Author: Barbara

• Vladimir Putin, President of Russia. Within a couple of days of launching Russia’s war of choice against Ukraine, are signs Putin bit off more than he can comfortably chew.  Setting aside the punishments inflicted by the West and setting aside whatever the measure of the Ukrainian resistance, others are getting into the act – and they don’t much like what they see. Xi has gotten nervous the situation in Europe is getting out of hand – he’s even offered to play mediator. Hungarian Prime Minster Viktor Orban, Putin’s pal, has felt obliged on this one to side with Europe and against Russia. And India’s Prime Minster, Narendra Modi, has called for an “immediate cessation of violence.” Who’s left to stand by their man, Putin? Oh wait. There’s always Venezuela’s President, Nicolas Maduro.
• Joseph Biden, President of the United States. He’s managed under difficult circumstances to stay steady. On the one side to convey strength and resolve, and on the other not to be pushed into imposing the most extreme level of sanctions against Russia, or to cut off diplomatic channels. I’m not arguing here that Joe Biden is Winston Churchill. Nor am I suggesting that I agree with his every decision at every step. Still, give the man credit. He’s doing what he set out to do. He, his administration, predicted the Russians were coming. They did – and the White House was prepared.
• Volodymr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine. The same cannot be said for Zelenskyy. If he knew the Russians were coming, he did not share the information with the Ukrainian people. To the contrary: in recent weeks he repeatedly reassured them there would be no Russian invasion. Still, to say that he was caught between a rock and a hard place is to understate it. The man now has a target on his back, and yet he’s hanging in and standing proud, offering still to talk to Putin if only Putin would return the favor. Is Zelensky a hero? Or a fool? Both?
• Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, and Olaf Scholz, respectively Prime Minister of Great Britain, President of France, and Chancellor of Germany. For different reasons, the last several days have chastened all three. Johnson has been obliged to shed his usual glib even buffoonish self. Macron has been obliged to shed his preening posturing, of European stateman.  And Scholz had been obliged to compensate for the mistake made by his widely admired (including by me) predecessor, Angela Merkel, who chose to get into bed with Putin for the privilege of his natural gas.
• Xi Jinping, President of China. He’s turned out a wild card. One day making nice to Putin, the next day seeming to have second thoughts. My best guess is he will not want to play the part of Putin’s partner. It’s one thing to have played kissy-kissy with the Russian during the recent Olympics, when he flew to China for the express purpose of cozying up to its president. But it’s quite another to stand alongside a bit of a madman who’s managed single-handedly to infuriate or at least alienate most everyone who is anyone.     

I include myself among those in shock though not awe.  In these posts – “Putin Patrol Continued” – and elsewhere I’ve followed the man for years. And I’m a longtime student of Russian politics. But truth is I did not fully believe until it happened that President Vladimir Putin would decide that Russia should invade the sovereign state of Ukraine not just in part, but in whole.

Putin has taken to referencing his nuclear arsenal. So, what we have now is not a worst-case scenario. But it’s bad enough.  As others have pointed out, we face the surreal but real enough situation in which there is a hot war on the European continent, the first since 1945. What Putin just did was evocative of Hitler’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 – and we all know where that led.

Former Secretary of State Madeline Albright just wrote an editorial expressing her view that by invading Ukraine Putin has made a grave strategic mistake. Over the long term, she argues the Russian people will suffer severe consequences, including diplomatic, military, and financial pain.

If this is possible, maybe even probable, why would Putin do what he did? Why would he risk so much and deviate so dangerously from what have become international norms? And why would he behave so curiously, among other signs and symptoms delivering long rants in recent days in which his fervor and fury are blatantly apparent?   

Questions like these return us to the riddle of whether Putin is a rational actor. Is he normal or abnormal? Is he, arguably like his crony, Donald Trump, mentally stable or at least somewhat unstable?

These are, of course, entirely academic questions that can never be answered with certainty. But for the moment at least the West has no choice but to assume that along with being evil, Putin is irrational.

The Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin is the title of the greatest book by one of America’s greatest historians, Timothy Snyder. Snyder describes the bloodlands as follows: “In the middle of Europe in the middle of the twentieth century, the Nazi and Soviet regimes murdered some fourteen million people. The place where all the victims died, the bloodlands, extends from central Poland to western Russia, through Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states.” During the Second Word War Ukraine was, in other words, at the heart of the killing.

But that’s not all. The Ukrainians endured enormous suffering before the war even started. They were decimated not only by the Holocaust but by the Holodomor, known also as the Great Famine. The Great Famine in what then was Soviet Ukraine lasted from 1932 – 1933. It was the direct result of Stalin’s wretched efforts forcibly to extract from Ukraine grain, thereby imposing on the country draconian policies that led to what has been estimated at 4 million direct famine deaths, and another 6 million birth defects.     

After the Soviet Union collapsed, in 1991, Ukraine remained in Russia’s orbit. Until 2014. In 2014, in consequence of people’s protests so determined and prolonged they came to be considered revolutionary, a new government was installed. This government was much more friendly to Europe than to Russia, a sin for which the Ukrainians have never been forgiven – by Putin.  

So, here we are. Putin taking revenge. The West plotting its response. The Ukrainians again in the middle of the miserable action.  

Postscript: It happens – no surprise – that Timothy Snyder just spoke about Ukraine at Harvard. Here is a highly pertinent piece from the Harvard Gazette about his remarks. Note his comment about regarding Ukraine as “the most interesting country in Europe.” Upending Putin’s Russia-Ukraine myth – Harvard Gazette

• Vladimir Putin, President of Russia.  Has the world watching his every move, hanging on his every word.  Has taken center stage, likes it there, plans for the time being to stay right where he is.

• Joseph Biden, President of the United States. Has been forced not to act but to react. Has no choice but to put the crisis in Europe at the top of his agenda. Plans for his domestic agenda largely on hold. Biden’s one consolation? So far at least, on this single issue, on Ukraine, he has had bipartisan backing.

• Volodymr Zelenskyy, President of Ukraine. Erstwhile actor and, yes, comedian, has done his level best to stay the course, keep his constituents calm, and shore up his alliances – all the while playing what is, inarguably, a wretchedly weak hand.

• Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Publicly greatly distraught by the greatest threat to peace on the European continent since the end of World War II.  Privately greatly relieved that “Party-Gate” has been relegated to the back burner.

• Emmanuel Macron, President of France. Been chatting more often with Putin than any other European leader. The upside is it keeps Macron, who is facing an early election, in the middle of the action. The downside is his chats with Putin have gone nowhere.

• Olaf Scholz, Chancellor of Germany. He could have done without this crisis; after all, he just succeeded his singularly esteemed predecessor, Angela Merkel. Germany is, moreover alarmingly weakly positioned, given its overreliance on energy from Russia. Still, there he is – stuck. Stuck between a rock and a hard place.

• Xi Jinping, President of China. The Olympics have been a bit of a distraction. But only a bit. Xi is reveling in the stress on the European continent. Xi is watching what Putin’s doing with the cold, hard eye of a seasoned strongman. Xi is thinking Taiwan and licking his chops.

On February 2^nd, Jeff Zucker, president of CNN, resigned from his post. More accurately, he was fired. Fired by his superior, Jason Kilar, CEO of CNN’s parent company, TimeWarner.

Ostensibly Zucker was dismissed for what was deemed an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate. Speculation though is that he was canned not because of his romantic relationship, but rather because of his professional relationship with Chris Cuomo. Cuomo is the former CNN anchor who himself was finally fired because he was entangled in the scandal involving his brother, then Governor of New York Andrew Cuomo.

Then again, maybe Zucker was fired for a different reason altogether. Maybe he was pushed out not because of his relationship with Allison Gollust, or because of his relationship with Chris Cuomo. Maybe it was because WarnerMedia is set to merge with Discovery, and Zucker is somehow inconvenient as the nuptials are soon to take place. Or, maybe it was because Kilar was – at another time in another place – subordinate to Zucker and this was Jason getting even with Jeff. Or, here’s another theory: it was Gollust who was mainly at fault, for being too amenable to the demands of Governor Cuomo, for whom, oh by the way, she had previously worked.

But, counterintuitively, this post about bad leadership at CNN is not primarily about Zucker. It’s primarily about Kilar. It’s about what Kilar has done, and not done in the immediate wake of Zucker’s departure.

Right now, CNN is rudderless. It’s been rudderless since Zucker left. This has already had three bad outcomes. First, several of the company’s leading lights, specifically star anchors such Jake Tapper, have let it publicly be known they are furious at Zucker’s departure. Second, the all-important launch of CNN’s new streaming service, CNN+, is supposed to happen in the next month. This means that even if it has not been derailed, inevitably it has been disrupted. Third, since Zucker was temporarily replaced by three nonentities – Michael Bass, Amy Entelis, and Ken Jautz – CNN is, at this critical moment, effectively without a proven leader at the helm.

Nothing against Bass, Entelis, or Jautz. Rather it is to say that if Kilar was going to fire Zucker from one moment to the next, he should have prepared. He should have prepared by being ready to replace him with a single individual demonstrably capable of calming the roiling waters, shoring up the sagging troops, putting on a happy face, and shepherding the company to the next, critical, stage of its development.

Since this involves both a major merger and a major launch, CNN’s leadership vacuum is painful every which way. Whatever Zucker did or did not do, blame for this unfortunate interregnum falls squarely on Kilar’s shoulders.  

In the years I’ve been blogging, now six or seven or more, I’ve not, as I recall, repeated any titles. To this rule there is one exception.

The first in a series, many moons ago, was called, “Putin Patrol.” Since then, have been countless subsequent posts titled, “Putin Patrol… Continued….” – and now here’s another. The old KGB operative has not lost his touch. He still knows how to control a room.

For about a month now much of the world has pivoted on Putin’s axis. He has led; the rest, especially the West, has followed. The West has had no choice but to respond to Putin’s aggression, leaving it, us, in the uncomfortable position of playing the subordinate to Putin’s superior. Sure, the U.S. and NATO have strode and strutted, posed, and postured, to make us seem strong. But let’s be clear. Russia has been the actor, the West, including, ironically, Ukraine, has been the reactor.

Here though is the question. Up to now Putin has been the leader, and Biden and company the followers. But can the Russian count on his dominance to persist? Seems to me the answer is no. Seems to me the status quo can last only so long. And, seems to me once it gives way, so does Putin’s capacity to control.

President Vladimir Putin is virtually solely responsible for the recent crisis on the European continent. He has been the lead actor. But the situation he created cannot indefinitely endure. The risk for him is that when the earth moves, his power, authority, and influence will not be expanded but diminished.   

Richard Haass, president of the Council of Foreign Relations, was asked this weekend if he thinks Putin is a rational actor. Or is he crazy? Haass replied, “I don’t know.”

This week was an excellent example of the role reversal that I’ve I’ve been talking (and writing) about for years – the one where leaders follow and followers lead. It hardly ever happens in autocracies. But it does in democracies, all the time.

First the governors. Several announced this week they would eliminate most indoor mask mandate requirements, in some states beginning immediately. As New York Governor Kathy Hochul put it, the number of Covid cases was down and it was “time to adapt.” It’s worth pointing out the governors who lifted the mandates were flying in the face of the continuing recommendation of the Centers for Disease Prevention and Control, which still says masks should be worn indoors, period.    

Why then did these governors decide this week that enough was enough – that it was time in so far as possible to get back to normal? The most obvious reason, and the reason they claimed, was the science, which testified the number of Covid cases was down, and the Omicron variant less severe than first feared.

The less obvious but more important reason is political: the governors knew full well that people were getting fed up. That their constituents were getting so sick and tired of mask wearing they were beginning in growing numbers to flout the rules, to refuse to wear masks even when they were supposed to. In other words, the leaders did not lead, they followed.

Meantime a renegade group of hundreds of Canadian truckers was leading. Making their their leaders’ lives miserable by completely clogging the streets of Ottawa, Canada’s capital. Why the demonstrations? Because the truckers hated the vaccine mandate – “Freedom” was their rallying cry – and insisted it be lifted, immediately.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was caught flat-footed, initially claiming the protesters were merely a “small fringe minority,” whose demonstrations were “unacceptable.” Ottawa’s mayor was beside himself, virtually begging for mercy as he called the truckers’ protests “the most serious emergency our city has ever faced.” Nor were Canadian leaders the only ones scrambling. The protests were contagious – leading to similar such resistance in France, Australia, and New Zealand, for example. And they were impactful. Because the truckers had completely blocked key choke points, most obviously between Canada and the United States, they had an almost immediate impact on business and industry, especially carmakers, some of whom were forced in short order to slow down or even shut down.

Will the truckers be brought to heel by Trudeau? Not bloody likely. To get the former to fall into line the latter will have to give them some sort of significant benefit – or threaten some sort of significant punishment. The truckers will not simply cave. Trudeau can not simply cave.

When Viktor Frankenstein created the monster, “Frankenstein,” Viktor thought he was doing good. Creating something new and exciting that would accrue not just to his benefit but to that of science. What even this most learned of men did not understand was that his humanoid would soon become an independent agent with his own mind. Who could and would do what he wanted when he wanted.  It was not long before Frankenstein could not be controlled by anyone – not even by the man who created him.

Think of Mike Pence and Mitch McConnell as 21^st century Viktor Frankensteins. They are not the only ones, but they are typical of the breed. A breed that in my book, The Enablers, I call ”enablers.” For the monster Pence, McConnell, and others of their ilk created is every bit as uncontrollable as the original Frankenstein. His name of course is Donald Trump.

In The Enablers I wrote that once Pence signed on with Trump, he had no choice. Pence had to accept without even a murmur Trump’s complete supremacy. Though it might have seemed unseemly – especially since he wanted one day to run for president himself – for Pence to play the perennial lapdog, the abject underling, so long as he was vice president, he was boxed in. “Trump’s demand for, need for, fealty was absolute, so before all else it was Pence’s fulltime job to fall into line.” If there was an organizing theme to Pence’s vice presidency, it was that he must never give offense to a man whose “emotional antennae quiver at every slight.” Pence was an enabler – a follower who allowed or even encouraged a leader, in this case an American president, to engage in and persist in behaviors that were destructive.

One might argue that for Pence it came with the territory. Vice presidents are supposed to be subordinate to presidents. Not so though senators. They are members of another branch of American government, the legislative branch, and their term of office is six years. So, ostensibly, not only are they are separate from the executive their long term in office protects them from the prevailing political wind.  

No matter. Though he had long been a power player in his own right, and though his personal disdain for Trump had long been an open secret, McConnell nevertheless enabled Trump throughout virtually the entirety of his presidency. Writing in The New Yorker, Jane Mayer called the senator Trump’s “enabler in chief.” I noted there was a moment at which McConnell’s support for Trump was pivotal. More than anyone else it was he, then majority leader, who protected the president from political harm during the first of his two impeachment trials. So zealous an enabler was McConnell that he precluded even a single witness from testifying at Trump’s impeachment trial, thereby effectively ensuring the president would serve out his term unimpeded.

This past week Pence finally declared that Trump was “wrong” to insist that he, Pence, had the right to overturn the results of the 2020 election. And, this past week, McConnell finally declared Republican attacks on two of their own, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, both fierce critics of Trump, were inappropriate and wrongheaded.    

Too little too late? Well, better late than never. But let’s be clear.

• Frankenstein came close to devouring the American body politic.
• It was types like Pence and McConnell that gave him license to do so.  

Did your eyes well up when you saw that handshake? You know which one. The one we witnessed yesterday – Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping shaking hands like the oldest and dearest of friends. I don’t know about you. But their declaration of affection near melted my heart. Two dictators finding common cause. Lovely.

On January 5 I wrote the “leaders of the year,” last year, were autocrats. It was the autocrats who had a banner 2021 while their democratic counterparts struggled. The pattern continues. It cannot be good for the United States – or for that matter any democratic country anywhere in the world – when sworn enemies of democracy make common cause.

A joint statement issued this week by Russia and China accused the U.S. of stoking the earlier protests in Hong Kong – and now of destabilizing Ukraine. What else is new? Autocrats ganging up on democrats to protect their interests, this time Russia in Europe, especially in East Europe. This time China in Asia, not so much anymore Hong Kong, already under its thumb, but Taiwan, presumably next in line for a Chinese takeover.

The newly cozy relationship between the leaders of Russia and China is being set in an historical context, with the focus on Putin who thought it good idea to place 100,000 Russian troops along the Ukrainian border. This is being seen as his attempt to turn back the clock, to the heyday of the Soviet empire, when one of the Soviet Socialist Republics was Ukraine.  

But there’s another historical context that’s far more pertinent, much more relevant. It goes back to the time of Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin, both arch communists who bonded over what for a time they perceived as their shared interests. While Mao was in the wilderness, a Chinese Communist fighting the Chinese nationalists, Stalin was his role model. A revolutionary leader who was the quintessential communist – and who had triumphed over impossible odds to, along with his earlier comrades, Lenin foremost among them, transform Russia. So when Mao finally came to power in China in 1949, having defeated his enemies after a long and difficult struggle, he was only too happy to ally himself with Stalin.

In 1950 the two leaders signed a pact between their two countries: the Sino-Soviet Treaty of Friendship and Alliance. But, the good will between the two men, Mao, and Stalin, did not last long. Within a decade their relationship deteriorated – as did their alliance.

The marriage between Putin and Xi is exactly like the one between Stalin and Mao. Born not out of affection but out of convenience. Still, so long as it lasts, the tie between Moscow and Beijing will be nettlesome and, potentially, dangerous. If Americans care at all about their place in the world they, we, will have no choice but to keep a close eye on the happy couple.  

This will be my last post on bad leadership – for the moment. I will use it to pose ten critical questions that remain, however, to be answered. I have long lamented the fact that by and large the leadership industry avoids the subject of bad leadership. It is so focused on the promise of leadership development – on the promise of growing good leaders – that bad leadership, bad leaders, are effectively sidelined.

This is not to say that bad leadership is a subject more generally avoided. It is not. We hear and read stories about bad leadership all the time. There are, moreover, countless books and articles about bad leadership and, yes, films and plays about bad leadership. But nearly without exception they tackle the subject on a case-by- case basis. Articles here about how bad a leader is Mark Zuckerberg. Articles there about how bad a leader is Boris Johnson. Books here about how bad a leader was Kenneth Lay. Books there about how bad a leader was Joseph Stalin.  

This though is different from looking at bad leadership generically, as a thing to be explored and addressed of itself. There are numberless lists of what it takes to be a good leader. Which traits? Which skills? Which dispositions? Which behaviors? There is no equivalent for bad leaders. Other than my own typology – see my previous post – there is very little on bad leadership qua bad leadership.*

Which brings me finally to questions that linger. This list is not, obviously, complete. It is intended only to indicate how long and tortuous the path still ahead. Still, notwithstanding “long,” and notwithstanding “tortuous, ” it is a path that remains, in my view, to be taken.

• How should bad leadership be defined?
• Does “bad” refer to being unethical, or ineffective? Or, does it necessarily refer to both? Is it possible to have a leader who is good along one of the two all-important axes (effective/ineffective), and bad along the other (ethical unethical)?
• What do we do with our differences of opinion – with the fact that my bad leader might be your good leader?
• What about bad leadership do we most need to know? What should be at the top of our research and teaching agendas?
• What are the roles of country, culture, and context in understanding bad leadership? Are conceptions of bad leadership in China fundamentally different from those in the United States?
• Similarly, do our conceptions of bad leadership change over time? Do we think of bad leadership differently now from how we did at the turn of the last century? How about the turn of the century before that?
• What about bad followership? How important is bad followership to bad leadership? Does the answer to this question depend on the situation? Or is there an absolute rule that applies to the relationship between leaders and followers, in particular when the leader is bad?
• If followers do matter, should we try as hard to develop good followers as good leaders?
• Does bad leadership happen suddenly, effectively overnight? Or is the process sometimes, or even often, slow, insidious precisely because it is incremental?
• If leaders are not angels, how do we stop them from getting to the point of being bad?
• If leaders already are bad, how do we stop them from getting worse?

———————————————————————————————-

*To this rule there are handful of exceptions. See especially Jean Lipman-Blumen’s book, The Allure of Toxic Leadership (Oxford, 2005), and, a more recent volume edited by Anders Ortenblad, titled Debating Bad Leadership (Palgrave, 2021). It should also be noted that in the extensive literature on Nazi Germany are some important books on bad leaders – and bad followers.