Unfortunately for global order, that harsh judgment has some historical truth to it. The United States is now the only really powerful nation to have eased into stable democratic government from the ground up. Yes, we fought our “revolution” against the British, but our practices of self-government were largely unchanged, and the principles behind them were in fact strengthened.

We do have a few friends around the world that share relatively peaceful origins. But Switzerland, New Zealand, and Costa Rica cannot hold back the New Chaos. The sad fact is that Europe and its former colonies are still mostly trapped between the reactionary longing to re-enchant the world and the radical fantasy of perpetual revolution.

It is this, and not “ancient hatreds” or our perceived “weakness,” that has truly fostered the New Chaos. Rather than blaming Barack Obama for the problem, we should blame the inability of the rest of the world to peacefully process the sweeping changes wrought by global democratization.