Henry Kissinger, Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

https://www.chapters.indigo.ca/en-ca/books/leadership/9780593489451-item.html

by Henry Kissinger  July 5, 2022|

Henry Kissinger, consummate diplomat and statesman, examines the strategies of six great twentieth-century figures and brings to life a unifying theory of leadership and diplomacy

“Leaders,” writes Henry Kissinger in this compelling book, “think and act at the intersection of two axes: the first, between the past and the future; the second, between the abiding values and aspirations of those they lead. They must balance what they know, which is necessarily drawn from the past, with what they intuit about the future, which is inherently conjectural and uncertain. It is this intuitive grasp of direction that enables leaders to set objectives and lay down a strategy.”

In Leadership, Kissinger analyses the lives of six extraordinary leaders through the distinctive strategies of statecraft, which he believes they embodied. After the Second World War, Konrad Adenauer brought defeated and morally bankrupt Germany back into the community of nations by what Kissinger calls “the strategy of humility.” Charles de Gaulle set France beside the victorious Allies and renewed its historic grandeur by “the strategy of will.” During the Cold War, Richard Nixon gave geostrategic advantage to the United States by “the strategy of equilibrium.” After twenty-five years of conflict, Anwar Sadat brought a vision of peace to the Middle East by a “strategy of transcendence.” Against the odds, Lee Kuan Yew created a powerhouse city-state, Singapore, by “the strategy of excellence.” And, though Britain was known as “the sick man of Europe” when Margaret Thatcher came to power, she renewed her country’s morale and international position by “the strategy of conviction.”

To each of these studies, Kissinger brings historical perception, public experience and—because he knew each of the subjects and participated in many of the events he describes—personal knowledge. Leadership is enriched by insights and judgements that only Kissinger could make and concludes with his reflections on world order and the indispensability of leadership today.

Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy by Henry Kissinger

https://www.ft.com/content/0e70845c-43c2-49f9-8138-7a9c176c9938

The US elder statesman draws on his vast experience to profile six world leaders — and dissect what made them effective

A 1975 photograph shows Margaret Thatcher (not yet prime minister) seated with Henry Kissinger

Today’s news agenda is dominated by discussions about Vladimir Putin’s war and Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s resistance, and the question of whether Joe Biden will keep the western alliance together or Xi Jinping will put pressure on Russia to make peace.

Do individuals matter in shaping the course of events? Henry Kissinger thinks they do, and in his latest book he draws on case studies and his own experience to argue that the individual leader, and his or her statecraft, can sometimes determine history. Of course, it helps if they are surrounded by the best advisers.

Although the ex-president Dwight Eisenhower opposed the author’s appointment as President Nixon’s national security adviser, on the grounds that academics were not fit for high-level decision-making, Kissinger made the transition from Harvard triumphantly. He gained the trust of one of the most insecure and suspicious men ever to sit in the Oval Office and also proved a master of bureaucratic politics, deftly side-lining the State Department and secretary of state William Rogers.

Although Kissinger, now aged 99, has not held office since 1977, he has advised virtually every US president since Nixon. His record and views divide opinion deeply but he is rarely ignored.

    Kissinger recognises the power of the US and its capacity to provide order and balance — but he despairs of its inconsistency

In Leadership, he sketches out the life and times of six figures, all of whom he knew personally, from Konrad Adenauer, whom he met on only a few occasions, to Nixon, with whom he was in daily contact before the president resigned over Watergate. Kissinger seems to have found Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore the most congenial. He admires Lee’s achievement in turning a poor little island with a volatile mix of ethnicities into a major economic and financial centre. He appreciates his adroitness as when, for example, Lee avoided controversy over military aid from Israel in the 1960s by blithely describing the Israeli experts as “Mexicans”.

Adenauer’s achievement was to turn a democratic West Germany into the pillar of a strong Europe and a valued partner in Nato. Charles de Gaulle was “ruthless and calculating” — and effective — restoring France as a power after its defeat in the second world war. Kissinger sees the same qualities in Margaret Thatcher, in her determination to transform British society and in her refusal to accept Argentina’s seizure of the Falkland Islands in 1982. Anwar Sadat of Egypt is on the list because he took the brave decision to break with his Arab allies and make peace with Israel.

The book highlights Kissinger’s own achievements, from the extrication of the US from Vietnam, to the opening to China and the shuttle diplomacy that brought, for a time, the promise of peace to the Middle East.

Yet for the most part, he chooses not to answer the charges that he was too willing to sacrifice principles and people for reasons of state. He refers to America’s refusal in 1971 to condemn the brutal attempts by Pakistan’s military dictatorship to suppress the independence movement in what was then East Pakistan. But he says any measures would have done little more than communicate American disapproval. “They would”, he adds, “also diminish American leverage and threaten the nascent opening to China — for which Pakistan was our principal intermediary.”

For Kissinger, good leaders have a deep appreciation of the past and an ability to imagine possible futures. Some leaders are prophets who, Kissinger says, see the present “less from the perspective of the possible than from a vision of the imperative”. The other type, the statesmen, manage change yet are conservatives in the older sense of preserving what is the core of their society. Since Kissinger puts Robespierre and Lenin in the former camp and Metternich and Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the latter, it is not hard to see where his sympathies lie.

When it comes to his own country and its role in the world, Kissinger recognises its power and its capacity to provide order and balance — both of which he ranks highly — but he despairs of its inconsistency. He also mistrusts what he sees as an American “idiosyncratic” faith that universal peace can be achieved, and shares the view, which he ascribes to Nixon, that peace is “a state of fragile and fluid equilibrium among the great powers . . . ”

He ends on a pessimistic note. It is not clear where good and effective leadership is to come from. Democratic elites appear detached from their own societies and unwilling to take responsibility for the world’s problems. The global order, he warns, is being shaken by the “unravelling of entire regions” and “the intensifying antagonism of great powers with conflicting claims of legitimacy”. Elder statesman is an overused term but Kissinger is the genuine article, and worth listening to — even if you choose to disagree with him.