The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post-Cold War.

• Author: Fredland, Richard A.
• Position: Review

THE COMING ANARCHY; SHATTERING THE DREAMS OF THE POST-COLD WAR

By Robert D. Kaplan, Random House, 2000. Pp. 185. $21.95

Our pro forma geopolitical worldview that served for fifty years of the Cold War was thoroughly shattered with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union in 1990. While there is political and ideological discourse about its nature and purpose, it is arguable that the bipolar Cold War world has been replaced by a "new world order." This term is used here descriptively, not prescriptively as some foreign policy gurus might in advocating a particular configuration of power with the United States, or some other power, at its center.

To describe is not to advocate, and my use of the "new world order," as is Kaplan's use of the term "coming anarchy," is purely descriptive. Following my presentation on "the new world order" for faculty at an East African university in the mid-1990s, a faculty member from the university responded. He began by stating, "I will have to argue that the current world situation is neither `new' nor `worldly' nor `orderly.' Otherwise, I agree with you completely." He went on to suggest that from his East African perspective domination of the international political system by major powers persisted as it had throughout the previous world order, the post-World War II era. Change was not "worldly," i.e. global, because his part of the world had not seen the profound changes that had transformed first world-second world relationships. Finally, with the current disorder in Africa, he concluded that the situation was hardly "orderly."

Into this implicit discussion of the nature of the post-Cold War international system have come several bold descriptions of the nature of the evolving system. Three explicit examples were first put forward in journal or magazine articles followed by books that expanded upon the theme (and capitalized upon the substantial intellectual excitement generated by the original publication). First came Francis Fukuyama, formerly of the Reagan State Department and now at James Mason University, with his reassuring "The End of History?" in The National Interest,(1) followed by the book.(2) Samuel Huntington, of Harvard, followed in 1993 with "The Clash of Civilizations?" in Foreign Affairs(3) and a book in 1996.(4) Finally, the journalist Robert Kaplan appeared with his series of articles in The Atlantic Monthly(5) followed by the current book.(6)

It is not the intention of this review to compare and contrast these various descriptions. It is not inconceivable to simultaneously subscribe to all hypotheses without intellectual dyspepsia. The pressing question is to assess which should hold the dominant position in a realistic worldview in the first years of the new millennium. While I hold with Huntington (and Gaddis to the extent that he is comparable), Kaplan's disturbing descriptions of the collapse of civilization in several parts of the world cannot be dismissed; the evidence is too compelling. There are two questions which must be asked. First, how important are his examples? Secondly, does his implicit realist prescription for U.S. foreign policy conform to reality?

In his opening paragraphs, Kaplan challenges Fukuyama's Hegelian view that history has ended and that everyone (with a few insignificant anachronisms like Cuba or North Korea) now openly seeks liberal capitalist systems in imitation of the United States.(7) Without mention of any current perspective, Kaplan dismisses idealistic perspectives for being Wilsonian in their unrealism, and thus not plausible. The anarchy he sees is not "civilizational" in Huntington's sense; it is the consequence of a societal breakdown of stupendous proportions, in effect a failure of the Fukuyama hypothesis: The world has distinctly repudiated liberal democracy in favor of warlordism.

Any careful observer of the international scene can recognize the dichotomous forces at work. On the one hand there is the process of regionalization, manifested in its most successful form by the European Union where states which had spent decades as bitter enemies decided to embark upon a less deadly path through the elimination of borders and commitment to a shared future. This path has been imitated less convincingly in Southeast Asia, Eastern Africa, and Central and South America. These are institutional forces of globalization.

The dichotomous force is fragmentation, most recently seen in an extreme form in the former Yugoslavia, but also evident in varying degrees in Quebec, Brittany, Eritrea, and Chechnya. While the economists rave about economies of scale and diminishing externalities that bring lower-cost goods to consumers through regionalism; others summon old loyalties and assert an identity that is at odds with the prevailing political power in a region. In broad terms, these can be seen as forces of order and disorder. Can it be that Kaplan is simply arguing that the glass is half empty when in actuality the level of water today is incrementally higher than it has been before and on balance is increasing? Or, is the water leaking or evaporating faster than it can be replenished?

Is it possible that Kaplan is subverted by his excellent journalist's eye that focuses in the first instance on capturing the reader's attention or imagination rather than on distancing himself academically from episodes and seeking a larger theory into which to fit specific behaviors?(8) Certainly neither of the other authors is so melodramatic. Perhaps, as a true representative of a society notorious for media-induced historicity, Kaplan has captured tragedies of the moment, even of the decade, but not necessarily events that are accurate portents of the new age evolving out of the redistribution of power following the Cold War. Conceptually, Kaplan belies his journalist's eye in proclaiming that "the meaning of [realism] is less clear than it seems."(9) Realism is abundantly clear, if complex. In contradistinction to idealism, realism defines a perspective of description or prescription in which tangible power is the determining feature of policy, not some conception of a better, or perfect world. Finally, Kaplan elucidates his perspective: "Realists ... run foreign policy; idealists [comment] from the sidelines."(10) He is certainly not to be confused with a pointy-headed...