Kaplan’s Blueprint for Action

An excerpt from the prologue of Imperial Grunts:

The only way to explore [the map for the War on Terrorism]… was on foot, or in a Humvee, with the troops themselves, for even as elites in New York and Washington debated imperialism in grand, historical terms, individual marines, soldiers, airmen, and sailors—all the cultural repositories of America’s unique experience with freedom—were interpreting policy on their own, on the ground, in dozens upon dozens of countries every week, oblivious to such faraway discussions.

Hell yeah. Kaplan’s critics come from across the political spectrum. Andrew Bacevich from the far left, Robert Kagan from the neo-con right, Thomas P. M. Barnett from the… well, from the PNM view. But Kaplan has no equal in seeing the world from the ground up. How many academics, even journalists, have been to the lawless frontiers across the globe? In his latest book, Kaplan heads to Yemen, Colombia, Mongolia, Iraq, and beyond, eating the same food as the troops and enduring the same living conditions (even if the man is 53 years old!). I’ve only just got started, but the book is delivering just what it promises.

Kaplan’s pessimism has toned down in the past few years, but he gives us one big warning: the Gap may be shrinking, but it is becoming far more dangerous. As he notes in Colombia:

For those who rarely ventured beyond the cocoon of the post-industrialized Western democracies, the world was liberalizing and becoming more convenient. But many parts of the planet had come more dangerous and out of reach.

How true. I have countless friends a generation older than me who took fantastic transcontinental journies when they were my age. A Japanese acquaintence now in his sixties rode his bike from India, through Pakistan, Iran, the Caucasus, Russia Proper, and into Europe in the late 1960s. My mother took a trip in the early 1970s the other way, going by bus from France to India—she went to discos in Tehran and Kabul! A French Canadian friend traveled from Quebec to the southern tip of Chile in the early 1980s. The trip took a year and he traveled through Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Today, you would want to stay away from all four of those countries.

While the developed world gets more connected through global commerce and travel, Kaplan is right: the anarchic frontiers are becoming more distant and deadly. How do you shrink the Gap? You need a new type of American warrior. And that is what Imperial Grunts is all about. Stay tuned for more excerpts.