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Robert D. Kaplan

Robert D. Kaplan Biography

Journalist

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“The debacle in Iraq has reinforced the realist dictum, disparaged by idealists in the 1990s, that the legacies of geography, history and culture really do set limits on what can be accomplished in any given place. But the experience in the Balkans reinforced an idealist dictum that is equally true: One should always work near the limits of what is possible rather than cynically give up on any place. In this decade idealists went too far; in the previous one, it was realists who did not go far enough.”

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Author:Robert D. Kaplan
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“One marker, which I would read a bit later on, tells the familiar story of Narcissa Whitman, "trail-blazer and martyred missionary," who followed the north side of the Platte in 1836 on horseback, "becoming the first white women to cross the American continent," and who, along with her husband, Marcus, was "massacred by Cayuse Indians" at their Protestant mission in 1847 in Walla Walla, Washington. (The Indians there were justifiably enraged at the whites for spreading measles to them.)”

MeaslesDry Humor
Book:Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World
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“Indeed, Chicago seems to have literally sucked the air out of Springfield: another case of American becoming a network of massive city-states more intimately interconnected with other continents than with their own hinterlands. It is in the merging with the rest of the world and global civilization that the forces of division come to the fore at home. Springfield: another small city that should inspire but doesn't.”

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Book:Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America's Role in the World
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“An idea is only an idea if it causes unease, debate and reflection. By that standard, Thomas Homer-Dixon's concept of an 'ingenuity gap' is truly a new idea. I can think of no other new concept that so fully condenses all of the challenges we face as a human civilization than the 'ingenuity gap'. Homer-Dixon has found a way to unite all of our concerns about economics, war, population growth, complexity, etc. under a single heading. He is one of an elite group of academics who can write for a mass audience.”

IfsThinkingWayWritingHumansI CanIdeasWarFacesFoundCausesGrowthChallengesAudienceGroupsCivilizationMassStandardsReflectionConceptsConcernEconomicsPopulationDebateComplexityEtcGapsElitesNew IdeasHeadingsIngenuityPopulation GrowthHuman CivilizationChallenges We Face
Author:Robert D. Kaplan
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“Bismarck's genius, as well as his great flaw, was the same as that of another outstanding nineteenth-century politician of the German-speaking world, Prince Clemens Metternich. Both men were artificers, able to hold off the future by building a fragile present out of pieces of the past.”

MenWorldWellsAblePastPiecesCenturyBuildingGeniusPoliticianFlawsFragileOutstandingNineteenth CenturyBismarckMetternich
Book:Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History
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“While the foreign policy elite in Washington focuses on the 8,000 deaths in a conflict in Syria – half a world away from the United States – more than 47,000 people have died in drug-related violence since 2006 in Mexico. A deeply troubled state as well as a demographic and economic giant on the United States’ southern border, Mexico will affect America’s destiny in coming decades more than any state or combination of states in the Middle East.”

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Author:Robert D. Kaplan
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