ON THE face of it, the American public are being offered a clear-cut choice. In the red corner is Donald Trump, convicted criminal, congenital liar, demagogue, and conspiracy theorist, friend of foreign tyrants, disdainer of climate science, manipulator of the law, etc., etc. In the blue corner is Kamala Harris, who, her supporters concede, is a political weathervane who has been “more focused on her political career than on the job she was elected to do”.

But what of the rest of the world? Whoever wins will oversee the continuing decline of the American empire that has dominated history since the end of the Second World War, when, at the Bretton Woods Conference, the US oversaw the consolidation of an international trading and financial system that disproportionately steered the fruits of global growth to the winning powers. It also fostered a moral superiority that made America, in Ronald Reagan’s quasi-biblical phrase, a “shining city on a hill” — or, to quote Barack Obama, “a global force for good”.

In practice, might was right. The US spends more on arms than China, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, France, Germany, Britain, Japan, South Korea, and Brazil combined. But it avowed an ideal of the common good, international rules-based order, and respect for human rights.

George W. Bush’s invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11 put an end to the idea of the US as the upholder of inviolable rules-based order. Vladimir Putin followed suit, invading Crimea and then Ukraine. Israel is doing the same in Gaza. China threatens it with Taiwan.

America’s sun is setting, and China’s is rising inexorably. In 2000, the West accounted for 80 per cent of global economic output. Today, that figure is just 60 per cent and falling. Under both Donald Trump and Joe Biden, Washington’s relationship with Beijing has been deeply competitive, and, with China’s increasing militarisation, could easily become combative. Whoever wins next week, that will not change.

This steady shift in the balance of power is emboldening other powers to move in ways that weaken the US sphere of influence. A new cold war with Russia threatens. Allies such as Saudi Arabia are acting more openly in their own interests than ever before. The US has endured humiliation in Afghanistan, sabre-rattling from North Korea, a slow grinding war that it will not resolve in Ukraine, and an inability to establish its authority over Israel and Iran in the Middle East.

There is no sense of any real strategic difference in how a future Trump or Harris administration will handle all of this. The US does not have the military strength to defend Israel, Ukraine, and also Taiwan simultaneously. Mr Trump’s pro-Israel position is clear, but so is Ms Harris’s. For all her rhetorical empathy with the people of Gaza, she seems to lack the will to depart from America’s double standards — supporting Ukrainian statehood while denying it to the Palestinians. On world trade, although the rhetoric of the two candidates differs, both, in practice, will direct the US into increased protectionism.

Mr Trump scares the world more with his crazy talk, but it is far from clear that Ms Harris has different solutions to the relative decline of the US, increasing social fragmentation at home, and diminishing authority abroad.