121 Quotes by Robert D. Kaplan

Grand strategy is about marrying ends to means, about doing what you can, consistent with the nation's capabilities and resources.

Even in the heart of America, if a small city is not connected in some demonstrable fashion to other continents, it is dead.

Indeed, Chicago seems to have literally sucked the air out of Springfield: another case of American becoming a network of massive city-states more intimately interconnected with other continents than with their own hinterlands. It is in the merging with the rest of the world and global civilization that the forces of division come to the fore at home. Springfield: another small city that should inspire but doesn't.

So far we have seen the weakening and collapse of small and medium-sized states in Africa and the Middle East. But quasi-anarchy in larger states like Russia and China, on which the territorial organization of Eurasia hinges, could be next - tied to structural economic causes linked, in turn, to slow growth world-wide.

As Napoleon said, to know a nation's geography is to know its foreign policy

Realism is alien to the American tradition

Discovering the inapplicability of Judeo-Christian morality in certain circumstances involving affairs of state can be searing. The rare individuals who have recognized the necessity of violating such morality, acted accordingly, and taken responsibility for their actions are among the most necessary leaders for their countries, even as they have caused great unease ..- In Defense of Henry Kissinger, The Atlantic 2013 Mayhttp://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/p...

A lot of the changes are so gradual that they don't even qualify as news, or even as interesting: they're so mundane that we just take them for granted. But history shows that it's the mundane changes that are more important than the dramatic 'newsworthy' events.

We talk a lot about individual rights, but in fact Americans are very willing to give up our individual rights if it means our property values will be protected, and so on.