Starred review from December 1, 2024
Kaplan (The Revenge of Geography, 2012) observes a world in which history, economics, politics, communication, and geography have converged to steer humanity into a state of permanent unease bordering on unmanageable chaos. Kaplan's greatest fears are a lack of order and the absence of sustainable institutions that undergird civilization. Recent decades have witnessed wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine, and Gaza that plod on without resolution, breeding both cynicism and a sense of helplessness in the souls of the citizenry. Instantaneous communication and its evil spawn, disinformation, have only added to a sense of permanent crisis. Citing other current foreign policy adepts, Kaplan also seeks enlightenment from Malthus, Spengler, Eliot, and Shakespeare to analyze the contemporary predicament. He focuses initially on the fate of the Weimar Republic in Germany and draws lessons from that tragic history. Kaplan's use of some of these precedents is sure to provoke debate, but he is scrupulous in his view that history only suggests, not determines, the world's future. Kaplan challenges readers with the breadth of his vision and erudition, and his grasp of so many diverse strands of culture and history makes this a great read for those looking to make some sense of things.
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December 15, 2024
A meditation on the ongoing crisis in global democracy. Drawing on an extended analogy comparing the history of the short-lived Weimar Republic, Adolf Hitler's first victim, to that of the modern democratic nations, Kaplan warns that danger is nigh: "A crisis in one becomes a crisis in all, all countries are now connected in ways in which a crisis for one can contain a domino effect that becomes almost universal," whether it be pandemic illness or climate change. In making this analogy, Kaplan, known for his dour political travelogues about places like the Balkans and the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, draws on numerous literary exemplars, some relatively well known (Alexander Solzhenitsyn) and others largely obscure today (Oswald Spengler). Against that Weimar backdrop, he places current political figures and movements, sometimes with curious speculations attached: closer documentation is wanted, for one, to support his thought that by invading Ukraine Vladimir Putin hoped to "forge a permanent alliance with a weakened and insecure Germany, practically dislodging it from the West, which would have the indirect effect of further undermining Europe's other liberal democracies." Given then-leader Angela Merkel's steely dislike of Putin, this scenario seems unlikely. But Kaplan is spot-on in his subsequent assessment of the several reasons that Putin's adventure in Ukraine was not the instant success Putin hoped for. Kaplan observes that while there are those who hope that with increased globalism will come the enhanced rule of law and "rules-based global civilization," it's equally likely that "there will be a civilizational vacuum, with anarchy becoming more prevalent." In the end, Kaplan posits, one can only follow trends and guess at their outcome, which "is not given to any of us in advance"--one reason, he suggests, to fight for democracy and against its enemies. A provocative thought experiment, of much interest to students of contemporary geopolitics.
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