Even as many yearn for the days when America’s influence kept geopolitics stable in the region, this may go down in history as the year when Asia no longer stood to attention when a US president cleared his throat. In the 1942 Hollywood classic Casablanca, Major Strasser of the Third Reich tells the French police prefect that his impression of saloon keeper Rick Blaine, the principal protagonist, is that he is just another blundering American.