1 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the University of Virginia, International Relations Speaker Series April 12, 2013 Comments welcome; [email protected] Do not cite without permission 2 The usual metric for the world leaders’ scorecard is who has done the most to advance their own country’s national interests.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 peace, 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 War I --- the war that was to end all wars 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 leadership 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 international relations 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: Harvard University 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 realpolitik 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.