Politics/Heads of State

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s new president, won the admiration of his people for his iron grasp on power. Then came the Kursk submarine crisis. Will the Kremlin’s mystery man be able to rein in a massively corrupt oligarchy, or will he wake the ghost of Stalin?

While Margaret Thatcher is washed-up in England, the post–Gulf War American right has taken the warrior queen to its heart—and she’s determined to reinvent herself as an international power player. But, as our author reports, Thatcher’s plans to create a new world forum may be foundering thanks to the storm of controversy raging around her maladroit millionaire son. Has Mrs. T. missed her moment?

As leader of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, Gerry Adams is Northern Ireland’s most controversial politician, a hero to some, a murderer to others. MAUREEN ORTH follows his dangerous, charismatic high-wire act from Belfast to London to Washington as Adams tires to turn his people from terror to peace.

Argentineans have always had a fatal weakness for charisma. And in their president from 1989 to 1999, they had the glitziest crowd pleaser since Evita. Maureen Orth reports for Vanity Fair from Buenos Aires about the ARab leader of a Catholic country, and his double political tango with the rich elite and the descamisados.