Leading with Nothing to Lose: Training in the Exercise of Power (The Undefended Leader Trilogy Book 2) by Walker Simon P

Author:Walker, Simon P [Walker, Simon P]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Piquant Editions
Published: 2013-11-25T16:00:00+00:00

TEN

Winston Churchill and the Pacesetting Strategy (PSX)

Sir Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was a man who believed that his destiny was to bestride human history. In total contrast to the humility of Carter, or the modesty of Lincoln, or even the humorous warmth of Reagan, his ego was magnificently dominant. F S Oliver, the Conservative pamphleteer and historian, offered the following appraisal of his personality: ‘From his youth up Mr. Churchill has loved with all his heart, with all his mind, with all his soul, and with all his strength, three things: war, politics and himself. He has loved war for its dangers, he loves politics for the same reason, and himself he has always loved for the knowledge that his mind is dangerous—dangerous to his enemies, dangerous to his friends, dangerous to himself. I can think of no man I have ever met who would so quickly and so bitterly eat his heart out in Paradise.’

He was a man of enormous ambition and energy, and yet for a long time the trajectory of his political career was as wide of its target as a misfired shell from one of the great warships he so loved. It was not until 1940, after the outbreak of the Second World War, at the age of 65, with the best part of 40 years in political life behind him, that Churchill was able finally to find his range. (Or perhaps it was that the target itself had moved to where he was aiming.) From that point onward, however, his contribution was immense and extraordinary. Churchill was to leave a legacy unsurpassed in modern prime-ministerial history in Britain—so much so that in 2002 (forgetting perhaps that he was half-American), the public voted him the greatest Briton ever.

Far and away the larger part of his political career had been erratic and often undistinguished. He suffered notable failures throughout his career, not least in the debacle at Gallipoli in 1915–16. Churchill proposed a plan to bring the First World War to an end by opening up a new front in Turkey. Through what appears to have been a combination of miscommunication and misfortune, the campaign became a disaster. In the first, naval attack, Britain had six out of nine battleships put out of action, three of them sunk. The subsequent amphibious assault was followed by nine months of fruitless fighting in which the Allies lost 46,000 dead before they were forced to withdraw, defeated. Churchill carried much of the blame and by the end of the year had resigned from the government.

Throughout his career, his big asset (but also his biggest problem) was that he saw everything in terms of the great global drama of political and military history. After the end of the First World War, his chief anxiety was the rearmament of Germany. Having struggled (and himself experienced battle) against an enemy that had, as he put it, ‘almost single-handedly fought nearly all the world and nearly beat them,’ Churchill issued what proved to be

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