Robert D. Kaplan holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. With extensive experience in foreign policy, he has authored over 20 books on the topic.

I highly recommend this book for everyone, even if politics are not your primary interest.

The work is both fascinating and insightful, offering brilliant observations on how we have evolved into a global community where every action triggers reactions that impact individuals worldwide.

In his book, Kaplan discusses the Weimar Republic as a precursor to today's geopolitical conflicts, stemming from the execution of Czar Nicholas II and his entire lineage. He asserts, "If you remove The Romanovs completely, you would have chaos that could lead to far worse consequences. The assassination of The Romanovs and their children was arguably the seminal crime of the 20th century because if you can kill children, you can kill millions. Those who murdered a few children went on to slaughter tens of millions. The murder of the Iraqi Sharifian royal family in 1958—children included—establishes a direct line leading to Saddam Hussein's dictatorship."

Kaplan further connects these historical events to contemporary issues regarding global finance and conflict, labeling it as a state of permanent crisis. He notes, "For the first time in history, we have truly interconnected financial markets; thus, a crisis in one major market can trigger turmoil in another stock exchange halfway across the globe with subsequent political ramifications. This unity among financial markets is facilitated by technology."

He also cites John von Neumann's observation: "The problem is the very finite size of Earth. It cannot expand; therefore it will eventually become an intrinsic source of political instability because technology and military assets collapse distance while populations continue to grow—all within this singular finite realm."

Additionally, he references Sir Halford Mackinder's famous statement: "At some point, Earth’s map becomes entirely covered; it’s all charted out so that great powers will ultimately only have each other to contend with." This notion of geographical determinism led Mackinder to effectively predict World War I—a concept closely aligned with von Neumann’s thesis about Earth's finitude resisting technological expansion.

We are living in interesting global times, probably not more or less than some other generations before us, it’s just that we are all living and experiencing the present. However, probably in no generation so far has global conditions and situations reverberated around the world with such immediacy than it does today given technology. So where are we headed in the future? To figure out the present and to imagine the future, the author takes us back to the past. He draws parallels to Germany’s Weimar Republic following World War I and the crises it experienced that had international implications, resulting in global consequences. He illustrates with this example how occurrences in our current world have global spread even more so than before because of digital and social media technology. He also posits that total democracy for a country may not always be the immediate answer - it may depend on several factors including factional turmoil, leadership, and readiness of the population - but that the goal should ultimately be democracy. The author’s insights are based on his deep knowledge of history coupled with his extensive experience and keen perspective as a journalist and traveler. I love that the title of the book is a salute to T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land - so apt. This was an interesting and absorbing read of yet another of Robert D. Kaplan’s books. Many thanks to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read and review this book.

If Robert D. Kaplan (geopolitical expert) has no fans, I am dead. I have always loved how he connects history and present in his books. Kaplan’s books are so well researched and cited (mad props!). If you have never read any of Kaplan’s work, this is a good one to start with.
Waste Land starts off comparing current geopolitical landscape and the Weimar Republic, the post-World War I democratic German government. My fellow historians have been looking at the comparisons for a while but somehow doesn’t lessen the guy punch reading it. The first week of the current US presidency was probably not the ideal time to read it regarding stress levels, but at the same time the perfect time.
Thank you NetGalley and Random House for an ARC. #WasteLand #NetGalley#nonfiction

Good in sections but fails to strongly cohere around a convincing thesis. While revisiting many of the themes (which he acknowledges) from his 1994 eye-opener The Coming Anarchy and incorporating more recent events (Ukraine, the rise of Putin and Xi Jinping, the post-Afghanistan fallout) does not expand meaningfully on the earlier work. Also, it is hard not to read Kaplan on how the chaos of the Weimar Republic and the Russian Army's collapse in World War I created a vacuum that led to Nazism and Communism, which is certainly reasonable, as anything but a defense of aristocracy as some kind of unbreakable societal glue, which is harder to swallow.