Aspects of Europe's Mind - Newsweek Columnists - MSNBC.com: "Putin wants to be president of a superpower, but Russia's GDP is not much bigger than the economic product of Los Angeles County. In 2006 he will be host of the leaders of the G8 countries, a group of developed democracies. Russia is neither developed nor democratic, and its leader has no plausible plan to make it the former and no apparent desire to allow it to be the latter."