New Books in Diplomatic History
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The Middle East remains one of the world’s most complicated, thorny—and, uncharitably, unstable—parts of the world, as countless headlines make clear. Internal strife, regional competition and external interventions have been the region’s history for the past several decades.
Robert Kaplan—author, foreign policy thinker, longtime writer on international affairs—has written about what he terms the “Greater Middle East”, a region that spans from the Mediterranean, south to Ethiopia and eastwards to Afghanistan and Pakistan, for decades. These insights are the foundation of his latest book: The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China (Random House, 2023)
In his book, Kaplan criticizes how the U.S. has approached the region—intervention and regime change (including his own mea culpa for his previous support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq, only for Washington to look somewhere else when newly-formed regimes inevitably disappoint.
In this interview, Robert and I talk about his idea of the “Greater Middle East,” some of the experiences that most stood out to him, and his conclusions on how to think about democracy, order, and anarchy in this part of the world.
Robert D. Kaplan is the bestselling author of twenty books on foreign affairs and travel, including Adriatic: A Concert of Civilizations at the End of the Modern Age (Random House: 2022), The Good American: The Epic Life of Bob Gersony, the U.S. Government's Greatest Humanitarian (Random House: 2021), The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate (Random House: 2012), Asia's Cauldron: The South China Sea and the End of a Stable Pacific (Random House: 2014), Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power (Random House: 2010), The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War (Random House: 2000), and Balkan Ghosts: A Journey Through History (St. Martins Press: 1993). He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. For three decades he reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. He was a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and the U.S. Navy’s Executive Panel.
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Gary J. Bass, "Judgement at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia" (Knopf, 2023)
Vanessa Walker, "Principles in Power: Latin America and the Politics of U.S. Human Rights Diplomacy" (Cornell UP, 2020)
Seyed Ali Alavi, "Iran and Palestine: Past, Present, and Future" (Routledge, 2019)
Mark Moyar, "Triumph Regained: The Vietnam War, 1965-1968" (Encounter, 2023)
Robert Lyman, "A War of Empires: Japan, India, Burma, and Britain: 1941–45" (Osprey, 2021)
Stuart A. Reid, "The Lumumba Plot: The Secret History of the CIA and a Cold War Assassination" (Knopf, 2023)
Anna Brinkman, "Balancing Strategy: Sea Power, Neutrality, and Prize Law in the Seven Years' War" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Elizabeth O’Brien Ingleson, "Made in China: When US-China Interests Converged to Transform Global Trade" (Harvard UP, 2024)
Lisa Langdon Koch, "Nuclear Decisions: Changing the Course of Nuclear Weapons Programs" (Oxford UP, 2023)
Lisa Bhungalia, "Elastic Empire: Refashioning War Through Aid in Palestine" (Stanford UP, 2023)
Christopher Tounsel, "Bounds of Blackness: African Americans, Sudan, and the Politics of Solidarity" (Cornell UP, 2024)
Jeremy Garlick, "Advantage China: Agent of Change in an Era of Global Disruption" (Bloomsbury, 2023)
David Tal, "The Making of an Alliance: The Origins and Development of the US-Israel Relationship" (Cambridge UP, 2022)
Lisa A. Kirschenbaum, "Soviet Adventures in the Land of the Capitalists: Ilf and Petrov's American Road Trip" (Cambridge UP, 2024)
Donald Stoker, "Why America Loses Wars: Limited War and US Strategy from the Korean War to the Present" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
Mateo Jarquín, "The Sandinista Revolution: A Global Latin American History" (UNC Press, 2024)
Mukund Padmanabhan, "The Great Flap of 1942: How the Raj Panicked over a Japanese Non-invasion (Vintage Books, 2024)
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Traian Sandu, "Ceausescu: The Ambiguous Dictator" (Perrin, 2023)
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