The Qualities of a Statesman

I recently dug out one of the books my grandfather wrote. He wrote many books, but this one from 1983 stood out for me. He titled it The Statesman,[1] a worthy topic then and now.

I do not know of any other book that similarly seeks to extract the admirable qualities of statesmen[2] from history and place them in a normative framework. This book did not get much attention at the time, and it projects my grandfather’s particular views on who deserves praise and who does not. But I admire his dedication to gleaning lessons learned from the past, and it is an enlightening exercise. Fifty years later, it also seems like a good time to reflect on the matter again.

In a very systematic and comprehensive way, my grandfather laid out the desirable traits of a true statesman and ticked through the context in which a statesman must operate. He even provided a handy annex for the “ideal statesman” – perhaps hoping some would take his list to heart. As he said, it was the progressive decline and increasing absence of stately qualities in his modern times that moved him to write. For me, two generations later, his words are like a placeholder for dynamics that have exacerbated and accelerated. If you want to know what I mean, I have appended excerpts from his closing chapter at the bottom of this essay. His assessment reads like writing on the wall.

So what does it take to be an ideal statesman? Quite a bit, he says, including: (1) intelligence factors like an ability to discern what matters, having flexible and quick thinking (no one-track-mind), a well-educated and cultured background, a broad perspective, creativity, and vision; (2) thought-process factors like decisiveness, an ability to prioritize, a willingness to compromise, driving power, patience, and a desire to lead; (3) character factors like reliability, prudence and discretion with a dose of daring, and a sense of responsibility and respect for moral law, including as a custodian of human life; (4) being an extrovert and skilled communicator; (5) living a disciplined life; (6) bureaucratic proficiency; (7) thick skin; and (8) good health. He gives many examples of what worked – and what did not.

If you noticed the italicized text, my grandfather repeatedly intimated that these qualities stand above the rest. Not to put words in his mouth, but I think he would look at the political landscape today and conclude even more emphatically that the ability to see beyond oneself and have empathy for others is the greatest hallmark of a great leader.

In drawing these lessons from history, my grandfather mostly scanned trans-Atlantic examples from the 19th and 20th centuries to make his case. In these rankings, Otto von Bismarck, the first Chancellor of a unified Germany, received exceedingly high marks, not only from my grandfather, but also Bismarck’s contemporaries and later historians who lavished their praise. Bismarck certainly was a prominent presence in the years after Sayyida Salme arrived in Germany. His impact was larger than life, but I will mention two discrete ways that Bismarck left a particular mark on Sayyida Salme’s life:

• He had his imperial thumb on the scale of colonial power plays that determined when and how she could return to Zanzibar, resulting in her complete frustration and embarrassment by the end of her 1888 trip, after which she chose not to return to Germany (The Centennial Collection, Addendum to My Memoirs, pp. 22-34):

To my mind, however, the matter was clear. I knew to a certainty that I had become subject to Bismarck’s caprice. Having embarked on my travels without his consent, I was to be ignored by the representative of the German Reich. What that meant for me, he surely would have known. All my relatives concurred: Let the German Consul step in for you and take up your cause, for only then can something be undertaken for a German subject. They were right, and my desolation became doubly palpable [when the German Consul did not step in and take up the cause]. (The Centennial Collection, p. 31)

• He is said to have deliberately provoked the Franco-Prussian war that broke out in the summer of 1870. From amazing research done by Fridjof Gutendorf, we now know exactly what tram her husband Heinrich was on just a couple of weeks later to get home – the wrong one! – when he discovered his error and leapt off mid-course to his fatal demise. Why the confusion? Because all the tram horses had been commissioned for wartime support, leaving the Hamburg tramlines in a mess.

Another great leader of the 19th century is one that my grandfather does not mention. If we look beyond the Occident to the Orient, we must add Sayyida Salme’s father, Sayyid Said bin Sultan, who ruled Oman and then Zanzibar between 1806 and 1856. That a small trading nation could leverage its perch at the tip of the Arabian peninsula into control of the East African coast all the way down to Zanzibar, secure its rule there and make Zanzibar its outpost capital, and then turn the island into one of the most prosperous commercial and financial centers of the world was no small feat. Today we would criticize Sayyid Said for building this prosperity on the backs of slaves (and tusks of elephants), but most would recognize that his reign showed a great deal of statesmanship. Here is Sayyida Salme’s description:

Somewhat taller than average, he had in his countenance something extraordinarily winsome and endearing, and yet his appearance commanded the utmost respect. Despite reveling in war and conquest, he was exemplary for all of us as the head of the family and ruler of his people. Nothing mattered more to him than justice, and he made no distinction between his own son and a simple slave when addressing possible transgressions. Above all, he was the definition of humility before God the Almighty. He had no trumped-up pride, unlike so many others of rank. Modest and with few needs for himself, he was charitable and generous toward others. He also appreciated when the people around him were well-dressed, cheerful, and in good spirits. I never saw him angry with anyone or heard him berate them. He had a good sense of humor and loved to put on a good joke. And yet, he was a great authority figure for young and old. (Memoirs, p. 6)

If we now also cast our view to present times – when history rhymes – we can name another great statesman in Sultan Qaboos bin Said, who ruled Oman from 1970 to 2020, for exactly half a century, just as his great-grandfather did the century before. It was also no small feat that Sultan Qaboos brought Oman out of poverty and isolation into modernity and the community of nations, while also bringing prosperity and peace to his people. To say that Sayyid Qaboos was beloved and revered would be an understatement, just as it was with Sayyid Said.

But the story is not done, for we now have Sayyid Haitham bin Tariq to continue this great tradition. According to Joseph Kéchichian,[3] this always poised and calm new Sultan is also focused on the well-being of his people and staying the Omani course of “friends to all, enemies to none.” As Kéchichian emphasized, “Oman is the only country in the entire Arab world that has never broken relations with any other.” This may help explain why, all told, the Al Bu Said family has maintained its rule continuously since 1756. That is a long time and makes this single dynasty even older than the American Republic, again no small feat. Yes, this Sultanate is no democracy, but even monarchs can be great statesmen, it would seem – just as democratic leaders can fall short of the standard.

Let history surprise you; let her story inspire you – let her authentic voice speak to you.

Andrea Emily Stumpf, February 24, 2025

Photograph: © Andrea E. Stumpf 2025

[1] Der Staatsmann: Anspruch und Wirklichkeit in der Politik (The Statesman: Political Aspirations and Realities), by Erich Schwinge (1983). My grandfather was born in 1903, met Sayyida Salme’s granddaughter, Emily Troemer, after both graduated from law school, and had four children with her before becoming a widower in 1947. His career spanned the law as a judge, defense attorney, law professor, university president, legal historian, and published author of dozens of books.

[2] I hope readers will allow me to use this old-fashioned term without feeling gender-offended. Today we would speak of “statespersons,” and that is how I mean it here. Not surprisingly, Google says that “statesman” has been on a steady decline to a mere fraction of its use since peaking in 1852. “Statesperson” did not really show up until 1970, but is still barely used. The historical examples that my grandfather drew from were almost universally male. Today the same book would reflect a somewhat more balanced landscape, even as we can continue to hope for more women in the field – especially with a goal of bringing ideal traits to the table.

[3] From a presentation hosted by the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center in Washington, DC, on February 11, 2025. Joseph Kéchichian is the author most recently of A Sultanate that Endures: Oman in the World from Qaboos bin Sa’id to Haitham bin Tariq (2023).

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+++ Translated excerpts from the closing chapter of Erich Schwinge’s

Der Staatsmann: Anspruch und Wirklichkeit in der Politik from 1983:

The Decline of Statesmanship: Lessons Learned

…. In an essay that appeared in 1937 under the title “Anarchy or Hierarchy,” the famous Spanish liberal Salvador de Madariaga (1886-1976) took an even more skeptical view [ ]. With regard to the democratic leadership of our time, one could speak only of a great "failure and bankruptcy of democratic leadership." And this despite democracies being even more dependent than all other forms of nations and governments on having men with high qualitative and ethical standards at the top. With constant forces seeking to undermine the authority of leaders in democracies, the leadership would need to possess such high personal and moral standards that these efforts would be destined to fail. In his view, what was missing among leaders the most those days was self-control and courage. The worldwide "collapse" of democratic institutions was a result, in the first instance, of the "cowardliness" of these people.

In 1956, in his book “The Power Elite,” the American sociologist C. Wright Mills claimed that American society was being led by “second-rate minds” – thereby causing the collapse of traditional morals. In earlier times, the cultural and political elite would have been broadly aligned; in other words, power and knowledge would have been linked. As of the middle of the twentieth century, the two had separated. A new kind of person had taken over the key political positions. Now the well-informed, well-educated, and experienced professional no longer stood before the powers-that-be as a “peer,” but only in select cases as a recruited expert (or “hired man”). In his view, cultivated individuals no longer had a place in the leadership ranks of the political world. The man of today “is a commander of the art of the phone call, the memo, and the briefing.” No wonder that the “mindlessness and mediocrity” of the heads of state and society had led to a massive decline in standards. The American system was apparently no longer in a position to produce capable, elite leader types. One could only say: “no qualities, no morals.”

In 1970, the prominent foreign secretary of the Truman era, Dean Acheson, said: “We find ourselves in a time in which mediocre men are at play everywhere. They have opinions without expertise, and leaders are made in the image of the masses.” The American journalist C.L. Sulzberger picked up on this comment for the title of a book he published in 1973, “An Age of Mediocrity.”

When one considers the statesmen that emerged from the nineteenth century in comparison to what we have experienced in the twentieth century, there is no way to avoid the conclusion that the picture has progressively deteriorated – perhaps more in one country, less in another. Without a doubt, we find ourselves in an era of decline.

It already starts with the selection. In the past, only intelligent and well-educated men made it into leadership positions – men who were at the apex of intelligence of their time and preserved ties to the cultural life of their nation. Nowadays, the candidate’s intellectual capacity no longer plays a decisive role, but instead, tactical party factors and considerations are given greater and often more critical significance. People have not understood how to run the selection process in a way that would result in having the most intelligent, capable, educated, informed, and reputable forces at the head of states and political parties everywhere.

…. Regarding the mental capacities of the statesmen we encounter today, there is a major difference with those who came before: Pitt d.J., William Gladstone, Benjamin Disraeli, Arthur Balfour, Herbert Asquith, Lloyd George, Georges Clemenceau, Aristide Briand, Edouard Herriot, Otto von Bismarck, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, Gustav Stresemann – to name just a few – who were not only highly intelligent, but also highly cultured in the broadest sense, who were always trying to expand their horizons. In our time, we keep coming across men running the state (such as Woodrow Wilson and Lyndon B. Johnson) who are forced to admit that they have not read a book in years. To the extent these twentieth-century statesmen read anything other than the daily papers, it is at most crime novels and Westerns. More demanding reading material is apparently not of interest.

…. The talent to anticipate future developments, envision potential scenarios, undertake the political calculations, and then make major decisions is also harder to find than in the past. As we have seen, the story of our century can only be described as a chain of calamitously faulty prognoses. The reason that the leading statesmen of our time so disastrously make these misjudgments over and over again is surely attributable in large part to the fact that they are mostly lacking in deeper historical understanding. There are, of course, lessons to be learned from history! For example, if the memory of Prince Metternich and the Vienna Congress had been present at the Paris peace conference in 1919, then a mandate and forced peace like the Versailles Treaty could not have occurred. And with a little foresight at the end of World War II, a Yalta with all its devastating consequences for Europe could hardly have been conceived.

The decline of statesmanship is especially evident in the flippant way the responsible statesmen of the twentieth century treat human lives. …. People have never counted for so little since the Middle Ages. It would have been the duty of the statesmen to avoid or abolish such descents back into barbarism. But their consciences were unmoved, and thus it came to the greatest blood bath in history.

It is disconcerting that things were not better in the great democracies.

The shape that Winston Churchill and the British Cabinet gave to aerial warfare with his instructions on February 14, 1942 (after that, attacks were to be directed not primarily to military targets, but to civilian populations) meant an abominable death for 600,000 noncombatants, including 400,000 women and children. This did not encumber Winston Churchill’s night rest, nor was he otherwise bothered by it. While his former Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain suffered from the thought that the recently begun war would again claim countless human lives (as evident from his letters in the winter of 1939/40), Churchill was unmoved by the bombing campaign he had ordered. Only once did his conscience call on him – in the presence of Australian Minister Casey – and he raised the question during a film showing if they – the British – were not “beasts”; one needed to also think of the women and children “down there.”

This was, however, but a passing emotion from him. ... He once admitted to his physician that any sense of remorse when thinking about such destruction was foreign to him. And his private secretary Colville has reported that news about the major Dresden attack with its devastation and human victimization hardly affected him, which surprised him. A person can hardly sink lower than when he – confronted with such a macabre event – shows indifference. In the extensive writings that Churchill left behind, there are no expressions of remorse about the consequences of this perverse wartime conduct, nor in his speeches or letters. This points to a shocking lack of empathy.

Just as grim as the attitude towards human life was (and is) the attitude of many modern statesmen toward the phenomenon of war. In the twentieth century, wars are let loose unconscionably, and with the instigation of such enemy action, there is hardly any preservation of the applicable standards that were developed under the law of nations. The world has lapsed since Hugo Grotius (1563-1645). Napoleon, Stalin, and Hitler did not have even the slightest compunction when engulfing other countries out of the blue and thus extinguishing the lives of hundreds of thousands, yes millions, of people.

As to the start of World War I, certainly no party is free from blame. But at least, it was not so much ill will as recklessness and incompetence that brought it about. Back then, there were still a few statesmen who directed their efforts to preventing the outbreak of war or then bringing it to a quick close. Those include Jean Jaurès, the socialist leader, on the French side, and Bethmann Hollweg, the Chancellor of the Republic, on the German side.

…. This is the same attitude we find with Bismarck. After unification of the Empire, his entire being was trained on the avoidance of a new confrontation under all circumstances. He clearly distanced himself from any thought of expanding the territory of the Reich and explicitly repudiated any conquest in the East. He emphasized again and again that no money or territory could justify the loss of lives that would come with any war.

The statesmanly stature exhibited by this attitude gave Bismarck the greatest esteem within the circle of peoples and nations. In 1876, the Times wrote that he was the greatest living authority on foreign affairs. In 1961, the Anglo-American historian Gordon Alexander Craig attested to his possession of the highest personal and professional qualities and described him as an unreplicable phenomenon of statesmanship. This historian and many others correctly positioned Bismarck as an exemplar against which all other statesmen should be measured – especially with regard to his deep and Christian faith-based sense of responsibility.

One may have hoped that things would improve after the big dictators of the century had passed from the political scene. Unfortunately, not much has changed. As before, small countries are overrun with war and occupation, their freedom stolen and subjugated. And as before, every means is justified – including bloody terror. Just as during World War II, millions of people have been (and are being) displaced from their land and homes and subjected to misery or death. Following the end of the War, the statesmen of today have not succeeded in establishing the conditions that the world so sorely needs. They stand more or less helpless in the face of developments. One does well to keep in mind what General MacArthur once said: “War is not simply ‘the continuation of politics by other means,’ but its bankruptcy.”

What the World Needs

That the world of high politics has ended up in conditions that, in part, can be described as nothing less than chaotic is ultimately caused by the fact that the mores of political ethics are no longer considered binding.

It is time that ethical considerations are finally given renewed standing in politics. The moral wilderness that has gripped the arena since the first World War, must be stopped. The foundational principles of mutual respect and good faith [Treu und Glauben] must find renewed application in relations between nations. Treaty violations must be scorned; the breach of international legal norms must be openly condemned. Human lives must once again be accorded the respect that is deserving of its highest value. War must be declared the greatest of all evils. The thesis that politics and ethics have nothing to do with each other must be eradicated from the minds of all humankind.

Every power stripped of morality is inherently evil. The statesman who is mindful of his responsibilities must therefore ask himself with every step he takes if he can live with his conscience. Conscientious accountability to God, the soul of his nation, and the future of the whole of humankind in solidarity are all equally necessary (Max Scheler). It is only this dedication to the majestic idea of the law and the objective hierarchy of values overall, derived from a high moral seriousness, that makes the statesman and distinguishes him from ordinary politicians.

Overcoming this gulf between politics and morality must be considered the most important task of modern statecraft. Political leaders in all nations and all parts of the world must be made to conduct themselves in accordance with the principles of political ethics, as detailed in Chapter 13 of this book [The Statesman and Ethical Norms].

There will always be situations where tyrants do not hold themselves to this standard and instead operate with aggression and oppression. Mechanisms will need to be developed to counter these offenses. Because it will be impossible, as a rule, to physically prevent these evil-doers from continuing their behavior, public denunciations remain the only recourse.

Resolutions of the United Nations have proven to be mostly ineffective. Their adoption is also much too dependent on the goodwill of the participating states and their respective interests. It will therefore be necessary to establish an independent authority above the states, which will immediately disparage and denounce every violation of the law and every other breach of the norms of international morality and continue with this denunciation until the norms of political ethics are respected. This is the only way to restrain the detractors of the rule of law and political decency and to curb and overcome the immoralism in the domain of high politics. The unscrupulous pursuit of power by individuals can only be countered by lobbing public denunciations on the heels of every offense. That this critically important controlling task can be entrusted only to morally upstanding personalities is obvious.

It is therefore advisable that members of the international legal community be encouraged to conclude treaties that legalize and institutionalize this controlling authority. Only in this way will it be possible to overcome the state of anarchy that governs the life of nations today and to restore the rule of law and morality in the international arena to its former prominence.