Dive into the archives.
- Kaplan on the Medal of Honor
Thanks to Eddie for sending us Robert Kaplan’s latest article in the Atlantic Monthly on what it takes to win the Medal of Honor.
No Greater Honor
Over the decades, the Medal of Honor—the highest award for valor—has evolved into the U.S. military equivalent of sainthood. Only eight Medals of Honor have been awarded since the Vietnam [...]
- Yes we can
Kaplan explains how we could invade Burma and how it would work. (Thanks Eddie!)
The New York Times
May 14, 2008
Aid at the Point of a Gun
By ROBERT D. KAPLANMae Sot, Thailand: MORE than 60,000 people may have died as a result of Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, and at least 1.5 million are homeless or otherwise [...]
- Oh! Kolkata!
Kaplan on India, finally (thanks Eddie!):
Oh! Kolkata!
When judging a new place, a traveler must first always reckon with his or her point of departure. Arriving in Calcutta by bus from Dhaka, the capital of next-door Bangladesh, is like arriving in West Berlin from East Berlin during the Cold War—a trip I made several times. Grayness [...]
- Equal Alliance, Unequal Roles
Following on the Kissinger post of last week, Kaplan has an Op-Ed in the New York Times on the Nato alliance and the unequal nature of the alliance—but unlike Kissinger, he defends it.
Predictions of NATO’s decline hold it to an impossible cold war standard. Then, a direct mortal threat to Central Europe in the form [...]
- Robert Kaplan on ‘The Ghost War’
I’m rather absurdly busy with professional matters and will continue as such for the rest of the week—but to post in haste, check out Robert D. Kaplan’s book review of ‘The Ghost War’ in the IHT:
In “The Ghost War,” the New York Times reporter Alex Berenson has fashioned a smart, economically written spy novel that [...]
- Robert D. Kaplan Joins Center for a New American Security
From a press release issued by the Center for a New American Security (CNAS):
Robert D. Kaplan Joins Center for a New American Security
CNAS Press ReleaseWASHINGTON, DC, January 30, 2008 – Robert Kaplan, a prolific and influential writer for The Atlantic Monthly, will join the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) as a Senior Fellow [...]
- 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 [...]
- But which book?
In the aftermath of the Bhutto assasination, the Hindustan Times runs this article on her relationships with leaders in India, noting:
Leader of the Opposition LK Advani expressed a sense of personal loss and grief at PPP leader Benazir Bhutto’s assassination since she enjoyed close ties with his family and had common interests, besides their common [...]
- Patriotism, nationalism and faith
“... to believe in something is more important than to be blessed by mere logic” writes Robert D. Kaplan in his latest article On Forgetting the Obvious. The war on terrorism is not a war of ideas, but a war of faith. Not faith in a religious sense, at least not for the Western side, [...]
- Unheralded military successes
Kaplan alert! A typical piece by the man himself in the typical travel writing/war correspondent/archair historian format that makes him so great. From the LA Times, slightly abridged:
Unheralded military successes
Low-cost, low-risk operations such as those in Colombia and the Philippines show what the U.S. can achieve.November 25, 2007
When I visited Arauca province in [...]
