Washington ? The gathering Iraq crisis is being portrayed as two grave tests of character and resolve, one for George W. Bush, the other for Saddam Hussein. But this peculiar moment in world affairs, at the end of a period of traditional power politics and at the beginning of a new age of terror and fright, also presents a momentous turning point for another world leader. It is the biggest international test yet for Vladimir V. Putin.

The Russian president is surrounded by troubles. He faces an insurrection in Chechnya. He fears a terrorist haven in Georgia. He worries about economic instability at home. He is constantly reminded that the end of the Cold War meant the end of his nation’s status as a superpower. And now he faces the growing likelihood of an attack on a country where Russia has important political ties and commercial interests.

But one of the laws of geopolitics is that grave moments of peril also present brave moments of opportunity. This is a turning point not only for what the Bush administration has come to call the New Iraq. It is also a turning point for what Western leaders have come to call, more in hope than in reality, the New Russia.

In the old days, the formula for a nation looking for world leadership was simple: Assert yourself as an honest broker, defuse a difficult situation with a dispassionate eye, and approach world problems the way cubist painters approached still-lifes, by looking at them from all sides.

That is the formula Theodore Roosevelt used to win peace at the end of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. It also won him a Nobel Peace Prize and it won his country, which at the time was no superpower, great world prestige. That formula is almost certainly not available to Putin this time. The Bush administration is in no mood for mediation.

The Russian opportunity is different in 2002. Here’s the menu of the limited choices Putin has:

Take Saddam Hussein’s side. The Russians realize that Yeltsin missed a great opportunity in the Balkans in the 1990s by hanging on until the last hour to the losing side, politically and morally, and Putin doesn’t want to be identified with isolated rogue states and failing causes.

Find a safe haven for Saddam Hussein outside Iraq. Saddam isn’t the Shah of Iran or Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier of Haiti, both of whom fled their countries, and there’s no indication the Iraqi leader has the urge for going. There are fewer places to hide a discredited dictator today than there were even a decade or so ago.

Help accomplish unimpeded weapons inspections. The Bush administration is leery of this, but it’s a legitimate role for Russia and, because so many expect these inspections to break down, could still lead to U.S. military intervention.

Join Bush in regarding Iraq as a threat to regional and global stability. This option highlights Russia’s importance to an international coalition and has the added advantage of appearing as if Putin rushed in to rescue Bush, an image that the Kremlin is unlikely to be able to replicate in the next several years.

Russia is like Britain in the days of empire. It has interests, not allies. One of its interests is world prestige. (Putin wants to show that Russia matters and cannot be ignored. He wants to look like a power broker.) One of its other interests is oil contracts. (Oil politics matter in Russia, too. They have, for example, driven Putin on regional issues in the Caspian Sea involving pipelines. He is now under pressure from his own domestic oil interests not to permit Russia’s oil concessions in Iraq to be torn up by a regime that succeeds Saddam Hussein.)

That’s why the effort to make an international coalition in Iraq is going to look a little bit like making a deal.

There are immense pressures inside Moscow pulling Putin away from Bush, mostly because of Russian worries about the extension of U.S. power, first in Central Asia and now in the Middle East. (The Western analogue to these pressures is the worry among American allies, including France and Canada, about U.S. unilateralism.) Even so, the United States is likely to guarantee the investments of Russia (and, perhaps, of France) in a reconstituted Iraq.

In exchange, the United States would win Russian forbearance, or perhaps cooperation, in Iraq and one thing more, which has been of assistance in Afghanistan: access to Russian intelligence capabilities, which Washington experts believe are better than the United States’.

This situation is laced with ironies. Perhaps the most compelling irony is imbedded in the doctrinal rationale for an American strike against Iraq. Last week, the Bush administration formalized its policy of pre-emptive strikes, legitimizing a doctrine that troubled American presidents when it was used by the old Soviet Union in Hungary, Czechoslovakia and elsewhere.

That is a notion that already has been noted in Moscow. Just this month, Putin escalated his rhetoric against Georgia, which he believes is harboring Chechen fighters. Like President Bush, he asked the United Nations for support. Like President Bush, he is threatening what he calls “adequate measures to oppose the terrorist threat.” This is evidence that Putin, who is using common language with Bush as he decides whether to make common cause with Bush, not only sees an opportunity here. He may also see an advantage.

David Shribman is a columnist for The Boston Globe.