One could make a case for Putin winning the cold war by installing a puppet dictator in the USA. I mean he said he would, and he did. It's pretty impressive, really. Not the stratagem in itself, it's dumb as fuck, but he knew the Americans would be even dumber.

I don't necessarily disagree - hence my adding "deserved or not", if you re-read what I wrote.
But regardless of what you think, it had that reputation.

And it doesn't no more.

Took credit for winning world wars

america is and always has been shit stain on the history of the world.

C'mon man, give the US some credit. They helped my home country, China, a lot during the defence against Japanese Imperialism, forced the impeialists to surrender.

At least they tried to hide it, now they don't.

As for the cold war, if you consider the conflict USA-USSR they clearly won: Russia was, at least at some point, equally powerful to the USA technologically and militarly, what one did first, the other caught up pretty quickly, then the Soviet Government collapsed for various reasons, and they couldn't catch up, now the USA is arguably the most technologically advanced country in the world, in many aspects.

China is catching up, but they are in no way equally capable.