There is a founding bargain underlying every modern nation. In Britain, it was parliamentary sovereignty; in France, republican citizenship; and in India, constitutional pluralism. America’s arrangement was of another order entirely: The management of paradoxes rather than consensus. An editorial in this newspaper (‘Happy birthday, America, no more an only child’, IE, July 4) marking its 250th Independence Day referred to the US President as “undermining the foundations on which the American story was built”.

I argue, however, that long before Donald Trump or the strategic competition with China, the US relied upon a framework of productive paradoxes inherent in its societal conceptions, political traditions, and governmental structure. The fine balance that accommodated them is wearing thin.

Liberalism and power are at the heart of the first paradox. In America’s telling, it is the champion of political ideals that have inspired movements in every corner of the globe. And yet that very republic has also made itself the preeminent geopolitical force of........

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