"A Thesaurus of Incoherencies"

by Cliopatria

In the months after 9/11, you started hearing more and more references to Robert Kaplan as the closest thing to a geopolitical thinker to come from the ranks of roving journalistic correspondents -- apart from Tom Friedman, of course. They became the Mutt and Jeff of American punditry.

Friedman emphasizes trade and diplomacy; exhibits a rather straightforward appreciation of technology as a driving factor in human progress; is, in his most optimistic moments, prone to evoking a global future of unlimited gravy production. Kaplan is more likely to refer to history; regards culture as the decisive force in each society's prospects; and, when imagining the world's future, tend to sound something like Kurtz from Heart of Darkness, only less cheerful.

Friedman sees some grounds for concern over the pace and direction of globalization. At heart, though, he trusts the process. Kaplan trusts nothing but the superiority of the West, and has not been shy about saying that imperialism was a good idea that has only gotten better with time.

If those are our options, we are doomed. Be that as it may, here is my confession: Friedman often irritates me, while Kaplan's weltanschaung calls to mind the phrase"beneath contempt."

Fortunately Tom Bissell does not agree: He considers Kaplan worth all the scorn needed to fuel an analytical essay of several thousand well-turned words. His piece,"Euphorias of Perrier: The Case Against Robert D. Kaplan," appears in the new issue of Virginia Quarterly Review -- a publication rapidly dispelling any fear that the day of the important literary quarterly is over.

"Kaplan's real and growingly evident problem," writes Bissell,"is not his Parkinson's grip on history, or that he is a bonehead or a warmonger, but rather that he is an incompetent thinker and a miserable writer." He calls one of Kaplan's books"a thesaurus of incoherencies."

What is worrying is that Kaplan has his enthusiasts in the corridors of power.

"Carl von Clausewitz famously wrote that war is the extension of politics by other means," says Bissell."Bush and Kaplan, on the other hand, appear to advocate war as cultural politics by other means. This has resulted in a collision of second-rate minds with third-rate policies. While one man attempts to make the world as simple as he is able to comprehend it, the other whispers in his various adjutants’ ears that they are on the side of History itself."

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Adam Kotsko - 6/30/2006

to both Bissell and McLemee -- Robert Kaplan has long been my least favorite of our nation's great corps of "public intellectuals." I believe that he sometimes verges on calling for a military coup, to save us from our decadence.

Jason T. Kuznicki - 6/30/2006

Still, even with this more generous definition, Kaplan's phrase would indicate that only 30% of the population was decimated. But the destruction of 30% of the population would have been sufficient to "decimate" all of it, no?

Konrad M Lawson - 6/30/2006

I really enjoyed the article and I think there should be more written on the quality of Kaplan's books.

I felt he was a bit unfair in a few places though. For example. He complains about Kaplan's use of the word "decimate":

"Kaplan’s approving seizure of the “imperial” label while knowing full well the term’s historically ugly connotations is quietly embarrassing in the way someone who misuses a widely misunderstood word such as decimate is embarrassing. (Which Kaplan does, incidentally: “Up to 30 percent of the population of Central Asia and adjacent areas was decimated by this Mongol war machine,” which would mean that up to thirty percent of the population was reduced by ten percent.)"

However, this is really not the case. As the New Oxford American dictionary says:

decimate |?des??m?t| verb [ trans. ] (often be decimated) 1 kill, destroy, or remove a large percentage or part of : the project would decimate the fragile wetland wilderness | the American chestnut, a species decimated by blight. • drastically reduce the strength or effectiveness of (something) : plant viruses that can decimate yields. 2 historical kill one in every ten of (a group of soldiers or others) as a punishment for the whole group.

Only the 2nd older "historical" meaning has the meaning that Bissell claims it has, and it is not "misusing" the word at all to use it to mean what most of us use the word to mean.

As another note in the dictionary under "USAGE" says:

"USAGE Historically, the meaning of the word decimate is ‘kill one in every ten of (a group of people).’ This sense has been superseded by the later, more general sense ‘kill or destroy a large percentage or part of,’ as in: the virus has decimated the population. Some traditionalists argue that this and other later senses are incorrect, but it is clear that these extended senses are now part of standard English. "

Manan Ahmed - 6/29/2006

"his Parkinson’s grip on history"

terrific piece !