Politics

I find it fascinating that despite being in another part of the world there is still a huge portion of the news and every day discussion regarding the US primaries and elections. Although I am in the UK, which I assume is much more closely invested in US politics than perhaps other parts of the world, it still goes to show a spotlight that is incessantly trained on the change and movements of our domestic politics.

I guess I had always denied that the US was a hegemon for more than its status as a political, economic and military power. My world view was closer to a utopian vision of the international system as a more globalized and equalized plane. But evidently it is the nature of a super power, or at least this super power, to be a leader not only in the nature of its position but also in its ‘personal power’. By this I mean in its relationship to its followers, the rest of the world.

It’s true that people around the world have always been obsessed with leadership. Leaders are central to our social and civic spheres. From birth we are thrown into a struggle between those who hold power and lead and those who follow. At home, school, the workplace. James Burns put it much better than I could in his book Leadership: “We search eagerly for leadership yet seek to cage and tame it. We recoil from power yet we are bewitched or titillated by it. We devour books on power - power in the office, power in the bedroom, power in the corridors… today it entrances both the seekers of power and the powerless.”

I had never imagined, though, that this obsession with leaders could be applied to the delicate balance of states in the international system. Maybe there has never before been a state with the power, position and influence to produce change and movement across the world, in states rich and poor, developed and developing. Does the US have the capacity to be the leader that influences the rest of world to achieve a common goal? And what would that common goal be? I believe the next president will have a responsibility that no US president has had before: the duty of a true world leader.

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