The world is run by old men in a hurry

EUROPE, not America, is the great exception.

In a world of nation states, it has the supranational European Union. In a world that understands the permanence of violence, it came to believe that it had transcended such things. (Hence the embarrassed rush to rearm now.) And in a world of old leaders, its Emmanuel Macrons and Giorgia Melonis stand out ever more as prodigies.

The numbers should amaze us. Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi and Vladimir Putin are all in their 70s. So are Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa and Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil. The president and supreme leader of Iran are 70 and 86, respectively. The presidents of Nigeria and Indonesia are each 73.