Robert D. Kaplan’s research while affiliated with Center For A New American Security Inc. and other places

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Publications (2)


The Geography of Chinese Power: How Far Can Beijing Reach on Land and at Sea?
  • Article

May 2010

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736 Reads

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112 Citations

Foreign Affairs

Robert D. Kaplan

The rise of China is not an existential problem for China's neighbors or the United States, but it is a geopolitical challenge. On land and at sea, abetted by China's favorable location on the map, Beijing's influence is expanding—from Central Asia to the South China Sea and from the Russian Far East to the Indian Ocean. By securing its economic needs, China is shifting the balance of power in the Eastern Hemisphere.


The Revenge of Geography

May 2009

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811 Reads

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153 Citations

Orbis

People and ideas influence events, but geography largely determines them, now more than ever. To understand the coming struggles, it's time to dust off the Victorian thinkers who knew the physical world best. A journalist who has covered the ends of the Earth offers a guide to the relief map—and a primer on the next phase of conflict. hen rapturous Germans tore down the Berlin Wall 20 years ago it symbolized far more than the overcoming of an arbitrary boundary. It began an intellectual cycle that saw all divisions, geographic and otherwise, as surmountable; that referred to "realism" and "pragmatism" only as pejoratives; and that invoked the humanism of Isaiah Berlin or the appeasement of Hitler at Munich to launch one international intervention after the next. In this way, the armed liberalism and the democracy-promoting neoconservatism of the 1990s shared the same universalist aspirations. But alas, when a fear of Munich leads to overreach the result is Vietnam—or in the current case, Iraq. And thus began the rehabilitation of realism, and with it another intellectual cycle. "Realist" is now a mark of respect, "neocon" a term of derision. The Vietnam analogy has vanquished that of Munich. Thomas Hobbes, who extolled the moral benefits of fear and saw anarchy as the chief threat to society, has elbowed out Isaiah Berlin as the philosopher of the present cycle. The focus now is less on universal ideals than particular distinctions, from ethnicity to culture to religion. Those who pointed this out a decade ago were sneered at for being "fatalists" or "determinists." Now they are applauded as "pragmatists." And this is the key insight of the past two decades—that there are worse things in the world than extreme tyranny, and in Iraq we brought them about ourselves. I say this having supported the war.

Citations (2)


... En este sentido, Ewan Anderson (1999) advierte que la propuesta central de la geopolítica radica en el aprovechamiento de la geografía para iluminar la política, específicamente la toma de decisiones, y propone que, a pesar de los crecientes efectos de la globalización, la unidad básica del sistema político mundial contemporáneo continúa siendo el Estado y, por tanto, se pueden explicar sus acciones, en el contexto internacional, considerando la relación entre territorio y poder. Por su parte, Robert Kaplan (2009) Como observa Sabet (2015), esta forma tradicional de entender la geopolítica concibe el poder y la hegemonía, con sus componentes duales de dominación y consentimiento, como elementos claves en el actuar de los Estados en busca de controlar aquellos espacios que exigen un dominio territorial para obtener beneficios concretos. Así, es plausible sugerir que algunos conceptos geopolíticos aún influyen en la forma en cómo los tomadores de decisiones piensan y actúan. ...

Reference:

La Iniciativa de la Franja y la Ruta como modelo complementario al desarrollo: reflexiones en torno a una década de existenciaBelt and Road Initiative as a Complementary Model for Development: Reflections on a Decade of Existence
The Revenge of Geography
  • Citing Article
  • May 2009

Orbis

... First, the strategic perspective argues that the US government not only considers Taiwan an indispensable part of its geopolitical strategy but is also able to adjust the role of Taiwan according to its own strategic needs. Robert Kaplan contended that Taiwan plays a crucial role in maintaining the First Island Chain because China would break the US's containment if peaceful reunification across the Taiwan Strait occurred, which would also undermine the US's geopolitical predominance in the Asia-Pacific region (Kaplan, 2010). Tucker and Glaser (2011) argued that the US's strategic credibility in the alliance system would be largely weakened if it reduced its security commitment to Taiwan, which might cause a domino effect among US allies. ...

The Geography of Chinese Power: How Far Can Beijing Reach on Land and at Sea?
  • Citing Article
  • May 2010

Foreign Affairs