Mattis was talking candidly to a group of soldiers, probably in Jordan. He noted that the United States is uniquely vested with the powers of inspiration and intimidation, but that America had lapsed into a kind of limbo. “We’ve got the power of intimidation, and that’s you, if someone wants to screw with our families, our country and our allies,” Mattis said. There was this: “The power of inspiration—we’ll get the power of inspiration back.” But in a clearer indictment of the state of Trump’s America, there was also this: “You just hold the line until our country gets back to understanding and respecting each other and showing it.”

The nightmare will pass, Mattis reckons. This would be reassuring, were it not for the vivid imagination and impressive skills in clairvoyance required to know just how Americans will come to be at peace with themselves again, and how that wished-for reconciliation will translate into a revival of the rules-based international order that the United States was once so indispensable in policing. In the meantime, Americans remain at one another’s throats, and Canadians remain transfixed, but in the larger scheme of things, just one matter of greater importance is the way the People’s Republic of China is muscling in on all the political and economic spaces the United States used to occupy, the world round.

Beijing is on a rampage. The regime is an increasingly belligerent and malignant force in world affairs, an ever heavier boot on the necks of the Chinese people, and an admitted enemy of what remains of the liberal global order. Usefully, the ruling Communist Party of China makes no bones about it anymore. At least there’s that. So, right about now would be a very good time for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and quite a few of his ministers and advisers to offer us all a good old grovelling apology for the stupidities they have been fobbing off on us about China as a potential free-trade partner, a friend in the cause of coping with climate change, and a generous provider of guilt-free capital investment.