Eighty years ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt uttered one of the most absurd lines in a presidential inaugural address, assuring the war-weary nation that “the great fact to remember is that the trend of civilization itself is forever upward.” In fact, history has no sides or direction, and societies can both improve and decay. With mismanagement of political culture or military weaponry, society can fall apart entirely. Nonetheless, the abstractly optimistic notion of the great “moral arc” of the universe remains a popular liberal conceit.
But as the author Robert Kaplan makes clear in his new book gaming out worst-case scenarios, Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis, it shouldn’t be. Sometimes things do go from bad to worse. Here Kaplan stares into the abyss of the future. And that future, rather bleak in his telling, is now.
The world, the author warns, runs the risk of resembling the Weimar Republic, the fleeting period of German democracy wedged between the end of World War I and the rise of Nazi Germany. In some respects, Weimar was a hedonist’s dream, both a free fall and a free-for-all. But it also was a time of stunning vibrancy, artistic achievement, and technological “progress.” Yet Weimar is primarily remembered for what emerged from its ashes: totalitarianism — and, with it, the most destructive war in modern history.
The late historian of Germany Gordon A. Craig famously observed that Weimar’s “normal state was crisis.” And here is where Kaplan’s analogy fits in. Our world, Kaplan writes, “is connected enough for one part to mortally influence the other parts, yet not connected enough to be politically coherent.” We now “find ourselves in an exceedingly fragile phase of technology and political transition.” And our much-vaunted fourth estate is fueling the extremes. So, too, is social media, which will only make our politics “harder, more complicated, and more difficult to succeed at,” Kaplan notes. Our politics and our media are simultaneously victims and carriers of this plague. They fuel each other, often bringing the worst impulses of humanity to the forefront. And neither are well equipped for a world in which disorder and chaos are the new normal.
“Technology has made us both masters and victims to a previously unimaginable degree,” Kaplan warns. “We believe we can defy gravity, yet we are weighed down by a mountain of worries that arrive instantly in our devices.” Consequently, it is at once both a “very claustrophobic and intimate world, yet also limitless.” It’s a world where “we may be connected with friends and relations around the globe, but just as often the people in the house or apartment next to ours might as well be in another universe.” The net result is one in which isolation and the feeling of closeness coexist. And the consequences of this development, Kaplan argues, carry over to other aspects of modern lives.
Some of the best portions of Waste Land are reflections on the media and mob rule. The disconnectivity fueled by technology breeds loneliness. And history tells us that loneliness is an essential component for totalitarianism. This was as true in Nazi Germany as it was in Mao’s Cultural Revolution. The “worst tyrannies had their origins in the isolation and loneliness of the individual,” Kaplan observes. That is: Mobs are often made up of lonely people.
Another feature of totalitarianism has reemerged: demands for ideological purity. By their very nature, mobs demand conformity. And instead of the fishwives of the French Revolution or Mao’s irate college students, the mobs have infiltrated the newsrooms of the privileged. The New York Times offers a recent example. Kaplan recounts how New York Times staffers deposed longtime editors after the newspaper published an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) calling for the National Guard to end mass rioting in the summer of 2020. Merely publishing a dissenting opinion was enough for these ideologues to demand the resignations of their liberal editors. This failure to tolerate different opinions bodes poorly for the future of a free society.
And greater dangers lurk ahead. The rise of artificial intelligence may only further cripple critical thinking. The role of tech only further empowers the young. History tells us that this is ominous. As Kaplan notes, “The young are not tempered by memories of the past and the grave mistakes they made,” which only further “raises the specter of particularly fearsome bottom-up mobs.”
In short: The very underpinnings of liberal societies are under siege — both from within and without. And the timing could hardly be worse.
Meanwhile, totalitarianism is on the march abroad. Russia has invaded Ukraine, Hamas and fellow Iranian proxies have decided to slaughter and pillage Israelis, and Xi Jinping is always eying an invasion of Taiwan that could lead to a Sino-American or even a world war. To observers of international affairs, none of this is news. But Kaplan highlights looming trends that will only add to the chaos.
“Geography is not disappearing” because of technology. Rather it is only “shrinking,” he claims. And “the smaller the world becomes because of technology, the more every place in it becomes important.” And with every place becoming more strategically significant, the risk of conflict only grows. What previously wasn’t particularly valuable is now worth more. Shortly before World War II, British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain infamously described Hitler’s plans to invade Czechoslovakia as a “quarrel in a faraway country, between people of whom we know nothing.” That sentiment of “splendid isolation,” as one of his predecessors in office called it, was wrong then and will prove to be even more naïve in the future.
Kaplan has long emphasized the importance of history, geography, and technology in understanding international affairs in his many books. Henry Kissinger famously said that historians must live with a “sense of the inevitability of tragedy.” Kaplan certainly does, showing a keen understanding of human nature. For example, he doesn’t credit the United Nations or international norms for the lack of a hot war between the Soviet Union and the United States. “Man has such a propensity for violence that it actually required hydrogen bombs to keep him temporarily at bay,” he writes.
It is unsurprising then that what Kaplan values most — institutions, reverence for the past and tradition, stability — are the ingredients essential to preserving order and freedom. But as he makes clear, these are things that can slip away easily. Waste Land is a well-written rumination on what may come next without very deft leadership working very smartly to avoid it.
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Sean Durns is a Senior Research Analyst for CAMERA, the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
