Start with the world's greatest nations -- the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. You might expect great leaders from great powers. But you don't see much greatness in the individuals who lead them: Barack Obama, David Cameron, François Hollande, Hu Jintao, and Vladimir Putin.
Instead, what you have is a bunch of talented, well-spoken guys facing a variety of economic and political challenges they cannot possibly overcome. At best, if they're lucky, they can be successful transactional leaders -- fixing a problem here and there, managing a crisis, or coping with one.
But transformational leaders who leave legacies that fundamentally alter their nation's trajectories? Not likely. Among them, Putin may actually prove to the most successful given his control and his objectives, but even this is no longer certain because of the generational divide he confronts, with so many younger Russians seeking change.
What about those consequential powers outside of the Perm Five -- Germany, India, Brazil? Surely there have got to be effective leaders here.
Angela Merkel is resilient, politically skilled. She's a survivor in German politics, but has been roundly criticized for failing to show leadership on broader European issues, particularly the eurozone crisis. And by all accounts, she won't make it into the Konrad Adenauer, Willy Brandt, and Helmut Kohl category. India's Prime Minister Manmohan Singh may also be a skilled politician and technocrat who was once popular, but he's now too entangled in political intrigue and charges of corruption to join the ranks of Nehru and Gandhi. Brazil offered up an intriguing candidate in former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, but, well, he's not in power anymore.
What about finding consequential leaders in the Arab and Muslim world? The Arab dictators whom we knew and never loved -- Saddam, the Assads, Qaddafi -- were and are brutal and extractive figures, taking so much more than they ever gave to their people. The next rung down weren't quite as bad -- Mubarak, Ben Ali, Abdullah Saleh -- but clearly better for the United States' interests than for their own peoples'. With the passing of the Ben Gurions, Sadats, Begins, King Husseins, and Rabins, the Middle East has been in the age of politicians not statesmen for some time now. A younger generation of Israeli leaders -- Netanyahu, Barak, Olmert -- bears this out.
What about the Arab Spring? After all, revolutions and crises have in the past been inspired and directed, indeed even produced consequential leaders. It's way too early to draw conclusions, but the trend lines don't look all that encouraging. The Arab uprisings have been effectively leaderless. Egypt's presidential election produced a pretty grey Muslim Brotherhood leader who will be constrained severely by the military and by his own party even if he wants to be bold.
Beyond Egypt, matters only get worse. Libya, Syria, and Yemen will be struggling for years with the quest for legitimate, respected, accountable, and effective leaders. The Arab kings who survive (in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Morocco, and Qatar) are more enlightened, even respected; and in the case of Saudi King Abdullah, even beloved by many Saudis. But to call them great leaders strains the bounds of credulity to the breaking point. Their prospective successors don't inspire much confidence, either.
SUBJECTS:
