Warrior Politics

Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos

“The side that knows when to fight and when not will take the victory. There are roadways not to be traveled, armies not to be attacked, walled cities not to be assaulted.” —Sun-Tzu


We live in dangerous times, when a new kind of leadership is required. Visionary and ruthlessly strategic, Warrior Politics extracts the best of the wisdom of the ages for modern leaders who are faced with the complex life-and-death challenges of today’s world—and determined to win.
Sun-Tzu urges leaders to “plan and calculate like a hungry man.” Machiavelli defines a policy not by its excellence but by its outcome. Churchill derives his greatness from his imagination of history. Livy shows that the vigor to face down adversaries must ultimately come from pride in our own past achievements. “Never mind if they call your caution timidity, your wisdom sloth, your generosity weakness,” he writes. “It is better that a wise enemy should fear you than that foolish friends should praise.” “Men often oppose a thing merely because they have no agency in planning it,” Alexander Hamilton says, “or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.”
Replete with maxims, warnings, examples from history, and shrewd recommendations, Warrior Politics wrests from the past the lessons we need to arm ourselves for the present. It offers an invaluable template for any decision-maker—in foreign policy or in business—faced with high stakes and inadequate knowledge of a mine-filled terrain. As we gear ourselves up for a new kind of war, no book is more prescient, more shrewd, or more essential.
Chapter I
There Is No "Modern" World


The evils of the twentieth century arose from populist movements that were monstrously exploited in the name of utopian ideals, and had their power amplified by new technologies. The Nazi party began as a crusade for workers' rights organized by a Munich locksmith, Anton Drexler, in 1919, before Hitler took it over the following year. The Bolsheviks also emerged amid emancipating political upheaval and, like the Nazis, exploited the dream of social renewal. Once the Nazis and Bolsheviks were in power, the inventions of the Industrial Age became crucial to their crimes. As for Mao Zedong, his push for labor-intensive industrialization, through the establishment of utopian communes, led to the deaths of at least 20 million Chinese during the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962.

The twentieth century may be a poor guide to the twenty-first, but only fools would discount it, particularly because populist movements now permeate the world, provoking disorder and demanding political and economic transformation. Asia is a specific cause for concern. India, Pakistan, China, and other emerging powers pulse with new technologies, nationalistic zeal, and disintegrative forces within. Recall the words of Alexander Hamilton:

To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties situated in the same neighborhood would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.

Thus, the evils of the twenty-first century may also arise from populist movements, taking advantage of democratization, motivated this time by religious and sectarian beliefs, and empowered by a post-Industrial Revolution: particularly information technology. Hindu extremists who burned down mosques in India in the early 1990s and attacked Christians in the late 1990s belong to a working-class movement within India's democracy that uses videocassettes and the Internet to spread its message. Similar phenomena have occurred in Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, Algeria, Mexico, Fiji, Egypt, Pakistan, the West Bank, and Arab Nazareth, to name but a few places where religious and ethnic groups, predominantly working-class and inspired by democratization, use modern communications technology to stir unrest.

Populist rage is fueled by social and economic tensions, aggravated often by population growth and resource scarcity in an increasingly urbanized planet. In the coming decades, 2 or 3 billion more people will live in the vast, impoverished cities of the developing world.

Global capitalism will contribute to this peril, smashing traditions and dynamically spawning new ones. The benefits of cap-italism are not distributed equitably, so the more dynamic the capitalist expansion, the more unequal the distribution of wealth that usually results. Thus, two dynamic classes will emerge under globalization-the entrepreneurial nouveaux riches and, more ominously, the new subproletariat: the billions of working poor, recently arrived from the countryside, inhabiting the expanding squatters' settlements that surround big cities in Africa, Eurasia, and South America.
"One of the most thought-provoking and profound books that I have recently read. As readable as it is stimulating."
-Henry Kissinger

"I read Warrior Politics with fascination. Kaplan makes a persuasive case that the insights of ancient philosophers--from Sun-Tzu to Machiavelli--are relevant to modern security problems. This book will be read by scholars, but it should also be read by those responsible today for making the decisions that affect our national security."
-William J. Perry, former secretary of defense

"Robert Kaplan skillfully captures the relevance of classical political theory for today’s leaders, whether they manage crises in the boardroom or the Oval Office."
-William S. Cohen, former secretary of defense

"Warrior Politics should be read by every citizen deeply concerned about America’s role in the world. I highly recommend Kaplan’s brilliant new book to anyone trying to understand what needs to be done in response to September 11."
-Newt Gingrich

"This is a brilliant and incisive book that should be read and discussed by policy makers and informed citizens alike, to help us think about how the modern state can exist, prosper, and survive in the face of twenty-first-century challenges."
-Denis A. Bovin,vice chairman, Bear Stearns

"This is an extraordinary book, one to be read by anyone interested in surviving in the twenty-first century. But it is not a book for bedtime reading . . . at least not if you like sleeping. Always provocative, Kaplan takes, head-on, lessons of conflict over the centuries, which continue to be true because humans continue to be human."
-Norman R. Augustine, CEO of Lockheed Martin

"A profound and timely meditation on twenty-first-century global politics and America’s place in it. Deeply versed in classical scholarship, Robert Kaplan shows how the philosophers and historians of ancient Greece and Rome offer vital lessons for American leaders today."
-John Gray, professor of European thought, London School of Economics


"Sun-Tzu also suggested that with the battle won, the best leader persuades his followers that they did it themselves: one great lesson among many others in this gem of a book for present and future leaders."
-Sidney Harman, executive chairman, Harman International Industries

"An intellectual tour de force expressing the enduring relevance of ancient principles of statecraft to modern circumstances in the most lucid and persuasive prose I’ve ever read."
-Robert McFarlane, former national security adviser
© John Stanmeyer
Robert D. Kaplan is the bestselling author of twenty books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including Adriatic, The Good American, The Revenge of Geography, Asia’s Cauldron, Monsoon, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. For three decades he reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. He was a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and the U.S. Navy’s Executive Panel. Foreign Policy magazine twice named him one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” View titles by Robert D. Kaplan

About

“The side that knows when to fight and when not will take the victory. There are roadways not to be traveled, armies not to be attacked, walled cities not to be assaulted.” —Sun-Tzu


We live in dangerous times, when a new kind of leadership is required. Visionary and ruthlessly strategic, Warrior Politics extracts the best of the wisdom of the ages for modern leaders who are faced with the complex life-and-death challenges of today’s world—and determined to win.
Sun-Tzu urges leaders to “plan and calculate like a hungry man.” Machiavelli defines a policy not by its excellence but by its outcome. Churchill derives his greatness from his imagination of history. Livy shows that the vigor to face down adversaries must ultimately come from pride in our own past achievements. “Never mind if they call your caution timidity, your wisdom sloth, your generosity weakness,” he writes. “It is better that a wise enemy should fear you than that foolish friends should praise.” “Men often oppose a thing merely because they have no agency in planning it,” Alexander Hamilton says, “or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.”
Replete with maxims, warnings, examples from history, and shrewd recommendations, Warrior Politics wrests from the past the lessons we need to arm ourselves for the present. It offers an invaluable template for any decision-maker—in foreign policy or in business—faced with high stakes and inadequate knowledge of a mine-filled terrain. As we gear ourselves up for a new kind of war, no book is more prescient, more shrewd, or more essential.

Excerpt

Chapter I
There Is No "Modern" World


The evils of the twentieth century arose from populist movements that were monstrously exploited in the name of utopian ideals, and had their power amplified by new technologies. The Nazi party began as a crusade for workers' rights organized by a Munich locksmith, Anton Drexler, in 1919, before Hitler took it over the following year. The Bolsheviks also emerged amid emancipating political upheaval and, like the Nazis, exploited the dream of social renewal. Once the Nazis and Bolsheviks were in power, the inventions of the Industrial Age became crucial to their crimes. As for Mao Zedong, his push for labor-intensive industrialization, through the establishment of utopian communes, led to the deaths of at least 20 million Chinese during the Great Leap Forward from 1958 to 1962.

The twentieth century may be a poor guide to the twenty-first, but only fools would discount it, particularly because populist movements now permeate the world, provoking disorder and demanding political and economic transformation. Asia is a specific cause for concern. India, Pakistan, China, and other emerging powers pulse with new technologies, nationalistic zeal, and disintegrative forces within. Recall the words of Alexander Hamilton:

To look for a continuation of harmony between a number of independent, unconnected sovereignties situated in the same neighborhood would be to disregard the uniform course of human events, and to set at defiance the accumulated experience of ages.

Thus, the evils of the twenty-first century may also arise from populist movements, taking advantage of democratization, motivated this time by religious and sectarian beliefs, and empowered by a post-Industrial Revolution: particularly information technology. Hindu extremists who burned down mosques in India in the early 1990s and attacked Christians in the late 1990s belong to a working-class movement within India's democracy that uses videocassettes and the Internet to spread its message. Similar phenomena have occurred in Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, Algeria, Mexico, Fiji, Egypt, Pakistan, the West Bank, and Arab Nazareth, to name but a few places where religious and ethnic groups, predominantly working-class and inspired by democratization, use modern communications technology to stir unrest.

Populist rage is fueled by social and economic tensions, aggravated often by population growth and resource scarcity in an increasingly urbanized planet. In the coming decades, 2 or 3 billion more people will live in the vast, impoverished cities of the developing world.

Global capitalism will contribute to this peril, smashing traditions and dynamically spawning new ones. The benefits of cap-italism are not distributed equitably, so the more dynamic the capitalist expansion, the more unequal the distribution of wealth that usually results. Thus, two dynamic classes will emerge under globalization-the entrepreneurial nouveaux riches and, more ominously, the new subproletariat: the billions of working poor, recently arrived from the countryside, inhabiting the expanding squatters' settlements that surround big cities in Africa, Eurasia, and South America.

Reviews

"One of the most thought-provoking and profound books that I have recently read. As readable as it is stimulating."
-Henry Kissinger

"I read Warrior Politics with fascination. Kaplan makes a persuasive case that the insights of ancient philosophers--from Sun-Tzu to Machiavelli--are relevant to modern security problems. This book will be read by scholars, but it should also be read by those responsible today for making the decisions that affect our national security."
-William J. Perry, former secretary of defense

"Robert Kaplan skillfully captures the relevance of classical political theory for today’s leaders, whether they manage crises in the boardroom or the Oval Office."
-William S. Cohen, former secretary of defense

"Warrior Politics should be read by every citizen deeply concerned about America’s role in the world. I highly recommend Kaplan’s brilliant new book to anyone trying to understand what needs to be done in response to September 11."
-Newt Gingrich

"This is a brilliant and incisive book that should be read and discussed by policy makers and informed citizens alike, to help us think about how the modern state can exist, prosper, and survive in the face of twenty-first-century challenges."
-Denis A. Bovin,vice chairman, Bear Stearns

"This is an extraordinary book, one to be read by anyone interested in surviving in the twenty-first century. But it is not a book for bedtime reading . . . at least not if you like sleeping. Always provocative, Kaplan takes, head-on, lessons of conflict over the centuries, which continue to be true because humans continue to be human."
-Norman R. Augustine, CEO of Lockheed Martin

"A profound and timely meditation on twenty-first-century global politics and America’s place in it. Deeply versed in classical scholarship, Robert Kaplan shows how the philosophers and historians of ancient Greece and Rome offer vital lessons for American leaders today."
-John Gray, professor of European thought, London School of Economics


"Sun-Tzu also suggested that with the battle won, the best leader persuades his followers that they did it themselves: one great lesson among many others in this gem of a book for present and future leaders."
-Sidney Harman, executive chairman, Harman International Industries

"An intellectual tour de force expressing the enduring relevance of ancient principles of statecraft to modern circumstances in the most lucid and persuasive prose I’ve ever read."
-Robert McFarlane, former national security adviser

Author

© John Stanmeyer
Robert D. Kaplan is the bestselling author of twenty books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including Adriatic, The Good American, The Revenge of Geography, Asia’s Cauldron, Monsoon, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. For three decades he reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. He was a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and the U.S. Navy’s Executive Panel. Foreign Policy magazine twice named him one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” View titles by Robert D. Kaplan