The whole of the Western worlds are complaining masters and high scoring victims, as it seems.
It's much about emotions, hurt feelings and such. The stark difference between the western and eastern leaders is their professionalism in expression and their willingness to become good diplomats - in general, not in particular, I shall say.
To become an excellent diplomat,
you also need to talk to those who do not have such goal. Instead of learning from a skilled dialogue partner, one must accept to lower the standard, and there is a certain need to manipulate. A stupid opponent has to be unfortunately manipulated, whereas a bright one has to be convinced. Both ways, it's a test of the diplomatic skills of a statesman.
However, this must be preceded by wanting to have created the understanding of the one who appears more stupid. This may take years.
Take care of oneself
The thing is that every time you constantly have to deal with less capable challengers, there is the danger that it chips away at your own integrity and sovereignty and instead of congratulating the better one at the end of the challenge and making friends with the result as the inferior one, there is the following: The smarter one has to flatter the dumber one so that the latter doesn't lose face.
Ever tried that and completed such thing without dishonoring yourself?
This is a very delicate matter in politics, both internally and externally. Politics is not business. People need to understand this. It is the high art of relationship.
It is not difficult to distinguish an insecure politician from a secure leader
if it can be recognised that the expression of leaders shows an ability to change perspective.
Where a politician, as a representative of his nation, lets his counterpart (colleague from another nation) see that he understands his position. And to mean it.
Someone who has worked in government for many years, has media appearances and whose communication is consistent and rational cannot be a pure fascist (or any other bad form of one-sided character) simply because they need to practise the ability to speak and think diplomatically in order to be able to express understanding of the situation of a foreign nation. And feel it.
He can only do this if he has advisors and opponents in his own ranks who sharply criticise and challenge him. Without having been challenged in many ways beforehand - and maybe not always in the open - according to the rules of diplomatic debate and having both lost and won in the process, you are not a suitable statesman.
Secondly, it is important for the public to see a head of state - or other representatives - who admit their own mistakes and neither overemphasise nor underplay them.
The problem for the West is that it doesn't get to see enough foreign government debates
and has to overcome language barriers. The English-speaking international audience consumes too little foreign politics and therefore I am not aware of the extent to which criticism is public (in China or Russia, for example) or is rather handled in such a way that critical debates are not televised in general, although they may take place.
How little the West really understands about other cultures is not something you can just find out or say.
But one can assume that there is much less understanding of a foreign culture, especially when everything is expressed in Western habits. Labelling and portraying heads of state as dictators for the sole reason that they have long terms in office need not be wise or accurate. Length of tenure can be both an indicator of stability or a sign of oppression.
There have been governments that have stayed in office simply because they forced it on the people and there are those that are because the people support it.
Now, there is no easy way to find out or even claim that the people of a foreign nation, for example, reject or welcome their head of state and their government unless you live there yourself, speak the language, adopt the customs and habits yourself for a relevant period of time and get a good feel for the atmosphere.
As a normal citizen who is neither one (emotionally stable) nor the other (living in a foreign country for a few years), one should rather keep quiet than make comments about other countries in such a way that "democracy should be brought there".
With such statements you rather out yourself as unintelligent.
From a philosophical point of view,
the heads of state are mutually dependent. It may very well be that the incompetence of one brings the other so low in his own standard of quality that it is to the detriment of all who are governed.
The best statesman is the one who succeeds in overcoming the low standard of the other. And even creates a deep insight into him. Such as that punishments undertaken from the one, will not only hurt the opponent but also the instigator himself.
If the whole of the world falls into a depressing or cynical belief, that such statesmen do not exist, that such diplomacy and relationship is just a dream, this human world may indeed fall apart and worse.
Though I do not think so.
There are very few statesmen today worthy of such appellation or admiration. There are more than a few with glib tongues, that can assuage an audience that showed up intent on blood, but most of them are little but frauds. Skillful and capable frauds, but no statesmen. Fidel Castro's son comes to mind. There are others that are not just skillful appeasers, but worthy orators, but, again, most often such are mere conmen, grifting on their skills and without actual visionary policy to implement thereby. Obama strikes me as such an orator, but who simply weaponized bureaucracies to profit his masters and himself, and now is about to be dragged into a cesspit of his own making.
Statesmen? Putin's foreign minister Lavrov perhaps deserves that epithet, although from where I sit I know very little of the potential crimes he could very well be using his ambassadorial skill to cover. I do know he is highly regarded by his diplomatic peers, and there seems to be no weakness of his person that has been able to stick sanctions to him. Xi Jinping, perhaps, deserves such an accolade, although the brutality with which he dealt with associates like Hu Jintao doesn't merit admiration. The brevity of that event in which Hu was disempowered prevented much in the way of understanding, as well as the great cultural and language differences. Overall there seems to be little but admiration for Xi from other Ministers Prime, Presidents, or national leaders, which suggests he has either the qualities of a statesman, or is simply dangerously powerful, and merciless in vengeance.
Robert Fico of Slovakia seems to have demonstrated statesman quality leadership, after being nearly killed by an assassin for principled policy, he has firmly stood by that policy to this day, and also attains to the admiration of his people and his peers in the EU. I could hardly know less about him than that, however.
Have you any statesmen in mind?
I have very few men in mind, but my own judgement may not be sufficient to have such knowledge in the sense that I can be certain. Moreover, these people cannot be perfect and, as you say, may have done some things that could not absolve them of wrongdoing.
I note that people who have basic integrity were born into a world in which crime and arbitrariness are the order of the day. It is questionable whether it is even possible to be a statesman who can remain true to his conscience in such an environment.
Apart from that, every statesman who has come into office has to make some lazy compromises. That, I think, is the reality.
You can't expect perfection from anyone and I don't think you can have that expectation when you think about politics.
So it is more likely to be individual episodes in which a statesman was able to preserve his integrity while causing the least possible damage. Where his reasonable actions outweigh the unreasonable ones.
Biblically speaking, however, no one is without sin.
With these realities in mind, the actions and decisions of a government must be viewed more in terms of the ‘least damage caused’, both internally and externally. The people themselves are a reflection of their statesmen and the fewer virtues are to be found in them, the less they are to be found in their leaders.
One big criminal act of omission is open borders, playing into the hands of human trafficking and putting the citizens of a country - as well as the newcomers - in a situation they cannot possibly handle.
Among the worst mental lapses I count statesmen and their staffs who have no balanced goal or vision whatsoever to develop a long-term view for their peoples existence. And who lack the confidence to develop relationships with other statesmen, seeing interdependence as something positive, not negative.
In general, I would say that Eastern statesmen are superior to Western statesmen in that they govern countries that not so long ago knew abject poverty and still had to catch up with technological progress. And their mentality also differs from ours in other ways, often in such a way that it is not completely comprehensible to us. We must not forget that these nations have role models (USA, Europe) that show how things can be messed up.
It's a bit like when a younger sibling decides not to follow the same course based on the mistakes of an older sibling.
Since every statesman springs from the people themselves, is born and grows up in their midst, the people bear a large part of the responsibility for what becomes of them. To the extent that the critical mass is committed to a way of life that lacks integrity, self-trust and conscientiousness, it creates its own weak leaders.
... Sorry, I was carried away and did not really answer your question.
You certainly discuss the same ideas, even if you didn't name names.