Robert_D._Kaplan

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Robert D. Kaplan Robert D. Kaplan Robert David Kaplan Born Residence Nationality Education Alma mater Occupation Employer Home town Religious beliefs Spouse(s) Children Parents June 23, 1952 (1952-06-23) New York, NY Stockbridge, Massachusetts[1] United States B.A., 1973 University of Connecticut journalist, author Atlantic Monthly Far Rockaway, Queens[2] Jewish Maria Cabral (a government official) Michael Anthony Philip Alexander Kaplan (truck driver) Phyllis Kaplan attended the University of Connecticut on a swimming scholarship and earned B.A. in English (1973). After graduating Kaplan applied unsuccessfully to several big-city newsrooms. He was a reporter for the Rutland Herald in Vermont before buying a one-way plane ticket to Tunisia. Over the next several years he lived in Israel, where he joined the Israeli army,[2] traveled and reported on Eastern Europe and the Middle East, lived for some time in Portugal and eventually settled down in Athens, Greece, where he met his Canadian[2] wife Maria Cabral. Kaplan is not related to journalist Fred Kaplan, with whom he is occasionally confused. He is also sometimes confused with neoconservative scholar Robert Kagan.[4] He lives with his wife Maria and their son in Massachusetts. Notes [3] Foreign correspondent career He traveled to Iraq to cover the Iran–Iraq War (1984). He first worked as a freelance foreign correspondent reporting on Eastern Europe and the Middle East, but slowly expanded his coverage to all regions ignored in the popular press. His first book, Surrender or Starve: The Wars Behind The Famine (1988) contended the famine in Ethiopia in the 1980s was more complex than just drought and Cold War US foreign policy, pointing the blame instead to the collectivization carried out by the Mengistu regime. Kaplan then went to Afghanistan to write about the guerrilla war against the Soviet Union for Reader’s Digest. Two years after writing Surrender or Starve, he wrote and published Soldiers of God: With the Mujahidin in Afghanistan (1990) in which he recounted his experiences during the Soviet-Afghan War. Robert David Kaplan (born 6 June 1952 in New York, New York) is an American journalist, currently a National Correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly. His writings have also been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Republic, The National Interest, and The Wall Street Journal, among other newspapers and publications, and his more controversial essays about the nature of U.S. power have spurred debate in academia, the media, and the highest levels of government. A frequent theme in his work is the reemergence of cultural and historical tensions temporarily suspended during the Cold War. Biography Kaplan grew up Far Rockaway in a Jewish family, son of the late Philip Alexander Kaplan and Phyllis Quasha. Kaplan’s father, a former race track tout who drove trucks for the New York Daily News,[2] instilled in him a love of history from an early age. He 1 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Robert D. Kaplan millennium were recorded in Eastward to Tartary. Also written in 2000 was another controversial essay entitled "the Dangers of Peace" in which he described an America falling under peacetime’s "numbing and corrosive illusion". Writing in the New York Times, reviewer Richard Bernstein notes that Kaplan "conveys a historically informed tragic sense in recognizing humankind’s tendency toward a kind of slipshod, gooey, utopian and ultimately dangerous optimism."[5] Balkan Ghosts and The Arabists Neither of these books sold very well, and Kaplan’s third book, Balkan Ghosts, was rejected by several editors before being published in 1993. At first, it did not sell very well. But when the Yugoslav Wars broke out, President Bill Clinton was seen with Kaplan’s book tucked under his arm, and White House insiders and aides said the book convinced the President against intervention in Bosnia. Kaplan’s book contended that the conflicts in the Balkans were based on ancient hatreds beyond any outside control. Kaplan criticized the administration for using the book to justify non-intervention, but his popularity skyrocketed shortly thereafter along with demand for his reporting. That same year, he also published The Arabists. Kaplan had not set out to influence U.S. foreign policy, but his work began to find a wide readership in high levels of government. Many felt that his reportage strengthened his arguments, as does his frequently-invoked historical perspective. In 1994 and 1995 he set out to travel from West Africa to Turkey, Central Asia to Iran, and India to Southeast Asia and published a travelogue about his journey in The Ends of the Earth. He then traveled across his home country and North America and wrote An Empire Wilderness, published in 1998. After 9/11 Demand for Kaplan’s unorthodox analysis became more popular after the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. In his book Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, published shortly after 9/11, Kaplan offered the opinion that political and business leaders should discard Christian/Jewish morality in public decision-making in favor of a pagan morality focused on the morality of the result rather than the morality of the means. He also published a pure travel book titled Mediterranean Winter. Kaplan’s book Imperial Grunts: The American Military On The Ground, was published in October 2005. In it, Kaplan tells of US Special Forces on the ground across the globe in Colombia, Mongolia, the Philippines, Afghanistan and Iraq. Kaplan predicts that the age of mass infantry warfare is probably over and has said that the conflict in Iraq caught the U.S. Army in between being a "dinosaur" and a "light and lethal force of the future." Kaplan sees large parts of the world where the US military is operating as "injun country" which must be civilized by the same methods used to subdue the American Frontier in the 1800s. He also praises the revival of Confederate military virtue in the US armed forces. Kaplan was embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq and wrote an often-cited report for the Atlantic Monthly entitled "Five Days in Fallujah" about the spring 2004 campaign. In June 2005 he wrote the cover story for the Atlantic Monthly titled "How We Would Fight China", which suggests the inevitability of a Cold War-type situation between the US and China. In October 2006 he wrote "When North Korea Falls" for the same magazine in which he examines the prospect of North "The Coming Anarchy" His article "The Coming Anarchy" published in the Atlantic Monthly in February 1994 about how population increase, urbanization, and resource depletion are undermining fragile governments across the developing world and represent a threat to the developed world was hotly debated and widely translated. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman called Kaplan one of the "most widely read" authors defining the post-Cold War era,[2] along with Francis Fukuyama, Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington, and Yale Professor Paul Kennedy. Kaplan published the article and other essays in a book with the same title in 2000, which also included the controversial article Was Democracy Just A Moment?, and his travels through the Balkans, Turkey, the Caucasus, and the Middle East at the turn of the 2 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Korea’s collapse and the effect on the balance of power in Asia in favor of China. In addition to his journalism, Kaplan has been a consultant to the U.S. Army’s Special Forces, the United States Marines, and the United States Air Force. He has lectured at military war colleges, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, major universities, the CIA, and business forums, and has appeared on PBS, NPR, C-Span, and Fox News. He is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. In 2001 he briefed President Bush. He is the recipient of the 2001 Greenway-Winship Award for Excellence in international reporting. In 2002, he was awarded the United States State Department Distinguished Public Service Award. From 2006 to 2008 Kaplan was the Class of 1960 Distinguished Visiting Professor in National Security at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis.[6] He is currently a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security. Kaplan’s next book reflects his continuing interest and focus on the US Armed Forces. Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground was published in September 2007 by Random House. Robert D. Kaplan as cannon fodder--lives whose passing they dutifully mourn on their side and gleefully celebrate on the others."-- Tom Bissell[7] "Kaplan, over his career, appears to have become someone who is too fond of war. "It could be said," he has written, "that occasional small wars and occupations are good for us." He’s expanded on this topic: those "occasional wars" are "evidence of humanity." This is because "peaceful times are also superficial times."" -- David Lipsky[2] "As a piece of travel literature alone, ’The Ends of the Earth’ succeeds in providing a tangible sense of the sweaty, smelly reality of many exotic points on the map, with glimpses of their cruelty but also, occasionally, of beauty and human kindness. As a piece of analysis, it is deeply thought-provoking." -Francis Fukuyama "If Kaplan is a romantic, he is also a populist and a reactionary." -- Andrew J. Bacevich "Mr. Kaplan is the first traveler to take us on a journey to the jagged places where these tectonic plates meet, and his argument-that our future is being shaped far away ’at the ends of the earth’--makes his travelogue pertinent and compelling reading." -- Michael Ignatieff "This is breathtaking. Here is a serious writer in 2005 admiring the Indian wars, which in their brutality brought about the end of an entire American civilization." -David Rieff[8]} "Kaplan offers no vision, no strategy, nothing beyond accurate descriptions of the current state of warfare inside the Gap. He is the global war on terror’s best sideline reporter, but he’s the wrong source to cite on how to run the entire franchise." -- Thomas P. M. Barnett "The dire conclusion about coming anarchy seems overdrawn... Still, Mr. Kaplan’s bold assertions do concentrate the mind. ’The Coming Anarchy’ is informed by a rock-solid, unwavering realism and an utter absence of sentimentality." -- Richard Bernstein[5] "This remarkable man has found himself a large and sometimes powerful audience, and he is determined to convey some very practical, big-picture warnings to the more efficacious members of that audience before they get us all into terrible trouble. We should pay close attention, and hope for a reduced accident rate." -- Adam Garfinkle[9] "Because he specializes in exploring the San Andreas faults of the modern geopolitical Praise and criticism of Kaplan "Whether Kaplan draws the right conclusions from his travels, he certainly reports authoritatively on conditions in far-flung places. He has been everywhere... Certainly, Kaplan makes fresh observations." -- Rex Roberts "Kaplan is worse than a bad writer or thinker. He is a dangerous writer made more dangerous by the fact that he is taken seriously. Even his most hostile reviews have treated him as though his arguments are still within the pale. His worldview is, in many ways, that of the current G. W. Bush administration, and shared by many Americans. These are people for whom the wider world means only acrimony to be dismissed and obstacles to be knocked over. People who care not for `exquisite subtleties’ when it comes to matters of force and occupation. People who do not think in human terms, except insofar as those terms reflect their own beliefs, which are supremely correct. People, in short, who had no use for people, except 3 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia system, his books have had more influence on politicians and policy makers than most travel writing." -- Adam Garfinkle "Robert Kaplan is a vigorous reporter who thinks on his feet, often invoking historical perspective, but never staying still, always voraciously searching for the outlines of the future in his restless travelogues, as he calls his works." -- Suzannah Lessard “Kaplan places him where he himself would like to stand, with the realists of this world against the idealists, with the toughminded pagans of antiquity against the softminded strand of Christianity and its offshoots that too often shape modern thought and policy in the West.” - Donald Kagan[10] "Robert Kaplan set himself up to be the Kipling of the Empire that wasn’t." - Thomas Grossman "“[N]obody except the ultra-right wing jingoists like Kaplan is comparing atrocities by various countries. What honest people are saying, is that we should pay attention to our own crimes, and stop committing them."[11] "The just cause for people like Kaplan was yes, we did it, therefore it’s a just cause. You can read that in the Nazi archives too.”[12][13] - Noam Chomsky Robert D. Kaplan Press. ISBN 0028740238. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 0028740238/. , published September 1993 Robert D. Kaplan (2001-06). The The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia--A Journey to the Frontiers of Anarchy. Peter Smith Pub Inc. ISBN 084467124X. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 084467124X/The. , published February 1996, republished January 2000 Robert D. Kaplan (1999-09-07). An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America’s Future. Vintage. ISBN 0679776877. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 0679776877/. , published August 1998 Robert D. Kaplan (2001-02-13). The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War. Vintage. ISBN 037570759X. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 037570759X/. , published January 2000 Robert D. Kaplan (2001-10). Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus. Vintage. ISBN 0375705767. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 0375705767/. , published November 2000 Robert D. Kaplan (2003-01-07). Warrior Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos. Vintage. ISBN 0375726276. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 0375726276/Warrior. , published December 2001 Robert D. Kaplan (Spring 2003), "AMERICA AND THE TRAGIC LIMITS OF IMPERIALISM" (PDF), The Hedgehog Review, Institute for Advanced Studies in Culture, University of Virginia, 56–76, http://www.virginia.edu/iasc/ HHR_Archives/America/5.1GKaplan.pdf, retrieved on 2009-04-14, "The war on terrorism will be very much like the Cold War, or like fighting a disease pandemic. In a disease pandemic, you almost never eradicate the disease; you simply suppress it to such a level that it doesn’t really interfere with daily life in any given geographical space. We are not going to eliminate entirely all terrorist incidents and that should not be the measure of whether the war on terrorism is a success or not. If we can reduce these incidents substantially so that spectacular incidents are few and far between, the body politic in the United States and Europe and elsewhere will be able to move on." • • • • • Writings • Carta’s Guide to Israel and Jordan. Jerusalem, Israel: Carta. 1980. ISBN 9652200239. (pbk.) • Robert D. Kaplan (2003-11-11). Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea. Vintage. ISBN 1400034523. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 1400034523/. , published September 1988, reprinted November 2003 • Robert D. Kaplan (2001-11). Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Vintage. ISBN 1400030250. http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400030250/. (also titled Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan), published February 1990, reprinted November 2001 • Robert D. Kaplan (2005-05-01). Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History. Picador. ISBN 0312424930. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 0312424930/. , published February 1993, reprinted March 1994 • Robert D. Kaplan (1995-07-01). Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite. Free • 4 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia • Robert D. Kaplan (2004-02-03). Mediterranean Winter: The Pleasures of History and Landscape in Tunisia, Sicily, Dalmatia, and Greece. Random House. ISBN 037550804X. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 037550804X/. , published February 2004 • Robert D. Kaplan (2006-09-12). Imperial Grunts: On the Ground with the American Military, from Mongolia to the Philippines to Iraq and Beyond. Vintage. ISBN 1400034574. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 1400034574/. , published September 2005 • Robert D. Kaplan (2007-09-04). Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Military in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground. Random House. ISBN 1400061334. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 1400061334/. , published September 2007 Contributions to Other Editions • Gafni, Shlomo S.; A. van der Heyden (1980). Yael Lotan. ed. The glory of the Holy Land. Robert D. Kaplan (research). Jerusalem : Steimatzky’s Agency : Jerusalem Publishing House. • Joseph Conrad (2000-04-18). Lord Jim & Nostromo (Modern Library). Modern Library. ISBN 037575489X. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 037575489X/. , published April 2000 (Introduction, Modern Library 1400061334Edition) • Travelers Tales Turkey: True Stories. Travelers’ Tales. 2002-09-17. ISBN 1885211821. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 1885211821/. , published September 2002 (Contributor) • Nikolai Gogol (2003-12-30). Taras Bulba (Modern Library Classics). Modern Library. ISBN 0812971191. http://www.amazon.com/dp/ 0812971191/. , published April 2003 (Introduction, Modern Library Edition) Robert D. Kaplan concern of the condition of the road and an improperly reinstalled street drain during the sewer work last year." [2] ^ Lipsky, David (November 27, 2005), "Appropriating the Globe", The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/ 27/books/review/ 27lipsky.html?ex=1178078400&en=2931d7d8ea0d5 retrieved on 2009-04-14. [3] Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2009. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Michigan: Gale Group, 2009 (http://www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC). Entry updated: 03/03/2009. [4] Suellentrop, Chris (October 31, 2001), "No Relation No. 13: The Foreign Policy Edition", Slate, http://www.slate.com/id/ 2058000, retrieved on 2009-04-14. [5] ^ Bernstein, Richard (February 23, 2000), "The Coming Anarchy: Dashing Hopes of Global Harmony", The New York Times, http://www.nytimes.com/ library/books/022300kaplan-bookreview.html/, retrieved on 2007-05-21. [6] "New and Special Courses - Fall Semester 2007-2008", United States Naval Academy, http://www.usna.edu/ acdean/courses/newcourses081.html, retrieved on 2009-04-14, "FP485G Future Global Security Challenges...Taught by the Class of 1960 Distinguished Visiting Professor in National Security, Robert Kaplan, this course will address issues critical to the future of US national security in an era of fierce competition for resources, rising Asian powers, radicalism and asymmetric threats. Questions regarding the role of the US in promoting international stability, the transformation of the military to meet new threats, and the ability of the US to protect its interests and promote its values will be discussed. Prereq: FP210." [7] Bissell, Tom (Summer 2006), "Euphorias [1] Denise A. Schneyer, Secretary (June 6, of Perrier: The Case Against Robert D. 2006), "MINUTES OF MEETING", Kaplan]", Virginia Quarterly Review, Stockbridge, Massachusetts: Water and http://www.vqronline.org/articles/2006/ Sewer Commission, http://coolsites.bz/ summer/bissell-euphoria-perrier/, stockbridge/StockbridgeMA_BComm/ retrieved on 2009-04-14, "Kaplan is sewerminutes/ worse than a bad writer or thinker. He is ___Minutes%3B%20June%206,%202006%3B%202-8-2007/ a dangerous writer made ever more content.txt, retrieved on 2009-04-14, dangerous by the fact that he is taken "The Town received a letter from Maria seriously. Even his most hostile reviews Cabral and Robert Kaplan ... expressing have treated him as though his References 5 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Robert D. Kaplan arguments are still within the pale. His incomprehensible, that we should keep worldview is, in many ways, that of the to the elementary moral level of the current administration, and shared by gospels. We should pay attention to our many Americans. These are people for own crimes and stop committing them. whom the wider world means only This would be true even if we were acrimony to be dismissed and obstacles killing one person, OK?" to be knocked over. People who care not [12] "Hot Type on the Middle East, Noam for “exquisite subtleties” when it comes Chomsky interviewed by Evan Solomon", to matters of force and occupation. Dissident Voice, the Noam Chomsky People who do not think in human terms, Website, April 16, 2002, except insofar as those terms reflect http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/ their own beliefs, which are supremely 20020416.htm, retrieved on 2009-04-14, correct. People, in short, who had no use "The just cause for people like Kaplan for people, except as cannon was yes, we did it, therefore it’s a just fodder—lives whose passing they cause. You can read that in the Nazi dutifully mourn on their side and archives too." gleefully celebrate on the others. [13] Noam Chomsky Interview on CBC (Part 1 “Kaplan is America’s Kipling,” reads one of 2) at YouTube of Imperial Grunts’s blurbs. This is to slander Kipling, who nevertheless did write one Kaplanesque sentence: “All the • Coming Anarchy - a leading foreign affairs people like us are We, / And every one blog inspired by the Kaplan’s ideas. else is They.”" • Robert Kaplan interview, The American [8] "The Cowboy Culture", The New Enterprise, January/February 2006. Republic online, October 6th, 2005, • "Robert Kaplan: Empire Without http://www.powells.com/review/ Apologies" by Andrew J. Bacevich, The 2005_10_06.html, retrieved on Nation Magazine, September 26, 2005 2009-04-14, "This is breathtaking. Here • Besant, Alexander (February 2008), is a serious writer in 2005 admiring the "Contemporary Issues of American Indian wars, which in their brutality National Security", Yale Journal of brought about the end of an entire International Affairs, archived from the American civilization." Review of original on Mar 06, 2008, Imperial Grunts: The American Military http://web.archive.org/web/ on the Ground 20080306160237/www.yjia.org/files/07-[9] Garfinkle, Adam “The Sky is Always kaplan.pdf, retrieved on 2009-04-13. Falling”, The New York Times, 19 March, • "Video: Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: 2000. Accessed 21 May, 2007. The American Military in the Air, at Sea, [10] Kagan, Donald (February 3, 2002), and on the Ground", FPRI BookTalk, "Saber Rattling for Democracy", The Foreign Policy Research Institute, New York Times, http://www.fpri.org/multimedia/ http://query.nytimes.com/gst/ 20070911.kaplan.html. fullpage.html?res=9D0DE4D71E3BF930A35751C0A9649C8B63&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all, • "Robert D. Kaplan (Class of 1960 National retrieved on 2007-07-02. Security Chair) - Faculty BIO", United [11] Solomon, Evan; Noam Chomsky (April States Naval Academy, 16, 2002), "Hot Type Transcript: Noam http://www.usna.edu/PoliSci/FacultyBIOs/ Chomsky "9-11" Interview April 16, Kaplan.htm, retrieved on 2009-04-14. 2002", archived from the original on Oct • Kaplan, Robert (2007-10-01), "Hog Pilots, 07, 2006, http://web.archive.org/web/ Blue Water Grunts: The American Military 20070203044327/www.cbc.ca/programs/ in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground", sites/hottype_chomsky911.html, Book TV, C-Span, http://www.booktv.org/ retrieved on 2009-04-14, "Kaplan can’t program.aspx?ProgramId=8618&SectionName=, understand trivialities. The triviality here retrieved on 2009-04-14. C-span interview is that nobody except the ultra right wing jingoists like Kaplan are comparing atrocities by various countries. What honest people are saying seems to be External links 6 From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Robert D. Kaplan Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_D._Kaplan" Categories: American travel writers, Living people, 1952 births, People from New York City, People from Queens, University of Connecticut alumni, American Jews, Jewish American writers, Israeli soldiers, American expatriates in Greece, American expatriates in Portugal, American expatriates in Israel, American foreign policy writers, United States Naval Academy faculty This page was last modified on 8 May 2009, at 09:46 (UTC). All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details.) Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a U.S. registered 501(c)(3) taxdeductible nonprofit charity. Privacy policy About Wikipedia Disclaimers 7