Valdai Club

Sergey Lavrov

Alexander Lukin

Jin Ling

Sergei Lavrenov

Artyom Lukin

John Laughland

Anastasia Likhacheva

Ghafoor A. Liwal

Alla Levchenko

Anatol Lieven

United Kingdom

Senior Research Fellow, Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

Anatol Lieven is a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington DC. His main research focus at present is the development and nature of nationalism in the contemporary world. His next book will be a debate on the question of migration to Europe. His most recent books are Pakistan: A Hard Country (2011); America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism (second edition 2012); and Ethical Realism: A Vision for America’s Role in the World (with John Hulsman, 2007).

He has written
extensively for the media on issues of contemporary international politics. He
worked as a British journalist in South Asia
and the former Soviet Union (1985–1998). He worked at think tanks in Washington DC (2000–2007),
and as a professor in the War Studies Department of King’s College London (2007–2014).

Materials

Afghanistan and Its Region After the US Withdrawal

It is above all through money and economic development that will give regional powers their best chance of influencing Taliban behaviour and the future of Afghanistan, writes Valdai Club expert Anatol Lieven. If with regional help Afghanistan is able to develop economically, this will be the best guarantee of at least a limited space for modern culture and education, for without this the Taliban would lack the managers and skilled labour necessary to conduct such development.

Climate Change and State Interest

The future of negotiation and action on limiting climate change seems likely to be characterised by Realist considerations of state interest and power, but with new understandings of state interest (in the West, but also to a lesser extent elsewhere) shaped by international communities of moral pressure. Hopefully, this will lead to a new form of enlightened self-interest in time to save us all from disaster, Valdai Club expert Anatol Lieven writes.

The Unholy Mess of US Middle Eastern Strategy

It is hard to exaggerate how utterly the USA has failed in the Middle East in the thirty years since the end of the Cold War. In the 1990s, US hegemony in the region was challenged by no outside great power competitor at all, and all the calculations which had underpinned Cold War strategies in the region had vanished.

Pakistan and India after Pulwama

Internationally, the Pakistani government of Imran Khan is feeling rather cheerful at the moment. Pakistan emerged in surprisingly good shape from the crisis with India that followed the attack by the Pakistan-based militant group Jaish-e-Mohamed on Indian troops at Pulwama in Kashmir.

The French Fifth Republic: Sinking Fast, with No Lifeboat in Sight

The crisis of France is therefore part of a wider crisis of the inability of West European elites to change and reform. Thus even as in Italy the traditional party order has collapsed altogether, the German Christian Democrats, oblivious it seems to the precipitous drop in their vote in recent years, have chosen as a successor to Angela Merkel someone who might as well be her clone. Perhaps the tragicomic spectacle of the Brexit shambles in Britain will drive European voters back towards faith in the European Union and the European liberal project. But I wouldn’t bet on that.

New Cold War: NATO Washes the Car

Why the current Western hysteria? Of course, as with all national hostilities, this builds to some extent on older foundations: the Cold War, around which western security institutions and western ideological propaganda were organised for two generations, and which created NATO itself; and the much older national hatred for Russia (sometimes of course justified) on the part of Poles, Balts, Jews and some Ukrainians.

Trump Administration Plans for Regime Change in Iran: Mad, Bad, and an Opportunity for Russia-European Reconciliation

It is increasingly clear that for powerful elements of the Trump administration backed by the Israel lobby, the demand for a renegotiation of the Iran nuclear deal is only a thin cover for a strategy of regime change in Iran. This has been explicitly stated by some of them. Mike Pompeo’s twelve demands to Iran also cannot be seen in any other light, since several of which require in effect an abandonment of real Iranian sovereignty and which are certainly completely unacceptable even as a basis for talks.

Peace in Afghanistan: The Duty of Afghanistan’s Region

In the short term, the war in Afghanistan will be chiefly not a military struggle but a test of American political stamina and of the capacity of the Afghan elites to maintain a minimally consensual state in Kabul. In the long term, it will be chiefly a test of the regional great powers, and their capacity to reach agreement among themselves on Afghanistan’s future.

Afghanistan Disaster Over the Years

In Afghanistan, the USA is now committed to a holding operation with no easily imaginable end in sight, either through peace or victory. The promises of the Trump administration and the Pentagon that this year will mark a turning point due to a small reinforcement of 4,000 men to help the Afghan National Army can be dismissed without serious consideration. US presidents and generals have made the same promise every year for the past decade and more.

The Era of American Stasis

The ancient Greeks coined the political term Stasis, implying a combination of an insoluble stand-off between opposing forces, political crisis, and state paralysis. We are now deep in the era of American stasis, the eventual outcome of which cannot be foreseen.

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Video

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