The presidency of George W. Bush has been traumatic for everyone, American or not, who believes that the human species can only solve the problems facing it in the 21st century by collective action, and by adhering to a multilateral system in which all are bound by the same rules. So traumatic that there is a temptation to blame all difficulties on the Bush administration, and to assume that once it comes to an end those difficulties will vanish.

I encountered that view among some of my colleagues, but more especially among my internationalist American friends, when I worked in the United Nations secretariat in New York during Mr Bush's first six years. I have also found it to be the default position of almost everyone in Europe since I returned there two years ago.

Memories are short. When I worked at the UN I was surprised how often I had to remind people that our relations with the Clinton administration had been anything but smooth. President Bill Clinton blamed the UN for his own failures in Somalia and Bosnia, and thereafter systematically blocked the establishment of new UN peacekeeping operations, until 1999 when he suddenly needed them in Kosovo and East Timor. He was unable to reach agreement with Congress on paying off US arrears to the UN budget. His officials considered advisers to Kofi Annan, UN secretary-general, dangerously soft on Saddam Hussein, while we on our side blamed the US for an Iraq policy that we saw penalising the Iraqi people, dividing the international community and making the UN the “bad guy” in the Arab and Muslim worlds.