The Loom of Time: Between Empire and Anarchy, from the Mediterranean to China

The vast Muslim heartland of Afro-Eurasia is a tumult that might find stability and prosperity but rarely democracy, according to this sweeping geopolitical meditation. Drawing on travelogue, interviews, scholarly literature, and 50 years of reporting on the region, Kaplan (The Coming Anarchy) surveys a “Greater Middle East” stretching from the Nile to the Uyghur community of Xinjiang, China. In Istanbul he ponders President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s turn from secularism toward a reprise of the Ottoman Empire. In Cairo he notes Egyptians’ preference for Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s stolid dictatorship over the chaos of the elected Islamist government of Mohammad Morsi. He deplores Iran’s “bleak, radical, utterly despised, and dysfunctional” theocracy but holds out hope that the ancient civilization might attain liberal democracy. From these and other examples, Kaplan distills larger themes: geography is destiny; the West’s modernizing influence has energized the region’s oscillation between secular dictatorship and Islamist reaction; and that “along with empire, monarchy is the most natural form of government,” so that a competent, nonideological autocrat may be preferable to an anarchic democracy. (He somewhat credulously paints Saudi crown prince Muhammad bin Salman as a dynamic ruler who is liberalizing Saudi society.) Some may criticize Kaplan’s conservative outlook and grand pronouncements, but he offers much provocative food for thought. (Aug.)