Kaplan reviewed in TNR, plus more

Robert D. Kaplan has long been an irregular contributor to The New Republic, but there’s no sign of nepotism in their review of Imperial Grunts. TNR’s inexplicably crappy website doesn’t have the article online yet, not even for subscribers, but Slate.com summarizes the review here:

A review of Robert Kaplan’s Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground claims that Kaplan doesn’t seem to value civilian control of the military. The piece also frowns upon Kaplan’s belief in imperialism, his “hero worship” of elite American soldiers, his admiration for the Confederate army, and his insistence that before whites arrived, Native Americans had almost no civilization. Rieff continues, “This is breathtaking. Here is a serious writer in 2005 admiring the Indian wars, which in their brutality brought about the end of an entire American civilization.”

Meanwhile, Lawrence Kaplan (no relation) savages the anti-war protests in DC from a few weekends ago:

As I traverse the Mall on Saturday, I cannot escape 13- and 14-year-old girls with peace signs (and the occasional Mercedes logo) painted on their cheeks. This odd demographic probably has something to do with the overrepresentation of a second group: demonstrators in their forties, too young to have protested the war in Vietnam but too old to be wearing their children’s face paint, which many of them do anyway. But there are also veterans of the Vietnam-era protest movement here, legions of whom turn out to hold banners aloft and to listen to Joan Baez warble, “Where have all the flowers gone?” [...The protest is] part thirty-fifth college reunion and part flea market for the disaffected.

And one more gem about The Man himself, at South Korea’s famous OhMyNews (yes, of Marmot fame):

In its June 2005 issue The Atlantic Monthly featured two articles, one in a Neo-con and one in the Kissinger mode. The lead article, by Robert D. Kaplan, an advocate of US imperial expansion, is called “How We Would Fight China: The Next Cold War.” The cover illustration shows a sinister almost feral-looking young Chinese sailor enlarged in the foreground; behind him a jaunty row of white-clad Chinese naval officers. It may not be racist, but the visual message borders on the racial.

Turns out that Chinese people are actually Chinese. Go figure.