Climate change and the nation state: the realist case

Anatol Lieven’s new book, Climate Change and the Nation State, broaches a subject which has hitherto received surprisingly little attention from environmental scholars – the question of how to combat climate change in an increasingly nationalist world. This in itself is a major contribution. Many authors in the field of climate change politics, such as Joel Wainwright and Geoff Mann in their 2018 book Climate Leviathan, advocate solutions to climate change which jettison the nation-state altogether. Lieven rightly pours cold water on this argument. ‘If action against climate change depends on the abolition of nation states’, he writes, ‘then there will be no action’ (p. xxii). Although Lieven’s book was published before COVID-19 gripped Western democracies, the pandemic rather seems to have proven his point. Nation-states – whether for good or for ill – are clearly still by far the most decisive actors in any global crisis. Without their support, international cooperation crumbles.

This argument, outlined forcefully in the Introduction, constitutes the bedrock upon which Lieven makes his second critical point: that we can harness nationalism in the fight against climate change. In the first half of the book, Lieven maintains that climate change threatens the vital interests of nation-states. Most controversially, he argues that climate-induced migration will undermine state legitimacy, particularly in concert with the mass automation of jobs. The second half makes the case that nationalism provides the interpersonal and intergenerational solidarity necessary to mobilize entire populations behind radical measures like the Green New Deal. Lieven concludes that only nationalism, not liberal internationalism, can deal with climate change – a position which will be provocative for anyone interested in environmental governance or theory.

The trouble is that Lieven appears to conflate nationalism with the nation-state. Recognition of the nation-state’s instrumental importance, however, is not the same thing as nationalism, which is the prioritization of the unity or power of one’s own nation over all other considerations. The ‘realist’ perspective in international relations – to which the subtitle of Lieven’s book (‘The Realist Case’) misleadingly implies he subscribes – actually takes it for granted that nation-states are first and foremost motivated by the accrual of power in the international system. This is very different from Lieven’s position. He claims that he has ‘never believed in national power as an end in itself but only as a path to the achievement of greater goals, including universal human ones’ such as the fight against climate change (p. xii).

If Lieven were a true ‘realist’, his conclusions might be much more negative. Empirical data suggest that global economic growth much above zero per cent will be very difficult to achieve whilst still hitting our emissions targets, largely because we have been so slow to act so far (see Hickel and Kallis 2019 for a summary). This clearly requires the sacrifice of national prosperity by nation-states in the Global North in order that others, in the Global South, can grow and lift their populations out of poverty. In the realist view, however, powerful states in the Global North will not willingly sacrifice economic growth in the fight against climate change, because economic growth is key to national power. This perhaps explains why Donald Trump chose to withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accords – for his administration believed that adhering to the Paris Agreement would diminish the economic power of the United States vis-à-vis industrializing nation-states like China. It is not enough to simply retort, as Lieven does, that in the long-run climate change will damage the economic growth of all states: the question is one of relative, not absolute power; and no self-respecting nationalist would ever sacrifice the former on the altar of an internationalist concern like climate change.

Turning to migration, Lieven makes further crucial points, but once again it appears to me that these are really supportive of using the nation-state as a means towards cosmopolitan ends, rather than of nationalism per se. He argues that, if the left wishes to combat the contemporary electoral slide towards anti-migrant ethnic nationalism and win over vast swathes of the population whose support is absolutely essential in the fight against climate change, it must drop its support for neoliberal policies of the ‘free’ movement of labour in favour of a planned system which regulates the rate of growth of migration and thus enables sufficient time for tolerance of migrants to build up amongst the population at large. This is not really the same thing as the ‘civic nationalist’ view that Lieven claims to support, however. Although the civic nationalist’s conception of the nation-state is, unlike the ethnic nationalist’s, a liberal-democratic one, civic nationalism in the last instance still prioritizes the strength and unity of the nation-state. This is, after all, the minimum definition of nationalism. If, for instance, absorbing tens of millions of refugees from climate-related conflicts would conceivably undermine liberal democracy in receiving nations, a true civic nationalist might choose to shut out those refugees. Although there are times where Lieven borders on this position – even invoking Garrett Hardin’s ‘lifeboat ethics’ on the last page of his book – he seems uncomfortable with it: he concludes by saying that we should focus all our energy on mitigating climate change, and therefore preventing such a terrible situation from occurring in the first place.

The difference between the two positions I have outlined here – the nation-state as a means towards cosmopolitan ends, and the unity or power of the nation-state as an end-in-itself (nationalism) – is not merely academic. The former is essential to any effective action on climate change which hopes to gain broad electoral support; the latter would mean a continuation of the reckless pursuit of growth, and a refusal to help refugees fleeing from the consequences. Lieven offers a powerful defence of the nation-state. A similarly strong argument for nationalism has yet to be written.