Book details

• The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century by Robert D Kaplan
• Random House 2018
• ISBN 978-0-8129-8661-7
• 304 pp

To the minders of the literary establishment, he peddles ‘boneheaded nonsense’ (David Rieff in The New Republic) or takes ‘intellectual shortcuts’ (David Lipsky in the New York Times Review of Books), yet Robert D Kaplan remains one of the most-widely read commentators of present times. His often polarising work – dismissed as ‘cheap pessimism’ by most in academia – has been mandatory reading for US foreign policy mandarins of Republican and Democrat administrations alike.

Mr Kaplan (66) attained sage-like status for predicting and documenting the rise of religious fundamentalism in Central Asia and for warning about its capacity to redefine warfare, long before the clash of civilisations became a global concern somewhere in 1996.

Braving the dangers of war, Mr Kaplan lived and worked amongst the Soldiers of God – Afghanistan’s mujahidin – as they battled, vanquished, and expelled the infidel Russian invaders in the 1980s. Returning a decade later, he finds a country in the iron grip of the Taliban and its legions of war orphans seeking shelter in military brotherhood, droning out childhood traumas by endless recital of prayers and observing piety in the face of deprivation.

In 1993, Mr Kaplan sealed his reputation as the most prominent of lay voices on US foreign policy with the publication of Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History which details the origins of the volatile nationalism that inflames passions in, arguably, Europe’s most unsettled of regions. Here, past grievances meet the vivid memories of medieval principalities standing firm against the Ottoman in a heady mix that bears little to no resemblance to present-day realities – yet still helps shape those realities.

In his book, Mr Kaplan notes that the Greek patriot who proclaims that there is but one Macedonia which belongs to Greece – and not any former Yugoslav republic – merely tries to defend the heritage of Alexander the Great against ‘rough and uncouth Slavic invaders’. That patriot has been conditioned to do so by a heritage that encompasses a thousand years or more of history.

Beware of Greeks

Mr Kaplan seems to dislike Greece and was, in fact, vindicated by the present plight of the country. Long before Greece’s day of reckoning arrived, he had unmasked Prime Minister Andres Papandreou as a crook and demagogue who cooked the books, shielded terrorist, and put the economy on the fast track to a meltdown. Greece, Mr Kaplan argues, is at heart a Balkan nation masquerading as a Western one.

What assures Robert D Kaplan’s enduring admiration in the higher spheres of successive US administrations is his increasingly obvious tendency to replace nuance with conviction. Thus, he considers the Balkan, unstable as it is, the most likely battleground of the twenty-first century; the stage where, once again, the cultural and religious differences between east and west will be fought out along a battle line stretching from Athens to Moscow, peopled on one side by Eastern Orthodox Christians and on the other by the Turks as renewed leaders of the House of Islam.

It is rather too easy and convenient to dismiss Mr Kaplan as a war-mongering alarmist whose conclusions and predictions rest, as they often do in spite of their accuracy, on false assumptions, simplistic interpretations, and a misreading of history. A more streamlined worldview, devoid of clutter, may indeed help discern broad trends and establish an approximation of a truth otherwise lost to the minutiae of history, the obscure points that academics usually argue over – ad infinitum.

It is the argument now deployed to justify the seemingly erratic behaviour of the current US president who has no time or patience for detail and refuses to understand any phenomenon that requires an explanation: if it looks, talks, and walk like a duck – well you do the math.

And such it is with Mr Kaplan and his rather one-sided approach to current events and a world in flux. His latest book – essentially a collection of essays previously published in The Atlantic – examines and justifies the prescient pessimism that has become a Kaplan hallmark.

The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First Century offers an entertaining read – for a prophesy. The tome’s leading article was commissioned, and released, by the Office of Net Assessment, a think tank within the US Department of Defence set up by Richard Nixon in 1973. In the essay, Mr Kaplan uses a large brush to paint a picture of the world in broad strokes.

European Craquelure

Europe is depicted as a craquelure of bickering states clinging to their decadent culture whilst fending off migrants. China’s Silk Road 2.0 initiative, once a fully operational conveyor belt, is expected to effectively reduce the old continent to an appendix of the Eurasian landmass or, more precisely, the Middle Kingdom.

Its influence waned both economically and politically, the United States is no longer able to set the global agenda, safeguard democracy, or impose its values. US gunboat diplomacy, backed up by formerly menacing carrier groups, no longer commands respect. The admirals and generals of the US fought and won the last war but struggle to identify, let alone meet, new challenges arriving from unexpected places that are impossible to pin down and bomb into submission or oblivion.

What is a superpower to do? Well, for starters: Get Real. Mr Kaplan recommends the makers of US foreign policy to let go of (most) lofty ideals and refocus on the actual nuts and bolts of diplomacy, gaining a new appreciation for geopolitics whilst nimbly navigating a pragmatic course and accepting the limitations, cultural or otherwise, of Western-style democracy.

In fact, Mr Kaplan proposes to ditch ethics from diplomacy altogether, arguing that a nation’s survival ‘sometimes’ leaves little room for private morality. Tomorrow’s leaders must do whatever it takes to ensure the country’s well-being and survival, paying no attention at all to ‘well-meaning intellectuals who, free of the burden of real-world responsibility, make choices in the abstract and treat morality as an inflexible absolute’.

After absorbing the above punch-on-the-nose, which intellectual dares raise his/her argument above the parapet of Mr Kaplan’s realpolitik? Unsurprisingly, the author is much enamoured of Henry Kissinger who elevated realism on foreign policy to an art form. Kissinger’s, as Churchill’s, is not a name to be used in vain.

Greatness to Come

Though the contours of the man’s greatness are clearly visible, his true size will only become clear in a generation or two. In the 1970s, Mr Kissinger of course scandalised liberals throughout the world by carrying – and wielding – a big stick, dispatching B52s to rain bombs on his foes whenever the Paris peace talks with the North Vietnamese did not quite progress as envisioned. He did, however, manage to execute a twin coup by extracting the US out of the Southeast Asian quagmire whilst almost simultaneously cosying up to the Chinese – archenemies not just of Moscow, but of pesky Hanoi as well.

It is to such diplomatic brilliance – powered by a ruthless dedication to pragmatism – that Mr Kaplan wants the US to return. Though the writer seem to consider the current US president out of his intellectual depth, Mr Kaplan does appear to admire his bluster as a crude form of realpolitik. That said, Mr Kaplan also recognises that realists may fail to understand the behaviour of nations not governed by like-minded leaders. He mentions Iran which has no rational reason to seek the destruction of Israel. Nor is it in Russia’s interest to threaten the Baltics or, indeed, Europe.

In one of the more memorable passages of his book, Mr Kaplan concludes that any student of William Shakespeare would have grasped the true character and intent of Vladimir Putin long before well-paid observers of global affairs caught on. It is most unlikely that President Trump studied, or even perused, Shakespeare before meeting his Russian colleague/foe/backer (chose one) in Helsinki – no doubt a lost opportunity.

The US and Europe should acquiesce to the inevitable tide of history which will see Asia (re)assert its dominance in world affairs. To Mr Kaplan the tide of history, unstoppable, is best represented by China’s new Silk Road which duplicates Marco Polo’s late thirteenth century travel route and aims to replicate the globalisation through commerce as practiced during the brief Pax Mongolica which unified large swaths of Eurasia under an enlightened administration that absorbed, protected, taxed, and connected diverse civilisations – delivering both stability and progress.

Isolationism Light

The role of the United States best suited for the coming world order is, according to Mr Kaplan, to slowly retreat from the world stage whilst maintaining its capacity for intervention on distant shores should vital interests be at stake. In essence, Mr Kaplan advocates a form of isolationism-light, a policy that recognises and accommodates the shift of geopolitical power towards Asia whilst ensuring that the US maintains an unchallenged position of pre-eminence in the New World.

What lacks in Mr Kaplan’s view of the world and its future is a more thorough understanding and better appreciation for Europe’s attempts at forging the unity – ‘an ever closer union’ – of an historically fractured and conflicted continent. Dismissing the European Union as a mere footnote to grand global affairs, and predicting its imminent demise, has of late become a fashionable pursuit in the Anglophone world. It denies reality and denotes delusion.

Though the US may have shifted the bulk of its attention towards Asia, the rest of the world increasingly looks to the EU for leadership as Pax Americana unravels. American observers, including Mr Kaplan, have difficulty in properly assessing, or taking seriously, any entity that does not field a great number of divisions. These, however, are no longer times of great conflagrations whose outcomes are decided by thunderous gunfire. Joseph Stalin may have been right in ignoring the pope for not commanding any divisions – that was then and this is now.

Hard Out, Soft In

Hard power is yesterday’s news. Soft power as expressed in economic, trade, and financial heft carries the day. Watch how the US fares in the trade war its president unleashed on Europe and China. If anything can indicate which way the world goes, and where power resides, this is it.

For a clue, take note of the July visit of EU president Donald Tusk and European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker to China. Though part of the annual EU-China summit, the trip gained in importance and relevance after President Trump’s decision to up the ante a few more notches and impose a whole range of additional charges on imported goods from China. What Mr Kaplan undoubtedly knows, but few in Washington seem to realise, is that the Silk Route allows for travel in both directions.

Cover photo: Robert D Kaplan, foreign policy wonk par excellence, delivering a lecture.

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© 2017 Photo by Central European University