Leadership: Six Studies in World Strategy

by Henry Kissinger

As a general rule, images ‘speak’ at a more emotional register of intensity than do words. Television and social media rely on images that inflame the passions, threatening to overwhelm leadership with a combination of personal and mass emotion. Social media in particular have encouraged users to become image-conscious spin doctors. All this engenders a more populist politics that celebrates utterances perceived to be authentic over the polished soundbites of the television era, not to mention the more analytical output of print.

The architects of the Internet thought of their invention as an ingenious means of connecting the world; in reality, it has also yielded a new way to divide humanity into warring tribes. Polarity and conformity rely upon and reinforce each other; one is shunted into a group, and then the group polices one’s thinking. Small wonder that on many contemporary social-media platforms, users are divided into ‘followers’ and ‘influencers’; there are no ‘leaders’.

What are the consequences for leadership? In our present circumstances, Lee’s gloomy assessment of visual media’s effects is relevant: ‘From such a process, I doubt if a Churchill, a Roosevelt or a de Gaulle can emerge.’[18] It is not that changes in communications technology have made inspired leadership and deep thinking about world order impossible, but that in an...