Has the world looted in a crisis, and that too permanently? Geopolitical analyst Robert Kaplan has all the reasons to believe yes. Moreover, without linear in this world, the direction of human history is anything but unknowable. Thought technology has continued to evolve, the roots of the permanent crisis continue to lie in what goes wrong with technology. With a scan of history and politics, you could see the similarity between today’s challenges and those of the years of delivery. The similarity is that each national disaster now has the potential to extend throughout the world, being the pandemic an example.
Waste land They warn and generate hope. While it positions us as the technology teachers, it considers us no less victims to a previously unimagalbal degree. All countries are now so connected, at least technological, that crises have a domino effect. There is a set of excessively complex problems that have not yet been recognized and resolved.
Two wide phases
An interesting and absorbent sweeping through history, literature, politics and philosophy guides Kaplan to divide the world into two wide phases: globalization 1.0 and globalization 2.0. While the past phase was the propagation of democracy and the extension of the middle class, the current phase is of neutral value but largely hostile. In addition, this phase is characterized by a dense interactions web work that is a perfect fuel to maintain a permanent crisis. It is not surprising, Ukraine, Gaza and other important conflicts obtain their amplified effects, instead of calming.
Considered one of the main world thinkers of foreign policy, Robert D Kaplan is currently president of Robert Strausz-Hupe in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. At this time, when the world is dealing with an uncertain geopolitics, a mortal mixture of war and climate change and intoxicating cocktail or rivalry of power and technological supremacy, the future is in a very fragile phase of political transition. Nothing less than a penetrating diagnosis is needed to evolve a new international order.
Lighting turbulence
The world is not getting worse, but the point is that social and digital media in cities, in addition to doing something good, have greater power to light more geopolitical turbulence. Waste land It arises that social networks in world cities is the key reason why politics will continue to be complicated and challenging. Complex countries are not only complex as Pakistan, Nigeria and South Africa staggering to become failed states, but it is more difficult to match the country of the country such as the United States and France. The book makes some convincing observations and launches unprecedented challenges that humanity probably faces.
Kaplan has drawn an interesting parallel of the current situation with the former Weimar Republic, the duration of the semi-presidencial republic of the interwar period (1918-1933). Like Weimar, ours is an interconnected states system in which no one really governs; Weimer, once a loose republic, is now a permanent condition in the world, since countries (and their people) are connected by technology that can be affected with each other.
Social networks and digital technology amplify the psychology of the crowd. Trump’s phenomenon was difficult to imagine in an earlier era of technology. Technology has its Pinball movement that oscillates between the ends of toxic narcissism and the solidarity of the mafia. The future is being defined by the technology of the 21st century, but has an interesting resonance with the past. Kaplan concludes that many diverse threads of culture and history are converging to give a new sense of surprising things.
Waste land It is a brilliant and misleading survey of the world we have before us. On land in history, philosophy and literature, it provides a variety of critical positions that we have before us. It is a dark mirror hero for a dangerous world that demands our attention. It seems that we have few options to fight, since the result is clear or predictable. It is a warning story of absolute brightness.
The reviewer is an independent writer, researcher and academic
Title: residual land
Author: Robert D Kaplan
Editor: Hurst, London
Price: $ 23
Posted on April 25, 2025