It is a measure of the deep foreign policy irrationality that permeates the contemporary West that even the conservative realpolitik of Kissinger must now be erased from history and implicitly condemned. Similar domestic tensions – always likely to be inflamed by irrational foreign policy stances – exist in all contemporary western nations. Hence the current chronic, ongoing political instability that afflicts the UK and France – and also, to a lesser degree, Germany and America. What then were the domestic political controversies that were brought into focus by Albanese's recent China crisis? Like Starmer and Macron, Albanese is a captive of the global elite policies that he is wedded to.