Rating: 
Summary: "Places Where Ethnicity Is Complex"
Review: Travel with Robert D Kaplan to the back of the beyond. Stay in grim hotels with broken toilets and damp, furrowed beds. No, the management will not give a damn for your comfort. And don't bother hailing a policeman: He will shake you down for cigarette money, ask why you are there, and put you through a bureaucratic nightmare grilling. Except for Turkey and Israel, the countries which Kaplan visits are run by mafias, megalomaniac dictators in the Saddam Hussein mold, or ex secret policemen (hint: these are the best run).We are so simplistic because of our Eurocentrism: Our textbooks ignore 80% of the globe. Ask your children where Turkmenistan and Azerbaijan are located and who their neighbors are. Better book up, kiddies, or you may be hauling RPGs and messkits there in defense of tomorrow's oil. The common element in all these countries is that they are places were ethnicity is complex. Look for more ethnic cleansing on a scale which makes the former Yugoslavia look like a church social. Give these people democracy? Don't forget that Slobodan Milosevich was, after all, a democratically-elected leader, and look what he did! Democracy CAN be a license to kill your neighbor. Kaplan's greatest value is to educate his readers on the dangers of simplistic solutions. Read him, and you will no longer reel with sucker punches as different parts of the world emerge from nowhere to suddenly become angry crisis zones demanding our immediate attention. "Self-interest at its healthiest," writes Kaplan, "implicity recognizes the self-interest of others, and therein lies the possibility of compromise. A rigid moral position admits few compromises."
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