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.
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 reconciliation culminated in Al-Sharaa’s visit to the White House last week, the first by a Syrian president, and the announcement that Syria had become the 90th member of the US-led Global Coalition Against Daesh.