Put 20 world leaders in the same city and the one thing you can guarantee is warship envy.

At this week’s G20 summit in Brisbane, Australia’s prime minister, Tony Abbott promised to “shirt-front” Vladimir Putin over the shooting down of the Malaysia Airlines plane over Ukraine. Not to be outdone, David Cameron has trash-talked the Russian premier for parking the Russian navy off the Queensland coast. Barack Obama has said nothing because he doesn’t need to. Generally speaking, the more extravagant the warship waving, the smaller the warship, and the US president is quite comfortable with his size.

The exception to the rule is Putin, who never fails to confuse his military hardware with his own diminished physical stature and can be relied on to play out his insecurities in public. Hence his retaliation with promises that he wasn’t bothered about sanctions and that falling oil prices would wreck the German economy.

The warship waving, though, is just that. Waving. What’s more, it’s waving for a home audience. Abbott and Cameron aren’t threatening Putin – both are pragmatic enough to understand that their natural place in the G20 pecking order is somewhere nearer the bottom than the top; they are making a display of showing how tough they are to win ratings in their own countries. Come the end of the summit, both will be able to leave with some pride intact.

Behind closed doors, it will be a rather different story. The conversations will be rather more measured: diffident even. “Excuse me, Mr Putin, sir. About the Ukraine? We know you’ve got a lot of tricky domestic situations going on at the moment but we’d quite like it if you eased up on Ukraine a bit? Otherwise some more oligarchs are going to have to miss out on their Christmas shopping in Bond Street?”

And Putin will look down from the chair the Australians deliberately raised, smile sweetly, and say he will look into it. Hopefully.