In offering this question I place myself within a position of prejudice. Although he has strategic sense I tend to believe that violent people, contrary to modern myths such as Hannibal Lector, cannot be sensibly called intelligent. Those who kill or get others to kill for them must be lacking in smarts not examples of it. Negative behaviour does not engender wealth or creativity and thereby limits the fulfillment and happiness of others.
Putin did not prosper in the KGB and his potential was rarely if ever mentioned. He rose above the parapet in 1991 when he was hired by a charity/socially concerned group and quickly embezzled some 120 million dollars. It was around this time that he created his system of political loyalty (group loyalty) based on money, the potential for him and others to become immensely wealthy.
A talented and highly intelligent politician I suggest is rare, reliant on cultural traits. Still, I concede my position is based largely on prejudice against killers (some killers have been intellectually remarkable such as Caravaggio but the list is short). Besides which, he is a very, very poor historian even given that he uses history to create rationales for war.
Think, how many strategic mistakes has he made? Surely, every action he has made?
Not paper pushing in the GDR did shape his cognition, but the streets and backyards of Petrograd.
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There is no such thing as a former KGB man.
Vladimir Putin
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Also of relevance for your query:
Do not expect that once taking advantage of Russia's weakness, you will receive dividends forever. Russian has always come for their money. And when they come - do not rely on an agreement signed by you, you are supposed to justify. They are not worth the paper it is written. Therefore, with the Russian is to play fair, or do not play.
Otto von Bismarck
it is not true that good can follow only from good and evil only from evil, but that often the opposite is true. Anyone who fails to see this is, indeed, a political infant. Max Weber, Essays in Sociology
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Imo and personal experience, politics is much more about instinct than intelligence.
Stephen, you are possibly correct but the question needs to be raised of why the streets? Many brilliant people experienced early years around such poverty and disadvantages. While some like Putin and Al Capone became gang leaders (our knowledge of Putin's early years comes from him), but contrary to this he was not, or does not appear to have been, tough in the manner of others from similar backgrounds. He shares with Stalin (not with Hitler) the capacity to make trouble and then hide behind and within the skirts of bigger men. Stalin rose above the graves of brighter men (Trotsky) by being relatively inconspicuous fitting the society he then ruled. These are neither the brightest nor the best but those who fitted well Russian society of the time.
From 1991 he can be seen on Russian newsreels and TV documents, making little if any impression. Not the rise of a Mastermind but of an inconspicuous figure using his ordinariness to rise from the confines of others more intellectually equipped. Iago to the Moor! Those he surrounds himself with are otherwise non-achievers, not remarkable men with only the head of the Russian banks, a woman, standing out.
Stephen,
Evil only from evil, good does not only produce good? Weber, and you, are defining both I am only defining destructiveness. Human beings have certain ideas on evil involving opposition and defeat.
Now, all carnivores kill savagely to eat, they are indeed murderers, but we do not judge them morally. The Darwinian ethics of these killers removing those less equipped within their specific environment is the only perceivable moral rationale. But human society moves forward, where it does at all, by removing or adjusting systems. The Mongols destroyed the Kyivan federation and in its place came anarchy and desperation for hundreds of years. Nothing positive (constructive and creative) emerged for centuries, or at least the promise of Kyiv was eliminated.
Stephen,
If you mean Russia's possible demographic and economic collapse and something better coming in its place devoid of delusion and violence, maybe, but for many Russians what they are doing at present is good and its alternative evil. Conceiving things in terms of power is prominent here. In that old monotheist tome Lucifer/devil is conceived as in a power struggle with god, his altar ego in fact, and is doomed to fail not because he is evil but because he rebels against legitimate authority and is weak. The old monotheist tomes have little to do with goodness.
Your view is Western and I do like it Stanley Wilkin However, I live and work in the East, struggling with obviously outdated ideas.
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Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the twain shall meet, Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God's great Judgment Seat; But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth, When two strong men stand face to face, though they come from the ends of the earth!
R.Kipling
The Ballad of East and West
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How paramount the future is to the present when one is surrounded by children.
Charles Darwin
Stephen,
The bit about Putin and his street smarts comes from Putin. It validated him in the KGB or his presentation of his career there. He works through lies.