History has never witnessed a leader quite like Donald Trump — a mix of ignorance, arrogance immorality, brazenness, insensitivity and sheer stupidity.
So, to succeed in the trough of graft, a politician must have a profusion of scandals, so many of them all at once such that they would eventually overwhelm the system’s capacity to cope.
The challenge for Washington is no longer whether it possesses sufficient capabilities, but whether the political system can align those capabilities behind a coherent long-term priority.
The Beijing summit did not produce a major agreement between the great powers on the region, but it firmly established that Middle Eastern crises are now deeply tied to the great-power dialogue.