John Waters
Author Robert Kaplan once shared with me what he believes is the military's greatest weakness: “The general officer corps is sometimes asked to be strategic and understand the world beyond their capability. They are creatures of systems and lack the imagination to truly understand the world.” To the credit of those senior-most leaders, our noncommissioned officer corps is among the best in history. Corporals, sergeants and petty officers have led, bled and persevered time and again, deploying relentlessly to combat zones around the world. Officers deserve credit for promoting the best junior enlisted leaders and extending the trust necessary for intrepid, twentysomething-year-olds to lead squads and teams into harm’s way. In “small wars” such as Iraq and Afghanistan, nearly all the glory belongs to these “small unit” leaders. But their senior officers failed to see through the mystery and marketing, to stop deceiving themselves about effects achieved on backwater battlefields, to stop talking about the number of patrols conducted or IEDs found or raids performed and to ask inconvenient questions about whether it mattered. For years, countless military officers advised that one more year, one more operation, one more raid could be the turning point, redeeming the sacrifices made by thousands of young Americans and their Afghan partners. One lesson of our recent small wars is that all civilians—members of Congress, journalists and everyday Americans, too—ought to tighten the reins.
In his insightful new book, The Hollow Crown: Shakespeare on How Leaders Rise, Rule, and Fall (Basic Books), military historian Eliot A. Cohen examines power through the characters of Shakespeare’s plays. More than a few of the plays selected feature military generals, including the late tragedy Coriolanus about a fatally flawed Roman general who achieved success on the battlefield but failed to comprehend, let alone navigate, the slippery turns of the world. Pride, writes Cohen, was his downfall. Coriolanus “has a boy’s pride, a boy’s lack of judgment, a boy’s soaring self-image, a boy’s generosity, and a boy’s foolish self-absorption.” But Coriolanus’s boyishness is not unique. Quoting Herman Melville’s poem “The March into Virginia,” Cohen reminds us that all wars are boyish and fought by boys: “the champions and enthusiasts of the state.” What follows is part one of our conversation on Shakespeare, power and the skills missing in the great military leader who attempts to exercise political power. Part two will appear next week.
How do we get our hands on power? Inherit it, acquire it, seize it. Your chapter on acquiring power demonstrates how the people we find most appealing can be the most deceptive, too.
I think that’s true in the case of Henry V, who I find fascinating but also loathsome. Shakespeare plays it such that people who watch the play tend to fall in love with Henry V. But you lay out the evidence and you find that he’s a manipulator, an egotist, a deceiver.
“Being a deceiver” is true of most who acquire power, not just warrior-king Henry V, right?
There is an element of artifice or manipulation or contrivance in acquiring power as opposed to when you’re either the son of the king or picked by the king to inherit power. The larger point is that even inheriting is never enough; you have to earn power once you’ve got it. You’ll find this to be true when you look at any executive—hanging onto power will be as much of a challenge as acquiring it.
Henry V’s father Henry Bolingbroke (King Henry IV) “distorts reality.” You note that Bolingbroke has an unlimited capacity for violence but presents himself as calm and cool. This trick helps him claim the throne. What is the difference between Henry IV and Henry V?
Bolingbroke is deceptive but unlike his son, Henry V, who is better at deceiving then he is, Bolingbroke’s deception usually consists of not saying much or being in the background or making a simple gesture to look better than he really is. Bolingbroke orders the killing of King Richard II but then, in public, says he feels terrible and turns on the guy who did the deed. But what he doesn’t do is portray himself as someone other than who he truly is. It’s a kind of deception, but not the thorough-going variety.
Henry V, meanwhile, becomes different people depending on what he wants. He plays the humble, honorable soldier when he wants to seduce the French princess, Catherine. He plays one of the boys when he wants to win the Battle of Agincourt, though his previous soliloquy reveals Henry V doesn’t believe he has anything in common with foot soldiers. Remember that because he had such limited performance range, Henry IV was never able to secure the crown in a comfortable way; he was constantly worried about traitors and rebellion. Henry IV worried constantly about challenges, including from his own son. Henry V has the political gift to talk in a different way than the way he really talks, and you see it in that creepy scene where he seduces Catherine, or how he talks to his old friend Falstaff. He’s a true chameleon.
How rare in politics is that chameleon quality?
There’s plenty of people who can lie or be deceptive but play a different personality? That’s much more difficult. I cannot think of anyone who immediately comes to mind in modern American politics who shares that capacity. Going back into history, Teddy Roosevelt could talk science to scientists, philosophy to philosophers, and ranching to cowboys; that was a real gift. In TR’s case, I think it was much more sincere than Henry V, and that accounts for his astonishing popularity. Churchill had a similar gift. He gave speeches so thoughtful that they inspired Harold Nicholson, an intellectual and sophisticate, and at the same time roused common people. Churchill could do that in the same speech; it’s no accident that he was steeped in Shakespeare.
Roman General Coriolanus was someone who could not speak to multiple audiences.
No.
Coriolanus comes from the life of Roman general Caius Marcius Coriolanus, a hero who leads an army to protect Rome only to be banished after he fails to gain support from Rome’s plebeians. Later, he is killed by his own allies after leading a Volscian army against Rome. Why was Coriolanus unwilling to receive the adulation of Rome’s common folk?
What you see in this play is a one-dimensional leader, extraordinarily inspiring for people who are soldiers or want to be soldiers but without any of the other political gifts. He has a terrible temper. He doesn’t know how to speak in a convincing way to the plebeians, though he can be quite eloquent. He is awful at controlling his temper. When he decides to bring peace between Corioles and Rome, he’s regarded as a traitor by his new friends and is killed by them.
He was an excellent leader in the military sense of the word, but he lacked the versatility—the qualities of deception—to acquire political power. The people want to gawk, to see the scars of battle worn by the great Coriolanus. But he refuses to show them his scars. Why?
Coriolanus views this as disgraceful, to show off his wounds. “I had rather have my wounds to heal again / Than hear say how I got them,” is what he says in Act 2, scene 2. It goes to his sense of honor. He feels that it would make it look like he had done this just to be rewarded for his service, when he views his service as his own reward.
He’s like a boy. And “like a boy he is astonished and outraged by craftiness and duplicity.”
In this way, Coriolanus is done in by his own sense of honor. “Better it is to die, better to starve, / Than crave the hire which first we do deserve,” is how he expresses this feeling. “Why custom wills, in all things should we do’t, / The dust on antique time would lie unswept, / And mountainous error be too highly heapt / For truth to o’er-peer. Rather than fool it so, / Let the high office and the honour go / To one that would do thus.” I think he feels as many veterans do that whatever suffering he endures is private and that it’s an intrusion into a private, precious piece of themselves that is completely unwarranted and disgraceful. The reaction of my veterans in the class was very strong.
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