Can there be liberty in the Greater Middle East without democracy? Robert D. Kaplan on why Singapore offers a palatable political model for countries lying between the Mediterranean and China

EPISODE 1665: In this KEEN ON show, Andrew talks to Robert D. Kaplan, author of THE LOOM OF TIME, about why Singapore offers a palatable political model for countries in the "Greater Middle East" ROBERT D. KAPLAN is the bestselling author of twenty-two books on foreign affairs and travel translated into many languages, including The Loom of Time, The Tragic Mind, Adriatic, The Good American, The Coming Anarchy, Balkan Ghosts, Asia’s Cauldron, and The Revenge of Geography. He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. For three decades he reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. A senior adviser at Eurasia Group, he was chief geopolitical analyst at Stratfor, a visiting professor at the United States Naval Academy, a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and a member of both the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and the U. S. Navy's Executive Panel. Foreign Policy magazine twice named him one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.” New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman has called Kaplan among the four “most widely read” authors defining the post-Cold War (along with Stanford Professor Francis Fukuyama, Yale Professor Paul Kennedy, and the late Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington). Kaplan's article, “The Coming Anarchy,” published in the February, 1994 Atlantic Monthly, about how population rise, ethnic and sectarian strife, disease, urbanization, and resource depletion is undermining the political fabric of the planet, was hotly debated in foreign-language translations around the world. So was his December, 1997 Atlantic cover story, “Was Democracy Just A Moment?” That piece argued that the democracy now spreading around the world would not necessarily lead to more stability. According to U. S. News & World Report, “President Clinton was so impressed with Kaplan, he ordered an interagency study of these issues, and it agreed with Kaplan’s conclusions.” In the 1980s, Kaplan was the first American writer to warn in print about a future war in the Balkans. Balkan Ghosts was chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the “best books” of 1993. The Arabists, The Ends of the Earth, An Empire Wilderness, Eastward to Tartary, and Warrior Politics were all chosen by The New York Times as “notable” books of the year. An Empire Wilderness was chosen by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times as one of the best books of 1998. The Wall Street Journal named The Arabists one of the five best books ever written about America’s historical involvement in the Middle East. The Financial Times named Asia’s Cauldron one of the ten best political books of 2014. Besides The Atlantic, Kaplan’s essays have appeared on the editorial pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times, as well as in all the major foreign affairs journals, including cover stories in Foreign Affairs. He has been a consultant to the U. S. Army’s Special Forces Regiment, the U. S. Air Force, and the U. S. Marines. Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenti This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe