Balance

Kim du Toit
September 12, 2006
11:44 PM CDT

One of the conundrums of leadership in a democratic society is the balance the leader of said society has to strike between leadership vs. execution of the public will. It’s a knife-edge balance which very few seem to master, and it’s a task at which most leaders fail.

Mostly, of course, it’s a fairly simple job: if a president is elected with a thumping majority, on a platform which includes popular measures like lowering taxes, dismantling State bureaucracy and building up the armed forces of the country, then there’s little “leadership” needed. If the majority is that large, then the president will find few obstacles in his way—either the will of the people will be carried out, and if not, the people will simply elect someone who will.

Likewise, if the issues are very clear-cut (invasion by a foreign army, for instance), then all that’s required is affirmation of the common goal, and the execution thereof. During WWII, for instance, Winston Churchill was elected as British Prime Minister because his predecessor’s policies had proven not only wrong, but very nearly fatally wrong. Thereafter, his goals were simple: national survival; containing Axis expansion, and waiting for the New World to enter the war on his side.

At the same time, however, France capitulated to the Germans not only because their armed forces were facing annihilation in the field, but also because a sizeable sector of the population saw German occupation as being preferable to the Third Republic; another recoiled from the cost of continuing the struggle (remembering the slaughter of WWI), and yet another saw the impossibility of the task, and simply gave up. Under those circumstances, therefore, a French leader promising a Churchillian-type of struggle to the bitter end would have faced an almost insuperable task, especially without an English Channel to provide a buffer against Nazi invasion. In hindsight, their decision to surrender doesn’t seem as craven as it’s often painted—especially as British aid and support was (justifiably) being held back because Churchill and his Cabinet realized that containing the Nazi invasion was going to be impossible. In a classic case of realism and idealism combined, though, he insisted that while evacuating Dunkirk, a considerable number of French soldiers be carried off at the expense of leaving British soldiers behind to be captured by the Germans.

It’s hard to imagine the French doing the same if the roles had been reversed. But what Churchill realized too was that the strategy of the war revolved around keeping a defeated France at least neutral, rather than have her join Germany to fight against Britain, which would have been catastrophic. Against that risk, therefore, a few score thousand captive soldiers was a cheap price to pay. (Churchill also knew that there were many Frenchmen who were quite prepared to join the German cause, and were looking for an excuse to blame “perfidious Albion” as a reason to join the Germans.)

While many may complain about some aspects of Churchill’s leadership, in some cases quite justifiably, there’s no arguing with the depth and correctness of his strategic vision. Yet many Britons after WWII refused to re-elect Churchill’s government back into power, because they perceived Britain’s economic problems and her near-defeat as the fault of the Conservative Party—and while that argument certainly has some merit, it should also be realized that the seeds of the disaster had been sown long before WWII by successive Labour- and Liberal governments who were not only irretrievably pacifistic, but hopelessly idealistic, both in power and in Opposition. (It should also be noted that a huge majority of returning British POWs, and their families, refused to vote for Churchill in 1945 because he had apparently left them in the lurch in 1940. Leadership is not always without cost.)

It came as no surprise, therefore, that once the massive bogeyman of Hitler and Axis Fascism had been defeated, that Britain would turn to a political philosophy which promised an end to poverty and Depression-style misery: socialism. In other words, Britain concentrated exclusively on its internal wellbeing, and, secure under the NATO umbrella, left foreign security to the United States. (This last sentence, by the way, is in no way critical of that attitude: given the appalling economic cost of two world wars for a nation which was really in no fiscal position to fight either, it’s hard to criticize the Brits for wanting to turn inward. Food rationing, after all, lasted for more than fifteen years after WWII ended. It’s difficult to understand, however, why the Brits would have chosen socialism—a philosophy which is not only fundamentally flawed in its basic premise, but which had been shown to be flawed in its execution during the mass starvations in Russia during the 1930s.)

Idealism flourishes in times of peace, and among men of goodwill and moral character. When faced with evil cynicism and implacable hostility, however, such idealism must perforce take second place to hard-eyed realism. Looking back, it seems almost inconceivable that the British and French Governments of the 1930s continued to appease Hitler as he tore up treaty after treaty, broke guarantee after guarantee, and invaded country after country until, inevitably, there was no recourse left but to declare war. Yet that is what happened—and it should also be noted that the British Government’s appeasal of Hitler was generally popular among the Britons, who were likewise wary of a repeat performance of the slaughter of WWI. In addition, Britain’s economy was only gradually recovering from the Great Depression of 1929-31, so any thought of undertaking so expensive a task as (another) European war was completely out of the question for most Britons. In 1935, for instance, 25% of the British population was found to be living on a subsistence diet—and it was later found that the definition of “subsistence” was appallingly too low. Additionally, Britain had still not yet recovered from the economic disaster of the First World War, so the prospect of still another one was, for most people, just too horrible to contemplate.

As with the French, therefore, the “appease at all costs” mentality of the British Government is not really that inexcusable as we might think in hindsight.

But that is the intrinsic problem of political leadership: how to balance the long-term needs against the immediate needs of the country; and how to balance the management of those (sometimes competing) interests with the mood and will of the people—who, it must be said, sometimes get it wrong.

We now know, for instance, that a single brigade of British and French soldiers sent to the demilitarized Rhineland in 1936 would have been sufficient to drive Hitler’s occupying soldiers back into Germany—and the political repercussions might have resulted in Hiter’s removal from office by either the Army or an election. Yet such was the popular paralysis in Britain and France against any kind of military action, that the sending of such a brigade would have been (and was) enormously unpopular, on the grounds that such action was “provoking” war with Germany.

Which brings us back to the problem of balance.

In recent times, we’ve seen that relaxation of leadership towards prospective danger causes problems down the road. The feckless Clinton adminstration, for example, was intent on enjoying the “peace dividend” created by the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, little aware that a different and more difficult enemy was waiting in the wings. And it must be said, much of the American population was supportive of that attitude. If ever there was an opportunity to beat swords into ploughshares, it seemed, the 1990s was the perfect time.

Having just overcome the longtime Communist foe, people had little patience for dealing with an avowed enemy which was not only militarily insignificant, but away from our shores, Over There. Besides, we had all sorts of internal problems to overcome: social inequalities to correct, wealth to share (to name but two), and the arrival of the dotcom boom simply exacerbated the mindset. We were too busy making money to worry about stuff like Islamic terrorists who were more concerned with killing Jews than Americans, after all. Even blatantly hostile acts like the bombing of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen were, in the grand scheme of things, insignificant: pinpricks in the aura of universal prosperity that was surely just over the horizon.

What was just over the horizon was the dotcom bust, and 9/11.

And just as Churchill had to deal with the mess created by his predecessors, George W. Bush and his new leadership have had to deal with the enduring legacy of earlier governments which failed in their primary task of protecting the long-term interests of the country and its people.

In fact, if we make a comparison between war-torn and Depression-crippled Britain of the 1930s with our flush affluence of the 1990s, the fecklessness of the Clinton era becomes even more inexcusable.

What we now know as well is that it would have been a relatively simple matter to contain terrorism back in the 1990s:  drive both Saddam Hussein and Hafez Assad from power at the end of Gulf War I, whack Bin Laden and Arafat, engage in sustained bombing attacks on terrorist training camps in places like Libya and Afghanistan, and so on. Given the strength of our military, it would have been almost as simple as sending a French/British brigade into the Rhineland back in 1936. But instead, to use Macbeth’s lovely expression, we “scotch’d the snake, not killed it”.

So here we are.

Given the many examples of a lack of leadership balance in the past, one would think that there should be no opposition to GWB’s foreign policy whatsoever. Yet to the socialists in our midst (and for whom history is after all a malleable commodity), the opposition is loud and continuous.

What strikes me the hardest is that when it comes to combating terrorism, the socialists Democrats say they have little disagreement with the broad principle of the thing; indeed, given the still-gaping hole in Lower Manhattan, even they could hardly argue against the need for such a struggle. But supposedly, the Democrats would have us believe that there is a better way of dealing with terrorism: that terrorist attacks will cease if only we stop killing them; or if we hand over Israel to the Pals; or if we allow Shari’a law to coexist with our own; or if.. if… if… The list is long, and fatuous, and ultimately an exercise in futility.

But for the idealists, futility isn’t a reason not to do something. In the immortal words of the dreary and self-important Bono: even if we know it won’t work, we should still do something.

The fact is that the Democrats don’t have a clue. All their proposed nostrums, befitting a party which stresses idealism over realism, look fantastic at 100,000 feet above the fray. “End Poverty!” “Stop Terrorism!” and so on. Yet when asked for specifics as to how they would achieve these laudable goals, the most common response seems to be: “Not the way the Republicans are doing it.”

Well, fine; I don’t much agree with the way the Republicans are handling a lot of stuff, either. But I have some fairly succinct alternative actions for them to employ.

And here’s where the balance thing rears its ugly head again. It really amuses me that GWB is being assailed by the Left for monitoring phone calls coming from overseas made by people who are probably linked with terrorist organizations. Our right to privacy, it seems, is inviolable and sacrosanct. Except that I don’t remember hearing screams of outrage from the New York Times during the Clinton era when the horribly-intrusive Echelon program was introduced. (In fact, the NYT called the program “necessary”, even though Echelon spied on everyone.)

I guess it depends on who’s doing the spying.

But the major point of all of this is quite simple. There is a time for a country’s leader to embark on a series of actions which may seem contrary to the will of the people—that’s called “leadership”—but the important point to note is that it’s critical that the leader not to go too far. Churchill, after all, did not advocate bombing Berlin in 1935 for making warplanes, even though the action would have been quite justifiable under the terms of the Versailles Treaty, which had forbidden Germany from possessing any military aircraft.

And in today’s idiom, that’s why it’s silly to call for the U.S. to, say, bomb the nuclear-obsessed Teheran government—although the bombing of Iran’s (illegal) nuclear facilities might be narrowly justified.

It seems to me that this is where today’s leaders fall short. While our system of government is quite clear that our elected officials exist to serve the will of the People, it is also clear that there are times when leaders need to embark on actions which, at times, may run contrary to general public opinion, but which is necessary to ensure the longtime wellbeing of the nation. Most people have little capacity for long-term vision; that shortcoming also manifests itself in our economy’s obsession with quarterly financial results rather than a company’s long-term health and prospects.

What’s lacking in our leaders is the ability to rise above the immediate, and look to the future. This, by the way, is why Ronald Reagan was successful as a leader: his vision was of the distant future rather than the immediate one, which is why his tactical operation was oftentimes lacking.

What has become even more clear is that there is no apparent leader-in-waiting with that quality: the ability to balance the long-term with the short-term; to balance the will of the people against the needs of the nation; and to balance the short-term national security needs against the long-term freedoms of our Constitution.

Even worse, I don’t see anyone who can even explain the above to a (justifiably) suspicious populace, let alone execute it. In fact, I’m not sure they even understand it—or worse, in the case of the populist/socialist politicians, they may understand it, but choose to ignore it.

I wish I could end this piece on a more positive note, but I can’t. And that fills me with gloom.