Difficult militarist, no leader at war, died (7)
I believe the answer is:
awkward
'difficult' is the definition.
(similar in meaning)
'militarist no leader at war died' is the wordplay.
'militarist' becomes 'hawk' (hawk is a kind of militarist).
'no leader' means to remove the first letter.
'at' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other).
'died' becomes 'd' (abbreviation next to the year of someone's death).
'hawk' with its first letter taken off is 'awk'.
'awk'+'war'+'d'='AWKWARD'
(Other definitions for awkward that I've seen before include "Unwieldy" , "Hard to do; ungraceful" , "inconvenient" , "Gauche - obstinate" , "Embarrassed" .)