In early 2017, less than two months into Donald Trump’s first term as president, I published a piece of speculative fiction. Set during a then-imaginary second Trump term, it depicts a nightmare scenario in which American troops abandon Europe, the pro-Russia Alternative for Germany wins 20 percent of the vote in a federal election, and Russia launches a full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

My purpose in writing the story was to stir readers on both sides of the Atlantic out of their complacency regarding the parlous state of what used to be called the “Free World.” But it still didn’t prepare me for the series of events that began with Vice President JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference and ended with the humiliation of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy by Trump and Vance before TV cameras in the Oval Office. While many may view that two-week period as indistinguishable from the rest of the Trump era, future historians won’t: They’ll record it as marking an epochal shift in global politics potentially even more significant than the collapse of the Berlin Wall or the terrorist attacks of 9/11. It marked the end of an era — the era of the American-led liberal international order.