So this is no time for schadenfreude. It's a time for critical solidarity. A few far-sighted people in Washington are beginning to formulate a long-term American strategy of trying to create an international order that would protect the interests of liberal democracies even when American hyperpower has faded; and to encourage rising powers such as India and China to sign up to such an order. That is exactly what today's weary Titan should be doing, and we should help him do it.

I like some of his stuff from time to time, but I do have to ask him what rock he's been looking under to make such an audaciously optimistic statement such as this. Certainly he's not talking about anyone in the Republican Party, nor, for that matter, about 1/2 of the leadership of the Democratic Party.

What international order are they trying to create? All I see is a concerted attempt to destroy all of the existing international order that has been so carefully, even if sometimes imperfectly, built since the end of WWII.