Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

In the Introduction, Kissinger introduces two archetypes of leadership: the statesman, who “assesses possible courses of action on the basis of their utility rather than their truth” and the prophet, who “regards this approach as a sacrilege, a triumph of expediency over universal principle” (xxv). There is a similarity here to The Importance of Strategic Skill and Moral Character for Leadership in terms of a distinction between pragmatism and vision, but the differences are acute. Strategy and morality are modes of getting things done with different audiences, while the statesman and the prophet are archetypes reflecting a particular sense of how politics works and ought to operate. Nixon was a skilled tactician with a moral vision, but was not prophetic, as the prophet rejects the switch between pragmatism and idealism as a compromise of their ideal. De Gaulle was a true prophet, articulating a vision of “grandeur” that actively disregarded material restraints in order to drive straight to the collective psychology of the French people (69). The tactics necessarily shifted—anyone who pursues a prophetic vision in a simplistic way is bound to fail—but whether Algeria remained within the empire or achieved its independence, the result had to be a reaffirmation of France’s “ability to conduct its own independent foreign policy and to fulfill de Gaulle’s vision of its role in the emerging world order” (104).

Normally, the statesman and the prophet are dueling archetypes. De Gaulle’s soaring declarations of French glory draw a sharp contrast with Adenauer’s painstaking efforts to secure Germany within the moral but decidedly unprophetic goal of membership within the Atlantic alliance. Sadat began his career as the consummate statesman, managing the administrative details of the Egyptian Republic while Nasser championed the prophetic cause of Arab nationalism. Yet Sadat ultimately made the transition, as his peace with Israel may have begun as a practical recognition that further war with Israel was futile, but blossomed into an idea of peace as “a rewriting of history. Peace is a giant struggle against all and every ambition and whim” (262). His assassination cut his prophetic vision short, and it retains a mostly institutional rather than visionary character, but it is hard to imagine it having progressed so far without a prophetic vision lurking in the distant horizon. Whereas morality is a perennial need, prophecy is born of a particular time and place, rarely welcome in that time, ultimately achieving its vindication when political structures come to reflect ideas that in previous generations would have seemed utterly impossible.