I’m surely inviting the wrath of certain readers on this one, and to really do it right, I’d have both of the books to which I will refer in front of me, but here goes.
I had initially avoided Robert Kaplan’s The Ends of the Earth because of Tom Bissell’s extended criticism of it in Chasing The Sea. I decided to give it a shot after Michael Totten’s prodding to do so.
Let me say that I think Bissell may have been onto something… In general, Kaplan does make some interesting observations all the places he goes, but I’ve been slowly getting the impression that his observations may tell us more about the geography of Kaplan’s mind rather than the places he visits. I notice time and time again that Kaplan observes, then retreats into his own mind with an “I wondered…” Well, that’s all fine and good, but it really doesn’t tell us anything of much use other than that Kaplan knows his history and wonders a lot about how it corresponds to the modern world. It’s almost as if he’s on these trips to collect observations that prove the world is heading back to some pre-modern anarchy…
Though I was in Uzbekistan at a different time, reading Kaplan’s observations on Uzbekistan makes me wonder if we really were in the same country. Pre-Byzantine Turks? Give me a break. There might be some reason to make some connections, but I think that “post-Soviet Turks” might be a little more helpful (to his credit, Kaplan does end up connecting the region more to the former USSR than to the Near East).
It’s the little things that get me wondering… His description of Samarkand’s layout seems wrong. “Gul Emir” means something very different than “Gur Emir” (actually, that’s a pretty funny mistake). I don’t know what road he took to Samarkand from Tashkent, but the landscape is not as drab and flat as he so dramatically describes it. Why he thought the so’m to be so unstable is beyond me. Maybe he hit different places than I would, but the country is not full of drunks who hit the bottle promptly at 9 a.m.
I could be accused of being nitpicky, but little things can snowball into one big, inaccurate impression of the country. And, like I so often think with the media, if Kaplan’s getting the part I think I know pretty well wrong, what else is he getting wrong?
All of which, I should add, isn’t to say that I’m anti-Kaplan or anything, just wary of the conclusions he makes and the suggestions that follow. His observations are excellent additions to discussions on the far corners of the world.
And finally, if you haven’t read Chasing the Sea, do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of it. It’s pretty cheap used and I can almost guarantee you’ll enjoy it.
This post was written by...
Nathan Hamm – author of 2040 posts on Registan.net.
Nathan founded Registan.net in 2003. He was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Uzbekistan 2000-2001 and received his MA in Central Asian Studies from the University of Washington in 2007. Since 2007, he has worked full-time as an analyst, consulting with clients on Central Asian affairs, specializing in how socio-cultural factors shape risks and opportunities. Follow him on Twitter or drop him a line.
{ 12 comments }
Actually, having just re-read The Coming Anarchy, I’m beginning to wonder some things about Kaplan myself. I had always been impressed w/ his Atlantic stuff and he’s a mesmerizing speaker, but I hadn’t read that book in a long time and he makes some logical leaps that are kind of disturbing (e.g. West Africa is fucked up ergo the world will soon be like West Africa, India will break up … just because it will). So I can see where you’re coming from.
I think in the end, Kaplan is a much better historian than political scientist. Kaplan is good to read if you want the basis for an informed opinion, but not if you’re looking for a policy argument to adopt/refute, or any sort of believable theory of how the future will play out.
Heathens all!! Nah I am just kidding. I am sitting in Vancouver Airport right now so I can’t really give any sort of deep reply, but I would just like to say that the thing I admire about Kaplan is just what you mentioned: that he spends his time thinking about how the past affects the present and thus the future. I think he has done a very good job in showing the effects of history. I don’t look to him for daily policy answers or grand strategy, but I think he does a good job of illustrating that we haven’t changed that much throughout the ages. More later… maybe.
I agree, Joe. I’ve noticed what praktike points out pops up way too often in Kaplan books I’ve read. If you’re going to assert that someplace will disintegrate/attack its neighbors/etc. you need to tell a pretty convincing story.
I agree, his Atlantic stuff is impressive and it’s the stuff of his I’m most familiar with.
But, like I said, I think he’s best identifying how the past affects the present, but I’m less impressed when he talks about the future. And, at least with Uzbekistan’s case, I kind of feel like he was discounting the enormous effects of recent political history (he talked about the environment plenty) in favor of some notion of the pre-modern Central Asian Turk.
Good observations, but (and this is the part I need to convince Curzon of) no particular policy path (least of all realpolitik!) follows.
Ah, but recently, he has been offering concrete strategies (e.g. “Supremacy by Stealth”), but those are mostly related to military training programs and not for the kinds of transnational environmental problems he really frets about.
You, sir, are a charlatan and a scurilous wag-about! How dare you!
LOL
My impressions about ENDS OF THE EARTH are that it is very dated. Remember he was traveling in 1994, and places change a lot in that amount of time. I met an investment banker who was in Hungary from 1993-2001, and he said he saw it go from worse than Russia to better than Germany.
I think the original coming anarchy article exagerrated because at the time Kaplan was rebutting the lovey-dovey sentiment of the world post-Haiti and post-Somalia.
He ain’t perfect — but as a general world affairs expert, I believe him to be the best.
Also, in the rest of that book, look how optimistic he is about Laos, Thailand, Turkey, and Iran. He isn’t a pure pessimist, just a pessimistic realist.
Sorry for the multiple posts.
Listen to the second mp3 here:
http://www.cominganarchy.com/archives/2005/04/04/kaplan-on-cominganarchycom/
He basically says: I’M NOT PERFECT!
I have long been a fan of Kaplan because he got a lot of bad things right when others were talking about how the world was just getting better and better. This is not only true in the Balkans and Africa, but when he wrote about Russia having little social base for democracy I didn’t believe it, but now I do.
But I should note that Kaplan himself has admitted being surprised at how well the Iraqis have been handling their young democracy, given what a rotten past they have (see Kaplan’s recent Wall Street Journal op-ed on Syria). So perhaps he has been extrapolating too much from West Africa.
Or maybe he just didn’t understand Iraqi Shi’ism, and didn’t see the guiding force that the Ayatollah Ali Sistani was been. Paul Bremer may have fouled every thing up he touched, but Sistani really have been the firm but wise voice Iraq needed when it could have blown apart.
Well, keep in mind that Kaplan was prowar, but mainly because he wanted to scare Iran into better behavior. That hasn’t worked out so good. He also wanted to install a benign autocrat, and that didn’t work so great either. We should have held elections much earlier.
I agree that Kaplan’s observations are good but his conclusions are sometimes a bit odd.