The Zelenskyy Lesson

 

Volodymyr Zelenskyy has been giving the world a master class in leadership since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. It should not be surprising. Though Zelenskyy rose to power as a celebrity and a comic (embodying the same regrettable trend in world politics that gave us our last president here in the US), some of the same dimensions of his career and experience that made him such a dubious leader in peacetime make him ideally suited to the current moment of crisis.

            In fact, the lesson that Zelenskyy is giving all of us extends far beyond his specific circumstances, or even the particular abstract case of “a wartime leader.” Zelenskyy embodies a principle of political dynamics that is starkly manifest in history, but that few political leaders seem to understand. Certainly his lesson would have been of enormous profit to the last four administrations here in the US.

            What is Zelenskyy teaching us? Simply this: that the outcome of political or military conflicts is virtually never predetermined from the outset. All conflicts evolve dynamically in response to the choices and actions of the key participants. The one and only question that determines the level of influence a leader may exert on the outcome of a crisis is: “What is s/he willing to risk?”

            That would seem an obvious truism, but it is a principle that few American leaders have understood or embraced in recent decades. Most American foreign policy, especially in the face of conflict and crisis, is informed by what I call the “static state fallacy.” American leaders look at what they believe the tactical situation is at the beginning of a conflict and assume that those facts will remain unchanged, thus the outcome is predetermined. They then decide what to do on that basis, with the virtually exclusive goal of avoiding risk.

            A tragic example of this error can be seen in the case of Syria in 2011-2012. As the uprising against the brutal Assad regime began, the situation was quite fluid. High ranking members of Assad’s cabinet defected. Few in Syria knew what to expect. A robust sign at that point of support for the insurgency by the US (for example, the declaration of a “no-fly zone” to protect innocent civilians from the brutal terror inflicted by Assad’s air force) would almost certainly have shifted the conflict against the Assad regime and foreshortened the civil war.

            Why did Barack Obama refuse to act? He assumed that the amount of support for and opposition to the Assad regime was fixed, thus US action would not influence the outcome. He also assumed that the fall of the Assad regime, even if it occurred, would put Syria into the hands of radical, malignant jihadists. Risking the loss of US pilots in a maneuver like a “no-fly zone” was thus a poor tradeoff. This was a clear example of the static-state fallacy: Obama failed to understand that US action could not only re-align people’s expectations in ways that would decrease the power of the Assad regime, but also in ways that decreased support for the jihadists.

           The number and power of jihadists in Syria was never predetermined. By failing to act the US helped foster groups like ISIS, who gained support because they filled a power vacuum created by US passivity. If the US had understood and acted on the Zelenskyy Lesson, much suffering might have been avoided, and many subsequent events (for example, the US election of 2016) might have occurred differently.

            Zelenskyy’s example is proof of this principle. The outcome in Ukraine was never predetermined. If Zelenskyy had accepted the opportunity to flee offered him by the US (to which he famously responded, “I need ammunition, not a ride”), Putin almost certainly would have captured Kyiv by now. Zelenskyy’s flight would have signaled to the whole world that Ukraine expected to lose, and that expectation would have become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Many Ukrainians who were on the fence, who were waiting for some sign of their compatriots’ commitment to the cause of Ukrainian nationalism, would have read Zelenskyy’s flight as a sign that all was lost.

            Instead, Zelenskyy’s refusal to flee and his deliberate visibility has galvanized the determination of Ukrainians to preserve their hard-won national independence. It is a true meeting of the man and the moment. All of Zelenskyy’s training as an entertainer, his comfort level in front of the camera and ease of expression, make him the perfect figure for the role he must play.

            But of course there is one thing Zelenskyy brings to the table that no one could have anticipated, perhaps even Zelenskyy himself. It is his obvious willingness to die. Zelenskyy clearly understands something about nationalism: it entails making the nation into an ultimate value, and for that to be true someone has to stake his or her life for the nation. That is what Ukrainians are responding to so viscerally.

            As a fellow Jew, two of whose grandparents emigrated from Ukraine, I cannot help empathizing with Zelenskyy’s existential situation. In life, Jews can generally only ever hope to be perceived as marginal figures, never wholly integrated into whatever group to which they currently belong. But by risking death Zelenskyy has finally escaped the Jewish dilemma. He has made himself the very embodiment of the Ukrainian soul. How vexing it must be for Vladimir Putin to encounter a President who actually believes in something, and is ready to sacrifice for it.

            This is not to suggest that the “Zelenskyy Lesson” requires that leaders must always risk death (their own or that of others) in order to influence political outcomes. But in order for leaders to influence the dynamic of any crisis, risks must be taken. Each crisis evolves in accordance with the expectations of those involved, and all participants set their expectations by the signs of what everyone else is willing to risk.

The US has taken risks in the Ukraine crisis thus far. But the point at which the US signals that it will risk no more, its capacity to influence the outcome of the crisis will evaporate. Will that point come late enough to save the people of Ukraine from destruction? For the sake of the entire world, I hope it does.