I am Professor at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, Qatar, visiting professor in the War Studies Department of King’s College London, and a senior fellow of the New America Foundation in Washington DC. My recent book, Pakistan: A Hard Country, was published in April 2011 by Penguin and was selected by the Daily Telegraph as one of the '2011 Books of Year'. A new edition of , America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, is published in 2012.

I spent most of my career as a British journalist in South Asia and the former Soviet Union, and am author of several books on the latter region, including Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power? (Yale University Press 1998) andUkraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry (USIP, 1999); and The Baltic Revolution: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and the Path to Independence (Yale University Press 1993).

I have a BA in history and a PhD in political science from the University of Cambridge. From 1986 to 1998 I worked as a British journalist, mainly in the former Soviet Union and South Asia. During this period I covered the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan, the Chechen war of 1994-96 and other conflicts.

In 1998-2000 I edited Strategic Comments at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. From 2000-2005 I was a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington DC. In 2005 I became a senior research fellow of the New America Foundation, a position I continues to hold.

Research Interests

 

My areas of interest include:

•    Insurgency and counter-insurgency
•    Terrorism
•    Islamist movements
•    Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran
•    Russia and the former Soviet Union
•    US political culture and strategy 

Publications

For a list of publications please visit the Research Portal

Expertise and Public Engagement

 In recent years I have worked chiefly on aspects of the “war on terror”, including contemporary US global strategy and its background in US history and political culture. He writes a monthly column for the Financial Times, and am published frequently in other newspapers and journals. I am a member of the editorial board of the National Interest and a convenor of the Russia and Eurasia Security Research Group

Together with Raghavan and Chaudhuri I collaborated with the FCO in organising a series of four confidential stakeholder conferences at King’s from 2009-2011, supported by £250k in FCO funding, to explore a regional strategy for Afghanistan. 

For a selection of media apperances and talks please click on the links below:

• Pakistan: A Hard Country. Anatol Lieven May 2013
• Panel Discussion: Secularism in Pakistan. March 2013
• Talking to the Taliban .October 2012
• KLF 2012 A Conversation with Anatol Lieven. November 2012
• The Radicalisation of the US Republican Party. September 2012
• Failed states don't hold literature festivals. February 2012