Globoquiz: Guess the Leader; Twin Regimes: One is a cold, calculating Russian, the other a gregarious and irreverent Latin, yet they rule as though separated at birth. How come?

Byline: Moises Naim (Naim, a former Venezuelan minister of Industry and Trade, is the editor of Foreign Policy magazine.)

Let's play "Guess The Leader": What is the name of the president of this oil-rich nation? The following facts provide clues to his identity while also revealing some interesting trends shaping today's world.

This lieutenant colonel emerged from relative obscurity in the 1990s and rapidly became a leading national political figure. Now in his early 50s, he underwent his formative experiences in the late 1970s and 1980s. As a result, his world view often reflects a zero-sum, hierarchical world where a strong, centralized government reliant on the military is the dominant player. While democratically elected in the late 1990s--and re-elected earlier in this decade--he has presided over a significant concentration of power in the executive, the erosion of democratic practices and the weakening of the checks and balances normal in a democracy. He has even ignored his own party, preferring to govern with his former comrades in arms. They now run ministries, regulatory agencies, provincial governments, state-owned enterprises and all the main institutions of the state. Blind loyalty rather than competence is the main criterion for top appointments.

His personal popularity owed a great deal to this question: why were living standards declining in a country with vast oil wealth? For most citizens the answer was obvious: corruption. The president understood the popular yearning for a tough boss to stop the thievery, and exploited this sentiment with great skill. He made a public enemy of "the oligarchy," the small circle of wealthy private businessmen who control much of the nation's wealth. The president used every opportunity to denounce them, accusing them of manipulating the media they controlled, of influencing the political process and of conspiring against him. Denunciations soon escalated into persecution, often carried out by the state tax men. The biggest battle would come over the nation's largest oil company, shaking global energy markets. The president won--ousting, exiling or jailing those he saw as rivals for power.

Meanwhile, the international price of oil skyrocketed. An avalanche of foreign currency fell into the government's coffers. A boom in public spending opened bountiful business opportunities for friends of the government and created a new breed of wealthy business groups strongly allied with the president and his circle. Despite political instability and unclear rules guiding private property and foreign investment, multinational oil companies could not afford to miss out. The old mantra of the oil business was often heard in the capital: "We will deal with whoever answers the phone in the presidential palace."

The president also enjoyed favorable political winds abroad. Not because he was much liked or trusted by other leaders, but because the world was busy with the war between two other oil presidents: George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein. Thus, major geopolitical emergencies elsewhere gave this president greater flexibility to make decisions unencumbered by the reactions of a very distracted and already overwhelmed international community. He was able to impair the functioning of democracy at home, persecute his political enemies, build unsavory international alliances with rogue ...