Supreme leaders are the problem

Prime Minister Mark Carney says the world is being run by hegemons. “We live in an era of great power rivalry,” he said in his now-famous Davos speech, where those countries assert their economic, political and military strength to dominate the less powerful.

This is only half the story. Countries have interests, but they don’t act without direction. They are driven to do the things their leaders dictate. Each of the great powers Carney was alluding to — China, Russia and America — are run by all-powerful leaders who have consolidated authority around their own person.

The world doesn’t have a hegemon problem; it has a supreme leader problem.

Supreme leaders have formed one bloody chapter after another in our history. Franco in Spain, Mussolini in Italy, Castro in Cuba, Stalin in the Soviet Union, and, most infamously, Hitler in Nazi Germany. Cults of personality surrounded each. Their word was literally law. Each built governance structures around their personal predilections. Which meant that they were both rigid yet unpredictable. Therein lay their strength.

Which brings us to U.S. President Donald Trump and former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, just fired by Trump. An egregiously unqualified appointee, she became the cosplay secretary, riding a horse along the border, wearing a Rolex at a Salvadoran prison photo-op and an improperly secured bulletproof vest at a field operation, buying departmental luxury jets for her personal use, and most fervently, spending more than US$200 million on a self-promotion advertising campaign.

Noem was a perfect exemplar of a Trump administration that excels in excess. She was fired by Trump not because of her controversial actions or behaviour. Despite misusing taxpayer dollars and lying about ICE operations and the people they killed or wrongly deported, she drew Trump’s ire because she finally drew Trump too close to one of those actions, when she said he approved of her ad buy.

Until then she was enabled by Trump because she emulated Trump. Which is a working principle of how supreme leaders work. Their indifference to governance is a feature of their leadership charisma. They rely on subordinates to understand and act according to the leader’s desires even if they are unspoken. They reign until they rule. And then they rule arbitrarily. As Kristi Noem found out.

This phenomenon was related by an eminent historian, Ian Kershaw, researching how Nazi Germany functioned. He discovered a 1934 speech given by a senior agricultural official that encapsulated the direction, one year in, of what would become the “Fuhrer State.” “It is the duty of everybody to try to work towards the Fuhrer along the lines he would wish,” the official said. “Anyone who makes mistakes will notice it soon enough.

But anyone who really works towards the Fuhrer along his lines and towards his goal will certainly both now and in the future, one day have the finest reward in the form of the sudden legal confirmation of his work.”

Kristi Noem, anyone? Or FBI Director Kash Patel? Or Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.? The list goes on.

It has been clear for some time that the Trump administration cares little about America’s democratic norms or governing institutions. Governing well is not the aim; governing like Trump would want, is. Which is simplistic and sudden.

How else to explain the long list of policy mistakes, broken promises and reversed decisions that is marking his presidency as one of the most incompetent and illegal in history? From tariff walk-backs to DOGE job cuts that never added up to starting a war in the Persian Gulf without any ready game plan to evacuate U.S. personnel from harm’s way or deal with stranded tankers and the inevitable disruption in oil markets.

Trump’s word is law in his orbit. Even when his word is wrong and known to be. Push the envelope and get Trump to agree, and that is now official policy or law.

MAGA government is acolyte governing. It is obeisance to the supreme leader. That doesn’t just mean doing what he wants, it is doing what you think he wants. Erratic and impulsive on the surface, it is deeply institutionalized below. Cabinet secretaries and agency heads deliberately mould the machinery of government to organically support and facilitate supreme leadership direction, whoever provides it. In this manner, it anticipates what is desired before being asked.

That brings us to Iran, the regional hegemony in the Middle East. That theocratic regime was formed and run by a supreme leader called the Ayatollah. Replacing Khamenei the father with Khamenei the son is the way to preserve the regime itself. Without a supreme leader in their form, the regime would fall. Which is why, despite punishing damage, they still wage war against the U.S. and Israel.

Carney’s hegemonic diagnosis was correct but insufficient. Just as Trump’s Iranian gambit may prove the opposite: correct and sufficient to remove Iran’s military hegemony but incorrect and insufficient in thinking military action alone could bring about actual regime change.

Supreme leaders reign supreme because they have built up a governing apparatus of people and power to withstand all but the deepest and longest of shocks. It reminds us they are the real hegemons, not their countries.

» David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government. This column previously appeared in the Winnipeg Free Press.