Adroit geo-strategists take new realities into account as they

When Stephen Kinzer observed, “Adroit geo-strategists take new realities into account as they try to imagine how global politics will unfold. In the foreign policy business, however, inertia is a powerful force and ‘adroit’ a little-known concept,” he laid bare the struggle between vision and stagnation. To be adroit is to be skillful, flexible, alive to shifting winds. Yet in the halls of foreign policy, where pride and bureaucracy reign, men often cling to the past, blinded to the new horizons that demand fresh thought.

The ancients knew well this danger. In war and in diplomacy, those who adapted thrived, while those bound to old ways perished. When Hannibal crossed the Alps with elephants, Rome nearly fell, for its leaders could not imagine war waged in such a fashion. It was only when Rome itself learned to be adroit, reshaping its strategies, that it survived. Kinzer reminds us that the same truth holds in global politics—those who fail to adapt are doomed to be overtaken by the tides of history.

Yet, as he laments, the natural state of institutions is inertia. Bureaucracies move slowly, leaders prefer the comfort of the familiar, and nations cling to outdated doctrines long after the world has shifted beneath them. It is easier to repeat the strategies of yesterday than to embrace the perilous work of reimagining tomorrow. In this way, power ossifies, and opportunities for peace, for progress, or for survival itself slip away.

History gives us sobering examples. In the years before World War I, the great powers clung to alliances, military doctrines, and rivalries that no longer served the realities of their age. Their inertia carried them blindly into catastrophe, where millions perished. In contrast, leaders like Franklin D. Roosevelt, facing World War II, practiced the very adroitness Kinzer praises—reshaping alliances, rethinking policies, and embracing innovation to meet unprecedented threats.

Thus, let this lesson be passed down: the world is never still. To lead with wisdom is to see the new realities as they are, not as one wishes them to be. Beware the seductions of inertia, for it is a silent tyrant that binds nations in chains of habit. Honor instead the path of the adroit, for in their skill and flexibility lies the power to guide humanity through storms, to seize opportunities, and to avert ruin. This is the eternal law: only those who adapt endure.