Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC, joining me now is Moisés Naím. He's the author of a new book called The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century. Very interesting because some of you may know he wrote a book called The End of Power a few years ago about the decentralization of power around the world. I think now he's going to say he was wrong. He's a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He's a former editor of Foreign Policy Magazine.

He's a former executive director of the World Bank and he's a former Venezuelan minister of trade and industry there in the Venezuelan government. Obviously this relates to what's going on in Russia and Ukraine right now. It also relates to things going on in the United States right now. It's a sheer coincidence that he's on with us on the second day of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, because this book was long scheduled to be released today and he's long been on our board as a guest for exactly this moment. Moisés, thank you very much for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC.

Moisés Naím: Hi, Brian. Delighted to be with you and yes, I remember our conversation about The End of Power and thanks for having me again.

Brian Lehrer: What happened if power was decentralizing and now it's recentralizing?

Moisés Naím: Well, no both things are happening at the same time. The End of Power that we discussed nine years ago in this show was my book showing and the many forces that were fragmenting and dispersing power. Power became easier to acquire, harder to use, easier to lose. In that book I also mentioned that that did not mean that they were not important fundamental pockets of concentrated power around the world. From golden Goldman Sachs to Facebook and Google, to the Pentagon, to the Chinese communist party, to the Vatican.

You cannot deny the existence of important power holders, but those coexistence, those forces that fragmented power coexist with the forces that concentrate power, because what happened in this nine years is that those that saw power being challenged by newcomers, micro powers, new players that are using a different script were not going to take it standing just sitting down and watching how they lost their power, they reacted and that reaction is a subject of the book, The Revenge of Power.

Brian Lehrer: I guess they could be happening at the same time and we'll get to Ukraine in a minute. I'm not sure Putin is an example of this, but in the United States a certain decentralization of power could lead to a recentralization in terms of authoritarianism in the worst case scenario, because power in terms of traditional institutions are losing respect around the country in all kinds of political corners. You cite three Ps, populism, polarization, and post-truth as the pillar of what's happening right now in The Revenge of Power.

It's so interesting because populism, which would seem to indicate popular opinion outside of the halls of power, connects to post-truth. Certainly we saw it among some of the supporters of Donald Trump and that could lead to authoritarianism.

Moisés Naím: Yes, that's a very good summary. The story of the three Ps is that they are practices that have always existed and very often mistakenly misinterpreted. Populism, for example, is often confused with an ideology, but it's not that, it's just a bag of tricks and strategies and behaviors that divide. The old divide and conquer, which is a very, very old maxim in politics is there, except that it has been exacerbated and repowered and reengineered and re-casted and relaunched in very different ways.

You have very different ideology, very different people being populist. Donald Trump and Hugo Chavez, for example, are quite amazing in terms of how different they are and their background and their stories, and yet how identical almost are their practices and their populism. Then that is connected to polarization, the societal division and fragmented society that are polarized that cannot even tolerate the existence of competitors that have a different point of view.

All of that as you said is fed by post-truth and that includes, but not only the social media and how lying and propaganda, manipulation of data, of information, of reality is part of the tool kit of these autocrats. The three Ps are essentially ways in which in the new world that we're living, autocrats that look and want to be seen as Democrats and have elections all the time. In fact, autocrats masquerading as Democrats. In that book I have 98 references to Putin's behavior aligned to the three Ps.

Brian Lehrer: How does The Revenge of Power explain what's happening right now in Ukraine?

Moisés Naím: Well, we don't know what's happening now. We know what's happening now in Ukraine, but we need to think about this five years from now. In five years we putting the still desire and the powerful person, would he be much weakened by everything that's going on? We don't know yet. We don't know if the sanctions are going to be as severe as they have been announced. We don't know what are the consequences. We don't know if the coalition that is now against Russia will hold.

Five years from now, again you can see Putin as an example of power that has become more fluid and much more difficult to use, but also very ephemeral, or you can see him concentrating power along the lines of the three Ps, we don't know yet. It's too soon to be calling these kinds of things.

Brian Lehrer: Well, you detail the autocratic leaders who try to maintain the facade of democracy in their countries and Vladimir Putin being one of them. What is the point? Does anyone out there believe Russia is a democracy under Vladimir Putin?

Moisés Naím: All the world because you are touching on a point that is quite interesting. You know that there is a democratic recession in the last 10 since I wrote the book and published it in 2003, '13, sorry. There has been a democratic recession. The number for countries that became non-democracy increased, then the percentage of the world population that lived in non-democracy also increased. Democracy is having a retraction, but at the same time, Brian, there is booming elections.

There elections everyday everywhere about everything. There is prime minister and president then governors and Congress and state and local officials. How do you reconcile the fact that the democracy is shrinking and elections are booming? Well, because many of these elections are sham elections. They are just strict and they are just theater. Why, why do these autocrats have to go through the contortions and the simulation that they are Democrats holding election?

Well, because they are weak in many ways, and they need the facade of legitimacy. Legitimacy is very important, is what the citizens bestow in a leader and give him or her the right to govern them. Well, that is in short supply in today's world, given how difficult is to govern and how difficult is to have a good governmental performance.

Brian Lehrer: Why do you think Putin would invade Ukraine, and what do you think might come of it? An insurgency, maybe a rejection in Russian public opinion, which even though it's not really a democracy at a certain point, if the people are against you, even an autocrat might have to respond with a change in policy, or might he even continue into other countries, including NATO ones? What do you think Putin's about in this situation?

Moisés Naím: I think, well, it's very hard. I don't want to speculate what is in his mind. I can't speculate what's happening in his country. His country is essentially a Petrostate, that exports oil, gas and guns, the three main industries are that. The hydrocarbon energy industry and the weapons systems and the weapons sales around the world. What happens as a result of that, there is a delinking of Russia with Europe and all the clients of their natural gas and their oil. Where are the funds to sustain the Russian system are going to come from? Who is going to pay the price in terms of the distribution of that? We know about the highly unequal distribution of wealth and income in Russia and the concentration of economic power in a few oligarchs. It may be that what propelled Putin to do this is to create an antidote to the possibility to the threat that Ukraine becomes a model for his citizens in Russia. He needed to have a weakened failed state kind of thing full of refugees and displaced people in Ukraine to remind the Russians that that can happen to them, too.

Brian Lehrer: For you as a former executive director of the World Bank and trade minister of the nation of Venezuela, I'm curious what you think about the potential impact of sanctions. Because that seems to be the Western response to the invasion of Ukraine, amping up sanctions step by step as Putin amps up how far he's going into the country. Let me play a clip of President Biden yesterday announcing the sanctions.

President Biden: Today I'm authorizing additional strong sanctions and new limitations on what can be exported to Russia. This is going to impose severe costs on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time. We have purposely designed these sanctions to maximize a long-term impact on Russia and to minimize the impact on the United States and our allies.

Brian Lehrer: Do you have an economic take on whether that's possible to maximize the impact on Russia and minimize the impact on the US and its allies?

Moisés Naím: Maximize and minimize are extreme words, I would not use them. I can use and I can accept that sanctions will hurt the Russian economy, and will have dire consequences for the Russian populations. I am worried about first how really severe are these-- Until now we have seen announcements. Some of these announcements are very specific and the names and are quite concrete but they say there's more coming. There is a long list of possible of the sanctions that we know exists, that we know have been considered that have not been announced.

The question about sanctions, first is that it's very easy to derive them and say that they will work and all that but remember, the alternative to sanctions is do nothing or war. Between do nothing, war, and sanctions when sanctions without the defects that we know they have, I rather go with sanctions than with war or do nothing. The big challenge with sanctions is that in order for them to really work, it need to be multilateral. That means that many countries have to impose them and hold to them. How strong is the alliance and the consensus on the sanctions is the question and is a very important question because we can discover that in a few months that only the United States and a few others are holding the bag for the sanctions while others in Europe especially are bypassing them or ignoring them, or reneging their link with the sanctions.

Brian Lehrer: On that point, there seems to be some dissension between the United States and Europe on how far to go with sanctions. For example, on whether to cut the Russian banks' access to what's known as Swift, which most Americans have never heard of The Economist describes it as a messaging network used by 11,000 banks in 200 countries to make cross-border payments. It says some Western governments favor pressing the cooperatively-owned Swift into cutting Russia off, but others do not. Here's President Biden yesterday answering a reporter's question on why they aren't putting that particular kind of pressure, cutting Russia off from Swift on Vladimir Putin.

President Biden: The sanctions that we have proposed on all their banks have equal consequences, maybe more consequences than Swift, number one. Number two, it is always an option, but right now, that's not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take.

Brian Lehrer: I thought that answer was really revealing yesterday because he didn't say that's not the position that he wishes to take. He said that's not the position that the rest of Europe wants to take. I'm curious again with your background in global economics, as well as this book you've written on The Revenge of Power: The Rise of Authoritarianism in Our Time, how do you see the two intersecting?

Moisés Naím: We know that Swift is a very powerful instrument. Disconnecting, severing the ties of the Russian financial systems to the rest of the world finance through Swift is a very powerful measure, that may be a boomerang. It may come back to hurt the global financial system. President Biden said that they have other instruments that may be as powerful and better targeted than Swift.

That remains to be seen but what I want to call our attention is that in all of these things, we are seeing the monolith chasing and clashing against the crowd. The Monolith is Putin who presides over learning the structure of vertical hierarchies that he controls in many significant ways, clashing with a crowd, with a swarm of governments, democracies, organizations, multilaterals. Democracy is always messy, is always slow, is always disappointing in many ways but that is what we see that we have the swarm, the crowd of democratic crowds of institutions, nation-states, and organizations dealing with a monolith. That asymmetry explains a lot of what we're seeing today.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take some phone calls for Moisés Naím author of The Revenge of Power: How Autocrats Are Reinventing Politics for the 21st Century. At 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. He's also a scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, former editor of Foreign Policy magazine. He was Venezuela's Minister of Trade, and he was executive director of the World Bank in the 1990s. Let's take a phone call. Steve in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Steve.

Steve: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: Hi, there, you're on the air.

Steve: Hi. Okay, so my question for you, Brian, and the guest, and everybody listening, has Vladimir Putin graduated from authoritarian dictator to a war criminal? Has he committed crimes against humanity? I think he has. If he has, if he is deemed as such, can he be held accountable at that level of despicable?

Brian Lehrer: Yes, or that level of accountability, really. Do you have a sense of where the line is between authoritarian, despot and war criminal? Anything you see in Ukraine that could actually trigger a war crimes investigation by the United Nations or the World Court?

Moisés Naím: The legal infrastructure and the legal setting institution of setting to declare somebody guilty of war crimes is slow, unpredictable, and very often ignored by those that are accused and found guilty. On the other hand, we have seen some surprising good outcomes in which people, the leaders and bad actors that are guilty of crimes against humanity have been brought to trial but those are small countries and there is always the asymmetry of behavior in the international system. At this point, one can wish that, of course, but I don't see that becoming a priority at this point.

Brian Lehrer: Is there an autocrats or authoritarian governments network lending him support that you can see? I'm curious about China, especially whether this is complicated or not for China, and where China fits into your book?

Moisés Naím: China figures quite significantly in the book because it is an important driver of a lot of these things, and yes, there is an international self-help coalition or mutually supporting system rather of countries. we have seen some China, for example, has been tacitly supporting. We have not seen a annunciation by the Chinese government or Xi Jinping much less of this war, no denunciations against Putin and his lies and his behavior, but we also seen others that are enthusiastically supporting Putin and his deeds around the world.

Brian Lehrer: I also wonder if you have a take on India and this Biden, couldn't say to a reporter's question yesterday what camp India is in, and you remind us in the book that authoritarianism is on a continuum that on one extreme is totalitarianism, on the other and are democratically elected leaders with authoritarian proclivities. i wonder if that latter group for you includes Modi in India and how you see India's connection to the invasion of Ukraine and if it matters?

Moisés Naím: Well, there is no doubt that president Modi has behaved in perfect alignment with the three P's, he's a populist, and he has been used the divide and conquer division in which he represents the noble people that has been abused by a bad elite. He has taken that to limits. He has used polarization and he polarizes issues all the time and therefore concentrates power in complex, interesting and effective ways. He uses the post-truth, the three Ps, the third of the three P's is post-truth in which he embellishes, distorts, changes and sometimes lies.

There is no doubt that that India under him belongs to the list of the three P autocrats that I described in The Revenge of Power. if that's the case, what we are seeing is an autocrat being very careful and keeping equal distancing from both the United States. India needs a relationship with the United States, but India also wants to be close to Russia for a variety of reasons. So that's why we haven't seen a stronger statement on the part of president Modi or the Indian government.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think Trump's inclination toward authoritarianism, which you write about not to mention his inclination toward Putin, make the response to this any more complicated domestically or internationally, even though Trump is out of power?

Moisés Naím: Yes, absolutely because he casts doubts. He presents populists, one of the hallmark of populists is not only the divide and conquer, but also to offer a promised land where the desires of the people are met in very rich ways. That end up not being true and I don't have any doubt that if Trump was in the White House today, the US reactions towards his grabbing of Ukraine would have been very different. It may even be that the situation in Ukraine is prolonged and becomes a forever occupation. If Trump runs for election in the United States and wins, we will see all so a very different posture on the part of the United States towards Russians grabbing, invading Ukraine.

Brian Lehrer: One more call, Byron in Manhattan, you're on WNYC with Moisés Naím.

Byron: Hey, how are you? I just wanted to make a quick comment. You asked a question with respect to Swift and you replayed president Biden's comments.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. That more extreme version of economic sanctions than they're taking. Go ahead.

Byron: Well, first of all, there is absolutely no question that the key way of disconnecting Russia from the global economy is to disconnect them from Swift. What Biden was trying to say is that if he does that, all the money owed to Russia, owed by Russian companies to all these European businesses in Germany, in Italy and across Europe, and even through American companies, those payments would then be cut off, they would not be made and that's the panic. If they cut Russia off, all the money owed to Western banks, Western companies, several of whom have operations in Russia, all the money owed to them would not be repaid because the excuse would be, they can't do it because they've cut us off from Swift.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. That I guess goes to a final question that we can discuss Moisés, and that is the integration economically between authoritarian countries, like you would consider Russia and democracies. This is such a big conversation, topic of conversation with respect to European integration with Russia's energy market in particular. That has left Europe soft on the human rights questions when it comes to Putin, because they don't want to get their energy supplies cut off or see price go up so much. Byron describes the banking aspect of this that would leave some in Europe vulnerable. Is there a way out of that?

Moisés Naím: Well, depends on the definition of that. If that is democracy and European democracy is dealing with the difficult balancing act of imposing sanctions, but making sure that they don't hurt their own populations and businesses and economy in significant ways, that is a very important conversation that I'm sure it has been taking place in the corridors of power in Europe and the United States and elsewhere for a while. Again here, I suggest that instead of looking at the immediate consequences and that Brian mentioned one that is quite important and relevant, which is the debt held by European and international banks of Russian debt.

That is very important, but it's just one of many. The question is five years from now. If the world has developed and has cut links with Russia, what will Russia export? For example, as a result of that, there are alternative ways of providing for energy, Europe and Germany and Italy and the rest of Europe. That for example, can spark a revision and a review, and a re relaunching of the idea of having nuclear power. Remember Germany had a lot of nuclear power and Angela Merkel decided that she would discontinue that, but now perhaps people are going to think twice, perhaps now nuclear power has acquired a new attractiveness.

If that happens, well, the geopolitics, not only with Russia, but all so with the Gulf states and the Middle East changes drastically. For Russia, the essence, I repeat this is a country that only exports, mostly exports oil and gas and weapons and it's a very large country with a large population. How do you provide for prosperity for this population without integrating to the world? That is the question that will define how history will judge Putin's decisions.

Brian Lehrer: Moisés Naím, author now of The Revenge of Power: The Rise of Authoritarianism in the 21st Century. Thank you so much for joining us today.

Moisés Naím: Thank you Brian. Always a pleasure.

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