The Tragic Mind

Forget The Power of Positive Thinking — for a more thoughtful perspective, read the writings of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Shakespeare, says Robert D. Kaplan, the Robert Strausz-Hupe Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute.

Tragic Thinking

When deciding whether to wage war, politicians should take a cue from the Greek tragedies and ponder all that could go wrong. Tragic thinking is not hopeless negativism. Literature, and especially the Greek tragedies and Shakespearean works such as Hamlet, remind leaders that geopolitics isn’t a science experiment. No one can control the various inputs into something as complex as war. To think tragically shows humility. Russian president Vladimir Putin displayed the opposite of self-awareness when ordering his ill-fated invasion of Ukraine. No subordinate would speak honestly to Putin, and no one could inject reality into his plan.