The Kind of Leader We Need Today

The Kind of Leader We Need Today—Jean Monnet

Not many people know of Jean Monnet.  I didn’t, until I saw an extremely positive reference to his leadership in a book I read which led me to purchase his Memoirs. 

Monnet was born in 1888 in Cognac, France.  After finishing school at 16, his father sent him to London to work for the family-run Cognac trading business.  He traveled the world, at still less than 20, visiting Canada, the United States, all of Europe, including Russia, Egypt and more.  In the process of his travels, he developed the strong conviction that the peoples of the different countries needed to work together.  That was certainly true of the cognac business.  They produced in just a couple of villages in France.  They sold it to the world.  

Unable for health reasons to join the military in World War I, Monnet began his lifetime career with a proposal to the French government to coordinate war supplies with Britain.  It worked and when the United States joined the war, they were brought in, though they proved to be reluctant partners.  

After the war, he committed himself to the League of Nations and was named the Deputy Secretary General at the age of only 31.  

Between the wars, he returned to run the family business and then moved into international finance, where he worked closely with various European countries, including Romania, Poland, and China and even helped set up a bank in San Francisco.

Monnet’s driving passion to bring countries together bore fruit again with the Monnet Plan in World War II, with the oversight of the purchase of war supplies. He developed a close relationship with President Roosevelt.  

After the war, his career reached full flower.  He authored the Schumann Plan (named after France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs).  It placed all German and French production of coal and steel under one High Authority in 1950.

This was the predecessor to the formation of the creation of the Common Market, the European monetary system and the European Parliament. 

Monnet’s life was dedicated to convincing leaders to work to achieve common interests by understanding the benefits of cooperation.

It was not easy and the challenges he faced and the fact that he overcame them is something to be kept in mind. Indeed, I find it hopeful, as we survey what would have been the enormous disappointment of Monnet in the likely exit of Great Britain from the European Community.   Perhaps he would not have been surprised.  He had experienced Britain’s and (the U.S.’s) hesitancy in joining a continental supra-national governance structure.

Following the end of World War I, in early 1919, the United States withdrew from the partnership and imposition of controls to coordinate the availability of raw materials and their pricing to in the various allied countries.  The U.S. representative wrote that such a combined Executive “was contrary to the views” of the U.S. government which “intended that pre-war (conditions of) trade should be restored as soon as possible.” 

As the French representative said to Monnet at the time, “That’s the end of the solidarity we worked so hard for.  Without it and without the altruistic, disinterested cooperation that we tried to achieve among the Allies, and should have extended to our former enemies, one day we’ll have to begin all over again.”

Monnet’s response would sum up what we are seeing today.  Referring to the words of the French representative, “They were the words of a generous man, but what part could he play in the peace, in a world where nations were once more sovereign, each of them preoccupied with recovering its former influence?  No one now could argue that collective action was necessary for sheer survival; no politician could realistically propose, even for the common good, limiting the sovereignty that each of our nations had won back at such a price.  There is no point in trying to apportion blame for this return to past habits; it was simply that Nature had returned to its normal course.  It was to take many years, and much suffering, before Europeans began to realize that they must choose either unity or gradual decline.”

These observations were made a century ago.  I think they would apply today.

We are seeing once again a rebirth of strong nationalism thwarting, at least for now, the drive for mutually beneficial alliances serving a common purpose.

However, let me be clear. I am not pessimistic about the re-emergence of such alliances in the future, though sadly it may take not only years but decades to achieve. 

 I believe there are at least three major irresistible and inevitable global realities that, in the end, will lead people, based on their basic desire to survive, to work together.  Those three driving realities are:

• The threat of climate change.  Climate change threatens the very existence of life as we know it on our planet.  We are becoming increasingly aware of this. How could we not with temperatures rising, glaciers melting away, seas rising and earthquakes increasing.   However, it has not yet reached, indeed has not even come close, to being seen by the public and their governments as a true, existential crisis.  It’s perfectly clear we will not resolve the climate crisis unless nations are working together against common goals and are sharing learning on how to achieve them.  The time will come, I submit, when climate change is seen as an existential threat to our planet. I just don’t know how much more damage we will have to witness. I fear a great deal. 

• The ever-existent and growing threat of nuclear disaster.  Here again, the threat is intellectually known, but it is far from having reached the crisis proportion that will lead the leading countries of the world to work together.  Indeed, the treaties between the United States and Russia which put in place some degree of control over nuclear weapons are becoming unraveled.  The START treaty will soon expire. Iran and North Korea appear to be developing nuclear capability. What will it take for the world leaders to see the need to unite to thwart this overhanging threat?   I  pray that we will see the need without having to experience a real-life demonstration  of how a nuclear weapon utterly destroys human life.  Sadly, frighteningly, I believe it may well take such a disaster.

• A third global reality which is inevitable and continuing to move ahead with lightning speed is technology and its many faceted impacts, including privacy, the communication of knowledge,  its impact on jobs  and commerce,  the related threats of “cyber-warfare” and the ambiguity of  and difficulty of ascertaining what is "truth" itself.  Today, many counties (e.g., China blocking Facebook) and in some cases blocs of counties (e.g., EEC) are grappling with how to create their own rules and mechanisms on how to manage at least some of these impacts. But without having any idea on what form it will take, and knowing it will be extremely difficult, I believe at some point, we will come to see we need to have to have global agreements on the use of many uses of technology. The question is how much pain will have to be suffered before we take the appropriate (difficult) action. 

This tension and likely oscillation between local (national) and global (international rule-based) allegiance and governance will continue throughout history.

We make a mistake if we don’t recognize that peoples’ loyalties start naturally “closest to home”—with their families, their community, their nation and then the broader world.  We make a mistake in our pursuit of global scale and cooperation if we forget the role of  the nation.  In its own much smaller way, that’s been true of Procter & Gamble. We have moved over the last three-quarters of a century to manage our businesses on an increasingly regional and global basis in order to take advantage of scale efficiencies and achieve faster dissemination of best-in-class technology.  In the course of doing this, however, we have from time to time lost sufficient recognition of  local differences that demand tailored product design and marketing. 

However, the  need to see and treat the world as a whole on certain key issues (a few of which I have identified above)  with supra-national goals and governance mechanisms is inevitable if we are to preserve life on earth as we know it.

In doing so,  we face a burning and haunting question:  Is it only possible for countries to work together on a sustained basis when they see themselves facing a crisis which threatens their very existence, such as World War I or World War II-- a crisis which they come to recognize they cannot overcome alone?   

Realistically, I believe the answer if "yes.”

To be sure, we can point to some examples where cooperation depended on something less than confronting an existential threat.   Joint exploration of space and coordinated attack on AIDS and other healthcare threats might qualify as examples, though I would question whether these brought the sustained, integrated effort the threats which I cited earlier will require. 

One thing for sure.  We will require the commitment to a common purpose seen to be of utmost strategic importance by EACH of the nations involved. Only this will  lead to the deeply integrated joint effort and governance necessary to achieve it.  

Monnet’s Memoirs provide an eloquent description of what underpins an effective joint effort. He cites Britain’s Sir Jay Walter Salter, explaining what made possible the international cooperation in World War I:

“The work could never have been successfully achieved if daily association had not development mutual confidence.  Given the proper personal relations, many things can be explained which would never be put on paper or stated in a formal meeting (so that) the limits of concession can be explored (enabling)  national policies (to be) formed and fixed in the first instance within them instead of beyond them.  But the delicacy of such work, and the difficulty of the questions of loyalty and good faith involved, are obvious.  It is only possible at all under conditions of personal confidence and long personal association.”

Monnet agrees with Salter.  Personal friendships played a great role in all the successes in which he was involved, as they have in all I have been involved.   However,  Monnet goes on to make an extremely important point that once again underscores the importance of having a common existential purpose.  

“Friendship, to me, is the result of joint action rather than the reason for it.  The reason is, first and foremost, mutual confidence.  This grows up naturally between men who take a common view of the problem to be solved.  When the problem becomes the same for everyone, and they all have the same concern to solve it, then differences and suspicions disappear, and friendship very often takes their place.  But how can people be persuaded to approach the problem in the same way and see to it that their interests are the same, when men and nation are divided?”

In posing that question, Monnet admits that at that time (1919), he did not have the answer.  He had seen that “danger had (brought countries) together; victory threatened to dissolve them.  Friendship would not be enough and danger was no longer there to force us together.  What kind of institutions, what international laws, could be established to take the place of necessity?”

Monnet’s subsequent career would answer that question as the European Common Market was formed by demonstrating convincingly that there would be enormous economic benefit in countries having unified policies and that it also would stand as a bulwark against the threatened expansion of the Soviet Union.

The challenge was to make the actuality of these benefits real and persuade the peoples of the participating countries of their reality.  Those benefits have to be perceived as large enough to overcome what inevitably will be the complexity of regulating key issues such as currency and control of national budgets and, though it could not be foreseen at the start, immigration, which has rocked the European Union more than any other.  It may be the principal reason why Brexit was supported by a majority of the British people. 

Given the inherent complexities, it is essential that the benefits of the cooperation be constantly updated and communicated to the publics. There are bound to be complaints; one needs to know the positives. I question whether this has been well done. 

Another fact that clearly emerges from the history of the European Common Community and Jean Monnet is that the establishment of transnational government controls requires extraordinarily strong and persistent leadership.  It is hard to imagine the Common Market happening as it did if it were not for Jean Monnet and Robert Schumann of France and Konrad Adenauer of Germany. 

Who are the leaders today who can unite the major nations of the world to confront the threats we face? I don’t know.  I can only hope that if history is any indicator, which it usually but not always is, leaders will ultimately emerge to deal with these issues of existential importance. I only hope and pray that they do so before these crises reach a life-destroying boil. That risk stares my children and mygrandchildren, all of us , in the face.