FT: Trump, Xi, Putin and the strongman race

Photo: abc.net.au

Trump’s return to the Oval Office has signalled a revival of the strongman style in global politics. Bilateral meetings between powerful, headstrong leaders increasingly shape the international agenda. Multilateral summits such as the UN General Assembly, the G20 or the COP climate summit are dwindling in significance, ‘Financial Times’ writes.

Both Trump and Xi skipped the recent G20 summit in South Africa. It was an international conference that would have forced them to share the spotlight with leaders of smaller nations. Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia also gave the G20 summit a miss, as did Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Putin finds it hard to travel these days. But that has not stopped him from enjoying a few set-piece summits this year, which allowed him to present himself as the honoured leader of a great power. He will be in New Delhi this week to meet Narendra Modi, the Indian prime minister. He strolled through Beijing with Xi and Kim Jong Un of North Korea in September. The previous month, he met Trump in Alaska.

Trump and Xi lead nations with the economic might to back up their strongman swagger. Despite his relentless campaign to win a Nobel Peace Prize, the US leader has also shown himself willing to use military force. He took the decision to bomb Iran in June and is currently threatening Venezuela.

But Trump’s efforts to end the year as the strongest of the strongmen are increasingly hamstrung by evidence that his domestic support is crumbling. The Republican party suffered bad electoral defeats recently in New York, New Jersey and Virginia. His protestations that the US economy is doing marvellously and that inflation has been beaten are disbelieved by American voters. Recent polls have shown the Democrats leading the Republicans by an average of five points ahead of next year’s congressional elections.

Xi, by contrast, is ending 2025 looking stronger than for some time. The Chinese leader has survived a perilous five years. A pandemic that originated in China created a global disaster — although Xi and his government somehow managed to forestall any efforts to hold China accountable. American tariffs threatened China’s access to global markets.

Nonetheless, in contrast to the EU and Japan, China has been unusually tough in its response to Trump’s trade war and used its grip over rare earths and critical minerals to force the US to reduce tariffs. The rare earths weapon could also change American calculations on a possible conflict over Taiwan.

Xi benefits from a presentational advantage in the battle of the strongmen, where a lot depends on an ability to project an image of unchallenged power. In a way that Trump can only envy, he has almost complete control over his country’s legislature, legal system and media. That means signs of dissent or turmoil are rare in China.

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