Xi Jinping is shaping up as the most powerful Chinese leader since Mao. Vladimir Putin has invaded one of Russia’s neighbours. In Egypt, Abdel Fatah al-Sisi has eschewed the designation generalissimo in favour of the equally telling field marshal. Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdogan occupies a presidential palace to put Louis XIV in the shade. We have been living through the year of the political strongman.

Alongside the authoritarian there are bona fide democrats in the line-up of tough guy leaders who are now making the geopolitical weather. Though properly elected, Mr Erdogan leans towards majoritarianism, but Narendra Modi and Shinzo Abe have shown no inclination to subvert the liberal constitutional order in India and Japan.

The connecting thread is rather an approach to interstate relations and an attachment to national sovereignty more rooted in the 19th than in the second half of the 20th century. Some would add Benjamin Netanyahu to such a list. For all their differences, Israel’s prime minister looks more comfortable in the company of Mr Putin than in that of soggy European liberals.