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Some recent global goings-on fully justify the somewhat enigmatic question in this headline. For example, there was the initial choice of leaders vying to win the US presidential election — Donald Trump and Joe Biden, before the latter quit the race following unprecedented private pressure and public scrutiny. There was also Sheikh Hasina’s ousting from power in Bangladesh, Vladimir Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu remaining at their respective helms amid raging wars, Nicolas Maduro facing calls for a reelection after disputed polls in Venezuela in July and the coups calamity in Africa (in the last four years, there have been nine successful and seven failed coups in West and Central Africa), among many other political crises.
These happenings serve as real-time examples as we, the authors of this op-ed, revisit elder statesman Henry Kissinger’s book, “Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy,” which analyses six leaders who held power in the 20th century, offering some insights to maneuver through the complexities of the 21st century.
The book delves into Richard Nixon’s “strategy of equilibrium,” Anwar Sadat’s “strategy of transcendence,” Lee Kuan Yew’s “strategy of excellence,” Margaret Thatcher’s “strategy of conviction,” Konrad Adenauer’s “strategy of humility” and Charles de Gaulle’s “strategy of will.” It stresses how “history-making” leadership is conditioned by “decisions made, trust earned, promises kept, a way forward proposed” and how these leaders employed strategies that “transcended the circumstances they inherited.”
These insights lead us to the question: what makes leaders and leadership “historic?” Is it time, people, events or opportunities acting as independent forces, or is it an interplay of all these? Possibly, there is no sure formula, but it is worth considering some hypotheses against the backdrop of a few other leaders that Kissinger does not specifically focus on in his book.
Watching the movie “Pearl Harbor,” one of the authors here was confronted with a strange coincidence. As President Franklin Roosevelt made his war declaration speech in the film following the Dec. 7, 1941, attack by Japanese bombers on American territory in the Pacific Ocean, President George W. Bush was making a contemporaneous war-mongering State of the Union Address in 2002, labeling Iran, Iraq and North Korea as the “axis of evil.”
While Roosevelt followed up his words with action that ultimately ended the Second World War, Bush may have rendered the first call for one of the biggest wars of this century, leaving his own place in the annals of history unclear, and the repercussions of which continue to play out to this day.
It is ironic that the US is what it is today — a superpower — because of the actions of another nation: the imperialist designs and misplaced overconfidence of Japan during the Second World War. Replacing the terms leaders and leadership with history, is the US then to be branded as a creator of history or merely a product of history? Was it purely circumstantial that it achieved greatness by turning a crisis into an opportunity or was it a nation that was born and destined to achieve what it has?
Some leaders are born to create history — and Alexander the Great is among the first names that fit this bill.
N. Janardhan and Eric Alter
Repackaging the past has always been considered a delicate art, but the above questions made us analyze a few existing categories of how people make history, with references to leaders and leadership and, of course, always bearing in mind the detail that history is always written by the winners.
First, some leaders are born to create history — and Alexander the Great is among the first names that fit this bill. Only alive for 32 years, some people called him a “conqueror” and “violent overlord.” Others called him a “civilizer.” But all of them used the suffix “Great” after his name, the first human to achieve this title unironically.
Second, there have been many leaders that created history from opportunity. It is perhaps here that the majority of famous (and infamous) names belong. Most historical figures were not born heroes and heroines. They made a mark by being in what turned out to be the right place at the right time, then by being courageous enough to seize an opportunity and make the best of it. Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Mother Teresa and the like were ordinary members of society until they dared to dream, worked toward shaping their vision and succeeded in their endeavors.
The latest example on this side of the spectrum, probably not the ideal and perhaps even questionable, is Volodymyr Zelensky, a former entertainer and an “accidental” president, who could be the face of a new leadership term: “strategy of stubbornness.”
Third, there are leaders who were created by history, those who did very little or nothing to get where they did, benefiting more from a combination of dynastic lineage and chance rather than from merit. Prime ministers Rajiv Gandhi of India and Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, among others, belong here, but remember that these two also paid with their lives.
Finally, being part of history as a natural process is also a useful category to include, which accommodates all of those who do not fit into the aforementioned groupings — including us. We are part of an “all the world’s a stage” group, where humans play their parts in either a preconceived fashion or by carving a path designed by our own will. Year after year, century after century, generation after generation, the venerable old order of ordinary people, who are also leaders in their own settings, changes and gives way to the dynamic new, adding pages to history. We may possess the talent and the spark of geniuses, but the difference between here and now, and there and then, is the recognition, or the lack of it, that our contributions achieve.
How does this categorization relate to the present, where two major wars continue in Europe and the Middle East, amid many other less-publicized ones? Kissinger’s book suggests that it is a combination of character and circumstance that creates history. So, what is different today — the character of the leaders in vogue or the circumstances of their leadership?
Is it that the times we live in are not dramatic enough to shape the leaders and their leadership skills that the world requires? Or is it that the current circumstances are so complex that they have precluded the rise of any leader as first among equals? Or is there a crisis of democracy, where the space for leaders to grow into effective administrators has diminished, faced by an electorate that seeks quick results that are difficult to deliver, thus forcing many leaders to quit midway or attempt to please a public by fair means or foul?
What skills should a new genre of leaders possess then? German philosopher of history Oswald Spengler offers a suggestion: they must be “valuers” (of people and situations) who, as born leaders, have acquired the ability to do the “correct” thing “without knowing” it.
Perhaps we should remind ourselves of the historian Andrew Roberts’ comments on the subject when he tells us that, although the most common understanding of leadership connotes inherent goodness, it “is in fact completely morally neutral, as capable of leading mankind to the abyss as to the sunlit uplands. It is a protean force of terrifying power.” One that we must strive to orient toward moral ends.
- N. Janardhan is Director, Research and Analysis, at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, Abu Dhabi. He is also an adjunct professor at the Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po.
- Eric Alter is Dean and Professor of International Law at the Anwar Gargash Diplomatic Academy, Abu Dhabi. He is also an adjunct professor at the Paris School of International Affairs, Sciences Po.