Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

he cautioned me ‘never to confuse energy with strength’.

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 involve

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.’[69]

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 ‘reasons of state’ (raisons d’état): that is, the flexible pursuit of the national interest based entirely on a realistic judgment of circumstances.

‘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.’[12]

As a result of Austria’s defeat combined with Woodrow Wilson’s doctrine of national self-determination and democratic ideology, a plethora of states weak in structure and inadequate in resources now faced Germany in Eastern and Central Europe. Any future resurgence of German military capacity would have to be defeated by a French offensive into the

Born in 1876 – only five years after German unification under Bismarck – Adenauer was for the rest of his life associated with his native city of Cologne, with its towering

His strategy of humility was composed of four elements: accepting the consequences of defeat; regaining the confidence of the victors; building a democratic society; and creating a European federation that would transcend the historic divisions of Europe.