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View all search resultsThe strongman’s mirror: Prabowo, Trump and the return of personalist power in Asia
As the Presidents of Indonesia and the United States prepare to meet this week for talks on trade and the Board of Peace, the spotlight falls on a unique and potent alignment. Beyond the policy briefs, it is time to consider the profound psychological and cultural synchronicity between Prabowo Subianto and Donald Trump.
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President Prabowo Subianto (right) shakes hands with United States President Donald Trump on Jan. 22, at the Board of Peace launch during the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland. (AFP/Fabrice Coffrini)
W
hen United States Donald Trump first entered politics, analysts reached for familiar American metaphors, populism, reality-TV theatrics or authoritarian drift. Yet his governing style, famously described as a “mob-boss presidency”, fits a far older political tradition.
His system prizes loyalty over law, charisma over procedure and spectacle over substance. To much of the world, this "grammar" of power is instantly recognizable.
In Southeast Asia, power has long been personal. Charisma and authority are inextricably intertwined; leadership rests not on the cold mechanics of impersonal institutions but on the subjective aura of command. In this light, Prabowo Subianto emerges as Trump’s most natural global counterpart: a leader who rules through presence, patronage and the language of dominance.
In traditional Javanese political cosmology, power is not delegated; it is possessed. Authority radiates like a spiritual force, kesaktian, from the ruler’s person. The ideal leader must appear both invincible and benevolent: feared yet fatherly. Modern Indonesia perpetuated this idiom through Sukarno, whose “Guided Democracy” transformed raw charisma into a constitutional principle.
Prabowo channels that legacy with precision. Half-soldier, half-sage, he blends nationalist discipline with a certain mystical gravitas. His speeches often resemble moral sermons, and his rallies serve as rituals of loyalty. To many Western observers, this is merely populism; to many Indonesians, it feels like an echo of kinship and kingship.
Trump operates within a similar ecosystem of fealty and fear. In his world, allies are not colleagues but "made men", protected only so long as they remain faithful. The political party, much like a crew, exists solely to amplify the boss’s will.
For Washington diplomats schooled in proceduralism and institutional checks, this is chaos. But for a leader like Prabowo, it is entirely legible. He recognizes in Trump the transactional logic of patronage politics, the same mechanism that governs Indonesian coalitions, business alliances and military hierarchies. The "deal" is not an aberration of the system; it is the moral structure itself.
