New Player in History

Mohammed bin Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is now, for all intents and purposes, King of Arabia. He is thus one of the richest people in the world, protector of the two holy cities of Islam and  de facto leader of the Sunnis. At only 32 years of age he is very young by the standards of our day to be in such a position (Kim Jong- Un of North Korean fame is 33). 

As you can see from his stone cold stare above, this guy isn't letting a little thing like his age getting in the way of being a monarch in the old mold. He has already unleashed war against their impoverished neighbors to the south in Yemen, which sends a clear message that he means to use some of the high tech weaponry the country has been buying up for decades. Of course, the humanitarian consequences of the two and half years of military intervention have been fairly horrific in terms of civilian casualties and hasn't really achieved much of anything substantial in military terms, but those are details to a true King. Recently, the embargo has led to large portions of Yemen being on the brink of starvation and to the largest outbreak of cholera (might be something else) in living memory. He also took the move of cutting off Qatar because it was seen as not following the Saudi/Sunni line in the region by doing things like being too friendly with Iran, sponsoring Al-Jazeera and in general having their own foreign policy.  

With so many of the worlds royals just being titular, its good to see someone looking to maintain the ancient tradition of hereditary authoritarianism. 

In my opinion the Saudi royal family is, taken as a whole, the most hypocritical bunch of reprobates that our era has produced. Working in tandem with a psychotically myopic US foreign policy they managed to do more damage to Islam than generations of Imperialism by Europeans and hundreds of years of rule by Turk managed to achieve. Places like Chechnya and Afghanistan have gone from being predominately Sufi, and thus fairly relaxed about religion, to centers of reactionary idiocy based on perhaps the shittiest religion on earth, Wahhabism. Having said all that, MBS has already let women drive and is allowing movie theatres to open up, so maybe he is going to jettison this wretched ideology.

"The mistake of the West was to put the Sauds on the throne of Saudi Arabia and give them control of the world's oil fortune, which they then used to propagate Wahhabi Islam." -Salman Rushdie
  

The Trumpening

The rise of Donald Trump is a phenomenon that has certainly exposed the rancid madness that still lurks in the heart of America. As a historian, I can't help but be deeply impressed at how he and his team managed to game the election and steamroll over scandals that would have sunk any other campaign a hundred times over. He took the trend of political campaigns becoming hollow spectacles and took it to its logical conclusion- running his election bid like reality TV. He pulled in ratings unseen in any election and received wide spread coverage from all media, proving once and for all the old maxim that there is no such thing as bad publicity. Team Trump went all in betting against the intelligence of the average American, and we saw the results of that strategy in November.

 

White supremacists now hold positions of high authority in Trump's cabinet. A president now sits up late at night in the White House watching Fox News religiously, tweeting whatever comes into his mind. The pendulum seems to have swung very far this time and we will just have to wait for it to swing back. Democracy is only as good as the majority of the citizens, and in this last election we saw clearly the consequences of the era of social media. People can now sign up for whatever narrative that suits their particular prejudices, and their version of the internet will happily deliver a constant stream of 'news' that backs up that viewpoint.  

I genuinely thought that the baby boomer generation couldn't do any more damage to America, but I was clearly very wrong. It seems that the most dangerous aspect of all this is that the idea of objective reality has been dealt a death blow after years on the defensive. Alternative facts can be concocted on a as needed basis to support whatever the administration sees as expedient. If the media brings up the truth, they can be called fake news and ignored. That the mainstream media has to a large extent become so exceptionally ridiculous and unprofessional that this tactic could succeed so well is depressing. Watching the supposed opposition consistently behave like childish hacks and rather blatantly try to copy the rights media tactics does not bode well for their return to power. 

On the bright side it seems that as a result of the Trumpining the international order is undergoing a major realignment. Seeing as how we are still basically running off the world order agreed upon at Bretton Woods some 70 years ago, that might not be such a bad thing.  

I can't even begin to fully understand who Trump really is, let alone what he actually believes. He is a Tulpa of extreme potency, and one that has seemingly transcended reality through channeling deep seated paranoia, greed, and a fair amount of xenophobic nationalism that has always been a part of the psyche of any great empire. The fact that a candidate ran openly on build a giant wall on our brown border and 'bomb the shit out of them' as serious foreign policy objectives for a complex globalized world that America ostensibly rules, and won a crushing victory on that platform, speaks volumes. Nobody talks of America being the leader of the free world anymore, and many countries, allies included, have essentially said they think the man is at least partially insane, if not a complete sociopath. Even under Bush, there was a ruthless logic and callousness to what he did, that although horrifying, the world could easily enough understand and accept. The most fascinating thing about Trump, in my opinion, is that nobody can anticipate what he will do. His impulsiveness is already the stuff of legend, and he, more so than any other major leader of this century, is just making it up as he goes along. 

I've never been a fan of the Imperial Presidency, even if it was somewhat justifiable at certain points in our history (Civil War, Great Depression, World War II). I just don't trust the concentration of power, and even less so when it becomes one person. To be perfectly honest, I'm not sure if any single person alive is capable of administering the world that has evolved since globalization made everything so interdependent. In my opinion, Obama was as intelligent and dedicated a president as we have ever had, and even he watched the deficit double because he got extorted into giving billions to predatory banks and passively observed country after country in the MENA region descended into chaotic bloodletting and civil war. Those were not popular moves for Obama to make, but they were probably the best that he had open to him; the alternatives being complete economic collapse on a 1929 scale or endless land wars/nation building in West Asia and North Africa. 

Trump is going to face similar tough choices during his presidency, and although he is clearly capable of outmaneuvering American politicians, I doubt he can do the same when going up against Russia, Iran or North Korea. Iran is close to having a land route all the way to Beirut that will create a Shia crescent from the borders of Pakistan to the Mediterranean. This amazingly bold play by Iran and its Shia brethren is being backed up by a resurgent Russia, which is objectively a lot more effective at dissuading Western intervention than any nuclear program the Iranians could have managed. Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States are desperate to counter the rise of Shia power in the region. They have and will continue to support movements like Islamic State and al-Nusra (now known as Organization for the Liberation of the Levant or HTS) in order to thwart the Shia apostates that they have hated for well over a hundred generations. This is the greatest challenge to the world order that we have seen in the post-1991 era, and has all the makings of an all out regional war, if not a global one. How much of this Trump fully comprehends is anyone's guess. His speech in Saudi Arabia was rather interesting for two reasons. One, he openly said America no longer cares about spreading Democracy, which although something that the US has probably not really cared about since the 1950's, was still a fundamental part of our foreign and domestic propaganda. He then went on to essentially say that regardless of the horrors that radical Sunni organizations have brought to the Levant, the real issue is the fact that the Shia, led by Iran and protected by Russia, are winning on all the fronts, except perhaps Yemen. It is a moment of historic realignment taking place in the crossroads of three continents and no one is in control of where it will lead. 

Trump is a lot of things, but an idiot isn't one of them. He managed to outsmart the Republican Party, then turn around to stomp the Democrats more ferociously than anyone since Reagan. You can hate the guy, and many do, but you should never fail to appreciate the man's genius for grandstanding and his unrivaled penchant for insult. Still, Machiavellian as the man may be, I truly doubt that he can manage the evolving crisis. The fall of the Islamic State is but a small element in the shifting sands of power in the region, and isn't likely to slow the Shia-Sunni conflict at all. The thing that I can't help but love about Trump is that the man is utterly unpredictable and will say absolutely anything that works its way into that strange mind of his. For all we know he could tweet at 3am tomorrow: We no longer need the oil, so why not let the Muslims kill each other and sell weapons to both sides? #jobs #winning #maga 

Let no one say that we do not live in interesting times.