The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate

This is a review of The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate [Hardcover]Mugged by GeographyAn old saw has it that a neo-conservative is a liberal mugged by reality. And, to paraphrase, a neo-conservative becomes a realist because he is mugged by geography. When? It happens soon after "the end of history" in the wake of 1989, rendering geography allegedly obsolete with a little help from modern technology. And so the airpower of Gulf War One putatively liberates us from the shackles of distance and terrain. But then the Balkans blow up and the Twin Towers collapse. We are back in Iraq after 9/11 and "it is surely wrong to suggest that physical terrain no longer mattered" (p. 22). Suddenly, geography is back with a vengeance. "Geography constitutes the very facts about international affairs that are so basic we take them for granted" (p. 30). And it is our permanent thing in the battle for power. "Geopolitics and the competition for `space' is eternal" (p. 88). The objective now is therefore "to have an appreciation of the map so that, counterintuitively, we need not always be bounded by it" (p. 29) for "I wish to argue for a modest acceptance of fate, secured ultimately in the facts of geography, in order to curb excessive zeal in foreign policy, a zeal of which I myself have been guilty" (p. 36).Thus, the newly minted realist develops a vision. A global "Mittleeuropa writ large" shall arise, "an ideal of tolerance and high civilization," according to a liberal dream of Friedrich List and Timothy Garton Ash (p. 11). This will be apparently a worldwide community of liberal democracy triumphant, not to be confused with an artificial construct like "the super-state of the European Union [which] has only abstract meaning to all but the elite" (p. 48). Meanwhile, the United States shall continue to fade. No longer a hegemonic hyperpower, America can continue to dominate regionally, but only if it "fixes" Mexico. Yet, even if it avoids a calamitous ending, it shall dissolve into a federation of gargantuan city-states, horizontally integrating the union and, thus, maintaining the balance of power in Eurasia. "A world balanced is a world free" (p. 346). Yet, "the world will be both duller and more dangerous than ever before" (p. 128). This, at least, is the latest geopolitical vision of the globetrotting declineist Robert Kaplan. An aspiring master of a "closed system" (p. 73), the author conceptualizes the globe as a single cohesive unit. It is a tempting simplification, but no, thanks, in particular if it leads to the self-fulfilling prophecy of America's collapse.Granted, all things human end. America will too. But its demise is far off. And so is Kaplan's prediction. Or is it? Ultimately, the Lord only knows. But, perhaps, others can divine with some accuracy. Thus, the author treats us to Mackinder, Mahan, Ratzel, Spykman, Strausz-Hupé, and a whole parade of other strategic giants long forgotten, undeservedly, because of the association of their grand schemes with sexy intellectual fashions of yore, now recognized as noxious determinism, militarism, racism, social Darwinism, and so forth. Yet, let us remember that "geography informs, rather than determines. Geography, therefore, is not synonymous with fatalism. But it is, like the distribution of economic and military power themselves, a major constraint on - and instigator of - the actions of states" (p. 29). Both globalization and localism are the context. They influence one another, while the former also triggers both "conflict and cooperation" (p. 102). Further Kaplan ably marries the awesome geostrategists with the encyclopedic scholars of comparative civilizations like Toynbee, Hodgson, Lewis, and Huntington. By clinging fast to his belief in the individual's free will, the author distills their teachings to stress that "of course, geography, history, and ethnic characteristics influence but do not determine future events" (p. 36).Qualifying his analysis thus, the modern-day neo-geostrategist makes a strong case for the utility of geopolitics in prognostication. This applies both to short and long term predictions. The former, of course, sound more plausible than the latter. It is the present and not the future that Kaplan describes when he paints vividly the menacing specter of global chaos as Third World countries, in Asia in particular, go nuclear and more nationalistic. They suffer from the "crisis of room" (p. 115). Thus, they are prone to push against each other. It is "a world of crowded megacities" and soon "a world of multidimensional brinkmanship" as nuclear crises proliferate profligately (p. 119). These areas already heave with underage males prone to radical ideologies and easily mobilized through the new media for transnational causes, religious (Islamic) fundamentalism in particular. In the future, Kaplan promises more of the same but even more intense. Asia will become a battlefield of the 21st century, just as Europe was until the mid-20th century. And "the megacity will be at the heart of twenty-first-century geography" (p. 120).The predictions are vividly grim: "A Eurasia and North Africa of vast, urban concentrations, overlapping missile ranges, and sensational global media will be one of constantly enraged crowds, fed by rumors and half-truth transported at the speed of light by satellite channels across the rimlands and heartland expanse, from one Third World city to another. Conversely, the crowd, empowered by social media like Twitter and Facebook, will also be fed by the very truth that autocratic rulers have denied it... In other words, politics in the mass media age will be more intense than anything we have experienced, because the past and future will have been obliterated... It is in the megacities of Eurasia principally where crowd psychology will have its greatest geopolitical impact" (p. 122-123). Crisis management will be a daily pursuit: "With civilizations densely packed one against the other, and the media a vehicle for constant verbal outrages, as well as for popular pressure from oppressed groups, the need for quiet behind-the-scenes diplomacy will never be greater. One crisis will flow into the next, and there will be perennial need for everyone to calm down" (p. 127).Operating with bold strokes of a global brush, Kaplan is predictably and overly kind to the mighty. China grapples eternally with the dilemma of core vs. periphery; so does Russia. Both are vulnerable to foreign attack. In this telling, Chinese and Russian imperialisms are mere functions of self-defense. All those foreign invasions warrant expansion. Really? How many invasions has "Russia" experienced in the past 800 years in comparison to, say, Poland? A hundred times fewer, Moscow has. "A legacy of depredations against Russia" should be taken with a generous grain of salt, except by the Mongol Empire, Napoleonic France, and the Third Reich (p. 150). That is three serious incursions in 800 years. The same osmotic logic prompts the author to embrace other aspects of imperial propaganda. In particular, Kaplan accepts everything that Moscow dubs "Russia," including historical places like Rus'. Ukraine anyone? It is pivotal only at present as an intended, and inevitable, victim of the reintegrating post-Soviet behemoth operating out of the Kremlin. "Now Russia, greatly reduced in size, tries to reconsolidate that same Heartland - Belarus, Ukraine, the Caucasus, and Central Asia" (p. 78). At least Kaplan got this reintegrating post-Soviet drive precisely right, despite the tendency to take at face value the standard trope of Russian imperialist apologetics.Unlike Stratfor's George Friedman, Kaplan strangely has no room for the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Is it because it would undermine his Moscow-centric paradigm of Eurasia? The Commonwealth is arguably European history's greatest secret and should be listed in the same breath with "the legacies of Prussian, Habsburg, and Byzantine and Ottoman rules [which] are still relevant" (p. 146). At least the author has a soft spot for the western post-Soviet zone. "The degree to which Central and Eastern Europe can develop a belt of prosperous and stable states from the ashes of communism will go a long way to protect Europe from Russia, and, in the process, convert the dream of a revived Mitteleuropa into reality: a dream that liberal intellectuals actually share with Mackinder" (p. 136).Yet, the Mittleeuropa does not really exist in the Mackinderian scheme of things. Someone must control "the geographic pivot of history" so the barbarians from the East would not pour into Europe. Too bad it has to be Russia, but better the Muscovite state than "the yellow peril." Albeit unattractive, Russia is thus indispensible in Mackinder's geopolitical imagination. "In short, strategically speaking, there is `no space' for Central Europe" (p. 9). It is an artificial construct, a springboard toward a Haushoferian Lebensraum or a causeway from Asia into Europe proper, which, in itself, is just an Asian peninsula jutting toward the Atlantic Ocean. What is Europe then? It is a map in flux. It is constructed on the basis of Charlemagne's ancient realm in the West, encompassing the post-Soviet zone and even North Africa, with power increasingly shifting to Berlin. The mighty rule.Yet, the dwarves of the world are not helpless. Kaplan rejects geographic determinism and fatalism with this valuable piece of advice: "A small state in the midst of adversaries, such as Israel, has to be particularly passive, or particularly aggressive, in order to survive. It is primarily a matter of geography" (p. 34). Anyone listening between Berlin and Moscow? The same applies to "the power of statelessness" (p. 126). According to the author, "small stateless groups are beneficiaries of this new age of technology" of death (p. 126-127).Still, one rejoices that this influential neo-conservative realist restores geography to its rightful place of permanence in the global calculus of power. "Geography offers a way to make at least some sense of it all" (p. xxii). And: "Just as geography is not an explanation for everything, neither is it a solution. Geography is merely the unchanging backdrop against which the battle of ideas plays out" (p. 177). Those who ignore geography do so at their peril. But the journalist qualifies this common sense observation by allowing that "the revenge of geography" is balanced by "the defeat of geography" by technology (transport and communication revolutions in particular). Geography remains relevant but not omnipotent. Thus, in this telling, geography serves as a reality check on our designs and actions, rather than a fatalistic determinant. Impersonal forces of geography rule. But they do not rule supreme.It is a pleasure to read Kaplan if only to revisit thinkers too long out of favor. Naturally, one cringes at some of his sentiments. For example, "there are things worse than communism," he deadpans, "and in Iraq we brought them about ourselves" (p. 21). This was not the author's preference of Stalin over Saddam, one should hope, but, rather, an awkwardly phrased confession of his appreciation for order over chaos. Yet, if chaos is counter-revolutionary, then it is better than any Communist totalitarian order which is an order of the prison, if not an outright order of the grave, as Angelo Codevilla would remark. This applies to all totalitarian regimes: For a Jew, chaos under Nazism meant hope of survival; order spelled death. One derives such knowledge from a posteriori inquiries, the essence of conservatism. We are delighted that Robert Kaplan's experience has been a corrective on his original liberal ideology. Now that the neo-geopolitician has been mugged by geography, perhaps he can be encouraged to delve into First Things, which are at the root of our understanding of the universe, including geography.Robert D. Kaplan, The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate (New York: Random House, 2012).Marek Jan Chodakiewicz

I read this book from two perspectives. First, decades ago, I was given a copy of the Air Force War College's textbook on geography as a basis for global military strategy and therefore became familiar at an early age with some of the concepts this book explores. Secondly, my family is bi-national American/Colombian, with family and businesses in both countries, and therefore is attuned with author Robert Kaplan's future vision of the USA evolving to become the center of an Anglo-Hispanic "supra-state."Although this book is supposedly focused in on the influence of geography in making and breaking nations, it is actually what we used to call "Social Studies" --- a combined analysis of all the factors of geography, demographics, history, economics, and politics that go into constituting a nation state.PART III. AMERICA'S DESTINY is the 25% of the book that most interested me. The other 75% is just OK, because it is an agglomeration of themes that students of world history and current events will probably already be familiar with. I didn't care for the lack of focus among so many topics. The chapter on Mexico starts with a rambling history of the Roman Empire followed up by a digression into our wars in Iran and Afghanistan, the history of China, India, Venice and the 18th Century mutiny of Indian troops against British Colonialists. However, those who aren't already familiar with these topics of World History 101 and are looking for the widest possible introduction to the geography, demographics, history, economics, politics, and current events in all parts of the world may enjoy Kaplan's "stream of consciousness" approach.Kaplan can also be a bit pedantic ("history and geography tell us") and prone to over-comparing motivations of current nation states to what their forebears did thousands of years ago ("Ancient history, too, offers up examples that cast doubt on whether Afghanistan and Iraq, in and of themselves, have doomed us"). He also says that he is "aware that I am on dangerous ground in raising geography on a pedestal" but actually covers so much material of a political, demographic, and economic nature that geography seems to be secondary. He might just as well have titled the book THE REVENGE OF (GEOGRAPHY, ECONOMICS, DEMOGRAPHICS, POLITICS, ETC. ETC.).My interest perked up in PART III AMERICA'S DESTINY. This is the part that Kaplan put his heart into, as he explains:==============As a visiting professor at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis some years back, I taught a course about future challenges in national security.==============In fact the book becomes especially interesting because Kaplan expands on the topic of "future challenges in national security" to include the future composition of our country in the combination of ALL factors that make us the nation we are, including geography, demographics, politics, and economics.Kaplan starts out by pointing out how fantastically blessed by geography we Americans are. We have 6% of the world's land area, but perhaps 25% to 30% of its arable farmland. Our entire country, except for the Desert Southwest, is drained by the Mississippi/Ohio/Missouri, and the Great Lakes/St. Lawrence. Our East Coast ports were perfectly positioned at the head of navigable waters to facilitate settlement, commerce, and the extension of political sovereignty for hundreds of miles inland. We ARE the center of the world's trading routes, with our East Coast facing Europe, our West Coast facing Asia, and our Gulf Coast facing Latin America. Kaplan perhaps overplays the idea that the United States is a superpower PRIMARILY because of our geography (the ambitions of our people also had a lot to do with making us what we are) but he makes it clear that no country has been favored by geography as we are.He then makes the point that in regard to the vision of what the United States wants to become as a nation, we are coming back to our starting point. Our country is named "The United States of AMERICA" (not NORTH AMERICA) because it wasn't until around 1900 that the word "America" stopped being used as a synonym for "Western Hemisphere" and the words NORTH AMERICA and SOUTH AMERICA began to be used to distinguish the continents. As late as the 1870s some prominent Americans continued to believe that the United States was destined to become coextensive with the entire hemisphere.Something of the reverse has actually happened. Instead of Anglo Americans going forth to colonize Latin America and incorporating it into the United States, tens of millions of Latin Americans have been attracted by our free political system and vibrant economy to come live among us. Kaplan makes a point that I (an Anglo American) and my Latin American family talk about almost every day, that the elderly Anglo population is passing, and America is being repopulated by a younger, more Latin American generation.Kaplan thinks, as I do, that we're on our way to becoming an even more powerful Anglo/Hispanic Superpower whose economic perimeter includes not only Canada but also Mexico, the Caribbean, Central America, and much or even all of South America. He thinks our population will be browner, but we'll still be Americans living under the same Constitution, and a rising prosperity in Latin America will boost our own prosperity (I see this happening in the microcosm of my own family).My takeaway from this book is that Mexico and Latin America REALLY are vital to our own well being. Before reading this book I leaned toward the view that America's free trade partnership shouldn't extend beyond Canada. Now I am wondering whether free trade with Mexico and most of the rest of Latin America may not after all be necessary for our security. These free trade agreements have put millions of Americans out of work, but they are accomplishing their purpose of helping to stabilize fragile countries like Colombia and Mexico. Eventually the trade agreements may serve their full purpose by boosting American exports, and therefore restoring employment, to the newly prosperous countries of Latin America.You'll find this book a worthwhile read if:1. You're looking for an education in Global Social Studies 101 (i.e. a basic literacy in global geography, demographics, politics, military strategic theory past and present, and current events). None of these subjects is covered deeply, but the reader will become away conversant in just about every factor that influences the world today.2. You're interested in the part of the book I was, which is to glimpse ahead into the USA's future.3. You want to acquire a more open-minded view of the cost/benefit analysis of U.S. free trade with Mexico and Latin America. It led me to wonder if perhaps the USA should include Mexico in its continental integration perimeter to the same degree as Canada (an objective that Mexico's former President asked for).

Currently I am reading the Part II of this book (India's Geographical Dilemma) and throughout until now, I have found this book quite informatively amazing. This one by Robert D Kaplan gives you a clear map of understanding the world view through the historical as well as current map of the nations and the world as a whole. I strongly recommend everyone to go thorough this book and advance your understanding on your geopolitical knowledge.Thank you #theHindu to let me know about this amazing narrator of geopolitics of today's world.

La lettura geografica del mondo e di come la componente ambientale possa condizionare, non determinare, la strategia nazionale e gli equilibri e disequilibri nell’ordine mondiale.

El libro es interesante y se deja leer, especialmente a partir del primer tercio, el cual es bastante aburrido y repetitivo. Cuando los capítulos comienzan a dedicarse a áreas concretas el interés crece, aunque en demasiadas ocasiones el autor se deja llevar por afirmaciones algo carentes de base.Otro punto negativo a destacar es su excesivo amor a Estados Unidos (su país), ya que el autor entiende que allí dónde éste vive un retroceso de su influencia puede haber amenazas a la estabilidad y la democracia. De hecho en varias partes del libro se expresa con cierto pesimismo sobre el presente y futuro de Estados Unidos, dando casi siempre como resultado (para él) una amenaza para la convivencia.Otro sesgo claro es su desprecio a América Latina, región que no existe para él y que apenas es nombrada en el libro. De hecho es la zona del planeta en la que menos tiempo repara, dedicándole alguna linea, no más. Ya que hablamos de geografía, podría haber comentado el porqué del gran tamaño de Brasil (Amazonía y Andes impedían al Imperio Español expandirse a través de sus colonias, siendo el Río Amazonas la clave para Portugal); cómo los Incas desarrollaron grandes comunicaciones y terrazas en los Andes o el gran desarollo comercial de los aztecas y mayas...o la cercanía genética de algunas tribus en Chile con otras de Polinesia, algo único en el continente.Por último, su ignorancia sobre Europa: ¿en serio puede hablarse de posible amenaza para la estabilidad de Europa la unificación alemana y su recuperación económica? creo que hay una variable que el autor apenas comenta pero que modifica todo lo dicho por él en el capitulo dedicado al Viejo Continente y sobre las relaciones Alemania - Europa de Este: La Unión Europea.Por supuesto hay un elemento que no destaca y que condiciona bastante la importancia de la geografía en sus análisis: la cultura, pero eso ciertamente ameritaría otro libro.En todo caso, es un libro que se recomienda leer como afición por las relaciones internacionales y mejora del inglés. Ha cosechado muchas críticas positivas en Estados Unidos, aunque creo que precisamente allí por su particular ausencia de conocimientos de Europa y América Latina, así como por su preocupación ante el desarrollo de China y la siempre lenta integración europea.Otro punto negativo, es el último capitulo, abiertamente xenófobo contra México, al considerar la migración mexicana como uno de los mayores enemigos para la cultura de EUA y su futuro...

I study geography and I found that this book is very good to gettinknow the problems arround the world and more....

Jeder der sich für Geopolitik interessiert und wissen möchte welchen einfluss die Geographischen gegebenheiten auf diese haben sollte dieses Buch lesen. Trotz der doch recht "trockenen" Materie ist dieses Buch sehr interessant geschrieben und lässt sich sehr gut lesen. Da es momentan nur in Englisch verfügbar ist und es doch einen gehoberen Anspruch verfolgt sollte man schon ein bisschen mehr drauf haben als simples Schulenglisch, denn sonst kann ich mir vorstellen das man alle 2min ein Wörterbuch in der Hand hält.Zu Robert Kaplan muss man selbst wohl eher wenige Worte verlieren. Experte für Geopolitik, Auslands Korrespondent & Author für The Atlantic Magazine und Foreign Affairs und er ist Chief Geopolitical Analyst bei Stratfor. Seine Arbeit wird unter anderem von Zeitungen wie der New York Times und von Nachrichtensender wie CNN publiziert. Also der Mann weiß also wovon er spricht.Ich kann zudem Udo von Massenbach da nur zustimmen, dass dieses Buch wirklich als Pflichtlektüre für alle Politiker im Bereich Außendiplomatie gelten sollte.