Any society, whatever its political system, is perpetually in transit between a past that forms its memory and a vision of the future that inspires its evolution. Along this route, leadership is indispensable: decisions must be made, trust earned, promises kept, a way forward proposed. Within human institutions — states, religions, armies, companies, schools — leadership is needed to help people reach from where they are to where they have never been and, sometimes, can scarcely imagine going. Without leadership, institutions drift, and nations court growing irrelevance and, ultimately, disaster.

Leaders think and act at the intersection of 2 axes: the first, between the past and the future; the second, between the abiding values and aspirations of those they lead. Their first challenge is analysis, which begins with a realistic assessment of their society based on history, mores, and capacities. Then they must balance what they know, which his 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 enable leaders to set objectives and lay down a strategy.

For strategies to inspire the society, leaders must serve as educators — communicating objectives, assuaging doubts and rallying support. While the state possesses by definition the monopoly of force, reliance on coercion is a symptom of inadequate leadership; good leaders elicit in their with to walk alongside them. They must also inspire an immediate entourage to translate their thinking so that it bears upon the practical issues of the day. Such a dynamic surrounding team is the visible complement of the leader’s inner vitality; it provides support for the leader’s journey and ameliorates the dilemmas of decision. Leaders can be magnified — or diminished — by the qualities of those around them.

The vital attributes of a leader in these tasks, and the bridge between the past and the future, are courage and character — courage to choose a direction among complex and difficult options, which requires the willingness to transcend the routine; and strength of character to sustain a course of action whose benefits and whose dangers can be only incompletely glimpsed at the moment of choice. Courage summons virtue in the moment of decision; character reinforces fidelity to values over an extended period.

Leadership is most essential during periods of transition, when values and institutions are losing their relevance, and the outlines of a worthy future are in controversy. In such times, leaders are called upon to think creatively and diagnostically: what are the sources of the society’s wellbeing? Of its decay? Which inheritances from the past should be preserved, and which adapted or discarded? Which objectives deserve commitment, and which prospects must be rejected no matter how tempting? And, at the extreme, is one’s society sufficiently vital and confident to tolerate sacrifice as a waystation to a more fulfilling future?

Leaders are inevitably hemmed in by constraints. They operate in scarcity, for every society faces limits to its capabilities and reach, dictated by demography and economy. They also operate in time, for every era and every culture reflects its own prevailing values, habits and attitudes that together define its desired outcomes. And leaders operate in competition, for they must contend with other players — whether allies, potential partners or adversaries — who are not static but adaptive, with their own distinct capacities and aspirations. Moreover, events often move too quickly to allow for precise calculation; leaders have to make judgments based on intuitions and hypotheses that cannot be proven at the time of decision. Management of risk is as critical to the leader as analytical skill.

“Strategy” describes the conclusion a leader reaches under these conditions of scarcity, temporality, competition and fluidity. In finding the way ahead, strategic leadership may be likened to traversing a tightrope: just as an acrobat will fall if either too timid or too audacious, a leader is obliged to navigate within a narrow margin, suspended between the relative certainties of the past and ambiguities of the future. The penalty for excessive ambition — what the Greeks called hubris — is exhaustion, while the price for resting on one’s laurels is progressive insignificance and eventual decay. Step by step, leaders must fit means to ends and purpose to circumstance if they are to reach their destinations.

The leader-as-strategist faces an inherent paradox: in circumstances that call for action, the scope for decision-making is often greatest when relevant information is at its scantiest. By the time more data become available, the margin of maneuver tends to have narrowed.

Statesmen are not called upon to settle easy questions. These often settle themselves. It is where the balance quivers, and the proportions are veiled in mist, that the opportunity for world-saving decisions presents itself.

In May 1953, an American exchange student asked Churchill how one might prepare to meet the challenges of leadership. “Study history. Study history,” was Churchill’s emphatic reply. “In history lies all the secrets of statecraft.”

Because of the complexity of reality, truth in history differs from truth in science. The scientist seeks verifiable results; the historically informed strategic leader strives to distill actionable insight from inherent ambiguity. Scientific experiments support or cast doubt on previous results, presenting scientists with the opportunity to modify their variables and repeat their trials. Strategists are usually permitted only one test; their decisions are typically irrevocable. The scientist thus learns truth experimentally or mathematically; the strategist reasons at least partly by analogy with the past — first establishing which events are comparable and which prior conclusions remain relevant. Even then, the strategist must choose analogies carefully, for no one can, in any real sense, experience the past; one can only imagine it as if “by the moonlight of memory.”

Writing at the end of the 20th century, Isaiah Berlin described the impossibility of applying scientific thinking beyond its remit and, consequently, the enduring challenge of the strategist’s craft. He held that the leader, like the novelist or landscape painter, must absorb life in all its dazzling complexity:

what makes men foolish or wise, understanding or blind, as opposed to knowledgeable or learned or well informed, is the perception of the unique flavors of each situation as it is, in its specific differences — of that in it where it differs from all other situations, that is, those aspects of it which make it insusceptible to scientific treatment.

WW1 exhausted treasuries, terminated dynasties and shattered lives. It was a catastrophe from which Europe has never fully recovered. Two generations of the youth of Europe had been depleted.

Although the most common understanding of “leadership” connotes inherent goodness, leadership “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” that we must strive to orient toward moral ends.

Farsighted statesmen understand that they have a pair of essential tasks. The first is to preserve their society by manipulating circumstances rather than being overwhelmed by them. The second is to temper vision with wariness, entertaining a sense of limits. Such leaders assume responsibility not only for the best but also for the worst outcomes. They tend to be conscious of the many great hopes that have failed, the countless good intentions that could not be realized, the stubborn persistence in human affairs of selfishness and power-hunger and violence. In that definition of leadership, statesmen are inclined to erect hedges against the possibility that even the most well-made plans might prove abortive, or that the most eloquent formulation might hide ulterior motives. They tend to be suspicious of those who personalize policy, for history teaches the fragility of structures dependent largely on single personalities. Ambitious but not revolutionary, they work within what they perceive as the grain of history, moving their societies forward while viewing their political institutions and fundamental values as an inheritance to be transmitted to future generations (albeit with modifications that sustain their essence).

Craving an empty canvas on which to lay down their designs, they take as a principal task the erasure of the past — its treasures along with its snares. The virtue of prophets is that they redefine what appears possible; they are the “unreasonable men” to whom George Bernard Shaw credited “all progress.” Believing in ultimate solutions, prophetic leaders tend to distrust gradualism as an unnecessary concession to time and circumstance; their goal is to transcend, rather than manage, the status quo.

The test of statesmen is the durability of political structures under stress, while prophets gauge their achievements against absolute standards. If the statesman assesses possible courses of action on the basis of their utility rather than their “truth,” the prophet regards this approach a sacrilege, a triumph of expediency over universal principle. To the statesman, negotiation is a mechanism of stability; to the prophet, it can be a means of converting or demoralizing opponents. And if, to the statesman, preservation of the international order transcends any dispute within it, prophets are guided by their objective and willing to overturn the existing order.

Both modes of leadership have been transformational, especially in periods of crisis, though the prophetic style, representative of moments of exaltation, will usually involve greater dislocation and suffering. Each approach also has its nemesis. The statesman’s is that equilibrium, though it may be the condition of stability and of long-term progress, does not supply its own momentum. For the prophet, the risk is that an ecstatic mood may submerge humanity in the vastness of a vision and reduce the individual to an object.

Leading thinkers — social historians, political philosophers and international relations theorists alike — have imbued inchoate forces with the strength of destiny. Before “movements,” “structures” and “distributions of power,” one is told, humanity is denied all choice — and, by extension, cannot but abdicate all responsibility. These are, of course, valid concepts of historical analysis, and any leader must be conscious of their force. But they are always applied through human agency and filtered through human perception. Ironically, there has been no more efficient tool for the malign consolidation of power by individuals than theories of the inevitable laws of history.

In May 1945, the American forces that first occupied Cologne reinstated Adenauer as mayor, but with the transfer of the city to British authority as a result of the Potsdam agreement, tensions arose, and the British dismissed him within a few months. Though he was temporarily excluded from political activity by the occupying power, Adenauer quietly concentrated on building a political base in preparation for the re-emergence of German self-government.

He was determined to turn submission into a virtue, and he saw that a temporary inequality of conditions was the precondition to equality of status.

In 1956, Adenauer was shaken by the US decision to sponsor a UNGA resolution condemning the Franco-British military operation to reverse the Egyptian nationalization of the Suez Canal. Adenauer had assumed that the Alliance by definition would protect the core interest of each member.

It was during the Suez crisis that Adenauer began to consider the need to use European integration — and particularly the Franco-German relationship — as a hedge against American vacillation.

A country which has lost 2 world wars, undergone 3 revolutions, committed the crimes of the Nazi era, and seen its material wealth wiped out twice in a generation, is bound to suffer from deep psychological scars. There is an atmosphere of hysteria, a tendency toward unbalanced actions.

Adenauer’s authority derived in part from his personality, which combined dignity with strength. His face, left partly rigid by injuries sustained in an automobile accident during his early forties, and his demeanor, simultaneously courtly and aloof, conveyed an unmistakable message: one was entering a world guided by principle and immune to slogans or pressure. He spoke calmly, only occasionally using his hands for emphasis. Always well prepared on contemporary issues, he never discussed his personal life in my presence.

In a discussion on the qualities of strong leadership, he cautioned me “never to confuse energy with strength.”

My dear Mr. Professor, in politics it is important to retaliate in cold blood.

When I argued that, in the emerging world order, America would make no distinction between Allied interests and its own, Adenauer pointed out courteously yet firmly that during the Suez crisis only a year earlier, America had failed to treat the interests of even its major allies (Britain and France) in that spirit.

De Gaulle had warned him that America, despite its promises, had abandoned France at the UN over Algeria just as it had previously done in 1956 over Suez. De Gaulle had argued that the diplomacy conducted by the Allies with respect to Berlin had lacked decisiveness and direction. Instead of temporizing, America should boldly take the lead and flatly reject Soviet demands.

Dean Acheson once observed that many leaders after leaving office act as if they had concluded a great love affair. They find it difficult to separate themselves from the issues that had occupied their days; reflections on alternative course of action fill many of their hours and conversations.

He raised a theme always present in his thinking but heretofore obscured from me: the evolution of what the German thought of themselves. The Germans were a deeply troubled and conflicted people because of an absence of a sense of proportion or of historical continuity. The evolution of history would present the Germans with surprising developments to which they might react in an unanticipated manner.

Still, he was better than Erhard, who in Adenauer’s view had been too “stupid” for the office of chancellor, his postwar economic wizardry notwithstanding. When I interjected that “too non-political” might be more appropriate adjective, Adenauer replied: “For a political leader, the adjective ‘non-political’ is the definition of stupidity.”

Do you think that I still believe you will protect us unconditionally? Your actions over recent years here make it clear that, for your country, detente with the Soviet Union will also be a top priority in crisis situations. I do not believe that any American president will risk nuclear war on behalf of Berlin in every circumstance. But the alliance remains important. What is protecting us is that the Soviet leaders themselves cannot be sure of this element of doubt.

Like his great predecessor, he was convinced of the crucial role of morality. “Politics without a conscience tends toward criminality. As I see it, politics is pragmatic action for the sake of moral ends.”

Angela Merkel was then 35 and without any political experience whatsoever.

For his part, Adenauer did not linger over posterity’s judgment. When asked how he wanted to be remembered, he replied simply: “He has done his duty.”

Historically, he said, Europe had been the arena of diverse nationalities and convictions. There was no such thing as a political Europe. Each part of Europe had created its own identity, undergone its own suffering, developed its own authority and mission. The countries of Europe were in the process of recovering from WW2 and seeking to defend themselves on the basis of a strategy that defined their character. The situation since the war had produced necessities and dangers that required close cooperation among the states of Europe — and between Europe and the US. France was prepared to cooperate in common tasks and would prove a loyal ally. It would not, however, give up its capacity to defend itself or surrender the determination of its future to multilateral institutions.

Petain, who in the early 1920s had served as de Gaulle’s mentor, was venerated for having repelled the German assault at Verdun during WW1. Now, ignoring the gap in their military ranks, the most junior French general addressed the most senior (and heretofore most highly esteemed) with withering condescension.

Soon afterward, Britain formalized the relationship with de Gaulle, accepting the general’s own unique conception of French national dignity. He insisted, for instance, that while Britain would supply the Free French with resources and funds, these should come as loans to be repaid, not as gifts.

Before 1940, de Gaulle had been known as an outstanding soldier and progressive strategic analyst, but nothing suggested that one day he would emerge as a mythic leader.

De Gaulle had learned German in school, and while in prison he consumed German newspapers with the appetite of an eager student and the curiosity of a journeyman military analyst. He wrote extensively about the German war effort, read novels, engaged in spirited discussions of military strategy with his fellow prisoners and even delivered a series of lectures on civil-military relations throughout French history. Much as he pined to return to the front, internment was his graduate school. It was also a crucible of solitude. In his prison notebook, the 26-year-old de Gaulle wrote: “Dominating oneself ought to become a sort of habit, a moral reflex acquired by a constant gymnastic of the will especially in the tiniest things: dress, conversation, the way one thinks.”

Under normal circumstances, with his battlefield experience, promotion to brigadier general and intellectual brilliance, de Gaulle might have aspired to a top command in the army and, after another decade or so of service, perhaps to a position in the French cabinet. That he would, instead, emerge as the symbol of France itself was scarcely conceivable.

In an essay I wrote over 50 years ago, I described him as an illusionist. First as a leader of the Free French during the war, later as founder and president of the Fifth Republic, he conjured up visions that transcended objective reality, in the process persuading his audiences to treat them as fact. For de Gaulle, politics was not the art of the possible but the art of the willed.

Rejecting the prevailing strategies based on dynastic loyalty or confessional affiliation, Richelieu instead oriented France’s internal and external policies in accord with “reason of state”: that is, the flexible pursuit of the national interest based entirely on a realistic judgment of circumstances.

Under Napoleon at the beginning of the 19th century, instead of advancing its interests by alliances and limited warfare, France proceeded to overthrow the prevailing order by conquering rather than simply defeating its rivals, all the while invoking the French Revolution’s new principle of popular legitimacy.

De Gaulle considered Napoleon a once-in-a-millennium genius but also blamed him for squandering French power and prestige: “He left France smaller than he found her.” Napoleon’s brilliance and his capacity for catastrophic errors of judgment, de Gaulle believed, could not easily be separated; France’s sweeping Napoleonic victories laid the groundwork for its eventual disasters.

As rising powers such as Germany surpassed France in economic performance, France continued to demonstrate cultural eminence. Paris was the heart of Western civilization, “the capital of the 19th century.”

With the major powers solidified into 2 alliance groups, diplomacy became rigid and allowed an otherwise unremarkable Balkan crisis between Serbia and Austria to precipitate a world war, in which casualties for all participants were way out of proportion to historical experience.

Although victorious in 1918, France knew better than any of its allies how close to defeat it had come. And it had lost its psychological and political resilience. Drained of its youth, fearful of its defeated antagonist, feeling abandoned by its allies and assailed by premonitions of impotence, France experienced the 1920s and 1930s as an almost uninterrupted succession of frustrations.

Nothing could have better expressed France’s feeling of insecurity after 1918 than its decision to begin building the Maginot Line at a moment when its army was the largest in Europe and Germany’s was limited by the peace treaty to 100K men. What made the decision all the more poignant was that the Treaty of Versailles had specifically prohibited Germany from stationing military forces in the Rhineland — the territory that had to be crossed before an attack on France could be launched. If the aftermath of its victory, France had come to feel so unsure of itself that it did not think it could counter a flagrant breach of the peace treaty by its disarmed enemy with its own offensive.

Above all he was concerned lest a precedent be set for the eventual disposition of France itself. More specifically, he feared that after ultimate victory France’s governance would be placed under Allied control and that a new French government would be legitimized by the Allies rather than by France’s own actions.

Having challenged Churchill, the leader who had made his eminence possible, de Gaulle did not hesitate to take on an even more formidable figure, President Roosevelt, over essentially the same issue: the fate of French territories reconquered by Allied arms. Here he encountered a less tolerant perspective. Roosevelt was focused single-mindedly on winning the war, and disputes over status within the coalition irritated him, especially when put forward by a figure whose claim was in no way buttressed by comparable power. He had only disdain for what he saw as de Gaulle’s Joan of Arc complex.

The President again alluded to the lack of power on the part of the French people at this time to assert their sovereignty. The President pointed out that it was, therefore, necessary to resort to the legal analogy of “trusteeship” and that it was his view that the Allied Nations fighting in French territory at the moment were fighting for the liberation of France and that they should hold the political situation in “trusteeship” for the French people.

Roosevelt’s challenge forced the implicit to become explicit.

I would suppose never in the whole history of politics has any man frittered away so large a capital in so short a space of time. He sat down to play cards with every ace, every king, and almost every queen in the pack but succeeded by some extraordinary sleight of hand in cheating himself out of his own stake.

And indeed, within the CFLN’s overall framework — de Gaulle’s structural proposal having been accepted — he outmaneuvered the older, far less subtle general. Ultimately, Giraud’s military command became subordinate to the nominal “civilian” control of the Committee, presenting the Allies with the fait accompli of a unified French authority. In the process, a new defense committee was created, with de Gaulle at the helm, to oversee military operations, effectively pushing Giraud into staff status.

There was no mention of the British troops who had actually liberated Bayeux or of the American forces that had suffered many of the casualties in the landing. De Gaulle was seeking to transform, in the minds of his listeners, what was essentially an Anglo-American expedition into a singular French victory. Not for the last time, he strove to persuade his listeners to accept as gospel an account bearing little relation to reality.

This seeming lack of gratitude to the liberators and obsessional emphasis on the alleged French role reflected another purpose. De Gaulle was only too aware that much of the French population had adjusted to the occupation. Emphasizing that period would have disclosed too many ambivalences, while stressing the role of the American and British forces would have impeded his ultimate purpose of restoring France’s faith in itself.

A parade down the Champs-Elysees, unprecedented in scale and perhaps never equaled in French history for its fervor, sealed de Gaulle’s legitimacy.

At both places, sniper fire rang out. As during later assassination attempts — and as previously in war — de Gaulle made no move to protect himself and forbore commenting. The unflinching physical courage he displayed in those days helped to cement his leadership of France.

France’s defeat in 1940 had left it sidelined in international diplomacy. It had been excluded from the Teheran conference in 1943, when Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin had settled on the strategy of the war. It would be similarly absent from the Yalta and Potsdam conferences in 1945, which established the structure of postwar Europe. De Gaulle could not restore France’s influence if he behaved as a supplicant seeking admission to international conferences; he had to demonstrate to Britain and the US that France was an autonomous actor with independent choices for whose goodwill it was important to contend. If France were to rejoin the first tier of international diplomacy, it would have to create its own opportunities — beginning with his daring mission to Moscow to parley with Stalin.

In his turn, de Gaulle put forward his own proposal for Central Europe, which amounted to a reversal of 200 years of European history. As he saw it, the German territories west of the Rhine should be ceded to France.

In conceiving of the state as a generational compact, de Gaulle was echoing Edmund Burke, who defined society as “a partnership between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born.”

This development raised the perennial question of whether war strategy should be shaped by military or by political considerations. As long as the military battlefield was on French soil, de Gaulle gave priority to the political.

Truman was unimpressed by de Gaulle’s explanation of his defiance — that, in effect, France should supplant Britain as America’s major European ally. Britain, de Gaulle argued, had become too exhausted by war to play that role.

Reforms that in more placid times might have been achieved in decades were unveiled in weeks. The provisional government established a family allowance to support the raising of children and revive the French birthrate. French women were able to exercise the right to vote for the first time. Social security expanded dramatically. Air France, Renault, coal, gas and electricity — all were nationalized.

As the largest party in the Constituent Assembly, the Communists demanded the 3 most important cabinet portfolios: Foreign Policy, Defense and Interior. Although de Gaulle refused to entertain this demand, he did feel obliged to grant the Communists significant domestic ministries, such as Economy and Labor.

Within weeks, de Gaulle realized that he was losing the struggle to shape the new constitution. A conventional political leader might have accepted such a disappointment as the price of holding power, but de Gaulle was not prepared to trade his conviction for what others judged practical.

I do not feel I am made for this kind of fight. I do not want to be attacked, criticized, contested every day by men whose only claim is to have had themselves elected in some small corner of France.

Historians have puzzled over the timing of de Gaulle’s resignation. Clearly he was at odds with the procedures of the Third Republic, in place until the Constituent Assembly would complete its work on a constitution, which itself was trending in a direction he disfavored. But attacking the institutions he led as head of government could have appeared to demonstrate either political impotence or, possibly, an invitation to a Bonapartist coup. Yet, paradoxically, if he intended to realize the vision to which he had unfailingly kept faith through all adversity and doubt — namely, assuming power so as to infuse republican government with broad legitimacy — he needed to resign before the Assembly’s work had been completed and not in protest at an existing constitution.

What this master of timing may have miscalculated was the interval required for the political leadership to recognize his indispensability and mend its ways.

This is why he advocated democracy in the form of a biting analysis of the defects and ultimate futility of dictatorship: It is the fate of dictatorship to exaggerate what it undertakes. As the citizens become impatient with its constraints and nostalgic for their lost freedom, the dictatorship must, whatever the cost, be able to compensate with broader and broader accomplishments. The nation becomes a machine on which the master imposes a regime of unchecked acceleration. In the end something has to give way. The grandiose edifice collapses in blood and misfortune.

In sum, republican government served as the best bulwark between chaos and tyranny.

Despite de Gaulle’s expectation that the country would quickly recall him, no summon came. He struggled against bouts of gloom with demonstrative stoicism, at times reaching apocalyptic moods. In 1947, he attempted to launch a national political movement that stood separately from the established parties; it evoked a brief exuberance before sputtering out.

The Fourth Republic collapsed in 1958 not so much from domestic challenges as from its inability to establish a policy regarding its colonial possessions. It spent too many of the political gains of the economic recovery on 3 colonial crises: the effort to hold on to Indochina, the Suez intervention and, above all, the Algerian crisis.

By 1954, colonial rule in Vietnam had become untenable. Laos and Cambodia had gained their independence from France the year before. The Eisenhower administration, emerging from the Korean War, was unwilling to back France militarily in Vietnam. General Henri Navarre’s strategy of luring Vietminh General Vo Nguyen Giap into an open battle by concentrating forces in the cauldron-like valley of Dien Bien Phu had resulted in a debacle. Over the course of 8 weeks, Chinese-supplied North Vietnamese forces had trapped the French and in early May brought about their surrender.

Washington’s disavowal of the Anglo-French action at Suez exposed the limits of NATO as an intergovernmental military alliance — and of America’s commitments to its allies. London and Paris drew antithetical lessons from their misadventure. Britain, shocked by the decline of its historic role and chastened by its schism with Washington, strove to restore the special relationship with America. France, by contrast, with far less prospect of achieving this kind of influence over American choices, festered in frustration — creating a rift in perception within the Atlantic Alliance that would achieve its full expression after de Gaulle’s return.

Never will any French government yield on the principle that Algeria is France.

But he had the wisdom to play it like a game of Go, which starts on a blank board, each party possessing 180 pieces, and where success is achieved through patience and a superior grasp of the evolving tactical situation.

The army’s commitment to keeping Algeria French had brought de Gaulle into office; now he acted on the conviction that returning the military to its role as an instrument of national policy was not achievable by a single dramatic decision. It would require a process that, by gradually reducing the military role in civilian order, would preclude the possibility of military dominance.

One who saw France’s predicament clearly was Mao Zedong, who predicted that France would not be able to sustain a military commitment to the conflict at its current scale: “You will see that they face many difficulties. France needs to support an 800K-strong military and spend 3B francs a day. If that continues for a long time, they will collapse.”

Now the State is flouted, the Nation defied, our power degraded, our international prestige lowered, our role and our place in Africa jeopardized. And by whom? Alas! Alas! By men whose duty, honor, and raison d’ete was to serve and obey.

To the French colonists, subordinating the security of what was legally a province of France to European defense represented a blow to their self-image and a revolutionary change in France’s priorities. The French public may have become exhausted from colonial wars, but the colonists themselves, and most of all the army, had borne the brunt of the sacrifice and felt deeply deceived.

De Gaulle never responded to several suggestions that he express compassion for the French settlers fleeing what they regarded as their homeland; nor is there any record of his ever having discussed the impact of his Algerian policy on himself. Though he did on occasion express emotions in public, de Gaulle made it a practice never to permit personal feelings to override his sense of duty or the requirements of the historical process, as he saw it.

Ever since the Thirty Years’ War, each country had regarded the other as its hereditary enemy. In the 20th century alone, France and Germany had fought each other in 2 world wars.

The courtesies extended to Adenauer were emblematic of the importance de Gaulle attached to the new relationship. Another gesture extended to Adenauer, no less unique, was to hold their discussions without the presence of aides, and largely in German. Indeed, the etiquette of the whole meeting was skillfully orchestrated to appeal to the psychology of the guest and to allow 2 old men, both born in the 19th century, to feel at east with each other in practicing traditional courtesies.

Now, between 1945 and 1950, in 2 great initiatives — NATO and the Marshall Plan — America abandoned its previous mode of conduct and assumed a permanent role in world affairs.

Washington, confident of America’s dominance, focused on immediate, practical tasks; it urged an alliance structure that, in the name of integration, would encourage joint Allied action and impede autonomous initiatives. De Gaulle, governing a country racked by generations of international and civil conflict, insisted that the manner of cooperation was as important as the goal. France, if it were to recover its identity, had to be perceived as acting out of choice, not compulsion, and it therefore needed to preserve its freedom of action.

De Gaulle’s assertive style resulted from a combination of personal confidence and historical experience, tempered by an awareness of the nightmare in which the unexpected had formed a central French experience. By contrast, American leaders, though personally modest in their conduct, based their own views on confidence in their mastery of the future.

De Gaulle was adamant in refusing to negotiate under threat. With characteristic eloquence, he attributed the challenge to the Soviet domestic system:

There is in this uproar of imprecations and demands organized by the Soviets something so arbitrary and so artificial that one is led to attribute it either to the premeditated unleashing of frantic ambitions or to the desire of drawing attention away from great difficulties. This second hypothesis seems all the more plausible to me since, despite the coercions, isolation, and acts of force in which the Communist system encloses the countries which are under its yoke… actually its gaps, its shortages, its internal failures, and above all its character of inhuman oppression, are felt more and more by the elites and the masses, whom it is more and more difficult to deceive and subjugate.

De Gaulle considered abstention from developing a major military capacity as a form of psychological abdication.

Eisenhower and Macmillan had dealt with de Gaulle in Algiers when he was still a contestant for leadership — and hence in no position to implement his views unilaterally. They therefore thought they could afford to ignore him without consequence. Their tactics made sense, however, only on the assumption that de Gaulle was being grandiloquently frivolous and had no practical alternative. These assumptions turned out to be mistaken.

De Gaulle reacted to the American and British silence by demonstrating that, in fact, he did have options. In March 1959, he withdrew the French Mediterranean fleet from the integrated NATO command; in June of that year, he ordered the removal of American nuclear weapons from French soil; in February 1960, France conducted its first nuclear test; and in 1966 he pulled France out of the NATO command structure altogether. He must have judged that Britain and the US would have no choice but to support him in case of Soviet attack while he retained freedom of decision.

The voices of immobility and demagogy are as always simultaneously raised. “It is useless,” say some. “It is too costly,” say others. But this time we shall not allow routine and illusion to invite invasion of our country. Moreover, in the midst of the strained and dangerous world in which we live, our chief duty is to be strong and to be ourselves.

Alliances have historically been formed to establish congruence between a nation’s capability and its intentions in 5 ways:

  1. To assemble forces adequate or deter a possible aggressor.
  2. To convey this capability.
  3. To proclaim obligations beyond the calculus of a power relationship — were these unambiguous, no such formal expression would have been required.
  4. To define a specific casus belli.
  5. To remove, as a means of diplomacy in a crisis, any doubt about the intentions of the parties.

All of these traditional objectives were altered by the emergence of nuclear weapons.

For de Gaulle, leadership was the elaboration of national purpose from a careful analysis of the meshing of existing power relationships with historical evolution.

In de Gaulle’s view, international obligations were inherently contingent, for 2 reasons: the circumstances in which they might evolve were, by definition, unpredictable; and the obligations themselves would be modified by changes in the geopolitical environment or the perception of leaders. As a result, de Gaulle was, on the one hand, among the most solid supporters of the Atlantic Alliance when there was an actual Soviet challenge to the international order. But, on the other hand, he never abandoned his insistence non his country’s freedom to judge the consequences of occasions as they arose.

When asked later why he had chosen these particular issues as the occasion for retiring from office, de Gaulle replied: “Because of their triviality.”

The criticisms were not without foundation. De Gaulle could be haughty, cold, abrasive and petty. As a leader, he radiated mystique, not warmth. As a person, he inspired admiration, even awe, but rarely affection.

Yet in his statesmanship, de Gaulle remains exceptional. No 20th-century leader demonstrated greater gifts of intuition. On every major strategic question facing France and Europe over no fewer than 3 decades, and against an overwhelming consensus, de Gaulle judged correctly. His extraordinary prescience was matched by the courage to act on his intuition, even when the consequences appeared to be political suicide. His career validated the Roman maxim that fortune favors the brave.

His career produced few formal lessons in policy making, no detailed guidance to be followed in specific circumstances. But the legacy of leadership needs to be inspirational, not solely doctrinal. De Gaulle led and inspired his followers by example, not by prescription. More than a half-century after his death, French foreign policy can still adequately be described as “Gaullist.” And his life is a case study in how great leaders can master circumstance and forge history.

Defiantly out of joint with the times in which he lived, de Gaulle strove for consensus by proclaiming the moral and practical importance of a vanished grandeur; he appealed not so much to a historic continuum as to what had been, centuries earlier, and might again be.

Churchill’s leadership was an extraordinary emanation of a tradition, fitting to its circumstances; his personal style was ebullient and leavened with delightful humor. De Gaulle’s leadership was not a elaboration of a historic process but a unique expression of a personality and of special set of principles. His humor was sardonic, designed to stress the distinctness, as well as the distinctiveness, of its subject matter. Where Churchill saw his leadership as the culmination of a historical process and a personal fulfillment, de Gaulle treated his encounter with history as a duty, one to be born as a burden separated from any personal satisfaction.

Aloofness, character, and the personification of greatness, these qualities … surround with prestige those who are prepared to carry a burden which is too heavy for lesser mortals. The price they have to pay for leadership is unceasing self-discipline, the constant taking of risks, and a perpetual inner struggle. The degree of suffering involved varies according to the temperament of the individual; but it is bound to be no less tormenting than the hair shirt of the penitent. This helps to explain those cases of withdrawal which, otherwise, are so hard to understand. It constantly happens that men with an unbroken record of success and public applause suddenly lay the burden down … Contentment and tranquility and the simple joys which go by the name of happiness are denied to those who fill positions of power. The choice must be made, and it is a hard one: whence that vague sense of melancholy which hangs about the skirts of majesty … One day somebody said to Napoleon, as they were looking at an old and noble monument: “How sad it is!” “Yes,” came the reply, “as sad as greatness.”

Anne died of pneumonia in 1948 at the age of 20. “Without Anne, maybe I never would have done what I did. She gave me the heart and the inspiration.” After her death, he carried a framed picture of her in his breast pocket for the rest of his life.

Europe and Japan, both of which had recovered from the devastation of war under the security umbrella of the US, began to compete economically with the US and to nurse their own sometimes differing perceptions of the evolving world order.

Some presidential statements were symbolic, suggesting a direction but not a call for immediate action.

Nixon and I would develop a relationship which, in its operational character, might have been described as a “partnership” — although true partnership rarely exists when the power is so unequally distributed between the 2 sides. The president can dismiss his security advisor without procedure or warning and has the authority to impose his preferences without formal notice or discussion. And, whatever contribution the security advisor might take, the president bears the ultimate responsibility for the decisions.

This consistent graciousness was all the more remarkable because, side by side with the decisive and thoughtful Nixon described in this pages, there was another Nixon — insecure about his image, uncertain of his authority and plagued by a nagging self-doubt. This other Nixon was accompanied by a version of Adam Smith’s “impartial spectator”: that is, a second “you,” standing outside yourself, observing and judging your actions. Nixon seemed to me have been haunted by such critical self-awareness all his life.

Absent a crisis, Nixon spent relatively little time on day-to-day issues and much more on the historical background of dynamics of a particular region or situation. He was always focused on what constituted potential turning points or key impending decisions. During these discussions, which frequently extended over many hours, the strategic thinking of the Nixon administration was shaped.

I still harbored the notion (inherited from my Harvard days) that the former president’s mind was as vague as the grammar he occasionally deployed in his press conferences. In quickly learned otherwise. He was familiar with national security issues in substance as well as their administrative ramifications. Eisenhower’s facial features were vivid and expressive, exuding self-assurance produced by decades of command. His manner of speaking was forceful, direct and eloquence.

Then, as now, an important school of thought maintained that stability and peace were the normal state of international affairs, while conflict was the consequence of either misunderstanding or malevolence. Once hostile powers were decisively overcome or defeated, the underlying harmony or trust would reemerge. In this quintessentially American conception, conflict was not inherent but artificial.

Nixon’s perception was more dynamic. He viewed peace as a state of fragile and fluid equilibrium among the great powers, a precarious balance that in turn constituted a vital component of international stability. In an interview, he stressed a balance of power as a prerequisite for peace:

It is when one nation becomes infinitely more powerful in relation to its potential competitor that the danger of war arises. So I believe in a world in which the US is powerful. I think it will be a safer world and a better world if we have a strong, healthy US, Europe, Soviet Union, China, Japan, each balancing the other, not playing one against the other, an even balance.

Any of the great British statesmen of the 19th century would have made a comparable statement about the balancing of power in Europe.

Like Roosevelt, he considered the national interest to be the defining objective in the pursuit of national strategy and foreign policy. Recognizing that national interests are often in tension with each other and not always reconcilable in so-called “win-win” outcomes, he saw the statesman’s task as identifying and managing those differences; this could be accomplished either by mitigating them or, when necessary and as a last resort, by overwhelming them with force. In such extreme cases, he was prone to apply a maxim he frequently put to his associates: “You pay the same price for conducting policy halfheartedly or hesitantly as for doing it the correct way and with conviction.”

In Nixon’s foreign-policy vision, the US should be the principal shaper of a fluid system of shifting balances. This role had no definable terminal point, but if America resigned from it, he believed, there would be global chaos.

“Power is a fact of international life. Our mutual obligation is to discipline that power, to seek together with other nations to ensure that it is used to maintain peace, not to threaten the peace.”

Still, how was “peace” to be defined and achieved?

A diplomatic deadlock between top leaders complicates any adjustment within the internal governance of both sides — another reason why detailed issues should be dealt with at lower levels, where technical expertise is more concentrated and accommodation less personally threatening. If only a few issues remain for the final phase, leaders will be liberated to crown a substantive outcome with symbolic adjustment and a celebratory flourish.

Nixon’s strengths as a statesman resided at the 2 ends of geopolitical strategy: analytical rigor in design and great boldness in execution. He was at his best in dialogues over long-range objectives and in efforts to draw his counterpart onto the edges of a strategic undertaking.

Its essence was a dramatic move away from the previous administrations’ tendency to compartmentalize seemingly disparate issues:

I recognize that the previous administration took the view that when we perceive a mutual interest on an issue with the USSR, we should pursue agreement and attempt to insulate it as much as possible from the ups and downs of conflicts elsewhere. This may well be sound on numerous bilateral and practical matters such as cultural or scientific exchanges. But, on the crucial issues of our day, I believe we must seek to advance on a front at least broad enough to make clear that we see some relationship between political and military issues.

As Western Europe and Japan recovered from WW2, they accumulated dollar reserves — $40B by 1971, compared with US gold reserves worth $10B. Lacking confidence in the US ability to sustain gold convertibility, foreign government, led by France, demanded that ever more dollars be exchanged for gold.

Fed Chairman Arthur Burns sought to preserve the Bretton Woods system, while Treasury Secretary John Connally and OMB Director George Shultz favored an end to the dollar-gold link, with Shultz going so far as to propose a new system of floating exchange rates. Siding with Connally and Shultz, Nixon judged that dollar-gold convertibility could not be preserved and that any attempt to maintain it would invite speculative attacks on the dollar. He announced a temporary suspension of dollar convertibility to gold on Sunday, August 15.

Deputy FM Xuan Thuy volunteered his awareness of the proposal by rejecting it on the ground that Hnaoi would never negotiate through a third party.

After a compromise enabling both the South Vietnamese claimants to legitimacy to join the formal negotiations, Hanoi refused to discuss any substantive issues at all. Its objective remained to procrastinate until exhaustion or domestic discord would force the US to abandon its South Vietnamese ally.

As we were approaching the November deadline without a Hanoi change in attitude or presidential decision of consequence, I wrote 2 memoranda on the principle that the security advisor owes the president an analysis of matters of consequential decisions.

The first memorandum inquired whether Vietnamization could in fact achieve our agreed objectives. The second memorandum a day later analyzed the incentives for a diplomatic solution in the existing strategy.

At the time, I was uneasy with Nixon’s decision. Over the years, in reflecting on the alternatives, I have concluded that Nixon had chosen the wiser course. Had he followed his first instincts, he would have had a cabinet crisis, compounded by national paralysis from protest demonstrations in major cities.

When we explored his definition of “peace-loving,” it turned out that no established South Vietnamese figure met his criteria.

But now, as arms control was becoming established on the international agenda, an emerging combination of liberals and conservatives started to criticize them on the grounds that arms control dealt only with symptoms and not the underlying causes: the authoritarian nature of the communist system and its human rights violations.

Adopted in 1967, it contained all the sacramental words — “peace,” “security,” “political independence” — but in a sequence that drained them of operational significance by enabling each side to apply its own definitions.

Having set the strategy, Nixon followed his usual practice of leaving its implementation to subordinates. He departed the Situation Room, leaving Sisco, Haig, and me to take care of the details.

This strategy of managing the Jordan crisis reflected a pattern that would recur in Nixon’s subsequent crisis management: a period of reflection, followed by a sudden move comprehensive enough to convince the adversary that further escalation posed unacceptable risk.

There ensured technical and political near-deadlock. US airlift capability during peacetime is enhanced by the Pentagon’s authority to requisition civilian aircraft. But civilian airlines were reluctant to operate in a combat zone, and a technical obstacle turned into a political one: to reach Israel from the US, civilian aircraft needed to stop for refueling, and Portugal and Spain — the most suitable stops — refused to allow refueling stops due to concern over Arab reactions and Soviet pressure.

To be sure, such measures would communicate US disapproval of Pakistani outrages, but they would also diminish American leverage and threaten the nascent opening to China — for which Pakistan was our principal intermediary.

Paradoxically, critics equated the administration’s reaction to this latest crisis with its conduct in Vietnam — but on diametrically opposite grounds: in East Pakistan, the fault was asserted to be the absence of US intervention in a faraway crisis, described as if America condoned the iniquity; in Vietnam, America was condemned for its continuing involvement.

A brilliant and hardboiled realist, she had not come to the conclusion that the existing balance of forces would enable her to impose India’s preferred strategic outcome.

The resolution of the conflict proved to be a turning point in the Cold War, though it was not recognized as such at the time nor widely today. India’s offer of a ceasefire resulted in part from Nixon’s willingness to use military signaling and high-level diplomacy to rebalance the strategic equation and thereby to defuse the crisis. His conduct risked planned summits with both Beijing and Moscow. Concurrently, it demonstrated willingness to use American power with resolve for geopolitical purposes — a lesson that was not lost on traditional allies.

Historical memory is often endowed with the appearance of inevitability; gone are the doubt, risk and contingent nature of events that accompany — and, on occasion, threaten to overwhelm — participants in the moment. Nixon’s leadership consisted in the fortitude to overcome his latent sense of doom and, amid the anguish of uncertainty, to merge complex geopolitical trends into a broad definition of national interest and to sustain it in the face of adversity. Nixon worked on the conviction that peace was the fragile and dangerously ephemeral consequence of diligent statesmanship within a world where tension and conflict were almost preordained. It was the statesman’s duty to seek to resolve conflicts on the basis of an inspired vision of the future.

Swings between reckless triumphalism and righteous abdication signal danger for America’s position in the world. A Nixonian flexibility, at once realistic and creative, is needed for American foreign policy. Despite many important differences between Nixon’s time in office and today, 3 familiar principles from his statesmanship would continue to benefit the US: the centrality of the national interest, the maintenance of the global equilibrium and the creation of sustained and intense discussions among major countries to construct a framework of legitimacy within which the balance of power can be defined and observed.

Certain qualities of Nixon’s leadership would help to actualize these principles: an understanding of how different aspects of national power relate to one another; an awareness of minute shifts in the global equilibrium and the agility to counterbalance them; an imagination for tactical boldness; a facility for relating the management of regional disturbances to a global strategy; and the vision to apply America’s historic values to its contemporary challenges.

Managing the global order requires an acute US sensitivity to evolving and often ambiguous events. It also demands an ability to identify strategic priorities. We must ask ourselves: which threats and opportunities require allies? And which are so central to American national interests and security that we will deal with them alone, if necessary? At what point does multilateral commitment compound strength, and when does it multiply vetoes? To achieve the goal of peace, confrontational forms of competition must leave room for a sense of shared legitimacy. Together, balanced power and agreed-upon legitimacies supply the soundest structure for peace.

And in spite of 23 centuries of nominal foreign rules — first under the Ptolemys and then under Romans, Byzantines, a succession of caliphs, Mamluks, Ottomans and finally the British — Egypt has typically been able to wrest local control from its ostensible conquerors. Though never fully independent since the days of Alexander the Great, Egypt also never fully acquiesced as a colony; instead, it was a civilization practicing eternity in a pharaonic guise.

The Egyptian Khedives, who by the 2nd half of the 19th century had achieved de facto independence from weakening Ottoman rule, saddled the country with debt, leading in 1875 to the sale to Britain of Egypt’s stake in the Suez Canal and the surrender of Egypt’s rights of operation there. In this way, beginning in 1876, Paris and London asserted control over Egyptian finance. In 1882, Britain occupied Egypt and named itself Egypt’s “protector.”

In 1922, after years of unrest over Britain’s sidelining of the popular Wafd Party, Egypt was grudgingly granted its long-promised formal independence, transforming it from a protectorate and sultanate to a kingdom. Sultan Fuad I became King Fuad I. This was, at first, only a nominal change; Britain still reserved for itself the operation of the Suez Canal, the prevention of foreign interference in Egypt and the “protection” of Egyptian security, foreign affairs and international communications.

Drawing on al-Masri’s example — treating the enemy of one’s enemy as one’s friend — Sadat began corresponding with an supporting German forces operating in North Africa. Stationed alongside British soldiers, Sadat nursed thoughts of rebellion.

Veterans of the 1948-9 war, including future Egyptian Presidents Naguib and Nasser, belived that the rout had resulted from Arab disunity. This catalyzed a new, pan-Arab project: a military union of Arab states charged with confronting Israel and combating Western influence. Perhaps because the establishment of Israel was perceived by many Egyptians as a further European imposition on the region, even greater Egyptian identification with Arab causes and fiercer resentment of the West followed.

Moreover, in prison he had undergone a profound transformation. Rather than languishing in his solitary confinement, he had developed what he later recalled as an “inner strength.” Already formed by the slow rhythms of his rural childhood, he professed to have found still grater serenity in prison. But his was not a serenity that lent itself to stillness. It was, rather, “a capacity for change.” In his memoirs, Sadat would reflect: “My contemplation of life and human nature in that secluded place had taught me that he who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress.”

A council of regents stepped in to manage the monarchy, as was customary with an infant king. But the real power now lay with the Revolutionary Command Council (RCC), of which General Naguib was the head. The RCC proclaimed a new constitutional charter, by which it would rule for a transitional period of 3 years. In the summer of 1953, the RCC abolished the monarchy, declared Egypt a republic, and appointed Naguib as president and PM. Nasser was named DPM.

To compound the challenge, the US announced publicly Egypt’s economic inadequacies as the reason for the cancellation. “No one likes being refused a loan by a bank,” as the WB President Eugene Black commented, adding that “people get especially upset when they read in the paper the next day that they were refused because their credit wasn’t any good.” To Nasser and Sadat, the issue went beyond creditworthiness. The Egyptian leaders saw Western powers using debt to humiliate and stunt Egypt — just as they had one 70 years earlier when they occupied the country.

Within days, Nasser retaliated. The Suez Canal Company, owned mostly by French and British shareholders, had operated the canal since the late 19th century. On July 26, 1956, Nasser announced the Company’s nationalization, in its stead, established the state-owned Suez Canal Authority.

In the Arab world, Nasser’s nationalization of the Suez Canal Company and defense against the European and Israeli military operations had made him a hero. He relished his leadership and cultivated it with slogans of Arab solidarity. But once he was crowned leader of the Arabs, the Arabs wanted him to lead. For Egypt, reliant for food on foreign aid from the US and for arms on the Soviet Union, shouldering others’ burdens was an unwelcome and infeasible project.

Nasser was so embarrassed by the defeat that he resigned the presidency on June 9. Called back to office by popular demonstrations, he tried to restore his prestige by launching a war of attribution against Israel. But rather than regaining Egypt’s former glory, the war in Yemen, the Six-Day War and the War of Attrition had the cumulative effect of draining Egypt’s resources and further increasing its dependence on the Soviet Union.

The Soviet Union, the funder of Nasser’s grandest domestic projects, soon proved more mercenary than ally. Khrushchev’s fall in 1964 had precipitated a new, hard-nosed approach under Brezhnev, Kosygin and Podgorny. Already by 1966, economic aid was drying up — as was Soviet cooperativeness. Soviet leaders began advocating Egyptian austerity policies; in May 1966, Kosygin denied a request from Cairo to postpone its debt repayment. The Soviet Union would maintain its influence as an arm supplier and occasional financier but ceased to be Egypt’s great-power benefactor.

In June 1967, the Egyptian leader broke off relations with the US over its military aid to Israel. By 1970, the Soviets had stopped responding to Nasser’a appeals for aid, loans, and debt relief. In pursuit of pan-Arabism, Nasser had brought about Egypt’s isolation.

Even at its height, the friendship between Egypt and the Soviet Union had been formal to the point of coldness. Sadat witness firsthand Soviet disdain for what they considered Egyptian dependency.

A high degree of engagement in the Arab world was a tactical obligation but not a civilizational one. In Egypt’s long history, Arab ties were one of many influences; proposals of pan-Arabism could therefore be judged on their immediate practical merits.

He treated Israel as a spearhead of American imperialism: “Israel has been the first line of defense of American interests and the Americans gave here the green light to the Gaza Aggression.”

In Egypt, personalities have always been more important than political programs.

Charismatic leaders such as Gamal Abdel Nasser base their politics on casting a spell. Their inspirational rhetoric and demeanor are designed to smother the bleaker truths of everyday life. Stubborn realities come into focus only when the singular, blinding personality disappears.

To succeed a charismatic leader is in the best of circumstances a forbidding task; while policy can be transmitted, charisma is intangible. Capturing the imagination of the people, who were still mourning Nasser, was unlikely. And without control over the workings of his government, Sadat knew he would be puppet. He needed, above all, to establish himself.

Each of his bold and unexpected moves was deliberately calculated to serve a larger strategic objective. As one senior diplomat put it at the time: “They badly misjudged the man if they thought he was going to be pliant. They forgot that he carried bombs in his pocket as a young revolutionary.”

But he was still tethered to Nasser’s legacy and Egypt’s realities, and constrained by 2 contradictory imperatives: to retain popular legitimacy he would need to retain Nasserism and his link to Nasser’s image; to reverse Egypt’s fortunes, he would need to jettison many elements of Nasser’s program. He therefore decided to reaffirm the Nasserist program while gradually, and at first imperceptibly, turning it in a new direction. By pursuing what looked like the established course, he would cloak his real intentions.

At their first summit in Khartoum in 1967, the Arab leaders had sworn never to recognize Israel, never to make peace with Israel and never to negotiate with Israel. In his early years in office, Sadat’s domestic position did not allow any deviation from the Khartoum rules.

But foreign policy is as influenced by intangibles as its is by objective circumstances. Sadat was still held in low regard in Washington. His initial public steps as president contradicted his private overtures, which were in any case too indirect and subtle to suggest a potential opening for transformative dialogue.

Sadat decided to go to war. He may have hoped to achieve his stated objectives in one fell swoop. But more likely, he was initiating hostilities in the expectation that it might legitimize alternative diplomatic options. Jehan Sadat, his extraordinary wife, recalled that he described the situation to her as requiring “one more war in order to win and enter into negotiations from a position of equality.”

For a nation to pretend to total autonomy is a form of nostalgia; reality dictates that every nation — even the most powerful — adapt its conduct to the capabilities and purposes of its neighbors and rivals.

Even successful negotiations sometimes leave in the negotiators’ memories uneasy traces of their compromises, which cast a shadow over future efforts.

He also came up with an ingenious idea for avoiding debates about who had yielded to whom. Israel and Egypt, rather than describing the agreement as a series of obligations each to the other, should express them as mutual commitments to the POTUS. In this manner, the agreement would be indirectly guaranteed by Washington. To stress the American role in the supervision, he prosed 2 UN technical inspection units using American technology and American personnel along the Suez Canal.

Peace is not a mere endorsement of written lines. Rather it is a rewriting of history. Peace is a giant struggle against all and every ambition and whim.

Aside from the immediate stakes, Arab leaders felt personally betrayed by Sadat’s failure to consult them. On a practical level, they worried that his presence in Jerusalem would strengthen the Israelis’ negotiating position. Assad of Syria was outright contemptuous. When in 1975 I had asked him for his alternative, he replied, icily: “You are abandoning Vietnam; you will abandon Taiwan. And we will be here when you grow tired of Israel.”

Sadat had problems even within his own delegation. As he said to one Foreign Ministry official:

You people in the Foreign Ministry are under the impression that you understand politics. In reality, however, you understand absolutely nothing. Henceforth I shall not pay the least attention to either your words or your memos. I am a man whose actions are governed by a higher strategy which you are incapable of either perceiving or understanding.

Shortly after Sadat’s assassination, I wrote that it was too early to judge whether he had “started an irreversible movement of history” or had consigned himself to the fate of the ancient Pharaoh Akhenaten, “who dreamed of monotheism amidst the panoply of Egyptian deities a millennium before it was accepted among mankind.”

He made clear that his country would do what it could in pursuit of both objectives, aware that America would make its own decisions about any assistance for its own reasons. He invited his interlocutors to join him less in a common ideology than in a joint exploration of the necessary.

To the astonished Harvard faculty, Lee articulated a worldview free of anti-American animus and post-imperial resentment. He neither blamed the US for Singapore’s challenges nor expected it to solve them. Rather, he sought American goodwill so that Singapore, lacking oil and other natural riches, could grow through the cultivation of what he said was its principal resource: the quality of its people, whose potential could develop only if they were not abandoned to communist insurgency, invasion by neighboring countries or Chinese hegemony.

He framed this task less in terms of the prevailing moral categories of the Cold War than as an element in the construction of a regional order — in the sustaining of which America should develop its own national interest.

One of the essential qualities of a statesman is the ability to resist being swept along by the mood of the moment. Lee’s performance in that long-ago Harvard seminar was instructive not only for the clarity of his analysis — of both America’s and Singapore’s position in the world — but also for his courage in going against the grain. It was a quality which he would display many times in his career.

Nixon said he showed the “ability to rise above the resentments of the moment and of the past and think about the nature of the new world to come.” Thatcher called him “one of the 20th century’s most accomplished practitioners of statecraft.”

Lee taught a kind of global physics in which societies must constantly strive to avoid entropy. Leaders are tempted by pessimism, but “we have to fight our way out of it. You have to show a credible, plausible way that we can keep our head above water.”

Parallel to Lee’s dire warnings about the threat of extinction lay an equally vivid imagination of his country’s potential. If every great achievement is a dream before it becomes a reality, Lee’s dream was breathtaking in its audacity: he envisioned a state that would not imply survive but flourish through an insistence on excellence: the quest for it needed to permeate the entire society.

During the war years, Lee learned that “the key to survival was improvisation” — a lesson that would shape his pragmatic, experimental approach to governing Singapore.

To achieve his objectives, Lee relied on penalizing civil servants for failure rather than encouraging them by raising their salaries; in fact, his government initially slashed them. Only in 1984, when Singapore had become wealthier, did Lee adopt his signature policy of pegging civil servants’ salaries at 80% of comparable private-sector rates.

Corruption in Singapore is understood not only as a moral failing of the individuals involved but also as a transgression against the ethical code of the community — which emphasizes meritocratic excellence, fair play and honorable conduct. “You want men with good character, good mind, strong convictions. Without that, Singapore won’t make it.”

The expansion of the right of the individual to behave or misbehave as he pleases has come at the expense of orderly society. In the East the main object is to have a well-ordered society so that everybody can have maximum enjoyment of his freedom. This freedom can only exist in an ordered state and not in a natural state of contention and anarchy.

Writing in 1970, 5 years after Singapore’s independence, the historian Arnold Toynbee predicted that the city-state in general had “become too small a political unit to be practicable any longer,” and that Singapore in particular was unlikely to last as a sovereign state. Much as Lee respected Toynbee, he did not share the scholar’s fatalism. His response to Toynbee’s challenge was to create a new nation out of the disparate peoples that the tides of history had deposited on the shores of Singapore.

Immediately after independence, Lee appealed to President Nasser of Egypt and PM Shastri of India to send military trainers. Reluctant to antagonize Indonesia and Malaysia, both declined the request. In response, Lee made the audacious decision to accept an offer of assistance from Israel, despite the backlash this risked among the significant Muslim population in Singapore and the region. To head off that threat, Lee simply decided not to announce the Israelis’ presence. To anyone who asked, Singapore’s new military advisors would instead be described as “Mexicans.”

Despite enormous budget pressure, Lee found funding for the rapid acquisition of air and naval forces required for credible deterrence against Singapore’s neighbors.

For Singapore to survive as a state, its economy had to grow. For it to succeed as a nation, the fruits of that growth had to be shared equitably among its people, regardless of ethnic origin. And for it to persist as an international presence, it had to build influence among the major powers — especially the US and China.

His travels and conversations with foreign leaders were consequential; by 1965, he had visited more than 50 countries and developed strong views about the reasons for their varying performance. “A nation is great not by its size alone. It is the will, the cohesion, the stamina, the discipline of its people and the quality of their leaders which ensures it an honorable place in history.”

When an American guest complimented him on including feminist principles in the development of Singapore, Lee disagreed. He had brought women into the labor force for practical reasons, he said. Singapore would not have been able to achieve its development goals without them. The same was true with respect to his immigration policy, which sought to convince talented foreigners to settle in Singapore. The purpose was not a theoretical notion of the benefits of multiculturalism but the requirements of Singapore’s growth and its otherwise stubborn demographics.

Winsemius advised that, for Singapore to industrialize, it needed to depress wages and make manufacturing more efficient by embracing technology and training workers. He proposed prioritizing textile manufacturing, followed by simple electronics and ship repair, a stepping stone to shipbuilding. Lee and Goh followed his advice. With the British on the way out, Winsemius warned that Singapore could neither aspire to total self-reliance nor depend on regional ties. Unable to count on a common market with Malaysia, it would have to operate in a wider sphere.

Others will not invest in a losing cause, it must look to be a winning cause.

By 1971, Singapore’s economy was growing at more than 8% per year. By 1972, multinationals employed more than half of Singapore’s labor force and accounted for 70% of its industrial production. By 1973, Singapore had become the world’s 3rd-largest oil refining hub. Within 10 years of independence, foreign investment in manufacturing had risen from $157M to more than $3.7B.

To continue to attract investment, Singapore’s productivity needed to keep climbing. To this end, Lee first asked workers to accept temporarily reduced wages in the interest of long-term growth. He gave urgent priority to education. And he frequently revised the nation’s industrial and social targets upwards.

To VP Hurbert Humphrey, Lee likened the Vietnam crisis to a long bus ride: the US had missed all of the stops at which it could have gotten off; the only option now was to stay on until the final destination.

In the decades to come, Lee would be admired for his candor as much as for his intelligence by presidents and PMs around the world. The subtlety and precision of his analysis and the reliability of his conduct turned him into a counselor to many on whom he himself was dependent. How did the leader of a small and vulnerable city-state manage to exercise so significant and an influence on so many leaders abroad? What was his perspective, and how was such a framework applied at moments of crisis?

In a sense, LKY was on a permanent quest for world order. He understood that the global balance of power was a product not only of anonymous forces but of living political entities, each replete with individual histories and culture, and each obliged to make a judgment of its opportunities. The maintenance of equilibrium, on which Singapore’s own flourishing as a trading nation depended, required not only the balancing of the major countries against each other but a degree of comprehension of their diverse identities and the perspectives that followed from them.

If you look at societies over the millennia you find certain basic patterns. American civilization from the Pilgrim Fathers on is one of optimism and the growth of orderly government. History in China is of dynasties which have risen and fallen, of the waxing and waning of societies. And through all that turbulence, the family, the extended family, the clan, has provided a kind of survival raft for the individual. Civilizations have collapsed, dynasties have been swept away by conquering hordes, but this life raft enables Chinese civilization to carry on and get to its next phase.

Some leaders seek to impress interlocutors by demonstrating their command of minute details; Lee, whose own factual knowledge was considerable, possessed a more precious quality: the capacity to distill a subject to its essence.

10 years later, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Lee’s perspective would become the conventional wisdom; at the time, few perceived the imminence of Soviet decay.

Any old and established nation would have ensured its supremacy for as long as it could. But America set out to put her defeated enemies on their feet to ward off an evil force, the Soviet Union, brought about technological change by transferring technology generously and freely to Europeans and to Japanese, and enabled them to become challengers within 30 years. There was a certain greatness of spirit born out of fear of Communism plus American idealism that brought that about.

It was not that Lee was sentimentally “pro-American” — he was not sentimental at all. He could find a healthy amount to criticize America’s approach to politics and geopolitics. He recorded his early views of Americans as “mixed”:

I admired their can-do approach but shared the view of the British establishment of the time that the Americans were bright and brash, that they had enormous wealth but often misused it. It was not true that all it needed to fix a problem was to bring resources to bear on it. They meant well but were heavy-handed and lacked a sense of history.

Lee made himself, so far as he could, part of the American decision-making process on matters of concern to Southeast Asia.

In 1994, he insisted that realism needed to be based on a clear moral distinction between good and evil:

Certain basics about human nature do not change. Man needs a certain moral sense of right and wrong. There is such a thing called evil, and it is not the result of being a victim of society. You are just an evil man, prone to do evil things, and you have to be stopped from doing them.

Lee admired America and was made uneasy by its oscillations. He respected and feared China because of its single-minded pursuit of objectives. Out of historic proximity to China and necessary friendship with the US, Lee distilled the security and future of Singapore.

Lee’s approach to China, like his analysis of America, was unsentimental. If America’s challenge, in Lee’s view, lay in its fluctuations between insufficiently reflective idealism and habitual bouts of self-doubt, the problem posed by China was the resurgence of a traditional imperial pattern. The millennia during which China conceived of itself as the “Middle Kingdom” and classified all other states as tributaries were bound to have left a legacy in Chinese thinking and to encourage a tendency toward hegemony.

Deng was the only leader in China with the political standing and strength to reverse Mao’s policies. A veteran of war and revolution, he saw the student demonstrators at Tiananmen as a danger that threatened to throw China back into turmoil and chaos, prostrate for another 100 years. He had lived through a revolution and recognized the early signs of one at Tiananmen. Gorbachev, unlike Deng, had only read about revolution, and did not recognize the danger signals of the Soviet Union’s impending collapse.

In the world ahead, America’s posture should be to “engage, not contain, China,” but in a way that “would also quietly set pieces into place for a fallback position should China not play according to the rules as a good global citizen.” In this way, should the countries of the region ever feel compelled “to take sides, America’s side of the chessboard should include Japan, Korea, ASEAN, India, Australia, NZ, and the Russian Federation.”

“The West believes the world must follow its historical development. But democracy and individual rights are alien to the rest of the world.” The universality of liberal claims was as inconceivable to him as the notion that Americans would someday choose to follow Confucius.

Lee was a relentless improviser, not a theoretician of government. He adopted policies that he thought stood a chance of working and revised them if the saw that they did not. He experimented constantly, borrowing ideas from other countries and trying to learn from their mistakes. “I was never prisoner of any theory. What guided me were reason and reality. The acid test I applied to every theory or science was, would it work?” “For forms of government let fools contest; whatever is best administered is best.”

The ultimate test of a statesman lies in the application of judgment as he journeys along an unmarked road to unknown destination.

He aim was for Singapore to develop the leaders and institutions relevant to the challenges ahead and to concentrate on its future rather than worship of its past. “All I can do is to make sure that when I leave, the institutions are good, sound, clean, efficient, and there is a government in place that knows what it has got to do.”

If you are just realistic, you become pedestrian, plebeian, you will fail. Therefore you must be able to soar above the reality and say, “This is also possible.”

Having wrested control of the Conservative Party from an exclusively male establishment that tolerated her under duress, she possessed only a meager share of political capital. Her previous record in government had been unremarkable; she had no great following in the country at large, and her experience in international relations was negligible. Not only was she Britain’s first female PM, she was also at that time a rare Conservative leader drawn from the middle class. In nearly every way, she was a complete outsider.

British political parties, by contrast, are rigorously institutionalized; an electoral victory functions first to empower a party in parliament and, as a consequence of that, to install a new premier. The essential characteristic of the British constitutional system is not that there is an alternative personality in the figure of the party leader but that there is an alternative policy and a whole alternative government ready to take office. That policy, moreover, is generally worked out in the party manifesto, which itself features as a major element in a UK election campaign.

The PM therefore sits within and, in some ways, below the political party to which he or she belongs. Unlike the American presidential system, in which legitimate decision-making power flows downward from the top, the British cabinet system elevates the importance of ministers, who represent the highest echelons of the party; authority moves in both directions between the PM and the cabinet. Ministers — though all appointed by the premier — are at once managers of the bureaucracy, the premier’s supporters (actual or nominal) and sometimes aspiring leaders themselves. Within cabinet, the dissent of an influential clique, or the machinations of a single magnetic personality, can limit the premier’s ability to pursue desired policy objectives. In extraordinary circumstances, a cabinet minister’s resignation may even threaten the premier’s hold on power.

While the PM’s authority formally derives from the monarch, in practice it rests primarily on the maintenance of party discipline — that is, the leader’s ability to sustain a parliamentary majority as well as the confidence of the party rank-and-file. Whereas the separation-of-powers system insulates the American executive from direct legislative pressure, in Britain the executive and legislative branches are largely fused together. In addition to being vulnerable during general elections, British premiers may be brought down by either a parliamentary vote of no confidence or a party mutiny. The former is rare; if a premier loses a no-confidence vote, a general election must be called, in which MPs have to defend their own seats. Les rare is the party leadership contest. If MPs fear that their party leader is growing personally unpopular, putting them at risk of losing their seats in the next general election, they may attempt to elevate a new one.

When the party and the PM are in agreement and enjoy a solid majority, the system works smoothly. When PMs diverge from orthodoxy or appear weakened in parliament or public opinion, they must court both cabinet and party for continue support. Weak leadership can survive in the American system thanks to the executive’s fixed 4-year term; in the British system, however, retaining the executive position requires all of the leader’s fortitude, conviction, mastery of substance and powers of persuasion. Since failure to convince colleagues to support one’s policies can be catastrophic, a premier must also be nimble, lest a policy discarded foreshadow the end of one’s political fortunes.

The challenges it faced, not least in economic performance, were very real, but no less real was a psychological handicap: the widespread belief that the country’s best days were in the past.

Churchill hoped to cement a partnership that would secure Britain’s influence in the world beyond what its raw power alone might allow — effectively borrowing US power through a close consultative relationship.

The financial pressure he soon brought to bear put a swift end to the British-French venture and dealt a devastating blow to both nations’ global aspirations. Chastened, Britain withdrew its forces and reduced its international role. The abiding lesson for many in the British governing class was never in the future to cross the Americans.

The was the bitter harvest of a generation of British leadership which had embraced as its principal task the orderly management of decline. To get itself out of this sorry condition, the nation would soon turn to a very different kind of leader.

Margaret Roberts, a recent graduate of Oxford with a degree in chemistry, applied for a research job at ICI. She was rejected. The internal assessment of her candidacy read: “This woman is headstrong, obstinate, and dangerously self-opinionated.” Three decades later, it was an inkling of these same qualities that persuaded the people of the UK to choose “this woman“ to tackle the challenges facing their nation.

If the elector suspects the politician of making promises simply to get his vote, he despises him; but if the promises are not forthcoming, he may reject him. I believe that parties and elections are about more than rival lists of miscellaneous promises — indeed, if they were not, democracy would scarcely be worth preserving.

For Thatcher, there were no sacred cows, much less insurmountable obstacles. Every policy was up for scrutiny. It was not sufficient for Conservatives to sand down the rough edges of socialism; they had to roll back the state before Britain’s economy collapsed in a catastrophic fashion.

And she had confidence that the British people would recognize the difference between sturdy principles and passing fads. “There would have been o great prophets, no great philosophers in life, no great things to follow, if those who propounded their views had gone out and said ‘Brothers, follow me, I believe in consensus.’”

Unlike the POTUS, the British PM does not have the ability to override the cabinet and still maintain her government. Thatcher was aware of these limits. To help her compensate, she would discretely call on friends in Britain and around the world to discuss her vision and her options.

To her, credible deterrence was the only real guarantee of peace and of the preservation of Westphalian sovereignty. In practice, this meant that the Western military capabilities would have to be restored before productive negotiations with the Soviet Union could be held.

Thatcher did not reverse her monetary policy even when the preliminary results were unpopular. He perseverance was all the more more remarkable given that, unlike the US, where interest rates are set by an independent central bank, in Thatcher’s Britain responsibility for setting interest rates was ultimately vested in the Treasury (until 1997), therefore resting directly with the PM.

Determined not to become trapped as Heath had been a decade earlier, Thatcher had initiated a policy of stockpiling coal that enabled her to hold her ground. As a result, Britain’s electrical grid would not experience the blackouts endured during previous miners’ strikes. As months passed, miners began to trickle back to work.

But the price of gutting deterrence in the South Atlantic proved steep, as the cost of the Falklands War ran to more than $7B in all. As historian Andrew Roberts writes of the decision: “Rarely has the truth been more starkly displayed that relatively high defense spending represents good value for money, because combat is always far more expensive than deterrence.”

The US would be unwise to abandon a close ally, as it had over Suez in 1956:

The strategic position of self-confidence of a close ally on a matter it considers of vital concern must not be undermined. It is a principle of no little contemporary relevance. In this sense the Falklands crisis in the end will strengthen Western cohesion.

But Thatcher’s political choices were limited. Unlike the Falklands, there was no possibility of a military solution; against the PLA, Hong Kong was indefensible. A solution would have to be found through negotiation; lurking in the background, however, was the fact that, should the 2 parties reach a stalemate, China had the power to settle the question unilaterally.

In Northern Ireland as elsewhere, terrorism was the method of the weak. The IRA’s supporters were a minority, seeking by use of spectacular violence to provoke the British government into either granting concessions or lashing out in a brutal overreaction that would drive the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland further into the Nationalist camp.

To understand a man, look at the world when he was 20.

To try to suppress nationhood and concentrate power at the center would be highly damaging and would jeopardize the objectives we seek to achieve. Europe will be stronger precisely because it has France as France, Spain as Spain, Britain as Britain, each with its own customs, traditions and identity. It would be folly to try to fit them into some sort of identikit European personality.

All night and into the next day, Thatcher witnessed fortune’s tide receding. She interviewed cabinet members one by one, who all told her that, though of course he personally supported her, regrettably she could not prevail in another vote.

Today, meritocratic principles and institutions are so familiar that they dominate our language and thinking. Take the word “nepotism,” which implies favoring one’s relatives and friends, especially in appointment to post of responsibility. In the pre-meritocratic world, nepotism was omnipresent — indeed, the customary way of life — yet the practice carried no implications of unfair advantage: to the contrary, blood relations were a source of legitimacy.

As originally conceived by the philosophers of ancient Greece, aristocracy meant “rule by the best.” Such rule, emphatically not hereditary, was morally justified by taking an aspect of human life assumed as given — the naturally inequality of endowments — and harnessing it for the public good. Plato’s “myth of the metals” portrayed an aristocratic political order based on what is now called “social mobility.” In his telling, youths with souls of “gold,” even if born to parents of “brass” or “silver,” could rise according to their natural talents.

As a social system that shaped the history of Europe over the centuries, however, aristocracy took on an entirely different meaning: a hereditary nobility which endowed its leaders with power and status. The defects of aristocracy in there hereditary sense — such as the risk of slipping into corruption and inefficiency — are easily recalled today. Less well remembered are its virtues.

For one, aristocrats did not understand themselves to have acquired their status through individual efforts. Position was inherent, not earned. As such, although there existed wastrels and incompetents, the creative aspect of aristocracy was bound up with the ethic of noblesse oblige, as in the phrase “to whom much is given much is expected.” Since aristocrats did not achieve their station, the best of them felt an obligation to engage in public service or social improvement.

In the realm of international relations, leaders from different nations belonged to this social class and shared a sensibility transcending national boundaries. Hence, they generally agreed on what constituted a legitimate international order. This did not prevent conflicts, but it did help limit the severity of them and facilitate their resolution. The concepts of sovereignty, equilibrium, the legal equality of states and the balance of power — which were the hallmarks of the Westphalian system — developed in a world of aristocratic practices.

The banes of aristocratic foreign policy were overconfidence in intuition and a self-regard that invited stagnation. Still, in negotiations where position was felt to be a birthright, mutual respect among competitors and even adversaries was expected (though not always guaranteed), and flexibility was uninhibited by a prior commitment to perpetual success, however short-term the issue. Policies could be judged in terms of a shared conception of the future rather than of a compulsion to avoid even temporary setbacks.

As a result, an aristocracy at its best could maintain a sense of excellence that was antithetical to the demagogic temptations sometimes afflicting popular democracy. To the extent that an aristocracy lived up to its values of restraint and disinterested public service, its leaders would tend to reject the arbitrariness of personal rule, governing through status and moral suasion instead.

Two related social forces, meritocracy and democratization, enabled and institutionalized the rise of middle-class leaders. One of the French Revolution’s rallying cries had bene “careers open to talents.” From the middle of the 19th century, the adoption of meritocratic principles and institutions in the West — such as entrance examinations, selective secondary schools and universities, and recruitment and promotion policies based on professional standards — created new opportunities for talented individuals from middle-class backgrounds to enter politics.

The industrial revolution also played its part in the growing emphasis on education, as the economic historian David Landes argues: “all the old advantages — resources, wealth, power — were devalued, and the mind established over matter. Henceforth the future lay open to all those with the character, the hands, and the brains.” With success increasingly ascribed to intelligence and effort rather than birthright, education became the quintessential road to advancement.

Opportunity means nothing unless it includes the right to be unequal and the freedom to be different.

The synthesis enshrined public service as a worthy endeavor, which encouraged aspirations to leadership. Both the school system and the broader society in which they were raised put a premium on academic performance, but both, above all, placed a strong emphasis on character. Correspondingly, the 6 leaders were brought up with priorities beyond their grades and test scores; these, while important, were not treated as an end in themselves. Hence Lee’s recurring references to the junzi, and de Gaulle’s striving to become “a man of character.” Education was not merely a credential to be obtained in one’s youth and set aside: it was an unending effort with both intellectual and moral dimensions.

Whatever its faults, middle-class nationalism provided a common ground, common standards, a common frame of reference without which society dissolves into nothing more than contending factions, as the Founding Fathers of America understood so well — a war of all against all.

For all the differences among these faiths, they uniformly served certain secular purposes: training in self-control, reflecting on faults and orienting toward the future. These religious habits helped to instill self-mastery and a preference for taking the long view — 2 essential attributes of statesmanship which these leaders exemplified.

These leaders all had a penetrating sense of reality and a powerful vision. Mediocre leaders are unable to distinguish the significant from the ordinary; they tend to be overwhelmed by the inexorable aspect of history. Great leaders intuit the timeless requirements of statecraft and distinguish, among the many elements of reality, those which contribute to an elevated future and need to be promoted from others which must be managed and, in the extreme case, perhaps only endured.

Both during their years in government and afterwards, not everyone admired these 6 leaders or subscribed to their policies. In each case, they faced resistance — often carried out for honorable motives and sometimes by distinguished opposing figures. Such is the price of making history.

Americans have grown skeptical of our elite’s claims to legitimacy not so much because it is too hard to enter the upper tier of American life (even if it is) as because those in that tier seem to be permitted to do whatever they want. The problem, in other words, is not necessarily the standards for entry, but the lack of standard upon entry. Precisely because our elite does not think of itself as an aristocracy, it does not believe itself to need standards or restraints.

Today’s elites speak less of obligation than of self-expression or their own advancement.

What risks being lost in an age dominated by the image? The quality goes by many names — erudition, learnedness, serious and independent thinking — but the term for it is “deep literacy,” defined as “engaging with an extended piece of writing in such a way as to anticipate an author’s direction and meaning.” Ubiquitous and penetrating, yet invisible, deep literacy was the “background radiation” of the period in which the 6 leaders profiled in this book came of age.”

To the politically concerned, deep literacy supplies the quality Max Weber called “proportion,” or “the ability to allow realities to impinge on you while maintaining an inner calm and composure.” Intense reading can help leaders cultivate the mental distance from external stimuli and personalities that sustains a sense of proportion. When combined with reflection and the training of memory, it also provides a storehouse of detailed and granular knowledge from which leaders can reason analogically. More profoundly, books offer a reality that is reasonable, sequential and orderly — a reality that can be mastered, or at least managed, by reflection and planning. And, perhaps most importantly for leadership, reading creates a “skein of intergenerational conversation,” encouraging learning with a sense of perspective. Finally, reading is a source of inspiration. Books recorded the deeds of leaders who once dared greatly, as well as those who dared too much, as a warning.

Injustice visualized is more visceral than injustice described; television played a crucial role in the American civil rights movement. Yet the costs of television are substantial, privileging emotional display over self-command, changing the kinds of people and arguments that are taken seriously in public life.

Although the Internet makes news and data more immediately accessible than ever, this surfeit of information has hardly made us individually more knowledgeable — let alone wiser. As the “cost” of accessing information becomes negligible, as with the Internet, the incentives to remember it seem to weaken. While forgetting any one fact may not matter, the systematic failure to internalize information brings about a change in perception and a weakening of analytical ability. Facts are rarely self-explanatory; their significance and interpretation depend on context and relevance. For information to be transmuted into something approaching wisdom, it must be placed within a broader context of history and experience.

As a general rule, images “speak” at a more emotional register of intensity than do words. Television and social media rely on images that inflame the passions, threatening to overwhelm leadership with a combination of personal and mass emotion. Social media in particular have encouraged users to become image-conscious spin doctors. All this engenders a more populist politics that celebrates utterances perceived to be authentic over the polished soundbites of the television era, not to mention the more analytical output of print.

The architects of the Internet thought of their invention as an ingenious means of connecting the world; in reality, it has also yielded a new way to divide humanity into warring tribes. Polarity and conformity rely upon and reinforce each other; one is shunted into a group, and then the group polices one’s thinking. Small wonder that on many contemporary social-media platforms, users are divided into “followers” and “influencers”; there are no “leaders.”

What are the consequences for leadership? In our present circumstances, Lee’s gloomy assessment of visual media’s effect is relevant: “From such a process, I doubt if a Churchill, a Roosevelt or a de Gaulle can emerge.” It is not that changes in communications technology have made inspired leadership and deep thinking about world order impossible, but that in an age dominated by television and the Internet, thoughtful leaders must struggle against the tide.

Habits of moderate action; more specifically, acting with due restraint on one’s impulses, due regard for the rights of others, and reasonable concern for distant consequences.

From youth to old age, the sheer centrality of character — that most indispensable of qualities — is an unending challenge, to leaders no less than to students of leadership. Good character does not assure worldly success, or triumph in statecraft, but it does provide firm grounding in victory and consolation in failure.

The strategic geography of Ukraine epitomizes these concerns. If Ukraine were to join NATO, the security line between Russia and Europe would be placed within 300 miles of Moscow — in effect eliminating the history buffer which saved Russia when France and Germany sought to occupy it in successive centuries. The February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, in flagrant violation of international law, is thus largely an outgrowth of a failed strategic dialogue or else of an inadequately undertaken one.

An irony of the contemporary world is that one of its glories — the revolutionary explosion of technology — has emerged so quickly, and with such optimism, that it has outrun thought of its perils, and inadequate systematic efforts have been made to understand its capacities. Technologists develop astonishing devices, but they have had little occasion to explore and assess their comparative implications within a frame of history.

It is not necessary for the leaders of the contemporary great powers to develop a detailed vision of how to resolve the dilemmas described here immediately. They must, however, be clear on what has to be avoided and cannot be tolerated. Wise leaders must preempt their challenges before they manifest themselves as crises.

Machiavelli ascribes the slackening of leadership to social lassitude induced by long periods of tranquility. When societies are blessed with peaceful times and indulge the slow corruption of standards, the people may follow “either a man who is judged to be good by common self-deception or someone put forward by men who are more likely to desire special favors than the common good.” But later, under the impact of “adverse times” — ever the teacher of realities — “this deception is revealed, and out of necessity the people turn to those who in tranquil times were almost forgotten.”