Rating: 
Summary: 6 stars at least
Review: This book is a detailed political, historical and social analysis of Central Europe, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Jordan, and the countries of the Caucasus. Kaplan begins his journey in Budapest. After visiting with friends there, he boards the train to visit Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel and Jordan. Later, he arrives again in Turkey to head east to travel through Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and Turkmenistan. At each stop along the way, he discusses politics and history with political leaders, dissidents, friends, and ordinary people. He combines comments from these sources with skilled observations of how society is working from the ground up in each locale to create extremely well-thought out and informed analyses of the social and political situation in the countries that he visits.By happenstance, I read this book immediately after reading Peter Theroux's Great Train Bazaar. What a contrast- - although their journey followed the same route for much of the way, Theroux told us little more about the countries he visited than the wines available within easy reach of the train station- -Kaplan sees so much more. Theroux sets off on his trip because he wants a trip to write about and he likes trains. Kaplan also takes his trip to get material to write about, but Kaplan first begins by writing a very clear list of questions that he plans to research during the trip. He wants to understand "the future borders of Europe, the underpinnings of the coming meltdown of Arab dictatorships, and the social and political effects of new Caspian Sea energy pipelines." He also wants to know "how people saw themselves. Were national or ethnic loyalties giving way to new forms of cosmopolitanism, through globalization? If so, what did that mean for the future of authoritarian regimes? If dictatorships gave way to more democratic rule, would that mean more stability or less- -more civility or less- -in the countries through which [he] would pass?" These are very heavy questions, and answers to them should be of interest to all global citizens, (especially policy makers, we would hope). Kaplan's observations and quotations cut to the quick of global society and culture. Kaplan's phrases like "social anarchy", "kleptocracy," and "moral vacuum" are brilliant descriptions of so many parts of the new Eastern Europe-Western Asia. In Romania, he is told "When we buy computers, compact disks, and clothes, we borrow the material consequences of the West without grasping the fundamental values that created such technologies in the first place." In Turkey, a human rights activist tells him "Westernization here is interpreted as secularization, not as democratization." In Bulgaria, his observations lead him to comment "The illusion that human progress is inexorable arises from the accident of one's historical and geographical good fortune." In Syria, he notes "Arab society was a conundrum: Among themselves, and in the privacy of their own homes, honesty, civility, and cleanliness reigned, yet none of these attributes overflowed into public life and spaces." After exploring the ritzy facades and partially hidden poverty of post-war Lebanon, he notes "Lebanon suggest that the 'end of history' is not democracy or humanism but materialism. People wanted goods and the money with which to buy them more than they wanted the rule of law." Later, "Middle East politics are like those of the ancient world- -a Greek or Roman could understand them better than an American." (Could this be why we're having so much trouble in Iraq?) Near the end of his journey in Turkmenistan, he looks back "But what were my conclusions after almost four thousand miles of travel?... That power and self-interest would shape the immediate future, at least in this part of the world." On the bright side, he states that the greatest lesson that he learned in Israel was that "Self-interest at its healthiest implicitly recognizes the self-interest of others, and therein lies the possibility of compromise." But he goes on to warn "A rigid moral position admits few compromises." This is a scary book, and many of its comments and conclusions are out of alignment with "political correct" ideology. But after traveling through parts of this region, and living on the margins of it for five years where I was in constant contact with people from this region, I find Kaplan's observations to be incredibly accurate. They are based on thorough research and observation, not wishful thinking or armchair travel. Is Kaplan a pessimist? No, he's just well traveled.
Rating:
Summary: possibly prophetic book about the New Near East
Review: This is another brilliant work of history and travel by Robert D. Kaplan. He finds that the old lines between East and West, even after the official demise of the Iron Curtain, still exist; on one side lands influenced by the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, on the other, beginning with Romania, lands not part of that heritage, instead heirs to Byzantine and Ottoman history. He calls this region, which is east of the European Union and NATO and south of Russia the "New Near East," and in this book he sought to explore it. The book begins as a sequel to his _Balkan Ghosts_. He finds that Hungary has a booming economy, the economic gulf between it and Romania widening as foreign investment in Hungary is six times that what Romania has received, understandable given the complex and risky Romanian business climate. He fears that Romania is drifting into the Third World with squatter settlements, a low per capita income, and the consumer class restricted to a few districts of Bucharest. Its leaders desperate to "lock" Romania into Europe via entry into NATO, Romania is clearly at a crossroads. Bulgaria he finds is very worried about entry into NATO, and is desperate lest it be forgotten by the West; indeed, so desirous of any coverage that Bulgaria's head of state personally thanked Kaplan for writing about his country! Bulgaria also faces the problem posed by the rise of criminal elements, called "groupings," that are an increasingly powerful element (one of the early groupings was unbelievably based around the Bulgarian Olympic wrestling team) and the threat of a subtle new imperialism from Russia, that of Russian organized crime, which threatens Bulgarian sovereignty in shadowy ways.
His trip to the Middle East was spellbinding. Concerned that he wasn't getting the full picture of the region from the international media, he sought to "discover the obvious" in his travels to Turkey and "Greater Syria." He writes that Turkey is a dynamic and fascinating country, one in which the economy was growing 7 percent a year and was forging its own strategic alliances independent of the US thanks to a growing relationship with Israel, which as Kaplan shows the two have a great deal in common. Few outside Turkey he writes appreciate the role of the military there - he called it the "deep state" - which sought to preserve the ideals of Kemal Ataturk's revolution, chiefly that the state be secular and to fight against such forces as ethnic separatism, an ideal that even Turkey's Islamists seem to have embraced, as they work within the system and are not terrorists. Syria he finds is not a true nationality, but rather a "hodgepodge" of several ethnic and religious groups at odds with one another, though as yet have not fought each other as the various groups in Lebanon had. Syria was an artificial creation of France and Britain following World War I, one with all the potent ional after the passing of the Assad regime to go the way of Yugoslavia, a land comprised of a northern region centered around Aleppo with historical links to Mosul and Baghdad, the Sunni Muslim heartland of Hama, Homs, and Damascus, and a south that is Druze and the west which is Alawite, both of which are Shiite. Syria, an austere country very similar to pre-1989 communist Europe is both dependent upon and dominant in Lebanon, an area historically part of Syria. Booming economically, seemingly having solved the violent struggles of the 1980s, Lebanon is controlled from Damascus; Lebanon is to Syria as Hong Kong is to China, essentially two systems, the smaller but more vibrant system existing only at the good will of the larger power. Jordan is another artificial state, an "accident of history," a consolation prize to the British's World War I ally the emir Abdullah (ally of Lawrence of Arabia), a country that faces an uncertain future with water shortages and a rising Palestinian population, one which might one day combine with the urban Palestinians of the West Bank and overwhelm Jordan's "Bedouin monarchy." After spending time in Israel Kaplan visits Georgia, a country the size of West Virginia with 5.6 million people, creator of one of the world's fourteen alphabets, a true dividing line between East and West, and divided along ethnic lines (particularly in South Ossetia in north-central Georgia). Once nearly destroyed after the Soviet Union by its democratically-elected president Zviad Gamsakhurdia during a time of anarchy and utter chaos, it was ironically saved by the former Soviet elite Eduard Shevardnadze, nothing unusual in the homeland of Stalin. Azerbaijan, like so much of the New Near East, is not a unified nation with an agreed upon national identity. Many Azeri are more loyal to a particular region, with for instance those in Gandzha in the dusty hinterlands feeling they have little in common with the oil boom town of Baku. Kaplan raises a cautionary note with regards to these divisions and the future of Azerbaijan, a land with vast future oil reserves in the Caspian Sea basin, growing corruption rivaling the worst third world nations, and one which is a subtle battleground between Turkey and Iran for influence. Kaplan also visits Turkmenistan and Armenia, which made for fascinating reading. If this book can be said to have a central them, it is twofold. One, the West's insistence on democracy in the New Near East is a fallacy; at stake is more often the very survival of these states, and it is more important to have good leadership than elections, which can lead to democratic governments that do terrible things, such as the ugly war over Nagorno-Karabakh between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Two, the process whereby huge, multiethnic empires become smaller, uniethnic states is often a violent one, which has lead to much bloodshed in the region - such as with the Armenian Genocide - and will lead to it again in the future. This book should be on everyone's reading list
Rating:
Summary: Required For Anyone Trying To Learn about the Middle East
Review: This is the third of Kaplan's books I have devoured and his smooth writing style aside, I couldn't put this one down and learned a ton. Kaplan has a gift for taking complex foreign policy concepts -- for exmaple, the co-mingling of nations and histories within modern day "states" like Armenia or Lebanon -- and reducing them to lessons that most novices could appreciate, using a "travel guide" format. He keeps advanced readers entertained with the continual support of his ongoing thesis: history repeats itself, and he illustrates patterns in contemporary nation-state behavior that prompts us to think broadly about possible outcomes in the region. There is no question that the region is a tinderbox -- more flammable than the Balkans -- and anyone wishing to watch the region with more insight and understanding than a CNN broadcast should pay attention to Kaplan and read this.
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