World Affairs Journal: Putin the powerful?
Last week, Forbes named Vladimir Putin the world’s most powerful person. The Russian president edged out the American and Chinese leaders. Barack Obama came in second and Xi Jinping third in the magazine’s fifth-annual list.
So congratulations to President Putin. Yet his perch at the top could be short-lived. It’s true, as Steve Forbes explained, his publication ranked people and not countries, but Putin’s fortunes and influence, no matter the strength of his personality, will diminish as his country’s accelerating economic decline and irrelevance continue, as seems inevitable today.