What the West Needs

The world seems upside down, or at least the West is.   Europe is awash in a flood of Islamic refugees from the Middle East—a foreign culture which it cannot absorb without changing its own.  Great  Britain, partially as a result of the immigration policies of the EU, has decided to revoke membership in that club.  In America, the country’s first black president has presided over a decline in race relations to a level not seen since the 1960’s, a tepid economy,  and a Middle East policy that has abandoned the region to Russian influence and inverted  35 years of  policy toward Iran (including not paying ransom for hostages).    And instead of promoting democratic capitalism as his predecessors have done for decades, President Obama announced in South America that rather than adhere to a particular  ideological system, countries should go with “whatever works” (for whom? is always a key question).

And as Barack Obama’s presidency nears its expiration date, we are faced with two unpopular candidates to follow.  Hillary  Clinton is up to her eyeballs in scandals, with an apparent allergy to the truth.  On the Republican side, we have a real estate mogul and T.V. personality that has no experience in government, full of bombast, and given to hyperbole which he then backs away from.  He has taken a sledgehammer to two pillars of Republican orthodoxy—free trade and N.A.T.O.  Between the two, Trump appears to be more genuinely patriotic but the reality is that Clinton is most interested in raw power and self-enrichment, Trump in self-aggrandizement. 

This is a world in which our economy has not reached its long term trend line growth in 8 years, and we are being pressed by several adversaries simultaneously—Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, ISIS.  Our longtime allies are in the midst of their own stagnant growth and immigration crisis.

Not since 1930’s has been a crying need for steady, principled leadership. 

It is against this backdrop that I read Havel: A Life by Michael Zantofsky.

Vaclav Havel was the first president of Czechoslovakia in the post-Soviet era.  He was a most unlikely leader—a playwright, author, intellectual, and patriot, Havel was intimately acquainted with Czech culture…and the human condition.  He was imprisoned for his dissident activities on several occasions and participated in the Prague Spring, rebelling against Communism in 1968, and guided his nation out of the Eastern Bloc orbit during the Velvet Revolution of 1989. Under his aegis, the country was able to restructure its political and military apparatus, as well as the economy---all without major social unrest.  

What strikes me most about the remarkable accomplishments of Havel was his devotion to principles and to his nation, utterly without regard to his own ego and stature.  He was able to do so, I believe, because, like America’s Founders, he had a superb grounding in human nature and the nature of power.  His calling as a writer grounded him in these ideas.  Much of human history involves the story of individuals that overreach and grab for authoritarian power.  But sometimes history puts the perfect person in the perfect place at the perfect time, and Havel was that guiding person.  As Zantofsky explained:

In Havel, however, there was an added complexity, in that, unlike many of the greats and giants of history, he was totally free of any egomaniacal or narcissistic preoccupation with himself and his own needs.  He was the most considerate person one could find, always worrying about the welfare of others, always wary of trying to elevate himself or of exaggerating his own importance, or, especially, hurting others’ feelings.”

His character stands in stark contrast with our current president and the two contenders that would succeed him. 

Havel was a strong advocate for individuals to decide their own fate and take responsibility for their own destiny.  Having seen the failings of state control:

How many times have they pinned their hopes on some external power, which  they expected to solve all their problems for them, how many times have they been bitterly disappointed and forced to admit that no one would help them unless they helped themselves.

With state control, he also understood the lure of power and, like America’s Founders, mankind’s propensity to abuse power.  One quote in his presidency is poignant and incisive:

“Being in power makes me permanently suspicious of myself.”

One cannot even imagine Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump uttering such words.

Czechoslovakia experienced repercussions of both Nazism and Communism, and its citizens felt the iron boot of both.  He saw what happened to his country when the European powers crafted a deal to give up the Sudetenland to Hitler and allowed his country to fall within the Soviet orbit. 

“Personally, I am usually inclined to believe that evil should be opposed in its embryonic form before it has a chance to grow, and that human life, human freedom and human dignity are higher values than state sovereignty.  Perhaps this inclination gives me the right to open this undoubtedly serious and complicated question. Our own historical experience has taught us that evil must be confronted rather than appeased.

Havel’s posture is quite distinct from that of the current leader of the West, who has been embracing the Castros and turning himself into a pretzel for the mullahs in Iran and in both cases, he has gotten nothing but threats, contempt and disdain in return.  Havel, in contrast, had the courage to stand up for liberty and individual rights, and demonstrated that he was willing to risk his own liberty to advance those causes.

Havel understanding of culture and commitment to the voice of the people led him not to resist Slovakia’s split with the Czech Republic, he opposed their independence and resigned over it, but did not stand in the way of an independent Slovakia, taking the view that:

Rather than live for years in a non-functioning federation or in some kind of a pseudo-federation, which is only a burden and a source of complications, it is better to live in two independent countries.”

His statement gives us food for thought for our own dysfunctional republic.  It is pretty clear that we have two very different versions of how the country should be administered and what role government should play in our lives. And these competing views may ultimately not be reconcilable.  On one hand, there are those that “bitterly cling to their guns and religion,” and presumably would like government to more or less leave them alone.  On the other hand, there are those that would like government to take care of them and the management of resources---the strength of the Sanders candidacy suggests that this is not an insignificant group.  One sometimes wonders if a split is inevitable and sometimes it is only the fact that these groups are not geographic contiguous that holds the country together.

As with some other great lovers of freedom—Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, for instance,  Havel’s popularity waned over the years.  It is as though Providence puts leaders like this on the planet for a particular time and for a particular reason, and then the sun sets on them.  Havel had his own vices—he smoked, drank and was not always faithful to his wife.  But his principles and his own brand of leadership guided the Czech Republic through unsettling transitions.  He weathered these challenges and guided his nation through them because of his patriotism, his fidelity to principles of individual freedom and faith in his people to control their own destiny.

He also adhered to a personal philosophy very much like Martha Nussbaum’s neo-Stoicism:

“And I understood, with a new sense of urgency, that the only real source of a will to live is hope, hope as an inner certainty that even things that can appear to us as purely nonsensical can have their own deep meaning and that it is our task to look for it.  And I understood, maybe somewhat better than before, why human life ceases to be a life worth living without the love of those close to you.”

And this inner core sustained him through the turbulent and difficult transitions of the Czech Republic from an authoritarian centrally planned economy to a free capitalist one—without bloodshed.

A generation ago, the West was blessed with a number of principled, steady leaders that had the courage to push back against a tyrannical, expansive system.  Lech Walesa ignited the flames in the shipyards of Gdansk.  But he also had a moral, rhetorical, economic , and military support in a number of defenders of Western values---  Pope John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, and Helmut Kohl, for instance, that stood up to the darkness of Communism.   Vaclav Havel rightfully deserves a place among those souls that rang the bell of freedom and never wavered.

Zantofsky summed up the life of Havel:

If most Europe today is safer than at any time in its history, it is not least  to the vision of statesmen like Bill Clinton, Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel.

The West is once again threatened—this time on multiple fronts, from multiple directions.  An assertive and adventuresome Russia has risen from the ashes.  Radical Islam cloaked in a refugee crisis threatens Europe and America.  China is asserting dominance l over the South China Sea.  Iran spreads is spreading its deadly tentacles across the Middle East.  A vastly underestimated ISIS directly and indirectly threatens the West with repeated terror attacks. 

And, as I assess Western leadership at the moment, we have none with a backbone, core principles, and intellectual grounding quite like Havel’s.