For decades the public watched millions and millions of innocent humans being killed as a result of war. War is defined as an inhumane act to fulfill a leader’s selfish needs and goals. War never had an ultimate winner, both opposing sides had lost greatly and achieved minimally. Over the years many had argued that war is one aspect of the human’s life that cannot be avoided. Whereas others had argued that war could be easily avoided if the country had a good leader. This paper will outline good qualities of a good leader and take a stance on “war can be easily avoided with good leadership”, and how a leader can use other methods to grow their country economically and international without using violence and weapons.
When voting for a new leader, qualities of that individual must be closely examined as his character will affect the country’s condition in the future. According to the book Developing potential across a full range of leadership by Bruce J. Avolio and Bernand M.Bass , the top qualities of a good leader are :1. Determination; 2. Possessing extraordinary talent; 3.taking risks 4. Showing dedication 5.dealing with crisis using radical solution. These characteristics are the foundation of good leadership. Some leaders have possessed them stronger than others, and others may work to strength those characteristics to maintain stronger control over a certain situation.
One of the very predicaments of democracy is choosing the right leader. This is mentioned by Socrates in “the republic” by plato as he said that justice and injustice can be alike. In other words, some individuals may use their popularity in which they received by being productive (a just act) to their people. However, it becomes a predicament when those individuals use that just cause to produce injustice and that is being elected as leaders when others are more skillful at the job. For example, this is recently seen when celebrities use their popularity to run for certain government positions, such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and his ruling of California. As a result of living in a democratic society, a good leader should be chosen by well informed and non-proud society. Society should not be loyal to parties, but only to their nation. This is very common in the United States, as people tend to vote for republicans or democrats because all their ancestors have been loyal to such groups. Most Americans don’t realize that these two major parties are backed by lobbyist groups. For example, part of the effort to bring the war against Iraq is dick cheney and his loyalty to black water (a private military contractor) which is ran by a hard line Christian who believes in apocalyptic/biblical prophecies. One must ask the reason for such wars to erupt, and from there we can prevent them. In the modern age, lobbyist must be weakened, and presidents must have stronger attachment with their own people. Wars can be prevented by the combination of: a strong leadership with stronger attachment to citizens of the state; and weakening the grip of lobbyist groups.
The media is a new factor that has emerged recently to play a role in creating propaganda for certain groups. Just until recently, the media has become a victim of a monopolized lobbying, and is a huge factor in misinforming citizens of good and bad leaders. Fox news is an important station as it has reportedly been financing certain elements of the Republican Party such as “the tea party movement”. Most of their news tends to be criticized by other news stations as leaning towards the far right. MSNBC on the other hand is leaning towards the left (democrats). Each station has their own agenda in establishing a self interest party. Journalism is not meant to bring the viewpoint of the journalist or the news anchors such as: Bill O’rielly, or Glen Beck. Such media plays a huge role in starting wars. For example, when George Bush began his war against Iraq under the impression that Saddam Hussein has nuclear weapons. The main problem here is the media played a key role in advertising such stand. This began a huge blind support for the war against Iraq, without realizing the lies behind such war. Responsible governments don’t lie to their own people, and honesty is part of leadership. During the Vietnam War, 57,000 good men died for the sake of a lie in which the US government initially said that it was as a result of the gulf of tungsten incident. As a result, honesty is a key point in ending wars, and not only should the leader be following it, but also government personnel’s and citizens of the state (voting for the right individual).
As mentioned previously in the introduction good leadership will minimize the chances of going to war. Instead of going to war or have some sort of negative relation with other countries, a leader can concentrate on his own country by developing it in every aspect, such as Working on developing and expanding their economical issues. While looking back at the United States in the past years, the US has gone into two major wars in the past 10 years: once with Iraq and second with Afghanistan. The idea might have been going to war will boost the economy, but instead the result was a dramatic failure in the economy as the funds for both war were too much for country’s economy to handle. As a result, ten years later the United States is still recovering from the economical depression it was put under, and its economy is still weak. The large sums of funds that were used towards the war had destroyed the American market, putting the country in more debt, the government had no plan to back up their economical failure, and as a result companies and banks had shut down, and thousands of citizens lost their jobs.Thus, the purpose of the American war was to gain more access to oil and natural resource, which would have had naturally stimulate the economy. However, the result of the war was the opposite of what was planned. The wars got out of control and more hatred was produced in the Middle East towards the US. The final results of the wars were chaotic cities and more political disruptions.
Good leadership means concentrating on the country’s well being. A good leader would care about flourishing their country out of its own resources, and concentrate on international relations. For example, the first step to good leadership is having good international relations. Peace treaties, frequent foreign visits and providing aid to other countries are a few of the many steps to good international relations. For example, when country A is in need and its on good terms with Country B, it will get all the aid it needs. Also, if a country A is in good relations with Country B, country B will never consider attacking and starting a war with country A. Therefore peace treaties and good international relations become very beneficial in times of need and it also plays as a self-defense system.
Also, if a good leader wished to increase economical flow into his country, they can start exporting and importing goods. Thus building the need of natural resources globally, and strengthening the relations in the world market with other countries. Thus, a war would never be an option to get access to more resources or gain political power. It is important to mention that war doesn’t necessarily occur from strong nations, but it can be the result of injustice caused by superpowers to make victimized nations rise up against it. A leader must have internal consciousness to ask if his own country is causing injustice to others. However, in a huge capitalistic society, this tends to be unrealistic, as economy is used for the advantage of the wealthiest. Take Haiti for instance, before 1990’s it was a nation that thrived from the rice and cement industry that was produced locally. The number of unemployed individual was very low compared to now. However, after the 1990’s US and other western companies began what the UN calls “dumping” rice and cement to the small nation at a staggering cheaper price than the local produce. This occurred after Haiti signed the free trade agreement, where tariffs on foreign goods were dropped. This caused many local farmers to go out of business, producing a huge number of homeless and underprivileged populations. Recently, many farmers are uniting with large number of citizens to fight against foreign goods. This has caused an economical injustice to the people of Haiti. Normally, when people feel oppressed, eventually they will rise up, just like the same idea that the Americans rose up against the British due to increase of taxes.
USA’s politics in the past 10 years has been an important controversial topic within international politics. Comparing George Bush leadership Vs. Obama’s leadership is very interesting and it clearly portraits good examples of good leadership. For example, during the leadership of Bush, USA went into two wars in hope of increasing economical flow and gain more access to natural oils. However, the fund for the military and money spent on the war had brought down the country’s economy to the ground and enter economical depression. Bush and his plan to go to war had put the USA in huge debts and had shut off many opportunities. On the other hand, ever since Obama took over the leadership he has been working very closely on flourishing USA’s economy once again. By increasing taxes and providing more jobs he has been slowly brining the USA back on its feet to become once again one of the strongest countries economically and politically.