Amid the crazy quilt of billionaires, Republican insiders and retired generals who are populating president-elect Donald J Trump’s emerging cabinet, the Gulf states and other US Middle East allies are among the few outside of his core supporters with something real to cheer about already: his choice for secretary of defence, retired Gen James Mattis.

On domestic policy, many of Mr Trump’s choices thus far run the gamut from preposterous to alarming. However, the selection of Gen Mattis opens the prospect for a serious and purposeful US foreign policy in the Middle East in the next administration.

Gen Mattis, whose nickname is “Mad Dog”, developed a reputation at the Pentagon under Barack Obama of both exceptional competence and relative hawkishness towards traditional American adversaries such as Iran and, unlike Mr Trump, crucially, Russia.

Indeed, apparently Mr Obama’s administration cut short his tour at the head of US Central Command, the primary American military establishment for the Middle East, because his hardline views on Tehran’s incorrigible bad behaviour didn’t mix well with efforts to negotiate the nuclear agreement and a hoped-for, but unrealised and apparently unrealisable, broader rapprochement.

This, of course, will come as welcome news to the Gulf states, which have felt abandoned by Washington in recent years in the face of an ascendant Iran. The idea that one of the more combative, as well as competent, US generals will now be leading the Pentagon speaks to a desire to reverse the general course of US foreign policy under Mr Obama, globally, but especially in the Middle East.

The Obama approach has been, basically, to seek reconciliation with old enemies, build new bridges and present an open hand. He represents that trend in American foreign policy since the Second World War that has sought to reassure the international community of Washington’s good intentions and downplay any sense of Yankee imperialism.

Nobody knows what to expect from Mr Trump’s foreign policy, and until he nominates the secretary of state, a process that is taking both far too long and far too theatrical a turn, that will still be an open question. Even then, many specifics will remain unanswered.

However, with Gen Mattis at the Pentagon, it’s hard to imagine that Mr Trump’s nativism and so-called “America-first” approach won’t have a strong internationalist component to it. It’s by no means certain, but seems increasingly likely, that Mr Trump will represent that other great wing of American foreign policy, the assertive and aggressive Washington that frustrates allies when it is there but that they tend to miss badly when it is gone.

Gen Mattis is by no means a hawk in the manner of the George W Bush administration, or a neoconservative. But he is a believer in “peace through strength” and the aggressive forward deployment of American forces in areas such as the Middle East and the Gulf to deter potential adversaries from mischief.

This should greatly reassure the Gulf states. They are still coping with the fallout from the hubristic excesses of the Bush era, mainly the invasion of Iraq, but would generally like a stronger American presence in the region and more cooperation with Washington’s traditional allies.

This is precisely what Gen Mattis advocates, and to that end he resisted any military “pivot to Asia” during the Obama years and continues to advocate a strong US presence in the Middle East.

And much as he disliked the nuclear deal with Iran, Gen Mattis now takes the same view that the Gulf states do: that the United States should work with its allies in the international community to vigorously enforce the agreement rather than simply abrogating it, which would play directly into the hands of Iran’s hardliners.

Another important advantage of having Gen Mattis at the Pentagon is that he, perhaps alone, in the administration that has taken shape thus far, would be flatly and confidently able to tell Mr Trump precisely what military ideas are implausible or unworkable and which are worth pursuing. It’s hard to imagine his somewhat paranoid and fanciful proposed national security adviser, retired Gen Michael Flynn, playing the same role. Indeed, it’s much easier to imagine Gen Flynn simply endorsing any flight of fancy that Mr Trump may concoct. Gen Mattis is made of sterner stuff.

Nevertheless, having a recently retired general undermines the principle of civilian control of the military and Gen Mattis will require a congressional dispensation to serve. This should be a rare exception to an important rule.

George Marshall, the first American secretary of defence under Harry Truman, received such a dispensation from Congress. Every now and then one is necessary. If the United States, and certainly its Gulf allies, ever needed someone as hard-nosed and serious as Gen Mattis in the Pentagon, it’s definitely now.

Washington’s relations with its Gulf Arab partners have been strained in recent years, particularly because of U.S. outreach to Iran and concerns that the United States may be seeking a broader rapprochement with Tehran, largely at Gulf Arab expense. In recent months, however, evidence has been mounting that these concerns, particularly regarding the impact of the nuclear agreement with Iran, may have been premature. Harsh rhetoric about Iran in general, and the nuclear deal in particular, by President-elect Donald Trump and some of his leading advisors has raised questions about the viability of the agreement. But no one really knows how a Trump foreign policy will look, especially given that many of his key appointments, including secretary of state, remain unresolved. But even without knowing what Trump’s precise plans will be, outgoing President Barack Obama and the lame-duck Congress have been expressing Washington’s growing unease with Iran’s persistence with, and in some cases expansion of, its provocative and destabilizing policies. These developments must be reassuring from the perspective of the Gulf Arab countries.

On December 1, the U.S. Senate voted 99-0 to extend U.S. non-nuclear sanctions against Iran despite the relatively successful implementation of the nuclear agreement with six major world powers led by the United States – the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Two weeks earlier, the House of Representatives passed a similar bill by 419-1. In the nuclear deal, Iran agreed to mothball its nuclear weapons program in exchange for the easing of a range of sanctions. Nonetheless, Congress has overwhelmingly approved a 10-year extension of the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA), which was set to expire at the end of 2016. This law authorizes the U.S. government to penalize companies doing business with Iran. It was particularly intended to discourage investment in Iran’s energy sector, in response to Iran’s efforts to expand its influence in the Middle East.

Thus far, both sides appear to be living up to their core obligations under the JCPOA, but aren’t going any further. Iran accuses the United States of violating both the letter and the spirit of the agreement. For its part, Washington has lamented that Iran has squandered its promise through ongoing support for U.S.-designated terrorist groups like Hizballah and sectarian militias in Iraq and elsewhere; its apparently increasing support for the Houthi rebels in Yemen; its participation in the brutal campaign to restore and extend the power of the Syrian dictatorship of President Bashar al-Assad, particularly in eastern Aleppo; and its aggressive campaign to produce and acquire medium- and long-range ballistic missiles that can be used with conventional and, potentially, nuclear warheads. The reauthorization of the non-nuclear U.S. sanctions in the ISA has outraged Tehran, which has threatened a “strong reaction” to what it calls a “gross violation” of the nuclear deal. Yet the White House, which is strongly committed to protecting the agreement, confirmed that the congressional action did not violate the terms of the JCPOA, and has implied that Obama will sign the legislation.

In November, the House of Representatives voted to block a trade deal whereby Boeing was planning to sell, through third-party intermediaries, 109 aircraft to Iran for about $25 billion. The future of this potential sale remains unclear. A similar measure restricting the Export-Import Bank from providing financing for trade deals such as the Boeing airplane sale with Iran was introduced in the Senate by Marco Rubio of Florida. The White House criticized this proposed measure, calling it “sweeping and vague,” and saying that it would have a “chilling effect” on “permissible business with Iran.” Therefore, the Obama White House continues to push back against some measures in Congress that it regards as fundamentally incompatible with the JCPOA, but it doesn’t seem to view the extension of the ISA in that light. Indeed, the White House specifically said it would veto the bill if it believed it was incompatible with the nuclear agreement, but hasn’t reached that conclusion.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell specifically said the extension of the ISA is essential in giving the United States leverage to counter Iran’s “persistent efforts to expand its sphere of influence” in the broader Middle East. Such rhetoric will be very welcome in Gulf Arab capitals, given that it strongly echoes their own views about Iranian policies in the region. Moreover, while mistrust in the administration persists, that Obama seems unlikely to veto the measure adds to the sense that Washington in general, including the White House, is recognizing that Iran’s policies haven’t changed and, if anything, have grown more destabilizing since signing the nuclear agreement.

Saudi Arabia recently accused Iran of being responsible for a cyber warfare attack against six critical organizations in the country, including the country’s civil aviation administration and central bank. In addition, Iran recently reiterated its partnership with Russia in support of the Assad regime in Syria. Tehran says it seeks greater cooperation with Saudi Arabia, and a recent agreement by OPEC members, including the two oil exporting powerhouses, suggests that some mutual interests can be defined in certain cases. But given the overall context, Riyadh will be highly skeptical of these Iranian overtures. Along with several of Trump’s prospective appointees, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is reportedly also pressing the case that Iran has become a more aggressive regional power since the signing of the agreement, and that measures need to be taken to rein it in.

Yet the Gulf Arab states are not pressing the incoming administration to scrap the nuclear agreement when Trump takes office, as he said as a candidate he might if elected. Instead, they appear to view tough enforcement of the agreement as preferable to abrogating it. After all, an ideal scenario for Iranian hard-liners would be to reach the agreement and dismantle the international sanctions regime with Obama and then have Trump take the lead in scrapping the deal, freeing Iran to return to its nuclear project with little chance that the former comprehensive sanctions regime can be re-established. At the same time, some proposed Trump administration measures, such as the release of several categories of classified or “secret” documents related to the deal, would further signal a toughening of the U.S. line toward Tehran. Iran says it will walk away from the agreement if Trump tries to renegotiate its terms.

With both sides talking tough, Congress seeking to strengthen the U.S. position, and the new administration poised to take a harder line toward Iran, at least some aspects of U.S. policy in the Middle East seem to be moving in a direction compatible with the perspectives of most of the Gulf Arab countries. After several years of persistent doubts about U.S. intentions, a harder-nosed attitude toward Iran by Congress, as well as both the outgoing and incoming administrations, will be deeply welcomed by Washington’s Gulf Arab partners.

The unfolding tragedy in Aleppo is not only a humanitarian and moral disaster, but it is a political calamity as well. All the worst actors are poised to be the big winners from what appears to be the imminent collapse of rebel groups in the besieged eastern half of the city.

The Syrian regime and its allies are employing barbaric but effective strategies and tactics. The main tactic being inflicted on eastern Aleppo is the regime’s familiar siege, starve and batter approach to retaking territory.

It’s a medieval model: encircle the area; systematically restrict food, medical supplies and other civilian essentials; keep up a steady barrage of bombardment, particularly targeting medical facilities; and, eventually, overrun it with a sudden, overwhelming attack.

The goal is to terrorise civilians and break the will, as well as the ability, of insurgent groups to fight. It’s the height of cruelty, but it’s working.

The world, including the United States, is long on lectures, but doing nothing.

The broader wartime strategy of the Bashar Al Assad regime is paying off. Relying on the playbook of his ruthless but skilful father, Hafez, Mr Al Assad has been gambling all along that, over time, most of the rest of the region and the world will prefer the devil they know to those they don’t.

And, indeed, the view that the continuation of the conflict is more dangerous and destabilising than the persistence of the regime, with its growing dependence on Iran, has gained considerable traction in recent months. It’s the height of cynicism, but it’s working.

The Obama administration’s irresponsible unwillingness to adopt a policy that promotes an identifiable and achievable outcome in Syria meant Washington increasingly left itself few plausible options. That, in turn, has virtually ensured a gradual and largely unintended drift away from regime change, with Washington playing into the hands of Mr Al Assad and his backers in Russia, Iran and Hizbollah.

Syrian officials openly admit they are trying to secure control over Aleppo before Donald Trump is inaugurated as US president. Not that they fear him. To the contrary, they expect that he will be far more sympathetic to the regime than the incumbent, Barack Obama.

But they can’t be certain what Mr Trump will do. And they are absolutely sure that Mr Obama will do nothing, since the chemical weapons “red line” fiasco demonstrated Washington’s determination to avoid engagement in Syria at all costs.

Mainstream rebel groups have been effectively starved of financial and material support, while more radical Islamist groups enjoy the backing of private donors, and, in some cases, some governments.

Meanwhile, Mr Al Assad – whose regime seemed on the brink of collapse in the summer of 2015 – has been salvaged and vastly empowered by a massive joint intervention by Russia, Iran, Hizbollah and sectarian Iraqi militias.

Mr Al Assad seems poised to secure control over not merely Aleppo but what his faction calls “necessary Syria”, which is a large strip of the country running from the Lebanese border to the Alawite coastal areas in the Syrian north-west and encompassing all of the major cities.

Yet it will be a Pyrrhic victory. Syria is demolished. No one is ready to rebuild it. And reunifying the country is a pipe dream.

The war will continue in much of the countryside. A large portion of Syria’s Sunni Arab majority will never accept Mr Al Assad’s legitimacy after he has presided over so much death and destruction.

Moreover, the Assad regime is wholly dependent on Russia, Iran, Hizbollah and Iraqi militias. These foreign forces on the ground are primarily controlled by Tehran, which is actively turning Syria into an Iranian protectorate, if not colonial possession.

Other Arab states, particularly in the Gulf region, along with millions of Syrians, will never accept this as a fait accompli.

But, although the war will continue, the moderate rebels are among the biggest losers. Extremist and terrorist groups, particularly Al Qaeda, are among the biggest winners.

Al Qaeda’s affiliates will increase their already alarmingly effective efforts to dominate the opposition. ISIL’s “caliphate” may be doomed, but Al Qaeda is riding high.

That suits Mr Al Assad and his backers perfectly. They are counting on extremists to dominate the opposition, and for the world to therefore see his rampages as a counterterrorism campaign.

Thus far, all the worst parties in Syria, and the broader Middle East – Mr Al Assad, Russia, Iran, Hizbollah and Al Qaeda – are ascendant.

They are winning because the supposedly responsible international powers are abdicating their responsibilities and ceding the field to mass murderers, fanatics, gangsters and terrorists. The calamitous fallout of this inexcusable moral, political and strategic failure won’t be restricted to Syria. The price will be huge and global.

Many Americans are convinced that their country is the world’s oldest and purest democracy. But many others agree with president-elect Donald Trump’s claim – when he thought he was about to lose – that the process is “rigged”.

The American political system was carefully constructed to balance majority rule with other political values, such as individual and minority rights, especially for the wealthy.

The United States was never conceptualized or constructed as a democracy. Instead, it’s a constitutional republic in which majority rule is filtered through a variety of decidedly undemocratic structures and processes designed to prevent a tyranny of the majority.

By global and historical standards, the US constitutional order has demonstrated a remarkable ability to evolve and adapt, keeping pace with social and economic changes.

The Civil War of 1861-1865, and the radical overhaul and arguably reinvention of the political system that followed, was the anomaly that proves the rule. But even then, those aspects of the antebellum constitutional order in question – including provisions regarding slavery – were re-conceptualised, reinterpreted or clarified rather than scrapped.

On January 20, Donald Trump will become the 45th president. Yet his opponent, Hillary Clinton, received at least 2 million more votes. The potential for such an outcome is built into the federal and largely winner-take-all American political system. On its own, this result is not shocking.

But a deeper and more problematic anachronism is at work. The American system was developed by and for a society that was more than 90 per cent rural and agrarian. Now, however, the United States is majority non-rural, by over 80 per cent.

Of all of the profound social and economic divisions that characterised this year’s election, including race, class and education, the yawning gap between urban and non-urban America was most dramatic. Mrs Clinton prevailed in 31 of the 35 major urban areas, and Mr Trump owed his victory almost entirely to non-urban voters.

The disproportionate power of rural voters is only growing and that is starting to produce significant distortions for securing the consent of the governed, because the Democratic Party’s strength tends to cluster in urban areas and the Republican Party’s in rural ones.

The occasional instance in which the winner of the Electoral College – and therefore the president-elect – is the loser of the popular vote has been understood as an unavoidable pitfall of the federal system. But that scenario is becoming increasingly less unusual.

Democrats won the popular vote in six of the past seven elections, but twice lost anyway. Only three times in the rest of US history has the “loser” won.

But given the disconnect between an electoral system developed for a rural society and our contemporary urban social realities, this contradiction seems poised to become a frequent rather than rare occurrence.

Added to this is the structural bias towards the rural in the Senate. All states, no matter how sparsely populated, get two senators each. At least in theory, as things stand, states with a combined total of just 17 per cent of the national population could elect a Senate majority.

This “unintentional gerrymandering” between “efficiently” dispersed rural Republican voters and “inefficiently” clustered Democratic ones virtually ensures Democrats will get less representation in the House of Representatives than their share of votes indicates.

The way Electoral College representation is calculated further intensifies of the power of rural voters: it combines the number of House of Representatives members allotted to a given state based on population, plus their two senators. Therefore, a state with just one or two House members based on population still gets three or four Electoral College votes, respectively.

Moreover, House representation is based on the number of residents in a given state, not the eligible voters. This further empowers voters in rural and sparsely populated areas where there are fewer children, non-citizens or other residents not entitled to vote.

American votes are profoundly unequal in power, depending on where they are registered. Anyone in a heavily contested “swing state”, and especially in certain districts, has a vote with potentially enormous influence.

There is every reason to fear that popular-vote losers winning the presidency will become a regular feature of American elections.

Democrats have been notably subdued in their response to Mr Trump’s minority victory. Everyone knew the rules and the result was entirely legitimate.

Imagine Mr Trump’s reaction had he defeated Mrs Clinton by more than 2 million votes but lost anyway. Yet even an enraged response would probably only have undermined the legitimacy of the result in the minds of a vocal minority.

Still, the fact that the American system was designed for a rural society that no longer exists may increase the sense that it is no longer working as planned and that a kind of unintentional “rigging” is indeed taking place.

It was an American intifada on Tuesday night. In these pages in August, I declared Donald Trump unelectable. Nothing that followed until the election really shook that conviction. I was in increasingly good company, as commentator after commentator, left and right, came to the same, ultimately erroneous, conclusion.

What did we miss? Plenty.

First, social media has clearly changed communications and political interaction so thoroughly that the existing polling models are no longer capable of real accuracy.

Second, no one, including the Trump campaign, thought he was really going to win white working-class states like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that haven’t voted Republican since the 1980s. But he did.

Third, there was a massive cultural and perceptual disconnect between the rural and ex-urban Trump coalition voters and the urban and educated Americans, both liberal and conservative, who disdained Mr Trump to the point that almost no newspapers, including the most doctrinaire Republican ones, endorsed him.

But as reporter Salena Zito has tirelessly pointed out, the educated urban elites took Mr Trump literally but they didn’t take him seriously, while his voters took him seriously but not literally. They don’t believe he is necessarily going to build a wall along the Mexican border, deport millions of immigrants, ban Muslims from entering the country, and so forth. They understood these to be generalised sentiments rather than realistic policy proposals. In many cases they may be correct.

Many factors brought the new Trump coalition together.

Some were just voting for change and saw Hillary Clinton as representing continuity as well as the establishment. Others were howling a primal scream of white working-class rage, not bothered that their reckless candidate might actually make a mess of things, because they don’t think they have anything to lose. Still others were genuinely attracted to his racist and white nationalist appeals.

White Americans in rural and exurban areas, particularly those without college education, voted overwhelmingly for Mr Trump. This includes women who did not hold his long history of sexism against him. Added to that was about one quarter of Latinos, some of whom probably thought they were voting their economic or patriotic interests, or were drawn to his authoritarian personality.

White women in surprising numbers joined this white American intifada, seeing Mr Trump variously as a champion, long shot, or nihilistic message of fury aimed at an educated, urban establishment they believe has abandoned them.

All of this was readily evident in anecdotal form, but it wasn’t measurable statistically, so the fact-based community didn’t believe it. One of the biggest casualties of the election was the very concept of objective, statistical data. At least for now, polls are meaningless.

Democrats won the popular vote, but they lost the White House and Congress. They now have no leader and have lost their old “blue firewall” of reliable Rust Belt states. But they still have their party and identity – and demographic trends favour them. They will lick their wounds, and be back, probably very powerfully, soon enough.

Perhaps the biggest losers are ideologically traditional conservatives. They now have no party, because the Republican Party has been taken over by a right-wing populist and protectionist movement that espouses none of the core principles of traditional American conservatism.

Unless Mr Trump somehow defects to their side – and why would he, having defeated them soundly – these people are truly adrift.

The country in general is bracing for a political disaster. The public outside the cities elected a real-life equivalent of Donald Duck. Most educated urbanites, left and right, understand this.

One can only hope that Mr Trump, who has been something of a chameleon in the past, will change again now he’s in office. It’s very unlikely. But if suddenly, and unexpectedly, becoming president of United States doesn’t change one, nothing would.

For many decades, Mr Trump lived as a relatively liberal Manhattan socialite, so his current white nationalist identity is in fact a persona recently adopted for a political campaign he has now won.

There is a small chance, then, that he will govern very differently from how he campaigned.

Sadly, the greater likelihood is that he will import into the White House his authoritarian and vengeful tendencies, lack of regard for the Constitution, distaste for civil liberties and bizarre opinions – perhaps the most dangerous being that climate change is a Chinese hoax to rip off America. If so, it will be up to a Republican Congress, which is fully beholden to him, and courts that have no enforcement power, to try to restrain him.

We must hope that president Trump will be very different from candidate Trump. But there is every reason to fear that the US constitutional order will soon face its toughest challenges in many decades.