Former US president Bill Clinton tells Foreign Policy who to read and what to watch out for in 2010. Our man Robert D. Kaplan gets a mention when Mr. Clinton is asked how long he sees the war on terror lasting:
BC: How long it lasts depends on whether the places out of which really big, effective terrorist groups are operating remain essentially stateless. The territories in Pakistan and the border area with Afghanistan are not part of a centralized state. Robert Kaplan has written tons of books about what’s going on in the modern world, and if you read The Ends of the Earth and these books that say we are de facto, no matter what the laws say, becoming nations of mega-city-states full of really poor, angry, uneducated, and highly vulnerable people, all over the world, we would have a lot of slumdog millionaires. If that’s right, then terror — meaning killing and robbery and coercion by people who do not have state authority and go beyond national borders — could be around for a very long time.
Clinton and Kaplan have somewhat of a history. Back in the mid-1990s, legend has it that Kaplan’s book Balkan Ghosts convinced President Clinton against intervening in Bosnia.
In the FP interview Clinton also tips authors such as Paul Krugman, David Brooks, Tom Friedman, Malcolm Gladwell, Robert Wright, Ken Wilber and Matt Ridley. Clinton seems to like the NYT best-sellers list.
Give the full interview a read: Bill Clinton’s World.
H/T to MutantFrog.
Great to see the shout out to our Bob by the big WJC!
Funny, considering his successor couldn’t even read.
I’m more interested in hearing about what Hilary Clinton is reading. But no, FP serves up rock star Bill instead.
My respect for Clinton has fallen a notch after reading his glowing praise of Tom Friedman. The fact that he is considered one of America’s top creative minds is a damning indictment of how far intellectualism has fallen in the States in the past few decades. A terrible writer.
Paul Krugman? Has anyone read his looney economic idea lately? They are crazy.
Yeah, calling Krugman raises eyebrows, but passing that by for the moment… Friedman?? Give me a break.
Bill Clinton is & always has been a tireless reader, and I don’t hold it against him that he likes (or says he likes) Friedman. Some people must like him, or he couldn’t hold down the job he now has. The quote about “megacities” shows that Friedman can depict the obvious to those of us who don’t travel as much as he does. Your own post on West Africa is good evidence that he was on target with this observation.
We must have more leaders reading Ken Wilber, instead of all that oldschool postmodern and modern stuff