The World

He was sedated, then suffocated with a plastic bag. After that the doctor, putting on earphones, dismembered him with his bone saw. The CIA reported MBS ordered the killing but this compulsive visionary and despotic reformer, dedicated to Saudi dynasty, personal autocracy, cultural liberalization and – a player of the Call of Duty videogame – millennial technology, weathered the storm.

Trump’s unconventional approach could have solved problems, but every initiative was spoiled by his own unique mix of narcissistic braggadocio, racist undercurrent and clumsy autocracy. He delivered few of the promised victories.^* In 2017, American and British air power obliterated Daesh from above as Kurdish Peshmerga and Iranian-backed Shiite militias rolled them back on the ground. Yet the Daesh threat had saved Assad, who was backed by the Iranians, Hezbollah and Russian air power. The death of the family matriarch Anisa, Bashar’s mother, left her family exposed – her billionaire nephew Rami Makhlouf owned half the economy – and allowed Asma to emerge. Now Bashar, faced with rebuilding a ruined state, demanded that Rami hand back some of his riches; when he refused he was arrested. Asma herself was diagnosed with cancer. When she recovered, she started to approve government appointments and build her own smartphone and smartcard businesses, run by her brother and other henchmen, while her portraits – often inscribed ‘The Lady of Jasmine’ – appeared beside those of Bashar. Lady Jasmine had become a potentate of war.

Trump accelerated the withdrawal from the 9/11 wars, which had cost eyewatering quantities of treasure and blood. Yet Iraq was controlled by Shiite factions allied to Iran which enjoyed tormenting America. On 8 May 2018, Trump withdrew from Obama’s Iran agreement, calling it ‘the worst deal ever’.

On 3 January 2020, after Iranian militias had fired on American forces in Iraq, Trump ordered the assassination of Iran’s ‘shadow commander’, Soleimani, liquidated by a drone at Baghdad airport. In August 2020, Trump delivered his ‘Abraham Accords’ between Israel and the Gulf monarchies, backed by MBS, aimed at the chief enemy, Iran. This dramatic alignment placed Israel, chief military power despite its chaotic democracy, at the centre of an Arab–Islamic affinity led by MBS, whose oil made him indispensable.

‘We must become more unpredictable as a nation,’ said Trump at one of his campaign rallies. ‘We must immediately become more unpredictable.’ In this, he had delivered.

THE EMPEROR, THE TSAR AND THE COMEDIAN

Several unpredictable – but frequently predicted – things were happening in the People’s Republic. Trump confronted a rising China and a gaping trade deficit that he said was ‘ripping off’ America. Ever since Nixon, China had been a protected sector in foreign policy that was targeted against Russia. In the process, western leaders had been awed by the prosperity and wealth of China, appeasing its Party and letting its trade soar. Now Trump insisted, ‘We can’t let that continue.’ His trade war hurt both economies, but when the two met Xi Jinping was as confident and vigilant as Trump was inconsistent and erratic. A man who had experienced a vertiginous downfall, who had been in prison himself, who had seen his sister commit suicide, was unmoved by Trump.

When he became leader in 2012, his view of power was unromantic and realistic. ‘People with little contact with power always see these things as mysterious and novel,’ he said in a rare moment of public reflection. ‘But what I see aren’t just the superficial things: the power, the flowers, the glory, the applause. I see the bullpens and how people can blow hot and cold.’ His family came with him: his nonagenarian mother called a family meeting to warn them against exploiting his rise.^* His wife Peng became the first leader’s wife to be publicly prominent since Madame Mao, but she claimed, ‘When he comes home, I’ve never felt as if there’s some leader in the house …’ His political ‘lineage’ rose with him too; he purged rivals and their ‘lineages’.

Now his mission was simple. ‘East, west, south, north and centre,’ he said, ‘the Party leads everything.’ Deng ruled that the Chinese must ‘bide their time and hide their strength’. But now Party rule was consolidated, the former British and Portuguese colonies Hong Kong and Macau restored; only Taiwan remained unredeemed. As he was promoted to Core Leader without the usual term limit and with his own ‘Xi Jinping Thought’, Xi promised a ‘Chinese dream’ for his people, with ‘common prosperity’ for all. China boasted the second largest GDP after America, becoming the world’s largest exporter. Now, Xi looked abroad.