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Curzon
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Curzon

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October 5th, 2005

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Kaplan: Blogs v.s. Magazines

The Economist, the Nation, the New Republic, and now the Asia Times have all given no-holds barred thumbs-down reviews of Imperial Grunts. Kaplan’s gung-ho approach to Empire is too tough for the mainstream press, but the blogs aren’t so lilly-livered. Check out the following:

Gun-Toting Liberal and Liberty Just in Case: “If you haven’t read Imperial Grunts, you are missing the book of the year.”
Vodkapundit: “damn fine reading.”
CDR Salamander: “Robert “Kipling” Kaplan had a great piece on the why/how/when of our war”
Fred Schoeneman: [The New Republic] review reminded me of how much I hate politically correct history, and how much I’ve liked Kaplan’s work in the past. I’m putting Imperial Grunts on my wishlist.
International Views: [The New Republic review] is horrified at Kaplan’s admiration for America’s Armed Forces.

Of course, I wasn’t surprised by this noticeable exception.

Comments to this entry

Chirol
October 5, 2005
6:45 pm
I have to rush and read Imperial Grunts and Barnett's Blueprint for Action before school starts! So much good reading and too little time!
IJ
October 5, 2005
6:55 pm
Kaplan's approach to international relations is biased towards conflict, and perhaps eternal conscription. He is criticised at times for not taking into account other perspectives.

A key problem, for example, is how will the West - not just the US - deal with the coming energy crisis? Last month's publication "Britain's Energy Future":http://fpc.org.uk/fsblob/575.pdf recommends self-sufficiency instead:
"1. A move from oil dependency will result in a phasing out of the military "Ëœkhaki cost' of defending oil and gas supplies of around $150 billion a year;
2. It will also include a phasing out of an annual cost of price fluctuations that is in the region of $400 billion a year for the global economy;
3. In addition to the phasing out of the combined military cost and impact of oil price fluctuations of close to $1 trillion a year, the global economy would have the benefit both of these resources and of an environment in which it was possible to plan business on the basis of stable electricity and fuel transport prices."
tom
October 5, 2005
9:50 pm
Great list of reviews: " I'm putting Imperial Grunts on my wishlist." Really shows how much the blogs like the book...
Curzon
October 5, 2005
10:46 pm
There's a link there -- read the blog post in question, it's overwhelmingly positive. Some of us have things called jobs which does take away time from how much we can read. For every book I read I could name three on my wishlist that I'd read if I had the book and the time.

And yeah, on the wish list. Why not? I didn't read Guns Germs and Steel until someone gave it to me.
KJB43
October 6, 2005
1:05 am
IJ, do you all on the Left ever tire of utopian, pie in the sky, wishful thinking, unworkable, schemes? What I am I saying? Of course not! You all are like the Trekkies of Star Trek who are so into that show they actually try to live in that fantasy world along side the real world.
And just to be clear, I do enjoy that show and other SF, I just do not treat it as a way of life or a "reality" I can enter and live in.
IJ
October 6, 2005
7:29 am
KGB43, you dismiss the ambition for peaceful coexistence between nations. Some 50 years ago the US wanted coexistence when it was a leading player in creating the United Nations system. Last month, the US administration appeared to favour the concept. "Leftist", democratic, governments are everywhere.
Daniel Nexon
October 6, 2005
1:36 pm
The reviews strike me as a bit harsh. I often find worthwhile insights in Kaplan's work. That being said, he's not systematic at all, altogether too impressionistic, and has a decided tendency to "go native." Balkan Ghosts, for example, was a deeply misguided book, while his Atlantic article that prefigured Imperial Grunts is actually one of the better pieces on the topic of "American Empire," in my view.
Curzon
October 6, 2005
2:29 pm
Kaplan's use of the "Empire" and "Imperial" scares many in the mainstream media, hence the negative reviews. It's an emotive and "disputed":http://www.cominganarchy.com/2005/07/31/just-44-more-days/#comment-17232 label.
Daniel Nexon
October 6, 2005
5:25 pm
Curzon: tell me about it. I've been doing a travelling show with a paper about the dynamics of empires and one of my colleagues described the process, accurately, as "painting a big red target on your back and saying: fire away!"

But I don't think this accounts for all of the negative reaction; there are problems with his work, some of which are deeply rooted. Subject for another conversation sometime, which will probably be more productive when I've actually read the book :-).
Dan tdaxp
October 6, 2005
7:16 pm
Dr. Nexon,

Could you explain your view of Balkan Ghosts? It was a turning-point book for me, that lead me to Black Lamb and Grey Falcon and away from the material I had been reading.
praktike
October 9, 2005
1:13 pm
Kaplan seems to have gone over to full-blown romanticism. Haven't read the book, but I did read his Atlantic and WSJ pieces as well as a few reviews. Looks bad.
Daniel Nexon
October 9, 2005
5:14 pm
Dan,

Kaplan does a poor job of distinguishing between the stories people tell one another -- about who they are, where they come from, and why other groups are good or evil - and the primordial, or unalterable, character of identities. He's particularly given to simplistic generalizations ("Western religions emphasize ideas and deeds, Eastern religions emphasize beauty and magic" ...this is just nonsensical) of the kind that are quaint in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century travelogues (which I used to collect) but that no serious writer should be making in this day and age.

The Balkan conflict was not the inevitable result of deeply rooted ethnic hatreds, but of opportunism, greed, miscalculation, and simple thuggery.
tdaxp
October 9, 2005
7:35 pm
Why We Teach

"Defending International Normas: The Role of Obligation, Material Interest, and Perception in Decision Making," by Richard Herrmann and Vaughn Shannon, International Organization, Vol 55 No 3, Summer 2001, pp 621-654, http://journals.cambridge.org/ac...
Gollios
October 11, 2005
4:24 am
I have an update for the CA crew. Kaplan will be on BookTV this weekend.

Saturday, October 15 at 1:50 pm

Monday, October 17 at 1:15 am

I finally received my copy of The Economist last Friday. The review of "Imperial Grunts" was rather horrid. However, Kaplan's own words refuted much of the commetary in that review as well as that of the Nation (and I'm sure many more to come).

As a side, did anyone see Victor Davis Hanson speak on the Pelopenisian wars last week? His new book ("A War Like No Other") should be a great read...
Dan
October 11, 2005
4:36 am
Gollios,

VDH was awesome. I used parts of his speech in class last week.

Thanks for the tip on Kaplan's BookTV chillin'
Younghusband
October 11, 2005
5:23 am
Check out his blog:

"victorhanson.com":http://victorhanson.com
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10:42 pm
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