The Stupid Simplicity of Strongman Leadership
Reflections in the Aftermath of the Missile Strikes on Iran
In the theatre of global power, few performances are as grimly predictable, and as intellectually impoverished, as that of the strongman leader. In the aftermath of Donald Trump’s missile strikes on Iran, we are once again reminded of the performative belligerence that passes for strategy in an age where might is mistaken for right, and theatre for wisdom. The ‘strongman’ model of leadership is not only dangerous; it is profoundly stupid in the philosophical sense, it seems to resist complexity, disdains reflection, and thrives on the crude logic of dominance.
Stupidity here does not mean a lack of intelligence. It refers rather to what the French philosopher Pierre Bourdieu once called “la bêtise”, a willful refusal to think deeply, to entertain alternative perspectives, or to see the world as anything other than a zero-sum contest. This is the stupidity of the strongman: a simplicity not born of clarity, but of fear and ego masquerading as courage.
The Illusion of Decisiveness
The missile strike is the perfect metaphor for strongman leadership. Swift, explosive, and, at first glance, decisive. It bypasses dialogue, ignores nuance, and silences complexity. In a world animated by process, where every action ripples through ecosystems of meaning and relation, the strongman insists on the illusion of control through force. Such an act is less a policy than a temper tantrum with enormous collateral damage.
The strongman craves the optics of power: the photo-op, the flag, the standing ovation in the war room. He thrives on appearance rather than attunement. There is no place for doubt or humility in this model, which is why it cannot deal with the real, the messy, entangled, and living world in which we actually dwell.
Process Denied
Process philosophy, as articulated by thinkers like Alfred North Whitehead, invites us to see the world not as a collection of fixed entities, but as a dynamic unfolding, an entangled web of becoming, where every event is both cause and effect, actor and acted upon. In such a worldview, the missile strike is not merely an action; it is a rupture in the fabric of relation. It is the refusal to listen, to wait, to dwell in the tragic gap between what is and what ought to be.
Strongman leadership abhors such gaps. It seeks closure, not contemplation; outcomes, not understanding. It cannot abide the vulnerability of not knowing. And so, rather than learning to sit with uncertainty or to foster dialogue, it escalates, attacks, and performs.
Care as Courage
Against this backdrop, the ethic of care appears not weak but revolutionary. As Joan Tronto and Nel Noddings have argued, care is not sentimentality but a deeply ethical stance, an ongoing commitment to responsiveness, attentiveness, and responsibility in relationship. Where the strongman dominates, the carer attends. Where the strongman silences, the carer listens. Where the strongman simplifies, the carer holds complexity.
Care requires courage, not the courage to strike first, but the courage to stay present, to remain open in the face of threat, to protect without dehumanising. It is not flashy or fast. It is slow, relational, and difficult. And in the geopolitical sphere, it is all too often dismissed as naïve or ineffectual, when in fact it is the only kind of leadership that might prevent the next war rather than simply hoping for the illusion of winning it.
The Morality of Means
The strongman model also fails ethically because it reduces morality to outcome. If the enemy is killed, if the “message” is sent, if the ratings rise, then the act is justified. This is consequentialism at its most brutal, and most incoherent. For as Iris Murdoch reminded us, our moral task is not to calculate but to attend, to see rightly. And to see rightly is to recognise the humanity of the other, to resist abstraction and simplification, to reject the tidy categories of friend and foe, good and evil.
Violence, in this framework, is always a failure of imagination. It signals the collapse of moral attention and the triumph of impulse over insight.
Toward a New Leadership Imagination
The missile strike on Iran is not an isolated event. It is a symptom of a deeper disorder, a civilisational sickness that confuses noise with significance, domination with leadership, and spectacle with wisdom. It is time to call this what it is: not strength, but stupidity in its most dangerous form.
The future requires not stronger men, but wiser humans. Leadership must be reconceived not as control but as stewardship, not as force but as presence. It must draw on the quieter intelligences, of soul, spirit, story, and care. These are not weak alternatives to power; they are its transformation.
Care is not passivity.
It is, as Arendt would say, the highest form of action, rooted in natality, in the possibility of something genuinely new. Only when we abandon the stupid simplicity of the strongman can we begin to forge a politics worthy of the people it claims to serve.