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Profiles in Statesmanship:

Seeking a Better World

Bruce W. Jentleson

Paper presented at the University of Virginia,

International Relations Speaker Series

April 12, 2013

Comments welcome; [email protected]

Do not cite without permission

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The usual metric for the world leaders’ scorecard is who has done the most to advance their own country’s national interests. The book I’m writing, Profiles in Statesmanship: Seeking a Better World, poses a different question: who has done the most to try to build , security and justice inclusive of, but not exclusive to, their own country’s particular national interests? There is statesmanship to make one’s own nation more successful. And there is

Statesmanship to make the world a better place. This is not altruism, but it also is not just a matter of global interests as extensions of national ones as typically conceived. Both statesmanship and Statesmanship take tremendous skill and savvy strategy. The latter also takes a guiding vision beyond the way the world is to how it can and should be, as well as enormous courage entailing as it does great political and personal risk.

Not surprisingly there are not a lot of nominees. Writing in 1910 and working with similar criteria --- not just “winning a brief popular fame . . . but to serving the great interests of modern states and, indeed, of universal humanity” --- the historian Andrew Dickson White identified Seven Great Statesmen.1 Two 19th century British historians compiled the four- volume Eminent Foreign Statesmen series, but using more the traditional small s-statesmanship criteria of just national interest. A library bibliographic search finds no book comparable to mine. A Google search doesn’t turn up much other than the homepage of the indie rock band

Great Statesmen.

1 Andrew Dickson White, Seven Great Statesmen: In the Warfare of Humanity with Unreason (New York: The Century Company, 1910),p. ix. 3

With the approaching centennial of World I --- the war that was to end all but didn’t – it seems fitting to focus my Profiles in Statesmanship book on the last 100 years. I include nine profiles (most individual, a few paired) selected to span the 100-year period, address a range of issues, provide nationality diversity, and make comparisons for insights and lessons. Four questions are probed in each case: who these leaders were as individuals, why they made the key choices they did, how they pursued their goals, and what was and wasn’t achieved. This not only tells the individual stories but as a structured comparative analysis identifies patterns across cases.

As engaging reading as these stories are, and as biographically and historically valuable as their analysis is, the ultimate purpose is to draw lessons for today. The essence of the 21st century world is that there are very few challenges that can be met by any nation on its own.

Yet there continues to be too much tunnel vision, thinking too narrowly about my own national interest, and too much myopia, focusing on today and not tomorrow. We need capital-S

Statesmanship now more than ever. While making no claims to an off-the-shelf strategy,

Profiles in Statesmanship provides insights and lessons for what it will take.

Does History Make (Wo)Men or Do (Wo)Men Make History?

Any study of political has to start with this question. At one end of the debate is Thomas Carlyle’s heroic conception that “the history of what man has accomplished in this world, is at bottom the History of the Great Men who have worked here. . . all things that we see standing accomplished in the world are properly the outer material result, the practical 4

realization and embodiment of Thoughts that dwell in the Great Men sent into the world.” At the other is Herbert Spencer deriding the “universal love of personalities” --- going back well before People magazine and TMZ.com to when “round the camp-fire assembled savages tell the events of the day’s chase and he among them who has done some feat of skill or agility is duly lauded.” The truth lies in between. Carlyle is too much the romanticist overstating the role of individuals and undervaluing conducive conditions creating opportunities for leadership.

Spencer is too much the sociologist overstating societal processes and context and undervaluing what Sidney Hook calls the “individual to whom we can justifiably attribute preponderant influence in determining an issue or event whose consequences would have been profoundly different if he had not acted as he did.”2

My own perspective based on my experience in the policy world as well as my work as an scholar puts me in the History: Great Leaders middle ground. The academic literature digs deeper than just the latest who’s up and who’s down, but too often stays at a level of abstraction that glosses over the impact that leaders do have. The talk inside the Beltway and among journalists can get too caught up in personalities, but often does focus in on critical decision-making and strategizing. The analytic balance is in recognizing that history and broad social forces create constraints as well as conducive conditions shaping the range of available choices, but that they don’t determine which choices get made. No individual is so extraordinary that (s)he would have transformational impact irrespective of the context in

2 Barbara Kellerman (ed.), Political Leadership: A Source Book (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press,1986), pp. 5, 12, 10, 25. 5

which (s)he ends up operating. But it also is not a given that just anyone could have pulled off the Statesmanship that the particular leader did. It’s man (woman) and moment, fit and timing.

In the burgeoning literature on leadership3, and in curriculums geared to its study and programs seeking to foster and develop it4, one gets a sense of both fascination and frustration.

Fascination in how time and again explanations of success and failure – be it in politics, business, higher education, or other professions and pursuits --- hone in on leadership as the key factor. Yet frustration in how difficult it is to define the elements with any degree of generality let alone teach and cultivate them. Profiles in Statesmanship will connect to this fascination, and contribute at least to diminishing the frustration.

The Profiles and “SBW Statesmanship” Analytic Framework

The statesmanship-Statesmanship distinction and goal of “seeking a better world” provide three criteria guiding selection of the individuals profiled:

n “Transformational” leadership, as James MacGregor Burns coined the term, efforts

to change the course of history;

3 Kellerman, Political Leadership; James Macgregor Burns, Leadership (New York: Harper and Row, 1979) and Transforming Leadership: A New Pursuit of Happiness (New York: Grove Press, 2003); Nannerl O. Keohane, Thinking about Leadership (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010); Thomas E. Cronin and Michael A. Genovese, Leadership Matters: Unleashing the Power of Paradox (Boulder, Colo.: Paradigm Publishers, 2012); Joseph S. Nye, Jr., Presidential Leadership and the Creation of the American Era (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); Fred I. Greenstein, Personality and Politics: Problems of Evidence, inference and Conceptualization (Chicago: Markham publishing, 1969);Ronald A. Heifetz, Leadership Without Easy Answers (Cambridge: Press, 1994); Marshall Sashkin and Molly G. Sashkin, Leadership that Matters (San Francisco: Berrett- Koehler, 2003).

4 U Va’s Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy is unique among policy schools in making “leadership” part of its name. But Duke’s Sanford School of Public Policy, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a number of other policy schools have programs and courses on leadership. 6

n Impact that is more globally inclusive than just nationally exclusive; e.g., not Henry

Kissinger, master at the of managing the superpower rivalry but with

benefits beyond the U.S. national interest seen as at most secondary effects;

n Those who may not have fully succeeded – in some cases paid with their lives --- but

did have significant positive impact: the “seeking” part.

On this basis, and also taking into account the diversity considerations noted earlier (span the

100-year period, nationality variation, issue range), the following world leaders are included:

Woodrow Wilson, for his vision of a peaceful international order and the mix of strengths and weaknesses in at, and success and failure in achieving it.

Winston Churchill, for the leadership crucial to winning World War II; Franklin D.

Roosevelt for forging the institutions for a durable postwar order; and Eleanor Roosevelt for fostering the values undergirding and indeed pushing that postwar order for justice not just stability.

Mahatma Gandhi, for his nationalism and pacifism that not only shaped India but resonated globally as the world transitioned from the imperial age to post-colonialism.

Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman and Konrad Adenauer, for European unity and peace after centuries of war.

Dag Hammarskjöld, for showing how crucial an international institution the United

Nations can be.

Anwar Sadat and Yitzhak Rabin, for their pursuit of Arab-Israeli peace. 7

Mikhail Gorbachev, for his role in ending the Cold War.

Nelson Mandela, for ending apartheid through peaceful means and the global icon he has embodied.

Gro Harlem Brundtland, for advancing sustainable development, global public health and women’s rights as key issues on the global agenda.

Drawing on the broader leadership literature, I develop a comparative case framework along the lines of the “structured focused” methodology developed by Alexander George and collaborators Richard Smoke and Andrew Bennett.5 The “SBW” (Seeking a Better World)

Statesmanship profiles are structured around four probing questions:

n Who were these leaders as individuals?

n Why did they make the crucial choices they did?

n How did they pursue their goals?

n What was and wasn’t achieved?

These are elaborated below.

I expect three main points to come through this analysis: how difficult finding that combination of persona, conditions and capabilities is; but that it is possible to do so; and that doing so has been essential to progress towards a better world.

21st Century Challenges: SBW Statesmanship Needed Now More than Ever

5 Alexander L. George and Andrew Bennett, Case Studies and Theory Development in the Social Sciences (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2005); Alexander L. George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Press, 1979). 8

In the 21st century world, moreso than ever before, no one nation can make itself genuinely secure on its own. Not the United States, not China, not anyone else. The greatest threats to 21st century global peace, prosperity and justice require nations working together.

Weapons of mass destruction will not be controlled without it. Terrorism will not be countered.

Long-standing national and regional conflicts with severe escalatory potential will not be managed. Cyber-war and other technology-driven emerging areas in need of rules of the game won’t get them. Climate change won’t be abated. Global health pandemics will not be averted.

Mass poverty, hunger, and lack of basic health care will not be alleviated.

Yet in these and so many other areas, the gap between the “ought” and the “is” of international cooperation is a gaping one.6 Closing it, or even significantly narrowing it, requires breaking out of the tunnel vision and myopia of traditional national interest statesmanship and exercising capital-S Statesmanship – now more than ever.

*******

In this paper I focus particularly on statesmanship as a theoretical approach, addressing four aspects: the level of analysis question; the Statesmanship/statesmanship conceptual distinction; the comparative case framework; and policy implications. Elements of the profiles are included illustratively; they currently are being researched, some further along than others.

I’ll elaborate some in the presentation.

6 And not one that any of the core IR paradigms is coping very well with. See Bruce W. Jentleson, “Global Governance in a Copernican World,” Global Governance 18 (April-June 2012), 133-148. 9

Level of Analysis

For much of what we seek to understand in the international arena, one or the other of the core IR paradigms --- be it realism’s system structure, liberal internationalism’s international institutions, constructivists’ state identity --- holds. That’s fine for broad patterns.

But key actions, events, decisions and other developments that have huge impact on international affairs often are left insufficiently explained. Daniel Byman and Kenneth Pollack show how much richer understanding is of some of history’s major wars by focusing not just on systemic forces but also on leaders whose individual characteristics and roles were major factors in the occurrence and nature of the wars (e.g., Hitler, , Saddam Hussein).7

They do not resort to “first image” as the sufficient level of analysis, but do argue that it is necessary; e.g., acknowledging that post-World War I Germany “was clearly a revisionist state” while going on to argue that Hitler’s particular impact was in his “ambitions [that] far exceeded those of the people he led”; and that even without Napoleon “revolutionary France might still have launched a crusade to liberate the world from the chains of absolute monarchy,” but how

Napoleon’s personality was “a major impetus to war” and how his particular military mindset shaped how war was fought.8

“As a professor,” Byman and Pollack cite , “I tended to think of history as run by impersonal forces. But when you see it in practice, you see the difference

7 Daniel L. Byman and Kenneth M. Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men: Bringing the Statesman Back In,” 25 (Spring 2001), 309-320. 8 Byman and Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men,” 115, 125-26 10

personalities make.”9 While this can be partially discounted for Kissingerian ego, dismissing it totally would be our own ego-disciplinary defensiveness. Indeed many recent studies bring leaders back into the analysis. Jim Goldgeier gives significant emphasis in his analysis of Soviet foreign policy to different leadership styles among Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev and

Gorbachev.10 David Shambaugh does the same for China.11 A recent study of development and poverty alleviation attributes differential progress across the Global South to the role of leaders such as Fernando Henrique Cardoso in Brazil and their particular role and political skills.12

Elizabeth Sanders’ work focuses on the roles presidents play in decision-making on military interventions, arguing that it is wrong to assume that leaders “are too idiosyncratic to study analytically, on the one hand, or assume that leaders respond to international or domestic conditions in similar ways, on the other.”13 In American politics Sam Popkin’s recent book The

Candidate brings the personas of the individual candidates more squarely into the analysis.14

Another indicator is the frequency that “political will” ends up as a key independent variable. I am especially struck by this in work on conflict prevention and conflict resolution. In explaining why various international actors have not pursued policies that could have prevented or resolved conflicts, one study after another ends up stressing the lack of political

9 Cited in Byman and Pollack, “Let Su Now Praise Great Men,” from a background talk Kissinger had with journalists in January 1975, as quoted in Walter Isaacson, Kissinger (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1992), p. 13. 10 James M. Goldgeier, Leadership Style and Soviet Foreign Policy: Stalin, Khrushchev, Brezhnev, Gorbachev (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). 11 David Shambaugh, ed., Deng Xiaoping: Portrait of a Chinese Statesman (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). 12 Marcus Andre Melo, Njuguna Ng’ethe and Kames Manor, Against the Odds: Politicians, Institutions and the Struggle against Poverty (New York: Columbia University Press). 13 Elizabeth N. Sanders, Leaders at War: How Presidents Shape Military Interventions (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2011), 2. 14 Samuel L. Popkin, The Candidate: What It Takes to Win – and Hold – the White House (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 11

will. And in prescribing what needs to be done to do better at conflict prevention and resolution, greater political will is the frequent answer. But political will is also a dependent variable for which leadership is a key independent variable. The potential impact leadership can have is constrained and conditioned by a number of factors and forces in the political environment, but still leaving a domain of choice that is a function of the beliefs, calculations and capabilities of the individuals occupying leadership positions.

This also is what one consistently hears from policymakers and political analysts. Kevin

Rudd, former Australian Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister and in his own right a

China expert, stresses how “in dealing with China, there is no substitute for direct leader-to- leader engagement.”15 Kurt Campbell, Harvard Ph.D. and recent Assistant Secretary of State for

East Asia and Pacific Affairs, while including a range of factors in his analysis of the Burma 2012 opening, points particularly to “the personal experiences of the two remarkable individuals

(Aung San Suu Kyi and General-President Thein Sein) have much to do with it.”16 Tensions in

U.S.-Israeli relations have been due in part to substantive policy differences over Iran and the

Palestinians, and also in part due to the poor chemistry between Barack Obama and Bibi

Netanyahu. True, it’s the nature of journalism, political commentary and talking heads analysis to overemphasize personal chemistry and other such factors. But it’s the mirror image fallacy to dismiss it.

It may have been that in IR’s disciplinary intellectual history we needed emphasis on the systemic level of analysis to counter reductionist tendencies, as in ’s touchstone

15 Kevin Rudd, “Beyond the Pivot: A New Road Map for U.S.-Chinese Relations,” Foreign Affairs (March/April 2013), p. 14. 16 Kurt M. Campbell, “The Lady and the General,” Foreign Policy 197 (December 2012), p. 32. 12

work.17 That’s been our equivalent to history not staying with great person theories. But we should not take this to the point of what Fred Greenstein calls “actor dispensability,” assuming that different leaders would respond the same to the same situation. Greenstein’s further point that “the more demanding the political act . . . the greater the likelihood that it will be influenced by personal characteristics of the actor” bears especially on this study.18 We don’t need theoretical centrality for , but we do need to avoid theoretical exclusion. The choices leaders of states, international institutions and other international actors face are constrained and conditioned by security dilemmas, power balances and other systemic forces as well as by domestic politics. But there still is a domain of choice. In many instances that still can be explained or predicted in largely actor dispensability terms. But in others --- often seminal ones – outcomes would not have been the same whomever was the leader. No individual is so extraordinary that (s)he would have transformational impact irrespective of the context in which (s)he ends up operating. But it also is not a given that just anyone could have pulled off the Statesmanship that the particular leader did. Consider this a levels of analysis version of the “analytic eclecticism” Peter Katzenstein and Rudra Sil call for.19

Conception of Statesmanship

The Statesmanship/statesmanship distinction as stated earlier follows three main criteria: transformational leadership, globally inclusive not nationally exclusive, net positive

17 Kenneth N. Waltz, Man, the State and War: A Theoretical Analysis (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959); Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979). 18 Greenstein, Personality and Politics, 46-47, 54. 19 Peter J. Katzenstein and Rudra Sil, Analytic Eclecticism: Beyond Paradigms in World Politics (new York: Palgrave, 2010). 13

impact. While admittedly lacking precision, I do think these provide sufficient reliability and validity for the purposes of the study.20

There is plenty of attention in the literature to small-s statesmanship. For example, and as one of many complexities of analysis too often missed in the simplified image of billiard ball- like states pursuing interest defined as power, was quite attuned to leadership dynamics. On military power: “The quality of military leadership has always exerted a decisive influence upon national power.” On alliances: “The smooth and effective operation of an alliance . . .depends in good measure on the relations of trust and respect among its military statesmen.” On diplomacy: It is “the brains of national power”, as with late 19th century

France, “a country that, while in other respects hopelessly outclassed, returned to the heights of power chiefly by virtue of its brilliant diplomacy”.21

Joe Nye argues that this and other forms of “transactional” leadership get undervalued and are often more crucial to progress in international affairs than transformational leadership.22 Nannerl Keohane makes a similar point about leadership more broadly.23 As general statements regarding what is most often the case, I agree. But my focus is with the non- normal course of events, with efforts at fundamental change in the international system. True, as another manifestation of Max Weber’s politics as the “slow boring of hard boards,”

20 Along with any questions about the criteria, I especially welcome discussion of the leaders I’ve chosen and others nominees.

21 Hans J. Morgenthau, Politics among Nations: The Struggle for Power and Peace, 3rd. edition (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), pp. 141, 159-61. 22 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Powers to Lead (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008). 23 Keohane, Thinking about Leadership, 18. 14

transactional leadership can ultimately bring about major systemic change. But the rest of the

Weber quote often gets left out:

It [politics] takes both passion and perspective. Certainly all historical experience

confirms the truth - that man would not have attained the possible unless time and

again he had reached out for the impossible. But to do that a man must be a leader, and

not only a leader but a hero as well, in a very sober sense of the word. And even those

who are neither leaders nor heroes must arm themselves with that steadfastness of

heart which can brave even the crumbling of all hopes. This is necessary right now, or

else men will not be able to attain even that which is possible today.24

Weberian politics as a vocation thus both gives due credit to steady and competent transactional leadership while also pushing for the transformational.

Analytic Framework

A structured focused comparative case methodology ensures that the profiles are not idiosyncratic, that the analysis is not atheoretical, and that the study has policy implications.

The framework as initially delineated earlier is the fourfold who/why/how/what.

WHO were these leaders as individuals?

We look at the personas, including early lives and other shaping effects, and draw on the political psychology and related literatures, with three caveats. First, determinism must be

24 Max Weber, “Politics as a Vocation,” http://anthropos-lab.net/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/Weber- Politics-as-a-Vocation.pdf 15

avoided, e.g. as James David Barber’s Presidential Character does not do.25 puts it well: On the one hand “great leadership often involves putting aside self-doubt, bucking conventional wisdom, and listening only to an inner voice that tells you the right thing to do.

That is the essence of strong character.” But on the other hand, “the problem is that bad leadership can also flow from these same characteristics: steely determination can become stubbornness; the willingness to flout conventional wisdom can amount to a lack of common sense; the inner voice can become delusional.”26 Within these parameters there is quite a lot of interest in the early lives of many of these leaders, some of which is pretty well known (e.g.,

Wilson, FDR, Churchill, Gandhi) and others less well known but also relevant (e.g., Dag

Hammarskjold, Gro Harlem Brundtland).

Second, even short of determinism, individual qualities must not be overemphasized, e.g., historian Paul Johnson makes all five of his keys to democratic statesmanship largely persona-based factors: ideas and beliefs, willpower, pertinacity, ability to communicate, magnanimity; Doris Kearns Goodwin has a point to make but goes too far in asserting that

“politicians are nearly always bound to the concepts and images formed in their minds before taking office.”27 There are more early signs of leadership in some cases than others, but in none is there anything akin to a Statesmanship equivalent of Mozart the 5-year-old prodigy or

LeBron James with NBA-level skills coming out of high school.

25 James David Barber, The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 1992). 26 Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006) pp. 60-61.

27 Paul Johnson, “Heroes: What Great Statesmen Have to Teach Us,” Lecture, Hillsdale College, December 2007, http://www.hillsdale.edu/news/imprimis/archive/issue.asp?year=2007&month=12 ; Doris Kearns Goodwin, Lyndon Johnson and the American Dream (New York: Harper and Row, 1976), p. 258 (italics added). 16

Third, no hero worship, where leaders get so idealized as to become like “talismans with a strong emotional tone . . . a folk attitude toward our greatest heroes [that] approaches the religious.”28 None of these leaders were perfect people: FDR was unfaithful to his wife; Nelson

Mandela had problematic relations with some of his own children.

Within those caveats we work with the significant shaping effects personality does have.

Certain commonalities are likely, but not as if there is some single model: e.g., Gandhi had personal asceticism, Churchill ravenous appetites. Short of a single model, some personal qualities are emerging as significant and somewhat generalizable:

Courage: Transformational leadership is not a safe path. It is indeed “a dangerous activity,” as leadership theorists Ronald Heifetz and Marty Lipsky put it. “You appear dangerous to people when you question their values, beliefs, or habits of a lifetime. You place yourself on the line when you tell people what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear.

Although you may see with clarity and passion a promising future of progress and gain, people will see with equal passion the losses you are asking them to sustain.”29 Rabin and Sadat found this out the hardest way; Gorbachev was not assassinated but was killed politically.

Compassion: This is important for connecting with the broad swaths of people, to both inspire and reassure in the face of change. It is partly personal and partly political. FDR’s battle with polio and experience at Warm Springs gave him compassion and populist connectedness that Hyde Park alone did not cultivate. Mandela had it in ways that contributed to how he was

28 Cited in “American Idols,” Foreign Policy, xxx, p. xx, from Dixon Wecter, The Hero in America: A Chronicle of Hero-Worship (Scribner, 1941). 29 Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Lipsky, Leadership on the Line: staying Alive through Dangers of Leading (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), p.12. 17

able to reassure whites while still having credibility with blacks in the transition from apartheid.

Visiting the make-shift memorial to Rabin at the square where he was assassinated just a few weeks after the tragic event, and seeing guitar-playing and candle-lighting Israeli youth, showed how this gruff, seemingly non-charismatic leader had connected with the younger generation.

Self-Confidence and Ambition: These are double-edged. Someone not self-confident and ambitious doesn’t take risks or undertake grand projects. But if too much so, it can become classic Greek hubris. Jack Matlock, U.S. Ambassador to the during the Gorbachev years, spoke in an interview about Gorbachev’s large ego which both pushed him forward but also had him feeling insecure in relation to rivals with strengths he didn’t have (e.g., Yeltsin’s popularity). Sadat also showed the double-edge, the confidence to take the bold move of going to Jerusalem but a royalishness that fed his ego but weakened and blinded him to domestic threats. Hammarskjöld’s self-confidence served him well in taking action independent of the superpowers in the Suez crisis, but also contributed to his over-reaching in the Congo crisis.

Emotional intelligence: The work of Daniel Goleman is relevant here.30 Jim Joseph, U.S.

Ambassador to South Africa in the Mandela years and himself a noted expert on leadership, stresses this quality in Mandela. 31

WHY did they make the crucial choices they did?

Why did they develop that guiding vision beyond the way the world is to how it could be? Being able and willing to push beyond standard analysis and see the need for profound

30 Daniel Goleman, Emotional intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ (New York: Bantam, 1995) 31 Ambassador Joseph has been a colleague at Duke as a Professor of the Practice (now emeritus), and we have had many conversations about Mandela and leadership generally. 18

change was a key. What was the basis for that analysis? What was the process by which each of these leaders came to it? Gorbachev sure looked like a standard apparatchik for much of his career, Sadat a loyal Nasserite, Rabin a gruff military man who ordered his troops to break

Palestinian wrists and legs – yet each came to have a bold vision. The belief systems construct as developed by Ole Holsti and others, including in some of my own work, is a useful baseline formulation.32 From there I’m focusing on turning points, decisive moments when key choices were made, ideas and strategies started to be developed. For Mandela there was the early life choice for lawyer over tribal chief, then the 1960s nonviolence-violence dynamic, the 1990s reconciliation not revolution. For Rabin it was the lessons of the first intifada. For Dag

Hammarskjold and shifting his conception of the role of UN Secretary-General from caretaker to principal (from more secretary to more general)33, it was the Suez crisis.

How did political motivations play in? Another part of the non-hero worship is not posing these leaders as above politics. All had to take politics into account whether the politics of being democratically elected leaders (Wilson, Churchill, FDR, Adenauer), autocratic leaders still subject to political rivalries and opposition (Sadat, Gorbachev), movement leaders (Eleanor

Roosevelt, Gandhi, Mandela), diplomats serving in national governments (Schuman, Monnet), or leaders of international organizations (Hammarskjold, Brundtland).

32 Ole R. Holsti, “The Belief System and National Images: A Case Study,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 3 (19620, pp. 244-252; Bruce W. Jentleson, “Discrepant Responses to Falling Dictators: Presidential Belief Systems and the Mediating Effects of the Senior Advisory Process,” Political Psychology 11:2 (1990), pp. 353-384. 33 Simon Chesterman, ed., Secretary or General: The UN Secretary-General in World Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007). 19

HOW did they pursue their goals?

Leadership, as leadership theorists stress, is an activity not just a position. Nan Keohane emphasizes not just making decisions but devising and implementing strategies to achieve objectives. This includes blunting opposition and bringing others along through the right combination of incentives, consequences, persuasion, and inspiration.34 Heifetz and Lipsky pose it as “orchestrating” the transformation by “controlling the temperature”, raising the heat enough so that people sit up and pay attention and lowering it when necessary to reduce a counterproductive level of tension.35 As difficult as this is in the relatively defined and confined organizational structure of corporations and universities, it is that much moreso in a political context, especially one that is both domestic and international. Heifetz and Lipsky also talk about “keeping the opposition close”36 – a lot harder to do when opposition is integral to the raison d’être of your opponents and the writ of authority is more contested and the tools more limited; see Wilson, Gorbachev, Rabin. They also urge “stay[ing] connected to the people, less you disengage from them and exacerbate the danger--”37 what Sadat didn’t do, what FDR and

Mandela did so well.

The “how” question gets at the politics and strategy ---- “the art of finding the means to achieve the ends set forth in one’s vision,” as puts it --- that the statesman had to pursue to get from noble motivations and even good ideas to actual achievements.38 We first

34 Keohane, Thinking about Leadership, 25-26, also Burns, 228-39, 401-4, 455-57???; 35 Heifetz and Lipsky, Leadership on the Line, pp. 107-08. 36 Heifetz and Lipsky, Leadership on the Line, p. 85. 37 Heifetz and Lipsky, Leadership on the Line, p. 100. 38 Joseph A. Nye, Jr., “Transformational Leadership and U.S. Grand Strategy,” Foreign Affairs 85 (July/August 2006), p. 144. 20

establish the domestic political context. In his recent book Peter Trubowitz contends that throughout U.S. history, American grand strategy has had “as much to do with leaders’ ability to govern effectively at home as it does with guaranteeing the nation’s security abroad.”39

While I don’t got as far as his “as much as” statement, I do agree that the influence domestic politics has had has long frustrated realists with the gap between the is and the ought.40 We thus look at factors such as roles and influence of his/her political party, main rivals for power, public opinion, elites, intellectuals and vested interests.

We also set the international context with such factors as the country’s foreign policy agenda, roles of other major countries and leaders, and other global aspects. One of the key conditions Byman and Pollack posit in their study for the impact of their warrior leaders is times of great change.41 This also bears on my study in the sense of certain international conditions being more conducive to SBW Statesmanship than others. But there is an element of tautology in times of change also being in part made, not just reacted to, by bold leaders. It’s akin to the limits of “ripeness” theory in that, just as the ripening of crops is not just its own determined process and timeline but can be hastened along by farmers’ actions, so can opportunities for achieving peace and security be shaped and not just responded to; e.g., Sadat’s trip to

Jerusalem, Gorbachev’s decisions on the end of the Cold War, Brundtland’s policy entrepreneurship on sustainable development.42

39 Peter Trubowitz, Politics and Strategy: Partisan Ambition and American Statecraft (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011), 4. 40 This was especially evident in Hans Morgenthau’s book In Defense of the National Interest: A Critical Examination of American Foreign Policy (New York: Knopf, 1951). 41 Byman and Pollack, “Let Us Now Praise Great Men,,” p. 109. 42 Bill Zartman is most associated with the ripeness concept as applied to international conflict resolution; see among other publications I. William Zartman, Ripe for Resolution: Conflict and Intervention in Africa (New York: 21

This dimension of the analysis thus gets at both the leader’s political skills and key elements of his/her strategy, strengths and weaknesses in both, and again with an eye to both particulars and patterns.

WHAT was achieved? What wasn’t? And why?

Net assessments are taken of what was and wasn’t achieved, and why. The net assessment in every case is positive, or the leaders wouldn’t be included in the study. But the failures and limits are as important to learn from as the successes: “seeking” is intentionally part of the book’s subtitle. With , for example, beyond the familiar story of the failed U.S. Senate ratification of the Versailles Treaty and the structural weaknesses of the

League of Nations, is how Wilsonianism impacted the anti-colonial movements of the day, as a mix of validation and disillusionment.43 Gandhi helped India become independent but not in ending or even damping Hindu-Muslim/India-Pakistan animosities; so too with his political pacifism which inspired some but not that many anti-colonial and other movements over the ensuing decades. Gorbachev brought the Cold War to an end, but didn’t politically survive his

Statesmanship. Rabin made unprecedented strides towards Israeli-Palestinian, but paid with his life and the peace process went off the tracks after he was gone.

In seeking to understand the successes and failures of American foreign policy, George

Kennan distinguished between flaws in the “concept” of a policy and flaws in its “execution”.44

Oxford University Press, 1985). See also Richard N. Haass, Conflicts Unending (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990). For more on my critique, see Bruce W. Jentleson, ed., Opportunities Missed, Opportunities Seized: Preventive Diplomacy in the Post-Cold War World (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 2000), 330-332. 43 Erez Manela, The Wilsonian Moment: Self-Determination and the International Origins of Anticolonial Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007). 44 George F. Kennan, American Diplomacy, 1900-1950 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1950), p. vii. 22

The “concepts” dimension gets at flaws in the substance of policy and strategy, the “execution” at mistakes in the pursuit and implementation. Kennan did not posit this as a dichotomous distinction, rather as an analytic differentiation from which one can both gain understanding and learn lessons: the diagnosis/prescription relationship for policy analysis and policy recommendations. I apply this approach in making the Statesmanship net assessments, and see the extent to which the analysis along the other three dimensions of the framework

(who/why/how) has explanatory value. This both pulls the study together and sets up the implications-drawing for 21st century Statesmanship.

Value of the Study

I have two principal goals in mind. First, with particular regard to scholarly discourse, I want to better answer the question of what leads to major breakthroughs in international peace and security than any of the paradigmatic –isms provide. There is too much “king of the hill” contest among the –isms with recurring rounds of one –ism’s claim to preponderance (if not hegemony) being challenged by another, which then makes its own claim to preponderance

(if not hegemony), only to have another (or the same one) come back and counter-claim and try to get back to the top of the hill, etc. There are some indicators that this is lightening. 45

More openness to what Katzenstein and Sil call “analytic eclecticism,” and greater valuation of what George and Bennett call “middle-range theory” and what frequently is referred to as

45 Daniel Maliniak, Amy Oakes, Susan Peterson, and Michael J. Tierney, “International Relations in the US Academy,” International Studies Quarterly (2011), 55, pp. 437-464. 23

problem-driven research, will do a great deal to advance our understanding of international relations.46 I see this study in this light.

The other main goal is to speak to critical 21st century policy challenges. As with much of my work, Profiles in Statesmanship places a high value on policy relevance.47 The essence of contemporary peace and security challenges is that no one nation can meet them on its own.

Yet the gap between the scope and nature of international cooperation needed, and that which has been achieved, is wide and arguably widening. Closing it, or even significantly narrowing it, requires breaking out of the tunnel vision and myopia of traditional national interest statesmanship and exercising capital-S Statesmanship. Analytically drawing lessons from past efforts can contribute to shaping and perhaps motivating present and future ones.

46 Katzenstein and Sil, Analytic Eclecticism; George and Bennett, p. 275 47 Bruce W. Jentleson, “The Need for Praxis: Bringing Policy Relevance Back In,” International Security 26 (Spring 2002), pp. 169-183; Jentleson and Ely Ratner, “Bridging the Beltway-Ivory Tower Gap,” International Studies Review 13 (March 2011), pp. 1-5. I also am a co-founder of the Bridging the Gap Project, including the New Era annual conference for advanced graduate students and the International policy Summer Institute for faculty: http://www.american.edu/sis/BTG/index.cfm