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Imperial presidency

The idea of Trump as a would-be autocrat has been a more or less constant theme in U.S. media—and not just on the left but also in the established center and on the center-right. It dominated “Resistance” outlets like MSNBC, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic—which published an early cover story on the theme by David Frum, a former speechwriter to U.S. President George W. Bush—and was the subject of numerous best-selling books, such as On Tyranny, by the Yale University historian Timothy Snyder. As the prospect of a new Trump presidency became more real, these same outlets and writers warned that, even if Trump failed to overthrow the American political system in his first presidency, he might succeed in a second.

But with that presidency now upon us, the Resistance seems notably muted. True, the Democratic presidential nominee, Kamala Harris, called Trump a “fascist” in the closing moments of her campaign. For the most part, though, reactions in D.C. have been much calmer. “Welcome,” Joe Biden said to Trump on his return to the White House. “Welcome back.”

In what might seem emblematic of this shifting mood, The New York Times recently published a big feature on the pro-autocratic thinker Curtis Yarvin. Yarvin is a computer engineer by training but known broadly for the political views he’s elaborated on his blog, which turn principally on the idea that democracy is a fundamentally dysfunctional form of government—and that now-democratic governments, particularly the U.S. government, should instead concentrate power in the lone figure of the “monarch” or “chief executive.” As the Times put it, “while Yarvin himself may still be obscure, his ideas are not”—noting that no less a public figure than U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance has picked them up.

But does the idea of autocracy have any real traction in America?

Daniel Bessner is an associate professor of international studies at the University of Washington and the author of Democracy in Exile: Hans Speier and the Rise of the Defense Intellectual. Bessner says no, there’s no authoritarian movement competing in any serious way with republican democracy for the hearts and minds of the American people. The New York Times interview with Yarvin is in that sense a spectacle—entertaining to read, perhaps, and compelling to a niche audience; but Yarvin’s ideas aren’t meaningfully influential. There is a related problem in plain sight, however—subtler and genuinely threatening to democratic life for the way it’s become normalized in the minds of so many Americans: the hyper-centralization of executive power …

• “The New York Times is in crisis. And I’d even suggest that elite liberalism is itself in crisis. If the best they can do is highlight Curtis Yarvin, I think that indicates they’ve run out of ideas of their own—perhaps even that their political project is failing. Ultimately, elite-liberal institutions don’t really support the thing that could retrench their brand of liberalism, which is the kind of economic redistribution of wealth that could shore up the traditional Democratic base. So instead of looking for ways to win people over to their side, they’re looking to people like Curtis Yarvin for reasons why the party they support lost the election. But Yarvin isn’t influential. He’s not a key to understanding the crisis of American liberalism.”
• “The United States now goes to war on the president’s say-so, which is a very pure example of autocratic power—in the sense that successive presidents have consolidated tremendous power in the presidential office. The American state is now essentially run through the executive branch, often with the president simply issuing executive orders. In fact, so much power is now vested in the presidency that it’s not even clear that anyone could really carry out the job properly without doing so.”
• “Honestly, people in the United States have been worrying like this since the country’s founding. It’s quite typical: You speak about existential threats to American democracy in order to heighten political tensions. And that type of rhetoric is especially common when people have it tough, because even if they can’t see how their own situation will get better, they can still hope that their political enemies suffer. But with Trump restored to the presidency, it’s clear that that kind of existential language hasn’t been electorally helpful for the Democrats. They had the whole “Trump is a fascist” thing, but American voters weren’t convinced. Of course, people like to imagine their lives as great struggles against evil, which this grand language of fascism plays into, but it’s just not that compelling politically.”

Planning your next break or just feeling the urge to escape for a while?

Since the meeting, Sharaa has said he wants to pursue a deep strategic relationship with Turkey. Which makes sense: Turkey had long provided weapons and money to Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), the rebel group Sharaa led in the civil war. Sharaa and Erdoğan also share a similar ideology of political Islam, a broad ideology on which the principles of the Muslim faith provide the foundations for a country’s secular laws. And for Turkey, having Syria as close Arab ally in a critical location in the Middle East would be invaluable.

It’s an alliance that could reshape the region.

The complication is, since Sharaa and HTS toppled Assad in mid-January, almost every other powerful actor in the region has developed its own strategic designs for Syria. And the country will need massive investment to rebuild after more than a decade of civil war, sitting as it does on only modest reserves of oil and natural gas.

Last week, the emir of Qatar visited Syria last week to meet with Sharaa. And a day before his meeting with Erdoğan, Sharaa flew to Saudi Arabia to meet with its crown prince and de facto ruler, Mohammad bin Salman. Qatar and Saudi have far more capabilities to pay for Syria’s reconstruction, whereas Turkey’s economy has been struggling for years.

Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia and Erdoğan have long been deeply divided over political Islam: The Saudi royal family profess devotion to Islam but see their hereditary authority as separate, and they’ve always viewed Islamist parties as threats to their regime and other Gulf monarchies.

So who has the upper hand here?

Shortly after the fall of Assad, Vali Nasr looked at the dramatic recent changes in and around Syria. Nasr says Assad’s ouster caused the overnight transformation of the political landscape in the Middle East. For one, it means an acute loss of power and standing for Iran—as Assad was a key ally in the so-called Axis of Resistance Iran formed to counter what it casts as the regional dominance of the U.S. and Israel. But it also means new opportunities for the other leading regional rivals: Turkey, the Gulf states—Qatar, Saudi, and the United Arab Emirates—and Israel.

Still, Nasr says, there’s a bigger question in the background. The longstanding, shifting rivalries among the players in this immediate power struggle will continue to influence the Middle East. But the region’s deeper challenges don’t come from these players directly; they come from the region’s broken states—including Syria itself, but also Lebanon, Yemen, and Iraq—and from the chronically volatile situation in Israel-Palestine. The ways those challenges play out, Nasr says, will determine what happens in Syria more than anything Sharaa works out in the near term with Erdoğan or any of his rivals.

—Michael Bluhm

• U.S. officials are on their way to Europe this week for talks on ending the war in Ukraine: “I think an underlying principle here is that the Europeans have to own this conflict going forward,” National Security Advisor Mike Waltz says. “President Trump is going to end it. And then in terms of security guarantees, that is squarely going to be with the Europeans.”
• Gyalo Thondup, the elder brother of the Dalai Lama and the former chairman of the Tibetan government in exile, has died at 97: “Thondup, one of six siblings of the Tibetan spiritual leader and the only brother not groomed for a religious life, made India his home in 1952 and helped develop early contacts with the Indian and U.S. governments to seek support for Tibet.”
• An Antonio Stradivari violin made in 1714 has sold at a Sotheby’s auction in New York for US$11.3 million: “The Joachim-Ma Stradivarius is regarded as one of Stradivari’s best works, built during his Golden Period at the height of his craftsmanship and acoustic mastery, according to the auction house. … [It] is believed to have influenced composer Johannes Brahms when he wrote the famed Violin Concerto in D Major. This exact violin was actually played during the concerto’s 1879 premiere.”

• The tech sector is moving faster than ever—and growing faster than any industry in the economy. How to keep up? Join the 2.5 million who read The Hustle, a free, daily, five-minute briefing on business and tech news. Sign up here.

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