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An interview with Anatol Lieven [1]

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Date: 2023-05-26

Here on the Daily Kos, we tend to get a lot of pro-Ukraine stories, most assuming the eventual complete victory of Ukraine, taking back all of the land that was stolen by Russia during the last ten years of so. Some of the people posting here are already planning for regime change in Russia, hopefully with a pro-western pro-freedom government. Or if not a pro-western government, perhaps a complete dissolution of the Russian Empire.

Personally, I’d be happy if Ukraine was able to take back their land, with bonus points if Georgia was also able to take back their land. Beyond that, I’m not sure what is feasible.

The problem is that in many ways, Daily Kos has become a bubble. Yes, we get the occasional tankie. But they’re usually so far away from reality that it’s very easy to completely discount their views.

And so I found this interview on Battleground: Ukraine earlier this week to be interesting. No, this isn’t an interview with some pro-Putin flunky. I think the hosts of Battleground: Ukraine have looked for a pro-Putin person to interview, but they didn’t find any that seems to be able to shed any light.

But this interview with Anatol Lieven is different. He starts off with the position that Russia is horribly in the wrong. But he’s not at all convinced that Ukraine can achieve complete victory. And he’s somewhat worried about the repercussions of taking back Crimea.

A while ago, on a completely different platform, I was asked about whether something was thought provoking. Thinking about the term thought provoking, I realized that for something to be thought provoking, it needed to challenge your beliefs. It needed to be reasoned well enough that you were forced to think about the arguments. It didn’t mean that you had to agree with it. (In fact, if you agreed with the argument before you read it, it probably wasn’t at all thought provoking.)

This interview is thought provoking. It makes me think about whether my desired goals in Ukraine are realistic or desirable. Not that I’ve changed my mind about my goals in Ukraine. It also brought a little focus onto the question of what Ukraine will be like after the (presumed) victory over Russia. What kind of state will it be? Are the current war time restrictions on free speech and other civil liberties temporary, or will Ukraine end up permanently in Freedom House’s Semi-Free category? (It seems unlikely that it will fall back to Russian level authoritarianism, but is that a possibility?)

All in all, I’d recommend this episode of the podcast; it will make you think. (I’d recommend the podcast in general just because it does a decent job of covering the war. And the other drivers really aren’t happy with me if I’m reading the latest on DK while driving. But that’s a different issue.)

shows.acast.com/...

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/5/26/2171537/-An-interview-with-Anatol-Lieven

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