Lieven, Anatol 1960–

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Lieven, Anatol 1960–

PERSONAL:

Born June 28, 1960, in London, England; son of Alexander Pavlovich (a journalist) and Veronica Eileen Mary (an art historian) Lieven. Education: Jesus College, Cambridge, B.A. (first class honors), 1982; additional studies at Troy State University and Jawaharlal Nehru University. Politics: Liberal. Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Cinema, literature, travel.

ADDRESSES:

Office—New American Foundation, 1630 Connecticut Ave. NW, 7th Fl., Washington, DC 20009. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Journalist and historian. Times, London, England, correspondent from Pakistan and Afghanistan, 1988-89, correspondent from the Baltic states and the Caucasus, 1990-92, deputy bureau chief in Moscow, Russia, 1993-96; U.S. Institute of Peace, Washington, DC, visiting senior fellow, 1996-97; International Institute for Strategic Studies, London, England, research fellow and editor of Strategic Comments, 1998-2000; Russia and Eurasia Center, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, senior associate for foreign and security policy, 2000—; New American Foundation, Washington, DC, senior research fellow.

MEMBER:

Amnesty International, Friends of the Earth.

AWARDS, HONORS:

George Orwell Prize for Political Writing, Political Quarterly, 1994; commendation from British Press Association, 1996, for coverage of Eastern European politics.

WRITINGS:

The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Path to Independence, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1993.

Chechnya: A Tombstone of Russian Power, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 1998.

Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry, United States Institute of Peace (Washington, DC), 1999.

(Editor, with Dmitri Trenin) Ambivalent Neighbors: The EU, NATO and the Price of Membership, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington DC), 2003.

America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2004.

(With Dmitri V. Trenin and Aleksei V. Malashenko) Russia's Restless Frontier: The Chechnya Factor in Post-Soviet Russia, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (Washington, DC), 2004.

Failing States and U.S. Strategy, Stanley Foundation (Muscatine, IA), 2006.

(With John Hulsman) Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 2006.

SIDELIGHTS:

Journalist and historian Anatol Lieven's work reflects his expertise in Eastern Europe. His first book, 1993's The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Path to Independence, recounts the long history of the Balkan region that culminated with the formation of three new republics following the fall of the USSR. The book "deals with their past histories and goes into great detail about the complex political infighting that led to the present, insecure, independence of the three countries," explained Contemporary Review critic Leo Murray, adding that Lieven "dwells amusingly on the fact that the three nations really do not like or trust each other, despite having been dominated together by the Russians." Noting that The Baltic Revolution "is sure to become a classic," New Statesman & Society contributor Robert Carver went on to praise Lieven for both his stylistic approach and understanding of his subject. "Balancing learning with a sharp sense of humor," Carver noted, "Lieven has that inestimable quality for a cultural analyst: a foot in both camps. He speaks the languages, has read the poetry and the promulgations; but he is a skeptical westerner, too, and unimpressed by the cloudy nationalist rhetoric. He knows the facts, the figures—and the fantasies." Remarking upon Lieven's Baltic-German heritage, Foreign Affairs reviewer Robert Legvold added that the author "brings a stern, discerning eye to the politicians and players on all sides. His judgments are frank and unvarnished…. History, in this instance, is involved and human, not mythical."

In Chechnya: A Tombstone of Russian Power, Lieven documents two centuries of troubles between Russia and the tiny republic that culminated in Russia's 1996 defeat in the war following Chechnya's declaration of independence in 1994. Lieven served as the London Times correspondent in Moscow from 1990 to 1996, in which capacity Foreign Affairs contributor Robert Legvold noted that he gave "the war a precise, detailed, and compelling profile." In his book-length retrospective, Lieven provides firsthand accounts of his observations in the field, a history of the Chechen and North Caucasus region, and his analysis of the mistakes made by Russia that led to the final result. "Lieven shows enormous respect for the Chechens, whose memory of Stalin's mass deportations … galvanized their resolve to be free," commented a Publishers Weekly reviewer. America contributor Martha Merritt described the war as "a corrupt Chechen administration [that] played chicken against a bumbling Kremlin team," and added that Lieven "argues powerfully that the Russian failure in this unpopular conflict was but the external manifestation of an extensive internal decline, both for the military and for society at large. He sees Russia as a weak state plundered by her own elites, with war accelerating opportunity." Lieven notes that the Russians were killing their own people in Chechnya. Sergei Kovalev was fired from his position as head of the Human Rights Commission when he challenged Boris Yeltsin to condemn the campaign. Russian soldiers suffered from low morale. Their pay often wound up in the pockets of politicians, and Lieven writes that they sometimes traded their guns with Chechen guerrillas for vodka and other items.

Chechen leader Dzhokhar Dudayev lost his life during the war. Merritt remarked that his successors "face a breakdown inflicted by pride and a callous, costly retort." Anatole Shub wrote in the New Leader that "the most controversial aspect of Lieven's book compares Russia's current situation with the failure of classical liberalism in the 19th century in Italy, Spain, Mexico, and other countries of Latin America. He sees Yeltsin as the equivalent of Mexico's Porfirio Diaz, thereby implying multiple crises yet to come." A Kirkus Reviews contributor concluded that Lieven's most forceful interpretation "is his suggestion that Russian society has fundamentally changed, making it impossible to follow traditional Western approaches that assume lasting continuities in Russian and Soviet history."

This societal impact is further explored in Russia's Restless Frontier: The Chechnya Factor in Post-Soviet Russia, which Lieven wrote with Dmitri V. Trenin and Aleksei V. Malashenko. The book, deemed by Political Science Quarterly contributor Pavel K. Baev to be a "valuable contribution" to the academic literature on the war in Chechnya, argues that the brutality of the war has had a deterring effect on fledgling separatist movements among Russia's ethnic minority populations. The result has been a reduced threat to Russian stability from secular sectarian movements. Yet, as the authors show, the war has helped to radicalize Muslim populations both in Russia and along its southern border, increasing the risk of religious-based conflict. Six new Islamic states, all former Soviet republics, border Russia; close beyond these lie Iran and Afghanistan. According to Lieven and his coauthors, the most serious challenges to Russian security in the foreseeable future exist not on its western border but along this southern frontier with unstable Islamic states. Gifford D. Malone, writing in Perspectives on Political Science, observed that the book offers a welcome new perspective on the subject and is an "important study" relevant to post-Soviet Russia and to larger international affairs.

New York Review of Books contributor Jack F. Matlock, Jr., declared that Lieven's 1999 work, Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry, "is full of insight and its judgments are well balanced…. Lieven discusses the main features of Ukraine's regional diversity, the ties that connect some regions with Russia more closely than others, and the features that have given rise to rivalry and animosity. He describes the importance of language, of history, and of the common experience of Soviet Communist society and its impact on the people of both countries."

In the early 2000s, Lieven turned his attention to American foreign policy. America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism offers a sharp critique of the ideas and myths that Lieven believes underlie the U.S. policy of exporting democracy around the world. Lieven identifies two distinct strands of American nationalism: a messianic belief in the United States as a symbol of enlightened government, which motivates a sincere desire to spread its system throughout the world; and the antithesis of this messianism, which manifests as a type of extreme isolationism marked by national chauvinism and xenophobia. In Lieven's analysis, this antithetical strand is connected with the southern evangelical Christian faction, which has wielded growing political influence in the United States in the 1990s and early 2000s. As Lieven emphasized in an interview with Nermeen Shaikh in Asia Source, these antithetical strands of American nationalism are especially obvious in U.S. policy toward the Muslim world: while President George W. Bush states his wish to bring democracy to these countries, American neo-conservatives "do not even bother to hide their contempt for Muslims and Arabs…. This is utterly contradictory."

A Publishers Weekly reviewer found America Right or Wrong "cogently argued" and "important." Michael Hirsh, writing in Washington Monthly, observed that "in some respects Lieven's book … is the most brilliant analysis of America's attitude toward the world to come along since 9/11." Hirsh appreciated Lieven's insights into the roots of American nationalism and global anti-Americanism, but added that "he takes his argument much too far" and as a result "confuse[s] the pathology of the Bush administration with the alleged pathology of America." Hirsch expressed disagreement with Lieven's view that the Bush administration's policies, such as the war in Iraq and the global war on terror, emerged from a monolithic sense of America's identity and role in the world. For Hirsh, it is more likely that current policies stem from "an out-of-balance moment illustrating the dominance of a certain strand of political culture—a strand which, when offset by other elements of American culture and foreign-policy tradition (as it usually is), has produced the world that Lieven rightly values."

In Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World, according to American Prospect writer James M. Lindsay, Lieven and coauthor John Hulsman argue for a U.S. foreign policy based on "prudence; a concentration on possible results rather than good intentions; a close study of the nature, views, and interests of other states, and a willingness to accommodate them when possible; and a mixture of profound American patriotism with an equally profound awareness of the limits both on American power and on American goodness." Though Lieven and Hulsman are highly critical of democratization schemes as promoted by the Bush administration, they state that democracy should remain "part of the American legacy" if pursued in a more wise, generous, and cooperative spirit. They argue that the United States can best pursue these objectives by promoting economic development as a precondition to democracy, by using the philosophy of ethical realism as guidance, and by developing a real understanding of the legitimate concerns of countries whose interests diverge from its own. In the view of Middle East Policy contributor Jack Snyder, Ethical Realism offers an admirable ideal but is not entirely convincing. Expressing skepticism toward the book's recommendations regarding the Palestinian issue, for example—which argue for huge compensation payouts to Palestinians in exchange for their relinquishing the right of return to Israel, acceptance of the already-built Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and the creation of a Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital—Snyder wrote that Lieven and Hulsman's solutions "echo the very same imperialist unilateralism that they are so eager to refute." Nevertheless, the critic appreciated Ethical Realism's thesis as "a solid rock to build upon." Reviewing the book in American Prospect, James M. Lindsay observed that "The generosity that animates Lieven and Hulsman's notion of developmental realism lies closer to the kind of vision that Washington needs to convey…. Yet the very extent of Bush's foreign-policy malpractice has made it harder to convince Americans to rally behind the kind of international vision that will appeal abroad."

Lieven once told CA: "As a historian turned journalist, my primary motivation in writing is to try to bridge the gap between these two professions. All too often, Western journalism, especially when dealing with parts of the world remote from the Western experience, is written without any serious attention to the particular history, culture, and underlying motivations of the societies concerned. This tends to lead to simplification and to the classification of people along misleading lines, usually with one side portrayed as hero, the others as villains. As well as diminishing the quality of journalism involved, this attitude has led to some notable catastrophes in Western policy, from Vietnam to Yugoslavia. My aim as a journalist is, whenever possible, to complicate the picture—even if my editors don't like it!"

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Lieven, Anatol and John Hulsman, Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 2006.

PERIODICALS

America, June 5, 1999, Martha Merritt, review of Chechnya: A Tombstone of Russian Power, p. 18.

American Prospect, October, 2006, James M. Lindsay, "How Ambitious Can We Be?," p. 47.

Asia Source, December 21, 2004, Nermeen Shaikh, interview with Anatol Lieven.

Atlantic Monthly, November, 2006, review of Ethical Realism, p. 124.

Choice, February, 1994, R.P. Peters, review of The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Path to Independence, p. 992; July-August, 1999, P. Rutland, review of Chechnya, p. 2015; February, 2000, P. Rutland, review of Ukraine andRussia: A Fraternal Rivalry, p. 1166; January 2004, J.H.P. Williams, review of Ambivalent Neighbors: The EU, NATO and the Price of Membership, p. 986; November, 2004, review of Russia's Restless Frontier: The Chechnya Factor in Post-Soviet Russia, p. 559.

Christian Century, March 20, 2007, Charles Strohmer, review of Ethical Realism, p. 39; May 1, 2007, Robin Lovin, review of Ethical Realism, p. 25.

Conscience, winter, 2006, review of Ethical Realism.

Contemporary Review, October, 1993, Leo Murray, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 216; August, 2005, Ian Jackson, "U.S. Nationalism and the War on Terror," p. 111.

Contemporary Sociology, January, 1995, Hank Johnston, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 35.

Current History, October, 1998, William W. Finan, Jr., review of Chechnya, p. 347.

Economist, July 17, 1993, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 88; June 13, 1998, review of Chechnya, p. S10.

Europe-Asia Studies, December, 2003, David J. Galbreath, review of Ambivalent Neighbors, p. 1337; January, 2005, Oleh Protsyk, review of Russia's Restless Frontier, p. 159.

Foreign Affairs, November-December, 1993, Robert Legvold, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 173; May-June, 1998, Robert Legvold, review of Chechnya, p. 147; March 1, 2005, Walter Russell Mead, review of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, p. 157.

Historian, summer, 1997, Henry R. Huttenbach, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 927.

International Affairs, April, 1994, Neil Melvin, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 374; January, 1999, Anna Matveena, review of Chechnya, p. 174; January, 2000, Taras Kuzio, review of Ukraine and Russia, p. 156; March, 2005, Martin Walker, review of America Right or Wrong, p. 485.

Internet Bookwatch, April, 2007, review of Ethical Realism.

Journal of the American Academy of Religion, December, 2005, Ira Chernus, review of America Right or Wrong, p. 1234.

Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 1998, review of Chechnya.

Library Journal, April 1, 1998, Rena Fowler, review of Chechnya, p. 112.

Middle East Policy, spring, 2007, Jack Snyder, review of Ethical Realism.

Nation, January 3, 2000, Robert V. Daniels, review of Chechnya, p. 25.

New Leader, August 10, 1998, Anatole Shub, review of Chechnya, p. 14.

New Left Review, March 1, 2005, Robin Blacburn, review of America Right or Wrong, p. 143.

New Statesman & Society, July 9, 1993, Robert Carver, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 40; July 10, 1998, Sarah A. Smith, review of Chechnya, p. 47.

New York Review of Books, November 4, 1993, Czeslaw Milosz, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 12; September 24, 1998, Robert Cottrell, review of Chechnya, p. 44; February 24, 2000, Jack F. Matlock, Jr., "The Nowhere Nation," pp. 41-45; February 24, 2005, Brian Urquhart, "Extreme Makeover," p. 4.

Perspectives on Political Science, fall, 2004, Gifford D. Malone, review of Russia's Restless Frontier, p. 238.

Political Science Quarterly, spring, 1999, Laura V. Swartz, review of Chechnya, p. 144; summer, 2005, Pavel K. Baev, review of Russia's Restless Frontier.

Political Studies, March, 1994, Paul Lewis, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 153.

Publishers Weekly, April 20, 1998, review of Chechnya, p. 53; October 18, 2004, review of America Right or Wrong, p. 60.

Reference & Research Book News, February 2007, review of Ethical Realism.

SAIS Review, January 1, 2007, Medlir Mema, "Morality and Realism: A Match Made in Heaven?," p. 171.

Slavic Review, spring, 1995, Anthony Rhinelander, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 145; fall, 1999, Pavel Baev, review of Chechnya, p. 707; fall, 2006, Svante Cornell, review of Russia's Restless Frontier.

Spectator, August 21, 1993, Philip Glazenbrook, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 26.

Times Literary Supplement, July 9, 1993, Geoffrey A. Hosking, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 5; June 5, 1998, G. Hosking, review of Chechnya, p. 13; March 25, 2005, Timothy Snyder, "The Old Country," p. 32.

Washington Monthly, April, 2005, "Bloody Necessary: Europeans Won't Admit It, but America's Violent Messianism Isn't All Bad," p. 43.

World Today, October, 1993, Vera Rich, review of The Baltic Revolution, p. 200.