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It has overcome its former partner and eventual rival, Al Qaeda, first in battle, then as the world’s pre-eminent jihadist group in reach and recruitment.

“declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria.”

In an echo of the Cold War, Russia has committed its own planes and missiles, a challenge to the West’s perceived indecision and inaction.

struggles in the Middle East, between Iran and Saudi Arabia, between Shiite and Sunni, are also playing out.

An American airstrike finally killed Mr. Zarqawi in June 2006. Four months later, his successors declared the founding of the Islamic State of Iraq.

in March 2008 an American lieutenant colonel, recalls vividly finding the Islamic State’s black, gold-fringed banner some 50 miles north of Baghdad.

They were not the only ones — Mr. Obama likened the group to the “J.V. team.”

Each was shaped by the larger forces of the Islamic world, in particular religious zeal, Al Qaeda and America’s war with Iraq. Each rejected the secular culture of the West, which many say was the target of the attacks in Paris.

"We are not in favour of tension," Turkey's Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu was quoted as saying after the incident."We have always been in favour of overcoming tensions through dialogue rather than conflict."

"We were not aware that they had fired shots at us," Muzaffer Gecici said. "We have video footage and we have handed this to the coastguard. We didn't even know it was a Russian ship."

And last week, Turkey complained over what it said was a sailor on a Russian naval ship brandishing a missile launcher as the vessel passed through Istanbul. R

ussia rejected the criticism, saying the crew had a "legal right" to protect the ship.

A Turkish F-16 fighter jet shoots down a Russian Su-24 attack aircraft, allegedly because it violated Turkish airspace

With Turkey refusing to apologise over the incident, Russia announces a package of economic sanctions against Turkey, including restrictions on imports and travel.

Turkey condemns Russian "provocation" after Turkish media publish an image showing a Russian serviceman holding a rocket launcher aboard a warship passing through the Bosphorus.

A Russian warship fires "warning shots" at a Turkish fishing vess

"Despite numerous attempts by the crew of the Smetlivy, the crew of the Turkish fishing boat did not make radio contact and did not respond to visual signals by semaphore or warning flares,"

President Vladimir Putin described as a "stab in the back" Turkey's downing of the Russian bomber and has imposed economic sanctions.

Russian warship fires warning shots at Turkish fishing boat

Before the question could even be asked, Yousef explained that “the last suicide bombing used by Hamas was in 2004,” saying that the technique of indiscriminate killing was harming the movement.

Though some, including Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, may want you to believe Hamas and ISIS are buddies and would work together, this isn’t the case.

They hoped to have a space where “they controlled what was preached, without oversight,” according to Yousef.

On Aug. 14, 2009, Moussa declared an Islamic emirate from Rafah, directly challenging Hamas rule.

The armed followers of Moussa, Jund Ansar Allah (Soldiers of the Followers of God), and other Salafi offshoots sporadically attacked Hamas positions. They also murdered Italian activist Vittorio Arrigoni in 2011, after attempting to force Hamas to release one of their leaders. Arrigoni’s killing was widely condemned. He was a beloved figure in Gaza.

The rockets were easily dealt with by Israel’s advanced “Iron Dome” missile defense system, and the IAF quickly retaliated by bombing three sites—two belonging to Hamas and another to Islamic Jihad. Israel promises to hold Hamas responsible for any rockets. So, when SOHB bombs, Hamas pays the price.

North Korea had become "a powerful nuclear weapons state ready to detonate [a] self-reliant A-bomb and H-bomb to reliably defend its sovereignty and the dignity of the nation," Kim said, according to the KCNA report.

Experts have responded to Pyongyang's claim with skepticism.

But its conventional weaponry is dated, with limited effectiveness, and it has looked to developing its nuclear capabilities to project power internationally.

"It's hard to regard North Korea as possessing an H-bomb. I think it seems to be developing it," Lee said, according to a report by South Korea's Yonhap news agency.

Kim's regime generally cloaks its efforts in secrecy and occasionally boasts of advances through propaganda outlets, leaving the rest of the world to attempt to connect the dots.

Pyongyang is a "black box", said Ewha's Kim. He added that the regime was well versed in using uncertainty about its true capabilities to generate fear and strengthen its hand in terms of negotiations.

North Korea had previously used plutonium in nuclear tests, one of the elements used in more "small fry" fission weapons such as atomic bombs, Nilsson-Wright said, and a leap to thermonuclear capability would be surprising.

In May, it said it had the ability to miniaturize nuclear weapons, a development that would allow it to deploy nuclear weapons on missiles. A U.S. National Security Council spokesman responded that the United States did not think the North Koreans had such a capability.

A hydrogen bomb produces a fusion reaction -- the energy source of the sun and the stars -- in which colliding nuclei form a new nucleus. Fusion devices produce explosions "orders of magnitude more powerful than atomic bombs," according to the Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization.

By comparison, the world's first thermonuclear test, conducted by the U.S. in the Marshall Islands in 1952, yielded the equivalent of 10.4 million tons of TNT, a blast 700 times more powerful.

"Of course not, and the president has stated this, that there is no need to use any nuclear weapons against terrorists, as they can be defeated through conventional means, and this is fully in line with our military doctrine,"

The pilots joke that if you flew upside down "chicken bones from Saigon would fall out."

"It is a symbol of American might," says Capt Erin McCabe. "Wherever we go in the world, people take notice."

In the era of drones, stealth aircraft, and cyberwarfare, a chunky old behemoth sketched out on a napkin three years after the end of World War Two still strikes fear into the enemy.

"Knocking down doors" in an aircraft this size - 159ft (48.5m) long, and with a wingspan of 185ft (56.4m) - is a team sport, performed by a crew of five.Sitting downstairs in the dark, with no windows, targeting and r

We hear a roar and look up. A dark bird is looming heavily over us, blocking out the sunlight.Plumes of smoke from eight engines fill the sky and eardrums vibrate to a distinctive sound. Not just a rumble but almost a scream from the turbofans. "The sound of freedom" as Schultz likes to say.

It can refuel in mid-air - giving it a potentially unlimited strike range. This created a "nuclear umbrella" for the United States during the Cold War, back in the era of Mutually Assured Destruction.

The Boeing B-52 Stratofortress

But internally, over the years it has been refitted with computers and GPS/INS (Inertial Navigation System).

The pointy tip of the spear

"You can't even stand upright, except on the ladder if you want to stretch your back. Though if you're creative you can sling up a hammock, he says.The ejection seats are "like sitting on a concrete sidewalk".

"Every B-52 I flew in smelled like stale sweat, piss and engine oil," he writes.

From this sleepy corner of Louisiana, Ward took part in one of the longest and most devastating bombing raids of the 20th Century.

He and 56 other crew entered seven bombers - his was the Grim Reaper, with a painting of Bugs Bunny carrying a sickle on its nose - and flew 14,000 miles to Baghdad to drop a wave of cruise missiles, which obliterated Saddam Hussein's air defences.

It was the first time in half a century that a NATO member shot down a Russian plane and drew a harsh response from Moscow.

Putin has denounced the Turkish action as a "treacherous stab in the back,"

After the incident, Russia deployed long-range S-400 air defense missile systems to a Russian air base in Syria just 30 miles south of the border with Turkey to help protect Russian warplanes,

The Turkish military issued a press release saying a Turkish garrison commander and a Russian delegation observed a military and religious ceremony before the body of Lt Col Peshkov left on a plane for Russia.

Turkey and Russia have important economic links. Russia is Turkey's second-largest trading partner, while more than three million Russian tourists visited Turkey last year.

Turkish industrial goods would not be banned for now but future expansion of the sanctions was not ruled out, officials said.

It was reportedly handed over to Turkish authorities by rebels from Syria's ethnic Turkmen community in the Hatay region in the early hours of Sunday.

“China had a particular approach that it wanted to make, and we agreed and respected to give them space to be able to implement that,

But today in my conversation with the Chinese I made it very clear: That has not worked and we cannot continue business as usual.”

Beijing has only agreed to impose bans on weapons shipments to the North and sanctions on specific companies and individuals linked to the nuclear program,

Kerry did not specify the sanctions that he wanted China to agree to, but two officials familiar with the discussions between the United States and its Security Council partners say the United States is drafting a resolution that envisions far more severe sanctions

The first would be a ban on North Korean ships in ports around the world

But the scope of that ban is unclear;

exceptions for food and humanitarian goods

A second set of sanctions under consideration is a cut-off of North Korean banking relationships, akin to the restrictions placed on Iran in the successful effort to drive it to the negotiation table on its nuclear program.

During the George W. Bush administration, the United States shut down transactions at one particular institution,

The most effective step against North Korea, most experts believe, would be the one that the Chinese most oppose: a restriction or cut-off of oil exports to the North.

South Korean and American officials said there was also renewed discussion of deploying an advanced missile defense system

Taken together, those steps amount to what one American official called “a big wish list.” And they all reflect the reality of economic interdependence, which makes it hard for the South Koreans, or the United States, to be too confrontational with China.

North Korea then threatened to attack the loudspeakers, which it said sullied the “dignity of our supreme leadership,” and put its military on what it called a “semi-war” footing,

it’s World War II, Vietnam, or Iraq that tend to be invoked more often—it remains a point of contention among academic

Six months after Wilson was reelected, he asked Congress to declare war against Germany to “make the world safe for democracy.”

He Kept Us Out of War.” Two years after shooting began, the prevailing American sentiment was that the war was an uncivilized exercise conducted by savages

part of its mission was to stay free of such senseless carnage, which it did—until 1917.

American story of WWI may not always tell us much about the war itself, but offers an excellent window into the outlook of the nation at any given time.

The 1920s also saw the beginnings of a cultural revolution: flappers, bootleggers, and jazz. There was enough change at home

an emerging continental power with a new sense of its role in the world.

ith the aftermath of WWI would be an understatement. Immediately following the war, the Versailles Peace Treaty swiftly disintegrated

-turn, the idea behind it wasn’t. Europe was still barbaric—but instead of hiding from the old continent, America needed to redeem it

America returned to “normalcy,” a word Warren Harding coined in his successful presidential campaign.

From this, he drew many lessons, among them that simply showing up and winning isn’t enough:

He cultivated Republicans to ensure continued US engagement, acceded to the reality of Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe

That’s what President Clinton meant when in 1995, making the case for intervening in the former Yugoslavia,

“The Guns of August.” A history of WWI’s origins, the book argued that none of the combatants wanted a war—

‘The Missiles of October,’” JFK told his brother.) Tuchman’s view would become the most popular one among an American public scarred by the futile-seeming war in Vietnam,

This wasn’t initially an American idea, however: It came from a 1961 book by the German historian Fritz Fischer, whose work blaming his own country rocked the nation.

Fischer’s argument found a sympathetic audience in America, reassuring doubters that US participation in the war, and its ultimate role in stopping Germany, hadn’t been futile after all.

In 2011 Sean McMeekin, an American historian who works at a Turkish university, released a book in which he pointed to a new culprit: Russia,

raming the war as an Eastern land grab that just happened to lead to the deaths of millions of Europeans might not ever become the standard narrative,

. American officials have since been trying to get Cuba to return the laser-guided missile, which did not contain explosives

More than 70 small earthquakes rattling Oklahoma in the past week have raised concerns fracking is making the problem worse.

waste water.

An Islamic State militant has carried out a public execution of his mother because she asked him to leave the group, say the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

Police found traces of explosives, three handmade belts and a fingerprint of fugitive Salah Abdeslam, a French national

Anti-North Korea messages and K-Pop music were broadcast from loudspeakers at 11 sites along the border.—

The Palestinian death toll since the beginning of the unrest late last year increased to 149, and at least 20 Israelis have also died

The company's one-wheeled boards were seized after a US rival filed a patent infringement claim.

Ben Carson asked a bunch of fifth-graders to point out the worst student in their class, before telling the boy to "start reading."

was planning to build a $9 million mansion inspired by Tony Stark.

Police used batons to push Galatasaray players off the pitch as missiles were hurled from sections of the 60,000-strong crowd. Scuffles continued in the players' tunnel.

Some Roma players said Galatasaray players had used intimidation throughout the ill-tempered match.

Mr. Corbyn, who was elected as the party’s leader last year, is trying to shift Labour leftward on a range of economic issues, such as opposition to inequality and government spending cuts,

As a lifelong opponent of nuclear weapons, Mr. Corbyn has opposed Labour’s support for the Trident submarine system

Prime Minister David Cameron would be unlikely to order the use of Trident missiles, and when asked about the point of keeping submarines on patrol, Mr. Corbyn replied, “They don’t have to have warheads on them.”

a channel of communication to Islamic State militants should be created, and cited the secret contacts between the British government

protection of employment in the defense sector as a priority, suggesting that his position was designed at least partly to allay concerns among union leaders

For Mr. Corbyn’s internal opponents, the issue is totemic because, while out of power in the 1980s, Labour shifted away from a unilateralist position on nuclear disarmament as part of a change championed first by Neil Kinnock and later by Tony Blair.

Some military figures have also argued that, in an era of strained budgets, Britain could be better off spending its scarce resources on conventional capabilities.

“keeping the capability to launch nuclear weapons, and therefore the ability to cause catastrophic and unimaginable destruction, is not a suitable solution, and Trident should be scrapped altogether.”

Trident is a highly sensitive issue for Labour.

and the Irish Republican Army during the decadeslong conflict in Northern Ireland

Mr. Corbyn also said there should be a “discussion” with Argentina about the future of the Falkland Islands, and on domestic issues, suggested a repeal of laws outlawing labor action by trade unions in sympathy with other workers

The KMT forged closer ties with China under President Ma Ying-jeou. The new president will take over from Ma, who will step down on May 20 after serving two four-year terms. China and Taiwan -- officially the People's Republic of China and the Republic of China -- separated in 1949 following the Communist victory on the mainland in the civil war.

From Taiwan, she is part of the South Korean pop act Twice. She appears in the video reading her apology off a sheet of paper, leading many to speculate that her Korean management company JYP Entertainment had coerced her to appease mainland Chinese fans, who represent a lucrative market

In particular, a younger generation fears a future under the influence of Beijing and doesn't want Taiwan to become another Chinese territory.

"Taiwanese people are very peaceful. We want a peaceful relationship with mainland China, but that shouldn't mean we have to sacrifice our way of life and our democracy," said Huang Kuo-chang, leader of the New Power Party, one of a number of smaller opposition parties.

Taiwan has elected its first female president

Tsai Ing-wen, leader of the opposition Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), won the presidency with 56.1% of the vote,

“He had an unshakable faith in the idea that what was best for the world would be best for the United States,” as Patricia O’Toole wrote in “The Moralist: Woodrow Wilson and the World He Made,” her biography published this year. Mr. Trump, by contrast, has made clear that he believes if something is good for the rest of the world, it must be bad for the United States.

His “America First” approach has rewritten the compact between the United States and the countries it allied with in World War I and thereafter, leaving them to find their own way in this new era

Just last week, Mr. Macron called for the creation of a “true European army” because the continent can no longer depend on the United States. “We have to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States of America,” he said. “When I see President Trump announcing that he’s quitting a major disarmament treaty, which was formed after the 1980s Euro-missile crisis that hit Europe, who is the main victim? Europe and its security.”

“You can make the argument that the classical liberal world order has perhaps outlived its normal life span,” said John Lewis Gaddis, a Yale historian. “Obviously, Trump is doing that kind of thinking — not in a manner that is very polite or very decorous for sure, but in a sense responding to the inner strains that have been building for a long time.”

Unlike Wilson, Mr. Trump is deeply unpopular in Europe. Only 27 percent of people in a 25-nation survey by the Pew Research Center had confidence in the American president to do the right thing in world affairs — and only 9 percent have such confidence in France. Mr. Trump cited the survey on the campaign trail this fall to prove that he has the United States’ interests at heart.

In effect, Mr. Trump’s every-country-for-itself philosophy is a return to 19th-century great power politics, one that its advocates call more realistic than Wilson’s naïve romanticism.

Walter Russell Mead, a professor at Bard College, has argued that Mr. Trump is not an isolationist, as some see him, but is reinventing internationalism to take on American enemies like China, Iran and Russia in a more cleareyed way. “He appears determined to upend the international system as thoroughly and disruptively as he has upended American politics,” he wrote in The Wall Street Journal.

Mr. Gaddis said internationalism remained the dominant force in the United States when there was still a Cold War and what is remarkable is that it lasted so long once that existential threat evaporated.

“I’m not surprised that some of these foundations have been shaken at this point,” he said. “I have no idea what is going to replace them. I’m not sure I like how it’s shaking. It’s a little too shaky, it seems to me.”

— Russia and China “possess precision-strike capabilities, integrated air defenses, cruise and ballistic missiles, advanced cyberwarfare and anti-satellite capabilities.”

— “If the United States had to fight Russia in a Baltic contingency or China in a war over Taiwan . . . Americans could face a decisive military defeat.”

“Air superiority, which the United States has taken for granted since World War II, is no longer assured. And, without control of the skies, U.S. ships and soldiers would be [highly] vulnerable.”

The slippage in our military power has at least three causes, only two of which we can influence.

The first is other countries’ decisions to beef up their militaries; we can’t change that. The second is the shifting nature of warfare, with the rise of cyberwarfare and other new technologies (communications satellites and the like). We can do better here by addressing the third cause: unwise cuts in defense spending.

The time has long passed since the Pentagon was the driving force behind the federal budget. In 1960, defense was 52 percent of federal outlays and 9 percent of overall economic activity (gross domestic product). In 2017, the comparable figures were 15 percent of outlays and 3 percent of GDP.

In truth, military spending is in a quiet competition with the American welfare state

he Pentagon is losing badly. Welfare programs have vast constituencies of voters. Defense has fewer. Politicians straddle the conflict. They vote for welfare while insisting that the U.S. military is still the world’s most powerful. This rationalizes inaction on defense but conveniently forgets that the military’s margin of superiority has dramatically shriveled

It’s hard to miss the parallels with the period before World War II, when England, France and the United States allowed Adolf Hitler to rearm Germany, altering the global balance of power. The delusional complacency recalls John F. Kennedy’s book, “Why England Slept.”

This is not a call for war. It is a call for stopping many self-inflicted wounds. We need to stop underfunding the military, especially on research and cyberwarfare, even if that means less welfare. We need to keep our commitments — Trump’s abrupt withdrawal from Syria devalues our word. And we need to repair our alliances.

War is changing, and we need to change with it. Otherwise, we may drift into a large war impossible to win

It uncomplicates complicated discussion; stealth-curates our news; hijacks our dopamine systems, carrying us off on a devil’s quest for ever more dime bags of retweets and likes.

Twitter is changing us — regressing us — in ways developmental psychologists would find weirdly recognizable.

the “imaginary audience” phenomenon in adolescents — the idea that teenagers somehow see themselves as stars of their own productions, believing themselves to be watched by an eager, if sometimes judgmental, public.

On Twitter, you actually are living your life on a stage. “It’s the imaginary audience come to life,

political and opinion Twitter has made many otherwise well-adjusted people a bit obsessed with their new publics, checking just a bit too frequently whether that brilliant aperçu they just typed has begun its viral zoom

Whenever anyone proposes boycotting social media altogether, Mr. Shirky always answers: Fine. Got a way to do that while protecting #blacklivesmatter and #metoo?

The same can be said of Twitter. It’s the ultimate large box of strangers. As in high school, Twitter denizens divide into tribes and bully to gain status; as in high school, too-confessional musings and dumb mistakes turn up in the wrong hands and end in humiliation.

the faster the medium is, the more emotional it gets. Twitter, as we know, is pretty fast, and therefore runs pretty hot.

Our self-regulation deserts us (been there); our prefrontal cortex, responsible for executive function and impulse control, goes offline; we become reward-seeking Scud missiles, addicts in search of a fix.

We become, in other words, teenagers, who are notoriously poor models of self-regulation — in large part because their prefrontal cortices are still developing and their dopamine circuits are pretty busy seeking stimulation

The psychologist Laurence Steinberg describes adolescents as “cars with powerful accelerators and weak brakes

Do we really want something so important, so vital, as our political conversation to be conducted in a teenage register and defined by teenage behaviors? Do we really want to have this discussion on a medium that makes us lose sight of our adult selves?

described high school to me as “a large box of strangers.” The kids don’t necessarily share much in common, after all; they just happen to be the same age and live in the same place. So what do they do in this giant box to give it order, structure? They divide into tribes and resort to aggression to determine status.

But something is wrong with this ecosystem. Too often, as Jaron Lanier notes in his recent jeremiad on social media, we think we’re controlling it when it’s controlling us.

the best response to adolescent deviltry, tough as it is, is to let kids make their own mistakes and hope that one day they realize they’re inflicting harm.

The problem is, Twitter rewards us for our mistakes. It isn’t designed to let us grow up.

Our postwar statesmen were neither weak nor incompetent. They were the architects of the greatest foreign policy triumph in U.S. history.

o successful was this policy that Americans now—most of whom weren’t alive to witness the enormity of these wars—see peace, unity, prosperity and stability as Europe’s natural state. This is an illusion. For centuries, Europe was the fulcrum of global violence. With the age of global exploration, it became the globe’s primary exporter of violence

The U.S. military was always an integral part of the plan to unite and rebuild Europe from the rubble. Since World War II, U.S. troops have been deployed in Eurasia to ensure the continent cannot be dominated by a single power capable of monopolizing its resources and turning them against the U.S. The United States has built overwhelmingly massive military assets there to deter local arms races before they begin, and it has simultaneously assured those under U.S. protection that there is no need to begin local arms races, for their safety is guaranteed.

Only America, and massive power as the U.S. exercised it, could have pacified and unified Europe under its aegis. No other continental country possessed half the world’s GDP. No other country had enough distance from Europe to be trusted, to a large extent, by all parties and indifferent to its regional jealousies. No other country had a strategic, moral and economic vision for Europe that its inhabitants could be persuaded gladly to share

The founders of these institutions fully intended them to be the foundations of a United States of Europe, much like the United States of America. Profound economic interdependence, they believed, would make further European wars impossible.

At the same time, the United States built an open, global order upon an architecture of specific institutions: the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund and the International Court of Justice. This order is in many respects an empire—a Pax Americana—but it is more humane than any empire that preceded it, with institutions that are intended to benefit all parties.

Through the application of economic, diplomatic and military force majeure, the United States suppressed Europe’s internal security competition. This is why postwar Europe ceased to be the world’s leading exporter of violence and became, instead, the world’s leading exporter of luxury sedans.

American grand strategy rests upon the credibility of its promise to protect American allies; this credibility rests, in turn, upon U.S. willingness to display its commitment.

The Soviet Union’s criticism of the Marshall Plan and other American involvement in Europe was eerily similar to the language Russia’s now uses in its campaign to undermine NATO and the EU. The vocabulary and tropes of Russian propaganda are widely echoed, wittingly or unwittingly, by far-right, far-left and other antiliberal politicians, parties and movements throughout the West

The loudest exponent of the idea that the U.S. is getting rolled, that the European Union was “created to destroy us,” and that multilateral institutions such as the World Trade Organization assault the “sovereignty” of the nations concerned is, unfortunately, the president of the United States.

It’s hard to understate how foolish and reckless these notions are. History can be shoved down the memory hole, for a time, but reality is never so cooperative.

The Second World War proved not only that isolationism and American-Firstism were fantasies, but exceptionally childish and dangerous ones, at that. In the age of hyperglobalized trade, international air travel, the internet, nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles, these fantasies are even more childish and dangerous. The U.S. may be on another continent, but it is not on another planet.

It is true that the U.S. spends more on its military, in absolute dollars and as a percentage of GDP, than any European country. That was always part of the deal. The U.S. is a global superpower. It can fight a war anywhere in the world, invade any country at will, and (at least in theory) fight multiple simultaneous major wars—even in space. Of course this costs more. It is in America’s advantage to be the only power on the planet that can do this.

Conversely, it is not remotely in America’s advantage for other countries to spend as much money on their militaries as we do

Trump’s refusal to deter our shared enemies and protect our allies risks provoking a regional European arms race—exactly what the U.S. has sought to avoid for 74 years

Above all, Trump’s overt support for sordid, Kremlin-backed actors who seek to undermine Europe’s unity is unfathomable: How could it be in Europe’s interest, or in ours, for the American president to lend the United States’ prestige and support to Europe’s Nazis, neo-Nazis, doctrinal Marxists, populists, authoritarians, and ethnic supremacists, particularly since all of them are ideologically hostile to the United States?

Should the unraveling of the order the U.S. built proceed at this pace, the world will soon be neither peaceful nor prosperous. Nor will the effects be confined to regions distant from the United States. America will feel them gradually, and then, probably, overnight—in the form of a devastating, sudden shock.

The American-led world order, undergirded by the ideal of liberal democracy, has been highly imperfect. But it has been the closest thing to Utopia our fallen and benighted species has ever seen. Its benefits are not just economic, although those benefits are immense. Its benefits must be measured in wars not fought, lives not squandered