History repeats itself

Sudhirendar Sharma

Sudhirendar Sharma

Has the world plunged into a crisis, and that too permanently? The geopolitical analyst Robert Kaplan has every reason to believe so. Moreso with no such thing as linear in this world, the direction of human history is anything but unknowable. Though technology has kept evolving, roots of the permanent crisis continue to lie in what goes wrong with technology. With a sweep of history and politics, one could see similarity between today’s challenges and those of interwar years. The similarity being that every national disaster now has the potential to spread across the world, pandemic being one example.

Waste Land

Waste Land both warns as well as generates hope. While it positions us as the Master of Technology, it considers us no less victims of it to a previously unimaginable degree. The entire world may seem one big now yet not connected enough to be politically coherent. But despite such cultural and even civilizational differences, a crisis at one level becomes a crisis for all. All countries are now so connected, at least technologically, that the crises have a domino effect. There are exceedingly complex set of issues that have yet to be acknowledged and resolved.

An interesting and absorbing sweep through history, literature, politics and philosophy guides Kaplan to divide the world into two broad phases, Globalization 1.0 and Globalization 2.0. While the past phase was about the spread of democracy and the enlargement of the middle class, the present phase is value-neutral but largely hostile. Furthermore, this phase is characterized by dense webwork of interactions that is a perfect fuel for sustaining permanent crisis. No wonder, Ukraine, Gaza and other major conflicts get their effects amplified, rather than assuaged. 

Considered one of the top global thinkers on Foreign Policy, Robert D. Kaplan is currently Robert Strausz-Hupe Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. At this time when the world is bracing uncertain geopolitics, a deadly mix of war and climate change and heady cocktail of power rivalry and technological supremacy, the future finds itself in an exceedingly fragile phase of political transition. Nothing less than a penetrating diagnosis is needed to evolve a new international order.

The world isn’t getting worse, but the point is that social and digital media in the cities, in addition to doing some good, has greater potency to ignite more geopolitical turbulence. Waste Land surmises that social media in the world-cities are the key reason why politics will continue to get complicated and challenging. Not only has complex countries like Pakistan, Nigeria, and South Africa are teetering on becoming failed state, it is getting harder to even govern countries like the United States and France. The book makes some compelling observations and tosses unprecedented challenges that mankind is likely to face. 

Kaplan has drawn an interesting parallel of the present situation with the erstwhile Weimar Republic, the semi presidential republic during the interwar period 1918-1933, which the world today find itself in an exceedingly fragile phase of technological and political transition. Much like Weimar, ours is an interconnected system of states in which no one really rules. Weimer, once a loose-limbed republic, is now a permanent condition in the world, as countries (and its people) are connected by technology to affect each other intimately.

The whole city is a web, or should it be said the entire world is a web. Social media and the digital technology only amplify crowd psychology. The Trump phenomenon was hard to imagine in an earlier age of technology. The technology has its pinball motion that oscillates between extremes of toxic narcissi and the solidarity of the mob. The future is being defined by 21 century technology but has interesting resonant with the past. Kaplan concludes that many diverse strands of culture and history are converging to make amazing new sense of things. 

Waste Land is a brilliant and engaging survey of the world before us. Grounded in a vast range of history, philosophy and literature, it provides a range of critical positions before us. It is a dark mirror held to a dangerous world that demands our attention. We seem to have little choice but to fight one, as the outcome is neither clear nor predictable. It is a cautionary tale of absolute brilliance.  

Waste Land

by Robert D. Kaplan

Hurst, London.

Extent: 207, Price: US$ 23.

(Sudhirendar Sharma is a writer and researcher specializing in development ikssues. He is based in New Delhi, India)

First published in the Hindu Business Line dated April 26, 2025.