This power vacuum, however, is not just a military one. It is also the fruit of the Obama doctrine, a debilitating doctrine of decline, which decrees abject acquiescence in the eclipse of the Atlantic alliance that won both world wars and the Cold War. The key word in Obama's doctrine is "engagement": once a synonym for battle, in his vocabulary it signifies appeasement. By sounding the retreat from Iraq and now Afghanistan, Obama has given tacit permission for his allies to scuttle the project of spreading democracy that was launched after 9/11, and without which the Arab Spring would never have happened. The end of American exceptionalism implies that those who fight for freedom anywhere can no longer count on US support. These dissidents are the natural allies of the West. The only hope of countless victims of genocide, terrorism, oppression and censorship has been the American example of perseverance in the cause of liberty. 

As the US retreats from the fray, leaving chaos in its wake, we see a process of political and institutional entropy spreading across the globe. Structures disintegrate, alliances atrophy, corruption creeps in. Organisations such as the EU, the UN and Nato increasingly resemble shell companies, with no real function beyond self-perpetuation. Power in this new world disorder is diffuse and unpredictable. Not only do "failed" states proliferate in Africa and Asia, but even Europe and America are burdened with bankrupt and parasitical states from Greece to California. This entropy is as dangerous as the power vacuum that causes it.

There is nothing inevitable about these phenomena: all are caused by human error; all are recent; all are reversible. It is already possible to look forward in America to a post-Obama era and to discern the contours of a Europe without the euro. How soon we can put our house in order depends on the struggle for the soul of the West; and that is where Standpoint comes in.