“The inquiry came to include the Trump-Russia angle, thanks to the exertions of CIA Director Brennan and his counterparts in British and European intelligence services – like minded in their transnational-progressive alarm at Trump’s NATO-bashing and overt infatuation with Putin.”

This does not quite capture the state of play in 2016. Instead of a glorious march towards democracy through the transformation of NATO into a grand NGO, the US had landed in a nasty confrontation with Russia over Crimea. Instead of the dawn of Arab democracy, we had the Syrian slaughterhouse.

America’s noble – or perhaps narcissistic – intentions did more damage than Trump’s indifference. The world is better off with an America that does not choose to play Don Quixote. The problem is not that the emperor has no clothes but that the empire has no tailors. Both the left and right wings of the American foreign policy share the End of History delusion in one form or another, as they made clear with their unanimous support for the 2011 overthrow of an American ally, Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak.

This is hard to explain to people who don’t understand the depth of American narcissism.