Response from Anatol Lieven

Abstract

I must thank the authors for their most interesting responses to my book, and their contributions to the debate on climate change – which, as we all agree, is by far the greatest threat now facing humanity. Hans Morgenthau stated that the main guiding intellectual principle of Realism is ‘interest defined in terms of power’. As a Realist, I would say that the overriding long term vital interest of all major states is the need to limit climate change; and the overriding need is to mobilize the power necessary to achieve this. I regard nationalism as a potentially useful tool in this regard, though by no means the only one. Pace Dr Braun, I do not regard it as a ‘doctrine’. As a follower of Edmund Burke, one thing I try very hard not to be is doctrinaire. If anthropogenic climate change is indeed a real and deadly threat – as all the panelists seem to agree that it is – then two points follow. The first is that we cannot afford to be too scrupulous about the tactics we use in response. History has not on the whole been kind to those who, faced with an obvious and overwhelming threat, chose instead to let rigid political ideologies stand in the way of the measures and alliances needed to defeat it. One thinks of those socialists in the 1920s and 30s who, faced with the rise of Fascism, rigidly refused to form alliances with ‘bourgeois’ liberal parties, and shelve their ideological Marxist demands for total nationalization of property, state atheism and so on. Like Dr Matejova, I too come from an East European background (albeit at one remove, on my father’s side), and perhaps in both our cases our Realism owes something to an awareness of the appalling possibilities latent even in highly developed societies, when these come under too great a combination of strains. My fear is that if we cannot limit climate change, then combined with migration (in part driven by climate change) and AI it will indeed produce dreadful strains on our societies and democracies in the decades to come, leading to dreadful political outcomes. Trump has been bad. What may come in future could be infinitely worse. The other point is that of time. Either we accept the overwhelming scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change or we don’t. If we don’t, then why are we having this conversation? If we do, then we must also accept the consensus that we need to take action urgently if disaster is to be avoided. As Dr Braun writes, the IPCC goal of keeping the rise in temperatures below