Much of the fake news causing so much alarm is trivial compared to the distorted view of the world promoted by many mainstream policymakers and commentators. One version insists the existing international system of rules made the past 70 years the most prosperous and stable the world has ever seen. Sadly, this golden era is now supposedly threatened by Russia and China.

Sure, there were some terrible wars in earlier centuries, including parts of the globe in the Middle Ages. But this doesn't diminish the unacceptable level of horrific violence and instability during the past 70 years, some created by countries claiming to champion a global rules-based order. The prominent Australian strategic commentator, Peter Jennings, often demands that China obey these rules without acknowledging that the US-led invasion of Iraq trashed the core international principles endorsed at the end of World War II. The repercussions are still felt in the violence racking the Middle East and the associated flood of refugees.

The balance of terror prevented either of the superpowers starting a nuclear war, but hasn't removed the ongoing risk of an accidental nuclear exchange. Nor did the nuclear stand-off prevent numerous other wars, including the protracted US intervention in Vietnam, which still suffers from the Pentagon's use of highly toxic defoliants, napalm and carpet bombing.

President Bush flashes a "thumbs-up" after declaring the end of major combat in Iraq. How that conflict contributed to the rules-based order is anyone's guess. AP

A 2016 Congressional Research Services study found the US has used armed force 215 times overseas since 1798. The tempo has stepped up, with force used 160 times since the Cold War ended in 1991. Earlier examples, such its participation in World War II, are widely considered commendable. Since then, the notion of American "exceptionalism" has sometimes been used to justify using military power in defiance of international norms. The US has also overthrown governments, including that of Iran's democratically elected secular prime minister in 1953 and installed the Shah, a brutal dictator who fled just before Ayatollah Khomeini's 1979 Iranian Revolution.

China's assertive behaviour in pursuing its contested territorial claims in the South China Sea, inherited from the Nationalist government and still supported by Taiwan, is not helpful. Although it has now lowered the temperature, ideally it should have accepted the findings of an international tribunal. But no one has been killed. Nor, given China's reliance on trade, does it threaten the freedom of commercial navigation. If the US ratified the Convention on the Law of the Sea, and accepted an earlier international court ruling after mining Nicaraguan harbours, it would be better placed to demand China obey the rules.