Robert D Kaplan

Writer, journalist and former Pentagon advisor Robert D Kaplan explains how we are entering a new era of global cataclysm with a deadly mix of war, climate change, great power rivalry, rapid technological advancement and the end of empire.

Kaplan’s trademark sweep of history, literature, politics and philosophy draws parallels between today’s challenges and those of Germany’s interwar Weimar Republic.  He warns that every national disaster could spread across the world because of the dilemmas facing this century, including pandemics, recessions, urbanisation, mass migration, destabilisation of large democracies and great power conflicts. He asks whether stability and historic liberalism rather than mass democracy could save world populations from anarchy.

‘A compelling, stark, critically important book that conveys the urgency of the present moment and the unprecedented challenges that face mankind’ General David Petraeus, former Director of the CIA

Kaplan is the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics and a former a Pentagon and US Navy advisor. His previous books include The Loom of Time, The Tragic Mind and The Coming Anarchy.

Previous American Lectures were given by Isabel Wilkerson (2023).

Part of the festival’s programme of American literature and culture.