Making a Realist Case for Climate Change

Title: Climate Change and the Nation State
Author: Anatol Lieven
Genre: Political Science
Publisher: Penguin Group
Release Date: 06/05/2021

‘This is one of those rare books that have something really important to say. Anatol Lieven is telling his fellow realists that at this moment the world’s great powers are far more threatened by climate change than they are by each other’ Ivan Krastev, author of The Light That Failed In the past two centuries we have experienced wave after wave of overwhelming change. Entire continents have been resettled; there are billions more of us; the jobs done by countless people would be unrecognizable to their predecessors; scientific change has transformed us all in confusing, terrible and miraculous ways. Anatol Lieven’s major new book provides the frame that has long been needed to understand how we should react to climate change.

Coming from applied science, learning and trying to understand International Relations is hard. We came across a lot of ‘It Depends’, depending on what point of view (POV) you’re looking from or into it.

Making a realist case, as the book titled Climate Change and the Nation State: The Realist Case meaning that advocating or arguing for stronger climate actions taken by each country. However, as we read through the first chapter, some of the arguments will fall under ‘It Depends’ category.

A few countries or region may benefitted from a warmer climate for their agriculture and trade/transport, but most of the countries will be likely hit by severe natural disasters (nauzubillah) within our lifetime.

The introduction and the first chapter try to ‘localize’ the impact of climate change within the domain of a country. For instance, the potential infrastructure damages. This justification is straightforward and can be understood by the general readers.

However, I found that his arguments on mass migration, nationalism and climate change is quite confusing and to certain extent, American-centric. Along the line of these arguments, there will be little POVs of China, Russia or India on the topic he elaborated.

I do agree with his observations that actually each political players in Westen countries are divided on the topic of climate change. Both sides of the Westerns politics tends to ignore or brush off the need for investments in nuclear and renewable energy to meet the Paris agreement commitment. To deal with that, he advocated ‘national solidarity’ to implement the Green New Deal.

The book will be much clearer if the author really concentrated his arguments using American examples, and how the American government should act for the interest of the Americans in term of climate change. He did highlighted some examples where China have made technological advancement that are relevant to mitigate climate change especially on EV and public transport.

To sum up the rest of the book, you need to know Western politics especially American politics to understand his arguments on nationalism and capitalism.