“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 the theoretical. That, ultimately, is why America has not been… — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share Image
“And so this is where the post Cold War has brought us: to the recognition that the very totalitarism that we fought against in… — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share Image
“Or take the opportunity offered to the United States following the attacks of September 11, 2001, when both Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Mohammed Khatami condemned the Sunni al Qaeda terrorism in no uncertain terms and Iranians held vigils for the victims in the streets of Tehran...or the help Iran gave to the US-led coalition against the Taliban later that… — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share
When you talk about aiding this country against that country or about fighting terrorism, when you actually take that decision and strip it down,… — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share Image
“One marker, which I would read a bit later on, tells the familiar story of Narcissa Whitman, "trail-blazer and martyred missionary," who followed the north side of the Platte in 1836 on horseback, "becoming the first white women to cross the American continent," and who, along with her husband, Marcus, was "massacred by Cayuse Indians" at their Protestant mission in… — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share
Given the level of anti-Americanism in the world, given the level of frustration with the United States throughout the Muslim world, you've got a homegrown attack or you have a nuclear explosion in the air that is not a test somewhere. Those are still the biggest threats out there. — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share
The Cold War went on for so long that it bred a kind of worldwide military establishment. Even when budgets went down in the… — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share Image
“So far we have seen the weakening and collapse of small and medium-sized states in Africa and the Middle East. But quasi-anarchy in larger… — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share Image
“Europe is a landscape; East Asia a seascape. Therein lies a crucial difference between the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.” — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share Image
“Macedonia, the inspiration for the French word for "mixed salad" (macedoine), defines the principle illness of the Balkans: conflicting dreams of lost imperial glory.… — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share Image
The more dynamic the capitalistic expansion, the greater the disparity. It is from the disparity that we are going to get all the political… — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share Image
It is easy to be a moral perfectionist when one is politically unaccountable. — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share Image
The masses cannot ultimately be free: only the individual can be. — Robert D. Kaplan Copy Share Image
