This creative and highly readable study defines and illustrates the concept of “strategic empathy,” the ability to think like one’s enemies. The central characters under analysis include some major twentieth-century decision makers—Mohandas K. Gandhi, Gustav Stresemann, Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, as well as the more obscure Vietnamese strategist, Le Duan. Shore’s analyses demonstrate a deep knowledge of developments in a number of disciplines, including cognitive psychology, cognitive neuroscience, behavioral economics, and political science, and his case studies are based on first-rate archival research.
The Gandhi case study shows how the Indian leader discerned that non-violence could be an effective strategy for coping with British colonial rulers. The two chapters on Gustav Stresemann focus on his ability to turn the German Weimar Republic into a nation of growing economic strength and international status by skillfully manipulating its adversaries after the disastrous loss in World War I. Having...