Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis

by Robert D. Kaplan

Technology has made us both masters and victims to a previously unimaginable degree. We believe we can defy gravity, yet we are weighed down by a mountain of worries that arrive instantly in our devices.

In truth, order must come before freedom, because without order there is no freedom for anyone.

Prediction is impossible. It is only through coming to terms with the past and vividly realizing the present that we can have premonitions about the future.

our world is still one of pitiless power struggles that make a mockery of elite posturing.

One of the reasons America is powerful is that it is protected by oceans. And one of the reasons why Americans have become less secure is because oceans offer them less protection than they used to.

Despite the passing of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, tyranny, I repeat, is not done with us. And I am not just talking about Putin, Xi, and the other dictators who plague international relations; I am talking about new and subtler forms of coercion at home.