Anatol Lieven

Author Event: Anatol Lieven
December 5, 2006

The Eisenhower Institute hosted Anatol Lieven, co-author Ethical Realism: A Vision for America's Role in the World, for an event on December 5, 2006 at the Institute offices. A reception was held in Lieven's honor, after which he discussed his book, fielded questions from the audience, and signed copies of his book.

Recognizing that America today faces a world more complicated than ever before, Lieven and his co-author, John Hulsman, two highly regarded policy experts from opposite political camps, offer a coherent foreign policy alternative for conservatives and liberals alike. In an effort to illuminate a new way forward, the two argue against the current blend of raw American power and the blind assertion of the transformative effects of democracy, in favor a foreign policy that "recognizes America's real strengths and weaknesses, and those of other nations." Its ethical claims are minimal but significant; its practicality is rooted in a sense of finiteness and common sense.

Ethical Realism lays out the core principles of a pragmatic, and yet moral, foreign policy, which draws on such thinkers as Reinhold Niebuhr, Hans Morgenthau, and George Kennan. Lieven points to the historical examples of Presidents Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower as they forged the policy of containment against the Soviet Union in the early years of the Cold War. Despite political differences, these two leaders were able to fashion a coherent and practical foreign policy strategy that thwarted Soviet expansion and yet rejected pressure for disastrous preventive wars-a threat that has returned since 9/11. Both morally stirring and deeply practical, this book shows us how to strengthen our national security, pursue our national interests and restore American leadership in the world.

Critically acclaimed, Ethical Realism has been hailed as a "profoundly necessary alternative to the arrogance of preemptive warfare" - Senator Gary Hart. General Brent Scowcroft says that the "book makes a powerful case that the United States needs a foreign policy based on hard facts and what we can achieve with our available resources." Dmitri Simes, publisher of The National Interest, calls Ethical Realism a "superb and courageous analysis of US foreign policy challenges and options" and that the authors have demonstrated "why messianic pretensions shared by some on the right and the left alike are neither realistic nor ethical and only endanger America without promoting true national interests."

Anatol Lieven, a British journalist, writer, and historian, is currently a senior research fellow at the New America Foundation. Lieven is also the author of America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism. He writes regularly for the Financial Times and the International Herald Tribune.