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A strongman is a particular type of leader. Historically mostly strongmen ruled the earth, though especially since the Enlightenment and the American and French Revolutions, democracies have given autocracies a run for their money.  

Recently the word “strongman” has come back into fashion – with a vengeance. First, because in the last decade the number of autocracies worldwide has increased, while the number of democracies has decreased. And second, because of what was immediately dubbed “Putin’s War,” the war in Ukraine, which has dominated much of the world’s news cycle since Russia’s invasion on February 24.

We make a mistake, however, when we confine the word “strongman” to politics, typically to national leaders who are autocrats or despots.  Strongmen are everywhere in evidence – including in business. What is Elon Musk if not a strongman? What is Jeff Bezos if not a strongman? What are men like Jamie Dimon and Larry Fink and Ray Dalio if not strongmen otherwise (poorly) disguised?

Here’s a fraction of Elon Musk’s last week:  

• He disclosed that he bought a 9% stake in Twitter whereupon he was immediately named to Twitter’s board.* As soon as the news of his humungous investment became known, Twitter’s stock surged 27%.
• He announced that 194 billion hamsters can fit into Tesla’s spanking new factory in Texas. (Musk is of course Tesla’s founder and CEO.)
• He tweeted this and that to his astronomically high 90 million Twitter followers – over whom he is reputed to have considerable sway.
• And, oh, by the way, another company of which Musk is founder and chief executive officer, SpaceX, this week launched one retired astronaut and three paying customers into space. They are scheduled to dock at their designated space station on Saturday.

If ventures, adventures, like these, all in a seven-day period, don’t make Musk a strongman, please tell me who is. A strongman “leads or controls by force of will and character.” No military means or mechanisms necessary.      

*Several days after it was announced that Musk was joining the board, it was announced Musk was not joining the board. No reason was given for why the change.

For years Alexei Navalny has been Vladimir Putin’s fiercest, and most relentless, persistent, and prominent domestic opponent. As the links below testify, (they are a sample), I have written about Navalny regularly and frequently, including in a book that appeared a decade ago, The End of Leadership.  

Navalny has not been much in the news lately, in part because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. And in part because he, who is already serving time in prison, was recently sentenced to another nine years, this time in a maximum-security facility.

Putin has been out to get Navalny for years. But each time, so far, he has failed. Putin has failed to kill Navalny or even completely to cripple him, though by locking him away for the indefinite future, Putin is trying to ensure that whatever Navalny’s voice that remains, will be silenced.

I am writing about Navalny today to draw attention to a film titled, “Navalny,” that is about to be released in the U.S. I have not yet seen it. But early word is it is as excellent as important.  Which means that for anyone with any interest in Russia under Putin, or in leadership and followership more generally, the film is must-viewing. Here a link to further information about the movie, “Navalny.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Navalny_(film)

And, here links to a few of my earlier blogs in which Navalny makes an appearance:  

Alexei Navalny – The Real Deal

Putin Patrol Continued….*

Putin Patrol Continued…. His Nemesis Revisits

The good news for liberal democrats is by now familiar. In the last six weeks the ideal of liberal democracy has been revived by what is now at least the bastion of liberal democracy worldwide, Ukraine. Similarly, Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has been transformed not just into a hero but a savior.    

The bad news for liberal democrats is less familiar. It is that in elections held last weekend, in two other eastern European countries, one Hungary, the other Serbia, liberal democrats lost, and illiberal autocrats won.   

To the United States and most of Europe, Serbia is less important. It is smaller and less significant. More to the point, Serbia is not a member either of NATO or the European Union (EU). Still, it’s worth noting its incumbent president, Aleksandar Vucic, won a landslide victory not despite of his populist, pro-Russian stance, even after the invasion of Ukraine, but because of it. No surprise then, that in his victory speech Vucic said that while Serbia still hoped to join the EU, it would nevertheless continue its “friendly partnership with Russia.” And no surprise that in the wake of his victory, Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, congratulated Vucic, especially on his “independent foreign policies.”

The fourth term win by Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orban presents the West with more of a problem. Unlike Serbia, Hungary is a member of both NATO and the EU, which explains why Orban has been a thorn in the side of both for years.

He is a self-styled “illiberal democrat” who rewrote the constitution, filled the top courts with his appointees, and changed the electoral system to his outrageous advantage. Hungary is, and has been for years, a country devoid of the institutional checks and balances, anything like a free press, and the competitive elections, that give meaning to the word “democracy.” No wonder after Orban’s landslide win Putin congratulated his pal – they met several times over the years – sending him a message that read in part, “Despite the difficult international situation, the further development of bilateral ties of partnership fully accords with the interests of the people of Russia and Hungary.”

Orban is a strongman at a moment when, notwithstanding the situation in Ukraine, strongmen are strong. They are everywhere in evidence, in capitals all over the world, from Beijing to Brasilia, from Ankara to Manila. Moreover, Putin himself is standing tall where to him it matters – in Russia. To be sure, polls out of Russia are not the most reliable. Additionally, there are several good explanations for why his numbers have recently gone up. They include: hundreds of thousands of his strongest opponents have left the country; those that are left are too scared openly to oppose him; he has made the media a closed shop; and the “rally ‘round the flag” effect, which means that during a crisis, especially a war, followers support whoever is their leader.

Still, since Putin’s people invaded Ukraine, his numbers went from high to even higher. In January his approval rating was 69%. By the end of March, it climbed to 83%.  A sobering reminder to Americans that our values are not universally shared. A sobering reminder to the American president that calling his autocratic counterpart a “war criminal” and a “butcher” might gratify some of the people some of the time. But it will not gratify all the people all the time.

We know that after World War II, most Germans denied knowing what had happened. Specifically, they denied knowing what had happened to European Jews: that by the millions they had been arrested, interned, tortured, and murdered. Jews from Germany and from most other countries in Europe, from East to West, from North to South.

The story outside Germany was somewhat similar. Most Americans said after the war they had no idea during the war that Jews were being systematically eliminated. While Germans’ pleas of “I didn’t know” were not generally persuasive, Americans who claimed ignorance were more convincing. In most cases were good reasons Americans did not know the Nazis were responsible for genocide, especially during the period 1942 to 1945.   

While we cannot now say how the war in Ukraine will end, what we can say now is that times have changed. We all know what is happening in Ukraine – which is precisely why we have become more involved in this bloody European conflict than in any that preceded it.

People with no obvious sources of power and authority – ordinary citizens – now feel entitled and emboldened to speak up and speak out. Partly this is the result of practice – social media give voice to anyone with anything at all to say. And partly this is the result of leaders deprived of their previous authority. In liberal democracies particularly, people no longer trust or admire their leaders, which is why we think ourselves the equal of those positioned as our superiors.

Changing technologies reinforce the changing culture. Give a person a voice that might resonate, chances are good that voice will be employed. I would not be writing this piece if I did not think someone would read it – someone from outside my immediate circle. Moreover, no expert, no pooh-bah, will edit or vet my prose. To get my piece “published” I need no one’s approval or assistance.  

One of the reasons why Russia has performed poorly in recent weeks is the remarkable level of support Ukrainians have received from people who are not Ukrainian – and who never before had anything remotely to do with Ukraine. In the West at least, countless millions are as furious as anxious that Goliath has threatened to destroy David for no good or obvious reason. Why are we so furious, so anxious? Because unlike during the Second World War we are not ignorant – nor can we possibly plead, ever, ignorance. In the West every sentient person – including every sentient American – is at least remotely aware of what is happening on Europe’s eastern flank.   

• Since the invasion, the calamity in Ukraine has dominated the American news cycle.  
• Since the invasion, Americans have been flying Ukrainian flags by the hundreds of thousands, from coast to coast.
• Since the invasion, some 400 American companies have pulled out of Russia, either ending their business in Russia altogether or sharply curtailing it.
• Since the invasion, one in four Americans have opened their wallets to respond to the crisis.      
• Since the invasion, hundreds of thousands of Americans have volunteered digitally to assist the Ukrainian war effort – to hack Russian government and military targets.
• Since the invasion, the U. S. government has approved an enormous spending package to support the Ukrainian war effort. As of mid-March, the total figure was $13.6 billion, some of the money going to weapons transfers and to support more U.S. troops in Europe; and some to economic warfare and humanitarian aid.   

Whatever bad is happening to Russia on the battlefield is being exaggerated and exacerbated by what is happening to Russia off the battlefield. This is a war unlike any other in the history of Europe. It is being fought not just by raw power – but by moral suasion. This time we know we don’t need a gun to fight the good fight. This time we know we have other arrows in our quiver.

In my book, Bad Leadership, I developed a typology of bad leadership based on two criteria. The first was ineffective, the second was unethical. I argued that all bad leadership is bad in one, or sometimes in both, these two ways.

I further divided what I called the “universe of bad leadership” – that is, all bad leadership – into seven different types. Though the types are no neater than is the human condition, generally they escalated from bad to worse. Thus, the last type of bad leadership, the seventh, was “evil” leadership.   

I defined evil leadership as follows: The leader and at least some followers commit atrocities. They use pain as an instrument of power. The harm done to men, women, and children is severe rather than slight. The harm can be physical, psychological, or both.

Note the title of the book is not Bad Leader – it is Bad Leadership. Moreover, my definition of evil leadership does not reference only the person at the top. Rather it is inclusive. It is about “the leader and at least some followers.” Still, I am not now, nor was I when I wrote the book, under any illusions: usually (though not always) evil leadership is driven by a single, identifiable individual who is more highly positioned than anyone else.   

This brings us to the case of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who President Joseph Biden has called a “butcher.” Presumably a leader who is a butcher is a leader who is evil. And, presumably, a leader who is a butcher has followers who similarly are evil or, at least, they are willing and able, on orders from on high, to use pain as an instrument of power.

Last night Biden gave a speech in Poland in which, at the end, he said of his Russian counterpart: “For God’s sake, this man cannot remain in power.” But virtually immediately after he said it, some of his aides insisted that he didn’t really mean it. That Biden’s remark was not to be interpreted as a call for regime change, which for a sitting president is considered bad form.

This is not the first time that Biden has called Putin out. Last week the American was asked by an interviewer if he thought the Russian was “a killer,” to which he, Biden, replied, “I do.” Safe to say, then, that Biden thinks of Putin and those around him as evil. As men – they are all men – who are doing harm to other men, and women, and children, that is not slight, but severe.   

Which raises the question of what is to be done? If by now it is widely agreed, at least in the West, that Putin’s leadership is evil leadership how are Western leaders to respond?

There is a famous line (variously attributed), that reads, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” All well and good. But if in the face of evil good men are supposed to do something as opposed to doing nothing, what more precisely should they do?

In the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Western leaders did not do nothing, they did something. In fact, in one month they did a lot. They shored up Ukraine’s defenses by many measures. They provided Ukraine (and some of the surrounding countries) with massive amounts of humanitarian aid. And they imposed on Russia punishing sanctions. Still, they stopped short of giving Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky everything he wanted and, it appears, they remain nervous about leaning in. About calling outright for the removal of capo di tutti i capi – the boss of all the bosses who is “a butcher” and “a killer.”

Words have meaning – and they have consequences. To label a leader evil, even implicitly, is to imply that heaven and earth should be moved to remove him from his position of power. To this general rule Putin, presumably, is not an exception.  

Without Ukraine, Russia ceases to be an empire, but with Ukraine suborned and then subordinated, Russia automatically becomes an empire.

Zbigniew Brzezinski

It is impossible to be an emperor – a czar – without an empire. Therefore, it has been impossible for Russian President Vladimir Putin to imagine himself an emperor – a czar, a Russian ruler in the tradition of Peter the Great – without suborning and then subordinating Ukraine to Russia.  

Here two testimonies to the importance of Ukraine to Russia – if you believe that Russia is, or should be, an empire. The first is the statement immediately above, by Brzezinski, the recently mentioned (see my post of March 16), highly esteemed writer and presidential security advisor.

The second is by Putin himself. In a long (5,000-words) article written by him last summer, tellingly titled, “On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians,” he declared his conviction and telegraphed his intention.   

Putin’s conviction is that “Russians and Ukrainians were one people.” Therefore, “the wall that has emerged in recent years between Russia and Ukraine, between the parts of what is essentially the same historical and spiritual space, to my mind is our great common misfortune and tragedy.” Putin justified the “historical unity” of Russians and Ukrainians by invoking the distant and recent history of the two peoples, going all the way back to the 9^th century. His conclusion, then, was inevitable. “I am confident,” he wrote, “that true sovereignty of Ukraine is possible only in partnership with Russia…. It is in the hearts and the memory of people living in modern Russia and Ukraine, in the blood dies that unite millions of our families. Together we have always been and will be many times stronger and more successful. For we are one people.”     

It is exceedingly unusual for a sitting president to pen an article of this length and depth. But by all accounts, Putin, because of his extreme fear of catching Covid, during the last two years spent much of his time alone, presumably ruminating about his place in the pantheon of Russian history. Moreover, those people to whom Putin did talk during the last two years were few in numbers, and uniformly like-minded. According to Anatol Lieven writing in the Financial Times, recently the number of people with access to Putin has “narrowed to a handful of close associates [who are] servants of the autocrat.” No wonder then that they are all committed to the idea that for “deep historical, cultural, professional and personal reasons,” Russia is a great power of which Ukraine is an inextricable, irrevocable part.

I emphasize the idea that Putin has imagined himself an emperor on a mission to reconstitute the Russian empire not to diminish the importance of other components of context. These include: the expansion of NATO; the larger global struggle between democracy and autocracy; Putin’s recent “agreement” with China’s President Xi Jinping; and Russia’s chronic inability to establish an identity beyond that of a “gas station masquerading as a country.” (This is John McCain’s still apt phrase.)

Instead, it is to stress that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was driven by a single individual, an all-powerful leader, powered by his ambition to be a leader who rules supreme. Putin will emerge from this ghastly fiasco with something he believes he can boast about. But he will never realize his dream. He will never unite Ukraine with Russia. He will never make Ukrainians and Russians “one people.” He will never have an empire. He will never be an emperor – another Russian czar.

Emperors are leaders above all others. They are the highest monarch – in honor and rank they surpass kings. Empires, in turn, are political units that typically extend over large swaths of land. Usually they are created by conquest, and divided between a dominant center and subordinate peripheries.  

Mary Beard, the English classicist widely acknowledged as a supremely accomplished expert on ancient Roman civilization, is fascinated by emperors. In her book, Twelve Caesars: Images of Power from the Ancient World to the Modern, she explores our enduring fascination with emperors, especially those who ruled ancient Rome. “It is almost two millennia,” Beard writes, since Rome ceased to be the capital of an empire, “but even now – in the West at least – almost everyone recognizes the name and sometimes even the look, of Julius Caesar or Nero.”  

Beard’s special interest is in the depiction of emperors in art. For emperors are shown not only in paintings and sculptures, but everywhere, and in every medium, from silver to wax. “They have been turned into inkwells and candlesticks. They feature on tapestries, in pop-up decorations at Renaissance festivals, and even on the backs of a notable set of sixteenth-century dining chairs.” Nor is this sort of art available only to the elite, to nobility or to the wealthy. Rather it is equal opportunity art, faces of emperors, heads of emperors, as available to the lower and the middle as to the upper class.  

For this trend that became fashion if not fixation, Julius Caesar was largely responsible. It was this Caesar who sought to engineer the replication of his image hundreds of times over. Beard notes that never had any other ruler been so intent on having his likeness so frequently reproduced, specifically to promote his omni-presence and omni-power. Think of Julius Caesar as a supreme self-promoter, hellbent on having himself depicted in every temple in Rome and in every city in the Roman world.       

Given the origin story of the emperor in art, no surprise that the origin story of the emperor in semantics is similar. The words emperor, Caesar, czar (tsar), and Kaiser all have the same source: the first Roman emperor, Imperator Caesar Augustus. Augustus, the adopted son of Julius Caesar, later took “Caesar” as part of his own official name. Since subsequent Roman emperors did the same, over time “Caesar” came to mean emperor of Rome, and “Caesar” came similarly to mean ruler both in other places and in other languages.

 But it’s one thing for leaders who are emperors to insert their languages as their likenesses into our lives. It’s quite another thing for us to permit leaders who are emperors to insert their languages as their likenesses into our lives. For that matter, it’s yet another thing for us to permit leaders to anoint themselves emperors in the first place.

Freud said we have a “thirst for authority.” While this is not accurate all the time, it is accurate some of the time. It does apply to some people in some circumstances – which explains our enduring fascination with emperors, with strongmen. Even if some of us loathe what others of us like.  

“Leaders who lust for success have an unstoppable need to achieve.” (From Barbara Kellerman and Todd L. Pittinsky, Leaders Who Lust: Power, Money, Sex, Success, Legitimacy, Legacy.)

This week Starbucks announced the company’s founder and former CEO was coming out of retirement again to take the helm. Howard Schultz lusts for success, which explains why he is coming out of retirement to retake his leadership role not for the first time but for the second.

After stepping away as chief executive officer in 2000, he returned as chief executive officer in 2008, remaining in place until 2017, purportedly once more to retire. Now here he is again – CEO of Starbucks for the third time.

What’s going on here? Is Schultz the only person on the planet who can do the job? Or is he unable to let go? Is he drawn like the proverbial moth to the flame, in his case straight back to Starbucks to right the ship?

The company is having some problems. Most obviously with employees who have the temerity to try to unionize, and who accuse Starbucks of retaliating against them by using “aggressive union-busting tactics.” This is unsettling not only those who work at Starbucks but those who invest in Starbucks, shareholders who do not like what they see.

For Schultz, there is a special irony here, a sad one, because for decades he positioned himself as an especially beneficent leader, a thoughtful, even kindly boss whose employees were not underlings but “partners.” One might think that what turned out a yawning gap between Schultz’s rhetoric and Schultz’s reality would disqualify him from stepping into the company’s leadership role for the third time. Guess not. Guess he badly wanted to be Starbucks’ czar yet again, and yet again those around him were unwilling or unable to say no.   

This week was another announcement, a related one, this one by football icon Tom Brady, who revealed on social media that he had reversed himself. He would not do what he said he would do just two months ago – he would not retire from football. “These past two months,” said Brady, “I’ve realized my place is still on the field and not in the stands. That time will come but it is not now.” Sounds like Schultz.

Those who read my posts who also read my books will know that Tom Brady was one among the 12 leaders featured in Leaders Who Lust.  About Brady we wrote that his lust for success was independent of financial rewards or material goods. Rather it was driven by the need to stand out – to excel in the game into which he had invested every fiber of his being.

Brady has been insatiable, willing to put himself through an almost unimaginably punishing schedule, a supremely arduous workload, and the severe psychological stress that is part of the overweening need to win. But Brady’s goal is to be at the pinnacle of success. Nothing less will suffice. Which is precisely why, come summer, he will, at the ancient age of 45, be back. He’ll be back to a grueling, grinding schedule, training with the Buccaneers.  

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has revived the use of a word that had long been out of fashion – totalitarianism. Given the battle for Ukraine is frequently described as “Putin’s War,” we are under the impression that the Russian president is acting alone. That he alone made the decision to invade Ukraine, and that he alone is carrying out the war in Ukraine.

The word “totalitarian” was in fashion for about thirty years, from the 1950s through the 1980s. It grew out of the history of German Naziism and Soviet Communism, especially though not exclusively during the years that Stalin was still in power. (He died in 1953.) Most famous was philosopher Hannah Arendt’s book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, especially part three titled, simply, Totalitarianism.     

To Arendt, writing in the 1950s, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin were the templates for what a totalitarian leader looks like. As the word itself suggests, the implication is the totalitarian leader has total control not just of the state but of the people. Total control of everything and everyone. Moreover, totalitarian leaders are never satisfied with what they have. Invariably, inevitably, they want more. Arendt wrote:

The struggle for total domination of the total population of the earth, the elimination of every competing nontotalitarian reality, is inherent in totalitarian regimes themselves. If they do not pursue total control as their ultimate goal, they are only too likely to lose whatever power they already seized.   

Sound familiar? Sound like Putin who could not be satisfied with what he had, who needed, craved, lusted for more?    

In the 1980s the widely esteemed, Polish-born political scientist and, under President Jimmy Carter, national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, similarly described Hitler and Stalin as prototypes of totalitarian leaders. In his book – Brzezinski was also a prolific author – titled The Grand Failure, he wrote:

Both elevated the State into the highest organ of collective action, both used brutal terror as the means of exacting social obedience, and both engaged in mass murders without parallel in human history. Both also organized their social control by similar means, ranging from youth groups to neighborhood informers to centralized and totally censored means of mass communication. And, finally, both asserted that they were engaged in constructing all-powerful “socialist” states.

But before we fall into the trap of thinking that these men acted alone, let’s be clear. They did not. Of course, they did not, they could not. Like all leaders they relied on legions of others, on their followers, to do the heavy lifting.  Concentration camps were not, only, Hitler’s concentration camps. The Gulag was not, only, Stalin’s gulag. Ukraine is not, only, Putin’s War.

Arendt understood the role of the leader – the totalitarian leader – in a totalitarian system. She understood that though he was all-powerful, he was not alone nor did he act alone.

In the center of the movement, as the motor that swings it into motion, sits the Leader. He is separated from the elite formation by an inner circle of the initiated who spread around him an aura of impenetrable mystery which corresponds to his “intangible preponderance.” His position within this intimate circle depends on his ability to spin intrigues among its members and upon his skill in constantly changing its personnel. He owes his rise to leadership to an extreme ability to handle inner party struggles for power.

Is Vladimir Putin a totalitarian leader? History will decide. For now, suffice to say that even Hitler and Stalin had help.

Here’s how Simon Sebag Montefiore put it in his book, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar.

The temptation has been to blame all the crimes on one man, Stalin. There is an obsession in the West today with the cult of villainy: a macabre but inane competition between Stalin and Hitler to find the “world’s most evil dictator” by counting their supposed victims. This is demonology not history. It has the effect of merely indicting one madman and offers us no lesson about either the danger of utopian ideas and systems, or the responsibility of individuals.

Not long after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine the gravity of the situation became clear. Images of burning buildings and fleeing Ukrainians were flashed around the world, which meant leaders were pressed almost immediately to respond to the crisis. For most government leaders the decision was easy. They had to say something – it was their job to make statements on American foreign policy. For most business leaders the decision was less easy. For their traditional, typical posture was publicly to maintain not only their personal neutrality, but their professional one. Maintaining the neutrality of the companies they led was more than a norm, it was a mantra.

Recently, however, sitting on the fence has become more difficult. American CEO’s, especially those who head large public companies with widespread name recognition, have been pushed, slowly but certainly, on some issues, to take a public stand. This has not pertained on motherhood and apple pie; it has pertained on hot button issues such as LGBTQ rights or Black Lives Matter. But, of course, when chief executive officers speak out, they voice not just their own views but those of the companies they represent. Moreover, when they do more than say their piece – when they act – they and those to whom they are responsible can be at risk.

Given that CEOs inevitably represent many different stakeholders, what should we assume? That the CEO is speaking only for him or herself? That the CEO is speaking for the board? That the CEO is speaking for employees? That the CEO is speaking for shareholders? Or customers, or providers, or communities? Where does it end – or begin? Not only is there on almost every important policy issue a difference of opinion, but the divisiveness can get fractious, downright nasty. Additionally, it can get costly. If CEOs say or do something that I don’t like, I, and legions of others, can take our business elsewhere.

The crisis in Ukraine has proven an exception to the general rule. CEOs of American companies were expected to, and they did, take a stand quickly, decisively, in ways that were unprecedented.

It’s not yet clear whether we’re in new territory here, whether this is a template for the future, or whether after Ukraine, CEOs will revert to their usual caution, their usual silence on topics that are politically fraught. What does seem certain is that stony silence will increasingly be a less viable option.

Which raises the question of why this crisis was a watershed. Why has Russia’s invasion of Ukraine done more to push CEOs to take a stand and, additionally, to put their money where their mouths are, than any other global crisis? Why have CEOs with astonishing speed halted their sales in Russia, shuttered their stores in Russia, suspended their transactions in Russia, withdrawn their businesses from Russia, stopped investing in Russia?  

• Moral clarity. A large, ostensibly powerful country invaded a much smaller, less powerful one, without apparent reason and with devastating consequences.
• Personal clarity. Evil is personified in Russian president Vladimir Putin. Good is personified in Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
• Political past. Russia is the bad guy here – a bad guy with whom Americans are familiar. The Cold War was long ago, but not that long ago. President Joe Biden is among those of a certain age who remembers when the world was bipolar, the United States and capitalism on one side; the Soviet Union and communism on the other.   
• Political present. In recent years Republicans and Democrats have been far more divided than united. Ukraine is different. On Ukraine Republicans and Democrats have managed to present a generally united front.
• Nuclear Weapons. Putin has bandied about their use. Such talk tends to focus the mind.
• NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is America’s most important and powerful alliance. But for decades Europe’s member states, especially Germany, were largely passive participants. Ukraine changed all that. The invasion has shaken Europeans to the core, gotten the West to work in tandem.
•  Public opinion. American public opinion is remarkably clear in its preference. Americans are even willing to sacrifice for Ukraine. Last week three out of five said they would pay more at the pump to help Ukraine’s cause. Their sympathy toward Ukraine is not just an abstraction. CEOs know full well it is mirrored in their boards, workers, shareholders, and other stakeholders.  
• Triumph – for now – of stakeholder capitalism over shareholder capitalism. This movement has been percolating for years, companies increasingly pressed to ditch the profit-is-all model for one in which other values, for example, protection of the environment, become as important or, more accurately, more important than they used to be.
• Shock. Difficult to exaggerate how much of a blow has been Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. It has upended our sense of the world order. It has upended our sense of what – in the 21^st century – is politically and militarily possible. It has upended our sense of what should constitute a global economy. And it has upended our sense of what one man can do to one million – and then some.

What is the short answer to why corporate leaders responded to Russia’s war against Ukraine with unprecedented clarity and alacrity? Because the situation seemed, but was not, surreal.