The Foreign Service Journal, June 2017

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | JUNE 2017 101 comes from more, however, than a state of mind. Kaplan stresses that the United States is endowed with the “most impressive polit- ical geography in the world, or in history for that matter.” The colo- nists were fortunate to gain possession of the last resource-rich part of the temperate zone settled during or after the Enlightenment. In addition to our ocean boundar- ies and stable, friendly neighbors, the United States benefits from having more navigable inland waterways than the rest of the world combined. This helped power breakneck economic develop- ment and lowered barriers to commu- nications and migration, keeping the country cohesive even as it spread west. Other countries complain that geogra- phy has cursed them; it’s given nothing but blessings to us. Kaplan meanders west, riffing as he visits the homes of Teddy Roosevelt, Abe Lincoln and James Buchanan, Mount Rushmore and the Hoover Dam. Every landmark contributes to the story of westward expansion, bringing Amer- ica closer to its geopolitical destination. Along the way he likens the early frontiersmen who battled with Native Fated to Lead? Earning the Rockies: How Geography Shapes America’s Role in the World Robert J. Kaplan, Random House, 2017, $27/hardcover, $13.99/ Kindle, 224 pages. Reviewed By Eric Green Who are we? Americans have asked this simple question since before we became an independent nation, and foreign policy thinkers have struggled to use the answers to explain why the United States ascended to predomi- nance in the international order. Robert Kaplan, the author of 16 (really!) previous books on international affairs, offers his own perspective with a short volume that is both a history of ideas and a master class in American geography. Written as a memoir, travelogue and intellectual meditation, Earning the Rockies opens with Kaplan recalling childhood road trips and tales told by his truck-driving father. These kindled in him a fascination with American historical landmarks and the epic geog- raphy of Appalachia, the central rivers, the Great Plains and beyond. Seeking renewed inspiration, he sets off on a coast-to-coast journey to revisit the continent’s landscape and to reflect on how the settlers’ encounters with it remade the country into an outward- looking imperial colossus. Kaplan reveres Bernard DeVoto, a historian of westward expansion who identified America’s embrace of “Mani- fest Destiny” as the moment when the country’s mental horizons about its place in the world expanded in the same way that our physical boundaries stretched to the Pacific. America’s expansive self-conception BOOKS American tribes to today’s U.S. Special Forces, and suggests that the experience of crossing the limitless prairie prepared Ameri- cans for their future vocation of policing the Pacific Ocean. By the time Kaplan reaches San Diego, the United States is not a normal country, but a world power that has developed “longstanding obligations, which, on account of its continued economic and social dynamism relative to other powers, it keeps.” Though Kaplan ranges far outside the Beltway to explain America’s role in the world, his conclusions are comfort- ably within mainstream establishment thinking. Kaplan is an unapologetic champion of projecting American power, rhapsodizing on the benefits of our 300-ship Navy, global diplomatic presence and more than 100 overseas military installations. While he celebrates America’s rise as a net positive for the world, Kaplan does not sugarcoat the process, pointing out the “morally ambiguous” legacy of the conquest of Mexico and the brutal treat- ment of Native Americans, as well as the counterproductive foreign adventures in the Philippines, Vietnam and Iraq. Kaplan’s book was completed prior to the start of the Trump administra- tion, but it includes a few digressions on Kaplan meanders west, riffing as he visits the homes of Teddy Roosevelt, Abe Lincoln and James Buchanan, Mount Rushmore and the Hoover Dam. Every landmark contributes to the story of westward expansion, bringing America closer to its geopolitical destination.