The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate

The discipline of Geopolitics had become tainted after totalitarian regimes in the 20th century had made it the basis of their foreign policies. Kaplan dusts it off, incorporates new viewpoints (Huntington, amongst others) and presents new geopolitical insights for the 21st century.
It is probably inevitable that a book of this scope will contain some regrettable cultural generalisations and lack of nuance. The analysis of China's geopolitics was the most revelatory, whereas the chapters on the other regions had me confused at times: having signed up for the Heartland theory, the author seems undecided where this heartland is. Just as he has convinced the reader that Kazakhstan is the heartland that will define who controls Europe, show more Africa and Asia, the analysis turns towards India. Or Iran. And then it turns out that Afghanistan - of all places - is the pivot state that will determine the global leader of the 21st century. Some might find the book an ex-post grand apology for American foreign policy decisions in the last two decades; others like myself will remember the unsettling picture of the military face-off between China and the US over the control of the Indian and the Pacific Oceans - which has only just started. show less

Classic Kaplan. In depth history in relation to current events and what may be happening in the near future. less ideological and more rational and in depth than Fergusson. A book I didn't want to put down or end and gave me another way of looking at the conglomeration of nation states on the planet. A rare 5 star review.

A little hard to get into if, like me, you didn't already have the vocabulary. But once you get up to speed, it's an excellent discussion of how geography shapes geopolitics. Recommend you read it with a good atlas, you'll never see the maps the same way again.

Robert Kaplan sets out to describe the effects that physical environments have had on Human affairs for the last four thousand years, with a large number of more modern examples. He quotes from some of my favourite writers on this topic from the past and joins Toynbee, McNeill, and even Freya Starke. The problem of some Americans in dealing with foreign parts of the globe, where their cultural traditions are conditioned by different physical as well as human environments are laid out in clear terms. the prose is literate and the maps quite useful.
There are a few cases of special pleading for current conservative approaches to problems. He has a very limited number of answers to the Mexican/Chicano stresses in the USA, for example, and show more doesn't spend time on successful challenges to the environment that have increased the chances of world peace and betterment. So the tone is alarmist, from the USA! point of view. But within its ideological strictures, it's a very good survey of 2012 on planet earth. show less

Interesting, if not magisterial. Is informed by the ghosts of past foreign policy debates in a manner that sometimes seems off-putting — one wants to learn more about geopolitics, not rehash 1990s debates about Balkan intervention. A nice thought-provoker, but one that covers a lot of subjects cursorily.

I probably should reread this book with my eyes. It is very dense and my mind wandered sometimes listening to the audio version. I also think I would do better with a good map close at hand as I read. The other challenge was the organization. To make his points, he often circles back to earlier topics and themes. Sometimes that makes it more confusing to follow. This book will be well worth a closer read. It does help inform current and future foreign policy.

Kaplan's main thesis is great food for thought; that is: the more the world is connected, the more strategic geographic locations are important. I know I'm going to be reading world news in a better more informed way. This is a very interesting book that suffers from bad writing and editing. Kaplan is quite good at making what could be a perfectly good sentence into a convoluted one. That said, I know more now that I did before about the interplay of geography, politics and strategy.