An oracle in the ancient kingdom of Phrygia once foretold that its future king would ride into town on a bullock cart. A few days later, the people of the realm anointed the peasant Gordius, who drove an ox-cart as the Phrygian king. Gordius fastened his lucky cart to a pole in the temple to Zeus in a knot that became famous as the Gordian knot. The oracle also prophesied that the one who could untie it would go on to conquer Asia. Many tried but the cart remained tied to the pole.
In the year 333 BC, a young Macedonian prince named Alexander came across the knot. When he heard the legend, the precocious 17-year-old simply drew his sword and cut the knot. Proving the prophecy, he went on to win Asia.
In the year 2024, leaders, as maverick as Alexander, sliced many Gordian knots with cleaving rhetoric and radical ideas that were often dismissed as crazy.
Javier, The Chainsaw Man
Exactly one year ago, Javier Milei, who belongs to the Libertad Avanza, beat Peronist leader Sergio Massa by a mile to become Argentina’s President. A self-described anarcho-capitalist, Milei famously campaigned during the election with a chainsaw, showing off his intent to slash and burn entrenched thought and established institutions, including the country’s central bank. He declared that Argentina needed shock therapy and there was no room for gradualism. Milei took the axe to half the ministries and fired thousands of government employees. The libertarian politician, who swears by freedom of doing business, sawed off large chunks of public spending on infrastructure, education, healthcare and social development services. No long-term gain without short-term pain, he argued. The single-point focus on public finances helped improve the federal balance sheet.
Argentina was in a recession when Milei took over. It emerged from that in the July-September quarter. Month-on-month inflation is sharply down from 25% to 2.5% even though annual inflation is still at 193% albeit lower than 211% a year ago. The US dollar now exchanges for nearly the same amount of pesos in the formal and informal market and the country’s forex reserves swelled by $11 billion during the year. Other reforms and small fixes seem to be working too.
It is too early to declare Milei’s shock therapy a success just because federal finances have improved. Unemployment has risen and with subsidies gone, cost of living has increased. So has poverty. Milei claims that the rise in unemployment and poverty levels is because it is correctly reported now unlike earlier when, he alleges, the real levels were hidden. He doesn’t have much time. Argentinians should feel the economic pain easing before the Overton Window shuts.
Captain America
Milei is at the vanguard of mould-breaking leaders now active on the world stage. The most powerful of them is unquestionably Donald Trump, whose sheer audacity trumps his predecessors’ promises of hope. In an astonishing rebound of political fortune, Trump, whose career seemed to be over in 2020 when he was ejected from office branded as an insurrectionist, trounced the lacklustre Democratic Party candidate Kamala Harris to reclaim the White House after a gap of four years. His comeback is so decisive that the hub of activity has already shifted from Washington to Florida as world leaders and business tycoons drop by to dine on fast food.
That business barons are already prostrating before king Trump at his Palm Beach resort-residence Mar-a-Lago is a sign of the enormous power he has accumulated by winning the election on hard positions, over-the-top plans and scattershot threats. SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son has pledged to invest $100 billion in the US over the next four years. Singapore’s ultra-cautious sovereign fund GIC is ramping up its US exposure. Congratulating Trump on his election win, even Indian billionaire Gautam Adani promised to invest $10 billion in that country’s energy and infrastructure sectors. Like his friend and admirer Milei, Trump has vowed to take the axe to government spending and slam rivals with earth-shattering trade tariffs while letting American businesses have a free run.
Trump’s promise to radically break away from America’s long-practised foreign policy is already forcing adjustments all over the world. His solution is simple: others’ problems are not America’s unless it’s good for business. A non-interventionist US can lower the temperature in many conflict-ridden parts of the world.
NATO members in Europe are mulling raising targeted defence spending to 3% of GDP from the currently mandated 2% of GDP. Israel, until now averse to a truce with Hamas, is said to be ready to make a deal. Some reports say that even Saudi Arabia might be involved in rebuilding Gaza in what has hints of a near-two-state solution.
The joker in the Trump pack, however, is Elon Musk, the billionaire designated to head a department of efficiency whose job would be to reprise what Milei—a Musk fanboy—did in Argentina.
Meanwhile, Phrygia…er, Turkey
On the cusp of Asia and Europe, where ancient Phrygia once existed, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have hacked a knotty problem in his backyard. In a mere 11 days, an Idlib-based rebel militia led by a former Islamic State and Al Qaeda commander, Ahmed al-Shaara, known earlier by his nom de guerre, Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, successfully evicted Bashar al-Assad, the dynastic occupant of Damascus for 24 years. Reports suggest that the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is designated a terrorist organisation by several countries, including the US and Turkey, has the tacit support of the latter. Acknowledging that Turkey is a major military force, Trump, who gets along with the Turkish President very well, has said that Erdogan orchestrated it.
The manoeuvre has decisively changed the power equations in the region. The HTS’s assault—when a non-interventionist is poised to become the US President and Israel has pummeled to near-submission Iran-backed Hamas and Hezbollah—has cut off Iran and Russia, which was a staunch ally of Assad, from the region.
In the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict earlier, Turkey had already tested Russia and found that it would be unwilling to divert attention from Ukraine. Turkey’s training and weapons helped Azerbaijan decisively wrest the region from Armenia in September 2023, which was under Russia’s security umbrella, in a one-day putsch. Turkey also supplies the highly effective Bayraktar drones (although they are said to be less in use now) to Ukraine, and their maker, Baykar, was even reported to be building a factory near Kyiv. Erdogan perhaps wagered, correctly, that Russia would not intervene in Syria.
That doesn’t mean the region will calm down. Far from it. But the slim odds for peace and rebuilding in the Middle East have gone up a notch and can potentially mean millions of refugees who fled to Turkey and its European neighbours could return. Erdogan had tried in 2010 to create a free trade zone with Jordan, Syria and Lebanon. A deal was signed but the region plunged into conflict soon after.
Whether unconventional leaders have been good or bad for their countries is debatable, but they definitely change the course of history. Nations such as Pakistan and Bangladesh, which are caught in a downward spiral, also need leaders who think out of the box. Events in both countries show that like Argentina, the Overton Window for drastic measures is open but the opportunity will not last for long. Perhaps new leaders will emerge in 2025.
(Dinesh Narayanan is a Delhi-based journalist and author of ‘The RSS And The Making Of The Deep Nation’.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author