THE STRONGMAN's TWO CONTRACTS

He did not wear a fake beak, a newspaper later joked. But he was dressed in baggy white overalls, big black goggles and black gloves. The birds, robed in their own white and black plumage, needed to recognize him as one of their own. They were to follow his lead as he, Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation, took to the skies in a motorized hang-glider.

It was autumn on the Siberian steppe. The skies were leaden. The first snow would be falling soon. The plan, concocted by the president's image-makers: to lead the flock of cranes, hatched and raised in captivity, into the air and start their natural migration cycle to warmer places further south. They only had to follow the big bird. He knew where to go.

The stunt was pregnant with political symbolism, an attempt to highlight Putin's prowess as the nation's leader. And that proved to be its undoing. Because when Putin took off, the cranes stayed put. On his first attempt, one bird followed. Later, five. The other birds looked on in bemusement. Strong winds, an ornithologist explained apologetically. But it could not stop people from mocking the publicity stunt as a spectacular failure.

Inadvertently, Putin had underlined something pertinent about the nature of power and strength. While, obviously, there are mechanisms for coercing compliance in all states, the power of a leader also depends on his ability to secure uncoerced compliance. Putin's aides on the ground could have scared the cranes into the air by flapping their arms around. His security detail could have fired their handguns into the air or unleashed a pack of dogs. But while this would surely have chased all birds in the air, such force would have profoundly altered the meaning of the stunt. The use of force would have merely accentuated the limits of Putin's power.