Henry Kissinger was a once-in-a-generation diplomat who worked with President Nixon to change the course of history. His observations about Napoleon and Bismarck were not only brilliant but also a lesson for modern leaders on how to conduct their foreign policies.

Kissinger writes, “Napoleon’s tragedy was that his ambitions surpassed his capacities; Bismarck’s tragedy was that his capacities exceeded his society’s ability to absorb them.”

Kissinger was scathing in his assessment of the two great leaders and blamed both of them for the tragedies that Germany and France had to go through later, after they were gone. Kissinger hinted that a country can progress in the right direction if there is a balance between the capacities of the leader and the ambition of the nation.

India at the moment is going through a crisis in the foreign policy domain due to a serious mismatch between the capacities of the leader and the ambition of the nation. The country is told on a daily basis that India has arrived at the world level and is moving fast to become a vishvaguru and that Modi is on the path to make the country great again.

There is hardly any objective assessment as to whether the country is on the right track or not. Pahalgam and Operation Sindoor have put a serious question mark on India’s foreign policy.

Despite the huge shindig about India’s emergence in the last ten years as a global player, created with the help of propaganda and media, India finds itself orphaned at the global high table, totally isolated and friendless. Even........

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