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Education for Leadership
Part 2 of 2
The Dark Side of Leadership
Leadership is not simply "a good thing." Indeed, the more widely one reads
about it, the more striking it is just how dark a thing it can be. To
begin with, leadership is morally neutral: Using the definition offered
above, Napoleon and even Hitler were great leaders. One can exercise
remarkable leadership for purposes that are evil.
There are, one trusts, no budding Napoleons at SAIS. But even so, the dark
side of leadership deserves the attention of those who hope to achieve
nothing but good and unselfish things with the skills they develop in this
sphere of life. Three things come to mind. First, Lord Acton had it right:
Power
does tend to corrupt, and successful leadership will usually
attract both power and publicity. That mordant historian and observer of
public men, Henry Adams, concluded, in one of the more dismal passages of
his autobiography,
The Education of Henry Adams, "The effect of
power and publicity on all men is the aggravation of self, a sort of tumor
that ends by killing the victim's sympathies; a diseased appetite, like a
passion for drink or perverted tastes; one can scarcely use expressions
too strong to describe the violence of egotism it stimulates."
Even when an individual is not corrupted in this way, he or she may find
that power, including the power conferred by leadership, can cause most
other human relationships to wither. Hence Adams's dark maxim, "A friend
in power is a friend lost." Those who understand the value of friendship
may think it too high a price to pay.
Finally, with leadership at the highest level comes--if one remains
straight--an overwhelming sense of responsibility. It is that sense that
transforms the faces of presidents in vigorous middle age to craggy,
wrinkled old age--look at pictures of Abraham Lincoln in 1860 and 1865 for
proof. The debilities of leadership--high blood pressure, heart ailments,
not to mention insomnia and sheer fatigue--grow in proportion to the size
of a real task. The Bible is remarkably candid in its depiction of this
price. When Moses leads the Israelites through the desert, he at one point
cries out in despair,
Wherefore hast thou afflicted thy servant? And wherefore have I not found
favour in thy sight, that thou layest the burden of all this people upon
me? Have I conceived all this people? Have I begotten them, that thou
shouldest say unto me, Carry them in thy bosom, as a nursing father
beareth the sucking child, unto the land which thou swarest unto their
fathers? ... I am not able to bear all this people alone, because it is
too heavy for me. And if thou deal thus with me, kill me, I pray thee, out
of hand, if I have found favour in thy sight; and let me not see my
wretchedness.
Nor is Moses the only great political leader who has thought of death as
an escape and not a mere curse. Small wonder, then, that Marcus Aurelius
expounded Stoicism, the retreat to what he termed the "inner citadel" as a
source of calm. The wise leader designs that citadel carefully, maintains
it well and visits it frequently.
The political philosopher Judith Shklar once said that one becomes a
political scientist out of one of two motivations: fascination with power
or fear of its consequences. A refugee from the horrors of mid-20th,
century Europe, she was the latter. To those of us at a school in the
capital city of the greatest power on the planet, in a country and at a
time that prizes movement over stillness, enterprise over contentment,
celebrity over humility, her words may come as a useful caution. They are
worth pondering at this institution, at this place and time. Still, a
profound awareness of the pitfalls of leadership and the price it may
exact from us does not diminish its inevitability. It is indispensable to
the great tasks of civilized social life. But it is more than a set of
skills to be noted in a curriculum vitae.
In this respect, the SAIS education is perhaps more appropriate than one
might think to that stated aim of developing leaders in international
affairs. Unlike law or business schools, or schools of public policy or
public administration, SAIS offers a liberal education in international
affairs. It is a catholic education in languages, economics, history and
international politics. It is liberal in its method, which focuses, and
should focus, less on the immediate and the technical, than on the broader
questions of why and how.
A liberal education is a good preparation for leadership in several ways.
By broadening us, by widening our views, by opening us to different ways
of viewing the world and deepening the questions that we ask, it prepares
us to teach ourselves. Training prepares individuals for their next task,
education for the mission of perpetual betterment.
Cardinal Newman, the great mid- 19th-century expositor of the ideal of a
liberal education, declared that it teaches the student
...to see things as they are, to go right to the point, to disentangle a
skein of thought, to detect what is sophistical and to discard what is
irrelevant. It prepares him to fill any post with credit, and to master
any subject with facility It shows him how to accommodate himself to
others, how to throw himself into their state of mind, how to bring before
them his own, how to influence them, how to come to an understanding with
them, how to bear with them.
Leadership in free societies requires these last qualities above all: A
Napoleon could make his way in revolutionary France, but (thank goodness)
in a modern, free and law-abiding society, he would be a bore and, hence,
a thwarted megalomaniac.
Most importantly, a liberal education deals with ends no less than with
means. When students come inquiring about getting a Ph.D., saying that
they "want to make policy," I have invariably said, "Tell me first what
policy you would like to make." The answer is not always a good one, which
is why I almost invariably suggest that they get a master's degree first
and that we discuss a doctorate later.
SAIS students will, one hopes, ask not just how the International Criminal
Court functions, but also what its aims are and to what extent they are
achievable; learn not only how countries negotiate environmental treaties,
but how to evaluate their costs and benefits; and explore not simply the
mechanics of American foreign policymaking, but also meditate on the
question of American purpose in the world.
It is well to study at a school that forces one to inquire into objectives
and that--while not ignoring the question of technique--puts first-order
questions where they belong: first.
Eliot A. Cohen is professor and director of the Strategic Studies
Program at the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies of The
Johns Hopkins University. This article is based on a lecture given to
first- year students at SAIS August 28, 2002.
©2002 The Paul Nitze School of Advanced
International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University.
