In the grand sweep of world events, the US election is a choice between two different approaches to managing the decline of US dominance.
The hopes of a US rejuvenation at the dawn of this century were dashed early, not by the terrorist attacks of September 11 or the rise of China but by two vast blunders committed by the US itself.
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What happens on US election day?
From the casting of the first vote to the concession speech, this is how the presidential election will unfold on November the 8th in the United States.
As the late British historian Arnold Toynbee liked to remark: "Civilisations die from suicide, not by murder."
The first blunder was the choice to invade Iraq in 2003. It was a decision that broke Americans' will for war. This was not an act of retaliation for September 11, remember. That was the invasion of Afghanistan. The invasion of Iraq was an imperial adventure.
Then US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said  September 11 had created "the kind of opportunities that World War II offered, to refashion the world".
But the Bush administration didn't think  the people would share its enthusiasm. So they disguised an imperial strategy as a pre-emptive strike in self-defence.Â
George W. Bush made the fateful decision, but he doesn't get all the blame. The invasion of Iraq was the culminating moment in a national infatuation with armed force.
"President Bush himself ought to be seen as a player reciting his lines rather than as a playwright drafting an entirely new script," says Andrew Bacevich, a professor of history at Boston University in his book The New American Militarism.
![Illustration: Dionne Gain](/web/20161108040456im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/j/z/o/v/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsjly4.png/1478559191979.jpg)
"Indeed, one striking aspect of America's drift towards militarism has been the absence of dissent offered by any political figure of genuine stature," he wrote in 2005.
Hillary Clinton voted in favour in the Senate and Donald Trump is on the record of being in support of the war in an interview, despite his later efforts to distance himself from the folly.
As president, Barack Obama has tried to extricate the US — "I am the president who ends wars", he boasted — but  found  a full withdrawal was going to be even worse than a continuing engagement.
After 13 years, about 4500 American deaths, more than 32,000 Americans injured and a cost to the US taxpayer of more than $US2 trillion, there are uncertain gains and very clear costs.
The second blunder was the 2008 financial collapse that became what Australians call the global financial crisis and Americans the Great Recession.
It was the convulsion that forced Americans to confront the crisis they had been trying hard for 30years to ignore: the crisis of a crushing inequality.
Again, it was entirely self-inflicted. Again, it happened on George W. Bush's watch. And, again, it was not solely his fault but the culminating failure of a much bigger national dysfunction. Â The easy profits from the debt-driven speculative mania in the share and real estate markets indulged an American denial that there was equal opportunity for all to get rich.
It was a national fever. For the first time, most US citizens became sharemarket investors. And not only the adults: 55 per cent of high school students bought into the share or bond market.
"Americans came to expect rising stock prices as their right," quipped a Wall Street wit, Jim Grant. "It was extraordinary. Everything was perfect yet improving."
Far from being a highly unlikely  event, the collapse was inevitable. Authorities knew it yet failed to protect against the consequences.
The two historic blunders came together in a way foreseen by US commentator Kevin Phillips in his 2002 book, Wealth and Democracy.
"At a certain point," he wrote, tracing the patterns of great power decline for four centuries, "in each leading world economic power's history, some major war proves too burdensome, economic prospects and divisions worsen, and the politics of frustration takes a critical leap forward."
Which brings us to the US election. One presidential candidate, Â Clinton, proposes economic recovery for the US people, improving equality though a higher minimum wage, affordable university fees and a fix to Obamacare, for instance.
At the same time she seeks to prevent further US decline globally by putting the US-led system of alliances and trade into rehab.
She wants to preserve the liberal international order because it serves US interests, but the political mood in the US will mean that a President Clinton will be severely constrained.
She is likely to be unable to further liberalise trade and she will be under pressure to justify any help to US allies. On the contrary, even Clinton would be under pressure to take a harder line on trading partners and to demand much more from US allies in managing global security.
The other, Â Trump, proposes an impossible gaggle of instant solutions, the trademark of the populist. A President Trump would want to stay home, forget America's allies, look after his friends with huge tax cuts, start a political fight club domestically, and perhaps join a gang of despots abroad, making common cause with Vladimir Putin's Russia, for starters.
One would seek the rational management of US decline, while the other would break the furniture just because he feels like it.
Either way, US allies such as Australia will have to develop a new, independent activism. Instead of outsourcing most defence and strategy thinking to Washington, Australia will need to start thinking much more for itself.
The US political scientist Francis Fukuyama says  all societies, democratic and authoritarian, are subject to decay over time. "The real issue is their ability to adapt and eventually fix themselves."
This week's election won't tell us if the US is able to fix itself; that will take years more. But it will tell us if the US Â is prepared to try.
Peter Hartcher is international editor.
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