Book Talk: The Myth of American Idealism
President Donald Trump has promised a US foreign policy based openly and publicly on the ruthless pursuit of US national interests. If his administration sticks to this, then in terms of rhetoric at least, this will be a revolutionary change; since for a century and more, every previous US administration has expressed its foreign policy in the language of idealism, linked in turn to US “exceptionalism”: an ideological form of American nationalism.
But this language of US idealism (like the “civilizing missions” of empires before it) has always contained immense amounts of deception, and even more dangerously self-deception. Worse than the hypocrisy involved has been the tendency – remarked by acute observers during the Vietnam War – for a belief in American democratic crusades actively to encourage the violation of laws and principles to which America has been ostensibly dedicated.
Noam Chomsky has for many years been one of the most acute and stringent critics of US foreign policy and its ideological underpinnings. His latest book, The Myth of American Idealism, sums up his lifetime’s work on this subject. To discuss the book, and the future of American exceptionalism, Anatol Lieven, director of the Eurasia program at the Quincy Institute, is joined by the book’s co-author, Nathan J Robinson.
The conversation will take place on Thursday, February 13th from 12:00 – 1:00 PM Eastern Time.
Program
Entities
Panelists
Nathan J. Robinson
Nathan J. Robinson is the cofounder and editor in chief of Current Affairs magazine. He is the author of The Myth of American Idealism (with Noam Chomsky), as well as Why You Should Be a Socialist and Responding to the Right, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The New Republic, among others. Robinson holds a JD from Yale Law School and a PhD in sociology and social policy from Harvard University.
Anatol Lieven
Dr. Anatol Lieven is the director of the Eurasia Program at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He was formerly a professor at Georgetown University in Qatar and in the War Studies Department of King’s College London. From 1985 to 1998, Lieven worked as a journalist in South Asia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and covered the wars in Afghanistan, Chechnya and the southern Caucasus. Lieven is the author of several books, including "Chechnya: Tombstone of Russian Power?" and "Ukraine and Russia: A Fraternal Rivalry."