Sublime

While he called it “loyalty,” the capacity he prized most in his subordinates was actually the capacity for subservience.

Napoleon* became famous for his emphasis on speed toward a goal in the context of his military campaigns. “‘The strength of the army’, he stated, ‘like power in mechanics, is the product of multiplying the mass by the velocity.’”

“It is ambition,” he had written, “that makes of a creature a real man.” Pride, embarrassment, gloating: such emotions could only hinder his progress along the road he saw so clearly before him—the “vision” he had indeed held for so long. They were luxuries in which he would not indulge himself.

Both Napoleon and George W. Bush fell victim to the alignment problem. Their short-term military goals were misaligned with their countries’ long-term geopolitical goals. We can understand the whole of Clausewitz’s On War as a warning that “maximizing victory” is as shortsighted a goal as “maximizing user engagement.” According to the Clausewitzian

For sheer grit and audacity, Harriman had few rivals, and he now proceeded on a daring, even reckless corporate raid that would shake Wall Street to its very foundations. Since Morgan and Hill had stonewalled his request for a one-third holding in the Burlington, he would proceed to attack them from the rear. He would, instead, stealthily buy contr

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.

Conner gradually led Eisenhower to a more advanced level of military study.24 The general introduced his assistant to the writings of the 19th-century Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, whose On War remains an influential treatise on warfare. Eisenhower struggled to grasp the military maxims set forth by Clausewitz, so Conner had Eisen