Military Review English Edition March-April 2014 | Page 84

BOOK REVIEWS

work. The author is, if nothing else, the contemporary poet laureate of geopolitics. As in his previous
books, Kaplan displays a rare ability to capture
vivid images in simple but incisive prose and filter
them through his sensitive and cultivated mind to
offer the reader keen insights into current political
and social problems based on his understanding
of history, social context, and geography. Kaplan
has given intellectual respectability and new life to
both travel writing and geopolitics, two genres that
have fallen into scholarly disrepute for some time.
In Victorian times, travel writing combined
descriptions of landscapes, people, and cultures
with philosophical musings, narratives of the
adventures of travel, and particularly revealing or
colorful incidents. Many authors carried the genre
to the level of high art while at the same time
making significant contributions to geographical
knowledge. The field of geopolitics, which initially
gained respectability as a more scientific approach
to international politics, failed to secure a stable
position in academia because it came to be viewed
as reactionary, imperialistic, deterministic, and
pseudoscientific.
Kaplan’s position on world affairs might be
described as that of a nondogmatic realist. His views
on currently intractable geopolitical problems are
balanced and sober, and they are tied to a realistic
assessment of human nature as neither naturally
good nor evil. Politicians, diplomats, and military
officers may find themselves nodding their heads
in agreement as they read through one of Kaplan’s
asse