Wednesday, February 11, 2015

Session 5 - What makes a good leader


Morgenthau in his second principle of the six principles of realism talks about how we should not focus on the motives of the statesmen but rather the ability of the statesman and the quality of his actions to decide if a political action will be successful or not. And to prove his point he gives the examples of Chamberlain who had good motives but his policies made WW2 inevitable, while on the other hand Churchill had personal motives but had the ability to have successful political action. He goes on to talk about how "Good motives do not guarantee the moral goodness and political success of the policies they inspire" and that "political realism considers a rational foreign policy to be good foreign policy; for only a rational foreign policy minimizes risks and maximizes benefit".

Now what Morgenthau makes sense but I find two problems with his argument. First of all we should realize that there are always outliers. And secondly we should not only look at capability as Morgenthau suggests, but also intention  of the statesman to judge the outcome of the policy and its effects.

Morgenthau may have given examples of three leaders to show we should not look at intention but rather capability. However what about the several leaders out there who had good motives but not good ability but still managed to be successful.

Furthermore, if a leader has good intention, he will work hard to the best of his capabilities to try and make policy work. True there is a small chance it would lead to a disastrous outcome, but nonetheless there is still a big chance that the outcome will be a positive one (as opposed to Morgenthau belief).

And lastly, if a leader has bad motives and has the intellectual capability ability to translate his motives into political action, then we know that the political policy might be benefitting the leader while harming the citizens of the country (as might happen in a dictatorship or authoritarian regime). I do not think such a foreign policy is a successful policy or a good foreign policy. 

3 comments:

  1. I think it's very hard to judge whether a leaders actions will be disastrous or not. Also, they may be disastrous in one particular way but they might have benefited a small faction of society in some other way. Its difficult to take all aspects of society into account while trying to judge whether a leaders action have been successful or not.
    It is also very hard to judge the true intentions of a statesman. Lying, cheating, corruption are common in today's politics. Therefore, I believe that it would not be feasible to spend too much time wondering what is the real intention or motive behind a statesmans' actions since there is no way we can know for sure.

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    1. I agree with the fact that real motives can never be truly uncovered but i disagree when you say that not too much time should be spend on it. It's the way politics works. Politics is a game of judging the motives and strategies of opponents and trying to one up them by counter strategizing whenever possible. Same works in the international arena between states. This is exactly why in the Cold War, the US and the USSR used various ways like espionage to attain information on the other's strategies and tried to counter them. Same goes for China today; there is a lot of suspicion around what it's goals are, whether it will rise peacefully or want hegemony. It is a dangerous speculative game but nonetheless it is applied both in theoretical work by scholars and in practice by politicians and statesmen of the world.

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  2. Good post. One point to follow up on Mariyam's comment, I would say it is critical to understand a statesman's actions, because ultimately this is what shapes the political world. Hence I concur with Rida.

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