To be sure, however, history provides illustrations of rulers who, in the face of daunting crises, rose above the limitations of their environment, projected and pursued visions that transformed their environments, and indelibly marked their societies and the course of history. For example, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, a brilliant commander and nation builder, accepted retraction of frontiers at a time when dictators were calling for expansionism. In regenerating Turkey and giving it a sense of appreciation for Western democracy, his leadership vision was illustrated by the following reply he gave to an aide urging a gesture for public opinion: "I do not act for public opinion," he said. "I act for the nation."

Another telling example can be found in Mikhail Gorbachev. In refusing to use force to stem revolts against communist rule, Gorbachev unleashed the chain of events that led to the revolutions that toppled communism, the dismantlement of the Soviet Union, and his own fall from power. Gorbachev went on to advocate non-violent leadership, nationally and internationally arguing that only leaders who combine political and moral authority can truly rise to the challenges of leadership. Similarly, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt displayed few of the skills and characteristics associated with leadership in the current literature. His rule was undemocratic, and he often silenced and purged his critics. In addition, he was a poor negotiator. Yet there is little doubt that his vision for peace, and the courage with which he pursued it, was driven by the courageous conviction that peace required moral leadership.

National Leadership

At the national level, although leadership may be found in many different environments, the most visible leadership is that of political governance. Given the size and power of the United States, national leadership is intermingled with international leadership challenges. The United States and its presidents are watched, observed, and judged around the world in terms of the leadership they are expected to provide. Whenever a sense of equity, morality, and respect for human dignity informs US foreign policy, it is hailed as leadership of the highest kind; whenever double standards and ulterior motives are suspected, it is political expediency of the lowest kind.

The culture of US democracy produces a temptation to place interest group politics above the national interest broadly conceived, the powerful private interests above what US President James Madison called the Republican virtues, the public good. The US Civil War dramatically illustrated the tension between these two conceptions. The Southern states defended slavery and rejected any notion that slavery could be incompatible with democracy. US Senator Stephen Douglas suggested that democracy should be interpreted narrowly as a form of government that gave certain people the right to popular sovereignty. US President Abraham Lincoln, on the other hand, took the high moral road. Democracy, he argued, was about equality and freedom of all people. This is precisely what distinguishes a true leader from a politician claiming leadership. The leader takes the high moral road and shows concerns for all the people. The leadership test applied to national governance requires rising above the parochial views of interest group politics.

Similarly, leadership at the global governance level requires rising above the narrowly defined national interests to invest in common human concerns, and, in the long run, best serve the national interests. US President Woodrow Wilson’s vision of a post-World War I new public order based on self-determination and on governance derived from the consent of the governed was the high moral road in international relations. It displeased his imperial allies but touched a resonant chord around the world with colonized people. People readily spoke of Wilsonian and US leadership.

Deception, intrigues, plotting to overthrow regimes, and the violent ways in which the United States at times interacted with the rest of the world during the presidencies of, for example, Johnson, Nixon, Reagan, or Bush could not be said to have been such edifying examples of the leadership. Indeed, US President Jimmy Carter rightly regretted this feature of US foreign policy, lamenting how the "option of peace" had been foregone by the US foreign policy. "We [the United States] gave at least tacit approval to Israel’s disastrous invasion of Lebanon in 1982, then sent in US Marines and bombed and strafed the villages around Beirut," explains Carter. "We invaded and defeated Grenada. We invaded and destroyed a good portion of Panama. And on a more massive scale, we orchestrated the Persian Gulf War. In none of these cases did we first exhaust the opportunity for peaceful resolution of the dispute."

The Bush administration’s policies illustrate this regrettable tendency to chose confrontation instead of persuasion, and power instead of true moral leadership. The administration’s agenda sought to redefine the US role in the world by condemning the Kyoto Protocol on global warming, the Anti-ballistic Missile Treaty, the International Criminal Court, the treaty on anti-personnel mines—to name a few—and by adopting a confrontational stand after the events of September 11, 2001. Instead of taking the high moral road of seeking security through collective actions to bring the criminals to justice, and to seriously tackle issues of inequity and injustice around the world, the Bush administration opted for the simplistic Manichean view of the world as either with the United States or with the terrorists. Confrontation prevailed over the moral leadership challenge. The strategy of confrontation relied on the use of force. The subsequent global war against international terrorism took US troops to Afghanistan, Colombia, Georgia, the Philippines, and, after another leadership failure at the UN Security Council, Iraq.

Professor and foreign policy analyst Noam Chomsky spoke for many people around the world when he articulated the dilemma produced by the Bush administration’s confrontational foreign policy. "There are two ways for Washington to respond to the threats engendered by its actions and startling proclamations," argued Chomsky. "One way is to try to alleviate the threats by paying some attention to legitimate grievances, and by agreeing to become a civilized member of a world community, with some respect for world order and its institutions. The other way is to construct even more awesome engines of destruction and domination, so that any perceived challenge, however remote, can be crushed—provoking new and greater challenges. That way poses serious dangers to the people of the United States and the world."