Waste Land

Description

We are entering a new era of global cataclysm in which the world faces a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and countless other dangers. In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and author of more than twenty books on world affairs, incisively explains how we got here and where we are going. Kaplan makes a novel argument that the current geopolitical landscape must be considered alongside contemporary social phenomena such as urbanisation and digital news media, grounding his ideas in foundational modern works of philosophy, politics, and literature, including the poem from which the title is borrowed, and celebrating a canon of traditionally conservative thinkers, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and many others.

As in many of his books, Kaplan looks to history and literature to inform the present, drawing particular comparisons between today’s challenges and the Weimar Republic, the post-World War I democratic German government that fell to Nazism in the 1930s. Just as in Weimar, which faced myriad crises inextricably bound up with global systems, the singular dilemmas of the twenty-first century—pandemic disease, recession, mass migration, the destabilising effects of large-scale democracy and great power conflicts, and the intimate bonds created by technology—mean that every disaster in one country has the potential to become a global crisis, too. According to Kaplan, the solutions lie in prioritising order in governing systems, arguing that stability and historic liberalism rather than mass democracy per se will save global populations from an anarchic future.

Waste Land is a bracing glimpse into a future defined by the connections afforded by technology but with remarkable parallels to the past. Just as it did in Weimar, Kaplan fears the situation may be spiralling out of our control—unless our leaders act first.

Reviews

‘Robert Kaplan is one of the most sophisticated and incisive geopolitical analysts of today’s world. His latest work is typically elegant, grounded in a vast range of philosophy, travel and literature. The book is a tribute to the role that history can play in illuminating a path for policymakers in an ever-more uncertain and chaotic world.’ — John Bew, Professor of History, King’s College London, and senior foreign policy advisor at No. 10 Downing Street

‘One of the great geopolitical thinkers of our time has produced yet another compelling, scholarly, and eminently readable book of thoughtful global analysis. Weaving everything from the gorgeous poetry of T.S. Eliot to the neo-realistic thinking of Jeane Kirkpatrick to the tragic history of the Weimar Republic, Robert Kaplan provides a dark mirror held to a dangerous world that commands our attention page after page. A cautionary tale of absolute brilliance!’ — James Stavridis USN (Ret), 16th Supreme Allied Commander of NATO

Author(s)

Robert D. Kaplan is the bestselling author of twenty-three books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including The Loom of Time, Adriatic, The Good American, The Revenge of Geography, Asia's Cauldron, Monsoon, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. For three decades he reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. He was a member of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board and the Chief of Naval Operations Executive Panel. Foreign Policy twice named him one of the world's Top 100 Global Thinkers.