Robert D. Kaplan

Robert D. Kaplan is the chief geopolitical analyst at Stratfor and a national correspondent for The Atlantic. He is the author, most recently, of The Revenge of Geography.

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

Issue January/February 2007

A Historian For Our Time

Thucydides may have been the more trustworthy historian, but Herodotus would have been more fun to share a wineskin with—and is a better guide to the god-filled geopolitics of the current era.

That's Character

The dignity of Ford's post-presidency

The Iraq Study Group

A reaction

We Can't Just Withdraw

Iraq may be closer to an explosion of genocide than we know.

Issue October 2006

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

Issue September 2006

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

Issue May 2006

Colonel Cross of the Gurkhas

In the mountains of strife-torn Nepal, some lessons about modern warfare from a British throwback

Issue April 2006

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

Issue October 2005

Imperial Grunts

With the Army Special Forces in the Philippines and Afghanistan—laboratories of counterinsurgency

Issue June 2005

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

Issue April 2005

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

Issue December 2004

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

Issue November 2004

The Media and the Military

American reporters would shudder to think that they harbor class prejudice—but they do

Issue July/August 2004

Five Days in Fallujah

Since the beginning of spring Fallujah has been at the heart of U.S. military preoccupations in Iraq. Our correspondent accompanied the first unit of Marines to assault the city after the murder and mutilation last April of four American civilians. He filed this report

Issue May 2004

How Do I Look?

Body armor is a must in some lines of work, and it gives "fashion plate" a whole new meaning

Issue March 2004

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

Issue December 2003

The Holy Mountain

Intimations of the geopolitical future in a place where time stands still

Issue November 2003

The Story of a War

Issue July 2003

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?

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