The profound crisis inside the US

"What is the greatest threat to the USA today?" a veteran American diplomat was recently asked at an international forum. Everyone expected him to say China, possibly Iran and the destabilization of the Middle East, perhaps even Russia. His answer caught everyone by surprise: "What's happening in Washington."

There is no doubt that America is changing rapidly and showing serious signs of decline. The complete absence of political consensus and understanding, in combination with the fact that the political dialogue is being dominated by zealots on both sides of the aisle, is catastrophic.

What happened in the House of Representatives is astonishing. The United States was left without a speaker of the House, who is number three in the official hierarchy of the American government, because an extreme faction of the Republicans decided to play games. This would have been...