Forbes: Putin Named 'World's Most-Powerful'

By Tim Marshall, Foreign Affairs Editor

The Forbes list of the World's Most Powerful People is an annual event allowing everyone to have a guess. After all, if the Forbes editors can do it, so can we.

They seek to quantify the unquantifiable. A list of the world's most wealthy people is measurable and at the top is the person with the most money.

A list of the best Premier League football teams in England last season is achievable. At the top, Manchester United, in 20th position, QPR.

However, a league table of powerful people is subjective, and inevitably flawed.

Forbes has four criteria to select what they boldly, perhaps coldly, describe as the "72 people that matter from the 7.2 billion people on the planet".

They are: How many people they have power over; The financial resources they control; If they have influence in more than one sphere; How actively they wield their power to change the world. 

This writer's guess is that Vladimir Putin is not more powerful than the man he knocked off the number one place - Barack Obama.

Against Mr Putin's 142 million population (and falling), Mr Obama has 314 million (and growing).

Japan's leader, Shinzo Abe, is only 57th on the list

The American economy dwarves Russia's, while the American military is 20 years ahead of its Russian counterpart and has military bases around the world from which to project its overwhelmingly power.

Mr Putin may well have outfoxed Mr Obama on Syria this year, he may dominate Russia and Russia's 'near abroad', but by the criteria of Forbes surely the American has more influence in the rest of the Middle East, in North America, South America, Africa, Australasia, and in controlling the world's sea lanes.

The Forbes guys think differently and they are entitled to be wrong. They are also entitled to think that the Amazon boss, Jeff Bezos, in at 15, is more powerful that the President of Japan, Shinzo Abe (57) who himself is 18 places behind the man he nominated to be the Governor of the Bank of Japan - Haruhiko Kuroda (39).

Britain's Prime Minister falls out of the top ten to 11 and is replaced at number ten by the CEO of Wal-Mart, Michael Duke.

One of these men spent the year planning the departure of thousands of troops from Afghanistan, overseeing the world's sixth largest economy, and curtailing hundreds of millions of pounds in aid to India, the other bestrode the American retail market like a colossus.

You can decide who you think wields the most power and therein lays the strength and weakness of the list.

The list is essentially opinion, which draws a conclusion guaranteed to gain bigger headlines than if Mr Obama has remained number one.

It's froth, it's fun, and it has its use in sparking debate about geo-politics and power projection. After all, who could argue that the Pope should be in at number four and the King of Saudi Arabia at eighth? Or vice versa.

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