Over the winter holiday break, I finished two interesting, albeit heavy, books on leadership by the American political scientist Eliot A. Cohen. Cohen is the Robert E. Osgood Professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (and former Dean of that school from 2019 to 2021), and he also served as a counselor at the U.S. Department of State under Condoleeza Rice from 2007 to 2009. Cohen wrote the first book, Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime in 2003, focusing primarily on four leaders - Abraham Lincoln, Georges Clemenceau, Winston Churchill, and David Ben-Gurion - and the theme (to borrow from a quote by Clemenceau), "War is too important to leave to the generals." Cohen examines the relationship between military and political leadership and argues that active statesmen (i.e. ones who actively play the role of "Commander in Chief" of a nation's military forces) make the best wartime leaders. I was particularly interested in his argument, as it seemed to be counter to my often argued HRO principle of "Deference to Expertise".
Cohen starts his book with a chapter on what is called the "normal" theory of civil-military relations (to borrow a term from Samuel Huntington's book, The Soldier and the State). In other words, when it comes to leadership during war time, there are "two hands on the sword" - the civil hand determines when to draw the sword from the scabbard and the military hand sharpens the sword for use and wields it during combat. The military hand should be isolated as much as possible from politics and given free rein to operate with as little intrusion as possible from the civil hand. My immediate response to this analogy was to ask myself, "Why would you ever have two independent hands that don't talk to each other exercising control over anything?" It's the proverbial right hand not talking to the left! Moreover, anyone who has paid attention to the recent international conflicts can quickly realize that it's difficult, if not impossible, to completely remove political considerations from the military ones. As the legendary Prussian general and brilliant military strategist Carl von Clausewitz said in his classic book On War, "The political object is the goal, war is the means of reaching it, and means can never be considered in isolation from their purpose." Given my strong beliefs in the HRO principle of "Deference to Expertise", I was impressed by his arguments, and I will be doing some more reading on this topic in the future!
While ordering a copy of Supreme Command: Soldiers, Statesmen, and Leadership in Wartime from my local public library, I came across Cohen's most recent book, The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and Fall, which came out in 2023. I waited about six weeks for this book, so it must be a popular read, at least in Highland Park, Illinois! The title comes from Shakespeare's play Richard II (note that the title of today's post is a quote from a different Shakespeare play, Henry IV Part 2):
For God’s sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings —
How some have been deposed, some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed,
Some poisoned by their wives, some sleeping killed,
All murdered. For within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court, and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be feared, and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life
Were brass impregnable; and humored thus,
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell, king!
I have to be honest, I haven't read very many of Shakespeare's plays. There was the obligatory reading of Romeo and Juliet in middle school and Hamlet during high school, but that was really it. What's great is that Cohen provides just enough context, background, and direct quotes from Shakespeare to support his argument, even for someone who has not read many of Shakespeare's plays. He divides the book into three major sections, discussing how leaders acquire power, how leaders wield power, and how leaders ultimately lose power. He does compare and contrast Shakespeare's leaders (many of which, but not all, are based upon actual leaders and events in history) with contemporary political leaders, but most of his arguments are based primarily on Shakespeare's plays. He also makes the argument that leaders outside of politics (e.g. business leaders, academic leaders, etc) can certainly learn from Shakespeare's plays. He writes, "Strip away the trappings of robes, crowns, and scepters and one realizes that today as well courts run almost all human organizations...there is someone at the top who rules or reigns. There is often a designated (or aspiring) successor filling the role of crown prince, and there are people at various other stages of authority who jockey for power."
The Washington Examiner has called the book, "The William Shakespeare Guide to Gaining and Wielding Political Power". Rather than analyzing each individual play, Cohen brings examples from all the plays (focusing mostly on the Henriad histories and Roman tragedies, though he also discusses The Tempest and Macbeth at length. Overall, I enjoyed the book, and it actually encouraged me to go back and read some of Shakespeare's plays. And once again, Cohen highlights a point that I've previously made, that one can learn a lot about leadership by reading some of literature's greatest works.
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