The art of making people wait: a lesson in power in Moscow
It seems that punctuality is a virtue that is not valued highly in certain latitudes. Vicente Fox, our former president with a memorable mustache and verbal carousing, decided to share with the world one of those anecdotes that confirm that international politics sometimes looks more like a poorly directed play than serious diplomacy. The star of this feature: Vladimir Putin, the man who probably has a manual titled “How to Project Authority in 10 Exaggerated Steps.” The setting: the Kremlin, that architectural complex that screams “absolute power” from every brick. The argument? A nine o’clock appointment in the morning that, as any punctuality fanatic would have suspected, was destined not to start on time.
Fox and his then wife, Marta Sahagún, arrived with the precision of a Swiss watch, demonstrating that education that they instilled in us as children. The reward for your civility? A waiting marathon of almost two hours, adorned with the most evasive excuses that the Russian staff could improvise. Imagine the scene: two state guests, probably with tight schedules, being transported like museum pieces to an even more opulent and, surely, more intimidating room. There they sat, holding hands, like two nervous teenagers in the principal’s waiting room. One wonders: was it a gesture of affection or a survival strategy to avoid being absorbed by the aura of omnipotence that emanates from the walls?
The triumphal entry and the height complex
But every great wait deserves a great reward, or at least, a great entrance. And Putin, oh, Putin did not disappoint. When the modern tsar finally decided to grace the visiting mortals with his presence, he did so with a staging that would have made a Hollywood director blush for its lack of subtlety. He crossed huge doors of gold and silver (because bronze is for the poor, of course) accompanied by the sound of trumpets. Yes, trumpets. Because nothing says “hello, how are you?” like a fanfare announcing your arrival. Fox, with his proverbial insight, interpreted the number: it was a display calculated to demonstrate power and authority.
The finishing touch of the play, however, was the greeting. Putin, a master in the art of non-verbal communication, offered a gesture “calculated by the difference in height,” according to the Mexican’s story. Here comical speculation is mandatory: does Russian protocol include a seminar on “How to greet higher leaders without looking like a child in front of your father”? Is it practiced with mannequins of different sizes? The anecdote, in its absurd magnificence, is a complete manual on power dynamics. The wait was not an oversight; It was act one. The entrance with trumpets, act two. The condescending greeting, act three. All to convey a clear message: “I set the times, I control the space, and here I set the rules.”
Fox, for its part, came away with a perfect story to tell at dinner parties, while the rest of the world wonders if there is a department in the Kremlin dedicated exclusively to choreographing entrances and managing waiting times to maximize the psychological impact. In the end, more than a bilateral meeting, it was a lesson in political narrative where the furniture, the music and the lost minutes spoke louder than any speech about international cooperation.
Were you amused by this wry look at high-level diplomacy?Share this gem of absurd protocol on your social networks and make your contacts laugh. And if you’re hungry for more scathing analysis of the theaters of global power, explore more of our related content. Reality sometimes trumps comedy, and someone has to point it out with a mocking smile.
