Robert D. Kaplan & Vladimir Putin's Character
Friday, March 23, 2018
I read the
NY Times Bret Stephen’s review of Robert D. Kaplan’s The Return of Marco Polo’s World – War, Strategy, and American Interests in the Twenty-First
Century with lots of interest.
My first
knowledge of this unusually brilliant man began in 1994 when I purloined his Balkan
Ghosts from some foreign hotel’s book shelf.
Then in
1998 under the tutelage of the Georgia Straight’s editor Charles Campbell I was
given the plum assignment to photograph and interview Kaplan. I was to write a
review of his An Empire Wilderness.
Kaplan by then
had this theory on how geography affects the decisions nations make.
Interviewing
Kaplan was a piece of cake (sort of) as I had gone to Lima in 1990 to interview
Mario Vargas Llosa for Books in Canada.
As you can
see I am not all that stupid a photographer. Some of us can write a splendid
declarative sentence in a pinch.
The Bret
Stephens review has one very splendid quote by Kaplan:
“A student of
Shakespeare would have grasped Vladimir Putin’s character long before an
international relations wonk.”
And there
is this:
“The very
idea that some sermon or blog or tweet has gone viral is a sad reflection on
the state of individualism in the 21st century. The electronic swarm
is a negation of loneliness that prepares the way for the new ideology of
totalitarianism.”
