LEADERSHIP ANALYSIS IN INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS: A PSYCHODYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32782/upj/2024-1-12Keywords:
international affairs, leadership, leadership analysis, political behavior, large group psychologyAbstract
The unexpected February 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine highlighted the failure of most Western academic and policy experts to anticipate Russian president Vladimir Putin’s dramatic shift from political-diplomatic rivalry to full-scale military competition with the Ukraine and the West. This failure occurred despite a variety of methods having been developed over the past century in an effort to analyze influential political leaders. Psycho-biographies emerged in the first half of the 20th century; then classified studies of leadership psychology emerged during World War II and expanded in use during the Cold War; and this expanded to the broader and more integrative study of leadership-followership dynamics in particular societies of interest. A review of these different methods of leadership analysis indicate that effective analysis requires a broad set of skills that are rarely taught together: an ability to interpret and effectively integrate data from a developmental perspective – from infancy to adulthood or older adulthood; heightened awareness of personal, cultural, political and institutional biases; an understanding of the personalities of highfunctioning politicians with narcissistic and psychopathic traits; the ability to embed leadership analyses into broader organizational, societal and international dynamics. Given that Russia is likely to remain a malicious geo-political rival of Ukraine, Europe and the West in the coming years and even decades, Ukrainian psychoanalytic clinicians have a unique opportunity to contribute to Western analyses of Russian political leaders as well as join the international efforts to counter a broad range of aggressive Russian military and diplomatic policies. In particular, Ukrainian clinicians may be more adept at identifying Russian leadership vulnerabilities and blind spots that Western initiatives could exploit.
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