Anatol Lieven

An Afghan Tragedy: The Pashtuns, The Taliban and The State

https://www.iiss.org/blogs/survival-blog/2021/06/afghanistan-taliban

NATO: A Fretful Porpentine

What’s in a name? NATO’s ‘Steadfast Defender’ is exercise in doublespeak

Cyberwarfare and Cyberhysteria

Article for Responsible statecraft (Quincy Institute) on how the Biden administration should respond to the latest cyber-hack: https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/01/13/a-lesson-in-cyber-spying-vs-cyber-attack/

Biden’s “Summit for Democracy” – a peak of hypocrisy

The Need for Western Caution in Belarus

Shades of 1941: A poorly equipped British squadron sails for the South China Sea

WORLD BRITAIN CHINA DEFENCE US POLITICS PROSPECT (London) Brexit Britain, the high seas and low farce Boris Johnson mulls sending a naval squadron to square off against China. A potential act of breathtaking—and dangerous—stupidity ByAnatol Lieven February 3, 2021 Photo:…

What Alexei Navalny is and is not

RESPONSIBLE STATECRAFT RUSSIA What Putin nemesis Alexei Navalny is, and what he is not FEBRUARY 2, 2021 Written byAnatol Lieven It is very human and natural to admire courage and resolution — these are qualities…

American Liberals Should Return to Social Democracy

Trump deserved to be routed, but his base stayed loyal—largely because of the left’s perverse obsession with what divides, rather than unites, America’s economically downtrodden majority The idea of the “Green New Deal,” adopted by…

The Tasks Before the Biden Administration

The key tasks of the Biden administration are the following: To sustain successful competition with China; To do so without worsening the risk of catastrophic war; To do so without draining national resources that are…

Historical Memory in Russia and the USA

Contribution to a webinar of the Simone Weil Center: Politics, Tragedy, Sovereignty: A Panel Discussion on the Meaning of Today’s Russia. View on YouTube. Panelists:  Marlene Laruelle, James Carden, Anatol Lieven, Boris Mezhuev, Paul Robinson, Richard…

The Ethic of Strategic Empathy

The great realist thinker Hans Morgenthau stated that a fundamental ethical duty of the statesman is the cultivation of empathy: the ability through study to see the world through the eyes of rival state elites.…

Stay Calm About China

Beijing’s ambitions shouldn’t be treated as an existential threat to the United States.  A central distinction in Realist international relations thought is that between vital and secondary national interests. Vital interests are threats to a…

Tocqueville in the 21st Century

The American Creed, and the civic nationalism of which it is the foundation, have been the essential glues that have held a wildly diverse country together. Without the Creed, America risks becoming something like the…

Uniting Nations Against Climate Change

Could a turn inwards provide us with the weapons we need to combat global threats? If the economic crisis resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic does indeed turn out to be the worst in peacetime since…

It’s Time for an America First Green New Deal

The challenge for U.S. and Western politicians in meeting the short-term crisis of the coronavirus and the long-term crisis of climate change is to create, by democratic means, the sort of national consensus that will…

Why global warming needs national solutions

Climate change is global, but we need to get real— and grasp that the most practical way to save the world will often be one country at a time It wasn’t really much of an epiphany. I was…

The pandemic and international competition: How the US can save itself with a ‘Green New Deal’

If there is one good result of the pandemic and the resulting economic crisis, it may be to remind the U.S. establishment that in the end, the international strength and influence of a country depends…

Climate Change and the State: A Case for Environmental Realism

Strong and legitimate states remain central to any efforts to limit climate change and maintain Western democracy. On the day when the death-roll touched thirty, Dr Rieux read an official telegram which the Prefect had…

Dance of the Ghosts: A new cold war with Russia will not serve Western interests

In January 2018, the US Department of Defense declared that ‘great power competition’, and not terrorism, was the greatest threat to the United States and should be the chief focus of the country’s military strategy…

Ukraine: The way out

What is truly strange and terrible about the looming disaster in Ukraine is that all the leading players already know and agree about what the only solution can be, even if they disagree on the…

Afghanistan: Risking a Collapse

Afghan president Hamid Karzai’s refusal to sign a basing  agreement with the United States is putting at risk the  willingness of the US and the West to remain engaged in  Afghanistan at all. What on…

Afghanistan: The Way to Peace

A very strange idea has spread in the Western media concerning Afghanistan: that the US  military is withdrawing from the country next year, and that the present Afghan war has  therefore entered into an “endgame.”…

Military Exceptionalism in Pakistan

Since Pakistan achieved independence in 1947, the country’s military has  governed the country outright three times and exerted a strong political  influence even when not in power. Pakistan’s tradition of military dominance stems above all…

Pakistan’s Surprising Stability

It is worth remembering the legacy of the Raj when we look at Pakistan. In the 1930s, one of my maternal uncles, as a Gurkha officer, spent some time with his regiment in Waziristan dealing…

Georgia and Pakistan: A Tale of Two Client States

As the situations become more complicated in Pakistan and Georgia, both American allies, the U.S. is faced with some tough choices. Every empire-indeed, every state that wishes to project dominant influence beyond its borders-sooner or…

A Difficult Country: Pakistan and the Case for Developmental Realism

There are no textbook solutions for the problems of a country like Pakistan–but a creative approach can go a long way. ON JANUARY 13, a U.S. missile strike on the Pakistani village of Damadola, intended…

The Pressures on Pakistan

ALLAH, THE ARMY, AND AMERICA The survival of Pakistan in its existing form is a vital U.S. security interest, one that trumps all  other American interests in the country. A collapse of Pakistan — into…

Against Russophobia

Ever since the Cold War ended, Western officials and commentators have been telling the Russians how they need to grow out of their Cold War attitudes toward the West and Western institutions, and learn to…