THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2026 87 but I really didn’t want to know.” As novelist Don DeLillo wrote of another (fictional) covert operation, “Knowledge was a danger, ignorance a cherished asset.” Some of the facts came out in testimony before Congress, some in the report of a special commission. Then in December 1986 President Reagan appointed an independent counsel to investigate. Five long years later, the independent counsel, a dogged former federal judge named Lawrence Walsh, had produced 14 indictments resulting in 11 convictions, including of North and Poindexter (whose convictions were later vacated on appeal), and no acquittals. The scorecard is misleading; in reality, the investigation fizzled. Walsh could not use as evidence any of the immunized testimony of the Iran-Contra figures who appeared before committees of Congress. As a result, defendants were charged not with the underlying crimes but with offenses, such as lying to Congress and obstruction of justice, that many members of the public could and did dismiss as no big deal. On Christmas Eve 1992, lame-duck President George H.W. Bush pardoned six of the Iran-Contra figures then awaiting trial. As McPherson notes: “The only person who ended up in prison was Thomas Clines [a minor participant in the Enterprise], and that was for cheating on his taxes.” Who Cared …? McPherson’s account begins in a detached and moderate tone, but by the concluding chapter, the author’s fury is unrestrained: “The Republican Party, especially, showed that Iran-Contra did not chasten it in the least. It continued its abhorrent disregard for the unwritten rules and conventions of a just and egalitarian society. … It paid a paltry price come election time.” The Constitution, democracy, and the rule of law breached? In the end, too many people simply did not care. And so, 40 years later, here we are again. Harry W. Kopp, a Foreign Service officer from 1967 to 1985, was deputy assistant secretary of State for international trade policy in the Carter and Reagan administrations. He is the author of The Voice of the Foreign Service: A History of the American Foreign Service Association at 100 (2nd edition, 2024) and co-author with John K. Naland of Career Diplomacy: Life and Work in the U.S. Foreign Service (4th edition, 2021). An Unsettling View of the Global Landscape Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis Robert D. Kaplan, Random House, 2025, $31.00/hardcover, e-book available, 224 pages. Reviewed by Joseph L. Novak In his new book, Waste Land, Robert D. Kaplan goes full pessimist. Deeply concerned about Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China, he is also worried about the impact of climate change and the spread of chaos in poorer regions of the globe. The main thing that is keeping him up at night, however, is the failure of the collective West to cohere in the face of escalating challenges. Kaplan has long been one of America’s premier geopolitical thinkers. Waste Land is his 23rd book in a list that includes Balkan Ghosts (1993), The Revenge of Geography (2012), and The Good American (2021). A writer of thought-provoking pieces in The Atlantic for many years, he is currently affiliated with the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. The Weimar Period His latest work begins with a lengthy rumination on Weimar-era Germany. During that turbulent post–World War I timeframe, the German government was often ineffective and “everyone was hanging on for dear life, unaware of where they were going.” The chapter is titled “Weimar Goes Global,” with Kaplan seeing the period as “a rough metaphor for our time.” Of course, the Weimar Republic abruptly ended with the Nazi takeover of power in 1933, followed by the swift movement toward World War II. Kaplan seems to be saying that the present-day West could face a similar cataclysm if it does not show strength and resolve. To Kaplan, the contemporary threats to stability are real enough. As touched on above, he sees Russia and China as dangerous players on the international scene. He laments that the Afghanistan and Iraq wars “substantially weakened the United States” and gave these
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