The Loom of Time

March 1, 2023

Noted for his engaging and ongoing look at geopolitics in books ranging from Balkan Ghosts to Adriatic, Kaplan goes beyond a regional focus to take in a wide swath of the world--"from the Mediterranean to China"--as he assesses the consequences of--and concerted resistance to--clashing empires. Prepub Alert.

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August 1, 2023
Prolific foreign affairs expert Kaplan (The Good American, 2020) continues to emphasize the geopolitical significance of the "Greater Middle East," that broad, arid swath from Greece and Egypt through Mesopotamia and Afghanistan that connected the great empires of the past yet largely resisted their dominance. The future, argues Kaplan, will resemble the past. As the age of the Westphalian nation-state wanes, a likely eventuality, given current trends, older patterns of regional influence will reemerge. Resource-hungry world powers, specifically an ascendant Beijing and diminished but still dangerous Russia, will compete, or worse, collude, in a Eurasian heartland rich with resources and out of reach of the U.S. This echoes Kaplan's other works, especially The Return of Marco Polo's World (2018), in its pessimistic realpolitik and anxiety about Chinese ambitions. Geography is destiny, he asserts, and democracy, though beautiful, is a world-historical flash in the pan. But here Kaplan's perspective is leavened by firsthand experiences of such key historical moments as the Iran-Iraq war and the Soviet-Afghan conflagration, and by robust engagement with such earlier historians as Arnold Toynbee and Elie Kedourie.

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August 21, 2023
The vast Muslim heartland of Afro-Eurasia is a tumult that might find stability and prosperity but rarely democracy, according to this sweeping geopolitical meditation. Drawing on travelogue, interviews, scholarly literature, and 50 years of reporting on the region, Kaplan (The Coming Anarchy) surveys a “Greater Middle East” stretching from the Nile to the Uyghur community of Xinjiang, China. In Istanbul he ponders President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s turn from secularism toward a reprise of the Ottoman Empire. In Cairo he notes Egyptians’ preference for Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s stolid dictatorship over the chaos of the elected Islamist government of Mohammad Morsi. He deplores Iran’s “bleak, radical, utterly despised, and dysfunctional” theocracy but holds out hope that the ancient civilization might attain liberal democracy. From these and other examples, Kaplan distills larger themes: geography is destiny; the West’s modernizing influence has energized the region’s oscillation between secular dictatorship and Islamist reaction; and that “along with empire, monarchy is the most natural form of government,” so that a competent, nonideological autocrat may be preferable to an anarchic democracy. (He somewhat credulously paints Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman as a dynamic ruler who is liberalizing Saudi society.) Some may criticize Kaplan’s conservative outlook and grand pronouncements, but he offers much provocative food for thought.

Starred review from July 15, 2023
The bestselling author specializing in geopolitics returns to the Middle East to deliver another tour de force. Drawing on 50 years of experience interviewing officials, intellectuals, historians, and fellow journalists and reading seemingly every history and scholarly work from Herodotus to Gibbon to Toynbee, Kaplan is convinced that "the big story in the Middle East today is not necessarily the failure of democracy--but the departure of empire." After the breakup of the Ottoman Empire in 1918, Britain and France had their moments, followed by the U.S and the Soviet Union. The 1991 Soviet collapse and disastrous U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan delivered the kiss of death, so "for the first time in modern history the region is in a post-imperial phase." Western scholars deplore empires, but nations with an ancient imperial tradition (Turkey, Iran, China) have no doubt that the world can benefit from their cultures. That humans yearn for democracy is a peculiarly Western fantasy. In reality, given a choice between dictatorship and disorder, a large percentage of the population, Americans included, prefers the former. In Turkey, Recep Erdoğan has been in office for two decades, evolving into another democratically elected autocrat. He has embraced Islamism, reversed national idol Kemal Ataturk's fierce secularization, and revived the expansiveness of the former Ottoman Empire, which Turks have always admired. Egypt is still recovering from the Arab Spring, during which the Muslim Brotherhood won a free election but could not establish order, so most Egyptians did not object when the nation's military returned to power. Kaplan points out that the U.S. regularly denounces lack of democracy throughout this region, from Libya to Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Yemen, and Iraq, apparently unaware that this would mean government by Islamists whose rule in Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan does not inspire confidence. American officials urge these nations to adopt progressive policies absent in the U.S. until recently. As always, the author offers much food for thought about a variety of geopolitical issues. Little encouraging news but brilliantly delivered.

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