Dive into the archives.
- Kaplan on the environment and Bangladesh
Waterworld is a long feature from this month’s Atlantic Monthly in which Robert Kaplan gives a narrative of his travels in Bangladesh – a country struggling with Islamic fundamentalism, weak governance, overpopulation and climate change. The themes of this article are reminiscent of his famous mid-1990s work – and namesake of this blog – The [...]
- Tokyo tabi
Younghusband in front of the infamous war museum at Yasukuni Shrine, Tokyo
I was in Tokyo last week and had a good tour around the city. I hit all the major spots:
Yasukuni Shrine – where to war criminals are
Yushukan – the infamous war museum
Ministry of Defense
Diet building
Imperial PalaceAll in all it was a good adventure, and [...]
- Fort Ross
In researching for another post to be published shortly, I came across information on Fort Ross, the Russian settlement founded in California in 1814. This is interesting enough that it deserves its own post.
It is hard to fully appreciate how far Russian imperial power in the 19th truly spread without looking at Fort Ross. [...]
- What Kenya tells us about Democracy in Africa
Some look at a headline such as this and are shocked. Those of us who have been reading Kaplan’s work for years can say, this type of post-election chaos has long been on the horizon.
Up to 1,000 killed in Kenya crisis
World powers have been horrified by the sudden outbreak of bloodshed in a country [...]
- Tuareg Rebellion
For our readers out there who’ve read Robert Kaplan’s latest books, the Tuareg Rebellion in Mali and Niger isn’t wholly unknown. Adrian over at Politics & Soccer is a masters student in Security Studies and is researching it for his thesis. If any of our readers have expertise to offer, he would surely appreciate it.
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- Kawagoe
As the warlord Ieyasu Tokugawa was establishing his hold over Japan and took control of Edo (today’s Tokyo) in 1590, he sent one his top lietenants to secure the domain of Kawagoe, which had vast holdings over the local countryside and was a vital defensive position to secure Edo from enemy attack. The town [...]
- WWI Humor
A German cartoon published at the start of World War I, indicating the German belief that the alliance of Germany and Austria would defeat the “entente” of England, France and Russia.
- Warlord Psychology
Via ChicagoBoyz this link to Kent’s Imperative titled, “Enigmatic biographies of the damned.”
Via the Economist this week, we learn of the death of an adversary whose kind has nearly been forgotten. Khun Sa was a warlord who amassed a private army and smuggling operation which dominated Asian heroin trafficking from remotest Burma over the course [...]
- The Geography of Persia Through History
To continue our occasional series on the historical borders of nations through history, I’d like to follow the posts on Ethiopia, Poland and Armenia with a review of the historical borders of Persia.
NOTE: As always, these borders shifted over the years, may not be entirely accurate, and I naturally rely on published historical sources as [...]
- Volapuk
In the book Spook Country William Gibson paints a picture of Cuban-Chinese gangsters who do parkour and communicate through a manufactured language called Volapuk.
Gibson describes Volapuk through the character Milgrim on page 16:
When the Russians got themselves computers, the keyboards and screen displays were Roman, not Cyrillic. They faked up something that looked like Cyrillic, [...]
