Tuesday, April 24, 2012

Free Ebook The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, by Robert D. Kaplan

Free Ebook The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, by Robert D. Kaplan

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The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, by Robert D. Kaplan

The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, by Robert D. Kaplan


The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, by Robert D. Kaplan


Free Ebook The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, by Robert D. Kaplan

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The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, by Robert D. Kaplan

Review

“[An] ambitious and challenging new book . . . [The Revenge of Geography] displays a formidable grasp of contemporary world politics and serves as a powerful reminder that it has been the planet’s geophysical configurations, as much as the flow of competing religions and ideologies, that have shaped human conflicts, past and present.”—Malise Ruthven, The New York Review of Books   “Robert D. Kaplan, the world-traveling reporter and intellectual whose fourteen books constitute a bedrock of penetrating exposition and analysis on the post-Cold War world . . . strips away much of the cant that suffuses public discourse these days on global developments and gets to a fundamental reality: that geography remains today, as it has been throughout history, one of the most powerful drivers of world events.”—The National Interest   “Kaplan plunges into a planetary review that is often thrilling in its sheer scale . . . encyclopedic.”—The New Yorker   “[The Revenge of Geography] serves the facts straight up. . . . Kaplan’s realism and willingness to face hard facts make The Revenge of Geography a valuable antidote to the feel-good manifestoes that often masquerade as strategic thought.”—The Daily Beast   “[A] remarkable new book . . . With such books as Balkan Ghosts and Monsoon, Kaplan, an observer of world events who sees what others often do not, has already established himself as one of the most discerning geopolitical writers of our time. The Revenge of Geography cements his status.”—National Review

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About the Author

Robert D. Kaplan is the bestselling author of sixteen books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including Asia’s Cauldron, The Revenge of Geography, Monsoon, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. He is a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a contributing editor at The Atlantic, where his work has appeared for three decades. He was chief geopolitical analyst at Stratfor, a visiting professor at the United States Naval Academy, and a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board. Foreign Policy magazine has twice named him one of the world’s Top 100 Global Thinkers.

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Product details

Paperback: 448 pages

Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (September 10, 2013)

Language: English

ISBN-10: 9780812982220

ISBN-13: 978-0812982220

ASIN: 0812982223

Product Dimensions:

5.2 x 1 x 8 inches

Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)

Average Customer Review:

4.0 out of 5 stars

349 customer reviews

Amazon Best Sellers Rank:

#114,207 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

"There are things worse than communism, it turned out, and in Iraq we brought them about ourselves. I say this as someone who supported regime change."I wasn't certain, when I began Robert Kaplan's The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate, just who Kaplan was or if I would have to do intellectual battle throughout this book with a point of view too contrary to my own. The above statement relieved my mind. Here, I suspected, might be someone worth listening to. Here might be someone from whom I can learn.Throughout Part I, he summarizes and expands upon a group of writers he calls Visionaries, chief among them Halford Makinder.For Makinder, Kaplan says, geography is"…an old story…Europe versus Russia: a liberal sea power—as were Athens and Venice—against a reactionary land power—as was Sparta and Prussia. For the sea, in addition to the cosmopolitan influences it bestows by virtue of access to distant harbors, provides the sort of inviolate border security necessary for liberalism and democracy to take root. (The United States is virtually an island nation …)"He makes clear that Russia, which he considered the heart of Makinder's “World Island,” has suffered since its beginning, from borders that are easily traduced, from a landmass that crosses 170 degrees of longitude (almost halfway around the globe), but lies almost entirely north of the 50th parallel (the northern border of the U.S. lies at 49 degrees north), and that historically has gone to great lengths to procure open ports for trade. The United States, on the other hand, is protected on two sides by large oceans, by treaty with a friendly power on a third, and threatened only by the demographics of population and economics on the fourth. We lie in the largest expanse of temperate zone productivity in the world, rivaled only by China. And we have two seaboards indented with year-round harbor facilities.And yet we jeered (this is my take, not necessarily Kaplan’s) for decades about Russia’s paranoia and the inability of Russian communism to make a living for its people, much less produce affluence. We have had, from the beginning, the right geography in which liberalism and democracy could take hold. Our history has, however, proven, time and again, Kaplan’s bald statement that "Democracy and morality are simply not synonymous."Part II goes deeper into the specifics of Europe, Russia, China, India, Iran, and the countries of the former Ottoman Empire.Speaking of the relatively new fundamentalism in Iran (but I would extend it to the possibilities inherent through the U.S. as well), he posits that in an increasingly urbanized world, the city, which once fostered creativity and innovation impossible back in the village, now accounts for much"intensified religious feeling. For in the village of old, religion was a natural extension of the daily traditions and routine of life among the extended family; but migrations to the city brought Muslims into the anonymity of slum existence, and to keep the family together and the young from drifting into crime, religion has had to be reinvented in starker, more ideological form.""Traveling from Saddam’s Iraq to Assad’s Syria, as I did on occasion, was like coming up for liberal humanist air." At this time, Kaplan regards Syria as having a better chance post-Assad than Iraq did post-Saddam because Syria seemed, at the time, to be a "less damaged society".Published in 2012 (2013 in paperback), Kaplan writes, with almost eerie foreshadowing, "…following Iraq and Afghanistan, the next target of Sunni jihadists could be Syria itself…"In Part III, America's Destiny, his final argument, vis a vis the U.S., is one I didn't expect. He paraphrases, and then expands favorably upon, Andrew Bacevich's "impolite observation," at a 2009 conference. "What have we achieved in the Middle East with all of our interventions since the 1980's?...Why not fix Mexico instead?""...human beings operate under constraints imposed by geography and the vast and varied phenomena that emanate from it: everything from persistent, albeit changeable, national characteristics to the location of trade routes to the life-or-death requirement for natural resources...And while the advance of electronic communications may make the world smaller, rather than negate geography, the Internet and other new media only make geography more precious, more contested, more claustrophobic.".There are no grand conclusions to The Revenge of Geography. No thrilling climax. No Walking Dead. No Sharknados. But there is a lot of food for thought for long winter evenings, and I recommend it wholeheartedly.

Mr. Kaplan is an astute and clear headed observer of reality. His notions on how geography affects attitude and how regional existence is a determinate of persons and groups far more than mere man made geo political lines on a map. He explains the essential differences in the halls of various power centers around the planet. He shows why geography may not be the only factor affecting foreign policy but the key one. If you read Guns, Germs and Steel, you may have an inkling of where this is going but Mr. Kaplan is writing about today and how geography causes nations to view the world from certain perspectives and eternal necessities. For example, Russia will always be seeking a warm water port and this requires a certain thrust from Russian leaders. Similarly, England is detached from some of the more direct influences of the European states, given the English Channel and it's island background. The only thing that Mr. Kaplan says or does that I did not agree nor enjoyed, was his attempt to bring both sides of the political polarity called America on board with his theory by first explaining his position, initially, on the Iraq War, and then claimed he changed it. His presentation is mostly conservative and he uses this word often. He attempts to gain liberal assent by first kicking a dead horse, the Iraq War. He is only correct in his observations up to the year forces were first withdrawn through misguided political acts back home. Losses were extended at a time things were restoring at last. The invasion may be controversial but his appeals to both sides to gain acceptance of his views I found to be unappealing and quite the stunt. His views are not for debate. He does not have to be smarmy towards those whose unanimity he seeks. The logic of his ideas carries the day; thus his self disparagement to make liberals like him is unnecessary. Anyone of either political perspective can only agree on this position because the facts demand it. Buy and read this book. Regardless of my annoyances with his early cloying and unnecessary genuflection, his overall thrust, by the beginning of chapter three, leads us all on an incredible journey of realization. What should have been obvious to all, that geography, if not a motivator for evil, is always a motivator of need.

As I read The Revenge of Geography I found myself wishing that it had been published a few years earlier, or that I had not retired from my job teaching high school Advanced Placement World History a couple of years ago, so that I could have used the rich material Robert D. Kaplan presents here in my classroom. That is high praise indeed, but it is no understatement to say that this book, alongside the works of Jared Diamond,Samuel Huntingdon, and a few other geographers/historians/researchers, is enormously valuable for those seeking a better understanding of our world and our future.Kaplan's greatest achievement here is his ability to explain the effects of geography on our past, present, and future. In the first of three segments, he provides the historical background to his study, tracing the work of historians and geographers from Herodotus through the twentieth century. In the second section, he analyzes the early twenty first century map,describing the ways in which gogrpahy influences the development of Europe, Russia, China, India, and the Middle East. Finally, the third section examines the fate of the United States and Mexico, two nations inevitably bound together by the map and whose futures will inevitably see us growing more intertwined.Throughout this meticulously researched work Kaplan provides "local color" through a series of fascinating anecdotes, many of them based on his own travels through the regions under discussion. These enhance what is already an impressive and scholarly account, one that I believe and hope will become essential reading for diplomats and strategists around the world.

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