What are my criteria for Leader of the Year – 2022? I have only one. My criterion is impact. My selection of who has been Leader of the Year in 2022 is based on which leader had the greatest impact – the strongest effect, for better or worse – during the last twelve months.
According to this criterion the Leader of the Year – 2022 is Russia’s President Vladimir Putin.
On what and, or on whom has he had an impact? Let me count the ways.
- Ukraine. Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine on February 24, 2022, was almost entirely the decision of one man. Putin. It’s why it’s often called, “Putin’s War.” As of December 2022, it is estimated that Putin’s War has been responsible for the deaths of some 13,000 thousand Ukrainian soldiers, and the killing or wounding of tens of thousands of Ukrainian civilians. (The figures vary widely.) Further, because of Putin’s War are some eight million refugees (most in Poland), with at least a third of Ukraine’s population (44 million in 2021) having been displaced westward. Additionally, on Putin’s orders parts of Ukraine have been turned into rubble: heavy damage has been inflicted by the Russian miliary on Ukraine’s cities, countryside, and infrastructure; its animal and plant life as well as on its people. It will take many years and enormous investments to restore Ukraine – and that’s setting aside the pain, the loss, and the grief that will never go away. If there has been a single saving grace to Putin’s War, it has been the emergence of Ukrainian President Volodymir Zelensky as a heroic leader. As a leader who has come more than any other in many years to symbolize, to personify personal freedom and political democracy.
- Russia. In November Western experts estimated that some 100,000 Russian soldiers had already been killed or wounded in the war. Moreover, Putin’s recent mobilization of another 300,000 troops further suggests that for the time being at least he is willing to fight to the death – the deaths of others – to realize at least some of his war aims. The truth though is far uglier than what Putin projects. The war has revealed that Russia’s military is weaker, much weaker, than either Russian or Western experts originally supposed. This weakness has been compounded by a series of strategic mistakes, based on poor information and false suppositions about Russia’s skill to fight – and about Ukraine’s will to fight. Instead of the resounding victory that Putin at first envisioned, he has been forced to face something else entirely: “the greatest human and strategic calamity since the collapse of the Soviet Union.” (Based on deep reporting by the New York Times.) So far as the West is concerned, Russia will be for the indefinite future a highly sanctioned pariah state, on which countries such as Germany will never again depend for critical resources.
- NATO. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization, by far the West’s most important miliary alliance, has been lethargic for years. For now, those days are gone. NATO has rediscovered its strategic purpose, while the United States and Europe have been reminded not only of the values they share, but of the need to remain militarily strong as well as politically vigilant. Additionally, NATO is likely to expand. Putin’s War prompted Sweden and Finland – long staunchly neutral – to rethink their national security policy. In May both formally applied to join NATO which, despite Turkey’s objections (related to the Kurds), likely will soon happen. Finally, there is NATO’s Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg. Stoltenberg is a Norwegian politician who has been in his NATO post since 2014 and who, certainly so far as Americans are concerned, has labored largely in obscurity. But Putin’s War has seen him emerge as a force in his own right. Stoltenberg has been stalwart throughout the crisis, voicing on NATO’s behalf a clear and consistent message. Russian aggression will not prevail. Western resolve will.
- United States. The impact on the United States of Putin’s unprovoked war on Ukraine has been considerable. The war in Ukraine is the largest, the deadliest and most destructive war on European soil since the end of World War II. It’s as if the shock of this radical deviation from what had come to be the norm forged a unity among American policy makers that recently has been a rarity. In the last five years at least America’s leadership class has hardly ever been joined in common purpose. Obviously, I am including in this group the President and members of Congress. But not only them. Americans across the board led by leaders across the board have been almost in unison: strong support for Ukraine, strong opposition against Russia. By leaders across the board, I refer to political and military leaders, yes, but also to corporate leaders, educational leaders, religious leaders, media leaders – you name them. During the next electoral cycle America’s generous and unflinching support for Ukraine is likely increasingly to be tested. But for our common purpose so far, President Joe Biden deserves considerable credit. Credit also to those who normally would oppose a Democratic president but who in this case saw fit to support him. It’s a relief to many millions of Americans, wearied by their divisiveness.
- Germany. No single country except obviously Ukraine and Russia has been more transformed by Putin’s War than Germany. Europe generally is more directly affected by what’s happening in Ukraine than is the United States. First, the war is closer. It’s a drive from Berlin to Lviv, not necessarily a flight. Second, Ukrainian refugees are everywhere visible in Europe, including over a million in Germany. Third, is the impact of the war on everyday life, whether lights and temperatures turned low, or inflation turned high. Germany for example was highly dependent on Russia for energy. Those days are gone. In part as a result, the rate of inflation in Germany is now 10 percent, among the highest in the larger advanced economies. (Before the war German inflation was 4.9 percent.) But the impact on Germany of Putin’s attack goes even deeper. Which brings us to point four. As the German ambassador to the United States, Emily Haber, has observed, Germany’s “national psychology is undergoing a profound transformation.” Germans generally are done with the idea that their relatively close ties first with the Soviet Union then with Russia changed the nature of the Russian bear. And Germans generally are done with the idea that war was something that happened to other countries and in other countries, never again to them. As a result of their rude awakening, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has led the charge to 1) end German dependance on Russian energy; 2) change Germany’s policy to permit exporting weapons to war zones; and 3) enshrine in the German constitution a major commitment to defense spending. As Haber put it, in consequence of Putin’s War the changes in Germany are “real” and they are “lasting.” Or, as Scholz put it, 2022 was a Zeitenwende – a moment that was a watershed.
- Middle East and Africa. As is usual with wars, there are those who profit from them. In this case Putin’s War caused oil prices to soar, which in turn further filled the coffers of energy exporters such as Saudi Arabia. But for everyone who has gained from this war, many, many more have lost. The United Nations has estimated that fifty countries rely on Russia and Ukraine for at least thirty percent of their imports of wheat. When these are interrupted, as they have been certainly episodically by the war in Ukraine, millions of people in the Middle East and Africa suffer from increased privation and even starvation. Countries most severely affected are those without easily extractable resources of their own, such as Lebanon, Yemen, and Libya in the Middle East, and Tunisia, Morocco, and Chad in Africa. Yemen is one of the countries hardest hit by the conflict in Europe. Over 17 million Yeminis – over half the population – are anyway food insecure. Given that Yemen procures nearly 45 percent of its wheat imports from Russia and Ukraine, when these are interfered with the impact obviously is devastating. The impact of Putin’s War is not then limited, it is unlimited. Even people and places that are far flung have suffered from the soaring prices and crippling shortages that are one of the countless consequences of what one man did.
- International System. The term “international system” refers to how states relate, one to another, one to a group of others, groups of one to groups of others. Putin’s impact on the international system is difficult to calculate, but even more difficult to overestimate. Most obviously it has altered for the indefinite future the situation in Europe. More specifically, it has changed, worsened, the relationship between Russia and the European Union. It has equally changed, worsened, the relationship between Russia and members of NATO, including, especially, the United States. It will take years, decades, maybe generations before these now cavernous divides can be closed, if they ever are. Similarly, if somewhat more elusively, Putin’s War has had an impact on relations between Russia and China, and between China and the United States. It is speculated that China’s President Xi Jinping sees a parallel between Putin’s attempt to take over (retake) Ukraine and his own fierce determination to take over (retake) Taiwan. Both leaders consider both territories as rightly belonging to them, to the states they have led for many years. (Putin has been leader of Russia for approximately two decades; Xi has been leader of China for approximately one.) During the days of the Cold War the world was viewed as bipolar, shaped by the competition between the two behemoths, the United States, and the Soviet Union. Since then, the international system has become more complex. China has become a vastly more important actor, economically, politically, and militarily. Additionally, except for Great Britain Europe has become more joined; and other countries from Venezuela to Vietnam, from India to Indonesia, have become forces that must be reckoned with. Moreover, new considerations, from climate change to supply chains have entered the global conversation. Still, for all the current complexities, the impact of one leader on the international system can still be almost unfathomably great.
- Democracy. As Freedom House has repeatedly documented, it, democracy, has been in decline in recent years. Each year for at least the last fifteen, are fewer countries that are democracies and more that are autocracies. It’s remotely possible though that Putin will reverse this trend. Far be it from me to play Pollyanna! Nor do I wish to ascribe to this single evil leader a power he does not have. Still, it can reasonably be claimed that Putin’s cruel attack on Ukraine has reminded people the world over that democratic ideals continue to resonate and that some people, here the Ukrainians, consider them worth sacrificing their lives for. One of the three recipients of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize is the Russian human rights organization, Memorial. The chair of Memorial is Jan Rachinsky, who when he accepted the prize in Oslo earlier this month said this. “What we see as the root cause of the crimes [in Ukraine] is the sanctification of the Russian state …. This requires that the absolute priority of power is to serve the interests of the state over the interests of individual human beings – their freedom, dignity, and rights. This inverted system of values prevailed in the Soviet Unition for 70 years and, regrettably, it continues until today.”
Rachinsky understands full well of course that Putin’s War is not only about Putin. It’s not Putin on the battlefield in Ukraine, risking his life for his cause. Those who take their lives in their hands to obey the orders of the Russian autocrat are his followers. Putin’s followers. Which is why, in Oslo, Rachinsky added this: “One of the obvious effects of the sanctification of the state is … that it allows for impunity not only for those who make criminal political decisions, but also for those who commit crimes in the execution of these decisions.”
Withal, Putin’s followers are his agents. He is the principal.
Case closed. Vladimir Putin is Leader of the Year – 2022.