Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.1177/2336825X211010985
S. Fishel
Anatol Lieven brings considerable experience in foreign affairs and journalism to the topic of climate change and responses to the risks and dangers that a changing earth climate demands of humans and human institutions. In his book Climate Change and the Nation State, he argues that focusing on the interests of nations is a way out of inaction on climate change: a strong civic nationalism is necessary and must rely on the sovereign territorial state for meaningful action on climate change. He further argues that the imagined community that makes up a nation can create the spatiotemporal political space that can envision and ‘demand the sacrifices necessary to combat climate change’ (p. xx). I will focus my comments around a framework that takes climate change to be a ‘wicked problem’ and that its roots lie in economic, political, cultural, and social problems that demand attention, justice and reparation to truly be addressed. I also note that the broad term ‘climate change’ serves as a shorthand term that encompasses a complex set of planetary processes that humans now influence through terraforming, the burning of fossil fuels, and overand misuse of shared resources (Woods, 2014). This is a crisis of our own making and, furthermore, some states and regions are more responsible than others for causing, and responding to, the issues of concern in Lieven’s book. Climate change is not only a policy puzzle (a very complex one, but more on that shortly), it also reveals a crisis at the root of world order and our treatment of one another, nonhuman animals, and the natural world and its resources. While it is tempting to respond to the urgency of the climate crisis using the tools already present, this moment affords humans an opportunity to interrogate the ways in which we arrived at this crisis. To repeat a quote attributed to Albert Einstein ‘We cannot solve our problems with the same thinking we used to create them’. We must be very mindful in our solutions that we do not unthinkingly slip in the poisons that made us sick to begin with. Pragmatically, of course, with the urgency of the problems we face, we cannot reinvent all institutions from the ground up, but we do need to be cautious, thoughtful, and aware of history. This includes listening to and respecting the experiences of those who have suffered through colonialization, resource extraction, and the postand endocolonial vestiges of the very nation states to which Lieven turns to as a solution to climate change response (Christ, 2013; Yusoff,
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Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.1177/2336825X211010054
J. Burgess
Security happens in the future. Threats to our security concern the potential of a future event, of possibility and uncertainty. Fear, omnipresent in popular culture is thereby non-uniform. Like time itself, it intensifies and softens, accelerates and slows, and disrupts and destabilises as a function of many variables. This article re-interprets the phenomenon of insecurity by reading it together with Heidegger’s analytic of time as a function of our proximity to being as fundamental ontological question, one which unfolds in the form of a threatening future.
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Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.1177/2336825x211013312
A. Lieven
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
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Pub Date : 2021-06-01DOI: 10.1177/2336825X211010667
Liridona Veliu
Prevailing studies on silence and democracy, in spite of silence’s inherently ambiguous nature, focus on subscribing meaning(s) to silence. Such attempts of turning silence into speech, point to an adversary relationship between silence and democratic theory. First, this article conducts an onto-epistemological critique of democratic theory’s treatment of silence (as meaning). Second, it suggests that there are self-reflective analytical benefits for scholars of democratic theory should they broaden up their gaze from silence as meaning toward silence-as-doing. This article argues that this can be done by shifting the epistemological focus from interpreting possible meanings behind the nonvoters’ silence into analyzing the context and/of interpretations of silence as ambiguous. Third, to illustrate this, the article uses the 2018 name referendum in North Macedonia which shows how the speech-centered approach of democratic theory is utilized to serve political goals rather than reaching the democratic ideal of “everyone having a vo-ice/te.”
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Pub Date : 2021-04-15DOI: 10.1177/2336825X211009107
Mats Braun
In several respects it is easy to agree with Anatol Lieven. To deal with the issue of climate change we need governance with a high level of legitimacy and trust, and the strategy needs to be long term for the present generation to accept sacrifices for the benefit of future generations. Yet is nationalism the political doctrine that could help the world to deliver on the need to decrease greenhouse gas emissions? Is nationalism, an ideology of the 19th century, the correct answer to the biggest challenge of the 21st century? First, I do not think many writers on nationalism dispute the positive aspects of nationalism. At least, if we look at authors in the modernist tradition, authors like Miroslav Hroch (1993) and Benedict Anderson (1983) and others do not dispute the important role of nationalism for the development of democracy and welfare states. In other contexts, authors working in a postcolonial tradition have suggested the crucial role of nationalism for emancipation and state building (see, e.g. Herr, 2003). Thus, a large part of the argumentation provided by Lieven on nationalism opens doors that already are wide open. Yet, the book is relevant. Lieven identifies and provides a correct problem description. The question of climate change responses is all about how we can find a narrative that allows us to act and make people feel included in the decision-making. This is in particular the case if we agree that to deal with climate change life style changes are necessary that go well beyond ideas of ecological modernization that would suggest that we could mitigate climate change efficiently through technological innovations and without reforms costly also in the long term. Yet, to argue that nationalism is the doctrine suitable for the task is a bold claim that the book provides little evidence of. I see at least three major objections. First, if we go beyond the US context and look for instance at Europe, as I will do in this intervention, the nation states can hardly
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Pub Date : 2021-04-13DOI: 10.1177/2336825X211009093
R. Hallam
One of the best books on the climate crisis over the past 10 years, maybe the best book, is Anatol Lieven’s Climate Change and the Nation State. This is not because it is particularly original in its basic arguments about the nature of the political world. It presents a solidly realist argument with its many strengths and weaknesses. It is a great book because Lieven has the courage to expose the appalling inability of the various political realist communities to grasp the seriousness of the exponentially increasing threat to the very existence of organised human life. The failure of modern conservatives to deal effectively with the terror that is coming down the road must be the most powerful case study of the inability of humans to act in accordance with their beliefs and self-interest. Lieven accepts his faith in Enlightenment values is shaken by this failure. I would argue such faith is shattered on the floor. We are heading into the greatest period of social breakdown in world history and conservatives are betraying in their most basic value – the hint is in the name. They stand by while the consequence of state inaction is the tearing apart of the very fabric our societies. Is it eye watering stupidity, is it entrancement by an infinite evil, or it is just ‘one bloody thing after another’ writ large – writ on an infinite scale? People will debate this greatest of all betrayals for centuries to come, on the questionable assumption future societies will still value debate. As an award winning researcher in political mobilisation at King’s College I initiated the Extinction Rebellion movement with a presentation called ‘Pivoting to the real issue’ (note the word ‘real’) in January 2018. I produced the core strategic framework of mass civil disobedience for the movement which went on to become the number one global influencer on the climate in 2019, and spread to 70 odd countries, inspiring thousands to get arrested. It was a desperate attempt to persuade the elites of their last change to turn the world back from triggering the numerous geo physical and biological feedbacks which threaten to decimate the habitats upon which our existence depends. It failed. And the main reason for this failure was the unwillingness of the liberal and conservative political class to look beyond the pathetic distractions of their culture wars to see that preventing climate breakdown is the most serious political imperative of all time.
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Pub Date : 2021-04-13DOI: 10.1177/2336825X211009106
D. Bursać, Dušan Vučićević
The 2020 elections in Serbia were held on 21st of June, as the first elections in Europe since the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic. The pre-electoral period was marked by the announcement of boycott from opposition, followed by a number of attempts of ruling party to mitigate the potential negative effects. The decision of opposition to restrain from participation came as a response to the long-term accusations of heavily biased electoral and media conditions, which culminated in EU-mediated (but largely unsuccessful) roundtable talks in 2019. On a larger scale, the administration headed by the President Aleksandar Vučić is becoming increasingly authoritarian, with several indices now classifying Serbia as a hybrid regime. As expected, the elections brought a convincing victory to Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party, which won 188 out of 250 seats. Despite the overwhelming triumph, government was formed more than four months later. This paper is contributing to the literature on actors’ strategies in hybrid regimes. Although only short-term effects of the boycott could be assessed, the 2020 elections in Serbia demonstrate that legitimacy of the regime cannot be endangered if the opposition is not supported by international actors, and moreover, that the election results have only strengthened the regime.
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Pub Date : 2021-04-13DOI: 10.1177/2336825X211009097
Miriam Matejová
I have a soft spot for realism. While I find the realist worldview at times pessimistic and often incomplete, the logic and mechanics of power, prudence, and self-help have frequently aligned with my Central European roots. Educated in Canada, I have studied both environmental and security issues separately—the former due to my growing awareness of the risks that environmental degradation poses to human societies and the latter mostly due to the lure of realist explanations of the world. Anatol Lieven’s book immediately appealed to my academic split personality. In Climate Change and the Nation State: The Case for Nationalism in a Warming World, Lieven makes a convincing case that climate change is the greatest security threat to the long-term interests of the world’s Great Powers. Crises and especially climate-exacerbated migration will make it difficult for states to achieve political consensus and act on climate change. Lieven paints a scary future, whether we get there gradually or abruptly. It is a world of not only devastating impacts from climate change (e.g., droughts, sudden disasters) but also a world where growing social and political disruptions outgrow states’ security forces and draw in militaries for domestic control (Lieven, 2020: 9). Meaningful action will require a push against contemporary culture, consumerism, and our increasingly shorter attention spans—and according to Lieven, that push can only come from a place of fear that something threatens one’s nation. A long-sighted, civic (as opposed to ethnic) nationalism can generate such fear (Lieven, 2020: 84). Lieven (2020: 76) argues that nationalism is the one force that overcomes the problem of sacrifice by current generations for future generations, the problem that must be solved in order to address climate change effectively. Nationalism legitimizes that sacrifice and makes sense of it. Calling for a political compromise and centrist attitude, Lieven proposes two specific steps: state militaries must
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Pub Date : 2021-03-09DOI: 10.1177/2336825X21995702
A. Hoyle, Helma van den Berg, B. Doosje, Martijn Kitzen
Hostile political actors frequently engage in malign information influence, projecting antagonistic strategic narratives in targeted societies to manipulate the information environment and distort the perceptions of the citizens. Research examining malign information influence is growing, but more attention could be given to its psychological effects. Information operations are commonly assumed to affect the levels of trust and the emotional experiences of citizens who are targeted by them, but these notions are currently supported by limited evidence. We propose that experimental psychological research is a promising avenue to more clearly demonstrate these effects and individual differences of the target audience that may exacerbate these effects. This article discusses the knowledge gap regarding the psychological effects of malign information influence and suggests relevant psychological research that can be built upon when devising experimental studies that might address it. Finally, the article outlines key benefits that insights gleaned from this experimental research would offer to those seeking to counter malign information influence.
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