The Return of Marco Polo’s World: War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-first Century

214 Pages·2018·7.01 MB·English

by  Robert D. Kaplan

Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Preface and Acknowledgments
Strategy
Chapter 1: The Return of Marco Polo’s World and the U.S. Military
Response
Chapter 2: The Art of Avoiding War
Chapter 3: The Tragedy of U.S. Foreign Policy
Chapter 4: Elegant Decline: The Navy’s Rising Importance
Chapter 5: When North Korea Falls
War and Its Costs
Chapter 6: Rereading Vietnam
Chapter 7: Iraq: The Counterfactual Game
Chapter 8: The Wounded Home Front
Chapter 9: No Greater Honor
Thinkers
Chapter 10: In Defense of Henry Kissinger
Chapter 11: Samuel Huntington: Looking the World in the Eye
Chapter 12: Why John Mearsheimer Is Right (About Some Things)
Reflections
Chapter 13: On Foreign Policy, Donald Trump Is No Realist
Chapter 14: The Post-Imperial Moment
Chapter 15: Fated to Lead
Chapter 16: The Great Danger of a New Utopianism
Marco Polo Redux
Chapter 17: Traveling China’s New Silk Road
Dedication
By Robert D. Kaplan
About the Author
The origins of hot wars lie in cold wars, and the origins of cold wars are found in the
anarchic ordering of the international arena….Theorists explain what historians know:
War is normal.
—KENNETH N. WALTZ, 1988
The lead, anchoring essay in this collection was written for the Pentagon’s
Office of Net Assessment in the late summer of 2016 and was subsequently
released for public view. Here and there, very sparingly, I have updated it. The
other essays, going back as far as seventeen years, remain exactly as they were
upon original publication. Thus, the reader will find occasional repetitions in
terms of ideas and of phrases even, as well as assumptions that, from hindsight, I
obviously got wrong.
At the Office of Net Assessment, I thank Air Force Colonel (Ret.) James H.
Baker and Dr. Andrew D. May for their help and interest. Net Assessment
commissioned the essay through the Center for a New American Security
(CNAS) in Washington, for which I thank CEO Michele Flournoy, President
Richard Fontaine, Director of Studies Shawn Brimley, Creative Director Melody
Cook, and other members of the CNAS staff. In particular, I am especially
grateful for the guidance of CNAS’s director of the Defense Strategies and
Assessments Program, Navy Captain (Ret.) Jerry Hendrix. Others who provided
guidance and insights as I wrote this essay, for which I am grateful, include Dr.
Shamila Chaudhary, Senior Advisor to the Dean, Johns Hopkins School of
Advanced International Studies; Svante Cornell, Director of the Central Asia–
Caucasus Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International
Studies; Reva Goujon, Vice President of Global Analysis at Stratfor; Army
Colonel Valery Keaveny, Jr.; Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Robert Lyons;
Marine Lieutenant Colonel Peter McAleer; Army Lieutenant General H. R.
McMaster; Marine Lieutenant Colonel David Mueller; Evan Osnos, staff writer
for The New Yorker; Karim Sadjadpour, Senior Associate at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace; Navy Admiral (Ret.) James Stavridis, Dean
of the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University; and Jim
Thomas, Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary
Assessments. Any mistake or incorrect analysis herein is entirely my own,
however.
Regarding the other essays, I am deeply grateful for the support over the years
of all the editors at The Atlantic, The American Interest, The National Interest,
and The Washington Post, especially James Bennet, James Gibney, Cullen
Murphy, Scott Stossel, Adam Garfinkle, and Jacob Heilbrunn.
Anna Pitoniak at Random House energetically oversaw the production and
presentation of this book, with good advice throughout. My literary agents, Gail
Hochman, Marianne Merola, and Henry Thayer, provided their usual,
exceptional support. The late Carl D. Brandt advised me well in the early phases
of this book project, as did Henry Thayer in the latter stages. Elizabeth M.
Lockyer, with help from Diane and Marc Rathbun, meticulously organizes my
professional life. And my wife, Maria Cabral, remains there with decades’ worth
of love and support.

1.
The Return of Marco Polo’s World and the U.S.
Military Response
AS EUROPE DISAPPEARS, EURASIA COHERES.
The supercontinent is becoming one fluid, comprehensible
unit of trade and conflict, as the Westphalian system of
states weakens and older, imperial legacies—Russian,
Chinese, Iranian, Turkish—become paramount. Every
crisis from Central Europe to the ethnic-Han Chinese
heartland is now interlinked. There is one singular battle
space.
What follows is a historical and geographical guide to it.