Read The Revenge of Geography Online

Authors: Robert D. Kaplan

The Revenge of Geography (54 page)

Chapter XIV: The Former Ottoman Empire

  1.
George Friedman,
The Next 100 Years: A Forecast for the 21st Century
(New York: Doubleday, 2009), p. 7.

  2.
William Langer and Robert Blake, “The Rise of the Ottoman Turks
and Its Historical Background,”
American Historical Review
, 1932; Jakub J. Grygiel,
Great Powers and Geopolitical Change
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), p. 96.

  3.
Herbert Adams Gibbons,
The Foundation of the Ottoman Empire
(New York: Century, 1916); Grygiel,
Great Powers and Geopolitical Change
, pp. 96–97, 101.

  4.
Dilip Hiro,
Inside Central Asia: A Political and Cultural History of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Iran
(New York: Overlook Duckworth, 2009), p. 89; Dilip Hiro, “The Islamic Wave Hits Turkey,”
The Nation
, June 28, 1986.

  5.
Hiro,
Inside Central Asia
, pp. 85–86.

  6.
Robert D. Kaplan,
Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus
(New York: Random House, 2000), p. 118.

  7.
Samuel P. Huntington,
The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996), pp. 85, 125, 177.

  8.
Erkan Turkmen,
The Essence of Rumi’s Masnevi
(Konya, Turkey: Misket, 1992), p. 73.

  9.
Marc Champion, “In Risky Deal, Ankara Seeks Security, Trade,”
Wall Street Journal
, May 18, 2010.

10.
Geoffrey Kemp and Robert E. Harkavy,
Strategic Geography and the Changing Middle East
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1997), p. 105.

11.
Freya Stark,
Islam To-day
, edited by A. J. Arberry and Rom Landau (London: Faber & Faber, 1943).

12.
Robert D. Kaplan, “Heirs of Sargons,”
The National Interest
, Washington, DC, July–August 2009.

13.
Georges Roux,
Ancient Iraq
(London: Allen & Unwin, 1964).

14.
Adeed Dawisha,
Iraq: A Political History from Independence to Occupation
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), p. 4.

15.
Ibid., p. 5.

16.
Ibid., pp. 286–87.

17.
Philip K. Hitti,
History of Syria: Including Lebanon and Palestine
(New York: Macmillan, 1951), pp. 3–5.

18.
Nibraz Kazimi, “Move Assad: Could Jihadists Overthrow the Syrian Government?,”
New Republic
, June 25, 2010.

19. Michael Young, “On the Eastern Shore,”
Wall Street Journal
, April 29, 2011.

20.
Franck Salameh, “Assad Dynasty Crumbles,”
The National Interest
, Washington, DC, April 27, 2011; see, too, Philip Mansel,
Levant
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2011).

21.
Unfortunately, despite the promise that Adonis’s poetry exudes, he turned out to be a disappointment to demonstrators in the early days of the Arab Spring, refusing to side completely with the opposition to Bashar al-Assad. Nevertheless, his poetry still suggests an eclectic Syria built on a confection of cultures. Robert F. Worth, “The Arab Intellectuals Who Didn’t Roar,”
New York Times
, October 30, 2011.

22.
Robert D. Kaplan,
Eastward to Tartary
, p. 186.

23.
Benjamin Schwarz, “Will Israel Live to 100?,”
The Atlantic
, May 2005.

PART III: AMERICA’S DESTINY
Chapter XV: Braudel, Mexico, and Grand Strategy

  1.
Fernand Braudel,
The Mediterranean: And the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II
, vols. 1 and 2, translated by Sian Reynolds (New York: Harper & Row, 1949, 1972, 1973).

  2.
Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 243, 245–46.

  3.
H. R. Trevor-Roper, “Fernand Braudel, the Annales, and the Mediterranean,”
The Journal of Modern History
, University of Chicago Press, December 1972.

  4.
Barry Cunliffe,
Europe Between the Oceans: Themes and Variations: 9000 BC–AD 1000
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), pp. 17–18.

  5.
Jakub J. Grygiel,
Great Powers and Geopolitical Change
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), p. 17.

  6.
Michael Lind, “America Under the Caesars,”
The National Interest
, Washington, July–August 2010.

  7.
Grygiel,
Great Powers and Geopolitical Change
, p. 123.

  8.
Ibid., pp. 63, 79–83.

  9.
Francis G. Hutchins,
The Illusion of Permanence: British Imperialism in India
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967), pp. 196–97; Niall Ferguson,
Empire: The Rise and Demise of the British World
Order and the Lessons for Global Power
(New York: Basic Books, 2003), pp. 137–38, 151–53; Robert D. Kaplan,
Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground
(New York: Random House, 2005), p. 368.

10.
Edward N. Luttwak,
The Grand Strategy of the Roman Empire: From the First Century A.D. to the Third
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1976), pp. 192–94.

11.
Edward N. Luttwak,
The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009).

12.
W. H. Parker,
Mackinder: Geography as an Aid to Statecraft
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), p. 127; Robert Strausz-Hupé,
Geopolitics: The Struggle for Space and Power
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1942), p. 240.

13.
Bernard DeVoto,
The Course of Empire
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1952), p. xxxii, 1989 American Heritage Library edition.

14.
David M. Kennedy, “Can We Still Afford to Be a Nation of Immigrants?,”
Atlantic Monthly
, November 1996.

15.
Joel Kotkin, “The Rise of the Third Coast: The Gulf’s Ascendancy in U.S.,”
Forbes.com
, June 23, 2011.

16.
Arnold J. Toynbee,
A Study of History
, abridgement of vols. 1–6 by D. C. Somervell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1934, 1946), p. 10.

17.
Henry Bamford Parkes,
A History of Mexico
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), pp. 3–4, 11.

18.
David J. Danelo, “The Many Faces of Mexico,”
Orbis
, Philadelphia, Winter 2011.

19.
Jackson Diehl, “The Crisis Next Door: U.S. Falls Short in Helping Mexico End Its Drug War,”
Washington Post
, July 26, 2010.

20.
Mackubin T. Owens, “Editor’s Corner,”
Orbis
, Philadelphia, Winter 2011.

21.
Robert C. Bonner, “The New Cocaine Cowboys: How to Defeat Mexico’s Drug Cartels,”
Foreign Affairs
, New York, July–August 2010.

22.
Robert D. Kaplan, “Looking the World in the Eye: Profile of Samuel Huntington,”
Atlantic Monthly
, December 2001.

23.
Samuel P. Huntington,
Who Are We? The Challenges to America’s National Identity
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2004). Huntington’s book drew in a small way on my own, which had put forward
a similar thesis. Robert D. Kaplan,
An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America’s Future
(New York: Random House, 1998), Chapters 10–13.

24.
Huntington,
Who Are We?
, pp. 39, 59, 61, 63, 69, 106.

25.
Ibid., p. 221.

26.
Peter Skerry, “What Are We to Make of Samuel Huntington?,”
Society
, New York, November–December 2005.

27.
Kennedy, “Can We Still Afford to Be a Nation of Immigrants?”

28.
Carlos Fuentes,
The Buried Mirror: Reflections on Spain and the New World
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), p. 343.

29.
Huntington,
Who Are We?
, pp. 115–16, 229–30, 232, 238; Peter Skerry,
Mexican Americans: The Ambivalent Minority
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 21–22, 289.

30.
Huntington,
Who Are We?
, pp. 246–47;
The Economist
, London, July 7, 2001.

31.
This idea I first propounded in
An Empire Wilderness
.

32.
Ted Galen Carpenter, “Escape from Mexico,”
The National Interest Online
, Washington, June 30, 2010.

33.
David Danelo, “How the U.S. and Mexico Can Take Back the Border—Together,” Foreign Policy Research Institute, Philadelphia, April 2010.

34.
Arnold J. Toynbee,
A Study of History
, abridgement of vols. 7–10 by D. C. Somervell (New York: Oxford University Press, 1957), p. 124.

35.
Ibid., pp. 15–16, 75.

36.
Kaplan,
An Empire Wilderness
, p. 14. See the bibliography in that book.

37.
Stratfor.com
, “The Geopolitics of the United States, Part 1: The Inevitable Empire,” Austin, Texas, August 25, 2011.

38.
Saul B. Cohen,
Geography and Politics in a World Divided
(New York: Random House, 1963), p. 95.

39.
James Fairgrieve,
Geography and World Power
, p. 329.

40.
Toynbee,
A Study of History
, vols. 7–10, p. 173.

41.
Nicholas John Spykman,
The Geography of the Peace
, edited by Helen R. Nicholl (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1944), p. 45.

42.
Robert Strausz-Hupé,
The Zone of Indifference
(New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1952), p. 64.

ALSO BY ROBERT D. KAPLAN

Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the
Future of American Power

Hog Pilots, Blue Water Grunts: The American Militar
in the Air, at Sea, and on the Ground

Imperial Grunts: The American Military on the Ground

Mediterranean Winter: The Pleasures of History and Landscape
in Tunisia, Sicily, Dalmatia, and the Peloponnese

Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos

Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans
,
the Middle East, and the Caucasus

The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams
of the Post Cold War

An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America’s Future

The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan
,
from Iran to Cambodia

The Arabists: The Romance of an American Elite

Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History

Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors
in Afghanistan and Pakistan

Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia
,

Sudan, Somalia, and Eritrea

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

R
OBERT
D. K
APLAN
is the author of fourteen books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including
Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power; Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History;
and
Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos
. He has been a foreign correspondent for
The Atlantic
for more than a quarter-century. In 2011,
Foreign Policy
magazine named Kaplan among the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” In 2012, he joined Stratfor as chief geopolitical analyst.

From 2009 to 2011, he served under Secretary of Defense Robert Gates as a member of the Defense Policy Board. Since 2008, he has been a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. From 2006 to 2008, he was the Class of 1960 Distinguished Visiting Professor in National Security at the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis. Visit him on the Web at
www.RobertDKaplan.com
and at
www.stratfor.com
.

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