Rating: 
Summary: Because It's Gloomy Doesn't Mean It Won't Happen
Review: "The Coming Anarchy" is bound to stir controversy, so the reader obviously has to make up his or her own mind. From my perspective, Kaplan draws a line with abstract political theory on one end and the hard realities on the ground on the other. What he discovers is disturbing, but convincing. He understands political and historical theory enough to evaluate them intelligently, but is not a slave to them--especially when they reflect nothing that he sees in his extensive travels. The future world he paints is bleak: the dissolution of political borders, harsh environmental conditions worsening human conflict (a connection ignored in standard studies), and the dominance of human nature that historians often ignore in their search for clinical, abstract models for international relations. Nevertheless, the facts of history have proven him right more often than not and he thus deserves to be listened to. As important is his belief that such a history is probable but not inevitable. Humans have it in their power to get their acts together and prevent such calamity, and Kaplan maintains an odd respect for the world and some hope for its potential. "The Coming Anarchy" is a thought-provoking analysis that challenges conventional wisdom which, almost without exception, is never accurate in retrospect. Highly recommended.
Rating: 
Summary: Kaplan Declares That Government is Out of Style
Review: This book is essentially a collection of Robert Kaplan's "greatest hits," made up of his most noteworthy articles on world politics and observations from Atlantic Monthly. The recurring theme of the selected articles here is Kaplan's strategy of using unwavering realism to interpret political trends in the world's most crisis-prone areas. This especially applies to sub-Saharan Africa, which few American policy makers understand or care about, but for which Kaplan's expertise and insights are impressive. Kaplan's "realism" is based on straight common sense and his own extensive travels through these areas of the world. And while you may not agree with everything (or anything) Kaplan says, you must admit that his common sense approach to solving political problems in the third world is far above and beyond that of armchair politicians who have never visited the places whose futures they are deciding. Kaplan's realism is also above (and disconnected from) left- and right-wing politics, as he has plenty of criticism of both liberal and conservative viewpoints on world affairs. The weaknesses of this book include Kaplan's frequent tendency to get big-headed about how his predictions of world events come true. Granted, he accurately predicted the ethnic catastrophes in Yugoslavia and the Caucasus region long before most policy makers cared about those places, and Kaplan certainly deserves credit for this. But he should drop some of his self-aggrandizement and let the facts speak for themselves. Also, throughout the articles in this book, Kaplan is usually on his soapbox, making recommendations and grand observations in a way that indicate he has all the answers to the world's political problems, and all the world's leaders and policy makers have got it all wrong. This tendency is the main flaw in Kaplan's writing style, although he definitely knows what he's talking about. Once again he just needs to let the facts speak for themselves. The conclusion reached by this collection of articles is that the nation state concept, along with the governments that manage nation states, will soon be obsolete. This is because of the emergence of corporate power and globalization, and the growing number of third world citizens who do not have the cultural or political experience to handle democracy (which is not the cure to all the world's problems, as Kaplan convincingly demonstrates). Kaplan concludes that the world will develop into regional city-states and chiefdoms, much like in the middle ages, after the nation state concept runs its course. You may not agree with some of Kaplan's far-fetched predictions, but you have to admit that he's been right about these things before.
Rating:
Summary: Look out Chicken Little!
Review: First and foremost, this is one of the most thought provoking books I've read in a long time. Kaplan's coverage and commentaries of many overlooked third-world tragedies are some of the most excellent and informative I've ever read. Kaplan has been on the ground during some particularly nasty historical events, and has seen first hand the growing pattern of anarchy and global instability that is certainly a crisis to us all. I am a person of strong opinions who will give them freely, but I also know a superior argument when I hear one, and on more than one instance I was surprised to find myself siding with Kaplan on things that I would have found harsh or ridiculous a year ago. Unfortunately, Kaplan's excellent, intelligent commentary on global politics can often get bogged down when he takes to the soap-box. The closer you get to the end, the more the book disintegrates into a long-winded, cynical tirade that isn't very constructive at all. Kaplan's views on American domestic policy often seem a bit "out there" which isn't surprising considering he's an expatriate who's seen the worst the world can offer. He can really get self-indulgent when he starts pointing fingers. Also, praising the foreign policy of Henry Kissinger and to a lesser degree Richard Nixon is a little hard to take at times, and even seems to contradict many of his earlier statements. Kaplan does more than just point fingers fortunately, but his proposed solutions range from progressive to medieval. Kaplan obviously prefers "order" over liberty which will certainly be hard for many liberal readers to stomach. It was almost impossible for me. I do agree with him that some countries need thier basic needs, like food and shelter met before having democracy thrust upon them like a white elephant. Unfortunately, it's hard for a spoiled westerner like me to judge when factoring in wild cards like tribal hatreds and religious intolorance. Kaplan actually gives the Taliban credit for stabilizing Afghanistan, which they obviously did. Of course, Hitler did wonderful things for Germany if you're willing to overlook that whole Holocaust thing. While Kaplan does come off as another opinionated elitist in the end, I still believe this is a book worth reading and I stand behind my rating. This book, both reported facts, and too often Kaplan's own views, offer us a glimpse at the very worst the world has to offer. Should we be prepared for it? Yes. Should we live in constant fear of it? Absolutely not.
Rating:
Summary: Voice from a Stretch Limo: "No More Mr. Nice Guy!"
Review: THE COMING ANARCHY is a cold shower for those of us who once entertained illusions about the future of those desperately poor countries usually referred to as the Third World. I remembered the glowing articles about Liberia (founded by American slaves); South Africa (loved that Reconciliation Commission); and Tito's Yugoslavia (they actually stood up to Stalin) that I read in years past. Each nurtured a hope that there was, in my lifetime, a way out for the world's oppressed. There are, in fact, several ways out -- and none of them bode well for us wealthy democracies. The Malthusian pressures, according to Kaplan, will make the pot boil over with disease, unrest, mass migration, and terrorism. Why NOT become an exploding martyr when there is no reason to continue living? Why NOT contract smallpox and hop a jet to the States? Anything but stay on in a filthy gutter outside a shack cobbled together with garbage! Kaplan doesn't have any answers. Washington doesn't have any answers. The U.N. has answers, but at a price tag that will put all of us on an economic par with Burkina Faso. And, of course, I don't have any answers; but I will continue to hope, because that is my nature. I understand that Kaplan is becoming required reading in Washington. We must be careful, with all our power, not to become like Thucydides' Athenians: a great power who, in facing down the enemy, became perhaps worse than the enemy. At the same time, it is a valuable corrective to read Kaplan. In addition to the essay "The Coming Anarchy," I would particularly recommend the essays on Metternich and Kissinger, Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL, and Joseph Conrad's NOSTROMO. It all looked so rosy when the Berlin Wall fell. Now it's time to face the issues we ignored while engaged in our half-century folie de deux with Communism.
Rating:
Summary: Real, from fact not from myth
Review: This is why I like Kaplan, this person has never been afraid of public opinion, he is real. I was drawn into the book on a reality that I knew and agreed with. To many details to go into here. I can foresee the future that Kaplan writes about in these pages. But a review here is meant to sway the reader to buy or not to buy, if you are in fact interested in the near future events on the grand scale this book is a buy. I'm pleased with it.
I also strongly recommend reading another good book that takes a bold and detailed real stance to our destiny, SB 1 or God by Karl Mark Maddox.
Rating:
Summary: The Coming Anarchy- Required Reading
Review: Once you read this Robert D. Kaplan book you will want to read everything he has written!
Rating:
Summary: A World of Desperate people
Review: A realist in a naive world, Mr. Kaplan's book should wake up every naive person on this now very small planet to the fact that the have-nots are getting more and more desperate.Kaplan is able to get across his point with such great interest its hard to put down.
Rating:
Summary: Starts Off Great...
Review: This book starts off great by expounding upon previously published ideas of Mr. Kaplan found in his articles within The Atlantic Monthly. He talks about a coming anarchy due to the decreasing relevance of international borders (which may be read the disintegration of the state). Refugee flows, environmental degradation, and ehnic cleavages are all factors that contribute to the disintegration of the current system. Kaplan expounds upon these notions and offers other examples and scenarios worth reading. I would recommend this book to those who enjoy works such as Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, and Steel", Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man", Friedman's "The Lexus and the Olive Tree", or Barber's "Jihad vs. McWorld". Like these works, Kaplan's book attempts to explain why the world is structured the way it is but maybe more importantly, what the future of this structuration may bring as it evolves both politically, socially, economically
Rating:
Summary: An amazingly prescient book.
Review: In the light of the recent terrorist attack on the WTC (this is written in November 2001) and the civilised world's War against Terrorism, this book, which is essentially a collection of assays that first appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, was amazingly prescient. The first essay, entitled "The Coming Anarchy", and from which the title of the book was taken, was written in February 1994. The whole collection of essays was first published in 2000. He quoted this from van Crevald,"From the vantage point of the present, there appears every prospect that religious...fanaticisms will play a larger role in the motivation of armed conflict" in the West than at any time for the last 300 years. At one stroke, he seemed to explain why it was so difficult to understand the mindset of those terrorists who deliberately killed themselves in order to achieve their aims. "..A person raised in a middle or upper middle class suburban environment, a place ruled by rationalism, in the service of material progress, has difficulty imagining the psychological state of affairs in a society where there is little or no memory of hard work achieving its just reward, and where life inside a gang or a drafty army barracks constitutes an improvement in material and emotional security." He also seemed to predict that the next war would not be between armies in the traditional sense, but would be about combating terrorists. "..there is much new weaponry that now, because of postindustrialization, is concealable even as it is more deadly; the perfect tools for stateless terrorists of which the world has enough." An amazingly prescient book. A highly recommended book.
Rating:
Summary: straight talk
Review: When my brother was called up from the U. S. Army Reserves and sent to Bosnia, I took to sending
him crates full of books. In return he sent me Robert D. Kaplan's Balkan Ghosts. It was a fairly even
exchange. Mr. Kaplan, most of whose work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, has perfected a
unique literary form; he combines his vigorous argument for realism in U.S. foreign policy with
travelogues, designed to illustrate his points through actual examples from abroad (or at home, as in
his Empire Wilderness). In Ghosts he related stories of his travels throughout the Balkans, exploring
how and why the age old ethnic hatreds that had so regularly convulsed the region still endured, and
were likely to, no matter what policy the West adopted. The book became notorious when Bill
Clinton cited it as the reason he was hesitant to commit U. S. military forces to the region. But
nothing gives an author credibility like having a President acknowledge that you'd influenced his
thinking, and Kaplan has become an unlikely best-selling author and a foreign policy voice to be
reckoned with. The Coming Anarchy is less of a travel book than Mr. Kaplan's others, though he does draw upon his
many journeys. Instead, it gathers a number of his essays from The Atlantic (including the title piece),
The Wall Street Journal, and The National Interest. Included herein are appreciations of books like
Conrad's Nostromo, Gibbon's Decline and Fall and Henry Kissinger's A World Restored and policy
prescriptions, for what kind of aid we should offer the Third World and how we should use our Intelligence services, but the bulk of the book (over half) is taken up by The Coming Anarchy and
Was Democracy Just a Moment, which taken together argue that, contrary to the expectations of most
in the West, including analysts of both Right and Left, the future of most of the world is unlikely to be
one of peace, justice, and economic growth, brought on by liberal democratic reforms, but will instead
be characterized by a decline into anarchy, tribalism, and warfare. His most important insight, one that has thus far been inadequately dealt with by either him or his
critics, is that stable democracy and free market capitalism appear to require certain preconditions
before they can take root. These include a middle class, functioning social institutions, law and order,
and the like. Yet much of Western foreign policy for at least the past hundred years has been based on
the fanciful notion that every nation, regardless of its unique history, culture, and current
circumstances, would automatically be a better place if only it enjoyed the same amount of freedom as
we do. On the contrary, Mr. Kaplan argues that : Not democracies but authoritarian systems, including monarchies, create middle classes--which,
having achieved a certain size and self-confidence, revolt against the very dictators who generated
the prosperity. The import of this idea, if it is correct, which I have long believed it to be, is that while we continue
to celebrate freedom and democracy here in the West, we may have to accept that developing nations
are better off having an intermediate authoritarian stage before they attempt to emulate us. [...] Though Herbert Butterfield famously said that realism is more of a boast than a philosophy, properly
understood realism is an important corrective to the utopian dreams of do-gooder liberals and
libertarian conservatives. We can not improve the lives of the citizens of other countries either
through purely governmental solutions to their problems, like redistributing wealth, or by blithely
prescribing freedom for them. Realism, that is the willingness to learn something from the real world,
requires us to acknowledge that these conventional kinds of Western notions will have to wait until
such countries have reached a much higher state of development. We merely indulge our own fancies
when we suggest that they try them out now. To do so is simply, as Mr. Kaplan masterfully shows,
quite probably counterproductive and, to put it baldly, unrealistic. GRADE : A-
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