In his latest book, The Loom of Time, the eminent analyst of modern diplomatic affairs, Robert D. Kaplan, explores issues related to the Middle East. In an appearance at the LBJ Library in Austin this week, he discussed that and other matters.
“The Arab Spring, which was heralded as a democracy movement, failed in every country. It broke down into chaos, into unrest, into new forms of autocracy that were even less enlightened, less liberal, than the one before. But that is not the real binary. The real binary that goes on, when you speak to leaders in the Middle East and people on the ground, is between autocracy and empire.”
Kaplan explained this binary, which is not what is widely understood to be the case. “Up until a few decades ago, the Middle East was always throughout its history controlled by one form of empire or another. All of the problems you are reading about – Gaza, the Palestinians, the Israelis, the Iraq War – all add up to the fact there has never been an adequate solution to the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in 1922 [modern-day Turkey rose from the ashes 101 years ago, 1923]. As long as the Ottomans ruled, for 400 years, there was no question about borders and ethnic boundaries because everyone owed fealty to the Sultan or to his subsidiaries.
“What is the central fact of the Middle East today? Why is it grabbing the headlines? It’s because there is no empire anymore. The stark fact when there is no empire is how to prevent anarchy. I divide Middle Eastern countries into two categories, that have to do with geography. I call them age-old clusters of civilization (like Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt), places that for thousands of years were an identifiable geography with borders. Outside of these are just vague geographical expressions. What is between Egypt and Tunisia? Libya, which is nothing. Northwestern Libya has always been focused towards Carthage and Tunisia; the eastern half of Libya always focused towards Alexandria. In an artificial country like Libya, the more extreme the autocracy.”
The form that takes is quite frightening and resembles what DT says he will do if elected in America this year: punish not just the guilty, but the innocent. “That way,” explained Kaplan, “you can achieve TOTAL TERROR in a society, and with total terror you can do anything you want.”
As a bulwark to this Kaplan said that historically “monarchy has been very good.” He then paraphrased a quote from Winston Churchill at the end of World War II: ‘Had, after World War I, the victors in their stupidity had not eliminated the monarchs of Prussia, Bavaria and the Hapsburg Empire, there would have been no Hitler.’ Churchill said it was those monarchies that provided basic stability and value systems. He wanted to bring the Kaiser’s family back to the throne after World War I as constitutional monarchs. Churchill’s argument was that if the people were still allowed to have their figurehead monarchy it would have stabilized politics so that you wouldn’t have had the rise of Hitler.” Even though Kaplan did not mention it, this model was followed after World War II in Japan, which still has its emperor.
The discussion turned to Iraq, another country (like Libya) with no natural borders. “Geography is the starting point towards an understanding of culture. Because, what after all is culture? It’s the collective experience of a large group of people on the same landscape for hundreds and thousands of years that leads into identifiable behaviour patterns. So, from geography you get culture, you get natural resources, trade routes, you get politics even. Whether a country has a coastline or an important sealine of communication or not makes a very, very big difference.” One of Kaplan’s most important books (of the 22 he has written) is The Revenge of Geography (2012).
Kaplan made a particular point of the relevance of an understanding of the geographical fact for Americans especially. “In the United States, the study of political science has overtaken the study of classical 19th century geography.” This development, he lamented, “has eliminated 30-40% of the story.”
Robert Kaplan is the Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. His appearance was hosted by the Clements Center for National Security, and the Strauss Center (both at the Univ of Texas, Austin). For upcoming events, visit
https://www.strausscenter.org/events
https://www.clementscenter.org/events/
Kaplan’s 2023 book, The Loom of Time, is by Random House.
[editorial note: Dr. Cunningham was in the Middle East in the summer of 2024; photo by C. Cunningham]