Last week I received a message from a distinguished retired general and head of a strategic institute in Canada, wringing his hands at the pusillanimity and ambivalence of most current world leaders and the apparent lack of any public appetite for the assertion of any recognizable principles in international affairs. He asked whether I thought the contemporary West could chin itself, if necessary, on facing the sort of challenges that were served up to and mastered by, as they have become known, “the greatest generation.” (This was Tom Brokaw’s coinage, referring to the generation of Americans and, broadly, British and Canadians also, of the period from 1930 to 1960.)

I replied that I did not think it was such a great generation spontaneously; it rose to great challenges, and lived in what was ultimately an immensely successful time, because of the leadership it enjoyed. That leadership devised and executed the strategy that brought the West through the Great Depression and World War II, and to the creation of the alliances and institutions that won the Cold War and secured the triumph of democracy and the free-market economy in the world.