The leaders whom greatness is thrust upon

The true measure of a leader is not their potential to do something but their ability to deliver

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon them.”

The above quote is from Shakespeare’s play, Twelfth Night. I think the global concern is not with Shakespeare’s first two categories of leaders. It is the third category — the leaders who have greatness thrust upon them — who become the reason for the gutted dreams of their millions of followers. Germany had Hitler who gifted them WWII and subsequently the same Germany had a statesman, Konrad Adenauer (1949-1963), whose visionary leadership enabled Germany to become what it has today — the leading economic state in the European Union. In 2003, Konrad was voted as the greatest German of all times by German citizens.

There are two examples of ‘greatness thrust upon them leadership’ that I would like to quote from the contemporary world — one has already led his country to war and the other is trying his best to do the same. The first example is of President Zelensky of Ukraine and the second is of President Tsai Ing-wen of Taiwan who is also doing everything she can to provoke China into invading the island. Zelensky, we all know was a jester performing in theatres before becoming the President. War only starts when diplomacy fails and in case of Zelensky, diplomacy as an instrument of policy was something that was not even tried by him to prevent the war. For the people of Pakistan, it is much easier to understand what Zelensky did if we relate it to how Pakistan looks at and manages its relationship with Afghanistan with which it shares a 2600 km long western border. Russia also shares a land border of 1974 km with Ukraine.

Pakistan’s Afghan policy was driven by a realisation that Afghanistan could never allow India to use it as a satellite state and bring it under its influence and control. That India’s economic and political control would eventually translate into a military control was not a wrong Pakistani strategic assumption to make. The premise of this assumption was based on many factors but two stood out in the decades gone by: first, establishment of increased number of Indian consulates in Afghanistan and their utilisation in executing across the border proxy war against Pakistan; and second, India training Afghan Army, including its officers, in the Indian Military Academy Dera Dun.

Zelensky should have realised that he could not overnight move Ukraine out of Russian sphere of influence. He banked on American and Western support and crossed all the Russian red lines. The result: Russian invasion and a state of war. Zelensky can now stir up as much Ukrainian nationalism as he wants but he has behaved more like Hitler — imposed an unnecessary war on his country rather than behaving as Konrad who laid seeds of German unification and contributed to making it a success story. For this reason, I think Zelensky can easily be categorised as part of the ‘greatness thrust upon them’ leadership in the world.

Now to the second leader, President Tsai Ing-wen who is seeking to do to Taiwan what Zelensky has done to Ukraine. Since 2016, the year Tsai assumed power in Taiwan, the relationship between Taiwan and mainland China has been quite strained. China views Tsai with distrust as she and her Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) represent a policy of outright Taiwanese independence. China also views Tsai with suspicion as she did not endorse the 1992 Consensus — the understanding reached between China and Taiwan that there is only one China but both China and Taiwan can have different interpretations of what China represents. The consensus was something that Tai’s predecessor Ma Ying-jeou had agreed to but Tsai refused to endorse it. President Tsai also shows her pro-independence tilt when she fails to condemn her Vice President, William Lai, who has on multiple occasions said that he is a ‘Taiwan independence worker’.

President Tsai has a very good education background: she received a law degree (1978) from National Taiwan University in Taipei and then attended Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, and the London School of Economics, earning, respectively, master’s (1980) and doctorate (1984) degrees in law. Tsai then returned to Taiwan where until 2000 she taught law at universities in Taipei.

But leaders should not be judged for what they are qualified to do but for what they end up doing. So, despite all these qualifications what she has managed to do politically can be easily categorised as ‘first’ in Taiwanese history. In December 2016, she placed a telephone call to US President-elect Donald Trump, who overturned several decades of diplomatic protocol by becoming the first US chief executive to speak to his Taiwanese counterpart since 1979. This prompted China to make a formal complaint to the US government. Tensions in the US-China relations were also ratcheted up in August 2022 when US Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi made a visit to Taiwan, the first by an elected US official in some 25 years, which China viewed as provocatively enhancing the international status of Taiwan’s government. Tsai is also the first Taiwanese leader to have visited the US four times since first taking office in 2016. It must be remembered that the US does not formally recognise Taiwan and is bound to pursue ‘One-China Policy’ as dictated by the Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) signed in 1979. When President Tsai visited the US in April 2023, China staged a three-day military exercise simulating a blockade of Taiwan but that, it seems, has not conveyed the message to Taiwan that China wanted to convey because Taiwan’s Vice President William Lai flew to the US on 12^th August 2023, once again to the deep anger and resentment of China which through its Ministry of Foreign Affairs has urged US leaders to “abide by One-China principle …and stop official exchanges between U.S and Taiwan”.

Since 2016, President Tsai’s actions have only undermined the status of peace and stability in the region and it is because of this lack of political insight that I categorise her amongst the ‘greatness thrust upon them leadership’ in the world. The US contributed to provoking Russia and we have a war in Ukraine on our hands. If the US doesn’t stop provoking China, we might have another war on our hand which is no good news for the world.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 20^th, 2023.

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