Back in the 1990s, it was fashionable to complain about what Hubert Vedrine, then the French foreign minister, called American hyperpuissance, or “hyperpower”. The left-leaning diplomat believed the “question at the centre of the world’s current powers” was the United States’ “domination of attitudes, concepts, language and modes of life.” What was needed, he argued, was a “balanced multipolarism,” which might counteract American “unilateralism,” “unipolarism” and “uniformity”.

With President Donald Trump, Vedrine has finally got his wish, though probably not in the way he would have imagined, much less liked.