Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy is a 2022 book by scholar and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. It was the last major work Kissinger produced in his more than 100 years of life. As with many of his later works, such as World Order (2014), it takes familiar themes from his scholarly and political career and updates them to reflect contemporary concerns. Kissinger was fascinated by the possibilities of individual leadership as early as his PhD dissertation, A World Restored (1957), in which Kissinger focused on the three statesmen most responsible for the post-Napoleonic order in Europe. Just as he did in his early scholarship, in Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy, Kissinger expresses concern about the scholastic trend in the Western world, particularly in the United States, to downplay the significance of individuals on the grounds that this “Great Man Theory of History” tells simple stories of individuals moving events all by themselves, ignoring the “movements, structures, and distributions of power” that purportedly move human events (xxvi). This volume is Kissinger’s final attempt to defend the value of the individual in shaping history, not to the exclusion of social forces, but rather through an individuals’ ability to give these social forces a solid direction and align them with fundamental human wants and needs.

This guide is based on the 2022 hardcover Penguin Press edition.

Content Warning: This summary contains some descriptions of war and human rights abuses, along with some outdated languages and accounts of racism and cultural insensitivity.

Summary

The book’s first case study is Konrad Adenauer, the longtime chancellor of postwar West Germany (the country was divided from 1945 to 1990). Adenauer assumed leadership of a shattered country, both materially and psychologically. It was occupied by the victorious allies and humbled by revelations of Nazi atrocities. Adenauer quickly realized that the future of Germany lay in its incorporation into a broader Western alliance under the leadership of the United States. To achieve this, he first had to accept a major downgrading of German power, until the day when it had earned enough trust that it could be trusted to stand on the front lines of the Cold War and then stand as a reunified state in the heart of Europe. Charles de Gaulle likewise began as the leader of the so-called Free French, a small anti-Nazi faction, but through sheer force of personality, he made himself the de facto leader of France, at least in the eyes of the Allies. He then won a constituency at home with his capacious view of a newly glorious France, which remained compelling even as France reeled from its humiliating defeat in World War II and faced the painful contraction of its empire.

Kissinger then turns to Richard Nixon, under whom he served as National Security Advisor and Secretary of State. As in previous works, Kissinger regards Nixon as a misunderstood visionary, out of step with elite opinion and ultimately disgraced by scandal, but consummately skillful in the art of diplomacy. He played a pivotal role in moving his country past the trauma of Vietnam and into a more nuanced phase of the Cold War, even if his contributions have (at least in Kissinger’s view) gone largely unappreciated. Anwar Sadat is likewise a man whose monumental achievements have gone largely uncelebrated in his home country of Egypt. Beginning his career as a hardline anti-Zionist and Arab nationalist, he shifted toward a more national viewpoint, recognizing the futility of war with Israel and ultimately forging a peace deal that would shortly afterwards cost him his life.

Next is Lee Kuan Yew, like Sadat a child of British colonialism, who by his early forties had become the first-ever Prime Minister of an entirely new nation, Singapore. Charged with unifying a diverse electorate who had never known unity, he built a unique system rooted in both capitalist dynamism and traditional morality, allied with the West but respectful of Chinese influence. Kissinger finally examines Margaret Thatcher, who arose from humble origins to become the first female Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. She was a fierce champion of free markets and British national sovereignty who gave post-imperial Britain a renewed sense of pride.

In the Conclusion, Kissinger identifies all six case studies as products of meritocracy, systems capable of elevating the most talented people to positions of influence, regardless of their background. He worries that a new culture that deemphasizes public service has left the world bereft of such leaders. If there is hope, it is that the myriad crises facing the world, from terrorism and war to the rise of dangerous new technologies, will prompt the emergence of leaders equipped to manage them, just as similarly dire conditions in the past produced the political leaders of Kissinger’s case studies.