Climate Change and the Nation State

A major new book on why the most urgent issue confronting us all needs national solutions

Anatol Lieven’s major new book provides the frame that has long been needed to understand how we should react to climate change. This is a vast challenge, but we have often in the past had to deal with such challenges- the industrial revolution, major wars and mass migration have seen mobilizations of human energy on the greatest scale. Just as previous generations had to face the unwanted and unpalatable, so do we.

In a series of incisive, compelling interventions, Lieven shows how in this emergency our crucial building block is the nation state. The drastic action required both to change our habits and protect ourselves can be carried out not through some vague globalism but through maintaining social cohesion and through our current governmental, fiscal and military structures.

This is a book which will provoke innumerable discussions.

Author Biography

Anatol Lieven is a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and a Fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington DC. He was previously a professor in the War Studies Department of King’s College, London. He worked for twelve years as a British foreign correspondent, reporting from South Asia, the former Soviet Union and eastern Europe for The Times and other publications. His books include Chechnya- Tombstone of Russian Power (1998); America Right or Wrong- An Anatomy of American Nationalism (second edition 2011); Ethical Realism- A Vision for America’s Role in the World (with John Hulsman) (2006) and Pakistan- A Hard Country (2011, published by Penguin).