In un articolo di Dimitri Trenin, il bravo direttore del Carnegie Moscow Center, l’approccio del leader russo agli affari internazionali: la Siria, la Libia, l’Egitto ma soprattutto il rapporto con gli Stati Uniti e l’Europa.

[…] Putin sees the United States as having lost its way, and the European Union as not having found one. He now views America and Russia as culturally opposite to each other and Russia as more European in terms of its core values than present-day E.U.-land. Surprisingly, he still seems to harbor respect, howwver, for Israel and the Jewish people generally—even when he disagrees with their leaders, as on the actual danger posed by Iran, or thinks they are running too high risks, as in Syria.

Compared to most of his fellow heads of state, particularly in the democratic countries, Putin, with his czar-like power inside Russia and vast experience in world affairs, looks an awesome character. Consequently, he is sometimes credited with the things that today’s Western leaders, almost to a single one of them, do not possess: strategic thinking; a sense of history; and purposefulness. Thus, Putin is occasionally depicted as a chess grand master towering over lesser players, even those who have much better figures on the chessboard.

The truth is, Putin enormously benefits from comparison: Contemporary Western leadership, whether in America or Europe, is often less than mediocre. Judged on his own merit, or against the record of past Russian leaders, communist and czarist, he cuts a more realistic figure. Putin has held Russia in one piece and so far defeated all his rivals; he was prudent with the oil money and thought he found a formula for ruling Russia: authoritarianism with the consent of the governed; finally, he ended Russia’s post-1991 dependency on the West.

Yet the challenges Putin faces are mounting, domestically and internationally. To confront them, he opted for conservatism, even traditionalism: This may not be a safe bet in a fast-changing world. To break off from the United States orbit as the oil money was pouring in was one thing; to manage China’s growing might is another. By the same token, turning away from Europe was much easier than rebuilding a politico-economic-military bloc in former Soviet Eurasia. Putin once quipped that, since the passing of Gandhi, there was no one worth talking to in the world. Each joke is only partly a joke. Czar Vladimir believes in his God-given mission and no longer walks with mere mortals. Imagining Putin himself in the company of the Tehran or Yalta summiteers, however, is hard. Even in Russia, true leadership sucks these days.