Rating: 
Summary: Excellent
Review: Robert Kaplan warns of a "bifurcated world divided between societies like ours, producing goods and services that the rest of the world wants, and those mired in various forms of chaos." This is a familiar theme for previous Kaplan readers (Balkan Ghosts, The Ends of the Earth). For those unacquainted with Kaplan, however, The Coming Anarchy is a fine introduction to one of the most important voices on the future of society and international relations. Kaplan mixes the intense reportage of a travel writer with the sharp wisdom of a foreign-policy expert to deliver what he calls "an unrelenting record of uncomfortable truths, of the kind that many of us implicitly acknowledge but will not publicly accept." The Coming Anarchy is also a disturbing book: Kaplan's vision of the future is a bleak one, full of ethnic conflict as the world falls away from a cold war that at least provided a kind of stability in even the shakiest of countries. That's gone now, of course, and Kaplan's descriptions of life and politics in Sierra Leone, Russia, India, and elsewhere are keenly troubling.
Rating: 
Summary: A thoughtful, if bleak, look at the future
Review: "Without America's insular position, guarded by two oceans and reinforced by plentiful natural resources, idealism might never have taken root here."-Robert Kaplan. Kaplan agrees with Henry Kissinger that the dangers inherent in fast social transformation are so great that demands for universal justice are ill informed. Kissinger, he says, thinks disorder is worse than injustice (although great injustice is worse than a little disorder.) He says that the primary role of politics is not to control wickedness, but to limit "righteousness." He points to the Nazis, the Jacobins, the ayatollahs and others who have made revolutions, as "self-righteous." He also points out that the American Revolution was actually an evolution, in that it developed gradually rather than precipitously. Kaplan is an admirer of Kissinger, whom he sees as the pre-eminent American foreign policy framer--head and shoulders above Vance, Muskie, Haig, Eagleburger and Christopher. He ranks George Shultz and James Baker higher than the aforementioned, but sees Albright as "ineffectual." Robert Kaplan is an astute observer of world politics He is a foreign correspondent for the Atlantic Monthly, with vast experience traveling and reporting in foreign lands, has written several widely respected books on foreign policy, and has served as a consultant to the U.S. Army's Special Forces regiment. His book BALKAN GHOSTS was chosen by the New York Times as one of the best books of 1993, and AN EMPIRE WILDERNESS by the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times as one of their best books of the year. In this book he predicts a bleak prognosis for the future, particularly in the Third World, but also for democracy in this country (a fact seemingly borne out in the recent election farce.) In fact, Kaplan has reservations about the future of democracy in many places. He thinks that for democracy to work, there must be an established, strong bureaucracy, viable institutions in place, and a robust middle class. The attempts by liberal idealists to plant it in, for example, sub-Saharan Africa, are doomed to failure-and that fact has been amply demonstrated in recent history. In short, Kaplan is a realist. He points out that intervention by the United States in the underdeveloped world should be rare, and only in instances when Washington and the nation at large support it. Then the development policy must be accomplished without "overstraining" us, its criteria must be clear, and it must not "set us up for failure," as was the case in Somalia and elsewhere. He advocates proportionalism, which he describes as "the argument in favor of promoting the use of contraceptives" by some Catholics, "as a means of reducing abortion"; a solution abhorrent to idealists. The art of the possible, with compromise the most effective tool. Democracy, he explains, is not always a good thing, and autocracy is not always a bad thing. It depends largely upon the environment, geography and history of the region being governed; and he gives an ample number of examples of the successes and failures of each, and the underlying reasons, as he sees them. He observes that multi-national corporations are replacing governments as maintainers of order and equilibrium in much of the world, as governments fail in their function. Kaplan points to the west coast of sub-Saharan Africa as a prime example of anarchy, with hordes of restless, violent young men preying upon a chaotic society and spreading the AIDS virus-a world in which government has become ineffectual--and then he seems to extend that example to predict the fate of the world, generally. It occurs to me that he may be using a bad example, ignoring the genetic predisposition to rage and violence of the indigenous people of that region, which has been amply demonstrated worldwide, and which is not typically evident in other peoples of the world to the same extent. Perhaps the future will be less bleak than he thinks, to the extent that the propensities and predilections of other races differ from his example, and the resulting cesspool that they have created since they attained "freedom" from the colonial powers. Let us hope so. Joseph Pierre
Rating:
Summary: A great introduction to a great author....
Review: This is Kaplan's 'shortest' work, and probably the best place to start reading the work of an author who is as talented, intelligent, perceptive and relavent as they come-- and probably, the person most capable of explaining what it is, in fact, that goes on in the 'rest' of the world....
For every time Francis Fukyama or one of the rest claimed that we were at 'the End of History' or something else composed of similar garbage, Kaplan has come back with a major work insinuating that he was not right at all. This book is composed of a number of essays about a variety of things; the theme of the book is that the world is going to stay the same more so than it is going to change; it is not that the rest is going to become like the West so much as that the world is becoming more and more like a Mad Max sci-fi reality full of despiration and hopelessness.... He, like other Hobbesian pessimists (Samuel Huntington being one that he discusses; Martin van Crevald being another arguing along similar lines) points out that at the end of Communism as a valid force, the world was left with as many questions as answers, and that things shouldn't be glossed over with Voltaire's Panglossian optimism.... This is a must read for those not willing to wade through one of Kaplan's longer works. I'd buy this, and I'd buy them, and read... and question.... This guy is the real thing....
Rating: 
Summary: Sleeping Beauty Ruminations
Review: Kaplan's work is clear and direct. However, his conception of nationalism and domestic violence is poorly developed and, quite possibly, misleading. In this work, as with his previous ones, Kaplan bases his expectations of the future on the faulty claims of nationalist groups who now prefer to find continuity in their conflicts. Nations and subcultures, it appears, are resurrected like Sleeping Beauty by the "kiss of freedom". If a group of people decide to adopt the trappings of a previously existing nation, say for instance Croatia, that does not mean that they were always part of an eternal Croatian nation. It means that nationalists are using history as a political tool. Kaplan apparently disagrees. But we are not privy to his thinking on the subject.
Rating:
Summary: APPROPRIATE AMBIVALENCE
Review: In this book, a self-styled Hobbesian realist takes aim at illusions of the left (that democracy and economic opportunity are making progress worldwide), and of the right (that national sovereignty is secure and isolationism adequate in the new global system). Emphasizing the dangerous degradation of ecosystems, especially in regions populated with large masses for whom destitution is already the norm, he stresses the destabilization of political order that major environmental catastrophes will increasingly bring. Further, Kaplan argues, the decision-making power to affect regional economic well-being is increasingly taken away from national governments by globalized capital. The powerlessness of governments to protect their own people, either from exploitation by transnational corporations, or from natural catastrophes (often precipitated by corporate practices), will more and more undermine their claims to loyalty and consent. As the binding power of national loyalty declines, collective identities will reform along ethnic lines, producing a proliferation of local and regional warfare driven by competition for the necessities of life. As governments lose their monopoly on armed force, defense will devolve upon private security forces (for those who can afford them). Ultimately, Kaplan is announcing the privatization of government itself: "a world government has been emerging-- quietly and organically ... the increasingly dense ganglia of international corporations and markets." (80) However one might quibble with details of his argument, the case this author makes for certain dangers we face, is pointedly compelling. For this reader though, his analysis appears blunted when it comes to the historical cause of much of the danger he warns us about: the system of globalized capital. Like many today, he seems to accept this phenomenon as a historical necessity, a force of nature, almost a sacred cow, demanding we kowtow, not criticize. "We need big corporations", Kaplan assures us (85). Even more pointedly: "governments are determined not by what liberal humanists wish but by what businesspeople and others require" (79). He does not identify the "others", but presumably they include the bankers who finance the "businesspeople". On the other hand, an occasional note of ambivalence creeps into his narrative, as if some vestige of civil piety toward the (nominally) democratic republic of which he is a citizen, still resists the ideology of the globalized corporate takeover. "The conservative flaw", he notes, "is to be vigilant against concentrations of power in government only-- not in the private sector, where power can be wielded more secretly and sometimes more dangerously" (88). Or again, "many governments-- including ours-- remain corrupt and decadent because of the influence of money"(115). This implicit ambivalence, which Kaplan himself does not refer to, seems to extend to the military as well. Referring to Eisenhower's famous warning, he admits, "It may be equally wise to fear a high-tech military complex today"(97). Yet in his last chapter "The Dangers of Peace", he clearly has difficulty imagining a pluralist multicultural planet where ethnic and religious conflicts are carried out nonviolently, by communication rather than carnage. Perhapsit is merely liberal idealism, to imagine that a condition of cultural conflict could be waged creatively under a civil without military violence, but in his next-to-last paragraph Kaplan seems to be struggling for a glimpse of some such future. This is a fine and challenging work: READ IT.
Rating:
Summary: Not Kaplan's best
Review: He starts off good, with a realistic portrayal based on his actual experience in areas of the world, notably Africa. His chapters on "democracy" and "idealism" are interesting and possibly these three chapters plus a short conclusion might have made a coherent, well-written (short) book. Instead, Kaplan wanders off the track into Gibbon's "Decline and Fall...", spends a whole bunch of time boring the reader thoroughly with Henry Kissinger's thoughts on 19th Century strategists, dares to try to wrap everything up as contained within Conrad's "Nostromo" and leaves the reader ready to quit after 185 overpriced pages. Other than telling us that there are serious problems out there and that our experience of these comforting times might be distorted as well as ephemeral. Kaplan presents no pearls of wisdom which one might have expected based on his prior works, several which deserve all five stars (Balkan Ghosts, The Arabists, Ends of the Earth). I was very disappointed in this poorly edited, all over-the-place book, indeed, various magazine articles made over into a book, but lacking in coherence. Surely with Kaplan's experience, the reader might have expected more. I wouldn't waste your time or money on this one (I'm sad to say)--but, by all means, buy one of this author's other books!
Rating:
Summary: Extreme but Believable
Review: I agree with those Amazonians who see this as an insightful, engaging, but limited work. Who can predict the future? However, to use an example from Kaplan himself, Special Forces members are encouraged to make judgments with only 20% of information available because the consequences for delay are too dire. Even if Kaplan, here, is only 20% correct, mainstream America needs to contend with his vision of the near future: to ignore him is too dangerous. I give Kaplan such high marks for his devotion to the art of writing, to the pursuit of wisdom, and for his seeming honesty.
Rating:
Summary: Self concious 'profundity'
Review: Newt is correct about one thing, Kaplan quotes everyone one earth. That is part of his whole technique of sounding prophetic. I for one am not especially enamored of 'prophecy'. I would prefer some solid empirical reporting. Kaplan's last book had the same faults as this one, as a matter of fact, it reads like he cut and pasted alot from An Empire Wilderness, but this book isn't even that good. Which is saying something, cause I gave that one about a C-.
Rating:
Summary: Kaplan's Work Is Always Good and Is Getting Better
Review: I've made it a point to read all of Kaplan's books as they are released and each one is better than its predecessor. Empire Wilderness was the best treatment of its type in more than 15 years, since Joel Garreau's 9 Nations of North America. The Coming Anarchy is more topically organized and less location specific, but is even better as a clear eyed -- clear headed anticipation of the future. That anticipation is far from optimistic, but this doesn't in any way detract from its worth. Kaplan has a wonderful sense of appreciating what Thomas Sowell describes as the "constrained" view of human nature and potential and he can see the shortcomings of civilization moving more to the forefront in the world. It's not necessarily cheering to hear these things, but it is immensely refreshing to hear a commentator who isn't weighed down by the foolish optimism and unthinking orthodoxies rampant today. An evening with this book can cure a month's worth of mind-numbing observations by CNN newscasters and the like. For anyone who has the intellectual curiosity and common sense to ask "why?" Kaplan is a kindred spirit, because he understands Aristotle's principle that the argument relying on authority (or worse yet common belief) is the weakest of all.
Rating:
Summary: Chilling realism
Review: "Anarchy" aptly describes the world envisioned by Kaplan in this collection of essays. He builds on his vast experience working with the U.S. military and third world countries to construct the ultimate pragmatical, yet in his mind bone-chillingly true, prediction for the future. His vision consists of a bifurcated world divided between the first-world economic superpowers and everyone else; a world in which the gap between the two will be ever more exacerbated as time goes on. In such a world, he envisions the devolution of the nation-state(which he believes to be largely a fantastical Western construct when applied to most of the world) into what can be described as nothing else but barely controlled chaos or anarchy. He predicts dramatic changes in the world power system in the next century, brought on by dramatic negative political and socioeconomic changes in the least developed but fastest-growing areas of the earth. Another perspective I found interesting came from the final essay in the book, in which he criticized the idealist foreign-policy views of many American intellectuals, an argument I have found in my experience to be dead-on. From a critical perspective, I believe that Kaplan takes too negative a take on the world's prospects for the next century for two reasons. First, he draws from his experiences with underdeveloped nations and extrapolates to make generalizations about the world's economic superpowers, an oversimplification that I found astounding given his depth of knowledge on the subject. Second, he largely excludes economics from his direct analysis, an omission which, given the phenomenal grobalization trend that we are witnessing now(see The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas Friedman), is inexcusable from a truly pragmatical analysis of the world. In defense of Kaplan's stance, he draws largely from his experience as a military consultant for his experiences, so an understandably narrow view based solely on physical force and largely ignoring non-physical forces of coercion(i.e. economics) emerges. Also, I doubt if he truly feels the extremes that he sets forth in his book; in order to lay out his true feelings, he had to polarize to the extreme realist/negative viewpoint. I highly advise this book to anyone who harbors an idealist perspective on the future of the world; although a bit extreme, it will rightfully shatter many of your naive preconceptions of the world. Beyond my humble viewpoint, Thomas Friedman cited Kaplan's work as one of four major perspectives of the post-Cold war era, along with Fukuyama, Kennedy, and Huntington. All in all, a seminal and extremely important work that I recommend to anyone interested in obtaining a more truthful perspective on the world than that advanced by the mass media
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