Anatoli Lieven, Senior Research Fellow at the New American Foundation, was briefly interviewed on Democracy Now! this morning. Lieven has written widely on Russia and foreign policy. In a commentary in the International Herald Tribune, he wrote this in regard to Putin and Dick Cheney,
In many ways, Russian President Vladimir Putin and U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney are rather similar characters. Both are highly intelligent, but both see the world above all through the restrictive prisms of security and national power.
Both are patriots, but like so many leaders with a tendency to see national power and their own power as one and the same thing. Both are capable of great ruthlessness in defending what they see as the vital interests of their countries. Both are publicly committed to democracy and human rights, but both have been responsible for policies that have called this commitment into question.
But to judge by their records, and especially their speeches of the past week, there is also an important difference between them. Putin is a statesman, and Cheney is not.
It’s too bad the DN! interview was so short. I would have liked to hear more of what he had to say about the G8.
