Obama memoirs: what he really thinks about Putin and the other leaders

Former US President Barack Obama compares Russia’s Vladimir Putin to a difficult “neighborhood president” in Chicago and describes former French President Nicolas Sarkozy as full of “excessive rhetoric” in the first volume of his memoirs. It consists of two parts of it.

A Promised Land sold nearly 890,000 copies in the US and Canada in its first 24 hours, a record for publisher Penguin Random House. It is expected to become the best-selling presidential memoir in history.

In the book, Obama recalls his travels around the world as the 44th president of the United States and his meetings with world leaders. So who made a good impression and who didn’t?

The Eton-educated conservative, who served as UK Prime Minister from 2010 to 2016, is “calm and confident” and has “the easy confidence of someone who has never been induced by life.” excessive pressure. “

Obama said he liked Cameron as a human being (“I personally like him, even when we disagree”), but did not hide his disagreement with Cameron’s economic policies. . He wrote: “Cameron follows free markets, promising voters that his policy of reducing deficits and cutting government services, along with legal reform and expanding trade, usher in a new era of UK competitiveness. Instead, the UK economy can be predicted to slide into a deeper recession. “

Obama wrote that the Russian leader reminded him of the politically powerful figures he met during his early days in Chicago. He wrote that Putin “was like a ward president [quận], except with nuclear weapons and veto power in the United Nations Security Council ”.

He continued: “In fact, Putin reminded me of the kind of men who used to run the Chicago machine or Tammany Hall. [một tổ chức chính trị của Thành phố New York] – tough, cunning street characters, unsentimental, who know what they know, who never go beyond their limited experience, but consider patronage, bribery, deception, fraud and violence to be legitimate business tools. “

According to Obama, the former president of France is “overexpressing emotions and authoritarian” and as “a figure in the image of Toulouse-Lautrec”.

“Conversations with Sarkozy become fun and annoying, his hands are in constant motion, his chest puffed out like a rooster, his private translator … always by his side to frantically repeat all his gestures and intonation as the conversation goes from flattering to aggressive to deep, without ever departing from his main concern, almost discovered is the center of action and the merit of all that can be credited. “

The German leader is considered “firm, honest, intellectually strict and an instinctive goodness.” Obama noted that she initially doubted him because of his eloquence and ability to speak. “I do not mean to offend, that as a German leader, aversion to demihumans can be a healthy thing.”

Obama considered that the Turkish leader was “friendly and generally receptive to my proposals”.

“But every time she heard him speak, his tall frame would sag a little, his powerful voice would rise an octave in response to various accusations or criticism. The strong impression that his commitment to democracy and the rule of law can only exist if it preserves its own power. “

The former prime minister is described as a “prudent, thoughtful and honest” and “chief architect of India’s economic transformation.” Mr. Singh is a “confident technocrat who earns the people’s trust not by evoking their passions, but by bringing a higher standard of living and maintaining a reputation that is not corrupt,” Obama said. commentary.

Obama is an admirer of Václav Havel, the first president of the Czech Republic after the Nhung Revolution, but found his successor, Václav Klaus, to be more obstructive. Obama writes that he fears that this skeptical European president will signal the rise of right-wing populism in Europe and embody “the way the economic crisis is.” [2008-9] causing a rise in nationalism, anti-immigration sentiment and skepticism [châu Âu] integration. “He added:” The hopeful wave of democratization, liberalization and integration, which swept across the world after the end of the Cold War, is now beginning to recede. “