Kaplan argues correctly that the modern world is much like the ancient world. Humans are human and the problem of violence in and against society is as eternal as Cain and Abel. He skillfully carries us from Churchill's The River War (a study of the British role in the Sudan 1881-1898) a book Kaplan first bought in Khartoum in the mid-1980s. Kaplan understands that the roots of historic conflict run much deeper than today's story and he combines Churchill's personal sense of history with Churchill's role in history.
Kaplan carries us through the lessons of Thucydides, Sun T'zu, Livy, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Kant and a series of other scholars who have tried to cope with the challenge of violence and human society. He offers intelligent insights into America's role in the world, the inevitable nature of third world violence in the next half-century and the challenge of creating effective responses and sustainable strategies and institutions.
I highly recommend Kaplan's new book to anyone who is trying to understand what needs to be done to response to September 11. There are a number of references in this book to asymmetric power, fanaticism and the intelligent use of unsuspected force outside the rules of modern state warfare, which are prescient of what we are now living through.
In this new book, Kaplan presents a rough theoretical and historical sketch of the ideas that have been in the background of his other writings. The morality and political virtue outlined here is neither amoral nor a variation on the theme of "might makes right," as some other reviewers have suggested. It is a morality rooted not in ideals, but in experience. For Kaplan, as for Machiavelli, political virtue is formed not by a vision of how things ought to be, but by how things are. And how things are, as documented by the likes of Thucydides and Livy from the classical world, by the horrors of the Holocaust from our own not-too-distant past, and by recent events like the bloodshed in Sierra Leone and elsewere - how things are is not always pretty. Though we may be much, much more than beasts - and who having listened to voice of a young Elvis, having read the "Divine Comedy," or having seen the temple of Nefertari, would deny that! - our virtue as well as our taste is defined by the beastly, the cruel, and the evil. This point is most vividly expressed in the words of Thomas Malthus: "moral evil is absolutely necessary to the production of moral excellence." To deny that is foolhardy and dangerous. To affirm it is the necessary first step in cultivating the pagan virtue that Kaplan advocates.
Here's a couple of quotes:
"Because the elite media is dominated by cosmopolitians who inhabit the wider world beyond the nation-state,
it has the tendency to emphasize moral principles over national self-interest."
"The power of the media is wilful and dangerous because it dramatically affects Western policy,
while bearing no responsibility for the outcome. Indeed, the media's moral perfectionism is
possible because it is politically unaccountable."
Is he talking about 'embedded journalists' who 'write what they're told'?
or is he referring to cnn or fox? or others?
Where would Mr. Kaplan advise us to seek objective news?
Robert D Kaplan is another 'know-it-all pundit' who wants you to think like him.
Let's face it, when you read quotes by mass murderers like Henry Kissinger, William J Perry, William S Cohn,
and disgraced criminal politicians like Newt Ginrich,
quoted on the back cover, take a big gulp before you read.