The corollary of the decline of the west is not the rise of Asia. It is the erosion of Asia, at least as an idea, as rivalries within geographic Asia overtake the notion of regional cohesion that once bound these countries together.

This may seem heresy. China has been leading world growth; western pundits often see the world’s most populous nation as the leader of a continent reasserting itself after 250 years of foreign oppression. Pan-Asian solidarity in opposing western imperialism has a respectable 20th-century history — but it is history, not today’s world where America is the only outsider to matter.

China’s recent creation of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, with its promise to see Asian money leading Asian development, was a formidable public relations coup. It has been well received by developing countries, which have chafed at western dominance of multilateral institutions.