Commanders Without Borders: How the World’s Loudest Leaders Keep Failing Upward
The Global Brotherhood of Commanders: A Field Guide to the Men (and Occasionally Women) Who Tell Everyone Else What to Do
By Dave’s Foreign Desk, somewhere between a G-7 cocktail reception and a bunker in Burkina Faso
There is a moment, usually around 2:00 a.m. local time, when every commander on earth—regardless of flag, ideology, or level of sanity—stares at the same encrypted tablet and asks the same question: “Whose bright idea was this?” The answer, of course, is always “the last guy,” who has since been promoted to a think-tank in Geneva.
From Kyiv to Kuala Lumpur, the species Commander erectus has become the planet’s most reliable renewable resource. They pop up after every coup, election, or corporate rebrand, promising “strategic clarity” while holding a map the wrong way up. Their shared vocabulary—phrases like “robust posture,” “kinetic option,” or “stakeholder synergy”—travels faster than a seasonal flu variant. One week a Brazilian general is bragging about rainforest “dominance,” the next he’s lecturing NATO officers on “asymmetric banana-logistics.” The PowerPoint slides are identical; only the fonts change.
Take the curious case of Generalissimo-turned-LinkedIn-influencer Rodrigo “Rod” Valdivia, late of the Andean High Command, currently advising a Luxembourgish fintech on “conflict-zone customer acquisition.” Rod once ordered helicopter gunships to protect a presidential alpaca; now he hosts webinars titled “Leadership Lessons from 4,000 Meters.” Viewers pay €199 to learn that decisive action is best taken after a quinoa salad. The global supply chain of expertise, it turns out, is just one long conga line of recycled résumés.
Meanwhile, in the South China Sea, an admiral nicknamed “Uncle Tight-Fist” plays chicken with destroyers the way teenagers play bumper cars. His counterpart in Manila live-tweets the encounter with crying-laughing emojis. Neither side can afford a real collision—Beijing’s economy needs TikTok-addicted consumers; Manila needs remittances from the same kids—so the dance continues, choreographed by men who studied nineteenth-century naval battles at staff colleges that still serve luncheon sherry.
The European theater offers its own tragicomedy. After 30 years of peace, NATO’s newest Supreme Allied Commander—a general who has never heard outgoing artillery—unveiled “Operation Steadfast Porcupine,” a plan to defend Estonia with inflatable tanks and motivational podcasts. Lithuanian teenagers promptly turned the inflatable tanks into rave venues. Morale, as the briefers say, is “robust.”
Not to be outdone, Africa’s coup economy has franchised the role. A 34-year-old colonel in Burkina Faso launches his third putsch before breakfast, pausing only to film a TikTok dance challenge with his troops. By sundown he’s on the phone with a Turkish drone salesman who offers two-for-one deals on Bayraktars if you pay in cocoa futures. The commander signs; the salesman throws in free hashtags.
In the private sector, the word “commander” has been gentrified. Tech CEOs now prefer “Chief Vision Commander,” a title that sounds like it was invented during a ayahuasca retreat. Their battlefield is the quarterly earnings call, where they deploy buzzwords like “strategic incursion into customer mindshare.” Casualties include grammar, humility, and anyone holding stock options.
What unites all these figures—whether they wear oak leaves, epaulettes, or Patagonia vests—is a touching faith that the next promotion will finally deliver the existential certainty missing since adolescence. The global org chart keeps growing new boxes—Cyber Commander, Climate Commander, Chief Memetic Officer—yet the fundamental task remains unchanged: tell other humans where to go and pretend surprise when they end up somewhere else.
And so the carousel spins. Yesterday’s warlord is today’s security consultant; last quarter’s CTO is tomorrow’s warlord. The maps get redrawn by people who couldn’t fold them in the first place. Somewhere, a freshly minted commander is Googling “how to inspire fear and quarterly growth simultaneously.” The answer, dear reader, is always the same: raise your voice, lower your expectations, and bill by the hour.
