Waste Land

A World in Permanent Crisis

By: Robert D. Kaplan

Narrated by: Robert Petkoff

An urgent exploration of a world in constant crisis, where every regional disaster threatens to become a global conflict, with lessons from history that can stop the spiral—from the New York Times bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography

“Compelling and helpful . . . Kaplan’s analysis has enormous implications for U.S. strategy abroad. . . . His conclusion is the only right one.”—John Bolton, The Wall Street Journal

One of Financial Times’ Most Important Books to Read This Year • One of Foreign Policy’s Most Anticipated Books of the Year

We are entering a new era of global cataclysm in which the world faces a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement, the end of both monarchy and empire, and countless other dangers. In Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan, geopolitical expert and author of more than twenty books on world affairs, incisively explains how we got here and where we are going. Kaplan makes a novel argument that the current geopolitical landscape must be considered alongside contemporary social phenomena such as urbanization and digital news media, grounding his ideas in foundational modern works of philosophy, politics, and literature, including the poem from which the title is borrowed, and celebrating a canon of traditionally conservative thinkers, including Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and many others.

As in many of his books, Kaplan looks to history and literature to inform the present, drawing particular comparisons between today's challenges and the Weimar Republic, the post-World War I democratic German government that fell to Nazism in the 1930s. Just as in Weimar, which faced myriad crises inextricably bound up with global systems, the singular dilemmas of the twenty-first century—pandemic disease, recession, mass migration, the destabilizing effects of large-scale democracy and great power conflicts, and the intimate bonds created by technology—mean that every disaster in one country has the potential to become a global crisis, too. According to Kaplan, the solutions lie in prioritizing order in governing systems, arguing that stability and historic liberalism rather than mass democracy per se will save global populations from an anarchic future.

Waste Land is a bracing glimpse into a future defined by the connections afforded by technology but with remarkable parallels to the past. Just as it did in Weimar, Kaplan fears the situation may be spiraling out of our control—unless our leaders act first.

Kaplan’s Get-off-My-Lawn Screed

I have always found Kaplan to be a realist with centrist take on international affairs. However, while his Waste Lands does have some good points, it devolves into the worst type of trite, Boomer critique of a world that he no longer is capable of understanding. To Kaplan, cancel culture is the stalking-horse of totalitarianism, instead of the forgotten cultural blip it was. Kaplan looks to 19th and 20th Century historians to support his thesis we are living in one big Weimar Republic made up of all nations. Instead of seeing that point through, he launches into a defense of “Western Civilization,” a completely nebulous concept that always seems to mean “how it used to be.” I can understand that how it used to be - when WaPost/Atlantic writers like Kaplan commanded audiences that truly set the agenda - is very attractive to the author, but Patrick Deneen or Roos Douthat make Kaplan’s points more cohesively.

The accurate description of what has been and what is.

The author has in my estimation correctly depicted the current state of modern western society and provided a clear path and destination of where that society, in relation to the world at large, is likely headed. We therefore are provided with a framework within which to think about what we see now and what we are likely to experience in the future.

The author's biases are immune to his own analysis

Much of the content is thought provoking, topical, and well supported by available context. Having read or listened to much of his work, it is interesting to see where he has been right, slightly off, and outright wrong. Yet here we see, more blatantly than ever, just how contradictory his own views can be. In the same breath as he talks about avoiding group think and the social pressures of mob mentality, he endorses zionism and globalism both tacitly and explicitly. He rightfully speaks against the cults of personality and culture that caused the most publicized atrocities of the last century, and the acts of terrorism of the last generations, yet all of his criticism does not apply to his own special groups. So while it is thought provoking and topical, be warned that it is inescapably biased and disingenuous. If you lack the integrity to apply your beliefs and criticisms to yourself and your favored group, then you lack integrity in your beliefs.

Excellent t

Thought provoking and necessary for today’s chaotic world. A must listen for those who care about what comes next.

Interesting analysis, unnecessarily woke

Interesting and exhaustive historical and contemporary analysis. Unnecessary and constant references to climate change and other hot woke topics. Feels like an attempt of conformity.