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“The side that knows when to fight and when not will take the victory. There are roadways not to be traveled, armies not to be attacked, walled cities not to be assaulted.” —Sun-Tzu


We live in dangerous times, when a new kind of leadership is required. Visionary and ruthlessly strategic, Warrior Politics extracts the best of the wisdom of the ages for modern leaders who are faced with the complex life-and-death challenges of today’s world—and determined to win.
Sun-Tzu urges leaders to “plan and calculate like a hungry man.” Machiavelli defines a policy not by its excellence but by its outcome. Churchill derives his greatness from his imagination of history. Livy shows that the vigor to face down adversaries must ultimately come from pride in our own past achievements. “Never mind if they call your caution timidity, your wisdom sloth, your generosity weakness,” he writes. “It is better that a wise enemy should fear you than that foolish friends should praise.” “Men often oppose a thing merely because they have no agency in planning it,” Alexander Hamilton says, “or because it may have been planned by those whom they dislike.”
Replete with maxims, warnings, examples from history, and shrewd recommendations, Warrior Politics wrests from the past the lessons we need to arm ourselves for the present. It offers an invaluable template for any decision-maker—in foreign policy or in business—faced with high stakes and inadequate knowledge of a mine-filled terrain. As we gear ourselves up for a new kind of war, no book is more prescient, more shrewd, or more essential.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #397365 in Books
• Published on: 2001-12
• Released on: 2001-12-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 224 pages

Amazon.com
Robert Kaplan's Warrior Politics is an extended, willfully provocative essay arguing that the bedrock of sound foreign policy should be "comprehensive pragmatism" rather than "utopian hopes." Kaplan calls for a reestablishment of American (primarily) realpolitik, one distanced from Judeo-Christian (or private) virtue and closer to a "pagan" (public) one. He aligns himself with America's Founding Fathers, who, he says, believed good government emerged only from a "sly understanding of men's passions." His book is a mix of aphoristic pronouncements, brief contemporary political analyses, rapid-fire parallels between conflicts ancient and current, and copious quotes from historians and thinkers through the ages (Livy, Thucydides, Sun-Tzu, Machiavelli, and Thomas Hobbes among them). Though its historical gleanings are often too summary and suspiciously convenient, Warrior Politics promises to generate controversy among students of global politics--just as it was designed to do. --H. O'Billovitch

From Publishers Weekly
Years of reporting from combat zones in Bosnia, Uganda, the Sudan, Sierra Leone, Pakistan, Ethiopia and Eritrea have convinced Kaplan (Balkan Ghosts, The Coming Anarchy) that Thucydides and Sun-Tzu are still right on the money when they wrote that war is not an aberration and that civilization can repress barbarism but cannot eradicate it. Reminding readers that "The greater the disregard of history, the greater the delusions regarding the future," Kaplan conducts a brisk tour through the works of Machiavelli, Malthus and Hobbes, among others, to support his advocacy of foreign policy based on the morality of results rather than good intentions. From those classics, he extracts historical models and rationales for exploiting military might, stealth, cunning and what he dubs "anxious foresight" (which some may regard as pessimism based on disasters past) in order to lead, fight and bring adversaries to their knees should they challenge the prevailing balance of power. He also adapts this model to business, exploring the ways modern-day CEOs can benefit from history's lessons. Kaplan's discussion of the world's breeding grounds for rogue warriors out to disrupt daily life in bizarre new ways will strike a chord with most readers, as will his recounting of the brilliant statesmanship of Churchill and Roosevelt during World War II. Some readers, however, may take exception to the potshots Kaplan aims at (unnamed) media personalities and human rights advocates. This is a provocative, smart and polemical work that will stimulate lively discussion. Agents, Brandt and Brandt. (Jan.)Forecast: Kaplan's credentials, combined with his call for a strong and unambiguous foreign policy, should draw attention. Blurbs from Henry Kissinger and former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry will help.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Aiming to advise foreign policymakers confronting global capitalism in a politically fragmenting world, Balkan Ghosts author Kaplan surveys the literature of leadership from Herodotus to Gen. George Marshall.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

OUTSTANDING!
I read Mr. Kaplan's book in 2004 on a flight to the west coast---then turned to the first page and re-read on the return flight---it's that good. Mr. Kaplan takes a realistic view of the world as it is, using history as a guide. This book would be ideal for someone new to strategy (strateegery) or an old hand. The author connects the dots and makes clear that we should pay more attention to what other world actors do, than what they say.
Highly recommended.

the anti chomsky
beyond the so-called intellectualism of the Chomsky left, the media hacks, the hate America fifth column,this book is as real as it gets......utopianism is dead, humanistic interventions on a manic level is retarded......people will die,more and more people will die, but dont blame americ, blame their 12th century breeding habits and ancien religion of death(Islam)....the only thing Kaplan is guilty of is marking the Serbs as the aggressors....what of Tudjmans ethnic cleansing of the Kraijina(300,000 Serbs dont warrant a Clintonian bombing against Zagreb---or is it only that Kaplan is an Arabist???What of the KLas brutal murders, 2,000 of secular kosovars and Serbs...before Belgrades intervention????come on, Serbia will be purified of all guilt....albanian muslims are neo-fascists..........trust me.......

Nothing new from the intellectual elite
Kaplan seems to be a bastion for propaganda attempting to justify American power centers based on history written by Western educated classes. He claims that "adult" choices in foreign policy are based on distinctions, because we must make a mature distinction on the type of dictators and terrorists we support and the kind our enemies do (like the Soviets during the Cold War). He gives Romania, under Caecescu, as an example for showing people what kind of dictators the Soviets supported whereas "our dictators" were less brutal. Let's take his example; Romania, Caecescu, an utterly hideous regime. That is something we can all agree on. What Kaplan forgets to tell us is that the U.S. supported Caecescu, as did Britain, right until the very end (we know this from internal National Security documents in the archives). It's only a small example because we've supported even more vicious regimes, like Suharto, the Taliban, Pinochet, etc. No one accepts the argument that ultra right-wing jingoists like Kaplan put forth comparing and contrasting puppet totalitarian regimes. His justification seems to be "We're supporting this particular type of terrorism, so it is good."