Blog

My site’s been down. So for the last couple of weeks I’ve been rendered mute. But no longer!

Logically, I should be posting about the presidential election which, for good reason, has Americans in a frenzy. However, precisely because of our fevered brow, it’s a good time to step back. To review a book about leadership written by the real thing – a leader.

———————————————————————–

It’s not often that a book about leadership is written by someone who really, really, really knows his stuff. This one then is an exception. Written by Tony Blair, Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland for ten years, the man is deeply experienced and unquestionably expert.

He does not disappoint. Blair’s book, On Leadership: Lessons for the 21^st Century is not great. But in an area – leadership – in which excellence is in embarrassingly short supply his book stands out as solid.

The book is more relevant to leaders in government than in business.  Moreover, while he tries to be current, Blair’s time as prime minister was 1997-2007. So, the context within which he governed was different from – it was far less fraught and furious – what it is today. To wit: Britain’s last prime minister, Rishi Sunak, lasted in office less than two years. And the incumbent, Keir Starmer, whose Labor Party won a landslide victory just last summer, already has approval ratings no better than dismal.

Blair’s model as a writer could have been Machiavelli. Not that Blair himself is Machiavellian. Rather it is that Blair, like his long-ago predecessor, set out to write a manual for leaders who are governors. Of the 40 short chapters many have titles indicating their instructions: “Be the Leader with the Plan;” and “Your First Duty: Keeping People Safe;” and “How to Negotiate.”

Ironically, the area in which Blair is the least competent is the one on which he spends the most time – technology. To his credit, he understands how technology has changed the dynamic between leaders and followers. In fact, there is a chapter on “Politics in the Era of Social Media” in which Blair acknowledges that “social media is a place where vitriol and venom are the sauce flavoring whatever opinion is being given vent to.” However, there was no social media during the decade that Blair was prime minister, which probably explains why in this area Blair seems more performative than highly knowledgeable.

Blair is at his best when he is most deeply human. First, when he is what he is at heart – an optimist during a time when pessimism about democracy prevails. Second, when he is being what he also is at heart – a seasoned wise man when wisdom about leadership is in equally short supply. 

What I admire most about this book is that it does what it sets out to do. To instruct about leadership seriously and purposefully. My own book, Professionalizing Leadership, is a lament about how we treat leadership as an occupation. We do not regard it as a profession or even as a vocation. Blair seems to share this view. He writes that governing is the one area of importance “in which a person with no qualifications, no track record, a CV devoid of content, can rise to a position of extraordinary power. In any other walk of life, we would consider such a circumstance unthinkable, ridiculous even…. But in politics this can happen.”

It is this deficiency that Tony Blair sets out to address. Which is why anyone with a personal, professional, or political interest in how to lead during a time when leading in democracies is so difficult, will find Blair’s book instructive and, as important, heartening.  

The Alpha Female

My last post was titled, “The Alpha Male.” I wrote it to provide another lens through which to look at a deeply flawed Republican candidate for president who, nevertheless, is more than holding his own against his Democratic opponent.

Which brings me to said opponent, Kamala Harris, whose recent trajectory is by now familiar. First overnight attention, then overweening affection, finally the grinding halt. For weeks, try as she might, she has been unable to make any headway.

The United States of America has this in common with almost every other country: it has never had a woman at the helm. No accident. Females are still seen as less leader-like – however defined – than their male counterparts. Which is primarily why still so few women at the top of the greasy pole – in business as in government, in the military as in the media, everywhere.  

Alpha males are seen as leaders in all great ape groups, including humans. Why? Because they are more readily seen as strong and strong-willed, as forceful and successful. On a largely though not entirely unconscious level, it is men much more than women who are seen as powerful – powerful enough to protect us from our enemies from without and, according to Trump, from within.

Wonder why he is concluding his campaign by demonizing immigrants? Because it enables him to be the hero who will save us. From whom? From the menacing and even murderous outsiders who became – under President Joe Biden and Vice President Harris – insiders.

Harris on the other hand is being pushed by Democratic sage James Carville to toughen up, to dominate her space, to depict herself not as a purveyor of joy but as an alpha female. He warns she needs to be “more aggressive.” He worries she lacks a “killer instinct.” He admonishes her to “hit hard – pronto.”  He cautions she must, absolutely must, “scare the crap out of voters.”

No accident that the few women who have risen to the top of the national heap, and who in many ways shone in their leadership roles, were seen as exceptionally strong. Britain’s prime minister Margaret Thatcher was famously known as the “Iron Lady.” India’s prime minister, Indira Gandhi, was also called an Iron Lady, in this case by Henry Kissinger. Prime Minster Golda Meir was similarly dubbed, she was called “the Iron Lady of Israel.”  Meanwhile Germany’s Chancellor, Angela Merkel, had a different sort of moniker, “Mutti Merkel.” Mother Merkel. But it too suggests a certain fierceness, in this case a mother who will do what she must to protect those for whom she is responsible.

We know by now that if women come across as being too strong it turns men off – and many women as well. Which is why threading the needle between being seen as too strong on the one hand and too weak on the other is so daunting a task. But it is not impossible. Thatcher was prime minister for over ten years. Gandhi was prime minister for almost fifteen years. Meir was prime minister for five years. Merkel was chancellor for more than fifteen years. Which suggests that once the right woman has the keys to the kingdom, she’s got a shot at transforming it, for some time to come, into a queendom.  

But she’s got to get there first. Which she will never do if she grins too much and glowers too little.

I’ll keep this short and simple. I’m keeping it simple by omitting from the discussion differences between the genders. And I’m keeping it short by limiting the discussion to a few comments buttressed by a few quotes.

Since Donald Trump burst onto the political scene nearly a decade ago, experts have continued to scratch their heads. How can a man so characterologically, psychologically, and intellectually deficient so strongly appeal to approximately half the American electorate?

To this question have been countless answers. One however has been largely or maybe even entirely absent. Trump is an alpha male.  Even at his now advanced age he still looks like one, lumbers like one, and speaks like one. All that sound and fury spewing from his mouth is, I hate to break it to you, evocative of an alpha male.

So, why does this matter? Why would we be attracted to an alpha male so lacking in apparent virtues, especially in comparison with someone who is not an alpha male but who on paper at least is more qualified to lead?    

Because we – we humans – are one of the great apes. Being a great ape does not mean that we are exactly like other great apes. But it does mean that we have some things in common. Such as longing to be led by someone who seems strong.

Our relatives include chimpanzees, to whom we humans, because we share a common ancestor, are closest. We share nearly 99% of our DNA with chimpanzees, which means that our genetic makeup is nearly identical. It cannot be, then, that the similarities stop there. That they are merely technical, without consequences for how they and we behave.

Humans are like chimpanzees (and countless other creatures) in that we, like they are social. We live in groups. Unlike humans who usually live in large groups, chimpanzees live in small groups of perhaps 20 to 50. Notwithstanding their small size, chimpanzee groups are like human groups in that they are organized hierarchically. Some chimps rank higher than others, while one, the leader, nearly invariably is an alpha male who ranks highest and rules the rest.

Historian Yuval Noah Harari: “The dominant member [of the chimpanzee group] who is almost always a male, is termed the alpha male. Other males and females exhibit their submission to the alpha male by bowing before him while making grunting sounds, not unlike human subjects bowing before a king.”*

Primatologist Frans de Waal: “[Among chimpanzees] the alpha male makes an impressive display… hitting anyone who doesn’t move out of the way in time. The display both draws attention to the male and impresses his audience…. Dominant males seem to keep track of [their underlings] because during their next round of display they sometimes single out parties who failed to acknowledge them for ‘special treatment’ to make sure that next time they won’t forget to greet.”**

Even assuming only slight similarities between chimpanzees and humans, among both great ape groups alpha males have forever been familiar figures. I’m not arguing that looking at Trump through the lens of a primatologist is the only way to understand his remarkable, and remarkably enduring political appeal. I am arguing that to exclude the primatologist’s perspective is to exclude an explanation of major not minor importance.

——————————————————————————–

*From his book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, p. 25.  

**From his book, Our Inner Ape, pp. 57, 58.

Winston Churchill believed in summits. In gatherings where one world leader would meet, face to face, with another world leader so they could come to know each other at least slightly, and get some work done. He thought it could not hurt the mightiest of men (yes, then all men) to share the same space, talk across the same table, eat the same food and drink the same drink, and maybe take a walk through the same thick wood.

Churchill:.

Conferences on the highest level… not overhung by a ponderous or rigid agenda, or led into mazes or jungles of technical details, zealously contested by hordes of experts and officials drawn up in a vast cumbrous array. These conferences should be confined to the smallest number of powers… and meet with a measure of informality and still greater privacy and seclusion.

Not long ago the leaders of the world’s two most powerful countries, who happened also to be the most implacable of enemies – the United States and the Soviet Union – met face to face usually for several days at a time on a reasonably regular basis.

• President John F. Kennedy and his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, met in Vienna in 1961.
• President Lyndon Johnson and his Soviet counterpart, Alexei Kosygin, met in Glassboro (New Jersey) in 1967.
• President Richard Nixon and his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, met in Moscow in 1972.
• President Richard Nixon and his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, met in Washington in 1973.
• President Richard Nixon and his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, met in Moscow in 1974.
• President Gerald Ford and his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, met in Vladivostok in 1974.
• President Jimmy Carter and his Soviet counterpart, Leonid Brezhnev, met in Vienna in 1979.
• President Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, met in Geneva in 1985.
• President Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, met in Reykjavik in 1986.
• President Ronald Reagan and his Soviet counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, met in Washington in 1987.  

Agreed: the world was simpler then. It was bipolar. Because, for decades after the Second World War, only the United States and the Soviet Union seemed much to matter, every other country in the world was background, not foreground. Moreover, hope still flickered for the United Nations. Then unlike now it was considered a potential forum for conflict resolution and peacekeeping.

Now though the world is more complicated. It’s not bipolar, it’s multipolar. Moreover, to add to the confusion and complexity are nonstate actors such as, to take obvious recent examples, Hamas and Hezbollah. As to international institutions – most obviously again the United Nations – in general they fail at their most important task. The UN commons is no match for single leaders who are strong and strong willed.

Which returns us to summits as a venue for diplomacy which, however, for decades has been sidelined. Essentially are two kinds. One is a summit between and among national leaders who are friends. These are easy. The other is a summit between and among national leaders who are foes. These are less easy; in fact, they are fraught.

Which is precisely why the comparison between then and now is so striking. Nixon met with his supposed archenemy, Brezhnev, three times. (Had Nixon not been forced to resign it would almost certainly have been more.) And Reagan met with his supposed archenemy, Gorbachev, also three times. Moreover, by their last get together, they were, if not friends, then downright friendly!

Contrast Nixon and Brezhnev and Reagan and Gorbachev with Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin. As presidents the latter met just once – in 2021, in Geneva – when they were together for a total of three and a half hours. Similarly, Biden has met with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, only twice. The two men were in the same place at the same time in November 2022, though only as part of a larger summit. And they met again a year later – on a single day for all of four hours.

Summits such as Biden’s with Putin and Xi are the antitheses of what Churchill had in mind – informal, leisurely meetings held in private, where two or perhaps a few more world leaders would have several days to get to know each other on a more personal level, unencumbered by “hordes of experts and officials drawn up in a vast cumbrous array.”

It’s easy now to fly from one point on the planet to another. Why then has the president of the United States not met more often with the presidents of Russia and China?  Why do leaders of today’s world powers fail to take advantage of every available avenue for international diplomacy? What are they afraid of? Do they personally and, or politically thrive on the hostility between them?

I am not suggesting that summits between or among declared enemies or even fierce competitors are a cure for what ails us. I am saying is that their effective exclusion from our diplomatic arsenal has been a loss. Churchill was many things. But a fool he was not.

One more thing. Russia and China have never been closer than they are now. Is it because Putin and Xi have met 42 times since Xi came to power in 2012? Let’s just say that meeting face-to-face, repeatedly, over several days, didn’t hurt!

It’s tempting to write the obvious. That liberal leaders are having a hard time because of the two evil “I’s” – inflation and immigration. Nor do I want to dismiss their importance. Inflation has forever signaled danger to anyone in power. And for the last decade immigration has been a hot button issue not just in the United States but in most of Europe and now also in Canada.

But to understand the level of our discontent it will not suffice to look just at a few problems, no matter how major. Or for that matter to look just at those at the top. For the answer to the questions of what’s going on – and why – rests primarily not with leaders but with their followers. It is we who are changing – those of us without power and authority not those with.

Look at this lousy week – specifically for liberal leaders:

• In Austria the hard right had a great night. The Kremlin friendly Freedom Party scored its strongest showing since its inception at the end of the Second World War … by former Nazi functionaries and SS officers. The Freedom Party scored over 29% of the vote.
• In France it’s now evident that the power of French President Emannuel Macron has been curbed. Effectively forced in recent weeks to appoint a prime minister who is well to his right, Macron’s control over the levers of government is perceptively less than previously.
• Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau – who has held office since 2015 – is running again. But he’s got some problems. Members of his own Liberal Party are ditching him. Canada is struggling with high inflation, soaring housing costs, and a weakened health care system. Most importantly, his poll numbers are dismal. More than 70 percent of Canadians say their country is “broken” under his leadership.    
• Kier Starmer is still wet behind the ears. He’s only been Prime Minister of the United Kingdom since July. But already one of his own – a member of his own Liberal Party – has unceremoniously ditched him. Two days ago, one Rosie Duffield loudly quit the party charging it, and by extension him, are all about “greed and power.” Seems among the issues is evidence that Starmer and other top Cabinet officials accepted lavish gifts from donors. Not a good look for a chap just starting out.
• Back on campus Brandeis University announced that its president of eight years, Ronald Liebowitz, would not only step down but do so in the middle of the academic year (November 1^st). This followed a debasing vote of no confidence in the president by the faculty, which accused him of “damaging errors in judgment and poor leadership.”
• Not far behind is the president of Rutgers University, Jonathan Holloway, who, however, is leaving only next June and then of his own free volition. Why then is he quitting? Because he’s had it. As he put it to a reporter, “It’s a punishing job in normal times…. But the standards we’re [now] being held to are impossible. I had to ask myself, ‘What is it I want to do, how can I do it, and is this the right position?’”  

So, what’s going on here? Is it just chance that liberal leaders everywhere are struggling? To wit in the United States, where the Democratic candidate for president is barely holding her own against her Republican opponent who is, among his numberless deficits, a crypto fascist?

In a book I wrote over a decade ago I warned of the trend. It’s not just about those at the top or even the times in which we live. It’s about what anyway has been the historical trajectory. A trajectory in which has been an exceptional expansion of political rights. It is this that explains why liberal leaders have been weakened – and their followers strengthened. As I wrote in the book, tellingly titled, The End of Leadership:  

A note about the title: it is meant as a caution about the future of leadership in the twenty-first century. For nearly everywhere leaders are found wanting, followers are restive, and the context is changing – sometimes at warp speed. So, unless we get a grip, the prognosis [for liberal leadership] is grim.

 About this, alas, I see no reason to change my mind.  

In my recent book, Leadership from Bad to Worse, I wrote that “Bad leadership and followership are not static. They develop over time: they go from bad to worse. But they go from bad to worse only if we allow it. If in contrast, bad leaders and followers are checked before they corrupt, at least before they corrupt completely, the outcome can be different.”

Seems the apparently bad Mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, has just been stopped. He’s certainly been stopped in his tracks.

Click on the link below and you’ll see my piece about Hizzoner the Mayor. I wrote it a couple of weeks ago when it started to seem clear that he was other than pure as the driven snow. And now this headline sprawled across the front page of yesterday’s New York Times, “ADAMS CHARGED WITH BRIBERY AND FRAUD”!

Specifically, he has been charged with bribery conspiracy, fraud, and soliciting illegal foreign campaign contributions. The sums involved are not – certainly not by today’s exorbitant standards – great. But the picture the indictments paint is a sordid one, with corruption apparently endemic to large swaths of the Adams administration. Moreover, in at least one case – involving a fire inspection – were potentially dangerous consequences.

Like everyone else Adams is innocent until proven guilty. But until this drama plays out it is his constituents, and the great city they inhabit, who will pay the price for what is at a minimum, his carelessness and incompetence. Still, it’s much, much better than the alternative – an alternative in which bad would have been permitted to persist.

—————————————————

He’s a Bad Leader … Every Which Way

When Donald Trump wants to stick Kamala Harris somewhere between dangerous and treacherous, he’ll call her a “communist.” No matter that Trump couldn’t distinguish between a communist and a socialist or name who coauthored the Communist Manifesto. In his lexicon a “communist” is the worst of the worst.  

Far be it from me to defend communism – under the banner of communism have been some of the most repressive and indeed murderous regimes in history. Still, it’s worth dissecting Trump’s insult because it comes at a moment in history when the differences between communism and capitalism are starker than they have been in decades.

The Soviet Union was a communist country. Russia is not. Communism in Russia was formally dismantled when the Soviet Union crumbled. Since then, China has replaced Russia as by far the most powerful Communist country in the world – hence America’s most formidable ideological as well as political, economic, and military competitor.

The degree to which the United States is capitalist waxes and wanes over the years – depending in the 20^th and 21^st centuries on whether Democrats or Republicans control the levers of power. Similarly, the degree to which China is communist waxes and wanes. This explains the title of this post, for in the last several years the difference between being a leader in the United States and being one in China – a leader in any sector – has grown greater.

In America corporate leaders who strike it rich are rewarded and admired in the extreme. They thrive on becoming rich and then richer, and most love to strut their stuff. Jeff Bezos famously sports the world’s largest sailing yacht. Ken Griffin ostentatiously just added a $90 million pad in St. Tropez to his already humungous real estate empire. And while Warren Buffet is conspicuously inconspicuous when it comes to possessions he cannot resist even as a nonagenarian adding to his mountain of money – he is now worth $144 billion. Additionally, notwithstanding our moaning and groaning about income disparity, the differences between them and us continue to grow. America’s CEOs now make about 200 times more money than their average employee. Moreover, although the stock market has been hovering at all time highs not everyone stands to gain. Well over a third of Americans have not a nickel in the market, and the top 1% of all Americans hold 50% of all stocks.

In China things are dramatically different. While in the US capitalism has grown starker and more extreme in recent years, in China the opposite has been true. It is communism that has grown starker and more extreme. In my last book, Leadership from Bad to Worse, I document how in the last five years especially President Xi Jinping has taken an increasingly hard line. He has become a much more rigidly ideological Communist, which has had implications for every aspect of Chinese life, effectively from the cradle to the grave.   

For Americans Xi’s now relentlessly tight grip is probably most obvious in the private sector. After years of being bullish on China, we now shy from investing in China. And leaders in American business have become trepidatious about dealing with their Chinese counterparts. For good reason. While America’s corporate leaders are gadding about and flying high, China’s corporate leaders are hunkering down, playing down their wealth rather than showing it off. No accident because, not being fools, they are acutely aware of the national mood. A mood that is a direct reflection of Xi’s metamorphosis from a leader who tolerated some signs of a market economy to one who does not; to one who is, instead, cracking down on what the regime deems signs of excessive wealth.

So, while in America there is scant serious interest in leveling the playing field, in China there is deadly serious interest. Xi wants to return to his country’s communist roots, which means his interest is in a “common prosperity,” not in one in which a few individuals prosper in the extreme.

One could lament – and I do – that both American and Chinese leaders are unwilling to move closer to a happy medium. Where wealth is somewhat more evenly distributed in the United States than it is now; where relentless repression as in China has no place.

Meantime we need to be clear: whenever leaders are at opposite ends of whatever the spectrum, connecting, communicating, the one with the other, is difficult. So if, as in this case, American leaders relentlessly reflect capitalism while Chinese leaders relentlessly reflect communism, the language they speak is radically different in more ways than one.

Headlines like this one – in last Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal – drive me nuts: “A Decade After ‘Lean in,’ Progress for Women Still Lags.”

Oh really?! Surprise, surprise!

Are we supposed to be astonished that according to a just concluded 10-year study of the “roles and promotion rates of millions of women and men at major North American companies,” women’s climb to the top of the organizational ladder remains seriously slow?

To be sure, the numbers of women in the highest ranks rose. But … women still comprise less than one third of those in the top tiers of management. They, we, still lag badly behind men on crucial early promotions. And they, we, have dropped even further back on rates of pay. Moreover, the number of employers who say that gender diversity is a high priority has fallen in recent years, from 87% in 2019 to 78% this year.    

As I said, surprise, surprise.

Want to know why what’s happening is happening and why what’s not happening is not happening? Read this and get a clue.

A Radical Relook at the Gender Gap

For those among us who think a second White House term for Donald Trump would be, shall we say, a disaster, one recent headline was especially alarming. It read, “Debate Night Barely Moved Needle in the Polls.” It was concerning not because most presidential debates do move the needle but because Kamala Harris won by so decisive a margin. In the immediate wake of the debate 67% of likely US voters said she did well in comparison with only 40% who said the same about him. So, Harris not only beat Trump in the debate she walloped him.

American voters are still relatively unfamiliar with her. Safe to say then that had Harris performed poorly on the debate stage her numbers would have suffered. Still, given her strong showing yielded no advantage, and given who is her opponent, one has to wonder, what’s going on here? Why isn’t Kamala Harris doing better than she is? In the wake of the Democratic Convention was exhilaration. Joe Biden was out of the picture, she looked good and sounded good, and Democrats were all fired up for what they hoped would be a great campaign. But a few weeks later, the presidential race looks more like a slog than a sprint.

Harris plays down her identity. But could be that it’s more important than she’s willing to admit, even to herself. She does not usually self-identify as a Black American (her father), or an Indian American (her mother), or a female American. But each of these identities matter, if not to her than to the American electorate. Consciously or unconsciously, it matters to voters that she would be, for example, the first American president who is a woman.

In my last post, “Male Leaders,” I wrote about the glaring difference between male leaders and female leaders as it relates to levels of aggression. “Male leaders and their followers are much more often and much more overtly aggressive than their female counterparts.” This certainly pertains to candidate Trump who almost invariably appears angry and combative, and whose followers skew more male than female. In a recent national poll women favored Harris over Trump by 21 points. If this figure stays approximately the same, on Election Day the gender gap will break all previous records.

However, this gap cuts both ways. Harris is more popular than Trump with women, but she is less popular than he is with men. Which raises the question, can Harris reel in more men? I would argue that she must try. That she must try to be less agreeable and more assertive. That she must try to be less feminine and more masculine. That she must try to be less general and more specific. That she must try to speak less about abortion and more about inflation. That she must try to smile less, to speak in a forceful cadence, and to appear stronger and even fiercer. She shouldn’t dump “the politics of joy” – it comes naturally to her. But instead of relentlessly playing joy up she should begin to play joy down.

Harris is in battle. Her opponent is prone to violence. It will not suffice for her to be, or to seem to be too ladylike, too female. She must be more androgynous, better at threading the needle between being a woman and being a man. We are, after all, in the land of the great apes, in which overwhelmingly it has been and still is males who rule the roost. This has implications for Harris – and for the American electorate.

I had occasion recently to be struck again by the difference between male leaders and female leaders – especially as it pertains to aggression. Neither the information nor the insight is new. It’s all over the relevant literature, including that on primates. Male leaders and their followers are much more often and much more overtly aggressive than their female counterparts – despite the distinction being one to which it appears we’re inured.

Among the reasons we forget it exists is the nature of work has changed. In large parts of the world the advantages male humans used to have of physical strength have diminished or even vanished. If you’re leading a company or a university, for example, physical strength plays little or no role in how you perform. Even if you’re leading a country, it plays no part or, more precisely, not one that is obvious. Joe Biden was not elected president of the United States in 2020 because of his physical strength or warrior-like personality. And it’s conceivable that though Kamala Harris is far smaller than Donald Trump, and cannot possibly replicate his inveterate swagger, she will defeat him in the November election.

But national leaders differ from other sorts of leaders in that they have proxies who are warriors. They have at their disposal militaries, and intelligence services, and weapons, many deadly. So, it is males leaders at the national level who are most likely to emulate their great ape analogues: males who are prone to aggression either because they want more sex or because they want more territory.

In both current wars in which the United States is most directly engaged – one between Ukraine and Russia and the other between Israel and Hamas – the leading actors are all male. Moreover, their primary prompt is for more territory. President Vladimir Putin’s original intention was to swallow Ukraine whole, to effectively annex it to Russia. And in response to the October 7^th attack on Israel by Hamas, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been determined to if not take over then rule over Gaza. 

In Sudan the civil war in which millions are being displaced and more are going hungry, males predictably are the protagonists. And the Democratic Republic of Congo – which for two decades has endured brutal civil strife – has the awful distinction of being known as “rape capital of the world,” with on average 48 women raped every hour, all by men determined to dominate them.      

This is not to suggest that female leaders are never aggressive. Sometimes they are, certainly when it comes to defending their young. Nor is it to imply that at the national level female leaders are weak or that they are pacifists. While their sample size is extremely small, women leaders such as Margaret Thatcher and Golda Meir remind us that gender is not, or at least not necessarily, a determinant.  

But it is to remind us of what we know. That among great apes – of which humans are one – males are more aggressive than females and that they are much more prone to violence. American politics is a current case in point. This is chief White House correspondent for the New York Times, Peter Baker, writing in yesterday’s paper.

“At the heart of today’s eruption of political violence is Mr. Trump….He has long favored the language of violence in his political discourse, encouraging supporters to beat up hecklers, threating to shoot looters and undocumented immigrants, mocking a near-fatal attack on the husband of the Democratic House speaker, and suggested that a general he deemed disloyal be executed…. He even suggested that the mob [on January 6^th, 2021] might be right to hang his vice president and has since embraced the attackers as patriots whom he may pardon if elected again.”

In his landmark book On Human Nature the preeminent sociobiologist, Edward O. Wilson wrote that “males are characteristically aggressive, especially toward one another,” and that the “physical and temperamental differences between men and women have been amplified by culture into universal male dominance.” Wilson’s book was written some fifty years ago, which means that some of what he wrote has been supplanted by different experts with different findings. But if there is evidence that his conclusion has been disproven, I’ve not seen it. Either in print or on the world stage.