Leadership and Statecraft

Machiavelli’s observation on leaders’ challenge to balance power is just as relevant in our time – with renewed military, economic and cultural conflicts – as it was in 16th century Florence. China’s growth, Russia’s attack on Ukraine and the increasing political and economic salience of the Global South have made the importance of competent leadership in political governance an ever more relevant issue. This anthology examines the challenges for leadership and statecraft in a progressively complex world and considers the question of how we can create political elites that are capable of safely guiding the West through the many challenges we face. By ensuring that both our past and present are taken into consideration, world-leading researchers and writers investigate how ideas of leadership have developed through history to give us a greater understanding of statecraft – and of what skills and organisations are needed to run small states, large empires and everything in between.

Kurt Almqvist is President of the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation for Public Benefit. Alastair Benn is a writer and deputy editor at Engelsberg Ideas. Mattias Hessérus is a historian and Director of Civilisation Studies at the Axel and Margaret Ax:son Johnson Foundation. Philip Zelikow is a professor of history at the University of Virginia and a distinguished visiting fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. An attorney and former career diplomat, he served on the National Security Council staff in the George H W Bush White House, then taught at Harvard. He has served in six administrations. His last fulltime service was as the counselor of the Department of State, a deputy to Secretary Condi Rice. He directed the 9/11 Commission and led the Covid Crisis Group that produced ‘Lessons from the Covid War: an Investigative Report’. His most recent book is The Road Less Travelled: the Secret Turning Point of the Great War. Kori Schake is a senior fellow and the director of Foreign and Defence Policy Studies at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). She has worked at the US State Department, the US Department of Defense, and the National Security Council at the White House. She has also taught at Stanford, West Point, Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies, the National Defense University, and the University of Maryland. In addition to being a contributing writer at The Atlantic and War on the Rocks, Dr Schake is the author of five books, among them America vs the West: Can the Liberal World Order Be Preserved?; and Safe Passage: the Transition from British to American Hegemony. Fredrik Logevall is the Laurence D. Belfer Professor of International Affairs at Harvard University. A native of Stockholm, Sweden, Professor Logevall earned his PhD in US foreign relations history from Yale University. He is a former president of the Society for Historians for American Foreign Relations. His book Embers of War: the Fall of an Empire and the Making of America’s Vietnam won the Pulitzer Prize for History, among other prizes. His most recent book is JFK: Coming of Age in the American Century, 1917–1956, which received the Elizabeth Longford Prize and was The Times Biography of the Year as well as a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Francis J. Gavin is the Giovanni Agnelli Distinguished Professor and the inaugural director of the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS. Previously, he was the first Frank Stanton Chair in Nuclear Security Policy Studies at MIT and the director of the Robert S Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas. He directs the Nuclear Studies Research Initiative, is a senior advisor to the Nuclear Proliferation International History Project at the Woodrow Wilson Center, and is a life-member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Professor Gavin’s writings include Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America’s Atomic Age; and Nuclear Weapons and American Grand Strategy. His book, Thinking Historically: a Guide to Statecraft and Strategy, is forthcoming. John Bew is a professor in History and Foreign Policy at the Department of War Studies, King’s College London. He leads the department’s Grand Strategy Programme, which aims to bring more historical and strategic expertise to statecraft, diplomacy and foreign policy. In 2019, Professor Bew joined the Number 10 Policy Unit and led the recent update to the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. He has written for the New Statesman, the Times Literary Supplement and New Republic, and his books include Citizen Clem: a Life of Attlee; Realpolitik: a History; and Castlereagh: Enlightenment, War, and Tyranny.