America is distracted and in a global diplomatic self-quarantine

STOP the World: I Want to Get Off was the name of a popular 1962 Broadway show - and in a way it captures the mood of a Washington being distracted today by a major political crisis and paying almost no attention to what is happening in the rest of the world.

In the final weeks of a presidential election taking place in a dangerously politically-polarised America, and in the midst of a deadly pandemic, an economic recession, and civil unrest, a US president is now supposedly recovering from a virus that has already killed close to 220,000 Americans. He has refused to pledge that he would accept the outcome of the Nov 3 presidential race, with the Speaker of the House of Representatives raising the possibility of ousting from office the president whom she accuses of being "in an altered state" from his medical treatment.

This is the president who is the leader of the world's only remaining superpower and the "free world", who, as the cliché goes, has his finger on the "nuclear button", a reference to his power to launch nuclear weapons, and who manages what is the locomotive of the global economy. And the crisis in Washington is unfolding at a time when, against the backdrop of a global pandemic and economic downturn, the threats facing the international order are as grave as they were during the most dangerous periods of the Cold War, challenging the national security interests of the United States and its allies.