Robert D. Kaplan speaking in New York, 2005. Photo by Younghusband.

In the early autumn of 2005 I took a 12 hour night bus from Ontario Canada to New York City to meet Robert D. Kaplan. It was a harrowing journey. At the border crossing, at about 2AM, all passengers filed off the bus to have their passports checked. It was about a 45 minute operation. I went through with no problems, but the officer looked at me a little funny.

You see, I had just come back from Iran, and had visas for China and Kazakhstan in my passport. When asked why I had visited, I answered honestly, “Recreation.” Upon asking my affiliation I promptly replied, “Royal Military College of Canada”. That must have triggered something.

Once everyone was back on the bus (and in one location, mind), a customs officer with the manner of a doberman boarded and pointed an accusatory finger towards the back of the bus — at me! “You, come with me.” he barked with authority. I grabbed my bag and made my way to the glass holding area beside passport control for questioning. The officer there was actually pretty friendly, and when I told him my business in America it turned out that he too was a Kaplan fan. All was fine and I was out within 10 minutes.

Unfortunately the Glass Cube of Interrogation was in full view of all the passengers on the bus. So once I came back aboard and made my way to my spot near the back of the bus, I received a number of suspicious stares. It seemed that every American around me thought that I was either a spy or a terrorist. Not a relaxing journey.

Anyways, I didn’t mean to bury the lede, but that story needed telling. Once again I will be making a pilgrimage to meet the man himself: Robert Kaplan will be speaking about the Indian Ocean in Tokyo on March 12. I have already made my reservation with the Sasakawa Peace Foundation and will be going up to Tokyo for the day by Shinkansen. I am of course willing to meet up with any readers, or anyone else going to the talk. Feel free to contact me at myname@mydomain (obscure enough?). Or use the contact form.

Finally, there will inevitably be a question and answer period. Dear readers, what do you want me to ask him?

Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power by Robert Kaplan will be released October 19, 2010. It is already available on Amazon for pre-order. No cover art yet.

Be Like Reagan, says Kaplan. More specifically:

Iran is the new Eastern Europe during the last phase of the Cold War. Like Poland during the heady days of Solidarity in the early 1980s, the protestors in the streets of Iranian cities are not crazed ethnics demonstrating on behalf of some illiberal blood-and-soil nationalism, but enlightened, technologically savvy multitudes crying out for universal values of democracy and human rights. As such, they have captured the imagination of liberal intellectuals in the West. Even as the United States is tied down with 200,000 troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran promises to be the signal issue of our time.

Rare for Kaplan, he lays out a policy prescription for the US President—well, be like Reagan, but more specifically:

Given that the regime could last another month or another decade, what is President Barack Obama to do? Throughout his first year in office, he’s attempted the Nixonian détente approach: talk, work back channels, get the two governments to negotiate on the basis of naked national interests. That approach seems to have failed—less because it doesn’t make sense than because the Iranian regime is so internally divided that it can’t adequately respond. That leaves us with the Reaganite approach: be open to far-reaching talks, as President Ronald Reagan was with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, but do nothing to legitimize the Iranian system. And, throughout any discussions, adopt the rhetoric of democracy. Make it clear that Washington is on the same side of history as the demonstrators, but also make it clear that the door is open to negotiations with those in power. And to avoid the risk of undermining the demonstrators by overt American support of them (thus catering to regime’s basest conspiracy theories), Obama should talk about democracy only in general, albeit pointed, terms, without directly referring to Iran. That is, he should get the language of universal values out over Iranian air waves as much as possible: encouraging the demonstrators without specifically backing them.

We are not in control. But something wonderful has begun: nothing less than the most positive development in the Middle East since President Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem. And while that daring gesture led only to a cold bilateral peace between Egypt and Israel, the Green Revolution in Iran carries the potential to unleash a true Islamic Reformation.

[At] the Killing Fields outside of Phnom Penh, where the Khmer Rouge did mass executions… there are human bones lying around, human skulls, and this tour group came, two tour buses, one Thai, one Greek. They both looked the same, because middle-class people around the world look increasingly the same: the same leisure clothes, made by the same factories. The middle-class people around the world are forgoing horizontal bonds of community as vertical state borders tend to dissolve and collapse, kind of in the medieval era, when the aristocracies of the various competing realms had more in common with each other than they had with their own peasants.

So I saw these two very alike middle-class groups. Most of the tourists wanted to learn. They were interested in this sight. But there were a few men in each group who you could tell were like bullies, you know, in the college dorm and just shouting, “What’s this?” One actually picked up a thigh bone in the dirt and started holding it up and laughing and everything. For them, it was a big joke. And the reason it was because they didn’t know the past. They obviously didn’t know what had happened here. This was one of the great crimes of the 20th century… And what just struck me at that moment is how history is forgotten.

Robert D. Kaplan, Booknotes Interview, April 21, 1996

It was that Kaplan quote that popped up in my mind when I saw this on Failbook:

Longtime readers may remember that I was revolted with the Holocaust Monument when it opened and wrote so at the time. But criticizing the design and philosophy behind constructing the monument is a world apart from so disrespectful behavior at the monument and trivializing the history of the Holocaust. The pictures are innocent and childish, which I find shocking and revolting.

And what just struck me at that moment is how history is forgotten.

Robert D. Kaplan, who has long been associated with the Foreign Policy Research Insititute, was awarded its Fifth Annual Benjamin Franklin Award for Public Service on November 12, 2009 at at FPRI’s 2009 Annual Dinner at the Westin Philadelphia.

You can watch the video on your browser or download the mp3 at the FPRI link here, where Kaplan recieves the award and then delivers the keynote address, regarding the rise of Asia and the future dimensions of conflict. His main point is that the “Asian century” is not just economic—while the US fumbles around in Iraq and Afghanistan and Europe defense budgets are starved, the militaries of India, China, Korea and Japan are growing. The Indian navy is about to become the 3rd largest in the world; Japan puts just 1% of its GDP to defense but puts to sea four times as many warships as the British; and China is ever-rising. And the growth isn’t just in size—they are becoming more sophisticated in technology and training.

H/T to Lexington Green for the heads-up on this event from two months ago—better late than never. (You can also watch or download the audio from previous Kaplan talks at the FPRI here, here and here.)

I never dreamed it possible to seriously write about the ancient Roman General Scipio Africanus the Elder and hip hop rapper 50 Cent on the same book page. I now know better—Ladies and Gentlemen, I present to you The 50th Law.

At first glance, the book looks like a practical joke or an act of tremendous chutzpah. The cover is made of imitation leather, embossed with gold lettering in a thick Gothic font, sporting pages that are edged with gold like a Holy Bible found in a church pew. The book is unreal in its confidence—co-authors Robert Greene and 50 Cent review the lessons taught by history’s great thinkers and leaders—Sun Tzu, Machiavelli, Napoleon, Lincoln, Clausewitz, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and many more—and then apply those lessons… to the life of 50 Cent! Can you think of anything more audacious?

The book opens with Robert Greene, who has authored books that are somewhat like the self-help version of Robert D. Kaplan’s Warrior Politics, explaining how Greene met 50 Cent in 2007 and was enthralled that, despite having no academic education, he instinctively understood the laws of power that Greene had been trying to teach in his books such as The 48 Laws of Power. He then tells how he spent a year with 50 Cent, witnessing him in action as he ran his music business and career as a performer, and wrote the book using the inspiration of 50 Cent’s career success, concluding that the famous rapper has something extra, a panache that Greene did not cover in his book on the 48 laws—fearlessness.

That is the key theme of the book—the dehabilitating nature of fear and the importance of overcoming it in order to succeed. Fearlessness allow a person to take advantages of opportunities and rise to challenges by taking initiative. It’s hard—fear is the most primitive and basic human emotion—but as Greene wrote in his blog post:

The truth is that a fearless approach is the necessary starting point of almost any successful or creative action in this world. The 50th is in fact the ultimate law of power, the key to the castle.

Greene met and spent time with 50 Cent well before the rapper’s success as one of the richest hip-hop artists was recognized by Forbes Magazine and his financial success became open public knowledge.

I am almost shocked to find myself writing that I strong recommend this book. Greene trumpets the values of realism and dismisses idealism, praises the benefits of adversity, the importance of innovation over tradition, and the book really does have the readability of Robert D. Kaplan’s writings and quickly draw you in to believing the material. Like Kaplan, it applies the laws of the ancients to very modern situations that make the material easy to grasp and understand. It is also jaw-droppingly audacious—Greene writes that, “Fifty could serve as my Cesare Borgia, and I as his Machiavelli.”

I was pleased to see that The Atlantic has the same sense of humor as us (e.g. this) with this recent answer to a letter.

H/T to a reader.

See you next year.

The Minister mentioned one of the [Sierra Leone] coup’s leaders, Solomon Anthony Joseph Musa, who shot the people who had paid for his schooling, “in order to erase the humiliation and mitigate the power his middle-class sponsors held over him.” …

Forget Miami: direct flights between the United States and the Murtala Muhammed Airport, in neighboring Nigeria’s largest city, Lagos, have been suspended by order of the U.S. Secretary of Transportation because of ineffective security at the terminal and its environs. A State Department report cited the airport for “extortion by law-enforcement and immigration officials.” This is one of the few times that the U.S. government has embargoed a foreign airport for reasons that are linked purely to crime.

- Robert D. Kaplan, The Coming Anarchy, February 1994

A portrait is emerging of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab—the “Christmas Bomber” who was thwarted as he tried to detonate a bomb as he flew from Nigeria to Detroit—that should chill liberal policymakers to the bone. Despite what we might like to think, he was not some rough kid from a broken home radicalized by Islamists in the ghettos of Nigeria. He was in fact a member of the uppercrust of Nigerian society and had studied at elite private schools in Togo and Britain, where he lived a very comfortable lifestyle. His father was a former Minister of Finance for the Nigerian government, a prominent banker and a respected businessman, who was so concerned about his son’s religious fanaticism, praise of terrorists, and study of Arabic and Islam in Yemen, that he alerted US authorities of his son’s radicalism six months before the attack (unfortunately, it didn’t do much good).

Some in the UK think it has to do with extreme leftist educational institutions that espouse anti-Americanism and protect extremist Islamist thinkers under the guise of free speach. But this may have less to do with it than the effect of education on a mind not tempered by other social and personal safeguards. Indeed, this type of education and family background is not the exception among terrorists—it’s practically the rule. Mohamed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attacks, was an Egyptian national, son of a lawyer, who attended graduate school in Germany. That’s a similar background to Ayman al-Zawahiri, a founder of Al Qaeda and reported to be it’s “brain”, the son of a university chemistry professor who trained to become a physician. And of course, Osama Bin Laden is a member of the Bin Laden family, one of Saudi Arabia’s richest families.

I believe the lesson from this is that education will not save us in the long-term battle against terror. Nigeria has millions of destitute young men living in absolute poverty. So do dozens more Muslim countries. Yet most militants are radicalized not by homegrown religous institutions, which tend to be very conservative and preserving the status quo (indeed, religious leaders in Nigeria were quick to condemn the recent attempted plane bombing). The danger as always is radical thinkers that want to violently destroy the status quo and existing institutions.

Whether it be 19th century France, 20th century Russia and China, or 21st century Islamic World, education is never a cure for extremists driven to violence, and pursuing education of the masses as a countermeasure to the spread of extremism is nonsense. Indeed, that may provide the venues and networks for the thinking that justifies terrorism and militancy.

SIDENOTE: There’s a second topic to follow here, also addressed by Kaplan’s 1994 article, that Nigeria is crime-ridden and corrupt, with notoriously dangerous airports, that should be a major warning sign to US authorities.

Merry Christmas! For a seasonal present, I’m giving all readers an almost-complete copy of The Coming Anarchy!

By that I mean: Robert D. Kaplan published the article The Coming Anarchy in 1994, and later combined that article with many others to publish a book by the same name in 2002. Over the years I’ve purchased dozens of copies of the book over the years and given to friends and colleagues to spread the good word, as perhaps one of the world’s primary Coming Anarchy evangelists… but truth be told, you can read most of the book for free online. Most articles were published in The Atlantic before the book was published, and since the magazine has recently opened up its online archives, you can access their archives online. So here goes—

1. The Coming Anarchy
2. Was Democracy Just a Moment? (blog post here)
3. Idealism Won’t Stop Mass Murder
4. Special Intelligence
5. And Now for the News: The Disturbing Relevance of Gibbon’s Decline and Fall
6. Proportionalism: A Realistic Approach to Foreign Policy
7. Kissinger, Metternich, and Realism
8. Conrad’s Nostromo and the Third World (first paragraph; remainder)
9. The Dangers of Peace

Robert D. Kaplan supplies a chapter on Chinese naval strategy to a Center for a New American Security report entitled China’s Arrival: A Strategic Framework for a Global Relationship. Much of the chapter is based on his previous work in Foreign Affairs and The Atlantic with a healthy dose of James Holmes and Toshi Yoshihara, two academics many will be familiar with. Kaplan’s primary contention is that in the long-term, China is pursuing a two-ocean strategy for its navy:

… the Chinese Navy would prefer to be not a one-ocean, but a two-ocean power, with multiple access routes between the Indian Ocean and Western Pacific to ease its dependence on the Strait of Malacca. (pp. 53-54)

Unfortunately much of the analysis is based on the Mahanian concept of physical protection of the sea lanes. This type of thinking has been criticized by naval thinkers in the West, but is considered the norm in Chinese strategic circles (see Mao Zedong, Meet Alfred Thayer Mahan: Strategic Theory and Chinese Sea Power (PDF) by Holmes and Yoshihara). Much of China’s resources pass through the Malacca Strait from the Indian Ocean. It is to this end that China has set up its string of pearls strategy (one being Gwadar Port), contemplating a Kra Canal as well as beefing up its naval power projection capabilities into the Indian Ocean. Thus, quoting Chinese naval analyst Zhang Ming, “India is perhaps China’s most realistic strategic adversary.” Kaplan points out that 90 percent of Chinese arms sales are to Indian Ocean littoral countries, virtually surrounding India on three sides.

This all sounds very ominous but before you begin accusing Kaplan of being a war-monger realize that much of this article is about justifying China’s expansion. Kaplan stresses that “there is nothing illegitimate about the rise of the Chinese military.” and “… it is too facile to suggest that China is acquiring naval power as a means to the end of regional or perhaps global hegemony.”(pp. 46) Chinese expansion is a function of expanding trade, giving rise to economic and strategist interests overseas. Furthermore, Chinese naval expansion, argues Kaplan, is “an indication that its land borders are for the first time in ages not under threat.” (pp. 48)

Kaplan once again makes the comparison of China’s rise to that of America’s rise in the 19th century. He even makes a reference to the Indian Wars and the Wounded Knee Massacre of 1890. Reader beware, one must tread carefully when using historical metaphors and analogues. There is learning from history, and there is being blinded by history. A good book to read on this subject is Neustadt and May’s excellent Thinking in Time: The Uses of History for Decision-Makers. That said, I think Kaplan is doing something more subtle here. Rather than making an argument about the progress of a rising power, he is offering a moral argument to counter anti-Chinese sentiment in the US. Basically he is saying: hey, we went the same route and the world didn’t turn out so bad did it? For some that may seem a very egocentric argument, but remember that the entire report is directed at the American and Chinese decision makers and is titled: A Strategic Framework for a Global Relationship. Kaplan argues that China’s naval rise can present the US with opportunities for engagement (eg. the Chinese dispatch to the Gulf of Aden as an example), and we know from his previous work that Kaplan supports the military as the harbingers of diplomacy. Furthermore, Kaplan advises that rather than leveraging allies like Japan and India to isolate China, the US should leverage these relationships to bind China in an Asia-centric alliance system. A moment of institutional liberalism from the self-proclaimed pessimistic realist Kaplan?

The rest of the report is written by name-brand academics such as John Ikenberry, Michael Green and Richard Weitz. Often Kaplan is criticized for writing in academic settings. The situation is no different here as he makes a number of claims without sufficient evidence. At least this time he uses endnotes (a whole 16 of them!). Since this is really a think piece, an exploration of a potential naval strategy from a decidedly American point of view, it might not require such adherence to the rigour of the academy. Unless you are a professional academic working on SLOC issues or are familiar with Holmes and Yoshihara’s work, this article is probably worth the read.

h/t to Lex who passed this on oh so long ago!