In 1993, a botched intervention in Somalia seemed to put the US off such projects for good. Three years later, it sent more than 16,000 troops to Bosnia. The failure to avert mass killings there revived the trope of a halfhearted superpower. Three years later, it led the Nato bombing of Yugoslavia. The reluctance to commit ground forces there was final proof of an inward-turning nation. Four years later, it was occupying both Afghanistan and Iraq.

As those twin missions faltered, wars of choice in half-understood parts of the world became unthinkable at last. In 2011, the US joined the bombing of Libya. When the ensuing void there produced two governments, even two central banks, such well-meaning intervention was discredited once and for all. Three years later, the US bombed Syria. The failure to act earlier confirmed the decadence of this bloat .?.?.

You will understand, won’t you, if I don’t take obituaries for the US empire at face value? For the fourth or fifth time in my life, America is said to be on the verge of something called “isolationism”. The record, by contrast, tells us to expect another show of force in some remote trouble spot or other by mid-decade. Go with the record.