Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin was born in Leningrad, on October 7^th of 1952. He is the current president of the Russian Federation and had been Prime Minister of Russia twice.

Putin spent his childhood in a community apartment in Leningrad, and according to himself, he used to spend his free time watching Soviet spy movies and dreamed about becoming a secret agent. Putin studied Law in the University of Leningrad and graduated in 1975. After college, Vladimir got in the Communist Party and started working at the National Security Committee (most commonly known as the KGB). With the Soviet Union’s fall, Putin left the KGB and began his political career.

President Putin first political position was as the vice-advisor of the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, in the year of 1996. In 1998, Putin became the first administrator-official of Yeltsin, and was later invited by the president to become the first congressman, which in Russia is a position of trust of the President of the Federation. After that, he was soon appointed as the most likely successor of President Boris Yeltsin. In December of 1999, Yeltsin resigned from the presidency due health problems and Putin took the position of president.

During Vladimir’s first government, he made several successful changes on taxes legislations, something that Yeltsin’s government was not able to proceed.

In March of 2004, Putin was reelected but his popularity among the Russians suffered some considerable falls due his way to act towards the Chechen people. Putin was chosen by Dmitri Medvedev as his Prime Minister during his presidency. In 2012 Putin was elected to his 3^rd mandate and current and will remain in this role until 2018.

Nowadays, Putin is considered one of the most important figures in the International Relations. Putin had been very criticized over his long-term power in Russia, as well as by some of his acts that were labeled to be against basic human rights. However, even with all the critics, Putin still enjoys a considerable amount of popularity among the Russian population.

Barack Obama

Barack Houssein Obama II was born in August 4^th of 1961 and is the current president of United States of America. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, and came from a half American/half Kenyan family. He was elected president for the first time in 2009 and then reelected in 2012.

Obama graduated in Law on the Harvard University in 1991. President Obama also taught Constitutional Right in the Chicago University from 1992 to 2004. He then was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996, and through the Democratic Party, in this role, he was the president of the Health Committee and of the Human Service Committee, and he was one of the main senators to participate of the approval of a legislation to monitor the racial discrimination. In 2004, Obama ran for the Federal Senate by the state of Illinois, was elected and took the office in 2005. Obama resigned from the Senate in 2008 to run for presidency in 2009.

During his first presidential campaign, Obama was emphatic on the withdraw of the American troops in Iraq. Both the Senator Hilary Clinton and the ex-President Bill Clinton publicly supported the candidacy of Obama, as well as a huge number of personalities as the Academy Winner actor Robert De Niro and the famous writer Stephen King.  Obama was elected by 69,4 millions of votes, being the second most voted president in the world.

In his mandate, Obama was responsible for some political changes. Obama revoked the limitations for the stem cells research and proposed the regulation to the greenhouse gases’ emissions. It was during his presidency that the same-sex marriage was upholded constitutionally for the whole country.  Obama also was the president that had to deal with the 2008 economic crisis in the US. In his foreign policy, Obama tried an approach to the Muslim countries and declared that he was in search of a “new start for the relations between the USA and the Middle East”. In 2009, Obama was awarded with the Nobel Prize of Peace because of his “extraordinary efforts in the reinforcement of diplomacy and cooperation of the peoples”.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen

Hello dear delegates!

The staff will begin to post a series of biographies that are related to our committee! We will start with the NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen. Good reading!

Anders Fogh Rasmussen was the 12^th Secretary General of NATO, he stood in this role from 2009 to 2014, being the head of the organization during the time that our committee takes place. Anders is Danish, he was born in Ginnerup city in 1953; he was the Prime Minister of Denmark from November of 2001 to April of 2009.

Rasmussen graduated in Economics at the Aarhus University in 1978. Also in 1978, Rasmussen won his first seat on the Danish Parliament (the Folketing). Anders was the leader of the Liberal Party (Venshe), he was a critic of the welfare state, being favorable to privatizations and of the limited state. The Secretary General Rasmussen, also, wrote several books defending the classic liberal thesis.

As Prime Minister of Denmark, Rasmussen left his earlier positions on the orthodox liberalism. He announced the “death” of neoliberalism, leading to criticism from the Danish right wing, and begun to identify himself as a third way[1] politician, regarding himself as a follower of the Anthony Giddens’ theories. In his government, Rasmussen worked with the Liberal Party and tried to limit the number of immigrants and asylum seekers. Fogh Rasmussen also stood for the end of the rising taxes; in 2009, Rasmussen implemented a tax reform that reduced 7,5% the Danish taxes.

In 2002, Rasmussen held the role of rotating president of the European Union. In 2003, he publically supported the Iraqi War, facing opposition from both Parliament and Danish population. Under his rule, Danish troops participated of the Iraq invasion, but those troops were withdrawn in 2007 due the hard opposition from the Danish people to the war.

Anders Fogh Rasmussen became the Secretary General of NATO in August 1^th of 2009. The only NATO member contrary to his candidacy was Turkey, but it changed when the USA president Barack Obama assured that Turkey officials would be in high positions on the NATO administration. As Rasmussen had important roles in the Libyan Civil War; in October of 2012, his term as Secretary General was extended until the summer of 2012. Rasmussen was then succeeded by the ex-Prime Minister of Norway, Jens Stoltenberg. In August of 2014, Fogh Rasmussen was awarded with the Order of Liberty, by the Ukrainian president, as thanks for his cooperation and NATO cooperation in the Crimea Crisis.

[1] Third Way was a “political wing” idealized by Anthony Giddens (a British sociologist) in the book “Beyond Left and Right” that stood between the right and the left wing.