who will be its guardian?
Our mission, unfinished, may take a
thousand years.
The struggle tires us, and our hair
is gray.
You and I, old friend, can we just
watch our efforts being washed
away?
Their distress may have been common, but their visions and missions were not.
Nor were their final years spent in the same pursuits. It is believed that the faction later known as the “Gang of Four” forced Zhou from power, maybe with Mao’s tacit support, during Zhou’s last year. By then Zhou had quietly positioned supporters of his policies in as many key positions as possible in anticipation of the struggle for power that would follow Mao’s death. Mao spent his last years lurching unpredictably from one side of the political spectrum to the other, doing incalculable damage to China in the process. For a time he would support a moderately pragmatic faction, then become impatient, then launch a mini-Cultural Revolution by allying himself with the ultraleft, and then reverse himself.
The two great leaders of Communist China died within nine months of each other in 1976. Neither had achieved his goals. But Zhou’s policies have outlived him, while Mao’s successors in power have raced to abandon Maoism.
Without Mao the Chinese Communist movement would have lacked the mystique that not only attracted the intensely fanatical supporters who conquered China, but also inspired millions throughout the world. But Mao, like most revolutionary leaders, could destroy but could not build.
Zhou also could destroy. But he had the talent, rare among revolutionary leaders, to do more than rule the ruins: He could retain what was best in the past and build a new society for the future.
Without Mao the Chinese Revolution would never have caught fire. Without Zhou it would have burned out and only the ashes would remain. Whether it will survive and in the end do more good than harm depends on whether the present Communist Chinese leaders decide, as Zhou did, that they are going to be more Chinese than Communist. If they do, China in the twenty-first century will not need to be concerned about the Soviets to the north, the Indians to the south, the Japanese to the northeast, or even the Americans to the east. China—with one billion of the world’s ablest people and with enormous natural resources—can become not only the most populous, but also the most powerful, nation in the world.
A
NEW
WORLD
New Leaders in a Time of Change
IN 1943 WENDELL WILLKIE, who had lost the presidency to Roosevelt in 1940 and expected to run again in 1944, published a book, which he called One World. The book’s contents have since been largely forgotten, but not the title: In two words it summed up one of the key realities of the modern age. For the first time we really had been living in “one world,” with no part of it so remote as to escape the turmoils of the rest.
In the four decades since Willkie wrote One World, greater changes have taken place in the world than during any comparable time in history. Such a global survey today might well be called A New World.
The new world in which we live is one of new people. Seventy percent of all the people living in the world today have been born since World War II.
It is a world of new nations. When the United Nations was founded in 1945, it had fifty-one members. Now it has more than one hundred fifty. Twenty-seven of those have a population less than that of San Jose, California.
It is a world of new ideas. There was a simplistic tendency during much of the postwar period to divide the world in two parts: the Communist world and the free world. Today, with the bitter split between the Soviets and the Chinese, the Communist world is no longer a solid bloc. Neither is the free world. A whole spectrum of political, economic, and religious beliefs competes for the loyalty of people in new nations.
It is a world in which the nature of war has been changed by the advent of nuclear weapons. All-out war between the major powers has become virtually obsolete as an instrument of national policy. The very concept of world war, and with it the thought of victory or defeat in such a war, has become almost unthinkable. But as the danger of world war has receded, the danger of smaller wars has increased. No longer can one major power credibly warn another that if it engages in aggression in peripheral areas, it also runs the risk of nuclear retaliation.
• • •
The leaders featured in this book have belonged to a particular, unique period. World War II was one of the cataclysmic events of modern history. It unleashed forces that permanently changed the world. It ushered in the nuclear age. It ended the sway of Western European powers over the rest of the globe, and it set in motion the dismantling of the old colonial empires. It locked Eastern Europe under Soviet control and established a predatory Russia as one of the world’s two superpowers. It set the stage for a titanic struggle between those value systems that today we somewhat inaccurately label “East” and “West”—between the democratic ideals rooted in the culture of Western Europe and the totalitarian system developed in Moscow.
Before the war Churchill was a lonely voice in opposition, dismissed as an eccentric; de Gaulle was a lonely voice seeking in vain for an audience; Adenauer was a fugitive in his own country. Each had the same qualities that later served his country so well, but those qualities were either not recognized or not wanted. For each the time had not yet come.
Churchill, de Gaulle, Adenauer—leaders such as these are rare, not only because as individuals they tower above the crowd, but also because the circumstances that bring them to the fore are rare. World War II and its aftermath not only demanded extraordinary leadership, but also provided a stage on which great dramas could be played.
But besides these postwar giants, hundreds of other leaders have played a part in the shaping of the new world. They are less known and their lives are less studied, but in many ways they are just as important. Nkrumah, Sukarno, and Nehru were leading examples of revolutionaries against the European colonial powers. Ramon Magsaysay of the Philippines could have become one of the brightest stars in the Far East had he not died long before his time. David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir were pioneers, raising a new nation from the ancient deserts of Palestine. And four other Mideast leaders—two kings, the Shah and Faisal; and two Egyptians, Nasser and Sadat—were among those who struggled to bring their nations into the new world without being overcome by the forces of the old.
There are also leaders whose names would, in other circumstances, have resounded through history, but who are little known because they led in quiet times or because they led less powerful countries. Lee Kuan Yew and Robert Menzies, for instance, would have ranked with Gladstone and Disraeli had they been Prime Ministers of Britain rather than Singapore and Australia. Their lives invite a world of speculation about what might have been: How different might the history of postwar India have been if Nehru had had Lee’s understanding of economic realities? How different might have been the course of Europe if Menzies had been among the Prime Ministers of postwar Britain?
And finally, others who deserve to be remembered are instead forgotten because they led not in quiet times but in quiet ways. We often remember the flamboyant demagogue more vividly than the quiet conciliator or the careful, meticulous builder.
THE “GOOD MAN” WHO SAVED ITALY: DE GASPERI
One of the most impressive of the leaders from this last group was also the first one I met: Italy’s postwar Prime Minister, Alcide de Gasperi.
Italy after World War II was desperately poor, even more so than much of the rest of Europe. Italy’s grand Renaissance palazzi may have survived in all their splendor, but the people needed food. A bit of pasta, a slice of bread—this was wealth in postwar Italy.
In desperation, people often grasp at extremes. Italy’s poverty was Stalin’s opportunity. Moscow pumped money into the coffers of the Italian Communist party, trying to strengthen the party as a vehicle through which to seize Italy. For a time it looked as though Mo
scow would win. But the slight figure of Alcide de Gasperi stood in its way.
I met de Gasperi in 1947, when I visited Italy as a member of the Herter committee studying the reconstruction needs of Western Europe. Italy’s most important elections since the war were less than a year away. Its Communist party was the largest and most heavily financed outside the Soviet bloc, and commentators in both Europe and the United States were predicting a Communist victory. Italian aristocrats were making their plans to flee the country if the Communists did come to power. The elections would be a crucial turning point, one way or the other. We knew it. De Gasperi knew it. The Soviets knew it.
De Gasperi had been Premier since December 1945. Each of us on the committee was struck by his strength, his intelligence, and his determination. But none of the adjectives so commonly attached to great men—such as towering, visionary, masterful—described de Gasperi. He had a certain bookish air about him. In fact he was a bookish person who had spent much of the Fascist period either in jail as a political prisoner or clerking and writing in the Vatican library after he was released. He was tall and thin, with a broad forehead, intense blue eyes, round spectacles, and a wide mouth whose thin lips seemed to form a faint frown even when his lively eyes announced that he was not at all unhappy. His hair remained thick and barely gray until his death in 1954 at the age of seventy-three.
Between de Gasperi and the other of the two major Italian leaders that I met on that 1947 trip, Giuseppe di Vittorio, the contrasts were striking. Di Vittorio, a Communist, was Secretary General of the Italian Labor Confederation and one of the nation’s most powerful postwar leaders. I called on him at his office. It was lavishly furnished with period furniture, luxurious red draperies, and thick red carpeting. He was vibrant, bouncy, and hospitable as he greeted me when I came into the room. He smiled, joked, and laughed easily. He exuded warmth—at first. But when the conversation turned to the United States and the Soviet Union, his geniality disappeared. He became icy and belligerent. He wore a red flag in his lapel, and he left no doubt, either by word or by manner, that he was completely loyal to Russia and completely hostile to America.
De Gasperi’s office by contrast was comfortable but not lavishly furnished. When he received the members of our committee, he was courteous but at the same time quietly reserved. Just as di Vittorio was a typical extrovert, de Gasperi was a typical introvert. I could not have imagined him slapping people on the back, engaging in light and loud talk, or resorting to lusty humor. He had an almost melancholy look in his eyes that day. This is not an unusual characteristic of leaders. De Gaulle and Adolfo Ruiz Cortines, Mexico’s greatest postwar President, often had such a look.
A superficial observer might have bet that di Vittorio would defeat de Gasperi hands down in a political campaign, because di Vittorio, when he wanted to, could project the kind of outgoing personality that would appeal to the warmhearted Italian people and de Gasperi could not. But after a few minutes all of us, including even hard-bitten, isolationist political pros on our committee, were struck by a quality we could not really describe but that we all agreed he had. De Gasperi radiated inner strength, and the more quietly he talked, the stronger he sounded. One could sense that he had profound faith in his people, in his country, and in his church.
The flashy performers often do win in political campaigns. But this quiet, unassuming man, a mediocre orator who had no visible charisma and to whom political geniality came with difficulty, had the strength, intelligence, and character that mark a great leader. It is fortunate that the Italian people were able to sense these qualities. Had they not done so, Italy today might well be Communist, and what Churchill used to describe as the soft underbelly of Europe would have been fatally pierced.
De Gasperi’s demeanor was modest, yet he was sure of himself and his abilities. He was known for his willingness to compromise with his political foes, but he could also be counted upon to uphold fundamental moral and political standards. He was called “the most unremarkable remarkable man of our time,” yet he was the greatest popularly elected Italian leader since the fall of the Roman Republic two thousand years ago.
• • •
Rebuilding a country after its defeat in war is one of the most difficult tasks a leader can face. But often the upheavals of war and defeat push to the fore leaders of exceptional ability. Just as MacArthur and Yoshida were the indispensable men for postwar Japan, and Adenauer for Germany, de Gasperi was the indispensable man for rebuilding defeated Italy.
Like West Germany’s Adenauer, de Gasperi was able to bring Italy back into the family of nations because it was clear to the rest of the world that, in the words of one Italian, “He is a good man. He means what he says.” His quiet, unimposing manner also contrasted sharply with the melodramatic bombast of Italian politics during the Fascist era and provided a welcome relief both to his own people and to the rest of the world.
Mussolini had subjected the Italians to a rhetorical regimen that was as rich as de Gasperi’s was bland. De Gasperi recognized his own limitations as a speaker, but he also suspected that the Italian people would prefer to be lectured by Il Professore after having been exhorted for twenty-three years by Il Duce. His oratory was rambling, sometimes a bit befuddled. Rather than wide, dramatic sweeps of the hand, de Gasperi used small, even cramped gestures; rather than florid metaphor, he filled his speeches with careful, impeccable reasoning. He would sometimes pause at the podium to search through his papers for just the right figure to bolster his case. If he could not find it after a few moments, he would sigh and mutter, “Never mind. Let us proceed.”
De Gasperi made up for his shortcomings as a speaker with his brilliance as a vote juggler. As an associate said during the parliamentary crises that rocked the Italian government in the first years after the war, “A vote of confidence is worth a hundred epigrams.” De Gasperi managed the votes of confidence that held his successive governments together.
Postwar Italian government was an exercise in perseverance. In West Germany and Japan final authority was in the hands of Allied Occupations, which gradually returned sovereignty to the elected governments. Thus national officials had assistance in dealing with food shortages, labor unrest, and the machinations of political extremists. They also had a “foreign devil” who could at least share the blame for the people’s discontents.
Unlike these nations, Italy was left to its own devices almost immediately. Yet de Gasperi, in spite of severe economic problems and the often savage tactics of the Communists, was able to stay in office from 1945 until 1953, a period in which he formed eight successive cabinets based on coalitions dominated by his Christian Democratic party.
One reason for his success was that he was not easily alarmed by political crises. One day he was working in an anteroom near the Chamber of Deputies when a panic-stricken master-at-arms interrupted with news that a debate was getting out of hand. The Prime Minister continued to make notes, unperturbed. Finally the aide said, “Mr. Prime Minister, they are throwing inkwells! . . . But, Mr. Prime Minister, they are even throwing the drawers of their desks at each other!” De Gasperi looked up. “Oh?” he asked, with mild interest. “How many?”
Initially de Gasperi’s cabinet included the Communists. He had earned a reputation as a compromiser and a skilled parliamentarian. But it eventually became clear to him that the Communists were intent on paralyzing the government from within, and in 1947 he formed a new cabinet without them.
It was a stunning and courageous move. It was also a grave risk to the stability of his government. De Gasperi had been an avid mountain climber until he was fifty-four, when a mishap during a climb in the Dolomites left him dangling for twenty long minutes by a single rope over a deep chasm. He held on and eventually swung to safety. He held on with similar tenacity after he had expelled the Communists from government. The result was that in those crucial elections of 1948 the Italian people gave his Christian Democratic party, and thus his anti-Communist coalition, a t
welve-million-vote landslide victory in the fall general elections. After 1948 he held his government together through skillful coalition-making in which all but the neo-Fascists and the Communists were welcome. Thus a wide array of interests, ranging from peasants to industrialists, was directly represented in the government.
One key factor in the 1948 elections was Pope Pius XII’s decision to mobilize Catholic Action volunteers in all of Italy’s 24,000 parishes in support of de Gasperi and anticommunism. I met Pius twice, in 1947 and 1957, and found that, like de Gasperi, he combined intense human compassion with a realistic understanding of secular political affairs. Many criticized his decision to throw the authority of the Vatican behind de Gasperi’s anti-Communist coalition, but Pius believed he was acting according to his responsibilities as Pope. I could see that he considered communism as much a threat to the Church as it was to the political freedom of Italy.
But the margin of victory in 1948 was too wide to be explained simply by the intervention of the Church. Without de Gasperi, who was able to campaign as an honest, progressive proponent of democracy and freedom, the Christian Democratic party could easily have lost the election, the West could have lost Italy, and Italy could have lost its freedom.
De Gasperi understood his people. When we visited Italy, he spoke movingly to us about their plight, especially their urgent need for food. For their part the Communists spoke to the Italians of little else. But de Gasperi believed his nation needed more. La Scala, the great Milan opera house and an important symbol of Italy’s cultural heritage, had been partially destroyed during the war. Although the Italian government could have used all of its funds and more just for food, enough was siphoned off to restore La Scala. De Gasperi spoke with pride of the restoration project; he knew that at this critical time sustenance was needed for the spirits of Italians as well as their bodies. On our visit we attended a performance at La Scala. The American flag had been hung over our box. The spotlight was turned on us, and the orchestra struck up “The Star-Spangled Banner.” The house exploded in a tremendous, emotional ovation. I knew in that moment that de Gasperi had read his people right, and the Communists had read them wrong, and I gained a new measure of confidence that he would win the next year’s elections.
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