Let UsNow Praise Daniel L. Byman and GreatMen Kenneth M ...

Let Us Now Prais e Great Men

In January 1762 Prus-sia hovered on the brink of disaster Despite the masterful generalship of Fred-erick the Great the combined forces of France Austria and Russia hadgradually worn down the Prussian army in six years of constant warfare Aus-trian armies had marched deep into Saxony and Silesia and the Russians hadeven sacked Berlin Frederickrsquos defeat appeared imminent and the enemy co-alition intended to partition Prussia to reduce it to the status of a middle Ger-man state no more powerful than Bavaria or Saxony And then a miracleoccurred The Prusso-phobic Czarina Elizabeth unexpectedly died only to besucceeded by her son Peter who idolized the soldier-king Immediately Petermade peace with Frederick and ordered home the Russian armies This rever-sal paralyzed the French and Austrians and allowed Frederick to rally hisforces Although Peter was soon ousted by his wife Catherine the allied ar-mies never regained their advantage In the end Frederick held them off andkept Prussia intact1

Frederickrsquos triumph in the Seven Yearsrsquo War was essential to Prussiarsquos even-tual unication of Germany and all that followed from it Conceiving of Euro-pean history today without this victory is impossible It is equally impossibleto conceive of Prussian victory in 1763 without the death of Elizabeth and Pe-terrsquos adoration of Frederick In the words of Christopher Duffy ldquoIt is curious toreect that if one lady had lived for a very few weeks longer historians wouldby now have analyzed in most convincing detail the reasons for a collapse aslsquoinevitablersquo as that which overtook the Sweden of Charles XIIrdquo2 In short had itnot been for the idiosyncrasies of one man and one woman European historywould look very very different

Let Us Now PraiseGreat Men

Daniel L Byman andKenneth M Pollack

Bringing the Statesman Back In

International Security Vol 25 No 4 (Spring 2001) pp 107ndash146copy 2001 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

107

Daniel L Byman is the Research Director of RANDrsquos Center for Middle East Public Policy Kenneth MPollack is a Senior Research Professor at the National Defense University

The authors would like to thank Nora Bensahel Daniel Markey Robert Mullins Gideon Rose Ste-phen Peter Rosen Richard Samuels Jeremy Shapiro Abram Shulsky Benjamin Valentino StephenVan Evera an anonymous reviewer and the members of the John M Olin seminar series at Har-vard University for their helpful comments on previous versions of this work Comments are wel-come at bymanrandorg and kenpollackerolscom

1 Christopher Duffy Frederick the Great A Military Life (New York Routledge 1985) pp 226ndash243and Dennis E Showalter The Wars of Frederick the Great (London Longman 1996) pp 309ndash3202 Duffy Frederick the Great p 233

The story of Prussiarsquos reprieve is admittedly an extreme example of the rolethat individuals play in international relations but such inuence is by nomeans exceptionalmdashfar from it How can we explain twentieth-century historywithout reference to Adolf Hitler Joseph Stalin Vladimir Lenin Franklin Roo-sevelt Winston Churchill Mahatma Gandhi or Mao Zedong Nor would anypolicymaker in any capital try to explain the world today without recourse tothe personal goals and beliefs of Bill Clinton Vladimir Putin Jiang Zemin andSaddam Hussein among others Indeed the policymaking community inWashington takes it as an article of faith that who is the prime minister ofGreat Britain the chancellor of Germany or the king of Saudi Arabia has realrepercussions for the United States and the rest of the world As HenryKissinger remarked ldquoAs a professor I tended to think of history as run by im-personal forces But when you see it in practice you see the difference person-alities makerdquo3

For these reasons the tendency of scholars to ignore the role of personalitiesin international relations is particularly troubling Most political scientistswhen pressed will admit to the importance of personal idiosyncrasies and hu-man error in determining the course of international relations Most will fur-ther concede that because they do not attempt to explain the roles of eitherhuman error or personality in international relations they cannot explain all ofthe variance in the affairs of nations

However political scientists most frequently have argued that they must setaside both fortuna and virtuacute and instead focus only on impersonal forces as thecauses of international events Their reasons for doing so fall under three ru-brics First many political scientists contend that individuals ultimately do notmatter or at least they count for little in the major events that shape interna-tional politics Instead they argue that the roar of the anarchic system domes-tic politics and institutional dynamics drown out the small voices ofindividual leaders Second other political scientists posit that although indi-viduals may matter from time to time their inuence does not lend itself to thegeneralizations that political scientists seek Simply put individuals are too in-dividualistic Third several leading international relations theorists haveraised a number of specic objections that they argue render the study of indi-viduals theoretically hopeless

We believe that political scientists are simultaneously too modest and too ar-rogant in these claims Too modest because political scientists need not throw

International Security 254 108

3 A background talk with reporters in January 1975 as quoted in Walter Isaacson Kissinger (NewYork Simon and Schuster 1992) p 13

up their hands and believe that they have nothing useful to say about the roleof individuals in international relations The theoretical objections raised overthe years do not stand up under closer examination and should not prevent usfrom mining this rich ore Too arrogant because too many political scientistsimply or assert that the impersonal forces on which they focus their attentionexplain the vast majority of events in international relations In so doing theymarginalize the crucial impact of individuals on war and diplomacy and ne-glect the extent to which social science can tease out useful generalizations re-garding the role played by individuals

It is time to rescue men and women as individuals from the oblivionto which political scientists have consigned them This article is not intendedas a comprehensive account of the importance of individualsmdashsuch aneffort would require the work of many lifetimesmdashbut it is intended to ques-tion scholarsrsquo current assumptions about international politics and showthe plausibility of analyzing international relations by focusing on the role ofindividuals

What is the impact of individuals on international relations What aspects ofstate behavior do they affect Under what conditions are they inuentialThese are the questions this article seeks to answer We contend that the goalsabilities and foibles of individuals are crucial to the intentions capabilitiesand strategies of a state Indeed individuals not only affect the actions of theirown states but also shape the reactions of other nations which must respondto the aspirations abilities and aggressiveness of foreign leaders Of courseindividuals matter more to international relations under certain circumstancesIndividual personalities take on added signicance when power is concen-trated in the hands of a leader when institutions are in conict or in times ofgreat change Individuals also shape many of the drivers identied by othertheorists such as the balance of power domestic opinion and bureaucraticpolitics These paradigms suffer when individuals are ignored

This article has four parts We rst rebut the specic theoretical argu-ments denigrating the utility of theories of the impact of individuals on inter-national relations We then counter the argument that individuals do nothave a signicant impact on international events by examining ve historicalcases that show that the role of individuals was crucial to the outcome ofeach We next refute the argument that it is impossible to generate hypo-theses regarding the role of individuals by teasing out plausible testable hy-potheses from the cases in the previous section We conclude by notinghow the study of individuals enriches our understanding of international rela-tions

Let Us Now Praise Great Men 109

Rebutting the Theoretical Objections

The study of individuals has not been attacked so much as ignored by interna-tional relations theorists This is not to say that no work has been done on thistopic At least since the time of Aristotle scholars have tried to explain politicsin terms of individual behavior Indeed classical realist thinkers such as Thucy-dides Niccolograve Machiavelli and Hans Morgenthau all explicitly acknowledgethe impact of individual personalities on international relations Since thenhowever work on individuals in political science has generally been left topsychologists historians and area studies specialists4 These scholars haveproduced many excellent studies on the importance of individuals but theyhave not treated the subject in a systematic fashion that would help answer thegeneral questions of when and how individuals affect international relationsThese works provide a foundation on which to build but as they are they re-main incomplete5


4 Other useful work for understanding the role of individuals in international relations comesfrom historians and area studies experts Fred I Greenstein has published an exemplary workdemonstrating how the personality traits of postwar presidents have shaped US foreign policySee Greenstein The Presidential Difference Leadership Style from FDR to Clinton (New York FreePress 2000) See also James M Goldgeier Leadership Style and Soviet Foreign Policy Stalin Khrush-chev Brezhnev Gorbachev (Baltimore Md Johns Hopkins University Press 1994) and DavidShambaugh ed Deng Xiaoping Portrait of a Chinese Statesman (New York Oxford University Press1994) Daniel Markey has written an interesting study of how individualsrsquo desire for prestige af-fects international relations Markey ldquoThe Prestige Motive in International Relationsrdquo PhD dis-sertation Princeton University 20005 Political psychologists and political scientists drawing on their insights also devote consider-able attention to the biases and perceptions that may shape human behavior paying particular at-tention to the behavior of leaders and elites in general See Robert Jervis Perception andMisperception in International Politics (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1976) Three valu-able examples of works on leaders and perceptions are Yuen Foong Khong Analogies at War(Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1992) Paul Hart Eric K Stern and Bengt Sundeliuseds Beyond Groupthink Political Group Dynamics and Foreign Policy-making (Ann Arbor Universityof Michigan Press 1997) and Alexander L George Presidential Decisionmaking in Foreign Policy TheEffective Use of Information and Advice (Boulder Colo Westview 1980) For an interesting workcomparing the role of new leaders on the formulation of public policy see Valerie Bunce Do NewLeaders Make a Difference (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1981) A good summary ofliterature on leadership can be found in Robert J House and Mary L Baetz ldquoLeadership SomeEmpirical Generalizations and New Research Directionsrdquo in LL Cummings and Barry M Staweds Leadership Participation and Group Behavior (Greenwich Conn JAI Press 1990) pp 1ndash84Other important works include Harold D Lasswell The Analysis of Political Behaviour An EmpiricalApproach (London Kegan Paul 1947) Alexander L George and Julliette L George Woodrow Wil-son and Colonel House A Personality Study (New York Dover 1964) and Harold D Lasswell andDaniel Lerner eds World Revolutionary Elites Studies in Coercive Ideological Movements (CambridgeMass MIT Press 1965) For a sample of more recent interesting works on individual decision-making see Scott Plous The Psychology of Judgment and Decision Making (New York McGraw-Hill1993) and Herbert C Kelman International Behavior A Social-Psychological Analysis (New YorkHolt Rinehart and Winston 1965) For an interesting assessment of different views of the individ-

One exception to political scientistsrsquo neglect of individuals is KennethWaltzrsquos seminal work Man the State and War Waltz famously outlines threelevels of analysis calling them ldquoimagesrdquo of international relations In the rstimage the behavior of nations springs from the behavior of individu-als Waltzrsquos second image considers the behavior of nations to be driven bytheir internal organization positing that different kinds of governments andsocial structures produce different kinds of international behavior Finally thethird image contends that the behavior of nations is driven by their relative po-sitionmdashin terms of both power and geographymdashin an anarchic internationalsystem6

Although Waltz is unusual in even considering the rst image he nonethe-less rejects it Waltz and those following in his tradition believe that the thirdimage best explains international relationsmdashor the most important elements ofit such as the causes of great power wars and alliances7 Champions of thethird image have many critics Nevertheless even scholars who challengeWaltzrsquos focus on the third image generally do so in the name of second-imagefactors such as bureaucracy culture and political systems Thus even Waltzrsquoscritics neglect the rst image8

objection 1 the first image cannot provide an adequate explanationfor international relations because human nature is a constantwhereas international relations varyIn Man the State and War Waltz argues that if human nature is constant thebehavior of nationsmdashthe example he employs is war makingmdashshould also be


ual throughout history see Janet Coleman ed The Individual in Political Theory and Practice (NewYork Oxford University Press 1996) For works that assess when personality factors should be ex-amined to explain political outcomes see Fred I Greenstein Personality and Politics (Chicago Mark-ham 1969) Fred I Greenstein ldquoThe Impact of Personality on Politics An Attempt to Clear Awaythe Underbrushrdquo American Political Science Review Vol 61 No 3 (September 1967) pp 629ndash641Margaret Hermann ldquoWhen Leader Personality Will Affect Foreign Policy Some Propositionsrdquo inJames Rosenau ed In Search of Global Patterns (New York Free Press 1976) pp 326ndash333 and Mar-garet Hermann ldquoLeaders and Foreign Policy Decision-Makingrdquo in Dan Caldwell and Timothy JMcKeown eds Diplomacy Force and Leadership (Boulder Colo Westview 1993) pp 77ndash946 Kenneth N Waltz Man the State and War (New York Columbia University Press 1959) espe-cially pp 16 80ndash81 159ndash1657 In his words only a theory drawn from the third image can offer a ldquoa nal explanation becauseit does not hinge on accidental causesmdashirrationalities in men defects in statesrdquo Ibid pp 231ndash232See also pp 224ndash238 and Kenneth N Waltz Theory of International Politics (New York McGraw-Hill 1979) pp 60ndash688 For example the world system domestic politics (ldquosecond imagerdquo) and other mainstream ap-proaches also slight the importance of individuals See Immanuel Wallerstein The Modern World-System I (New York Academic Press 1974) and Immanuel Wallerstein The Politics of the WorldEconomy (Cambridge Cambridge University Press 1984) For an example of the second image as

constant That is nations should always be at war Because nations are not al-ways at war Waltz claims that human nature cannot possibly explain why na-tions go to war9 On this point Waltz is simply mistaken Human nature is nota constant it is a variable By dening the rst image solely in terms of an inef-fable quality shared among all humans Waltz has constructed a straw manNot all men and women are entirely evil aggressive greedy or vainglorious Afew are but a few others are wholly generous humble and restrained Thevast majority of humans however possess a mix of traits Thus ldquohuman na-turerdquo entails a tremendous range of variance Properly understood the rstimage should generate theories derived from the distribution of these traitsacross the population and their impact on international relations

As soon as one recognizes that personalities vary widely Waltzrsquos criticism ofthe rst image becomes unconvincing Because personalities differ it is en-tirely possible that variance in the traits of individuals explains differences ininternational relations For instance although not all wars have been caused byaggressive risk-tolerant greedy or vainglorious leaders those leaders whodid manifest these traits regularly went to warmdashoften for seemingly absurdreasons and often more than once Indeed leaders most notorious for thesetraits such as Louis XIV Peter the Great Frederick the Great NapoleonBonaparte Napoleon III Wilhelm II Benito Mussolini and Hitler have fo-mented some of the greatest conicts in modern European history10

objection 2 theories focused on the in uence of individuals ininternational relations cannot be parsimoniousIn his book Theory of International Politics Waltz claims that parsimony must bean important criterion for judging the value of a theory11 He argues that the


related to democracies see Michael Doyle ldquoLiberalism and World Politicsrdquo American Political Sci-ence Review Vol 80 No 4 (December 1986) pp 1151ndash11699 Waltz Man the State and War pp 27ndash30 As an example on page 28 he claims that human na-ture cannot explain the outbreak of war in 1914 because the same human nature that conceivedWorld War I must have caused peace in for example 191010 We recognize a likely selection bias in this claim It may be that there were leaders who didpossess these traits but did not go to war and therefore the fact that they did possess these traitswas not well known beyond their intimates and perhaps their biographers We believe that a morerigorous analysis of this claim is warranted11 Waltz Theory of International Politics especially pp 19ndash20 We note that Waltz has retreatedfrom his earlier defense of parsimony in his more recent work For instance in 1997 he observedthat ldquothe explanatory power of a theory not its parsimony is the criterion of a theoryrsquos successrdquoKenneth N Waltz ldquoInternational Politics Is Not Foreign Policyrdquo Security Studies Vol 6 No 1 (Au-tumn 1996) p 57

more closely a model approximates reality the more variables it will includetherefore a realistic theory will be less parsimonious and thus less useful12

First we contend that it is possible to derive elegant theories from the rst im-agemdasha challenge we answer in the third section of this article Of greater rele-vance however we dismiss the contention that parsimony is somehow moreimportant than accuracy when deriving political science theory The eld of in-ternational relations is an effort to explain the interaction of states and ulti-mately predict their behavior Consequently realism (with a small ldquoRrdquo) is thebest and perhaps the only determinant of the utility of a theory How welldoes the theory actually explain behavior and allow us to predict future ac-tions Creating parsimonious models may be useful for illustrative or heuristicpurposes but this is at best several steps removed from the actual goals of thediscipline A massive model with hundreds of variables that took a month torun but predicted international behavior perfectly would be far more useful byany measure than a model with only a single variable that could illustrate onlyoccasional tendencies and only in badly underspecied circumstances13

objection 3 state intentions are not germane to theories ofinternational relationsMany proponents of the third image acknowledge that individual leaders of-ten have a heavy inuence on state goals14 Because they believe that state in-tentions are not necessary to the construction of a theory of internationalpolitics however any impact that individual personalities may have in thissphere is likewise irrelevant Instead they claim that all states are functionallyequivalent and therefore their intentions are irrelevant because they all havethe same primary or ldquodominantrdquo goal namely their own security15 Even themost benign state is not certain how other states will act either now or in thefuture and thus must take steps to defend itself16


12 Waltz Theory of International Politics pp 19ndash20 61ndash6813 This is not to suggest that parsimony is not desirable Undoubtedly a parsimonious theory isbetter than a complicated theory all other things being equal When all other things are not equalas is usually the case we prefer an accurate complexity over an inaccurate parsimony14 In his defense Waltz himself recognizes this See for example Waltz Man the State and Warp 21815 Again the best statement of these views is Waltz Theory of International Politics pp 91ndash101and Kenneth N Waltz ldquoEvaluating Theoriesrdquo American Political Science Review Vol 91 No 4 (De-cember 1997) p 91516 The denitive expression of this is Robert Jervis ldquoCooperation under the Security DilemmardquoWorld Politics Vol 30 No 2 (January 1978) p 168 Joseph M Grieco argues that cooperation will

The assertion about the essential irrelevance of actor preferences is empiri-cally weak and (again demonstrating the danger of overly parsimonious mod-els) analytically misleading For example Stephen Waltrsquos work on allianceformation demonstrates that by omitting state intentions Waltzrsquos argumentthat alliance formation is based purely on the distribution of power poorly pre-dicts actual alliance patterns17 Other scholars have established the importanceof the distinction between ldquostatus quordquo statesmdashthose nations content with thestate of affairs as they aremdashand ldquorevisionistrdquo statesmdashthose unhappy with thecurrent state of affairs and willing to change it Revisionist states want moreterritory inuence prestige or other objectives that are not always directly re-lated to their security They may go to war or otherwise disrupt the interna-tional system even when they are secure At times they may even jeopardizetheir security to pursue these aims18 On the other hand status quo states areable to assure potential rivals of their benign intentionsmdashthus preventing un-certainty and misunderstanding from escalating into war This allows statusquo states to take steps such as keeping their defense budgets low eventhough this would endanger their security in a world that followed structuralrealist precepts In short state intentions are a critical factor in international re-lations and to the extent that individual personalities shape those intentionsthey too must be considered important

Individuals Matter Lessons from History

Individuals play a central role in shaping international relations including thecauses of war alliance patterns and other areas that international relationsscholars consider important To demonstrate this claimmdashand to provide thehistorical foundation on which we build testable hypotheses in the next sec-tionmdashwe draw on ve cases (1) Germany under Hitler (2) the contrasting im-pact of Chancellor Otto von Bismarck and Kaiser Wilhelm II on Europeanpolitics (3) France under Napoleon Bonaparte (4) a comparison of Iraq under


fail as a result of these dynamics See Grieco Cooperation among Nations (Ithaca NY Cornell Uni-versity Press 1990) p 4517 Stephen M Walt The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 1987)18 Randall L Schweller ldquoBandwagoning for Prot Bringing the Revisionist State Back Inrdquo Inter-national SecurityVol 19 No 1 (Summer 1994) pp 72ndash107 Randall L Schweller ldquoNeorealismrsquos Sta-tus Quo Bias What Security Dilemmardquo Security Studies Vol 5 No 3 (Spring 1996) pp 90ndash121and Arnold Wolfers ldquoThe Balance of Power in Theory and Practicerdquo in Wolfers Discord and Collab-oration Essays on International Politics (Baltimore Md Johns Hopkins Press 1962) especiallyp 124

Saddam Hussein and Syria under Haz al-Asad and (5) the behavior of Iran inits war with Iraq under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini

We chose these cases according to several criteria They demonstrate the im-portance of individuals regardless of political system period of time or regionof the world They highlight particular aspects of the impact of individualleaders on international relations Each case also suggests theories derivedfrom the rst image related to some of the most fundamental questions of in-ternational relations theory of the last thirty years the causes of war the for-mation of alliances and the likelihood of cooperation under anarchy to nameonly a few19

adolf hitlerThe personal characteristics and idiosyncrasies of Adolf Hitler led to thedeaths of millions and changed the history of the world Hitlerrsquos unique pa-thologies were the single most important factor in causing both World War IIin Europe (at least in the sense of the continent-wide total war that ensued)and Germanyrsquos eventual defeat Hitler deed both domestic opposition andsystemic logic in igniting World War II leading Germany to astonishing victo-ries visiting unimaginable misery on the world and then causing the collapseof the empire he had built Understanding international relations during the1930s and 1940s is impossible without grasping the impact of Hitler himself

Germany after World War I was clearly a revisionist state but Hitlerrsquos ambi-tions far exceeded those of the people he led The German people detested theterms of the Treaty of Versailles Most believed that Germany should rearm re-gain its pre-Versailles territory in the east and demand integration with Aus-tria and the German-populated Sudetenland20 However though revisionismwas the Zeitgeist in interwar Germany European hegemony and global domi-nation were not The vast majority of Germans had lost any inclination towardmilitary expansion after living through the horrors of World War I Although


19 A caveat is in order regarding our case selection This article does not seek to test rst-imagetheories of international relations Instead it seeks to generate testable hypotheses to demonstratethat the rst image is a valid line of inquiry for international relations scholars Consequently wehave chosen ldquoeasyrdquo casesmdashcases in which the individualrsquos inuence is self-evident even to thepoint of obviousnessmdashrather than ldquohardrdquo cases or a random sample20 Most Germans had accepted the loss of Alsace-Lorraine because they recognized that theseterritories could not be recovered without ghting a major war with France Gordon A Craig Ger-many 1866ndash1945 (New York Oxford University Press 1978) p 674 Klaus Hildebrand The ForeignPolicy of the Third Reich trans Anthony Fothergill (Berkeley University of California Press 1973)pp 29ndash37 and Donald Kagan On the Origins of War and the Preservation of Peace (New YorkDoubleday 1995) pp 309ndash310

many Germans wanted to revise the Treaty of Versailles few were willing towage another major war to do so21 Indeed on September 27 1938 when Hit-ler mobilized the German army to attack Czechoslovakia the Berlin crowdsturned their backs on the German troops marching through the streets of thecapital22

Nor were most German elites sympathetic to Hitlerrsquos aspirations Even mostof the mainstream nationalist parties and the army high commandmdashamongthe most bellicose groups in Germanymdashwanted only to restore their country toits pre-1914 status Although they were probably more willing than the aver-age German to use force to achieve these goals the great majority were equallychary of another major war and had no aspirations to continental mastery23

On the uniqueness of Hitlerrsquos aspirations Gordon Craig has written ldquoAdolfHitler was sui generis a force without a real historical past dedicated to theacquisition of power for his own gratication and to the destruction of a peo-ple whose existence was an offence to him and whose annihilation would behis crowning triumph Both the grandiose barbarism of his political vision andthe moral emptiness of his character make it impossible to compare him in anymeaningful way with any other German leader He stands alonerdquo24


21 KaganOn the Origins of War pp 328 403 Kenneth Macksey From Triumph to Disaster The FatalFlaws of German Generalship from Moltke to Guderian (London Greenhill 1996) pp 72ndash75 Ernest RMay Strange Victory Hitlerrsquos Conquest of France (New York Hill and Wang 2000) pp 15ndash110 Rich-ard Overy Why the Allies Won (New York WW Norton 1995) pp 9ndash10 298ndash305 Richard Overywith Andrew Wheatcroft The Road to War rev and updated ed (London Penguin 1999) p 41AJP Taylor The Origins of the Second World War (New York Atheneum 1983) pp 58ndash59 DonaldCameron Watt How War Came The Immediate Origins of the Second World War 1938ndash1939 (NewYork Pantheon 1989) pp 30 33 38ndash39 105 and Gordon Wright The Ordeal of Total War 1939ndash1945(New York Harper Torchbooks 1968) p 7 We have purposely included citations from Taylor notdespite but because of his apologies for Hitler to demonstrate the strength of our arguments22 Alan Bullock Hitler A Study in Tyranny abridged ed (New York Harper Perennial 1991)p 26823 Ian Kershaw provides the denitive contemporary assessment of how Hitler rsquos foreign policydiverged from the revisionist aspirations of other German elites in Kershaw ldquoNazi Foreign PolicyHitler rsquos lsquoProgrammersquo or lsquoExpansion without Objectrsquordquo reprinted in Patrick Finney ed Origins ofthe Second World War (London Arnold 1997) pp 129ndash135 See also Bullock Hitler A Study in Tyr-anny pp 176 233ndash240 258ndash259 268 Craig Germany pp 679 693 697ndash699 Hildebrand The ForeignPolicy of the Third Reich pp 24ndash37 Kagan On the Origins of War p 339 Macksey From Triumph toDisaster May Strange Victory pp 15ndash110 215ndash232 Overy with Wheatcroft Road to War pp 40ndash4148ndash49 53 71 Wright Ordeal of Total War p 7 Watt How War Came pp 104ndash105 and CorelliBarnett ed Hitlerrsquos Generals (New York QuillWilliam Morrow 1989)24 CraigGermany p 543 Craigrsquos view is the consensus among contemporary historians Both theTaylorFischer revisionist school (Hitler was no different from other German statesmen) and thefunctionalist school (Nazi foreign policy stemmed from domestic pressures) have been effectivelydiscredited See Patrick Finney ldquoIntroduction History Writing and the Origins of the SecondWorld Warrdquo and ldquoCommentaryrdquo in Finney Origins of the Second World War pp 4ndash7 41ndash42 the re-sponse by Richard Overy to Tim Mason reprinted in ldquoDebate Germany lsquoDomestic Crisisrsquo andWar in 1939rdquo in ibid pp 99ndash109 and especially Kershaw ldquoNazi Foreign Policyrdquo pp 121ndash144

For their part Britain and France did not want war with Germany and wereprepared to make considerable sacrices (in terms of both their own relativesecurity and other peoplersquos territory) to appease Berlin Public opinion in Brit-ain during the interwar years was sympathetic to Germany believing that theterms of the peace had been overly harsh Moreover the possibility of a WorldWar Indashlike bloodbath terried Britain and London was willing to write off con-siderable portions of Eastern Europe to avert another one25 Although theFrench were less sympathetic to German aspirations they were equally afraidof another continental war and thus were willing to give in to at least someGerman demands for revisions to the Versailles treaty including demands forterritory in the east In addition to the extent that France contemplated usingmilitary force against Germany it was unwilling to do so without Britainrsquos fullparticipation26 For these reasons the French and British acquiesced to Germanrearmament after 1933 the remilitarization of the Rhineland the Anschlusswith Austria and the occupation of Sudeten Czechoslovakia Moreover the ev-idence indicates that Britain and France would not have gone to war to preventGerman reoccupation of the Polish corridor27 In short Britain and France were


25 Sidney Aster ldquolsquoGuilty Menrsquo The Case of Neville Chamberlainrdquo in Finney Origins of the SecondWorld War pp 62ndash64 66ndash70 Bullock Hitler A Study in Tyranny pp 269 293 David Dilks ldquolsquoWeMust Hope for the Best and Prepare for the Worstrsquo The Prime Minister the Cabinet and HitlerrsquosGermany 1937ndash1939rdquo in Finney Origins of the Second World War pp 52ndash53 Finney ldquoIntroductionrdquopp 13ndash16 Kagan On the Origins of War pp 290ndash307 340ndash342 May Strange Victory pp 169ndash212Overy with Wheatcroft Road to War pp 52 73ndash120 RAC Parker ldquoAlternatives to Appeasementrdquoin Finney Origins of the Second World War pp 211ndash220 Taylor Origins of the Second World War ppxindashxii 34 45ndash46 58 68 74ndash77 94ndash95 99ndash100 135ndash136 160 165 189 227ndash228 and Watt How WarCame pp 27ndash29 83ndash84 168 385ndash38626 Anthony Adamthwaite ldquoFrance and the Coming of Warrdquo in Finney Origins of the Second WorldWar pp 78ndash90 KaganOn the Origins of War pp 296ndash298 May Strange Victory pp 6 113ndash160 Ste-phen A Schuker ldquoFrance and the Remilitarization of the Rhinelandrdquo in Finney Origins of the Sec-ond World War pp 224ndash227 238ndash239 Taylor Origins of the Second World War pp 73ndash76 91 98ndash100155 188 and Wright Ordeal of Total War p 8 Taylor concludes that ultimately ldquothe French weretherefore willing to surrender everything [to Germany] except their own securityrdquo Taylor Originsof the Second World War p 188 See also Finney ldquoIntroductionrdquo pp 17ndash2027 Beginning at Locarno in 1925 British and French statesmen repeatedly made clear that theywould not go to war over the Polish corridor per se Right up to the German invasion they contin-ued to believe that the ldquoquestion of Danzigrdquo should not be a casus bellimdashand encouraged Polishconcessions to Germany on Danzig in hope of forestalling a war The British and French guaran-tees to Poland in 1939 had committed the Allies to ght for Polish independence but neither Lon-don nor Paris had guaranteed every inch of Polish territory specically meaning Danzig Theirdecision to go to war to defend Poland in September 1939 was not based on any change of heart re-garding Danzig Rather it was a reaction to Germanyrsquos invasion of all of Poland demonstratingthat Hitler was determined to make Germany the hegemon of Europe under his leadership SeeBullock Hitler A Study in Tyranny p 293 Anna M Cienciala ldquoPoland in British and French Policy1939 Determination to Fightmdashor Avoid Warrdquo in Finney Origins of the Second World War pp 414ndash415 417ndash426 428ndash429 Dilks ldquolsquoWe Must Hope for the Best and Prepare for the Worstrsquordquo p 53Kagan On the Origins of War p 311 May Strange Victory pp 198ndash212 Overy with Wheatcroft

willing to swallow hard and accept virtually any German demandsmdashshort ofgranting Berlin a hegemonic position in Europe or ceding their own territorymdashas long as they believed that by doing so they could avert a war ConsequentlyGermany should have been able to achieve the moderate revisionist goals es-poused by most Germans without sparking a general European war Only Hit-ler rsquos personal ambitions made such a conict unavoidable

Thus World War II at least in the sense of the global conagration that even-tually ignited was caused by the unique aspirations of Adolf Hitler not by thewidespread German desire to revise the order established at Versailles in 1918The outbreak of World War II was prompted by the German invasion of Po-landmdasha country that few Germans were willing to risk war with Britain andFrance to remove from the map of Europe Moreover the British and Frenchdid not go to war for Polish sovereignty per se but only because they saw theGerman attack on Poland (and the earlier occupation of Bohemia in violationof the 1938 Munich agreement) as incontrovertible proof that Hitler would notbe satised with modest revisions of the postwar peace but instead was deter-mined to make himself master of all Europe28

Hitlerrsquos personal role in the course of world politics did not end with thestart of war between Germany and the Western Allies Instead he relentlesslypushed Germany down the road to annihilation Every step of the way the de-cision to act was effectively Hitlerrsquos alone taken despite the opposition ofwhatever independent voices still existed Indeed the army high commandconsistently opposed Hitlerrsquos foreign adventures until it was ultimately bat-tered into submission Hitler also made sure that all other opposing voiceswere stilled or subverted Thus the opposition parties the foreign ministryand ultimately even the army were all brought under his control leaving Ger-man decisionmaking entirely in his hands29


Road to War pp 14ndash17 113 119 Taylor Origins of the Second World War pp 38 54 59ndash60 194ndash199207ndash212 213ndash221 238 249ndash252 264ndash265 270ndash273 and Watt How War Came pp 59 69 186 320ndash321 In Taylorrsquos words during the August 1939 crisis ldquo[Britain France and Italy] were convincedthat Danzig was not worth a war all three were agreed that it should return to Germany with safe-guards for Polish traderdquo Taylor Origins of the Second World War p 25228 Adamthwaite ldquoFrance and the Coming of Warrdquo pp 84ndash87 Aster ldquolsquoGuilty Menrsquordquo pp 64ndash6572ndash73 Cienciala ldquoPoland in British and French Policyrdquo pp 418ndash421 Dilks ldquolsquoWe Must Hope for theBest and Prepare for the Worstrsquordquo p 53 Kagan On the Origins of War p 410 May Strange Victorypp 291ndash308 OveryWhy the Allies Won p 9 Overy with Wheatcroft Road to War pp 15ndash17 TaylorOrigins of the Second World War pp 205ndash214 249ndash252 264ndash265 270ndash273 and Watt How War Camepp 168ndash169 186 385ndash386 509ndash51029 Bullock Hitler A Study in Tyranny pp 233ndash240 258ndash259 268 321ndash325 Kershaw ldquoNazi ForeignPolicyrdquo pp 121ndash144 and Watt How War Came pp 20ndash21 24ndash25 255 441 In particular on the

Hitlerrsquos decision to invade France in 1940 propelled Germany and the worldfurther down the road to total war Given the terror of the British and French ofbecoming involved in another major war with Germany it is not clear whatthey would have done had Germany not attacked France The stalemate thatprevailed along the Rhine from October 1939 to May 1940 suggests that theymight ultimately have acceded to Germanyrsquos conquest of Poland30 Hitlerhowever was determined to destroy France to remove it as an obstacle to hisplans for expansion in the east31 Once again he was opposed by the seniorarmy leadership who believed that German troops would be unlikely toachieve the same success against the French army then considered the mostpowerful force on the continent32 But Hitler insisted on attacking and turningldquophony warrdquo into total war

Hitlerrsquos next and most self-destructive step was attacking Russia Onceagain this was essentially his idea alone taken over the opposition of his gen-erals (including even his most pliant lackeys such as Hermann Goumlring Wil-helm Keitel and Alfred Jodl) who unanimously believed that Germanyshould not attack Russiamdashand certainly not until Britain had sued for peace33

The attack on Russia marked the beginning of the end for Hitlerrsquos Reich Al-though there is still much debate over whether Germany could have defeatedRussia had the German generals been given a free hand to ght the war as they


armyrsquos efforts to oppose Hitlerrsquos foreign policies and his ultimately successful efforts to subvertthe ofcer corps see Barnett Hitlerrsquos Generals Matthew Cooper The German Army 1933ndash1945(Lanham Md Scarborough House 1990) Macksey From Triumph to Disaster pp 65 79ndash80 132ndash134 and Overy Why the Allies Won pp 23ndash2430 Even after declaring war in September 1939 there was no discussion in Paris of an offensiveagainst Germany Overy with Wheatcroft Road to War p 15 May Strange Victory pp 271ndash336AJP Taylor Bismarck TheMan and the Statesman (New York Vintage 1967) pp 264ndash266 and WattHow War Came pp 330ndash332 The German general staff was also convinced that the French and Brit-ish would not take the offensive and would eventually accede to the German conquests if Berlinrefrained from attacking France See Cooper The German Army p 18031 Bullock Hitler A Study in Tyranny pp 204 296 319 Craig Germany p 677 Hildebrand ldquoTheForeign Policy of the Third Reichrdquo p 88 Eberhard Jaumlckel Hitlerrsquos World View (Cambridge MassHarvard University Press 1982) pp 37ndash38 Taylor Bismarck pp 131ndash132 Wright Ordeal of TotalWar p 6 and Watt How War Came pp 42ndash4332 On German army opposition to the invasion of France see Bullock Hitler A Study in Tyrannypp 233 321ndash325 Cooper The German Army pp 178ndash182 Craig Germany pp 716ndash717 MackseyFrom Triumph to Disaster pp 79ndash80 and May Strange Victory pp 15ndash27 Indeed Cooper notes thateven KeitelmdashHitler rsquos worst lackey among the generalsmdashobjected to the attack on France33 Cooper The German Army pp 246ndash258 286 Kenneth Macksey ldquoGuderianrdquo in Barnett HitlerrsquosGenerals pp 451ndash452 Macksey From Triumph to Disaster pp 132ndash134 and Bernd Wegner ldquoTheRoad to Defeat The German Campaigns in Russia 1941ndash1943rdquo in John Gooch ed Decisive Cam-paigns of the Second World War (London Frank Cass 1990) pp 107ndash108 There were some Germangenerals including the chief of staff who were not opposed to the idea of attacking Russia in theabstract but only after the war with Britain had been won See Cooper The German Army pp 252ndash256

wished there is no dissent that it was the Red Army that eventually destroyedthe Wehrmacht and sealed Hitlerrsquos fate

Here as well it is interesting to consider what might have happened hadGermany not attacked Russia in 1941 which would likely have been the case(given the unanimous opposition of the general staff) had Hitler not been incharge Even assuming that the United States had joined the war that Decem-ber it is at best unclear whether the Anglo-Saxon powers could have found away to get ashore and defeat the Wehrmacht in Western Europe without theRed Army pinning down two-thirds of the German military34 Against a Ger-man Reich possessing most of the resources of continental Europe a Cold Warbetween Britain and Germany seems the most likely outcome leaving Ger-many the hegemon of Europe

Just as Hitler was the most important cause of World War II and the mostimportant factor in the vast sudden expansion of the German Reich so too washe the most important cause of Germanyrsquos defeat35 As recent work such asRichard Overyrsquos superb analysis of Allied victory makes clear German strate-gic- and operational-level defeats were the decisive factor in the destruction ofthe Wehrmacht Allied material strengthmdashand the growth in the ability of theAllied armed forces to wield that strengthmdashplayed an important role but onlythe German failures at Moscow Stalingrad and Kursk made it possible for theAllies to bring that material strength to bear In each of these instances Hitlerdeserves the lionrsquos share of the blame for defeat36 Even after Hitler lost thesecrucial battles he insisted on retaining command and greatly hastened Alliedvictory by leading superb German armies to defeat after defeat Despite a


34 Accounts of the Normandy invasion such as Overyrsquos superb analysis make clear just howdicey an operation it was and how much harder it would have been if the Wehrmacht had beenable to concentrate its forces in France See Overy Why the Allies Won pp 134ndash17935 In October 1941 Stalin put out diplomatic feelers to see what surrender terms he might getfrom Germany Hitler brushed these entreaties aside because nothing short of the destruction ofthe Soviet state and the enslavement of the Russian people would satisfy his objectives We do notknow what concessions Stalin might have been willing to make but given the military balance atthe time and the German advances up to that point the two sides might have agreed on a settle-ment similar to the 1917 Brest-Litovsk treaty in which Lenin conceded the Ukraine Belarussia andthe Baltic states to Germany If Germany had accepted such terms from Stalin it would haveldquowonrdquo the war Only Hitler could have considered such a victory inadequate See Overy Why theAllies Won pp 14 1936 Cooper The German Army pp 260ndash287 316ndash325 340 423ndash428 437ndash441 456ndash460 MackseyldquoGuderianrdquo pp 452ndash456 Macksey From Triumph to Disaster pp 135ndash136 Martin MiddlebrookldquoPaulusrdquo in Barnett Hitlerrsquos Generals pp 366ndash367 Overy Why the Allies Won pp 2ndash7 67 98ndash100RHS Stol Hitlerrsquos Panzers East World War II Reinterpreted (Norman University of OklahomaPress 1993) 82ndash89 and Wegner ldquoThe Road to Defeatrdquo especially pp 111ndash123

never-ending stream of revisionist work on World War II the evidence andscholarly analysis remains compelling that Adolf Hitlerrsquos ldquogeneralshiprdquo crip-pled the German army and so was the principal cause of Nazi defeat andAllied victory37

Summarizing Hitlerrsquos importance is difcult given the magnitude of hisinuence Hitler determined the intentions of the German state shaping its de-cisions to go to war its choice of enemies and the extent of its ambitions Hit-ler also meddled directly in Germanyrsquos strategy for achieving its goalsmdashinterference that led to the Wehrmachtrsquos defeat and his own undoing Hitlerrsquosaggressiveness and malevolence also inspired a strong anti-German coalitionleading even such anticommunist stalwarts as Winston Churchill to ally withthe Soviet Union

otto von bismarck and wilhelm iiGermanyrsquos Chancellor Otto von Bismarck through sheer force of genius cre-ated a diplomatic structure that kept peace in Europe from 1871 to 1890 KaiserWilhelm II who dismissed Bismarck in 1890 brought Bismarckrsquos architecturecrashing down through sheer force of idiocy The nature of the threat to Ger-many bureaucratic interests and other impersonal factors remained roughlyconstant during the period before and after 1890 Yet Germany veered from be-ing the pillar of Europersquos status quo states to the leader of its revisionist campClearly changes in the balance of power played an important role A compari-son of the two periods however reveals the key role that individuals play inforging and maintaining alliances guiding bureaucracies and paving the roadto war

A brilliant diplomatic tactician Bismarck forged a complex series of alliancesto strengthen Germanyrsquos position as a status quo power and preserve thepeace in Europe Bismarckrsquos alliances were designed to prevent Germany fromfalling victim to a coalition of great powers on both its bordersmdasha German


37 For recent historical work concurring that Hitler rsquos leadership was the most important of arange of factors leading to the defeat of the German army see Paul Adair Hitlerrsquos Greatest DefeatThe Collapse of Army Group Centre June 1944 (London Arms and Armour 1995) especially pp 2366ndash67 84 104 168 Corelli Barnett ldquoIntroductionrdquo in BarnettHitlerrsquos Generals pp 2ndash7 Cooper TheGerman Army especially pp 246 304 316ndash325 400 406 423ndash428 437ndash441 456ndash484 491 510ndash511518 528ndash531 Overy Why the Allies Won pp 67 87ndash88 175 198ndash207 274ndash281 Macksey From Tri-umph to Disaster p 225 Albert Seaton The Russo-German War 1941ndash1945 (Novato Calif Presidio1971) especially pp 113 404 459 529ndash535 Stol Hitlerrsquos Panzers East especially pp 72ndash73Wegner ldquoThe Road to Defeatrdquo pp 105ndash127 and Joachim Wieder and Heinrich Graf von EinsiedelStalingrad Memories and Reassessments trans Helmut Bolger (London Arms and Armour 1993)pp 16ndash22

nightmare later realized in World War I To ease other powersrsquo security con-cerns Bismarck tried to portray Germany as a sated power38 Bismarck alsosought to keep his allies from ghting one another recognizing that Germanycould easily become involved if conict ared Thus he forged alliances withAustria and Russia that were explicitly defensive39 Bismarck also sought tomaintain Britainrsquos goodwill and to placate French opinion on every issue ex-cept Alsace-Lorraine40

Bismarck deed the systemic logic of balancing in forging his coalitions Hesucceeded in crafting alliances despite the growing industrial might of theRuhr and Germanyrsquos evident military prowess as demonstrated by its decisivevictories over Austria in 1866 and France in 1870ndash71 Indeed rather than bal-ance against Berlin other European powers looked to Germany for diplomaticleadership41 When Bismarck left ofce in 1890 France and Britain were com-peting bitterly for colonies in Africa while Russia and England were rivalplayers in the Great Game The idea that these three powers would ally was al-most unthinkable42

By championing the status quo and refusing further expansion in Europe af-ter 1871 Bismarck also deed the wishes of the German people and bureaucra-cies Bismarck as AJP Taylor notes ldquostood outside party or class a solitarygure following a line of his own devisingrdquo43 Bismarck alone restrained Ger-many As one contemporary noted in 1888 ldquoAll the world is really pro-warhere With the almost exclusive exception of His Excellency [Bismarck]who exerts himself to the utmost for the maintenance of peacerdquo44 Germanyrsquosmilitary leadership in particular harbored aggressive goals and repeatedlyconsidered preemptive war against both France and Russia Bismarck killed


38 Kagan On the Origins of War p 10139 For example in the 1887 Reinsurance treaty Germany and Russia promised neutrality if theother engaged in a war against a third country unless Germany attacked France or Russia attackedAustria In other words as long as the countries had defensive goals they would be allied HenryKissinger Diplomacy (New York Simon and Schuster 1994) p 165 Bismarck also used their alli-ance to rein in Austria He repeatedly reminded Vienna of the alliancersquos defensive character andrefused to support it in its Balkan ambitions In 1882 Bismarck brought Italy into its alliance withAustria Kagan On the Origins of War p 10840 Kissinger Diplomacy p 160 To distract Paris Bismarck urged the French to engage in colonialadventures Bismarck also pushed the British and the Austrians to work together to preserve thestatus quo in the Mediterranean The result the ldquoMediterranean agreementrdquo of 1887 led Britain tobecome associated with the Triple Alliance and thus deter Russian and French adventurism CraigGermany p 13141 Craig Germany p 11642 Kissinger Diplomacy p 17143 Taylor Bismarck p 5344 Friedrich von Holstein as quoted in Kagan On the Origins of War p 115 At the time Holsteinworked in the German Foreign Ofce

these ideas Even though most Germans disliked allying with Russia and fa-vored Austriarsquos position on the Eastern Question Bismarck tried to keep closeto Moscow and prevent Vienna from expanding in the Balkans Unlike his suc-cessors he recognized that Germany could not afford problems on both bor-ders and given Francersquos unrelenting hostility Germanyrsquos eastern border hadto be secure45

Indeed critics have faulted Bismarck for devising a strategy so individualdependent that only a diplomatic genius could carry it out Henry Kissingerfor example notes that ldquowhere Bismarck failed was in having doomed his soci-ety to a style of policy which could only have been carried on had a great manemerged in every generationrdquo46 Yet in truth we will never know whether itwas inevitable that Bismarckrsquos successors should have chosen to substitute rig-idity for exibility and bullying for conciliation47 His successors did not fail tomaintain his intricate system they simply never tried

The year 1890 is rightly seen as a turning point in German foreign policy butthis can be explained only by the change in German leadership Germanyrsquos so-cial and bureaucratic structures remained unchanged as did its trade patternsNo great technological leap radically altered the nature of military might or na-tional wealth Of course German power did rise steadily following Germanunication But this gradual rise cannot explain the radical disjuncture be-tween the Bismarckian and Wilhelmine foreign policies Although Germanyrsquospower rose gradually in the few short years after Bismarckrsquos demise Germanywent from a champion of the status quo to its greatest challenger Only thechange in leadership can explain this sudden transformation

Once settled on his throne Kaiser Wilhelm II ousted the aging chancellorand Germany quickly shed Bismarckrsquos policies Bismarckrsquos successors aban-doned his alliance strategy of restraint abruptly ended their alliance with Rus-sia (much to St Petersburgrsquos dismay) and blindly lashed themselves toAustrian policy in the Balkans disregarding its potential to provoke a warwith Russia48 Understanding Wilhelmine Germany is difcult without focus-


45 Taylor Bismarck p 210 During the Congress of Berlin the German parliament urged Bismarckto take a stronger stand vis-agrave-vis the Eastern question Kissinger Diplomacy p 156 Moreover in1887 some leading German military gures urged a preemptive war on Russiamdashan idea Bismarckrejected out of hand46 Kissinger Diplomacy p 13847 Kissinger notes that the removal of Bismarckrsquos genius did not by necessity usher in a policy ofidiocy Ibid p 169 Similarly Craig notes that even when the Germans had solid grounds for theiractions their interventions were often menacing insulting and violent Craig Germany p 24348 Kissinger Diplomacy p 179 and Paul M Kennedy ldquoThe Kaiser and German WeltpolitikReections on Wilhelm IIrsquos Place in the Making of German Foreign Policyrdquo in John CG Rohl andNicolaus Sombart eds Kaiser Wilhelm II New Interpretations (Cambridge Cambridge University

ing on the role of Wilhelm II himself As Paul Kennedy has argued astructuralist approach ldquotells us why Wilhelmine Germany was expansionist ata certain time but it has much less explanatory power when we move on to theequally important questions of what sort of expansionist policies were chosenand why and with what effectsrdquo49

As if alienating St Petersburg was not enough of a blunder the kaiserrsquos pur-suit of a eet in the face of British opposition drove London into anti-Germanalliances and bought Germany little in return The naval program indicateshow individuals shape bureaucratic politics and even domestic economic in-terests Without Kaiser Wilhelm II there would have been no naval programAs Kennedy further observes ldquoFrom the beginning to the end of theFlottenpolitik the kaiser played a critical and fatal rolerdquo50 Only after the navalprogram got into high gear did the kaiser nd a domestic base for it51

Not surprisingly after 1890 the kaiserrsquos misguided policies and alarming be-havior destroyed the protective web of alliances that Bismarck had created anddrove the three former adversariesmdashBritain France and Russiamdashinto a TripleEntente opposing Berlin Most foreign governments and populaces saw Wil-helmrsquos rhetoric as German policy52 Where Bismarck had tried to downplay theimage of German power the kaiser swaggered At the Congress of Berlin in1878 Germany under Bismarck had sought to promote peace among the Euro-pean powers and demonstrate that Germany was a satiated power Wilhelm IIon the other hand was an incorrigible jingoist who rather than reassure othercapitals regularly frightened them by rattling Germanyrsquos saber and demand-ing more ldquorespectrdquo for Berlin True Wilhelmrsquos Weltanschaung was shared bymany of his countrymen However though the kaiser may have been closer tothe norm than Bismarck he was hardly normal Wilhelm showed an uncannyknack for stampeding Germanyrsquos erstwhile allies into anti-German coalitions


Press 1982) p 164 Bismarckrsquos successor as chancellor Leopold von Caprivi confessed that hewanted to simplify foreign policy because he lacked Bismarckrsquos ability to keep eight balls in the airat once Russia to preserve the alliance offered several concessions with regard to Germanyrsquos po-sition with Austria but Caprivi still refused to renew the alliance Kagan On the Origins of Warp 12249 Kennedy ldquoThe Kaiser and German Weltpolitikrdquo p 151 See also Robert GL Waite ldquoLeadershipPathologies The Kaiser and the Fuumlhrer and the Decision for War in 1914 and 1939rdquo in Betty Gladed Psychological Dimensions of War (Newbury Park NJ Sage 1990) pp 143ndash16850 Kennedy ldquoThe Kaiser and German Weltpolitikrdquo p 16251 Blaming German industry as some scholars do does not explain the German decision to builda large eet As Kennedy notes it cannot have mattered to Krupp whether the government spentmillions on infantry divisions or on battleships as the giant arms manufacturer would have sup-plied the guns for either Ibid p 15252 Ibid p 160

while cajoling his ministers into policies that they knew were foolish Just be-fore World War I Chancellor Theobald Bethmann-Hollweg lamented this turnof events ldquoA Turkish policy against Russia Morocco against France eetagainst England all at the same timemdashchallenge everybody get in everyonersquosway and actually in the course of all this weaken nobodyrdquo53 Given thegrowth in German power by the turn of the century even Bismarck might havebeen hard-pressed to avoid an anti-German entente but his successors wors-ened rather than helped the problem

The comparison between Bismarck and Wilhelm II reveals several pointsabout the importance of individuals With the shift from Bismarck toWilhelm II came a change in Germanyrsquos alliances and foreign policy postureThis shift did not reect a new strategic environment or domestic pressuresbut rather the different visions of the individuals at the helm of the stateBismarckian Germany sought to preserve the status quo Wilhelmine Germanysought to become Europersquos hegemon Not only did the choice of alliance part-ners change but so too did the nature of the alliances Under Bismarck Ger-manyrsquos alliances were defensive and intended to restrain its allies underWilhelm II they encouraged Austria and others toward aggression Similarlythe face that Germany presented to the world went from the reassuring peace-maker of the Berlin Congress to the bellicose expansionist of the two Moroccancrises (and numerous others) provoked by Wilhelm II As a result the nationsof Europe banded together to oppose German expansionism The comparisonof Bismarck with Wilhelm II also demonstrates the role that individuals play inthe success or failure of diplomacy Balances of power are created by individu-als not fostered solely by power politics

napoleon bonaparteNapoleon Bonapartersquos impact on nineteenth-century European affairs demon-strates that an individual leader can determine not only the intentions of hisstate but also its capabilities and the reactions of other states Like the person-alities of Hitler and Wilhelm II Napoleonrsquos was a major impetus to war Napo-leonrsquos unique role in shaping European politics in the early nineteenth centuryencompassed more than just his megalomaniacal pursuit of glory howeverNapoleon not only profoundly shaped French intentions he was also a crucialcomponent of French power Napoleonrsquos military skills were so great that asan individual he affected the balance of continental power and so helped force


53 Kurt Riezler Tagebuumlcher Aufsaumltze Dokumente ed Karl Dietrich Erdman (Goumlttingen GermanyVandenhoeck and Ruprecht 1972) p 188 as quoted in Craig Germany p 337

the other states of Europe to move against him as much as to move againstFrance

One cannot blame Napoleon entirely for the wars that bear his name Even ifBonaparte had never taken power there is an argument to be made that revo-lutionary France might still have launched a crusade to liberate the world fromthe chains of absolute monarchy even after the cannonade of Valmy ended thethreat to the new republic in 179254 The philosophy of the revolution de-manded that its blessings of ldquoLiberteacute Egaliteacute et Fraterniteacuterdquo be spread to the be-nighted peoples of the rest of Europe55

But the French Revolution explains only part of the story The War of theFirst Coalition (1792) was the only conict France fought in the age of Napo-leon that was unequivocally defensive Thereafter French motives were in-creasingly aggressive Defending or even spreading the revolution becameless and less relevant and especially after 1807 Francersquos wars were foughtlargely to sate the personal demons of the emperor As early as the War of theThird Coalition (1805) Austria and Russia sought only to compel France todisgorge its conquests since 1791 whereas Napoleon fought this campaign asmuch to establish his control over central Germany as to end any threat fromthe Third Coalition56 Reecting on Napoleonrsquos aggressive nature DavidChandler has conceded that ldquothere can be no denying that many of these at-tacks were in the last analysis provoked by the Emperorrdquo57

Following the Battle of Friedland in 1807 Czar Alexander I and the king ofPrussia Friedrich Wilhelm III signed the Peace of Tilsit leaving Napoleon thehegemon of Europe After Tilsit the tatters of the argument that his wars weredefensive or the result of the unstoppable tide of revolution disintegrate TheFrench people were satised by the glories they had won and grew increas-ingly disenchanted with the costs of Napoleonrsquos constant war making58 PrinceMetternich (then Austriarsquos ambassador to Paris) wrote in December 1808 thatldquoit is no longer the French people who are waging war it is Napoleon alonewho is set on it Even his army no longer wants this conictrdquo59 Despite theast conquests he had achieved at Tilsit however Napoleon was not content In


54 David G Chandler The Campaigns of Napoleon (New York Scribner 1966) pp xxixndashxxx55 Such expansionary behavior is typical of revolutionary states Stephen M Walt Revolution andWar (Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 1996)56 Alistair HorneHow Far from Austerlitz Napoleon 1805ndash1815 (Armonk NY St Martinrsquos 1996)p 69 and Alan Schom Napoleon Bonaparte (New York HarperCollins 1997) p 40057 Chandler Campaigns of Napoleon p xxix58 Horne How Far from Austerlitz pp 296ndash297 and Schom Napoleon Bonaparte pp 305 434 478482ndash49559 Schom Napoleon Bonaparte p 400

the words of Alistair Horne ldquoThe trouble was that for all his new consoli-dated power Napoleon had to go on As he himself had written as a youthlsquoAmbition is never content even on the summit of greatnessrsquordquo60 Thus Napo-leon because of his overweening ambition and ego was as much the cause ofthe wars of 1796ndash1815 as were the forces unleashed by the French RevolutionIndeed Napoleonrsquos ego may have been the most important of the forces un-leashed by the revolution61

One telling commentary on the increasingly idiosyncratic nature of Frenchwar making was the reaction of Charles-Maurice de Talleyrand-Peacuterigord Na-poleonrsquos brilliant but despicable foreign minister As the years passedTalleyrand steadily distanced himself from the emperor because he concludedthat Napoleonrsquos ambitions could lead only to disaster After AusterlitzTalleyrand urged Napoleon to offer Austria generous terms to win it over as anally (precisely the course Bismarck would pursue so successfully sixty-oneyears later) but Napoleonrsquos ego demanded that Austria be humiliated Thepeace he inicted on Vienna ensured the undying enmity of the HapsburgsTalleyrand ardently opposed Napoleonrsquos subsequent invasions of Portugal(1807) Spain (1808) and Russia (1812) as dangerous and unnecessary adven-tures By 1812 Talleyrand had effectively abandoned Napoleon and was work-ing for the czar because he recognized that Napoleonrsquos unquenchable ambitionwould condemn everyone around him to certain doom62

Napoleonrsquos personal ambition was not the only facet of his personality thatmade him a crucial factor in the international relations of his time Napoleonwas also a military genius one of the greatest generals in history At the begin-ning of the nineteenth century France was the wealthiest and the second mostpopulous nation in Europe In addition the manpower furnished by the leveacuteeen masse combined with the military reforms of the late eighteenth centurygave France formidable military power These factors alone suggest that revo-lutionary France would have been a tougher foe for the other European pow-ers to contain than Louis XIVrsquos France Nevertheless Napoleon himself was aldquoforce multiplierrdquo of tremendous value63 The Duke of Wellington remarked


60 Horne How Far from Austerlitz p 23561 See also Felix MarkhamNapoleon (New York Signet New American Library 1963) pp 55ndash5662 Horne How Far from Austerlitz pp 237ndash240 and Schom Napoleon Bonaparte pp 248ndash250 417ndash418 478 Schom also notes that Napoleonrsquos secret police chief Joseph Foucheacute perhaps the thirdmost powerful man in the empire also constantly sought peace despite the emperorrsquos compulsivewar making See Schom Napoleon Bonaparte pp 271ndash27263 Perhaps the best examples were the campaigns of 1813 and 1814 By then Napoleon had lostthe advantage of superior military effectiveness because most of his best-trained combat veteranshad been slaughtered in Spain and Russia while his enemies had reformed their own militaries

that Bonapartersquos presence on the eld of battle was worth 40000 men64 Hisskills as a general were repeatedly showcased in virtuoso performances suchas the Marengo Austerlitz JenaAuerstadt Friedland and Wagram cam-paignsmdashwhere he scored colossal successes although regularly outnumberedby his adversaries When Napoleon was at his best he could achieve almostanything as a general regardless of the forces arrayed against him At hisworst he still inspired his troops to superhuman efforts and terried even hismost able opponents Ultimately Napoleon proved so uniquely important toFrench aggressiveness and power that the other European powers broke withcenturies of tradition and made his removal a principal war aim65

saddam hussein and ha z al-asadAlthough Saddam Hussein and Haz al-Asad faced many similar problems asleaders their preferred solutions were very different They were both Arab dic-tators ruling illegitimate regimes who feared they would be overthrown Theyboth ruled in countries where domestic institutions were feeble and thereforedid not signicantly constrain policymaking They both ruled fairly weak Arabstates bordering considerably stronger neighbors (Israel Turkey and Iran) aswell as weaker ones (Jordan Kuwait Lebanon and Saudi Arabia) They wereboth members of minority groups in the countries they ruled and were bothchallenged by the majority communal groups whom they suppressed inbloodthirsty fashion For both their own continued rule was their preeminentconcern To stay in power they centralized decisionmaking in their ownhands created divided and competing bureaucracies and ruthlessly quashedany individual or group that appeared to be gaining independent power forfear that it could become a rival

Despite these similarities the two leadersmdashand as a result the two statesthey ledmdashhad very different intentions and strategies Although both soughtto aggrandize the power of their respective states (and so their own power)Asadrsquos ambitions were more limited than Saddamrsquos Whatever Asadrsquos early as-pirations to a ldquogreater Syriardquo comprising the entirety of the Levantine littoral


along French lines Likewise his adversaries had adopted their own versions of the leveacutee en masseand so the French were badly outnumbered as well Nevertheless Napoleon nearly won each ofthese campaigns and his conduct of the 1814 campaign in defense of France was nothing short ofastonishing See Chandler Campaigns of Napoleon pp 865ndash100464 MarkhamNapoleon p 141 This in an era when 100000 men was considered a large eld army65 Chandler Campaigns of Napoleon pp 899 947 994 1001 and SchomNapoleon Bonaparte p 414Schom contends that the allies recognized that Napoleon had to be removed because of his belli-cosity and martial skills as early as 1805 after the Battle of Austerlitz Chandler argues that theAustrians were convinced of the necessity of this course only after the Battle of Leipzig in 1813

for the last eighteen years of his life his primary foreign policy goals wereregaining the Golan Heights from Israel institutionalizing Syrian suzeraintyover Lebanon and perhaps regaining the HatayAlexandretta province fromTurkey On the other hand Saddam has repeatedly sought to don GamalAbdel Nasserrsquos mantle of ldquoleader of the Arab worldrdquo Saddamrsquos invasionsof Iran and Kuwait his pursuit of all manner of ballistic missiles and non-conventional weapons his efforts to build a massive Iraqi military and his var-ious diplomatic gambits have all been explicitly pursuedmdashat least in partmdashinthe name of making himself and Iraq the voice of the Arabs in regional andglobal affairs66 Even when such goals were clearly secondary to more immedi-ate concerns (such as the threat from revolutionary Iran in prompting his deci-sion to attack in September 1980) Saddam has never failed to remind hispeople of the larger stakes he always believes are involved67

An even greater difference between these two despots lay in how they pur-sued their goals To say that Saddam is risk tolerant would be a gross under-statement68 Even when his motives are defensive his course of action isusually offensive Whenever he has confronted a difcult situation Saddamhas frequently chosen the most reckless of all available options When facedwith the threat from Syrian Barsquothism and Syriarsquos damming of the EuphratesRiver in the mid-1970s Saddam was ready to attack Syria had Asad not movedto defuse the situation69 Fearing the threat from Ayatollah Khomeini and theIslamic Revolution in the late 1970s Saddam attacked Iran70 To avoid eco-nomic hardship Saddam attacked Kuwait in 199071 Confronted by a thirty-


66 See for example Ofra Bengio Saddam Speaks on the Gulf Crisis A Collection of Documents (TelAviv Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies 1992) pp 14ndash1767 F Gregory Gause III ldquoGulf Regional Politics Revolution War and Rivalryrdquo in W HowardWriggins ed Dynamics of Regional Politics Four Systems on the Indian Ocean Rim (New York Co-lumbia University Press 1992) p 52 and Phebe Marr The Modern History of Iraq (Boulder ColoWestview 1985) p 24568 For an interesting analysis of Saddamrsquos decisionmaking see Jerrold M Post ldquoThe DeningMoment of Saddamrsquos Life A Political Psychology Perspective on the Leadership and Decision-Making of Saddam Hussein during the Gulf Crisisrdquo in Stanley A Renshon ed The Political Psy-chology of the Gulf War Leaders Publics and the Process of Conict (Pittsburgh Pa University ofPittsburgh Press 1993) pp 49ndash6669 Christine Moss Helms Iraq Eastern Flank of the Arab World (Washington DC Brookings1984) pp 45ndash46 149ndash150 Majid Khadduri Socialist Iraq A Study in Iraqi Politics since 1968 (Wash-ington DC Middle East Institute 1978) pp 68 161ndash164 and Marr Modern History of Iraqpp 230ndash23170 Helms Iraq Eastern Flank of the Arab World pp 151ndash162 Dilip Hiro Lebanon Fire and Embers(New York St Martinrsquos 1992) pp 25ndash39 and Marr Modern History of Iraq pp 292ndash29471 Amatzia Baram ldquoThe Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait Decision-Making in Baghdadrdquo in Baram andBarry Rubin eds Iraqrsquos Road to War (New York St Martinrsquos 1993) pp 6ndash9 Lawrence Freedmanand Efraim Karsh The Gulf Conict 1990ndash1991 Diplomacy and War in the New World Order (Prince-ton NJ Princeton University Press 1993) pp 38ndash41 45ndash47 and F Gregory Gause III ldquoProspect

nation coalition led by the worldrsquos only superpower Saddam gambled that hecould ignore the coalitionrsquos air forces stalemate its armies and force the restof the world to accept his annexation of Kuwait72 Three years later whileIraqi society slowly suffocated under international sanctions Saddam refusedto give up the remnants of his nonconventional weapons programs and in-stead tried to attack Kuwait once again Nor have the recurrent crises withBaghdad since then given any indication that Saddam has learned his lessonHe continues to bully threaten and provoke Indeed even the decline of Iraqipower appears not to have affected the aggressiveness of Baghdadrsquos foreignpolicy Undeterred by the loss of three-quarters of his military power to theUS-led coalition in 1991 Saddam has continued to provoke Washington as ifDesert Storm meant no more to him than a weather forecast

Asad on the other hand was one of the most cautious leaders in the Mid-dle East Asad agonized over difcult decisions only choosing a course of ac-tion long after it had become imperative for him to do so He alone among theSyrian leadership opposed Syriarsquos invasion of Jordan in September 1970 forfear that it was too risky73 Asad agonized over his own coup delaying it untillong after it could not possibly fail74 He did not invade Lebanon until 1976after every other course of action had failed him and he realized that furtherhesitation could undermine the stability of Syria75 He threatened to attack


Theory and Iraqi War Decisionsrdquo paper presented at the 1997 annual meeting of the AmericanPolitical Science Association Washington DC August 28ndash31 199772 On Saddamrsquos aggressive grand strategy beginning in early 1990 see Baram ldquoThe Iraqi Inva-sion of Kuwaitrdquo pp 5ndash28 and Bengio Saddam Speaks on the Gulf Crisis pp 11ndash3473 Neville Brown ldquoJordanian Civil Warrdquo Military Review September 1971 p 45 Alasdair Drys-dale ldquoThe Syrian Armed Forces in National Politics The Role of the Geographic and Ethnic Pe-ripheryrdquo in Roman Kolkowicz and Andrej Korbonski eds Soldiers Peasants and BureaucratsCivil-Military Relations in Communist and Modernizing Societies (London George Allen and Unwin1982) pp 68ndash69 Derek Hopwood Syria 1945ndash1986 Politics and Society (London Unwin Hyman1988) pp 51ndash52 Fred H LawsonWhy Syria Goes to War Thirty Years of Confrontation (Ithaca NYCornell University Press 1996) p 68 Moshe Marsquooz ldquoThe Emergence of Modern Syriardquo in Marsquoozand Avner Yaniv eds Syria under Assad (New York St Martinrsquos 1986) p 26 and Nikolaos VanDam The Stuggle for Power in Syria Sectarianism Regionalism and Tribalism in Politics 1961ndash1978(New York St Martinrsquos 1979) pp 84ndash8874 Marsquooz ldquoThe Emergence of Modern Syriardquo p 28 Patrick Seale Asad of Syria (London IBTauris 1988) p 171 and Van Dam The Struggle for Power in Syria pp 87ndash9275 Reuven Avi-Ran The Syrian Involvement in Lebanon since 1975 (Boulder Colo Westview1991) pp 3ndash22 Robert Fisk Pity the Nation The Abduction of Lebanon (New York Atheneum1990) pp 80ndash91 Hiro Lebanon Fire and Embers pp 33ndash44 Hopwood Syria pp 60ndash62 MosheMarsquooz Syria and Israel From War to Peace-making (London Oxford University Press 1995)pp 160ndash165 Itamar Rabinovich ldquoThe Changing Prism Syrian Policy in Lebanon as a Mirror anIssue and an Instrumentrdquo in Marsquooz and Yaniv Syria under Assad pp 179ndash184 Itamar RabinovichThe War for Lebanon 1970ndash1985 (Ithaca NY Cornell University Press 1985) pp 36ndash37 47ndash56 85ndash88 201ndash236 Seale Asad of Syria pp 267ndash289 and Naomi Joy Weinberger Syrian Intervention inLebanon (New York Oxford University Press 1986) pp 95ndash213

Jordan several times in the early 1980s but drew back every time76 He triedhard to avoid a war with Israel in 1982 and fought back only when the Israelisattacked him despite his efforts77 Similarly he moved against his brotherRifrsquoat only after Rifrsquoat tried to seize control of the government in 1984 eventhough the rest of Syriarsquos top leadership had been urging him to defang Rifrsquoatfor years78

Perhaps the best indication of the differing approaches of these two Arabdictators to foreign policy was their divergent responses to the collapse of theSoviet Union Asad adopted a policy of appeasement while Saddam assumeda policy of aggressive expansion Both concluded that the loss of the SovietUnion as a counterweight to the United States would allow Washingtonand Israel to bring greater pressure to bear on them Saddamrsquos response wasoffensive Seize Kuwait to secure its economic resources overawe the otherArab states and demonstrate Iraqi military might79 Indeed many experts sus-pect that Saddam consciously sought to challenge the United States to demon-strate its (relative) weakness and Iraqrsquos strength80 The fact that this actionthreatened to provoke war with the United States (something that considerableevidence indicates Saddam fully understood) was an acceptable risk to him81

On the other hand Asad reacted to the Cold Warrsquos end by moderating manyof his more aggressive policies He curbed Syriarsquos involvement in inter-national terrorism joined the US-led coalition against Iraq and in his own


76 Joseph Nevo ldquoSyria and Jordan The Politics of Subversionrdquo in Marsquooz and Yaniv Syria underAssad p 14577 Avi-Ran Syrian Involvement in Lebanon pp 132ndash136 Anthony H Cordesman and Abraham RWagner The Lessons of Modern War Vol 1 The Arab-Israeli Conicts 1973ndash1989 (Boulder ColoWestview 1990) p 83 Marsquooz Syria and Israel pp 174ndash175 Zersquoev Schiff and Ehud Yarsquoari IsraelrsquosLebanon War ed and trans Ina Friedman (New York Simon and Schuster 1984) pp 117ndash118 155ndash156 and Seale Asad of Syria p 38078 The best account of Rifrsquoat al-Asadrsquos fall is Michael Eisenstadt ldquoSyriarsquos Defense CompaniesProle of a Praetorian Unitrdquo unpublished manuscript Washington Institute for Near East Policy1989 pp 8ndash1279 For Saddamrsquos analysis of the new world order and aggressive prescriptions for Iraq and theother Arab states see his address to the Fourth Summit of the Arab Cooperation Council AmmanFebruary 24 1990 reprinted in Bengio Saddam Speaks on the Gulf Crisis pp 37ndash4980 Baram ldquoIraqi Invasion of Kuwaitrdquo pp 10ndash11 Bengio Saddam Speaks on the Gulf Crisis p 15and Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh The Gulf Conict 1990ndash1991 Diplomacy and War in theNew World Order (Princeton NJ Princeton University Press 1991) p 3181 The best known of Saddamrsquos statements implying that he understood the risk that the UnitedStates might intervene if Iraq attacked Kuwait was his warning to US Ambassador April Glaspiethat American society ldquocannot accept 10000 fatalities in one battlerdquo in their infamous meeting onJuly 25 1990 See Micah L Sifry and Christopher Cerf eds The Gulf War Reader History Docu-ments Opinions (New York Random House 1991) p 125 However Iraqi ofcials restated this af-ter the war See for example ldquoAziz Interviewed on Outbreak of Gulf Warrdquo MilliyetMay 30 1991in Foreign Broadcast Information ServicendashNear EastndashSouth Asia-91-107 June 4 1991 pp 13ndash14and Milton Viorst ldquoReport from Baghdadrdquo New Yorker June 24 1991 pp 66ndash67

dysfunctional and dithering manner showed a surprisingmdashalbeit painfullycautious and unrealisticmdashwillingness to actually consider a peace treaty withIsrael

Comparing Saddam Hussein and Haz al-Asad two of the most brutal ty-rants of the Arab world demonstrates that the course of despotic regimes canto a considerable extent be predicted by the personality of their leaders De-spite all of their similarities Saddam and Asad shared a crucial differenceWhere Saddam is aggressive reckless and extremely expansionist Asad wasdefensive cautious and only modestly expansionist

ayatollah ruhollah khomeini and the iran-iraq warHitler and Napoleon are hardly historyrsquos only leaders who extended wars be-yond what systemic domestic and bureaucratic pressures might dictate Al-though Saddam Hussein may have started the Iran-Iraq War its durationbeyond 1982 can largely be blamed on the determination of AyatollahRuhollah Khomeini the charismatic Iranian leader In 1982 Iranian forces hadrecovered the territory lost in the initial Iraqi invasion of 1980 but Khomeinikept the war going for six more years in the hope of removing Saddam frompower Khomeini insisted on conducting fruitless offensives to try to break theIraqis During this time powerful allies cast their lot against Iran leading elitesbegan to oppose the war and the Iranian people became increasingly disgrun-tled Yet the ghting dragged on To the Imam the dictates of his revolutionaryIslamic credo mattered more than military and economic realities82 Only thecomplete collapse of Iranrsquos armies along the front in 1988 led the Imam toldquodrink the bitter cup of peacerdquo in his own words As William Quandt lamentshundreds of thousands of Iranians and Iraqis died as a result of ldquothis old manrsquosintransigencerdquo 83

Khomeini like Napoleon was himself a source of fear This fear affected thereactions of other states particularly within the Middle East State borders didnot limit the draw of his charisma which amplied the strength of his revolu-tionary credo In Lebanon Iraq Bahrain and elsewhere in the Muslim worldShirsquoa radicals and Islamist militants of all sects were drawn by the command-


82 See Sandra Mackey The Iranians Persia Islam and the Soul of a Nation (New York Penguin1996) pp 322ndash328 for statements on Khomeinirsquos ideology as it relates to the warrsquos continuation Agood overview of Khomeinirsquos theology can be found in Hamid Dabashi Theology of Discontent TheIdeological Foundation of the Islamic Revolution in Iran (New York New York University Press 1993)pp 409ndash48483 William Quandt ldquoThe Middle East on the Brink Prospects for Changerdquo Middle East JournalVol 50 No 1 (Winter 1996) p 13 See also RK Ramazani Revolutionary Iran (Baltimore MdJohns Hopkins Press 1988) p 74

ing image that Khomeini presented It was in part this threat that led the tradi-tional monarchies of the Persian Gulf to form the Gulf Cooperation Counciland work with Iraq against Iran84

Hypotheses on the Role of Individuals in International Relations

The nal charge we have left to fulll is to demonstrate that the rst image canproduce plausible and testable hypotheses about international relationsIdeally future research would test and elaborate on these hypotheses to de-velop a more comprehensive set of theories regarding the role of individuals ininternational relations The very existence of these credible hypotheses how-ever demonstrates the value of the rst image It can be used to derive impor-tant theories that scholars can test and rene

Below we present thirteen hypotheses on the role of individuals in interna-tional relations The rst set of hypotheses describes the most general ways inwhich individuals shape the behavior of nations The next set delves down to adeeper level of analysis presenting hypotheses that detail how specic person-ality traits of leaders may cause certain patterns of outcomes in internationalaffairs The third set of hypotheses examines the conditions under which lead-ers have the most inuence The fourth and nal group suggests how the rstimage interacts with the other twomdashsimultaneously shaping them and beingshaped by them in turn

the basics foundational hypotheses on the impact of individualsThe rst four hypotheses presented below address how individuals can shapethe broadest contours of international relations At the most basic level thecore question of this article is Do individual personalities matter to the affairsof nations Our conclusion is a resounding ldquoyesrdquo These four hypotheses areintuitive obvious (we hope) and perhaps even commonsensical Their obvi-ousness should not detract from their value howevermdashquite the opposite InAristotelian fashion sometimes it is important to catalogue knowledgemdasheventhat which after having been articulated seems obviousmdashin search of newinsights


84 Jacob M Landau The Politics of Pan-Islam Ideology and Organization (Oxford Oxford UniversityPress 1994) pp 259ndash260 On the formation of the Gulf Cooperation Council see David PriessldquoBalance-of-Threat Theory and the Genesis of the GCCrdquo Security Studies Vol 5 No 4 (Summer1996) pp 143ndash171 Lenore G Martin The Unstable Gulf Threats from Within (Lexington MassLexington Books 1984) pp 24ndash27 and Emile A Nakleh The Gulf Cooperation Council Policies Prob-lems and Prospects (New York Praeger 1986)

hypothesis 1 individuals set the ultimate and secondary intentionsof a state One of the most important roles of individuals is to shape if notdetermine a statersquos intentions At times the inuence of individuals can be sogreat as to transform a defender of the status quo into its greatest nemesis Bis-marck fought for the status quo in Europe whereas Wilhelm II fought to over-turn it Even when a countryrsquos people and leaders already oppose the existingorder a leader can greatly magnify the extent of the statersquos revisionist ambi-tions The German people and their generals sought only a greater Germanybut Hitler would be satised with nothing less than the enslavement of Eu-rope Similarly Napoleonrsquos ego not the aspirations of the French people drovela grande armeacutee to destruction on the steppes of Russia and the mountains ofSpain A prescient leader also can direct foreign policy toward important long-term goals that are often ignored by demagogues bureaucrats and the generalpopulace Bismarck recognized the danger of alienating Russia even thoughmost German ofcials were hostile to the czar

Of course a countryrsquos strategic position domestic politics culture and otherfactorsmdashboth systemic and domesticmdashalso shape a statersquos intentions Thecases presented above however suggest that individuals can often transcendthese factors play them off against one another or otherwise exercise a directand decisive inuence on a statersquos behavior

hypothesis 2 individuals can be an important component of a statersquosdiplomatic influence and military power Just as individuals can deter-mine a statersquos intentions so too are they often an important aspect of a statersquoscapabilities Sterile quantiable measures such as industrial output and ordersof battle are only part of a countryrsquos military power The competence or inepti-tude of its leaders also weighs heavily in the balance By itself France was aformidable military power capable of matching or even besting any of its ri-vals With Napoleon leading its armies France could be defeated only by thecombined forces of all of Europe Hitler in contrast diminished Germanyrsquosmilitary power His foolish strategies and amateurish orders destroyed Ger-manyrsquos superbly led and trained armies Great leaders also can strengthen acountryrsquos diplomatic power It is individuals who build the alliances and cre-ate the threats that maintain or destroy balances of power Bismarck forged al-liances where others would have failed Absent the Iron Chancellor it is hardto imagine a defeated Austria aligning with Prussia after the humiliations ofSadowa and Koumlniggraumltz Similarly it is equally hard to imagine a leader otherthan Wilhelm II repeatedly antagonizing Britain for so little purpose This em-phasis on the impact of individuals on state power is not to belittle geographyresources state capacity or other vital factors But political scientists must rec-


ognize that these factors alone often fail to account for a statersquos overall militarymight or political inuence

hypothesis 3 individual leaders shape their statersquos strategies Lead-ers shape not only a statersquos goals and capabilities but also the manner in whichthe state employs its resources in pursuit of its goals Napoleon was a soldierrst and last All too often the emperor ignored Talleyrandrsquos sage advice tosolve his foreign policy problems at the bargaining table preferring to solvethem instead on the battleeld Whereas Asad dithered in response to chal-lenges Saddam invariably reached for the sword

One particular manifestation of this role is the inuence that individualshave in making and breaking alliances The idiosyncratic preferences of lead-ers often cause them to ally with one state over another even in the face ofstrong systemic or domestic pressures Because of his animus against theHouse of Windsor Wilhelm II would consider allying with Britain only if Lon-don would grovel before him Moreover Wilhelm II demanded simplicity inGermanyrsquos alliances and thus let relations with Russia and Britain deteriorateBismarck could juggle many balls Wilhelm II one on a good day As scholarsoften forget balances of power are not inevitable They rest on the shoulders ofindividuals85

hypothesis 4 individual leaders affect the behavior of opposingstates that must react to leadersrsquo idiosyncratic intentions and capa-bilities Leaders not only inuence the actions of their states they also shapethe reactions of other states At times the mere presence of charismatic mo-ronic bellicose or puissant gures alters how other international actors be-have toward the state Napoleonrsquos overweening ambition coupled with hisoverwhelming military prowess convinced the rest of Europe that the emperorhimself had to be deposed The Gulf oil monarchies fearing both revolutionand invasion banded together to oppose the threat from Islamic Iran led bythe charismatic Khomeini Incompetence as well as ability can force otherstates to react Wilhelm IIrsquos erratic diplomacy and provocative swaggering ledother European leaders to see himmdashand thus Germanymdashas untrustworthyand dangerous And we will not even mention Hitler

building on the obvious foundational hypotheses and the future ofchina The above four hypotheses can be faulted as obvious but if true inter-national relations scholars must change their analytic approach Consider anyassessment of the future of Chinamdasha vital question for the coming years


85 Indeed Henry Kissingermdashone of the premier realistsmdashdevotes much of his early work to ex-amining how such a balance was created in nineteenth-century Europe See Kissinger AWorld Re-

Neorealists might stress Chinarsquos ability to generate power and the relativepower of its rivals Second-image theorists would add a discussion of how thecommunist legacy shapes Beijingrsquos behavior and the relative power and agen-das of the Peoplersquos Liberation Army (PLA) party apparatchiks and other insti-tutions Still other scholars might weigh Chinarsquos strategic culture the existingoffense-defense balance or the presence of important domestic interest groupssuch as farmers and factory workers

If our hypotheses above are true howevermdasheven to the point of being obvi-ousmdashthen scholars cannot understand the future impact of China on interna-tional relations without also understanding the mix of skills and abilities ofChinarsquos leaders such as Jiang Zemin Does Jiang like Mao Zedong and DengXiaoping before him exert tremendous inuence over Chinarsquos overall policiesHow will he pursue Chinarsquos foreign policy objectives Is Jiang a skilled diplo-mat or will he transform Chinarsquos potential friends into real enemies If Beijinggoes to war will he shape the PLArsquos strategy or like so many leaders tragi-cally overreach How do Chinarsquos neighbors and other key states view Jiang asa dangerous warlord a man of peace or some uneasy mix The answers tothese questions do not by themselves provide a perfect guide to Chinarsquos fu-ture behavior But ignoring the particular qualities of Jiangrsquos personality riskscourting disaster

how individuals matter hypotheses on personality traitsOf course it is not enough to speculate merely on whether individuals ldquomat-terrdquo to the course of international relations What is necessary to demonstratethe utility of the rst image is to show that it can generate specic testable hy-potheses regarding how individuals affect international relations As we ar-gued earlier the rst image should be able to generate testable hypotheses inwhich the variance in the distribution of personality traits among leaders issaid to cause states to act in particular ways The hypotheses listed below arehardly exhaustive but drawing on the case studies presented above they dem-onstrate the kind of hypotheses that can be inferred regarding the correlationbetween the distribution of leadersrsquo personality traits and international rela-tions outcomes86


stored Metternich Castlereagh and the Problems of Peace 1812ndash1822 (Boston Houghton Mifin 1957)for a superb example86 We recognize that there is a selection bias in the cases from which we generated several ofthese hypotheses For example we note the correlation between risk tolerance and war but ourcases focus largely on instances of war Additional testing of these hypotheses using cases of peaceis necessary as are tests using leaders who are not risk tolerant egotistical and so on

hypothesis 5 states led by risk-tolerant leaders are more likely tocause wars Some leaders are more willing than others to tolerate high levelsof risk and this willingness to accept risk often determines how aggressive astate is Hitler and Napoleon stand out as leaders willing to take risks to gainresources glory or other objectives Hitlerrsquos invasion of France was a daringventure to say nothing of his foray into Russia Napoleon repeatedly rolled thedice risking his empire in the pursuit of further conquests A more cautiousman might have opted to consolidate his power rather than trust in his star soabsolutely The contrast between Saddam Hussein and Haz al-Asad high-lights the importance of risk tolerance Saddamrsquos willingness to accept highrisks led him to attack Iran Kuwait Saudi Arabia Bahrain and Israelmdashand torepeatedly provoke the United States Asad on the other hand generallysought to avoid risky undertakings He intervened reluctantly in Lebanon onlyafter exhausting all other options he backed down from confrontations withJordan and Iraq in the 1970s and 1980s and after 1982 he challenged Israel onlyindirectly preferring to work through proxies rather than risk a direct confron-tation Faced with similar circumstances Saddam saw opportunities whereAsad saw dangers This different perspective has often meant the differencebetween war and peace in the Middle East

hypothesis 6 states led by delusional leaders start wars and prolongthem unnecessarily Some leaders view the world through cracked lensesTheir ideology or their pathology clouds their vision leading them to ignorereality and to overestimate their chances of success A variety of work ondecisionmaking shows that individuals interpret information in differentways with certain fallacies being common but present to different degrees De-lusional individuals are particularly likely to ignore or misinterpret systemicimperatives and domestic constraints causing them to overestimate theirchances of victory in war or to underestimate the value of an alliance Delu-sional leaders see threats that do not exist They miscalculate balances ofpower And they imagine alliances where none are possible

Needless to say words such as ldquocrazyrdquo and ldquodelusionalrdquo are overusedSaddam Hussein although certainly evil and often foolish is not insane Ratio-nality is a spectrum Some leaders follow a hyperrational course whereas oth-ers are more prone to wishful thinking But leaders such as Hitler andKhomeini have clearly slipped over the edge Hitler believed that his GermanUbermenschen could defy the entire world and continued to believe this evenas armies of Russian Untermenschen approached Berlin Khomeini refused tocountenance any peace with Iraqrsquos government of heretics even after the im-possibility of military victory became obvious to everyone around him


Delusional leaders and the security dilemma interact in particularly perni-cious ways In its classic depiction Robert Jervis explains that in an anarchicworld system a statersquos actions to defend itself often cause a counterreaction byits rivals which in turn leaves all states less secure It is not always the anar-chic system that imposes the security dilemma A delusional or foolish leadercan create one through his or her own actions Wilhelm II saw Germany as sur-rounded by hostile powers (including several that had been Germanyrsquos diplo-matic partners until the kaiser dismissed Bismarck) and believed that theirmilitaries and alliances threatened German ambitions indeed Germanyrsquos verysurvival In turn Wilhelmrsquos own actions most notably his development of aeet spurred the British and French to see him as a threat Delusional leaderscan create security dilemmas where none previously existed or cause precari-ous situations to spiral into calamity

hypothesis 7 states led by leaders with grandiose visions are morelikely to destabilize the system It is difcult for the international systemto accommodate the outsized dreams of leaders The status quo has greatdifculty with leaders who cannot be sated with minor concessions and mod-est territorial transfers These leaders often overreach in a desperate attempt torealize their ambitions Triumphs that would have been the crown jewels forLouis XVI were disdained as cut-glass baubles by Napoleon Similarly Hitlerrsquosambitions soared beyond those of other German leaders In both cases theirambitions exceeded not only the capabilities of their states but also the abilityof the international system to contain them without massive dislocation Thedetermination of Napoleon and Hitler to rule all of Europe (and dominate theworld) sparked wars and upheaval that changed the face of the continent Noris vast military power a necessity Saddam Hussein and Ayatollah Khomeinihad dreams of similar proportion and even without commensurate militarypower both managed to radically shake the international affairs of the PersianGulf and to some extent the world Had their dreams been less ambitious his-tory books and atlases would look very different87

Vast dreams also produce numerous enemies By attacking all of EuropeHitler and Napoleon turned all of Europe against them Iranrsquos modest powermade it little threat to any state beyond its neighbors Yet by seeking to exportIranrsquos revolution throughout the Islamic world Khomenei even made enemiesof distant Indonesia and Morocco Seeking to lead the Arab world Saddam in-


87 See Greenstein The Presidential Difference pp 192ndash198

stead alienated it by attacking ve Middle Eastern states and threatening a halfdozen others

hypothesis 8 states led by predictable leaders will have strongerand more enduring alliances A state whose behavior can consistentlybe predicted is one that can be trustedmdashtrusted to do good or trusted to doevil but trusted nonetheless States may forge alliances with states whosebehavior they do not trust but they are unlikely to adhere to these ties forlong or place much weight on them for the achievement of their goals Further-more such alliances are unlikely to realize their full potential because theircohesion will be weak and their actions disjointed In many of these cases itis the predictability of leaders that is at issue For example although Hitlerand Mussolini had many goals that were either shared or complementary eachrepeatedly surprised the other destroying any trust between them with theresult that their actions often ran at cross purposes and their alliance wasas often a source of weakness as of strength

Indeed the personal relationships among leaders often overcome systemicdynamics or other factors As Hans Morgenthau notes ldquoThe smooth and effec-tive operation of an alliance then depends in good measure upon the relationsof trust and respect among its military statesmenrdquo88 Churchill deliberately cul-tivated a ldquospecial relationshiprdquo with Roosevelt which paid off with unswerv-ingly close cooperation even when the United States and Britain haddiametrically opposed ideas about the conduct of World War II Observers ofthe Middle East have often remarked that Iraq and Syria should have been nat-ural alliesmdashthey shared an ideology common internal problems common ex-ternal enemies and generally compatible aspirationsmdashyet they detested eachother As a result Syria the self-proclaimed champion of Arab nationalismwas the only Arab state to back Persian Iran against Iraq

It may be that one contributing factor to the democratic peace is that democ-racies are more likely to produce leaders whose behavior can be predictedand thus trusted especially by other democratic leaders Trustworthinessand consistency are qualities rewarded by voters in democratic systems Inaddition modern democracies tend to have a range of institutional checkson leaders which makes it difcult for them to push their countries too farfrom their preexisting course Consequently it may be that the success of dem-ocratic alliances and the easier ability of democratic leaders to avoid wars


88 Hans Morgenthau Politics among Nations 3d ed (New York Alfred A Knopf 1960) p 201

when their interests clash come in part from the fact that democratic systemsselect for the kind of behavior that foreign leaders nd predictable and trust-worthy

Critics may contend that characteristics such as risk tolerance and a prone-ness toward delusions are impossible to operationalize Such criticisms how-ever were once also applied to culture ideology ideas and norms butscholars over time developed methods to measure and weigh these conceptsgreatly enriching the study of international relations Psychologists have awide range of measures for determining degrees of rationality Scholars ofdecisionmaking have identied situations such as a desire to preserve onersquospolitical position or make good on sunk costs that steer individuals towardrisky behavior89 International relations scholars must draw on these studies intheir own work Just because we lack analytic measures today does not meanwe should assume we always will

when individuals matter enabling factorsLeaders do not have the same impact on foreign policy in all situations Nomatter how delusional egocentric or risk acceptant some leaders are unableto gain popular support whereas others are overwhelmed by bureaucraticsystemic cultural or other factors Below we present three hypotheses thatsuggest when individuals have a greater impact on international relations andconsequently under what conditions theories derived from the rst imageshould most likely have the greatest explanatory power

hypothesis 9 the more power is concentrated in the hands of an indi-vidual leader the greater the influence of that leaderrsquos personalityand preferences Individuals are only one of many factors that determine astatersquos actions In vying to set policy leaders often must contend with a bewil-dering array of institutions and actors such as a nationrsquos military parliamentbureaucracy political opposition elites and people When other institutionsare strong the ability of any individual leader to shape policy is correspond-ingly diminished If a soldier of Napoleonrsquos ability entered the French army to-day it is unlikely that he would shake the foundations of Europe On the otherhand when institutions are weak or unformed the impact of leaders increasesConsequently individuals generally matter most in authoritarian regimes with


89 Jack Levy ldquoProspect Theory Rational Choice and International Relationsrdquo InternationalStudies Quarterly Vol 41 No 1 (March 1997) p 93 and Jack S Levy ldquoLoss Aversion Framing andBargaining The Implications of Prospect Theory for International Conictrdquo International PoliticalScience Review Vol 17 No 2 (April 1996) p 189 A leaderrsquos proneness toward risk could be mea-sured by examining how he or she responded to similar circumstances before assuming power

weak institutions As Bismarckrsquos adviser Friedrich von Gentz described theczarrsquos position ldquoNone of the obstacles that restrain and thwart the other sover-eignsmdashdivided authority constitutional forms public opinion etcmdashexists forthe Emperor of Russia What he dreams of at night he can carry out in themorningrdquo90

Nevertheless an exceptionally charismatic leader can overcome even stronginstitutions Figures such as Hitler and Napoleonmdashand other modern giantssuch as Mustafa Kemal Ataturk Mao Simon Boliacutevar Nasser and Gandhimdashareable to defy the wishes of pragmatic elements around them and succeed inhaving their followers follow Ayatollah Khomeini of course represented al-most an ideal-type of the Weberian charismatic leader As Max Weber notedthe charismatic authority can defy convention and standard arguments Such aleader is able to note ldquoIt is written but I say unto yourdquo91 Thus Khomeinirsquosgrip on the Iranian people allowed him to ignore the opposition of other lead-ing gures to the war with Iraq The hundreds of thousands of Iranians slaugh-tered on the battleelds of al-Basrah al-Faw and Kurdistan testify to the forceof his charisma

Individuals however still matter even when strong institutions shape theirbehavior and limit the impact of their personal idiosyncrasies As former presi-dential adviser Clark Clifford once noted ldquoThe executive branch of our gov-ernment is like a chameleon To a startling degree it reects the character andpersonality of the Presidentrdquo92 Even in a democracy with well-establishedchecks and balances recognizing the strengths and weaknesses of the leader isessential

hypothesis 10 individuals are more important when systemic domes-tic and bureaucratic forces conflict or are ambiguous At times insti-tutional systemic and domestic factors may be strong but their interactionleads to vague or conicting pressures on policymaking In these circum-stances the preferences of individuals assume greater importance Althoughnot one of the historical cases we examined an excellent example of how indi-viduals can choose among equally viable options is British Prime MinisterMargaret Thatcherrsquos decision to confront Argentina over the Falkland IslandsToday many analysts chalk up Thatcherrsquos attack on the Falklands as a (success-


90 Friedrich von Gentz ldquoConsiderations on the Political System in Europerdquo (1818) in MackWalker ed Metternichrsquos Europe (New York Walker and Co 1968) p 80 Quoted in Kissinger Di-plomacy p 14091 Max Weber Economy and Society (Berkeley University of California Press 1978) p 243 (ellipsisin the original)92 Quoted in Greenstein The Presidential Difference p 189

ful) attempt to restore her governmentrsquos agging popularity At the time how-ever what path Britain would choose was not so clear The Foreign Ofcecounseled against any provocation and urged Thatcher not to send a taskforce93 Defense ofcials doubted that Britain could retake the Falklands andthe treasury feared the impact of the cost of war on Britainrsquos struggling econ-omy94 A narrow majority of public opinion polls taken before the ghting be-gan indicated that the British public felt that the Falklands were not worthBritish casualties The United States also pushed for a diplomatic solution

Thatcher however played down voices urging restraint and led her nationto war As Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins note ldquoThe gure of MargaretThatcher towers over the Falklands drama from its inception to the euphoria ofthe nal triumph Each of the participants interviewed for the war madesimilar remarks lsquoIt was Mrs Thatcherrsquos war She held us to it She neverseemed to inch from her conviction about its course She took the risks on hershoulders and she won She emerged as a remarkable war leaderrsquordquo95 Withoutthe Iron Lady Britain might well have chosen negotiation over confrontationand the Falklands Warmdashfor better or for worsemdashwould never have occurred

hypothesis 11 individuals are more important when circumstancesare fluid In times of tremendous change individuals often assume greaterimportance Individuals in contrast to large bureaucracies or unwieldy parlia-ments can act decisively and purposefully There was a good reason why theRoman Republic transferred the powers of the Senate to a dictator in times ofcrisis A single person can react quickly to rapidly unfolding events seizingopportunities and fending off calamities In the 1930s Europe was in chaosThe dramatic political changes resulting from World War I the emergence ofcommunism and fascism and the dislocation caused by the worldwide de-pression threw the power structure of Europe into disarray Hitler skillfully ex-ploited this disorder He played Britain Italy France and Russia off oneanother effectively paralyzing them as he remilitarized the Rhineland and


93 Max Hastings and Simon Jenkins The Battle for the Falklands (New York WW Norton 1983)p 66 Throughout the conict key cabinet ofcials such as Foreign Secretary Francis Pym andHome Secretary William Whitelaw urged compromise over confrontation The Sunday Times ofLondon Insight Team War in the Falklands The Full Story (New York Harper and Row 1982)pp 177ndash17894 The military contingency le for an invasion of the Falklands stressed the logistical problemsof operations so far from British shores It also noted that Britain might not be able to meet itsNATO commitments if it were engaged in a conict in the Falklands Most ominously it arguedthat not even the largest task force could retake the islands after an Argentine invasion Hastingsand Jenkins Battle for the Falklands p 5695 Ibid pp 335ndash336

gobbled up Austria Czechoslovakia and Poland Haz al-Asad also took ad-vantage of the uid circumstances created by the end of the Cold War and theIraqi invasion of Kuwait to secure Syriarsquos suzerainty over Lebanon even whilemoving closer to the United States

the interacting imagesIt is ultimately impossible to explain all of international relations by resort toonly one of the three images None can effectively explain all of the variance inthe world Furthermore none of the images is entirely discretemdasheach shapesthe others Thus their impact is felt both directly on events and indirectlythrough the inuence they exert on the other images96 The rst image is no ex-ception At least some of its utility as a predictor of international relations liesin the indirect inuence it exerts through the other two images

hypothesis 12 individuals can shape the second image Domestic opin-ion bureaucratic politics and other second-image factors are not independentof individuals In bureaucratic politics it is not inevitable that where you standdepends on where you sit especially if where you sit is determined by theleader The German military was a hindrance to Hitlerrsquos machinations only un-til he was able to oust the strong independent generals running the army andreplace them with pliant lackeys who owed their positions to his benecenceLikewise the public opinion that guides states is often created by the deliberateactions of leaders who can employ charisma propaganda or other means totwist public opinion into an enabling factor Hitler Stalin Saddam and otherdictators have adeptly incited nationalist fervor created specious casus belliand otherwise played their publics like violins to support their policiesKhomeinirsquos messianic appeal created a mass following for whatever policieshe enunciated If the Imam wished it so then his followers wanted it too

Nor are interest group politics independent of individuals In the early1900s an aggressive coalition of German industrialists and naval ofcerschampioned Germanyrsquos ldquorisk eetrdquo making it difcult for Berlin to back awayfrom the hostile spiral it was fostering with London This coalition howevercame into being only after the kaiser had decided to begin the FlottenpolitikWithout his ill-conceived rst effort the interest group never would have be-come so strong


96 For a similar study of interacting images see Philip Gourevitch ldquoSecond Image Reversed In-ternational Sources of Domestic Politicsrdquo International Organization Vol 32 No 4 (Autumn 1978)pp 881ndash911

Leaders also build institutions97 Khomeini for example created a bizarresystem of overlapping administrative bodiesmdashgovernmental religious andparastatalmdashthat functioned adequately during the Imamrsquos life because he hadthe requisite blend of political power charisma and religious learning to con-trol the system Khomeinirsquos legacy lives on in the institutions he created to suithis rule Today without the Imam the system he created is fractious and cha-otic with power diffused among a multitude of competing organizationsmdashadirect legacy of a system created for a unique man

Nor do all leaders lead equally well Some inspire their subordinates gettingthe most out of their governing teams military staffs and diplomatic corpsNapoleonrsquos ofcers were ercely devoted to him making superhuman effortsto carry out his grandiose vision Similarly as Fred Greenstein notes someleaders create a climate of tolerance that allows dissent and creativity toourish98 Other leaders however are bad at receiving advice from their sub-ordinates Saddam has created a system where fear and sycophancy are neces-sary for survival Not surprisingly he seldom receives objective or usefuladvice

hypothesis 13 individuals can shape the third image To the extent thatthird-image theories rest on the assumption that the distribution of power is akey moving force in international relations then individuals must be countedwhen measuring the distribution As noted in hypothesis 2 the skills of indi-vidual leaders are often key components of national power When judging thebalance of power between France and its rivals in the early nineteenth centuryscholars must recognize that Napoleonrsquos military genius multiplied the valueof sterile production gures and orders of battle

Hypothesis 8 the impact of a leaderrsquos trustworthiness and reliability positsanother inuence of the rst image on third-image considerations A key com-ponent of cooperation under anarchy appears to be the willingness of leadersto trust one another In the absence of a common threat cooperation becomesquite difcult For cooperation to survive leaders must feel able to predict oneanotherrsquos behavior and trust them to act in a mutually benecial manner

The role of individuals extends beyond merely serving as an input into athird-image model For instance a key aspect of some third-image theories isthat the uncertainty and imperfect information inherent in the anarchic inter-national system fosters certain patterns of behavior in states As we noted


97 Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower for example created a national security structure thathas lasted for decades after their terms ended Greenstein The Presidential Difference p 19598 Ibid pp 195ndash196

above this geopolitical fog is frequently the creation of individual leaders Of-ten it is not a lack of information that leads to miscalculation but self-decep-tion on the part of leaders Few human beings are perfectly objectiveprocessors of information and many of the worldrsquos most important gureshave lived in deep denial even psychosis For this reason proponents of thethird image are adamant that even if the future brings perfect information itwill not eliminate these long-standing systemic pressures because the problemis not necessarily in the quality or quantity of information but in its interpreta-tion In other words the fault lies not in our stars but in ourselves

Conclusions

Giants still walk the earth International relations cannot be understood if therole of the individual is ignored Critics may still contend that we have focusedon exceptions And indeed we have Yet such exceptional individuals knit thetapestry of history Explaining international relations while ignoring HitlerBismarck Napoleon and other monumental gures is like trying to under-stand art or music without Michaelangelo or Mozart Thus policymakers andpoliticians are right to pay attention to the goals abilities and idiosyncrasies ofthe worldrsquos leaders It is time for scholars to play their part helping us betterunderstand when and how individuals can make a difference

Recognizing the importance of individuals is necessary to explode one of themost pernicious and dangerous myths in the study of international relationsthe cult of inevitability Just because a particular event occurred does not meanit was fated to do so Scholars often fail to acknowledge that common interna-tional behaviormdashbalancing against a threat choosing a grand strategy ormarching off to warmdashresults from decisions made by individuals It was notinevitable that Germany became bellicose in the late nineteenth century With-out Bismarck it might have happened earlier and without Wilhelm II it mightnot have happened at all Scholars are too quick to dismiss individualsrsquo behav-ior with reference to ldquoCleopatrarsquos noserdquo butmdashas the hypotheses we presentabove suggestmdashscholars can deduce useful generalizations about the role ofindividuals

We hope that our work spurs a renewal in the study of the rst image Al-though the range of issues to explore is vast several suggest themselves imme-diately First although we argue that the rst image has an impact on militaryand diplomatic power clearly individuals do not shape all elements of powerequally For example leaders can affect important factors such as strategy andtraining but have less of an impact on the tactical level during the conduct of


operations A more complete assessment of how individuals inuence the fac-tors that make up military and diplomatic power would be highly useful Sec-ond we barely scratch the surface of when individuals matter The autocraticpolitical systems that allowed individuals far more freedom are (fortunately)becoming fewer in number Institutions in all their variety should be assessedfor the latitude they allow individuals and the particular policy areas that aremost and least affected Third scholars should explore the role of individualson issues other than war and alliances which has been the focus of this initialforay Individuals may be important to such tragedies as ethnic conict masskilling the perpetuation of tyranny and other wrongs (and of course rights)whose understanding is basic to the study of politics Fourth work on the im-pact of individuals outside the role of state leader is essential The personalitiesof generals diplomats religious authorities and other shapers and imple-menters of policy cannot be ignored Fifth scholars should examine whetherdifferent political systems routinely produce certain types of leaders

Like other approaches to international relations the rst image does not pro-vide all the answers Within the discipline of international relations the studyof individuals can be only one part of a larger whole Ignoring their role is fool-ish but so too is ignoring the inuence of other forces such as systemic factorsdomestic politics and bureaucratic pressures99 International relations arecomplex and cannot be understood by focusing on any one aspect of politicsalone A foolish parsimony is the hobgoblin of small minds Of course recog-nizing the role of individuals will make the job of scholars and analysts moredifcult Political scientists will have to employ biography and psychology inaddition to traditional tools such as economics and history Such additionshowever will result in a far richer product that is better able to explain ourworld and anticipate coming challenges


99 Favoring one level of analysis at the expense of the others is perhaps the most pernicious formof ldquoreductionismrdquo See Charles A Kupchan The Vulnerability of Empire (Ithaca NY Cornell Uni-versity Press 1994) p 7 Likewise we echo Fareed Zakariarsquos plea for scholars to ldquodevelop a toler-ance for more limitedmdashbut more accuratemdashgeneralizationsrdquo by developing theories ofinternational affairs that draw on both internal and external factors to explain state behavior SeeZakaria ldquoRealism and Domestic Politics A Review Essayrdquo International Security Vol 17 No 1(Summer 1992) pp 178ndash179

The story of Prussiarsquos reprieve is admittedly an extreme example of the rolethat individuals play in international relations but such inuence is by nomeans exceptionalmdashfar from it How can we explain twentieth-century historywithout reference to Adolf Hitler Joseph Stalin Vladimir Lenin Franklin Roo-sevelt Winston Churchill Mahatma Gandhi or Mao Zedong Nor would anypolicymaker in any capital try to explain the world today without recourse tothe personal goals and beliefs of Bill Clinton Vladimir Putin Jiang Zemin andSaddam Hussein among others Indeed the policymaking community inWashington takes it as an article of faith that who is the prime minister ofGreat Britain the chancellor of Germany or the king of Saudi Arabia has realrepercussions for the United States and the rest of the world As HenryKissinger remarked ldquoAs a professor I tended to think of history as run by im-personal forces But when you see it in practice you see the difference person-alities makerdquo3

For these reasons the tendency of scholars to ignore the role of personalitiesin international relations is particularly troubling Most political scientistswhen pressed will admit to the importance of personal idiosyncrasies and hu-man error in determining the course of international relations Most will fur-ther concede that because they do not attempt to explain the roles of eitherhuman error or personality in international relations they cannot explain all ofthe variance in the affairs of nations

However political scientists most frequently have argued that they must setaside both fortuna and virtuacute and instead focus only on impersonal forces as thecauses of international events Their reasons for doing so fall under three ru-brics First many political scientists contend that individuals ultimately do notmatter or at least they count for little in the major events that shape interna-tional politics Instead they argue that the roar of the anarchic system domes-tic politics and institutional dynamics drown out the small voices ofindividual leaders Second other political scientists posit that although indi-viduals may matter from time to time their inuence does not lend itself to thegeneralizations that political scientists seek Simply put individuals are too in-dividualistic Third several leading international relations theorists haveraised a number of specic objections that they argue render the study of indi-viduals theoretically hopeless

We believe that political scientists are simultaneously too modest and too ar-rogant in these claims Too modest because political scientists need not throw


3 A background talk with reporters in January 1975 as quoted in Walter Isaacson Kissinger (NewYork Simon and Schuster 1992) p 13






























































































































































































Conclusions






































































































































































































Conclusions









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