What is the role of boldness in politics and international affairs? I ask in all seriousness. If there is a world in which President Trump’s attack on Iran somehow works out well, it will be because of the President’s bold willingness to do what his predecessors have wanted but were unwilling to do. If the attack fails to bring peace and security to the Middle East — if, on the contrary, it sows chaos and disorder — it will be seen as reckless, the fever dream of someone who risked the stability of the world for dreams of vainglory.
Politics often rewards boldness after the fact. Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1862 was an extraordinary gamble. Many advisers warned him that freeing enslaved people during the Civil War would alienate border states, provoke backlash in the North, and complicate the war effort. It was legally uncertain and politically dangerous. Yet Lincoln believed the war could not be won without transforming it into a struggle over slavery itself. The proclamation changed the moral meaning of the war and opened the door to Black enlistment in the Union army. What looked like a radical risk helped reshape the conflict and the country.
On the other hand, Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 was the quintessential act of imperial boldness. Confident after years of victory, Napoleon launched the largest army Europe had ever seen deep into Russian territory. The campaign ended in disaster: the army collapsed under the brutal winter and supply failures. What began as a daring assertion of power became the beginning of Napoleon’s downfall.
Successful gambles become “statesmanship”; failed gambles become “madness.”
It is hard today not to look back at George W. Bush’s 2003 gamble. President Bush presented his decision to invade Iraq as a decisive act meant to reshape the Middle East, eliminate weapons of mass destruction, and spread democracy. The result was a long war, regional instability, and consequences that continue to reverberate. What had been defended as bold leadership is widely regarded today as a disaster. The lies that led to war, as well as the chaos that ensued, are cautionary examples of what can go wrong when leaders are willing to break with caution, defy prevailing advice, and take enormous risks.
In Hannah Arendt’s writing, boldness is understood as action. Arendt argued that political action is inherently unpredictable and irreversible. Action sets processes into motion that no one can fully control. When we act, people gather around because what we have done is surprising. If they ignore the act, it fades into irrelevance. If they condemn it, they may arrest us — or even kill us. But if they cheer for it and sing its praises, they may turn us into a hero. A bold act may later appear heroic, foolish, or tragic depending on how the story unfolds.
Even more provocatively, action cannot be judged by moral standards. Because action is new and upends behavioral expectations, because it breaks through what is commonly expected and reaches into the extraordinary, applying traditional moral norms is out of place. Action is sui generis; it promises to reorder the world and redefine the moral terrain. The only criterion by which to judge action, Arendt understood, is “greatness.”
The Athenian general Pericles “knew full well that he had broken with the normal standards for everyday behavior when he found the glory of Athens in having left behind ‘everywhere everlasting remembrance of their good and their evil deeds.’” Political action, in Arendt’s telling, dares to be great — which means that it takes the bold risk of doing great evil in the effort to do great things.
What makes an act great is neither its motive nor its achievement, but the virtuosity of the performance itself. Arendt compares political action to the performing arts. An actor, pianist, or dancer performs before others; the performance exists only in the moment and disappears once it is over. Political action works the same way. It unfolds in public, before spectators and participants, and its greatness lies not in its ends but in the quality of the deed itself. Because of this, she says, political actors depend on virtuosity — the excellence of performance in the moment. The demand for virtuosity, however, is a rigorous one. Political action, to be great, carries a burden to act with virtuosity that many leaders find intolerable. The consequences of action unfold slowly and depend on how others respond. There are no guarantees that an action will succeed, that your performance will be applauded.
For this reason, the temptation always arises to replace the virtuosity of action with something more immediate, something that forces the issue and shows your ability to impose your will on the situation. Violence offers that temptation. A strike, a bombardment, a sudden blow — these promise clarity and decisiveness where political action depends on practiced virtuosity. In her essay On Violence, Arendt warned that violence is not the same as power. Power arises when people act together in a shared political world — through alliances, institutions, and legitimacy. Violence can be a substitute for power when power fails. It can destroy power, but it cannot create it.
The question Arendt poses in On Violence is whether action requires violence — and her answer is no. If we look at the world according to the science of history, so that all that happens is inevitable, then it may be true that “violence in the shape of war and revolution may appear to constitute the only possible interruption.” But Arendt’s essay and her political thought argue against this view. The virtuosity of action, she believes, is political precisely because it can “interrupt what otherwise would have proceeded automatically and therefore predictably.”
The paradox Arendt unfolds is that politics cannot exist without bold and risky actions, yet the greatness of action can never be proven beforehand. History decides only later whether a deed will appear as founding courage or catastrophic folly. Thus, politics requires the courage to act without guarantees, to begin processes whose outcomes cannot be known in advance. Yet the same unpredictability means that boldness always risks sliding into disaster.
That distinction between power and violence matters. A bold military strike may demonstrate the capacity to act. It may even succeed in its immediate aims. But the deeper question is whether it strengthens the fragile web of political relationships on which real power depends — or whether it substitutes spectacle for power and leaves the political world weaker than before.
It is easy to criticize the cascade of shifting justifications that the President is offering for the war, as well as his latest bombastic remark that he will accept nothing less than Iran’s total surrender. Yet it would be a mistake to ignore the quality that has long defined his political style: improvisation. Like an improvisational performer, Trump pivots and adapts with astonishing speed. Next week, the goals and the demands will be different.
In Arendt’s sense, that capacity for improvisation is not trivial. Political action unfolds in a world of unpredictable responses — alliances shift, adversaries adapt, new realities emerge overnight. The first bold act begins the performance, but it does not complete it. The hope, then, is that such improvisational skill might steer events toward a result that justifies the risk. Yet that is precisely the uncertainty that bold political action always carries. A daring move may open possibilities, but it also sets forces in motion that no leader can fully control.
That is the question we face now. A strike may demonstrate the ability to act. Whether it reveals political virtuosity — or merely the spectacle of force — will depend on what follows. History will judge the performance. The same boldness that opens the door to greatness also opens the door to disaster.
