Beyond Great ForcesNovember/December 2019 159PUTTING PEOPLE FIRST
Individuals aren’t everything, o course: countries still have national
interests, domestic politics, bureaucracies, and other forces that can
play profound, even overwhelming, roles in shaping foreign policy.
Yet it is equally facile to use such terms as “national interests,” “domes-
tic politics,” and “bureaucratic resistance” without recognizing how
leaders create, bend, exploit, override, or succumb to these factors.
Consider how individuals interact with institutions. I MBS had
somehow come to power in a Saudi Arabia that was a mature liberal
democracy, for example, he would no doubt have had a harder time
fundamentally reorienting his country. In autocracies, which by deÄ-
nition lack democratic checks and balances, it is particularly easy for
leaders to dominate policymaking. But autocracies can also produce
weak leaders who merely reÁect the impulses o their countries’ bu-
reaucracies, militaries, or ruling elites. Algerian President Abdelaziz
BouteÁika remained in power for years even though he was nearly
comatose, serving as a front for the country’s political elite until he
resigned at the age o 82, earlier this year. Meanwhile, the likes o a
Putin or an Erdogan can step into a more pluralistic system and bend
it to his will.
Even mature liberal democracies are not immune to the charms
o a dominant personality. Today, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt
is revered as a demigod, but in his day, he was denounced for all
manner o highhanded and dictatorial behavior, ranging from trying
to pack the Supreme Court to enacting supposedly socialist eco-
nomic policies. Before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Roo sevelt
shaped popular sentiment when he rearmed the country, oered the
United Kingdom military aid, and pushed Japan to the brink, pav-
ing the way for the eventual U.S. entry into World War II. Roo sevelt
remade the United States’ institutions as much as he was constrained
by them, using his economic policies to expand the federal govern-
ment’s power and the war to lay the groundwork for the country’s
subsequent global military dominance. As the philosopher Ralph
Waldo Emerson wrote, “An institution is the lengthened shadow o
one man.”
In his own way, Trump has also laid bare the limits o institutions.
Whereas Roosevelt cajoled, guided, and shaped American institu-
tions, Trump has derided and corroded them, largely on behal o his
own ego and prejudices. Yes, the American bureaucracy has saved