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Younghusband
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Younghusband

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June 21st, 2006

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The Anti-Kaplan

Shocked! Shocked I say!

Kaplan’s real and growingly evident problem is not his Parkinson’s grip on history, or that he is a bonehead or a warmonger, but rather that he is an incompetent thinker and a miserable writer.

Tom Bissell makes his case against Robert Kaplan.

Blasphemy!

Wot wot! to Carpetblogger

Comments to this entry

alec
June 21, 2006
4:26 pm
Jeez, consider yourself zinged, Mr. Kaplan! I think Bissel makes a few decent points (regarding Kaplan's affinity for conflict being number one and his underlying tone for a renewed colonialism to impart Western values, and thus success, to struggling countries being number two). However, Mr. Bissel seems to suffocate his writing with his own bitter lemons towards prevailing ideas surrounding global conflict and the future's relation toward the past. Simply, there are some faults of Kaplan's thinking, but Kaplan still remains an intelligent and independent thinker about pragmatic solutions to foreign policy, which unfortunately is a rarity in American intellectuality these days.

Also, do not source the New Republic if you want anyone to take you seriously.
Jing
June 21, 2006
6:32 pm
A review to warm the cockles of my heart!
Eddie
June 21, 2006
6:38 pm
Alec,

What is so bad about "The New Republic"? (forgive me, I'm only familiar with the Sullivan scandal of the late 90's).
Chirol
June 21, 2006
7:39 pm
Bissel seems to be using the age old tactic of nobodies, trying to talk trash about an expert to get noticed. Bad idea. He should spend more time on the road coming up with original insights instead of slinging mud. From his bio, it looks like even Coming Anarchy has far out-travelled him. Also his entire introduction bickering about Kaplan's exact title is as silly as it is a waste of space. As for the rest, it shouldn't be difnified with a response.
Younghusband
June 21, 2006
8:11 pm
Between the circular potshots and context-free soundbytes, the entire article comes down to one thing: "I can't even begin to understand Kaplan, but I wish I had his juice."

Like Chirol said, this guy has never been in the shit. Has he ever spent a day with military personnel? He says: "As a journalist I have spent some time around Marines and soldiers, both within and without war zones (my father is a former Marine and a Vietnam veteran)". I would like to hear more about this.

Nathan, what is your take on Bissell? I know you "like some of his books":http://www.registan.net/?p=4634 but is he of the level to take on our Bob?
Eddie
June 21, 2006
8:54 pm
Before Bissell gets rightfully thrashed for the opportunistic hack job (which are more and more common these days, as Chirol points out), I would like to note "Chasing The Sea" was a really good read.
Nathan Hamm
June 21, 2006
9:13 pm
Chirol, bollocks. Tom ripped Kaplan in Chasing the Sea because what he had to say in The Ends of the Earth about Central Asia was a steaming pile of BS. As much as I enjoy reading Kaplan, I concur. The guy is great for extended rumination, but he comes up with some downright strange conclusions fairly often.

As for being well-traveled, all I really have to say is "la-de-frickin'-da." Ibn Battuta was also extremely well-traveled. Being so did not stop him from getting things wrong. In both cases, the observations are still quite valuable even if the conclusions are not as valuable.

I'm not terribly well-qualified to give detailed critiques of Kaplan's work on many regions he has written about, but my general rule of thumb is that if a journalist type gets it stupendously wrong on something about which I am extremely knowledgeable, I will be extremely skeptical of all his arguments.

I guess the most important response I want to make to both you, Chirol, and to Eddie is that I would not take this as opportunism. I've had specific beefs that have grown into general ones.

And, more in response to YH, I have to admit first that I am biased. I have not met Tom, but my dad has and I have on occasion exchanged emails with him. On top of that, we both did Peace Corps service in Uzbekistan. I don't always agree with him (and I've not read the entire article this post is about yet), but I do think that Tom's characterizations of Uzbeks and Uzbekistan are the most honest ones that one will find. He doesn't suffer from the third world fetishism of too many writers, nor is he overly critical of Uzbeks. I think that he gives them just what they deserve in Chasing the Sea.

Is he on the right level to take on Kaplan? Sure. But then again, I think that anyone is on the right level to take on anyone else provided they can bring the goods.
Nathan Hamm
June 21, 2006
9:16 pm
Oh, and by the way, An Empire Wilderness is one of the most mind-numbingly awful books I've ever read by choice and one of the strongest arguments in the case for Kaplan not being a serious thinker.
Curzon
June 21, 2006
9:23 pm
Alec: What's to be zinged about? Bissel joins the crowd of Kaplan critics who hate the man so much yet who, unable to articulate a formulated (let alone intelligent) argument, resort to foaming at the mouth and finishing with insults ("bonehead", etc etc.).

I'll be back with more later.
Kenneth
June 21, 2006
10:03 pm
Curzon's right: Bissel spends much time pontificating about how "bad" Kaplan's thought is while failing to advance a single coherent argument against him. His appeals are to shock ("I can't believe he said that!!!111") rather than to logic. While he does highlight a few inconsistencies in Kaplan's details, he gives the impression of seeking surrogates for a critique of the underlying themes in Kaplan's writing. Either that, or he develops a straw man and develops a devastatingly stupid argument therefrom. Example: "If ethnic conflict in the Balkans was inevitable, why didn't anyone see it coming?" Good question, Mr. Bissel: why _didn't_ anyone see it coming? Perhaps they ignored history, as Hitler did in 1941 when he made the disastrous decision to invade the USSR? Saying, in effect, that something must be predicted in order to be inevitable is about as stupid a retort as you can come upon with. This poignantly illustrates how the man is wanting for a real argument. The rest of the time, he just counters Kaplan's blood-and-flesh observations with his own "experiences" that do not transcend his narrow sociocultural microcosm. Conclusion: the guy should get a life.
Kenneth
June 21, 2006
10:06 pm
Addendum: All of the Kaplan critics I've seen thus far employ many if not all of the fallacies outlined above. You will recall Bacevich's article in _The Nation_ over _Imperial Grunts_. Hasn't anyone got anything substantive to say against him?
Jing
June 21, 2006
10:36 pm
I think the general criticism of Kaplan is that when push comes to shove, he doesn't possess any particular in depth knowledge of the places he writes on. Backpacking across Eurasia will only teach you so much. A jack-of-all trades, master of none. His observations and conclusions are to put it charitably, dilettantish. Or to not be so charitable "retahded". The Mark Steyn of the literate so to speak.

I have to admit I have a bias towards academic specialization (Who wants to read about economics of the iron industry in late Qing Guangdong China?!?! Anyone?), but when Kaplan gets it so spectacularly wrong on the topics where people with a particular passion and expertise are concerned, it doesn't lend any credence to his other broad topics.
Nathan Hamm
June 21, 2006
11:48 pm
Hasn't anyone got anything substantive to say against him?

How about that one of the greatest consistencies across his broad body of work is his inability to get facts right--something Bissell notes early in the article and points out in Chasing the Sea.

Or how about that he too often uses absurd historical explanations to explain modern behaviors while also using baseless explanations for modern behaviors that lead him to silly conclusions about the future. (On that last point in particular, I'm thinking about his assertion that the Pacific Northwest will one day be populated by an ethnic group made up of the intermingling of East Asians and Caucasians--an argument I unfortunately must paraphrase from memory because I actually threw away An Empire Wilderness to prevent at least one copy from falling into another's hands.)

Like Jing said, the guy's an expert in nothing. What I like about him, and what I imagine many others here like about him is that he approaches his subjects with realism and pessimism. And that's about the end of it. When he steps beyond reporting and reflection into, to borrow and paraphrase from Bissell, "What It All Means," or into policy prescriptions, he's far less worth relying on than people who are actually well-versed in the subjects he tackles.
Plunge
June 21, 2006
11:53 pm
Nothing is more annoying than someone who attacks the speaker instead of the idea. The only time to attack the speaker is when they have lied about themselves in order to bolster their reputation. Other than that, spend you time writing an intelligent rebuttal, not this gutter trash that we see here.
Dan Nexon
June 22, 2006
12:04 am
"Example: "If ethnic conflict in the Balkans was inevitable, why didn't anyone see it coming?"Â? Good question, Mr. Bissel: why didn't anyone see it coming? "

Actually, Bissel's criticism here is exactly on the mark: remember that Kaplan's argument is about "ancient ethnic hatreds." If such hatreds made the conflict inevitable, than the actors who supposedly harbored them should have viewed the conflict as inevitable. The fact that they didn't anticipate it proves that Kaplan's argument is wrong.

I agree that Bissel sprinkled in far too many ad hom attacks (but often in the context of Kaplan's own ad hom responses to his critics), but I agree with Alex: the basic substantive critiques Bissel makes are pretty devastating.

As preface to some longer comments I hope to make longer, let me note that Kaplan's arguments are not particularly novel. I don't mean that as a slap against Kaplan -- we all reinvent the wheel, the question is whether we improve on it or not. But it does mean that at least some of the historical and theoretical claims Kaplan sprinkles around in his arguments have been subject to significant criticism over a long period of time and that these criticisms often create problems for the underlying infrastructure of his arguments.
Kenneth
June 22, 2006
12:08 am
_Actually, Bissel's criticism here is exactly on the mark: remember that Kaplan's argument is about "ancient ethnic hatreds."Â? If such hatreds made the conflict inevitable, than the actors who supposedly harbored them should have viewed the conflict as inevitable. The fact that they didn't anticipate it proves that Kaplan's argument is wrong._

If they hate each other, they're going to go at it anyway.
lirelou
June 22, 2006
12:52 am
I greatly enjoyed the critique, but then I have never read any of Kaplan's books and only a few of his articles. My own bias lies against defining American policy as either imperialism or neo-imperialism, but I agree with the maxim, which is certainly not unique to Kaplan, the we must act in accordance with our own perceived national interests.
sun bin
June 22, 2006
12:56 am
I only read a few articles by Kaplan. So I am not the expert on him like you guys.

My view:
he is a travelogue journalist, not an academic.
i.e. you can read it on the beach, at the same speed you read harry porter. (vs the books you need to pause and think -- eg barnett)
so he lacks the rigor and logic of serioud academic works. i do not take him seriously. bissel critics, though long-winded and sometime immersed into minor insigficant details, has many points that echoes my view on kaplan.

i am actually quite surprise that you guys like him so much, as i think the threesome who host this site (and many commentators here, who i may agree or disagree with in various issues) are each better than kaplan, as far as 'reasoning' is concerned.
alec
June 22, 2006
1:07 am
Woah, woah. Let's not go ape shit here with the smell of Kaplan's blood or feel equally defensive about the Bissel piece. Kaplan does have some drawbacks, but have you read Coming Anarchy? Coming Anarchy bro! (That is said in a 420 drawl). Yes, he isn't the most prolific thinker, but he does apply some interesting principles to what drives history to make predictions about the future. Yes, he isn't Joyce, but he writes in an engaging and logical fashion. And yes, some of his concepts about other peoples and cultures seem antiquated, even judgmental or condescending, but his overall concern is how do we address the many issues that continue to plague an increasingly 'civilized' or 'modernized' world. Conclusion: Bissel makes some good points, but the man does enough to discredit his own thoughts on his own.

Also, The New Republic endorsed Joe Liebermann in 2004.
Younghusband
June 22, 2006
1:22 am
Sun Bin, thanks for the kind comments but Kaplan's lack of academic credits is a plus in my opinion. Simply in terms of military issues, I think he has a perfectly nuanced, complex and well thought out vision that has not been replicated by any civvie academic I have seen so far, but gels with a lot of the problems that modern militaries around the world are dealing with today.

Plunge, your comment applies as much to those commenting here as to the article in question. I agree on both counts.

Also (and this may be worth a separate post & discussion), when does considering "war" as a perpetual condition of humanity make one a "warmonger"?

bq. I do not doubt that it was great fun for Kaplan to play soldier, but he is apparently unaware that he is celebrating the taking and loss of life in this leprous book

OMGWTFBBQ! Come down off your high horse and get some air my friend! Also, thanks for the unhelpful, yet obligatory Clausewitz quote.

And I don't like at all the comparison of Kaplan and Bush. Bush is much more of Tom Barnett's kinda president [YH ducks].

Anyways, I am going shut up and wait for Curzon's analysis, which should be great.
Curzon
June 22, 2006
2:22 am
Three things:

1. Total ditto to Younghusband regarding Kaplan's "lack" of academic credentials. The _last_ thing we need is another world affairs "expert" with a PhD. I'll may get to my Fisk when the commenting here has died down.

2. Nathan has formulated the only really intelligent critique of Kaplan in general (as opposed to critical book reviews) of which I am aware. Dr. Nexon, I don't follow the point you're trying to make.

3. Please note that the smartest comment in the twenty thus far was made by "a 16 year old":http://www.cominganarchy.com/2006/06/21/the-anti-kaplan/#comment-105590 -- and an athiest, libertarian, and Canadian at that! (Or, Kenneth, are you now 17?)
Kenneth
June 22, 2006
3:40 am
_1. Total ditto to Younghusband regarding Kaplan's "lack"Â? of academic credentials. The last thing we need is another world affairs "expert"Â? with a PhD. I'll may get to my Fisk when the commenting here has died down._

Agreed. While some criticisms of Kaplan are not without foundation, it should be stressed that they concern the details of his argument and not his underlying theme (and mostly irrelevant details at that, how he got name x of subject y wrong yadda yadda yadda and nothing about his general comments that the world is increasingly being defined by tribal animosities). Since Kaplan makes no claim to expertise, most of these criticisms, when intended to be general criticisms, are moot. Kaplan just calls it how he sees it. The trouble with "experts", as Curzon has implied, is that they tend to get bogged down in details rather than looking at the big picture and are sometimes made overconfident by their "expertise". Kaplan's a generalist, accessible to the intelligent layperson, and this is what's good about him.

_3. Please note that the smartest comment in the twenty thus far was made by a 16 year old "”?and an atheist, libertarian, and Canadian at that! (Or, Kenneth, are you now 17?)_

Why thank you. No, I'm not 17 yet- will be so on October 9 of this year.
Dan Nexon
June 22, 2006
4:05 am
Curzon: I'm not sure which point you're talking about. Balkan Ghosts was a deeply flawed book. Bissel's criticism here, as I explained above, is a pretty devastating QED of why deep-seated hatreds cannot explain the violence of the Bosnian War.

The "prefatory" comment was supposed to be a nice -- if poorly edited -- way of saying that Kaplan asserts a lot of stuff that draws on theoretical and historical interpretations that don't stand up to scrutiny. Bissel does a reasonable job on some of these.

A couple of additional points:

1) Why the heck are we bashing my profession all of a sudden? And this in a comments thread that's supposed to be decrying Bissel's use of the ad hominem fallacy.

2) There are details and there are details. Every non-fiction writer makes errors of fact. The question is whether the errors/omissions/misinterpretations undermine the warrants for the broader themes. So, with all due respect to Kenneth and Curzon, now how attractive we find a "big picture," it is worthless if it is built on junk.

( I'm not saying that's the case with all of Kaplan's writings, but I am saying that the details can matter and that Kaplan does engage in sloppy argumentation. As I mentioned, Balkan Ghosts is worse than useless; but I've found his writings on US empire much more insightful.)
Dan Nexon
June 22, 2006
4:15 am
"Now" should be "no matter"

Kenneth: I have no idea what your rejoinder to my defense of Bissel is supposed to mean. Could you elaborate?
Curzon
June 22, 2006
4:37 am
Dr. Nexon: The only appearance of the word "inevitable" is regarding USSR-Bulgaria relations (I just conducted a text search of an electronic version of Balkan Ghosts.) Kaplan does not say violence was bound to happen, he observes:

An observer could see the hatred building, year by year. In the late 1980s, the dimensions of the Stepinac issue grew as the conflicting Serb and Croat positions hardened under the weight of increased poverty, an annual inflation rate of several thousand percent, and the fragmentation of the Yugoslav federation. Genocide became a word thrown around a lot.


God that book was awesome.

Sorry to appear bitchy about academics all of a sudden. I have long held a very poor view of the profession, which I should articulate someday in a post. I still have great respect for many individual professors and experts. If you feel sensitive about insults to your profession, believe me when I say that I empathize deeply.
sun bin
June 22, 2006
4:46 am
just one clarification.
i meant to say "kaplan's lack of the basic rigor anyone with some academic training would have", i think many people without a ph.d. or even a b.a. can be very logical in their reasoning. i know many such people.

so i am not questioning kaplan's resume. i just cannot follow his logic.

having said that, people can be intuitive and be right even if they do not follow the normal line of logic, or cannot present his logic clearly. although that the probability is lower.

---
re: dr nexon,

"1) Why the heck are we bashing my profession all of a sudden? "
--so that someone without such credential would look better? :)
germanicus
June 22, 2006
5:52 am
Right on Younghusband and Curzon, don't stirke your colors.
Nathan
June 22, 2006
5:56 am
I'm confused. I see a lot of defense of Kaplan, but I'm not seeing why other than that he's not an academic and something about him having an appealing "theme." (If the "theme" is the pessimism and realism, there is a wide range of much better realist literature--academic and otherwise--to turn to.)

If he doesn't get facts right, misapplies historical analogies, I think it quite clearly follows that his conclusions are shaky. Otherwise, we can cut out the masturbatory midground (like musing that an Uzbek slurping his soup means that Kaplan's has discovered pre-Byzantine Turkish civilization--used as an example to characterize the thousands of pages of "I wonder...") and just get to the "we're all gonna die!" part at the end. I think that, in a nutshell, is why Bissell (with "ll" not "l") characterizes him as a bad writer. I don't entirely agree. Kaplan is an enjoyable read, but he's not shown the requisite factual reliability to be treated as a serious thinker or a sage source of policy wisdom.

The guy's a pretty good travel writer and nothing more.
Curzon
June 22, 2006
6:04 am
Nathan: See my second comment, point 1. Stay tuned.
Dan Nexon
June 22, 2006
11:14 am
Curzon: I don't know why you think that particular paragraph makes the book "awesome." It was simply wrong as an empirical matter: see, for example, John Mueller's The Banality of Ethnic War (PDF). Scratch the word "inevitable" and the same problem persists.

And Nathan's right that the basic themes of many of his books (but not all) echo those found in much older traditions of thought. As I said above, this is no knock against Kaplan, who communicates those ideas vividly and effectively... but it does mean that a great deal of the sensibility of this blog (which I, for one, really enjoy) don't depend on a specific defense of Kaplan.
John Robb
June 22, 2006
12:09 pm
I love Kaplan's writing. However, he is long on description (which he is excellent at) but very weak in analysis.
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » The Anti-Kaplan, Fisked
June 22, 2006
3:32 pm
[...] Next Post: Previous Post: « The Anti-Kaplan [...]
carpetblogger
June 23, 2006
6:58 am
Say what you will about Kaplan, but that guy Bissell is nothing more than a peace-corpse drop-out with a book deal.

Check out this interview with Bissell on McSweeny's (http://www.mcsweeneys.net/authorpages/bissell/bissell7.html) which comes via new caucasus blogger Breed (http://caliban.wordpress.com/). Breed, who lived in UZ for a while, has got an opinion or two on Bissell's work.
Nathan Hamm
June 23, 2006
7:33 am
Say what you will about Kaplan, but that guy Bissell is nothing more than a peace-corpse drop-out with a book deal.

Which is exactly the kind of criticism that many here are up in arms at Bissell about. I figured I might as well bring it up since I doubt Kaplan defenders will.

I wish I could get to Breed's site at the moment. I'll give it a shot tomorrow. But judging from the content and tenor of his comments left at my site, that Breed has "an opinion or two" means the odds are pretty long that we'll find too much more than ad hominem attacks.

And since Curzon called you out as disagreeing with me about Bissell's critique of Kaplan on Uzbekistan (some of which I am admittedly ambivalent towards), what's your defense of Kaplan?
Nathan Hamm
June 23, 2006
7:45 am
Saw Breed's post and it was better than I had expected. For the record, I'm no hardcore defender of Bissell and am officially agnostic about the charges. Any nastiness towards Breed is, by the way, retracted. 5+ hours of Russian per day is making me cranky.
Breed
June 23, 2006
12:30 pm
That wasn't nasty at all, Nathan; your summary of the timbre of previous commentary is not entirely inaccurate.

I have to ask, though, did you find Tashkent to be as charming as Bissell did?
Curzon
June 23, 2006
1:04 pm
I don't want to talk shit about his essay, which snidely pokes holes in Robert Kaplan while pretending not to understand Kaplan's arguments (if someone buys me a beer, I will explain them; if no beer is forthcoming, then go away).


That should have been my policy.
Nathan Hamm
June 23, 2006
1:40 pm
Not as charming as Bissell did but not as horrible as Kaplan did.
alec
June 25, 2006
4:20 am
I liked the Bissell interview in McSweeney's, but christ, how many peace corps volunteers turned international commentators does this world need? Suburban idealism => reality of third world countres = book deal (all of this is done while doing the robot in slow motion, to perfectly capture the inane trajectory of a liberal arts degree turned into an extended pedigree program of How The World Works by Liberal McTypical).
Kenneth
June 28, 2006
4:59 am
_Kenneth: I have no idea what your rejoinder to my defense of Bissel is supposed to mean. Could you elaborate?_

Apologies for the terribly delayed response, but your argument is pretty absurd when applied uniformly. Perhaps there was no ethnic hatred between the Tutsis and Hutus because neither saw the Rwandan Genocide coming? How about the current situation in Iraq, with the strife between Shi'ites and Kurds? People fail to learn from history or draw out the obvious conclusions, it's as simple as that, and their ethnic hatred makes prediction irrelevant in any case because if they hate each other that much they're going to fight regardless.
Riki
July 1, 2006
1:04 pm
Looks like old Thomas has quite a checkered past, if this review is anything to go on. Did he ever get sanctioned for this? I'm no expert but it looks like plagiarism to me.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/customer-reviews/037572754X/ref=cm_rev_next/102-2064524-0788107?ie=UTF8&customer-reviews.sort%5Fby=-SubmissionDate&n=283155&s=books&customer-reviews.start=41
Jason
July 1, 2006
3:26 pm
This already came up a while ago--I remember being surprised, because I like some of Bissell's work--but it was pretty clearly debunked, at least for my comfort. Check here: http://www.radosh.net/archive/001091.html
sun bin
July 1, 2006
5:53 pm
riki,

mot sure if you are for or against bissel:) the review is 4* out of 49 samples.....

anyway, i would trust the Economist, as it never failed me.
ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » Kaplan on President Obama and Iraq
November 4, 2008
2:24 am
[...] itself a link to Tom Bissell’s hatchet job from more than two years ago (noted on these pages here and here). TNR blogs usually get good comments, so that space is worth [...]