The Tragic Mind: Fear, Fate, and the Burden of Power by Robert D. Kaplan
Literature & History Providing Perspectives on the Present
This latest release (17 Jan. 2023) from Robert D. Kaplan arises from his experiences as a foreign reporter, war correspondent, and influential voice in American foreign affairs. Indeed, it’s perhaps this latter role that provided the most proximate motivation for these reflections. Kaplan notes here, as he has previously, that his book, Balkan Ghosts, was widely credited by members of the Clinton administration with creating a reluctance among administration decision-makers to intervene in the civil war to stop the Serbian genocide in Kosovo. And, as he has written several times previously, he came to deeply regret—even to the point of suffering clinical depression—his initial support for invading Iraq to topple Saddam Hussein. Some decision-makers and influencers might simply slough off any serious reflection and self-criticism that can arise from such errors in judgment. “We all make mistakes, right?” But Kaplan refuses to let himself off the hook so easily. He not only refuses to ignore his mistakes, but he also seeks to understand them and learn from them. And this makes his mea culpa more than just a public demonstration of private remorse; instead, it provides a reason for reflection. Whipping oneself in public could easily become tiresome and pedantic, but not so here. In a sense, this particular book and self-revelation might be thought of as an act of penance, an attempt to not only purge the sin—the error—but also to right the scales, at least to some degree. And in doing this penance, he provides his readers with a significant benefit.
Note that Kaplan’s reasons for supporting the invasion of Iraq were neither arbitrary nor irrational. As a foreign correspondent working out of Greece and assigned to cover Eastern Europe, the Balkans, and the Middle East, Kaplan observed the effects of two terribly oppressive regimes on multiple occasions: that of the Ceausescus (husband and wife) in Romania and Saddam in Iraq. Kaplan thought that deposing Saddam would benefit the Iraqi people. On the whole, it did not. Not because Saddam wasn’t all that awful (he was), but because the civil war and chaos that followed the U.S. invasion were worse. This observation became a fundamental tenet for Kaplan: liberty requires order; order must precede liberty. This isn’t a welcome insight to most liberals (the “tempered liberals” described by Joshua Cherniss is his Liberalism in Dark Times, excepted). The insight that order must precede “freedom” was ignored by the neoconservatives of the W. Bush administration. Genuine conservatives would value the insight and modesty of Kaplan’s claim for the relationship between order and freedom.
But Kaplan’s book addresses contemporary issues only in passing. His deeper intent is to ground the morality required by international relations (and, I contend, other types of relations). He grounds the morality of this realm of human action in the reality of tragedy. Tragedy, Kaplan argues, serves as the most useful model for understanding the ethos of many types of political relationships (although he concentrates on international relations). Kaplan’s theory of tragedy emphasizes that tragedies, in addition to highlighting overweening hubris and other forms of human folly, also delve into the sometimes irresolvable conflicts between differing and incompatible manifestations of the good. (Hegel is a proponent of this theory.) Although not mentioned (as I recall), Weber’s distinction between “the 'ethic of ultimate ends' [and] . . . an 'ethic of responsibility’” (from Politics as a Vocation) is fundamental and addresses the same set of problems. Hard choices abound, and no fool-proof answer to these conundrums exists.
Kaplan has seen a lot up close, including war, crime, poverty, and tyranny. In addition to his diverse and sometimes harrowing experiences, Kaplan also ponders and reflects; he’s a reader. As Kaplan reported in his preceding book (Adriatic), he reads to travel and travels to read. And he shares his reading in his writing. Kaplan appreciates his experiences through the lens of his reading, which often, as in this book, reaches back to the ancient Greeks. In this work, Kaplan focuses on the three great tragedians of ancient Athens: Sophocles (especially Antigone), Aeschylus, and Euripides. And to supplement their insights, he turns to Shakespeare. Not a shabby reading list. And to be clear, Kaplan isn’t simply name-dropping. He explores and engages the scholarly commentary on these works, seeking to gain the marrow of their insights. This book complements Kaplan’s many earlier works that are so insightful about geopolitical and strategic realities. One may rightly refer to such realities as “the great game,” but like all political life, they entail vital issues of morality and tragedy, as well as aspects of a game. In this book, Kaplan rounds out his appreciation of all the dimensions of political decision-making in a complicated world.
Kaplan, as other writers I’ve come to value, from Thucydides to Augustine to Machiavelli (see several recent posts—with more to come—on this site); to the authors of The Federalist Papers; to great twentieth and twenty-first figures like Niebuhr (e.g., here & here), Morgenthau (Hans) (considered here, along with others, including Kissinger), Aron, Carr, Waltz, Ophuls (William née Patrick) (here, here, here, & here), Charles Hill, and John Mearsheimer (even as I disagree with his diagnosis of the Ukraine invasion)—all are in some sense political realists. We humans are fallible, full of foibles and vices (to put it mildly), and we’re bound by innumerable constraints. As biological entities, we are layered with eons of evolutionary developments; some of our behaviors and dispositions were laid down millions of years ago; and some of our thoughts and acts are as fleeting as yesterday’s fads. Whatever human nature consists of—however much we may want to deny it or ignore it—it always guides our behavior in some measure. We humans are both a part of Nature and apart from Nature. We can (and sometimes do) control our animal dispositions by the use of our Minds. The human mind, experienced collectively as a culture, has changed and evolved along with our bodies. In fact, in the past 10,000 years or more, our cultural evolution, our collective knowledge, and our shared traits, actions, and institutions have changed immensely more than any change (evolution) involving our bodies. Our collective consciousness, our sense of ourselves and our societies and the world in which we live, has also changed immensely throughout the existence of Homo sapiens. It seems we humans exist in a challenge: can humanity achieve enough velocity to escape the gravity of its past? Can human culture, in its institutions, families, friendships, societies, corporations, commonwealths, federations, and every other form of social organization, facilitate our overcoming the drag of millions of years of evolution and the constraints inherent in the human condition? (Hannah Arendt’s understanding of the “human condition”: we’re all born (natality), we all die (mortality), we are many (plurality), and we all share this earth and common needs and wants (equality).) Are we doomed by our nature and our condition to engage in a Promethean struggle that requires each generation to continue to attempt to plant the rock at the summit, only to have it crash back down? Or can the rock be raised but slowly, reaching certain plateaus that allow us to gain and retain a sense of accomplishment and genuine progress? (But always in danger of the plateau collapsing under the weight of a rock of progress.)
I’m perpetually torn between the realists who say we’re no different really than our ancient ancestors (save for our incredible powers—including destructive powers) and progressives (or evolutionists or developmentalists), who discern “progress” in the course of human history based upon changes in norms, institutions, beliefs, and actions. This raises us above our ancestors. My answer is the same as Zhou Enlai’s response to Kissinger’s question about the success of the French Revolution: “It’s too soon to tell.” But I do know that the human enterprise remains perilous and will undergo increasingly significant challenges within my expected lifetime and well beyond it.
Kaplan’s book is a reflection of a man who’s seen and considered at close hand our contemporary world and much of what came before it. The past, in its totality, creates the world in which we now live. History doesn’t teach “lessons;” it allows perspective. So with literature; literature doesn’t teach lessons, it fosters multiple perspectives and ways to comprehend and imagine our world that are unencumbered by the constraints of the known past that history requires. Kaplan uses both. We’d be wise to follow his lead.