Machiavelli made easy

ast time a People’s Party government was in office, my friend Husain Haqqani, roving ambassador No. 1 as I write, denied on scout’s honour that he had presented a copy of Machiavelli’s The Prince to the prime minister. His denial appeared in The Friday Times , although the report had been run elsewhere. His denial was followed by another, this time by Farhatullah Babar, who said that the prime minister did not read “that kind of book,” but did not rule out the possibility that it might have been read during the prime minister’s student days.

I was disappointed then and I am disappointed now that Machiavelli should have such a rotten image. I do not know what our new prime minister reads (he does read Faiz, I heard him say in a TV interview) but I would recommend that he read the sage of Florence. Even a casual reading is like dipping in a river flowing with the wisdom of statecraft. But since prime ministers are busy people, especially in their first 100 days, I am quite happy to give Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani a quick tour of Machiavelli’s master work. No ruler should be without it, be he democratically elected or otherwise.

The first thing the prime minister should do is to stay at home rather than fly from capital to capital as Shortcut used to do. Says Machiavelli, “Being on the spot, one can detect trouble at the start and deal with it immediately; if one is absent, it is discerned only when it has grown serious, and it is then too late.” In the same chapter, we find another gem: “When trouble is sensed well in advance, it can easily be remedied; if you wait for it to show itself, any medicine will be too late because the disease will have become incurable. So it is in politics. Political disorders can be quickly healed if they are seen well in advance (and only a prudent ruler has such foresight); when, for lack of a diagnosis, they are allowed to grow in such a way that everyone can recognise them, remedies are too late.” He goes on to observe that doing small injuries to others is ill-advised because men “will revenge themselves for small injuries, but cannot do so for great ones; the injury therefore that we do to a man must be such that we need not fear for his vengeance.” I am sure Mr Gillani is too nice a man to think of doing injury to anyone, big or small.

On FATA and Balochistan, a situation the prime minister will have to deal with sooner rather than later, Machiavelli could be his guide. “A city used to liberty can be more easily held by means of its citizens than in any other way, if you wish to preserve it.” Had Gen Musharraf only read Machiavelli, he would not have moved with shock and awe in Balochistan and FATA as he did. According to the sage, “It cannot be called virtue to kill one’s fellow citizens, betray one’s friends, be without faith, without pity and without religion; by these methods one may indeed gain power, but not glory.” And then more good advice, “Princes who are irresolute, follow the path of neutrality in order to escape immediate danger and usually come to grief.”

Since the PPP has a comfortable majority, one hopes it will not find itself tempted at some future juncture to do horse trading (what an innocent animal, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan one said, and what a bad name it has been given in Pakistan!). If such a situation should present itself, Machivelli’s words should be borne in mind. “The friendship which is gained by purchase and not through grandeur and nobility of spirit is bought but not secured, and at a pinch is not to be expended at your service.” Some people have been critical of certain appointments made recently, but Machiavelli might have approved. “Princes, and especially new ones, have found more faith and more usefulness in those men, whom at the beginning of their power, they regarded with suspicion, than in those they at first confided in … they are the most compelled to serve them faithfully as they know they must by their deeds cancel the bad opinion previously held of them, and thus the prince will always derive greater help from them than those who, serving him with greater security, neglect his interests.”

And what about the Prince’s ministers? Machiavelli writes, “The first impression that one gets of a ruler and of his brains is from seeing the men that he has about him … There are three different kinds of brains, the one understands things unassisted, the other understands things when shown by others, the third understands neither alone nor with the explanation of others.” As for flatterers, the sage’s advice is priceless: “And this is with regard to flatterers, of which courts are full, because men take such pleasure in their own things and deceive themselves about them that they can with difficulty guard against this plague … There is no other way of guarding one’s self against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you be speaking the truth. The Prince should get wise men to advise him, ‘giving them alone full liberty to speak the truth to him, but only of those things that he asks and of nothing else; but he must ask them about everything and hear their opinion, then he should make up his own mind, by himself.’ The Prince should put the policy agreed upon into effect right away and adhere to it rigidly. “Anyone who does not do so is ruined by flatterers or is constantly changing his mind because of conflicting advice: as a result he is held in low esteem.”

To Machiavelli’s wise words, I add those of that advertising genius, the late David Ogilivy, whose advice the new government would do well to follow when it comes to publicising its record in office. “The wrong advertising can actually reduce the sales of a product … Ford inserted advertisements in every other copy of the Reader’s Digest. At the end of the year, the people who had not been exposed to the advertising had bought more Fords than those who had.” Ogilvy would always say, “Do your homework. First study the product you are going to advertise. The more you know about it, the more likely you are to come up with a bid idea of selling it. If you are too lazy to do this kind of homework, you may occasionally lick into a successful campaign, but you will run the risk to skidding about on … ‘the slippery surface of irrelevant brilliance’.” Those who will want the prime minister to appear on television all times of day and night should be reminded of Ogilvy’s advice, “Only in the gravest case, should you show the client’s face.”