The great misunderstanding when it comes to strongman leaders

From Washington to Warsaw, from Beijing to Brasilia and Budapest, from Caracas to Cairo, the world has fallen under the spell of “strongman” leaders. Nowhere is that clearer than in the mounting tensions between Donald Trump’s US and Xi Jinping’s China. Ostensibly about trade, their conflict is at root a contest for supremacy between a long-established global hegemon and a pretender to that crown.

In one sense, the US-China dispute may look like a clash of the titans, pitting the world’s two largest economies, each equipped with awesome military and nuclear power, against each other.

But on closer inspection, that appearance is deceptive. In reality, it is a contest born as much of weakness on both sides as of strength.

In part, that stems from striking similarities between Trump and Xi. Though the specific circumstances and political systems differ, both have enveloped themselves in personality cults. Both have striven, often by questionable means, to amass power and project themselves as invincible and infallible.

Yet strip away the self-assured façade and they are exposed, not as supremely confident supermen but as suffering from inferiority complexes. And for all their braggadocio, both habitually portray their countries not as masters of all they survey, but as weak and exploited underdogs.

Trump has repeatedly complained that other countries “play the US for a sucker” and vowed to “Make America Great Again.” The implication being that it is not great now. Xi speaks of China’s “one hundred years of humiliation” and of engineering “the great rejuvenation of the Chinese people.” This is hardly the language of men confident that their country is indisputably the top nation.

Yet both, too, are in danger of over-estimating their countries’ power, a stance that could lead to overreach. Trump’s ultimate goal remains ill-defined. However, it appears to extend far beyond tackling China’s trade practices and intellectual property theft. Many observers believe he is bent on stopping its economic development in its tracks and eliminating it as an industrial and technological rival. However the two countries’ interdependence is so broad and deep that, even if that were achievable, it would be at great cost to America’s own economy.

Xi, on the other hand, is pouring huge resources into Made in China 2025, a bold attempt to leapfrog his country into global industrial and technological leadership. But although it has made some impressive strides, its continuing dependence on foreign suppliers of many components, such as semiconductors and jet engines, show how far it still has to go.

Meanwhile, there are growing questions about his flagship Belt and Road Initiative, a controversial and costly project to build infrastructure around the world that has become an axis of China’s foreign policy. One of the biggest uncertainties is for how long China can continue pumping money into investments offering meagre or negative returns as its economy continues to slow and its towering debt levels to rise.

Both men are also politically vulnerable at home. Trump faces a hostile Democrat majority in the House of Representatives, as well as continuing allegations of improper conduct in office. Xi has suffered a humiliating rebuff from mass demonstrations in Hong Kong that has compelled his hand-picked head of the territory’s government to suspend a highly controversial planned extradition law.

Other politicians might take challenges and setbacks in their stride. But for men who have striven assiduously to present themselves as all-powerful and in supreme control, that is a much tougher challenge. It makes it extremely difficult to climb down or retreat, for fear of losing face and authority. By concentrating power in their own hands, they make it hard to blame credible scapegoats when things go wrong. The temptation then to raise the stakes, ratchet up the rhetoric and push things to the brink must be strong.

Others face similar dilemmas. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s autocratic President, has been thrown on to the defensive by his party’s second defeat at the hands of Istanbul’s voters. And even in Britain, hardline Brexiteers must opt between inflicting severe damage on the country by taking it out of the European Union without a negotiated deal and seeking a compromise on terms that the EU, as much the stronger party, will almost certainly dictate. These cases have clear differences but a similarity exists between them.

For to plough ahead regardless could court catastrophe. But to retreat would invite accusations that the emperor has no clothes. Not an easy choice for those who have set themselves up as founts of power and leadership. Which way they and those like them jump will shape not just their own future, but that of their own countries—and of the world.