The odds are that American democracy will survive the dismal chaos of Donald J Trump’s presidency. The founding fathers had just such an authoritarian populist in mind when they embedded into the constitution a sophisticated latticework of checks and balances. It is all there — the imperative to constrain the violence of tyranny and faction — in James Madison’s contributions to the Federalist Papers. Since January the Congress and the courts have been doing their jobs.

The postwar international order — the framework of rules, alliances and institutions that, in broad terms, has kept the peace since 1945 — will not be so readily rescued from Trump’s foreign policy. The liberal internationalism that has defined the west has been rooted both in American power and in a shared commitment to freedom, democracy and the rule of law. This president disdains at once US global leadership and the essential values that have underwritten it.

Trump’s latest threat to inflict “fire and fury” on Kim Jong Un’s North Korean regime speaks to an immediate danger. A big part of the president’s pitch is the promise of US withdrawal from international responsibilities. But this sits alongside an angry frustration at the refusal of adversaries such as North Korea to bow to American power. Bombing Pyongyang would risk a disastrous conflagration. The worry is that Trump has no other strategy.