On the morning of July 4, an American marketing professor was walking towards his ex-wife’s house in Athens to pick up their two young children. It should have been an unremarkable, if strained visit – the couple had apparently been disputing the terms of custody arrangements.

It was after midnight in Malaysia when Secretary of State Marco Rubio dialed into a call between President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte. The topic was Ukraine and Rubio, on his first trip to Asia as Trump’s top diplomat, had just met face-to-face with his Russian counterpart, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.