Fareed Zakaria Gps

In my latest documentary, we describe Russian President Vladimir Putin as the most powerful man in the world. But why? After all, the United States -- and China, for that matter -- are more powerful countries than Russia. The power of a head of state is determined both by the country's strength and the capacity he or she has to exercise that power, unilaterally, unconstrained by other institutions, parties and political forces. And combining those two metrics, it's easy to see why Vladimir Putin rises to the top of list. Putin has created what he calls a "vertical of power," something unlike any we see in other great nations. As the Russian chess grandmaster Gary Kasparov -- himself a harsh critic of Putin -- has noted, the entire structure of Russian political power rests on one man. When the czar died, you knew the structure that would endure and the process by which his successor, his son, would be elevated. When the general secretary of the Soviet Communist Party died, the Standing C