The Coming Anarchy
"The Coming Anarchy"is an influential article written by journalistRobert D. Kaplan,which was first published in the February 1994 edition ofThe Atlantic Monthly.It is a fundamental analysis of world affairs in thepost Cold War era,widely considered comparable in scope and importance toSamuel Huntington'sClash of CivilizationsandFrancis Fukuyama'sThe End of History and the Last Man.[citation needed]U.S. PresidentBill Clintonreportedly recommended the article to White House staff.[1]It has also been criticized forMalthusianpessimism, and for blaming the predicted afflictions on their victims while overlooking political and economic causes such asneoliberal policy.[2]
The article
[edit]While Fukuyama believed the end of theCold Warwould bring an era of world peace, Kaplan argued theCold Warwas the closest the world would ever get toUtopia.The coming struggles would no longer be neatly ideological, but cultural and historical. In the disorder and civil strife then besetting West Africa, Kaplan saw the first signs of broader global trends. As environmental stress worsened, bringing widespread disease and resource conflict, rural populations would migrate toward urban areas, redefining identities along cultural or tribal lines and fomenting social strife. Politics would become localized as central state power faded, with sub-national conflicts about ethnic self-defense and self-interest, not ideology, becoming commonplace. The post-modern world would be, for Kaplan, one of numerous cross-cutting identities, systems and allegiances, far from the ordered state-based system of the West in the modern era. FollowingThomas Homer-Dixon,he suggests politics should recover its links to physical territory and resources, and address the causes of problems rather than their consequences.
Kaplan advocates a new kind of cartography which emphasizes the newly relevant borderlines rather than traditional political divisions. The world map should show three dimensions, in which group and other identities are atop the spatial divisions of cities, states, and nations. Maps should be constantly evolving, showing the rise and fall of many smaller groups with moving centers of power. The "last map" should be an ever-mutating representation of chaos.
20 years later
[edit]20 years after the original publication, Robert D. Kaplan published a follow-up entitledWhy So Much Anarchy?(2016), reflecting on the relevance of his thesis to current events, especially in the Arab countries.[3]In the new article, Kaplan recognizes that some of his prophecies, such as a revival of racial violence in America, did not come to be.
However, he stands by some of his more provocative arguments, such as the belief that "Islam is a religion ideally suited for the urbanizing poor who were willing to fight". He mentions the growing popularity ofTurkish President Erdogan's conservativeJustice and Development Party,largely aligned with political Islam, as fulfilling his prediction about Turkish politics. He makes further analyses of nations' relative strengths, notably a robust bureaucracy, which arises from a well developed middle class. He cites the example of the arguably successful democratic transition of most former Soviet republics into stable democracies, which can be explained by their strong bureaucratic apparatus and middle class. The lack of "bourgeoise traditions", on the other hand, can be interpreted as one of the main reasons of the failure of states such as Sierra Leone. Overall, Kaplan sticks to his original narrative, forecasting growing anarchy in large portions of the world.
In 2018, he revisited the thesis again forThe National Interestin an article called "The Anarchy That Came". It concludes with the statement, "My vision—then and now—of vast geopolitical disruption is not ultimately pessimistic, but merely historical."[4]
The book
[edit]| External videos | |
|---|---|
 Presentation by Kaplan onThe Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War,March 7, 2000,C-SPAN |
The article was republished as the first chapter of the bookThe Coming Anarchyin 2000. The book also included the controversial articleWas Democracy Just A Moment?,first published inThe Atlanticin December 1997, and several others by Kaplan.
See also
[edit]References
[edit]- ^Lester, Toby (August 1996)."Beyond" The Coming Anarchy "".The Atlantic Online.The Atlantic Monthly Company.RetrievedFebruary 1,2016.
- ^ Harvey, David(2005).A Brief History of Neoliberalism.Oxford University Press.p.185.ISBN978-0-19-928326-2.
- ^"Why So Much Anarchy?".Stratfor.RetrievedFebruary 2,2016.
- ^Kaplan, Robert (October 21, 2018)."The Anarchy that Came".The National Interest.