Robert D. Kaplan

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.