EARNING THE ROCKIES
How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World
Robert D Kaplan
Random House
201 pages; $27
Just over half of America, having voted for Hillary Clinton, awoke the next morning to a country that seems not only unfamiliar but upside-down. Populists embrace a celebrity billionaire, evangelicals welcome a foul-mouthed Lothario, conservatives accept an opportunist whose only ideological commitment is to himself. The Republican establishment proves helpless against the hijacking of the party, the mainstream media prove ineffectual against the tide of fake news and the political system proves vulnerable to the machinations of a sinister foreign government. Longstanding global alliances are questioned, longstanding political norms are trashed — and then the candidate with the three-million-vote plurality loses. In what alternative universe does this make any sense? As Karl Marx said, in a very different context: All that is solid melts into air.
Or maybe not. Maybe the political air is turbulent but the country’s tectonic fundamentals remain solid. Maybe American politics and geopolitics rest on a foundation as immovable as the rivers and plains of the country itself. For those who feel disoriented, and also (perhaps especially) for those who feel triumphant, Robert D Kaplan’s small but magisterial new book is a tonic, because it brings fundamentals back into view.
With only 180 uncrowded pages of text, this is a book that can be read on a coast-to-coast flight, but fully digesting it will take much longer. Every page brings a fresh insight, a telling aperçu, a bracing reality check. Mr Kaplan is one of America’s most distinguished writers on foreign affairs, with 16 prior books to his name. Many will recall his 1994 Atlantic article (then book) “The Coming Anarchy,” which looks eerily prescient today. In his teens as a hitchhiker and again in middle age as a journalist, Mr Kaplan trekked across the continental United States. Today, perplexed by America’s pivot against the successful global order that Americans built, he repeats the journey, “for the answers to our dilemmas overseas lie within the continent itself.”
He returns with a musing travelogue, one that seeks, in words as carefully chosen as gemstones, to bring America’s geographic and geopolitical fundamentals back into the picture.
What do we learn along the way? For all the turbulent change swirling about us now, America was and remains the product of an exceptional geography. North America has more miles of navigable inland waterways than much of the rest of the world combined. Better still, its rivers run diagonally rather than (as in Russia) north and south, forming an ideal network for internal communication and trade. Moreover, America’s continental span and rich resource base shield it from external threat and dependency. Thus the United States is uniquely blessed by geography to form and sustain a cohesive continental union. Union is not the same as unity, but it’s a good start.
America’s geographical and hydrological blessings ramify not only inward but also outward. “The United States is not a normal country: Its geographic bounty gave it the possibility of becoming a world power, and with that power it has developed longstanding obligations, which, on account of its continued economic and social dynamism relative to other powers, it keeps,” Kaplan writes. “We are,” he says (his italics), “fated to lead.” For a host of reasons, ranging from geography to culture, no other country can play the same role.
Mr Kaplan embraces America’s quasi-imperial role but is no imperialist. His book is most challenging, and most valuable, for the layers of paradox it mines. Geography and union make the United States a hegemon whose auspices create the conditions for globalisation — but globalisation diminishes America’s geographical advantages and erodes American unity. Meanwhile, as globalisation uproots local economies and norms, the communications revolution spawns new tribal and ideological identities, everything from jihadism to alt-right. “It isn’t the clash of civilisations so much as the clash of artificially reconstructed civilisations that is taking place,” Kaplan writes. Finally, globalisation, a product of American influence and a bulwark against chaos, erodes American influence and births new disruptions. For all its unrivaled military and economic power, the United States “now has no possibility of bringing order to the world.” The best we can hope for is to reduce disorder. Doing that requires projecting power, yes, but with a “light and subtle footprint.” It won’t be easy.
Earning the Rockies was written before the 2016 election. The name “Trump” appears only a few times. Yet there is more insight here into the Age of Trump than in bushels of political-horse-race journalism.
Where are we now? In territory that is uncharted but not altogether unfamiliar. President Trump may try to ignore the paradoxes of geography and globalism, but he cannot escape them. In the long run, Mr Kaplan reminds us, the shape of the river constrains the pilot’s course. America will continue to lead, because it must.
©2017 The New York Times News Service
