In 1991, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu married his third wife Sara. The couple, who reportedly met in Amsterdam, were married in Jerusalem and honeymooned in New York.
Mitchell Barak, then a 23-year-old political staffer, went with them on their honeymoon.
“How many people do you know bring a staffer on honeymoon?” he tells ABC RN’s new podcast Take Me to Your Leader.
“To be the advance team for two days to make sure the apartment they’re borrowing from their friend is ready, and to set up a full two-and-a-half-days of meetings with donors, friends [and] political people that his wife is attending also?” Barak says.
Netanyahu’s unrelenting tenacity is part of what has set him apart from other would-be leaders.
“He is super focused. Super focused. And he never takes a break, and he never takes a vacation, and he never stops. That’s it. He doesn’t go see a movie, he doesn’t go out and hang out with friends,” Barak, who is now a political consultant, says.
Benjamin Netanyahu has been in power in Israel for so long, he has changed the political landscape. (AP: Debbie Hill)
Global leaders like Netanyahu, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, Narendra Modi, Giorgia Meloni and Rishi Sunak shape our world and affect the course of history.
They’ve all had different paths to power and have hugely varied ideologies and approaches. And while they often project carefully cultivated personalities through well-managed social media accounts and manicured origin stories — some true, some not so true — all are nonetheless effective in creating particular narratives.
Yet those who’ve worked with them, study them and fear them know who they really are. These insiders can shed light on what makes these global leaders tick, how they got to the top, and what they are likely to do with all that power.
A glimpse behind the curtain can help us understand what makes a modern world leader.
So which heads of state are having the greatest impact on the world today? Why and how? And which are here to stay?
‘In charge of everything’
The Russian and Chinese leaders deserve closer inspection. Together they represent a move to a more authoritarian form of geopolitics. These two nations are so integrated into the rest of the world that decisions made by these leaders affect us all, for better or for worse.
Russian President Vladimir Putin’s decisions have a far-reaching impact across the world. (Sputnik via Reuters)
For instance, consider the impact they’re having in current discussions around food and energy prices, defense issues, trade conflicts and inflation.
Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping have been increasingly flexing their domestic muscle of late, both changing their constitution to prolong their respective time in office, perhaps even for life. So what’s next for these two?
Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is similarly intriguing. His rise to the top — although he’s still one step away from being king — has not been a traditional one.
MBS, as he’s known, first had to leapfrog through the very long list of princes ahead of him in line to the throne. So how did he do it?
This extraordinary story includes a luxury hotel being temporarily converted into a prison, starting a war, appealing to Saudi Arabia’s large youth population, and promising a 2030 vision right out of science fiction.
Some see Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, seen here shaking hands with Chinese President Xi Jinping, as a reformer. Others aren’t so sure. (Reuters)
To many, MBS is a reformer: curtailing the power of religious police, addressing rampant corruption in the kingdom and relaxing rules around music and women driving.
But to others, he’s a butcher. The CIA concluded that the crown prince approved the killing and dismemberment of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Istanbul in 2018.
Journalist Karen Elliot House, who has interviewed MBS a number of times, says, “Almost nothing can be done without his knowledge … Saudis describe [MBS as] ‘Mr Everything’. He is in charge of everything.”
Ambition and the inability to take no for an answer
“As long as he’s walking and breathing, he is central to Israel’s political scene.”
That’s how Mitchell Barak described Benjamin Netanyahu who’s just been sworn in for his third term as prime minister of Israel. This is despite corruption and fraud charges hanging over Netanyahu – and his wife — for decades.
Netanyahu has been around for so long that he’s moved the conventional political goalposts.
As Israeli scholar Ayala Panievsky says, “Left and right in Israel, traditionally, is about are you per agreement with the Palestinians or are you on the hawkish side of politics … [Now] there is a realignment of the political map between two coalitions. One is the pro-Netanyahu coalition and the other is the anti-Netanyahu coalition.”
If, as these leaders seem to demonstrate, there is a global shift to the right, then what better place to observe this than Italy, with last year’s election of Giorgia Meloni. She’s Italy’s first female prime minister, but some commentators question whether she’s also a fascist?
Giorgia Meloni, leader of the far-right Brothers of Italy party, became Italy’s new prime minister in September 2022. (Francesca Volpi for Bloomberg via Getty Images)
The answer is complicated.
Italy is a democratic country and to some, this fact alone makes her election incompatible with fascism.
However, some of Meloni’s supporters clearly have nostalgic fascist sympathies from a bygone era. Italian-born journalist Barbara Serra put it this way: “(Are) the millions of people who voted for Georgia Meloni fascist sympathisers? No, of course they are not … But did those millions of people vote for a party that they know has fascist nostalgia in them without caring about it? Yes, they did.”
British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is seen as a steady hand while India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems determined to make his country a superpower. (Getty Images: Leon Neal)
The leader of the world’s second most populated country is just as important. Narendra Modi seems determined to make India a superpower in its own right. So how will he do it?
One of his oldest friends Dr Bharat Barai says Modi is “dedicated to [making India] the top nation in all different fields: education, culture, economy, military.”
The world’s sixth largest economy got a new prime minister last year with the election of Rishi Sunak as UK prime minister. A centrist with a background in banking and finance, Sunak is rich, privileged, conservative and surprisingly for some, a Brexiter.
His eventual support within the Conservative Party may represent the desire for a steady hand in times of crises; a quieter reaction to the noisy populist, Boris Johnson. But while Sunak has made up some ground after the departure of Liz Truss, who saw the Conservative support collapse to 22 per cent, it’s unclear whether he can turn it around enough for a win next year.
Will Rishi Sunak be able to win the next UK election? (Reuters: Hannah McKay)
Hard realities and uneasy alliances
While ambition, tenacity and the inability to take ‘no’ for an answer may serve some of these leaders well as they fight their way to the top, when the realities of government and international diplomacy kick in, it can be a different story.
For example, Benjamin Netanyahu had to cobble together a hard-line coalition with the likes of far right lawyer Itamar Ben-Gvir to climb once again to the top. This pre-election wrangling brings its own difficulties, not least managing new and important relationships with neighboring Arab states.
Barak says Netanyahu will deal with anyone in order to stay in power. “He usually campaigns for a hard-right government and then he sobers up after election day and realizes he can’t govern with a bunch of ideological hardliners.
“Right after election day (Netanyahu) says, ‘How can we form a government of more normal people?'”
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has risen to power through some unlikely maneuvering. (Reuters: Bandar Algaloud, Saudi Royal Court)
Lastly, in this time of shifting global alliances, choosing sides is a tricky thing to get right.
Netanyahu and MBS are two leaders who demonstrate how they navigate this tricky maneuver in international diplomacy. A bit of carrot and a bit of stick it seems. For example Elliott House says of MBS: “Once the Crown Prince saw [US President Joe] Biden trying to reach out to him, he said, ‘Now it’s my turn to make you squirm’.”
And as Barak says of Netanyahu: “There are very few leaders in the world who could say that they have a very close personal relationship with Donald Trump. There are even fewer leaders in the world that can say they have a very close personal relationship with Vladimir Putin. He’s the only one that really has a relationship with both.”
Getting to know the personalities of these leaders sheds light on the seismic geopolitical shifts unfolding right now and could help all of us understand where our world is headed.
Take Me to Your Leader is broadcast on ABC RN on Sunday mornings at 7am or listen anytime on the ABC listen app.