This week’s cover

News is usually the cover’s friend. When a story is already in readers’ minds, our designers have more scope to play around with ideas. The long-awaited Gaza ceasefire was an exception. Although the deal was obviously welcome, it forced us into a last-minute change of design.

In this issue, during the countdown to the inauguration on January 20th, our focus was Donald Trump’s foreign policy. To his critics, the next president’s ventures abroad have involved more slapstick than statecraft. To us, that view seems blinkered. The Gaza peace deal, which appeared imminent as we prepared our cover, was evidence of the fact that Mr Trump’s second term could be both disruptive and consequential.

Mr Trump’s foreign policy will be defined by three conflicts: the Middle East, Ukraine and America’s cold war with China. Each shows how the 47th president is impelled to break with the pattern of recent decades: in his unorthodox methods, his accumulation and opportunistic use of influence, and his belief that power alone creates peace.

To get that across we tried putting him bursting out of his camouflage suit. But there are two problems with showing Mr Trump as a war president. One is substantial: he and the members of his team who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan want to avoid forever wars. The other is aesthetic: featuring a man in fatigues who could do with a few more reps on the assault course is a strange way to convey the idea that his foreign policy should be taken seriously.

A picture of him flag-hugging was better. For decades American leaders have argued that their power comes with the responsibility to be the indispensable defender of a world made more stable and benign by democracy, settled borders and universal values. By contrast, Mr Trump embraces an America-first approach to the world, in which he will ditch the values and focus on amassing and exploiting power.

The design worked, but it could have been illustrating almost any aspect of Mr Trump’s policy. In addition, after a string of Trump covers, including the man as the Statue of Liberty in last week’s American edition, we hankered after a Trump-free design.

How about a megaphone grafted onto the roof of the White House? Mr Trump reportedly considers one of his greatest gifts to be his unpredictability. The Israelis and Palestinians eventually agreed to the Gaza deal because he created a deadline by threatening that “all hell would break loose” if they failed. He has recently launched a taboo-busting bid for control over Greenland, with its minerals and strategic position in the Arctic. Not since Richard Nixon has a president seen behaving like a “madman” as such a source of advantage.

Again, though, this cover was too generic. It said that Mr Trump is a loudmouth, but not that he will shake up the world.

We ended up working on two ideas, one with the protagonist and one without. Showing Mr Trump as a colossus striding across the world illustrated his ambition. The Trump camp makes clear that the next administration will aim not just to stop the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine; Mr Trump also wants to prevent a third world war by demonstrating to an increasingly bellicose China that America is too simply strong to confront.

An American flag breaking through the floor approached that same conclusion from a different direction. Mr Trump has little truck with multilateral rules or any other elements of what is often called the “post-war world order”. Gone is the idea of America as the indispensable defender of democracy, settled borders and universal values. Instead, the Trump doctrine is based on the belief that American strength, wielded in unorthodox and opportunistic ways, is the way to bring about peace.

The flag idea was fresh and clean. It got across the combination of power and taboo-breaking that propels Mr Trump. But on Wednesday evening news came of the ceasefire and hostage deal. Given an outbreak of peacemaking catalysed by the next president, we needed a Plan B.

This is it. Mr Trump, his right foot somewhere in the exosphere, is coming over the horizon towards us. He is heading out into the world and he’s looking sombre and purposeful. We have heard a lot about Mr Trump’s doctrine. We’re about to find out whether it works.