The Loom Of Time: Between Empire And Anarchy, From The Mediterranean To China, by Robert D. Kaplan

If you remember where Robert Kaplan left off in the Revenge of Geography, he discussed the need to focus more on China and Mexico. In this book, Kaplan turns his attention to an area that he said got too much attention last time, in urging people to take seriously the promise and the problems of the Greater Middle East. The author views this region as extending from North Africa and the Sahel states across to the Horn of Africa, including the Levant, Turkey, and all the way into Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent. As if to point out the author’s distinct lack of self-awareness, the author claims that the American retreat from the region has emboldened the Chinese, Turks, Russians, and Iranians to increase their influence in the region, as if he does not remember that he had urged the United States to pay less attention to this supposedly unprofitable region. When you write as many books as this author has, and you pay as little attention to the contradictions in your thinking as this author does, you get cases like this particular book where it is clear that the author has bills to pay (and so writes about a popular subject) and is less than usually concerned about the contradictions of his work. It must be admitted, though, that the author wishes to make a mea maxima culpa about his misguided support of the US invasion of Iraq, which he regrets in hindsight, figuring he ought to have been smart enough to see that it wouldn’t actually help create order and that it would inevitably increase the influence of Iran over the Shi’ite population of Iraq’s south, both of which should have been possible to see in advance, it must be admitted.

This book is a bit less than 350 pages of contents. It begins with a map, and then contains a prologue about China in the afterlife of empire. This is followed by the author’s discussion of time and terrain being essential aspects to history (1). After that the author takes a basically regional approach to the history of the Greater Middle East, starting with Greece (2). He then moves on to Turkey (3), which he views as a missed opportunity for Europe to help Turkey consolidate as a secular state, giving the Islamists support by denying their entry into the EU repeatedly. The author spends two chapters dealing with the Nile River area, focusing first on overpopulated and rigidly governed Egypt (4) and then moving on to discuss the problems of Ethiopia as an empire in search of a unifier (5). This is followed by a discussion of politics and history in the Arabian desert (6). Three chapters cover the fertile crescent, talking first about the destruction of the Ottoman Empire and its consequences (7), and then focusing on Syria (8), and Iraq (9) and their struggles to maintain cohesion as artificial states. The book then moves to talk about the achievements of Safavid Iran (10) and its successors as well as the problems of statehood in Afghanistan (11). The book then ends with an epilogue that warns about the failure of imagination that things can always get worse than even the worst regime, as well as acknowledgments, notes, and an index.

It is clear that as an author, Kaplan has less of a systematic view of the world than he does make impressionistic sketches that are designed to reflect the needs and concerns of the time, like the author’s pathological need to be accepted as an expert of the region and receive the plaudits of fellow beltway analysts and midbrow audiences of newspapers like the WaPo and New York Times. Does that pathological condition make this book a bad one? Not exactly. If you are looking at a breezy, journalistic account of the author’s experiences in traveling through and reading about the Middle East, his praises of generally better writers whose work he views and underappreciated and worth championing, as well as an understanding of how the author’s negative personal experiences with Saddam’s Iraq made him biased against the regime and not sensitive to the difficulties of promoting order in the Middle East’s artificial states, this book has some value. There is at least some continuity in this work as in his previous works in a general view of the importance of historical geography to current events analysis, his instinctive hostility towards anarchy that leads him to give a grudging support to empires as well as tyrannical regimes that nevertheless protect useful minorities from vengeful and petty majorities on the street, and his fondness of Iran as a cosmopolitan empire once its ayatollahs are removed from power (whenever that blessed event may take place). So, it is not as if the author is always in contradiction with his previous works, even if he values internal consistently less than most prolific writers, it would seem. This book can be enjoyed if one does not take it too seriously, but rather views it as a breezy and rather personal travelogue of the Greater Middle East, and one that speaks in praise of empires, which few writers who wish to be taken seriously these days seem to be willing to do. And that is worth something, at least.