Perspective

Robert Kaplan, the author of the Revenge of Geography, is rather forthright about his perspective as a partially recovering American neoconservative foreign policy intellectual. Kaplan is a journalist but also a scholar whose academic work is highly influential at the highest levels of the US government, including presidents. And it was partly due to his support for the 2003 Iraq War, that most leading national American politicians supported the war. However, he has since come to deeply regret his support, so much of The Revenge of Geography is driven by his need to explain why Iraq was a disaster.

His solution, more or less, is to blame geography. Kaplan's status as a quasi-geographical determinist is clear. Over the long-run most geopolitical outcomes are determined by geographic factors combined with demographic trends. Together these factors demonstrated that the US had no strong interest in controlling Iraq despite its presence in...