t of identity politics, but a realistic reflection of the low-wage workforce. It is certainly far closer to reality than Lieven’s fantasies of a nation organised around a draft. Conscription is an idea that has enjoyed a vogue recently among the authoritarian Gulf states, where Lieven currently teaches. Qatar and the United Arab Emirates rival each other in their well-upholstered visions of national mobilisation. But what is the relevance of that politics to the generation of Western youths whose attitude towards the nation is resolutely post-heroic? Lieven mocks the European Greens for the knee-jerk cosmopolitanism of their party manifestos. He fears that their refusal to emphatically embrace the nation undermines the popularity and efficacy of their environmental politics. But as someone who claims to be a realist, would he not be better off asking what relationship such pronouncements have to the conduct of actually existing climate politics? The UN climate change conferences, which are the real drivers of global climate politics, are anything but exercises in altruistic cosmopolitanism. And the result, as one would expect, has been a painful deadlock. When it comes to nuclear power, Lieven pillories “the greens” for their dogmatic opposition. In some cases this is no doubt fuelled by anti-modernism. And the overriding priority of the climate emergency certainly does throw new light on the nuclear issue. But anyone who believes that nuclear power can be defended in terms of realism adheres to a strange view of history. In fact, the technology has been driven by a series of ludicrously exaggerated and unrealistic visions, among the most farfetched of which is the promise of fusion, to which Lieven seems attached. What has kept nuclear energy alive has not been realpolitik, let alone the cost-benefit calculus of the market. It has been sustained by the entrenched interests of technocrats and a small cabal of engineering firms and power utilities, garnished with technological wishful thinking. There may be a case for continuing nuclear research and development as part of our response to the climate crisis. But if you are remotely realistic you make that argument on the speculative grounds that we have to keep all our technological options open. The deepest irony of Lievin’s pastiche of realism becomes clear when we turn to international relations. One can certainly agree with him that in the face of the climate crisis and the current pandemic, a new cold war with China and Russia would be ruinous. But to argue, as he suggests, that the THE CRITICS | BOOKS THE NS POEM The Manor Simon Armitage What a prize prick he’s made of himself, trudging a dozen furlongs across the plain to the widowed heiress’s country estate just to be turned away at the lodge, to stare from the wrong side of the locked gates. The plan – admit it – was to worm his way in: to start as a lowly gofer and drudge, then rise from gardener to footman to keeper of hawks – her hooded merlin steady on his wrist – to suddenly making his way upstairs after dark, now soaping her breasts in the roll-top bath with its clawed gold feet, now laying a trail of soft fruit from her pillow to his, his tongue now coaxing the shy nasturtium flower of love. Here he is in the dream, gilt-framed, a gent in her late husband’s best brown suit, the loyal schnauzer gazing up at his eyes. And here’s the true him tramping the verge, frayed collar and cuffs, brambles for hair, the toes of his boots mouthing like grounded fish. A pride of lions roams the walled parkland between this dogsbody life and the next. Simon Armitage is the poet laureate. This poem is included in Lives of Houses edited by Kate Kennedy and Hermione Lee, newly published by Princeton University Press. urgency and generality of the climate crisis render all considerations of geopolitics and ideological difference irrelevant is to make life too easy for ourselves. Lieven may well be right that China’s artificial islands in the South China Sea will soon be submerged by the rising tides. But that is why the geopolitics of climate change are concentrated not on the South China Sea but on the Arctic, where the melting ice caps are clearing the waters for a new Great Game. The irony of Lieven’s position is that in treating climate change as a threat to all states, by concluding with regard to climate policy that, in the words of Reinhold Niebuhr, “All have sinned and have fallen short of the glory of God”, he espouses not so much realism as an inverted version of 19th-century liberalism. In this vision all nations were imagined unfolding their inner destiny, peacefully side by side. Unfortunately, the reality of our situation is more difficult than that. l Adam Tooze is the author of “Crashed: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World” (Allen Lane) 3-23 APRIL 2020 | NEW STATESMAN | 69