You betcha, says Barnett. He’s the sentimental choice, for sure, and I dare say his accomplishments are more impressive than narrating a documentary about climate change and throwing a big concert that nobody watched. But even so — more influential than Putin? We’re not even sure yet if the peace in Iraq will hold. Putin’s consolidating power in Russia, expanding his borders, and pimping nuclear tech to Iran. The man’s got his own jugend, for heaven’s sake. He’s a tsar in the (re)making and poised to restore the country to its old place as a key counterweight to U.S. power, this time in triangulation with China. I gotta say, it was his year.
If the peace in Iraq does hold, it’s Petraeus’s year next year. As for Dean’s point about Ahmadinejad, it’s true that he looms even larger in the western imagination than Putin does. But for all its excuses about how the award reflects no moral judgment, Time doesn’t like to get too far on the wrong side of American popular opinion with these things. There’s no question who the most influential person in the world was by the end of 2001, and it wasn’t Rudy Giuliani.
Follow that link to the Gore item, incidentally, and note the byline. As usual, it’s all about celebrity.
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