“ The debacle in Iraq has reinforced the realist dictum, disparaged by idealists in the 1990s, that the legacies of geography, history and culture really do set limits on what can be accomplished in any… Robert D. Kaplan
“ Grand strategy is about marrying ends to means, about doing what you can, consistent with the nation's capabilities and resources. Robert D. Kaplan
“ Being on the frontier, as I've said, required doing rather than imagining: clearing land, building shelter, obtaining food supplies. Frontiers test ideologies like nothing else. There is no time for t… Robert D. Kaplan
“ Even in the heart of America, if a small city is not connected in some demonstrable fashion to other continents, it is dead. Robert D. Kaplan
“ In foreign policy, a modest acceptance of fate will often lead to discipline rather than indifference. The realization that we cannot always have our way is the basis of a mature outlook that rests on… Robert D. Kaplan
“ Indeed, Chicago seems to have literally sucked the air out of Springfield: another case of American becoming a network of massive city-states more intimately interconnected with other continents than… Robert D. Kaplan
“ In fact, the fear of another Munich was not altogether new. It had been an underlying element in the decision to liberate Kuwait from Saddam Hussein’s aggression in 1991. If we didn’t stop Saddam in K… Robert D. Kaplan
“ While our position has been eroding, the internal positions of Eurasia’s two principal hinge states, Russia and China, have been eroding further. They have ethnic, political, and economic challenges o… Robert D. Kaplan
“ There are riches enough for all of us, no matter our abilities or circumstances. It is only the inspiration that requires summoning. Robert D. Kaplan
“ America is fated to lead. That is the judgment of geography as it has played out over the past two and a half centuries. Robert D. Kaplan
“ When Erdogan assumed control, he gave power to a wave of Islamism, strengthened by Ozal, that had been creeping back into Turkish life under the radar screen of official Kemalism. Robert D. Kaplan
“ The United States fought against the prospect of a Vietnam unified by the communist North. But once that unification became fact, the new and enlarged Vietnamese state became a much greater threat to… Robert D. Kaplan
“ Simply put, there are actions of state that are the right things to do, even if they cannot be defined in terms of conventional morality. Robert D. Kaplan
“ Macedonia, the inspiration for the French word for mixed salad (macedoine), defines the principle illness of the Balkans: conflicting dreams of lost imperial glory. Each nation demands that is borders… Robert D. Kaplan
“ And yet these same oceans, by separating America by thousands of miles from other continents, have given America a virulent strain of isolationism that has persisted to this day. Robert D. Kaplan
“ The United States was a great power less because of its ideas than because, with direct access to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, it was the most favored state in the world from the point of view of… Robert D. Kaplan
“ The relative obscurity of Day’s autobiography and other books like it about Vietnam constitute a lesser-known aspect of our civilian-military divide. The books to which I refer should be part of our r… Robert D. Kaplan
“ A soldier: I know where heaven is and it's Lithuania ... The women are beautiful, pagan, with a practical view towards sex. Who says communism was bad? You're working three levels of advantages: you'r… Robert D. Kaplan
“ If you travel around America you see different sections of highways donated by this or that person, and that's a slow beginning of what may end up being a situation common in the Third World: some sec… Robert D. Kaplan
