Antonio Navalón
After reading and analyzing Henry Kissinger’s latest book, “Leadership”, which he has just published at the age of 100, I have discovered something important and worth noting. At this point in civilization, there is almost nothing new under the sun, and generally, the elements of emerging crises are identical or very similar to past crises. Crises are the gateway to significant changes, which does not mean those are often the best or the right ones. What is true is that historical crises such as, for an example, the one we are currently experiencing in most of the world, on the one hand, push us to do an exercise of natural selection of leadership. On the other hand, we will be witnessing – either due to the prevailing failure of the systems, popular needs, or the instinct for survival – the birth, the emergence, or the consolidation of those with the best personal elements to lead the different crises.
In Mexico, the final stretch begins. After this week, everything in the country will be an endless repetition of proposals, speeches, and strategies that will mark who will lead the people next year. These days, the two contenders for the presidency will be defined. On the one hand, there is the Frente Amplio por México represented by a group of leaders and parties that were unable to materialize and consolidate the leadership that was in their power for a while. A group of politicians who could not see and anticipate the awakening of Mexican society ended up costing them the country’s leadership, forcing them to carry out a profound reinvention of their structures and methods of action. Henry Kissinger says it is necessary to exercise a statesman’s leadership rather than a prophet’s leadership. While statesmen make their decisions based on real projections and concrete data that demonstrate the reality of their people, prophets base their decisions on other data, on their interpretations of reality, and without any consideration of the will other than their own.
On the other hand, there is the great movement of national regeneration headed by a personage who has not only been the one who has obtained the most significant number of votes in the history of our country but also – after so many years of campaigning – finally managed to translate his interests into national reality. President López Obrador has demonstrated the fruits of perseverance – although I do not know if it is well directed – and is an example that electoral campaigns do not necessarily have a fixed duration.
We are approximately eight months away from seeing the great machines of social, political, and electoral mobilization by the parties operating, but the reality is that everything starts this week. I am not in favor of betting, although, believe me, it will take a miracle for two candidates to remain the same when, after Christmas and the beginning of the year, the presidential campaign really begins. In the meantime, make no mistake, there will be no mercy in the Mexican case. Whoever wins will do everything necessary to enforce the presidential program, no matter the cost.
It is challenging to have a crisis of this depth without being able to guarantee the survival of the administrative and bureaucratic apparatuses that make and regulate the relations between society and the government. A character like Adolf Hitler is not born spontaneously, nor does he come to power by chance. Before he burst into history, everything had to contribute to Germany’s transition from the Weimar Republic to the consolidation of the Third Reich. The German nation, from the leadership of Otto von Bismarck and its real unification to the geographical division with four commissars after losing the greatest world war and having unleashed the war experiment that, so far and officially, has the record of having cost more lives in the history of humanity. From that point on, what allowed the recomposition of Germany were mainly two things: first, a statesmanlike leadership, not a prophet’s, and at the same time, the understanding and care that while the Marshall Plan helped – with the exceptional work of the Germans – to reinvent the country and rebuild it, in the face of a nation divided but ready at heart, an exemplary leadership was necessary. Without the Marshall Plan and Ludwig Erhard’s Reforms that enabled the economic miracle, Germany would have been a nation doomed to oblivion and nostalgia for what it had once been.
Nostalgia for what once was and longing for what could be are two elements that sometimes betray countries. What will the recovery of the Mexican State be like? This is something that should concern and worry all of us. First, because neither since the end of World War II nor nowadays can a country live out of its context and out of its geostrategic constraints. If we add to this the fact that we are part of the largest domestic market on the planet, it is easy to assume that our alliance with the United States and Canada is, in itself, a limit to prophetic madness. All of this also comes with the great lessons that history has taught us.
It is an overwhelming spectacle to see how the mug shot of a man accused of having wanted to alter the elections and carry out a coup d’état to continue is the poster and main campaign element of a candidate who, as things stand, it is very difficult for him not to win next year’s election. Above all, if the American campaign is made on the path from justice to do justice, turning the processes into the best electoral campaign of a country that is already too polarized and confronted within itself to understand that a nation without legal guarantees, without respect for its laws or its judges, has simply ceased to exist.
Among other issues, we will see how this fundamental lesson of confrontation that the Spaniards are giving will end. At any other time in Europe and in the history of Spain itself, the logical thing to do, considering the benefits of the transition process and the context that led to the promulgation of the 1978 Constitution, would have been to form the grand coalition that Feijóo proposed to Sánchez last week. However, the prophetic and not statesmanlike leadership prefers to raise the tension of polarization further in order not only to win but to do so regardless of the costs of the destruction of the State that this onslaught will bring about. It is also difficult to suppose why this phenomenon is not confined to one leader and a whole generation of politicians follow him, even though it is the exact opposite of their roots, beliefs, and political careers.
Prophetic leadership completely dispenses with the need for seriousness. Statesmanlike leadership is less brilliant less decisive, but much more effective and responsible in building and reinforcing the habits of power so that there is a mix between what each citizen’s ultimate belief means and, more importantly, designing and implementing a not impossible model. The impossible is always an attraction in politics. The problem is that the impossible usually destroys countries and politicians, in addition to the vast and long road of institutional destruction and often even physical destruction that it entails.
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