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… More »
Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, in Washington, D.C. More
Robert D. Kaplan is a national correspondent for The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, in Washington, D.C. His latest book is Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power (Random House, 2010).
Kaplan is the best-selling author of twelve previous books on international affairs and travel, translated into many languages. In the 1980s, he was the first American writer to warn in print about a future war in the Balkans. Balkan Ghosts was chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the “best books” of 1993, and by Amazon.com as one of the best travel books of all time. The Arabists, The Ends of the Earth, An Empire Wilderness, Eastward to Tartary, and Warrior Politics were all chosen by The New York Times as “notable” books of the year.
Kaplan is a provocative essayist whose more than three-decades' worth of traveling and reporting experience, much of which he has accumulated in the world's most difficult and dangerous places, informs even his briefest contributions. His article, “The Coming Anarchy,” in the February 1994 Atlantic, about how population rises, urbanization, and resource depletion are undermining governments, was widely translated and debated. So was his December 1997 Atlantic cover story, “Was Democracy Just A Moment?” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls Kaplan among the four “most widely read” authors defining the post-Cold War (along with Francis Fukuyama, Harvard Prof. Samuel Huntington, and Yale Prof. Paul Kennedy).
In addition to his written work, Kaplan has been a consultant to the U. S. Army’s Special Forces Regiment, the U. S. Air Force, and the U. S. Marines. From 2006 to 2008, he was the Class of 1960 Distinguished Visiting Professor in National Security at the United States Naval Academy. He has also lectured at the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Pentagon's Joint Staff, major universities, the CIA, and business forums.
Iraq could become America's primary staging ground in the Middle East. And the greatest beneficial effect could come next door, in Iran… More »
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… More »
The economic and political fault lines that separated Carthage and Numidia are the ones that separate Tunisia and Algeria—and the Romans drew them… More »
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… More »
The tribal lands of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border reveal the future of conflict in the Subcontinent, along with the dark side of globalization… More »
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… More »
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.… More »
To understand Iran—and perhaps even the future of other parts of the Islamic world—one must understand a man like Mohsen Rafiqdoost… More »
How scarcity, crime, overpopulation, tribalism, and disease are rapidly destroying the social fabric of our planet… More »
Hafez-al Assad has so far prevented the Balkanization of his country, but he can't last forever… More »
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…… More »
In a turbulent region the stateless Kurds play the role of spoiler… More »
Hostile neighbors and militant rebels imperil Khartoum's new regime… More »
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