I’ve posted pieces about Russian President Vladimir Putin for almost a decade – usually under the title, “Putin Patrol.”
Why, I’ve wondered, my particular interest in him, given it began when he was just another Russian leader – not that impressive, not that different from most of his predecessors, not that distinguishable from other strongmen with whom the West was preoccupied. Perhaps it was just that he was leader of Russia, formerly of the Soviet Union, the country that in my lifetime has been the United States’ most obvious if not always most onerous adversary.
Now though is different. Now Putin has become an obsession. Now Putin is not just my obsession but everyone else’s – everyone everywhere in the world who is remotely aware of what’s happening in the international system.
We are fixated on what Putin thinks and why. We are obsessed with everything he says and everything he does. We worry about him staying sane and grasping that actions have consequences. We are convinced that cornering him is dangerous – we are equally convinced that he must be cornered.
But…even the best and brightest are reduced to reading tea leaves. This morning the distinguished foreign policy experts, David Ignatius (Washington Post) and Ed Luce (Financial Times), were together on television. Predictably they spoke about Putin. But not a single syllable they said – nothing, nada, zilch – was new or different. Either informative or enlightening. Because they have no idea what Putin will do in the future, they simply reiterated what we already know about him from the past.
This is not to say that we have nothing to learn, or to relearn, from this case. We do. Here ten leadership lessons drawn so far from Putin’s War.
- Leaders matter. But they matter more in some cases than in others.
- Leaders matter a lot when they have great power and high authority.
- Leaders matter a lot more when they have great power and high authority and when they lead countries or companies that are strong as opposed to weak.
- Leaders matter most when they 1) have great power and high authority; 2) when they have great power and high authority in countries or companies that are strong as opposed to weak; and 3) when power is centralized.
- Centralized power is power that is dangerous. Decision making tends much more often to be flawed and implementations of decisions much more often to be poor.
- Followers matter. But they matter more in some cases than others.
- Followers matter more when they do something as opposed to when they do nothing.
- Followers matter however even when they do nothing. When followers do nothing, they support the status quo – they support the leader who already is in place.
- Past is prologue. Anyone who has watched Putin over the years and is aware of how strongmen work, could have predicted that he would do what he did. That he would either invade Ukraine or try in another way to take a bite out of its hide. After all, he already took a bite, a big bite, in 2014, when he seized Crimea. But when he swallowed it whole what was the response? How did NATO and the European Union react? With piddling peeps of protest.
- Dictators usually fall. I predict that Putin will fall, though like every other so-called expert I have no idea when or how. Still, I am persuaded that Putin’s decision on February 24, 2022 to invade Ukraine will be the death of his dictatorship. Literally or figuratively.