I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Friday, February 25th.

Joining me now is Moises Naim. 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,

and 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 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. So Moises, thank you very much for coming on. Welcome back to WNYC. Hi, Brian. Delighted

to be with you and yes, I remember our conversation about the end of power.

And thanks for having me again.

How does the revenge of power explain what's happening right now in Ukraine?

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, will Putin be, you know, still the czar 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.

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