Eastward to Tartary : Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East,

and the Caucasus

by Robert D. Kaplan

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Like Fitzroy Maclean’s Eastern Approaches, an account of his travels as a British diplomat in the Caucasus and Central Asia in the 1930s, Robert Kaplan’s new book Eastward to Tartary can leave the reader uncertain as to how true and accurate it is. This is a critical question for military readers since Kaplan enjoys a certain vogue amongst senior officers, from his earlier writings on the Balkans and on political instabilities that followed the end of the Cold War. He writes about places where conflict involving the American military seems likely.

One can argue that in the early 1990s, Samuel Huntington’s Foreign Affairs article "The Clash of Civilizations" and Robert Kaplan’s Atlantic Monthly article "The Coming Anarchy" shaped the perception of future conflict for a generation of American military leaders. Despite the later criticism of these two pieces, the simplistic but persuasive arguments about cultural determinism and the inherent belligerence of tribal nationalism provided a conceptual framework for senior officers who tried to explain the necessity of military operations throughout the world in the absence of a global Communist threat.

Full Text: http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/bookrev/kaplan1.html

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Aerospace Power Journal: Eastward to Tartary Travels in the ... - Full text of the article, 'Eastward to Tartary Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus. - Review - book review' from Aerospace Power ...

Powell's Books - Eastward To Tartary : Travels in the Balkans, the ... - Eastward To Tartary : Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus (01 Edition). by Robert D. Kaplan. ISBN:: 0375705767 (More details. ...

EASTWARD TO TARTARY: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and ... - EASTWARD TO TARTARY: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus by Robert D. Kaplan Random House, $26.9 ... Washington Monthly article ...

A Realist's Picaresque - New York Times - But ''Eastward to Tartary'' is not only an account of Kaplan's travels in the Balkans, the Middle East and the Caucasus. It is also a revealing study of ...

Foreign Affairs - Book Review - Eastward to Tartary: Travels in ... - Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus. Robert D. Kaplan. New York: Random House, 2000, 384 pp. $26.95. ...