Robert D. Kaplan
Robert D. Kaplan's career started at a small U.S.
newspaper, but he soon grew frustrated with the work and began writing on
his own, as an overseas stringer and freelancer. Eight years later his
byline finally appeared in a major national magazine, and soon after he
began writing regularly for The Atlantic Monthly.
Now a correspondent for The Atlantic, Kaplan has reported on assignment for the magazine from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and the United States. He has been prolific in recent years. His books include Imperial Grunts (2005), Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus (2000), The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War (2000), An Empire Wilderness: Travels Into America's Future (1998), The Ends of the Earth (1995), The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite (1993), and Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (1993), all of which grew out of Atlantic articles.
Kaplan has been writing as a foreign correspondent for more than twenty years, and his two-decades' worth of traveling and reporting experience—much of which he has accumulated in the world's most difficult and dangerous places— inform even his briefest contributions. His writing always combines on-the-ground reporting, rich academic context, a deep regard for the past, and an abiding concern for the future.
Recent articles by Robert D. Kaplan
Time for Decisiveness on Afghanistan
Obama needs to get behind his chosen general and put the spectacle of indecisiveness behind him. Otherwise, in the coming months, the Democrats may be seen as having lost a war. And if that happens, not even the Nobel Peace Prize will rescue his reputation.
What Obama's Nobel Really Means
A growing contingent wants Obama to lead a post-nationalist global society. If he does things right, the U.S. could become history's first truly international nation.
Why I Love Al Jazeera
The Arab TV channel is visually stunning, exudes hustle, and covers the globe like no one else. Just beware of its insidious despotism.
Time to Get Real About World Order
Establishing stability—and eventually democracy—in the world's most troubled countries requires letting go of starry-eyed notions about self-government in the near term.
The Bear Still Has Teeth
As the Obama administration's recent scrapping of plans for an Eastern European missile defense system makes clear, while Poland and the Czech Republic may be our allies, it is mighty Russia to whom we are wise to defer.
Buddha’s Savage Peace
Sri Lanka’s civil war is finally over. Can Buddhists and Hindus coexist there once again?
Losing Patience with Israel
More than democracy, Washington wants stability in the Middle East. That means leaning against the interests of the Jewish state.
The Wrong Man for the Job
Obama's new ambassador to Iraq is a star diplomat—but has no experience in the Arab world. Why Christopher Hill is a bad choice.
Be Like Bush
Finesse alone won't get Obama through the challenges ahead. He needs to become more like his predecessor.
To Catch a Tiger
Sri Lanka's brutal suppression of the Tamil Tigers offers an object lesson in how to defeat an insurgency. Or does it?
Obama Cannot Afford to Get Iran Wrong
His instincts so far have been pitch-perfect.
The Lessons of China and Iran
Uighur uprisings in China and political protests in Iran have dispelled the conventional wisdom about both countries. What should we expect next? Get ready for non-stop turbulence.
Obama Shines in Cairo
In a brilliant speech, Obama extended the American dream to include the world's Muslims and put Iran on the defensive.
Iran, Iraq, North Korea: What Now?
We may be about to witness the complete evaporation of the axis of evil.
Obama the Untested
A look ahead to the crises—from Russian power plays to Israeli military strikes—that could really show us what the president is made of.
North Korea, the Next Iraq?
The hazards of overreacting to Kim Jong Il's nuclear tests.
Pakistan’s Fatal Shore
The port of Gwadar could be the next Dubai. Or it could be a deadly ethnic flash point in the most dangerous country on Earth.
Talking to the Taliban
Why the Pakistan intelligence agency's close ties with the Taliban should not be condemned.
Do the Palestinians Really Want a State?
Why landlessness may be its own source of power.
India’s New Face
Meet the pro-business anti-Muslim extremist who could one day be the leader of the world’s largest democracy.
The Shrinking Superpower
Why the recession could spell the end of American dominance.
Saving Afghanistan
Even though the situation on the ground is better than most people think, the war is on track to be the longest in U.S. history. Americans, says one Army general, need to show "strategic patience."
Hillary's Road Trip
The itinerary for Clinton's first overseas trip as Secretary of State signals that Asia is the strategic focal point of this century.
Iran's Postmodern Beast in Gaza
"Israel has, in effect, launched the war on the Iranian empire that President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney, in particular, can only have contemplated."
Fear Hath No Shelf-Life: Our Torture Dilemma
"While torture is bad, the thoroughly humane approach, contrary to our desires, has its limits."
Obama's Afghanistan Hurdles
Robert D. Kaplan on how Obama can improve the situation in Afghanistan so as to free himself up for pressing economic matters.
Those Greek Riots
"Pay close attention to Greece; at a time of world-wide economic upheaval, it might eerily presage disturbances elsewhere in 2009"
Obama's Foreign Policy: Buying in at the Bottom
"George W. Bush ... has poised America for a diplomatic rebound, which the next administration will get the credit for carrying out."
Behind Mumbai
Robert D. Kaplan offers insight into the Hindu-Muslim tensions festering within India.
Asymmetry at Sea
What war with Iran in the Gulf could be like.
Iraq: The Counterfactual Game
Was the invasion worth it?
Lifting the Bamboo Curtain
As China and India vie for power and influence, Burma has become a strategic battleground. Four Americans with deep ties to this fractured, resource-rich country illuminate its current troubles, and what the U.S. should do to shape its future.
Behind the Indian Embassy Bombing
"You would think that the Bush administration would be coaching the Karzai government not to antagonize Pakistan unnecessarily by cozying up to India."
What Rumsfeld Got Right
How Donald Rumsfeld remade the U.S. military for a more uncertain world [Web only: Video: "Donald Rumsfeld—The Change Agent"]
No Greater Honor
Robert D. Kaplan comments on what it takes to earn the highest award the military can bestow—and why the public fails to appreciate its worth.
Oh! Kolkata!
Calcutta has been renamed. Now, with investment on the rise, tech companies moving in, and a growing middle class, can it be reborn? [Web only: Slideshow: "The Streets of Kolkata"]
Waterworld
Is Bangladesh going under?
The Next Frontier
The creation of AFRICOM, the U.S. military's new Africa Command, offers the hope of steady, low-key progress in the war on terror.
It's the Tribes, Stupid!
Quelling anarchy in Iraq, Pakistan, and elsewhere, will require building on tribal loyalties—not imposing democracy from the top down.
America’s Elegant Decline
Hulls in the water could soon displace boots on the ground as the most important military catchphrase of our time. But our Navy is stretched thin. How we manage dwindling naval resources will go a long way toward determining our future standing in the world.
Burma’s Next Chapter
Will the collapse of Burma’s oppressive junta bring democracy or ethnic turmoil?
Earth, Fire, Water
Revisiting the Armenian genocide.
The Navy’s New Flat-Earth Strategy
The U.S. unveils a collaborative plan for policing the seas.
Bottom-Up Progress
Robert D. Kaplan gives credence to the testimony of Petraeus and Crocker and warns against a hasty withdrawal from Iraq.
Military Air
The future of economy class?
Outsourcing Conflict
For all the notoriety of private military contractors like Blackwater, they represent an important aspect of the future of war. And that future is not all bad.
The Plane That Would Bomb Iran
Inside the cockpit and culture of the B-2, whose pilots may carry the greatest responsibility in the U.S. military today [Web only: Slideshow: "Spirit in the Sky."]
Rereading Vietnam
The Vietnam analogy looms ever larger in the debate over Iraq, but the U.S. military has memories of that conflict that the public doesn't.
Foreign Policy: Munich Versus Vietnam
"At the moment, the Vietnam analogy has the upper-hand. But don't count Munich out."
Smoke and Mirrors
What the State Department is not accomplishing in Iraq.
Was the Iraq Study Group Report Really a Flop?
For a document that was supposedly "dead-on-arrival," it's certainly having a strong influence.
A Historian For Our Time
Thucydides may have been more trustworthy, but Herodotus would have been more fun to share a wineskin with—and is a far better guide to the present.
The Iraq Study Group
A reaction
That's Character
The dignity of Ford's post-presidency.
We Can't Just Withdraw
Iraq may be closer to an explosion of genocide than we know.
When North Korea Falls
The furor over Kim Jong Il’s missile tests and nuclear brinksmanship obscures the real threat: the prospect of North Korea’s catastrophic collapse. How the regime ends could determine the balance of power in Asia for decades. The likely winner? China.
Hunting the Taliban in Las Vegas
In trailers just minutes away from the slot machines, Air Force pilots control Predators over Iraq and Afghanistan. A case study in the marvels—and limits—of modern military technology.
Colonel Cross of the Gurkhas
In the mountains of strife-torn Nepal, some lessons about modern warfare from a British throwback.
The Coming Normalcy?
Whatever else the American occupation of Iraq may be, it serves as a laboratory for ideas about how to wring stability out of chaos—the great foreign-policy challenge of the twenty-first century.
Imperial Grunts
With the Army Special Forces in the Philippines and Afghanistan—laboratories of counterinsurgency.
How We Would Fight China
The Middle East is just a blip. The American military contest with China in the Pacific will define the twenty-first century. And China will be a more formidable adversary than Russia ever was.
America's African Rifles
"Every time you fire, a bad guy should bleed!" At the heart of the U.S. military's imperial venture is the training of indigenous troops around the world—and at the heart of that training is the rifle range. A report from Niger.
At the Gates of Brussels
If Recep Tayyip Erdogan gets his way, Turkey will be more Islamic and Europe will be more Turkish. Both would be good news.
The Media and the Military
American reporters would shudder to think that they harbor class prejudice—but they do.
Five Days in Fallujah
Our correspondent accompanied the first unit of Marines to assault Fallujah after the murder and mutilation last April of four American civilians.
How Do I Look?
Body armor is a must in some lines of work, and it gives "fashion plate" a whole new meaning.
The Man Who Would Be Khan
A new breed of American soldier—call him the soldier-diplomat—has come into being since the end of the Cold War. Meet the colonel who was our man in Mongolia, an officer who probably wielded more local influence than many Mongol rulers of yore.
The Holy Mountain
Intimations of the geopolitical future in a place where time stands still.
Supremacy by Stealth
It is a cliché these days to observe that the United States now possesses a global empire—different from Britain's and Rome's but an empire nonetheless. It is time to move beyond a statement of the obvious. Our recent effort in Iraq, with its large-scale mobilization of troops and immense concentration of risk, is not indicative of how we will want to act in the future. So how should we operate on a tactical level to manage an unruly world? What are the rules and what are the tools?
Euphorias of Hatred
The grim lessons of a novel by Gogol.
A Tale of Two Colonies
Our correspondent travels to Yemen and Eritrea, and finds that the war on terrorism is forcing U.S. involvement with the one country's tribal turbulence and the other's obsessive fear of chaos.
A Post-Saddam Scenario
Iraq could become America's primary staging ground in the Middle East. And the greatest beneficial effect could come next door, in Iran.
The World in 2005
Hidden in plain sight.
Looking the World in the Eye
Samuel Huntington is a mild-mannered man whose sharp opinions—about the collision of Islam and the West, about the role of the military in a liberal society, about what separates countries that work from countries that don't—have proved to be as prescient as they have been controversial. Huntington has been ridiculed and vilified, but in the decades ahead his view of the world will be the way it really looks.
Roman Africa
The economic and political fault lines that separated Carthage and Numidia are the ones that separate Tunisia and Algeria—and the Romans drew them.
Where Europe Vanishes
Civilizations have collided in the Caucasus Mountains since the dawn of history, and the region's dozens of ethnic groups have been noted for "obstinacy and ferocity" since ancient times. Stalin was born in these mountains, and it was also here that the Soviet empire began to crumble. The story of the Republic of Georgia illustrates that the peoples of the Caucasus may prove as incapable of self-rule as they were resistant to rule by outsiders.
The Lawless Frontier
The tribal lands of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border reveal the future of conflict in the Subcontinent, along with the dark side of globalization.
Israel Now
The author, a former resident of Israel, finds that raw power and economic forces are redrawing the map of the Middle East, and peace talks will merely formalize the emerging reality.
Was Democracy Just a Moment?
The global triumph of democracy was to be the glorious climax of the American Century. But democracy may not be the system that will best serve the world—or even the one that will prevail in places that now consider themselves bastions of freedom.
A Bazaari's World
To understand Iran—and perhaps even the future of other parts of the Islamic world—one must understand a man like Mohsen Rafiqdoost.
The Coming Anarchy
How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet.
Syria: Identity Crisis
Hafez-al Assad has so far prevented the Balkanization of his country, but he can't last forever.
Tales From the Bazaar
As individuals, few American diplomats have been as anonymous as the members of the group known as Arabists. And yet as a group, no cadre of diplomats has aroused more suspicion than the Arab experts have. Arabists are frequently accused of romanticism, of having "gone native"—charges brought with a special vehemence as a result of the recent Gulf War and the events leading up to it. Who are the Arabists? Where did they come from? Do they deserve our confidence?
Sons of Devils
In a turbulent region the stateless Kurds play the role of spoiler.
Sudan: A Microcosm of Africa's Ills
Hostile neighbors and militant rebels imperil Khartoum's new regime.