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<\/p>\nFor much of the past decade, a lot of what has unfolded in the world has been seen through the idea of the rise of strongmen in global politics.<\/p>\n
Donald Trump, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have headed the list, along with Recep Tayyip Erdo\u011fan in T\u00fcrkiye.<\/p>\n
And that’s not to mention the ones who have come and gone in the meantime: Hungary’s Viktor Orb\u00e1n, Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines.<\/p>\n
But so much has been transformed in the past year.<\/p>\n
In the United States and Russia, two of the strongmen may still hold unprecedented power within their countries, and seek to exert on the rest of the world, but they do so with rapidly diminishing credibility and effectiveness.<\/p>\n
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Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin have headed the list of strongmen in global politics, along with Xi Jinping. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque\/File Photo)<\/p>\n
Trump’s rambling pronouncements \u2014 someone described them this week as “fantasy announcements” \u2014 barely rate any immediate quiver in world markets, let alone diplomatic circles.<\/p>\n
For example, there was cautious early reporting in international media on Friday morning, Australian time, of his announcement on social media of a “HISTORIC agreement for the COMPLETE DISARMAMENT of Hamas and all other armed groups in Gaza”.<\/p>\n
As is so often the case these days, everyone immediately wanted to know if anybody else had actually agreed to this agreement.<\/p>\n
As The New York Times reported: “There was no immediate comment from Hamas or Israel, and it was not clear whether either had signed off on the plan after years of war and a fragile ceasefire.”<\/p>\n
A new conflation of important factors<\/p>\n
It’s not just that some of the strongmen don’t seem so strong anymore, that they often just seem to be lashing out reasonably ineffectively, or even that the “Great Powers” don’t seem to be running things.<\/p>\n
It’s that there is a new conflation of factors proving to be just as important, if not more so, in driving world events in increasingly disturbing directions.<\/p>\n
These include the dividend of years of greater powers’ efforts at destabilising other states; the rise of states that have never quite got to be stable in the first place; and of the role of non-state actors.<\/p>\n
More recently there has been the rapidly and relentlessly expanding story of how technological change in warfare \u2014 and rapidly diminishing stockpiles of defensive weapons \u2014 are transforming geopolitical power.<\/p>\n
Will Hamas disarm? Experts say ‘it’s difficult to believe’<\/a><\/p>\n Middle East analysts are sceptical Hamas will willingly lay down its weapons and that Israel will totally withdraw from Gaza.<\/p>\n Just in this week alone, we have seen the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine spread inexorably: conspicuously dragging in Saudi Arabia as well as conflicts in Iraq, Syria and Yemen continuing to escalate.<\/p>\n But Egypt has now also found itself under attack.<\/p>\n Also, Ukraine directly attacked an Iranian vessel in the Caspian Sea, a move which linked the Iranian and Ukrainian conflicts. It also reflected Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s apparent attempts to highlight Russian support for Iran to the US president days before he went to see Trump in Washington.<\/p>\n Then there are reports \u2014 denied by the Chinese \u2014 of a major deal to deliver Chinese arms to Iran.<\/p>\n In Europe, NATO jets scrambled this week as a Russian missile entered Polish airspace and crashed.<\/p>\n Ukraine has expressed alarm that North Korea is about to send another 30,000 troops to Russia to support its campaign.<\/p>\n Yet even with all this, the impacts of the major conflicts of the time don’t just involve crossfire and manpower.<\/p>\n Trump scuttles nuclear power deal with Saudi Arabia<\/p>\n Russia, one of the world’s largest resource economies, is now importing oil from India because of the damage Ukraine has inflicted on its energy infrastructure.<\/p>\n The European Union is struggling with a dilemma about placing sanctions on an aluminium smelter in Ireland owned by Russian interests because European nations also need the aluminium.<\/p>\n There are reports that Ukraine has been buying Chinese drone components from an EU defence loan.<\/p>\n The chaos that Trump’s increasingly erratic interventions create was highlighted this week by the announcement of a nuclear power deal with Saudi Arabia \u2014 a 30-year legal framework that would let US companies build nuclear infrastructure and export civilian nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia while blocking foreign competitors such as China and Russia.<\/p>\n
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