Just a selection from Mr. Ganesh’s latest essay, on American Political life and Foreign Policy and its World-Historical repercussions. In sum a collection catchphrases-sometimes expressed as sentences. In sum, the rhetorical architectonic is based upon fragmentary thought, held together with stylistic embellishment, one of his writerly gifts.

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No one is better placed to restore the US to planetary leadership.

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Whatever the empire’s faults, caprice was not among them.

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When the cold war ended, so did America’s steadfastness. The pattern since has been one of abrupt swings not just in policy but in underlying worldview from president to president.

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When US fickleness recurs in trade, global health and other realms, you can see how countries might come to make their own arrangements or, in time, to throw in their lot with a more predictable superpower.

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Mr Biden could run a masterly foreign policy, then, and still fail to recreate the kind of US influence that he knew from childhood through to middle age.

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Aware of its relative youth as a civilisation, the west often assumes that Asia sees history as a vast Hegelian rhythm, measured out in centuries.

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The Chinese pitch to wavering countries almost writes itself: better a heavy-handed superpower than a whimsical one.

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https://www.ft.com/content/39d70d56-8beb-4725-8b9d-1e0b3183f921

Old Socialist