Peoples everywhere, not least in Ukraine, suffer ceaselessly because of the narcissistic plague. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine was intended to feed his ego and provide him with the stature and glory that his Peter the Great ambitions required. More than 60,000 deaths later (on both sides) and perhaps 500,000 maimed and mauled, not to mention the millions displaced, his narcissism remains unquenched. Putin’s crimes against humanity are many, not least the forced abduction of perhaps 20,000 children. Narcissism has been driving these despotic acts, not national security concerns or strategic imperatives. Furthermore, his narcissistic needs make ending the Ukrainian war at a bargaining table difficult, if not impossible.
But Putin is hardly alone in letting his personality disorder triumph over peace and stability. We can easily blame the civil war in Sudan (500 dead and 300,.000 displaced) on the ego needs of two generals responsible for a previous genocide in Darfur and for contemporary clashes over naked primacy in Khartoum, Omdurman, and once again in Darfur.
Kais Saied, president of Tunisia, is a newly born dictator driven, too, by his narcissistic needs. So has Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan been propelled for years by the same urges. Hun Sen has kept Cambodians in post-Khmer Rouge thrall for twenty-five painful years. In a similar vein, and to satisfy similar narcissistic feelings, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, next door in Myanmar, ousted Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, triggering a massively brutal civil conflict between the Tatmadaw, a large army, and a ragtag collection of former professionals, students, and ethnic militias.
Our own menace, Trump, belongs with these marauders. He, too, rides the waves of narcissistically imposed harm that overwhelms the twenty-first century globe. There is hardly a political figure alive or dead who out-competes Trump and Putin (and perhaps Xi Jinping) in the race for all out aggrandizement with destructive consequences. It is no wonder Trump and Putin bonded so well. Putin and Xi strut on the international stage; Trump incites rioters, threatens opponents with mayhem, and believes that being a perpetual bully will accomplish narcissistic objectives.
Narcissists believe in their own self-importance, above others. They have an inborn sense of supreme entitlement and are relentlessly preoccupied with their own power and beauty, as in the original Narcissus -- the handsome hunter of Greek mythology who fell in love with his own reflection in a pool of water, staring at it for the remainder of his days.
Narcissists are characteristically exploitative of others for their own gain – no matter how costly for others. Their arrogance is legendary. Most of all, they lack even a smidgin of empathy for those who are less well off, weak, or otherwise seemingly deprived.
Narcissists seek attention at all costs, even by outrageous behavior. They crave admiration and think that it is deserved and owed to them. They are notable for having no social boundaries. Outrageous acts become acceptable.
Fundamentally, narcissists are misogynists. They hold women in contempt. Too often they loathe and fear them. They seek to torment and frustrate them, frequently by debasing them sexually. They harbor ambiguous feelings toward the sexual act.
Do these descriptions jibe with what we know about the performance of leaders here and abroad?
Nevertheless, to succeed and to produce positive political goods for their citizens and nations, politicians and statespersons need not be narcissistic. Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Barack Obama were less ego driven than others, and achieved remarkable good. Russians like Catherine the Great and Germans like Otto von Bismarck were strong willed, but less interested in their own reflections in the pool of history than others before and since. A few prominent national leaders in modern times may even be viewed as selfless; Nelson Mandela comes to mind as an archetype.
But whether readers agree with these individual characterizations, it seems evident that the war in Ukraine; any potential conflict in Taiwan; and the civil wars in Sudan, Myanmar, Burkina Faso, Chad, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo all have unfortunate narcissistic origins.
Reducing the impact of narcissism on global affairs and global conflict is an eminently desirable goal that unfortunately is beyond our reach. Only if electorates recognize or are taught to recognize the dangers of personality disorders in politics and in those who strive to lead, can nations reduce the dangers to themselves and to global security. Pathological liars, leaders obsessed with their own grandeur, and those intent on boosting themselves by employing military means to stroke their insatiable egos must – somehow – in local as well as global politics, be kept away from the triggers of war. The aim of our age should be to still the egos of mendacious (mostly) men who repress and brutalize their own peoples, and attack innocent others, primarily to sate narcissistic drives.
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Truly.....Narcissism and its deformed and pernicious cousin hubris are the two plagues of our civilization whose principal contemporary challenge, I am persuaded, is finding leaders prepared to eschew both....sad.