Decline of the west Whoever wins the US election must face harsh reality

It is November 1992 and the US is at the height of its power. Communism has been defeated. The Berlin Wall has been demolished. The Soviet Union has broken up and Russia is being used as the laboratory mouse for free-market shock treatment.

- Larry Elliott

Liberalisation of the Chinese economy offers the opportunity for US multinationals to outsource production. An era of American-dominated globalisation has dawned.

Two liberal internationalists - George HW Bush and Bill Clinton - are battling for the presidency. Clinton defeats Bush, because the protectionist Ross Perot takes more votes from the Republicans than from the Democrats.

Much has changed in the 32 years since Clinton became the first baby boomer to enter the White House. As Americans prepare to go to the polls tomorrow, their country is still the world's largest economy. But its supremacy is no longer unchallenged and the unipolar new world order that Bush boasted of in 1991 at the end of the first Gulf war has collapsed.

In the 1990s, there was talk of a state-free world where money, goods and people would move freely, controls on capital were removed, and independent central banks set interest rates. The World Trade Organization would break down trade barriers.