Center for a New American Security

Robert D. Kaplan has been a senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security since March 2008, and has been a foreign correspondent for The Atlantic for over a quarter-century. He is the author of Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power, published by Random House in October, 2010, with the paperback to be released in September.

In 2009, he was appointed by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, which advises the Secretary on key issues. He served on the Board through 2011.  From 2006 to 2008, he was the Class of 1960 Distinguished Visiting Professor in National Security at the United States Naval Academy, Annapolis.

Mr. Kaplan is the best-selling author of twelve previous books on international affairs and travel, translated into many languages. In the 1980s, Mr. Kaplan was the first American writer to warn in print about a future war in the Balkans. Balkan Ghosts was chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the “best books” of 1993. The Arabists, The Ends of the Earth, An Empire Wilderness, Eastward to Tartary, and Warrior Politics were all chosen by The New York Times as “notable” books of the year. An Empire Wilderness was chosen by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times as one of the best books of 1998. The Wall Street Journal named The Arabists as one of the best five books written about America’s historical involvement in the Middle East.

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls Mr. Kaplan among the four “most widely read” authors defining the post-Cold War (along with Johns Hopkins Professor Francis Fukuyama, Yale Professor Paul Kennedy, and the late Harvard Professor Samuel Huntington). His article, “The Coming Anarchy,” in the February, 1994 Atlantic Monthly, about how population rises, urbanization, and resource depletion is undermining governments, was hotly debated in foreign-language translations around the world. So was his December, 1997 Atlantic cover story, “Was Democracy Just A Moment?” That piece argued that the democracy now spreading around the world would not necessarily lead to more stability. According to U.S. News & World Report, “President Clinton was so impressed with Kaplan, he ordered an interagency study of these issues, and it agreed with Kaplan’s conclusions.”

Besides The Atlantic Monthly, Mr. Kaplan’s essays have appeared on the editorial pages of The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Los Angeles Times, as well as in all the major foreign affairs journals. He has been a consultant to the U. S. Army’s Special Forces Regiment, the U. S. Air Force, and the U. S. Marines. He has lectured at military war colleges, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Pentagon's Joint Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, major universities, and global business forums.  Mr. Kaplan has delivered the Secretary of State’s Open Forum Lecture at the U. S. State Department. He has reported from over 100 countries. Two earlier books of his, Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and Surrender or Starve: Travels in Ethiopia, Sudan, Somalia and Eritrea, have been re-issued, so that all his books are in print.