For subscribers
The mystery of good judgment
It does more to shape a life than intellect and hard work.
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has been compared unfavourably with some of his predecessors like Mr Robert McNamara and Mr Donald Rumsfeld.
PHOTO: ERIC LEE/NYTIMES
Janan Ganesh
In this, the year we mark 70 years since the Suez crisis, one fun fact rates a mention. Mr Anthony Eden held a first-class degree in Arabic and Persian. The man who led Britain to disgrace in the canal had not just a fine mind but one steeped in the very region that would trip him up.
Few Western leaders have been as literate about what was then called the Near East. (He had met the King of Iraq in his twenties.) Few Western leaders have got the place more wrong. Mr Eden ate from the tree of knowledge but could not make up for what he so lacked in judgment.
