88 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2026 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL “adversaries a head start in the renewed strategic competition.” That said, Russia—“the sick man of Eurasia,” as he puts it—has been debilitated by its bloody invasion of Ukraine. As for China, it faces a shrinking population as well as declining economic growth. While Beijing has a seemingly firm institutionalized system in place to deal with leadership vacuums, Kaplan worries that post-Putin Moscow could unravel with unforeseen consequences. Kaplan also writes sagaciously about the effects of climate change. He quotes science journalist Peter Brannen who harrowingly observed that “humanity’s ongoing chemistry experiment on our planet could push the climate … into a state it hasn’t seen in tens of millions of years, a world for which Homo sapiens did not evolve.” A chapter called “Crowds and Chaos” lists additional threats. Kaplan’s arguments in this section are not particularly well sketched out. He appears to be saying that expanding urbanization and the spreading use of digital communication platforms, for instance, could rile up populaces across the globe, leading to bouts of tumult. Realism vs. Optimism On several occasions, Kaplan underscores that he was not an optimist in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Unlike other commentators, he did not believe that the new age would inevitably be marked by harmony and mutually beneficial globalization. The Anxious Foresight Although Kaplan’s book goes off on tangents and is difficult to decipher at times, the overall point is a valuable one. Buffeted by a whirlwind of profound change, the international rules-based order is under significant stress. Those who do not recognize this, the author warns, are likely to be caught completely off guard by the onslaught of crises. In response to this unpredictable state of affairs, Kaplan is advising the West to engage in some self-reflection. Its record in recent years in tackling the most pressing issues has not been an impressive one. If the West fails to realize that the current global landscape is Hobbesian in nature, it will face increasing marginalization. An advocate of what he calls “anxious foresight,” Kaplan never claims that there is light at the end of the tunnel. But he does end Waste Land with the following apt guidance: “The direction of history is unknowable. There is no such thing as automatic linear progress. Thus, we have no choice but to fight on, as the outcome is not given to any of us in advance.” n Joseph L. Novak is a writer based in Washington, D.C. He is a fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London and a retiree member of the American Foreign Service Association. A former lawyer, he was a Foreign Service officer for 30 years. Kaplan underscores that he was not an optimist in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Hegelian-influenced Francis Fukuyama may have envisioned “The End of History,” but Kaplan—a foreign policy realist—was not buying it. In this regard, Kaplan flags an article he wrote for The Atlantic in 1994 called “The Coming Anarchy.” The article, which was later made into a book, was controversial at the time for its gloomy tone. Rising to his own defense, he contends that many of the issues he dealt with, such as weak governance, poverty, and environmental scarcity, continue to plague numerous developing countries. Throughout Waste Land, Kaplan displays an amazing level of erudition. He skillfully references Thucydides, Ibn Khaldun, Thomas Hobbes, Edmund Burke, Walter Bagehot, Henry Adams, José Ortega y Gasset, Hannah Arendt, Jean-Paul Sartre, Elias Canetti, and many other writers and thinkers. At times, his taste for citing eminent figures goes astray. For example, a prolonged disquisition on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and his Red Wheel series of historical novels set amid his chapter on the Weimar period seems out of place. The title of the book is itself a reference to the famous poem The Waste Land published by the renowned AngloAmerican poet T.S. Eliot in 1922. Kaplan cites several of the poem’s lyrical highlights, including: “A crowd flowed under London Bridge, so many/I had not thought death had undone so many.” Eliot’s theme of postwar breakdown and collapse is a perfect fit for Kaplan’s saturnine mood.
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