One of the highly touted virtues in Western culture is to be strategic. From politicians to parents, people are aiming to be “strategic” to get ahead and to accomplish goals.
But in doing so, they fail to see the downsides of a strategic orientation and a calculated way of being.
Our youth, on the other hand, value authenticity and transparency and are often distrustful of those who are seen as only strategic. Additionally, in many other cultures, strategic leaders are seen as morally bankrupt, evoking derision — not admiration — from potential followers.
Nowhere are the colossal failures of the strategic mindset more evident than in the realms of international relations and domestic politics.
Global superpowers have been unapologetically strategic and have treated the world as a giant chessboard, consolidating control and domination.
This strategic maneuvering comes with a cost. When there are strategic entities in global affairs, all other players are forced to also resort to opportunistic tactics and to retaliate, sending the whole system into a vicious cycle of opportunism.
The result is a global order of adversarial nations entrenched in a state of paranoia in which everybody stands to lose.
In the arena of domestic politics in the United States, politicians of both parties have lost credibility with the masses and are viewed as crooks and smooth operators.
Our leaders have imbibed the pragmatic American cultural conditioning that equates being strategic with being effective as a desirable leadership trait. The result is a track record of unprincipled conduct based on whatever it takes to win.
Prestigious U.S. universities in business, public policy and international relations have colluded in promoting, in their curriculum, the competitive mentality of getting ahead at the expense of the whole.
The domestic archetype of the “good leader” as one who is strategic has also spilled over to the global stage, eroding the United States’ global differentiation as a positive moral force and giving rise to the widely held perception that the U.S. is just a mirror image of other superpowers that will use and abandon the weaker players the moment a situation turns sour.
Our country’s critics point out that the Kurds, the Iraqis and the Afghans have all been treated as expendable based on U.S. strategic interests.
The loss of reputation suffered over decades from self-serving tactics in foreign affairs is costing us heavily in terms of our dependability as a trustworthy steward of the global order capable of providing a morally superior alternative to authoritarian superpowers.
Research recognizes that people have become wary of leaders who are strategic, preferring leaders who are real, authentic and transparent.
In domestic politics, there is growing distrust of polished career politicians. Unfortunately, this vacuum has been exploited by equally opportunistic secular messiahs who have positioned themselves as “antiheroes of the strategic political playbook.”
When the domestic electorate becomes more sophisticated in discerning the true “being” of leaders as opposed to what leaders are portraying, we will witness a seismic shift toward authentic leadership.
When being authentic and true to oneself and to others makes the most “strategic” sense for our leaders, this will work to resolve the leadership crisis.
It will save us from the irreversible environmental, political, moral and humanitarian decline that has engulfed us due to the self-sabotaging, Machiavellian mindset promoted within universities, governments and corporations.