The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against FateNEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In this provocative, startling book, Robert D. Kaplan, the bestselling author of Monsoon and Balkan Ghosts, offers a revelatory new prism through which to view global upheavals and to understand what lies ahead for continents and countries around the world. Bestselling author Robert D. Kaplan builds on the insights, discoveries, and theories of great geographers and geopolitical thinkers of the recent and distant past to look back at critical pivots in history and then to look forward at the evolving global scene. Kaplan traces the history of the world’s hot spots by examining their climates, topographies, and proximities to other embattled lands. He then applies the lessons learned to the present crises in Europe, Russia, China, the Indian Subcontinent, Turkey, Iran, and the Arab Middle East. The result is a holistic interpretation of the next cycle of conflict throughout Eurasia, a visionary glimpse into a future that can be understood only in the context of temperature, land allotment, and other physical certainties. A brilliant rebuttal to thinkers who suggest that globalism will trump geography, this indispensable work shows how timeless truths and natural facts can help prevent this century’s looming cataclysms. Praise for The Revenge of Geography “[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 |
Contents
FROM BOSNIA TO BAGHDAD | 3 |
THE REVENGE OF GEOGRAPHY | 23 |
HERODOTUS AND HIS SUCCESSORS | 38 |
THE EURASIAN MAP | 60 |
THE NAZI DISTORTION | 79 |
THE RIMLAND THESIS | 89 |
THE ALLURE OF SEA POWER | 103 |
THE CRISIS OF ROOM | 114 |
RUSSIA AND THE INDEPENDENT HEARTLAND | 154 |
THE GEOGRAPHY OF CHINESE POWER | 188 |
INDIAS GEOGRAPHICAL DILEMMA | 228 |
THE IRANIAN PIVOT | 255 |
THE FORMER OTTOMAN EMPIRE | 284 |
BRAUDEL MEXICO AND GRAND STRATEGY | 319 |
Acknowledgments | 347 |
| 379 | |
Other editions - View all
The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and ... Robert D. Kaplan No preview available - 2013 |
Common terms and phrases
Afghanistan Africa American Anatolia Arab world Arabia Asian balance of power Balkans border Caspian Caucasus Central Asia Central Europe China Chinese civilization Cold Cold War countries cultural decades democracy democratic demographic desert dominated Dynasty Eastern economic Empire ethnic Eurasia European fact forces frontier geography geopolitics German global Greater Middle East Greece Haushofer Heartland Hodgson human Ibid Ideals and Reality India Indian Ocean Indian Subcontinent influence invasion Iran Iran's Iranian Iraq Islam Island Israel Japan Kazakhstan Korea land power Mackinder Mackinder's Mahan McNeill Mediterranean Mexico military modern Mongol Mongolia Morgenthau mountains Muslim naval Navy northern Oikoumene Ottoman Pacific Pakistan Peninsula percent Persian pivotal plateau political population regime region Rimland River Russia Russian Far East Saudi sea power Shiite southern Soviet Union Spykman steppe Strategy Strausz-Hupé Syria Taiwan territory tion Turkey Turkic Turkish Turks twentieth twenty-first century United University Press West Western writes York zone