The Great Hall of the People has witnessed many things, but a subdued Donald Trump must rank among the most surreal. During his recent Beijing sojourn, the usual theatricality accompanied by finger-wagging histrionics and the low-grade one-liners that constitute the standard MAGA repertoire was noticeably missing. Instead, the world watched an uncharacteristically muted American President, seemingly weighed down by the architecture, or perhaps by reality. The explanation for this sudden outbreak of gravity may lie not in a new-found appreciation for Confucian restraint but in the gruelling geopolitical hangover of his West Asian misadventure. Having stumbled into an open-ended, bruising, and altogether avoidable conflict........

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