Unsurprisingly, the news that the NSA has been monitoring the calls of dozens of world leaders hasn't gone down particularly well with any of those world leaders. In fact, after suspecting that the US might have been snooping on her communications, last week German Chancellor Angela Merkel rang up Obama herself to demand some answers. A couple of days later, it emerged that her phone has potentially been monitored for more than a decade by the supposedly friendly American government.

Saudi Arabia dealt a high-profile snub to the international community and the United States on Friday when it turned down a rotating seat on the United Nations Security Council. The unprecedented move was a culmination of months of public derision directed toward the U.S. for its halfhearted approach to intervention in Syria, its tacit support of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and, most recently, its overtures to Iran.

The war in Afghanistan is transitioning to its endgame. But the drawdown hasn’t stopped the billions in U.S. aid flowing into the country, and after 12 years of spending on this scale, we’re still losing money—hundreds of millions unaccounted for—almost as fast as we can write the next check. The spotty oversight of U.S. aid to Afghan forces is now set to get even worse as the main auditing group is in the country is about to have its presence dramatically reduced.

Recently Yazheng Huang warned that, because of dysfunction in the U.S. financial and political system, the United States is likely to lose its lead in technological innovation to China. Huang argues that state support for science in China is likely to exceed that in the United States soon, and this will eventually allow China to overtake the United States.

It's an established and obvious point, a corollary to the famous post-Watergate principle that "it's always the cover-up, never the crime." The "crime" might initially seem serious, or at least embarrassing: sending the Watergate burglars to spy on Richard Nixon's Democratic opponents, whatever happened between Bill Clinton and Paula Jones or Monica Lewinsky. But of course what came after is what did the real damage.

For presidents, like sports-team managers, the tough weeks tend to outnumber the jubilant. But even by the standards of an unforgiving job, Barack Obama could be forgiven for feeling unusually buffeted of late. Many of the blows have come on the domestic front, with the all-consuming stand-off of the government shutdown segueing into frantic efforts to defend and repair the roll-out of Obamacare amid charges of fatal technological incompetence.

A series of events in recent weeks has created a widespread narrative that the U.S. is an unreliable ally and a weak partner. First, the U.S. government shutdown forced President Barack Obama to cancel his trip to a couple of Asia summits. Then, new Edward Snowden leaks revealed that the National Security Agency has been spying on up to 35 world leaders, including top U.S. allies like German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Though it has received comparatively little attention, one of the most profound geopolitical trends of the early 21st century is gathering steam: China’s pivot to Central Asia. As American military forces withdraw from Afghanistan and gaze toward the Asia-Pacific, and while Washington’s European allies put NATO’s eastward expansion on the back burner, Central Asia has become China’s domain of investment and influence.