Critique on Kaplan's "The Comming Anarchy"
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- Date Submitted: 01/04/2014 03:07 PM
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Robert Kaplan predicted in his book “The Coming Anarchy” that the dystrophic scenario from the Road Warrior was a prelude to what would eventually encompass us globally. “Their world crumbled. The cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive.” (Mad Max 2: The Road Warrior, (1981) Quotes) Fortunately, Kaplan’s thesis, based on his observations regarding West Africa, was incorrect.
Kaplan warned that West Africa’s ungoverned spaces, disease-ridden slums, weak borders, and impoverished masses, was a look into the future of the planet. Where Kaplan fall short in his notion that nation-states will dissolve into tribal enclaves and the lack of the United States policy in West Africa will add to this worldwide decline. Kaplan failed to predict that increases in the re-establishment along with the political power growth of nation-states in West Africa would stabilize that region; and that change in United States policies to combating issues in West Africa would mitigate his global anarchy hypothesis.
When Kaplan wrote this hypothesis in 1994, he concluded that places like Sierra Leone where
a microcosm of what is occurring, albeit in a more tempered and gradual manner, throughout West Africa and much of the underdeveloped world: the withering away of central governments, the rise of tribal and regional domains, the unchecked spread of disease, and the growing pervasiveness of war (Kaplan, 1994)
What Kaplan failed to envision was that these nation states, no matter how they were formed, would reach a point where they would emerge from the chaos of civil war and strife to become not only a stable government, but one which functions as a nation-state. And that the de-colonialization that took place in Africa, starting in 1945, and the subsequent struggles faced by those...
Kaplan warned that West Africa’s ungoverned spaces, disease-ridden slums, weak borders, and impoverished masses, was a look into the future of the planet. Where Kaplan fall short in his notion that nation-states will dissolve into tribal enclaves and the lack of the United States policy in West Africa will add to this worldwide decline. Kaplan failed to predict that increases in the re-establishment along with the political power growth of nation-states in West Africa would stabilize that region; and that change in United States policies to combating issues in West Africa would mitigate his global anarchy hypothesis.
When Kaplan wrote this hypothesis in 1994, he concluded that places like Sierra Leone where
a microcosm of what is occurring, albeit in a more tempered and gradual manner, throughout West Africa and much of the underdeveloped world: the withering away of central governments, the rise of tribal and regional domains, the unchecked spread of disease, and the growing pervasiveness of war (Kaplan, 1994)
What Kaplan failed to envision was that these nation states, no matter how they were formed, would reach a point where they would emerge from the chaos of civil war and strife to become not only a stable government, but one which functions as a nation-state. And that the de-colonialization that took place in Africa, starting in 1945, and the subsequent struggles faced by those...