Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power

Monsoon: The Indian Ocean and the Future of American Power is another in a long line of travel logs from Robert Kaplan. In this book Kaplan travels through Oman, Baluchistan (the coastal portion of Pakistan which stretches into Afghanistan and India as well), India, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Malaysia and Zanzibar. He gives a boots-on-the-ground view of the people, politics, geography and culture as it is right now. What concerns the people and their leaders, their attitude towards American economic hegemony (even as it wanes), their views on nationalism and religion in their own countries and the economic and environmental challenges their societies face. But where Kaplan shines is the historical perspectives he adds to each place he travels. He will go back as far as written records exist to understand how successive invasions, empires and wars have shaped the people, culture, language and boundaries of the nations as they now exist. This is the eleventh book by Kaplan I have read. Soldiers of God: With Islamic Warriors in Afghanistan and Pakistan inspired me to read Rudyard Kipling, The Ends of the Earth: From Togo to Turkmenistan, from Iran to Cambodia inspired me to read the excellent novel The Heart of the Matter by Graham Greene, Mediterranean Winter deceived me into believing I should tackle Edward Gibbon. This book has convinced me I should give the poetry of Rabindranath Tagore a try. Kaplan deftly interweaves his descriptions of the people and landscapes (over the course of twelve novels and numerous lectures and articles his prose has steadily improved) with quotes from other authors about the same areas. The author might be a novelist intimate with the setting, it might be a poet's florid description of their homeland, it might be the description of a former Imperialist administrator or soldier who knew the landscape only as a battlefield and the people only as adversaries, but all are meant to deepen the reader's understanding of the people and place being described whether the quote strengthens Kaplan's view or is added for juxtaposition. Thomas Friedman's world might well be flat and Jared Diamond's world might be on the brink of collapse (and they might be able to deliver a better lecture on economics and the science of global warming, respectively), but Kaplan's world is anchored by its geography and connected by a long, fluid line to the history that has shaped its cultural and geopolitical context. The conclusions he draws in this book? 1) The Indian Ocean Rim countries have been connected by predictable trade winds for millennia allowing them to intermingle goods, cultures, religions and snippets of language reducing isolationism and leading to a secular and cosmopolitan outlook by many 2) India and China will likely clash for dominance as the primary naval power in the Indian Ocean and on land in Burma and Nepal. The United States will reduce its role as the `Guardian of the World's Oceans' and focus on counterbalancing China in the Pacific. As the economies and populations of China and India continue to grow while that of the US stagnates or declines the US will only be able to project "soft power" in these regions owing to the fact that a direct confrontation with China could easily lead to them deciding to no longer finance the US national debt. 3) Indonesia might be the World's largest Islamic nation, but one that is unlikely to radicalize due to the moderating influence of the underlying Hindu and Buddhist cultures. 4) China will continue to project economic "soft power" throughout the South Pacific and Indian Oceans as it offers billions of development dollars to countries without concern for the governments' record on upholding human rights; US aid comes with a civics lesson, China's appetite for natural resources is too rapacious to be anything but pragmatic.

The initial premise of this book is that, during what we now call Antiquity, the Indian Ocean Basin was the largest and most dynamic center of trade and cultural commerce in the world. True, the Mediterranean was definitive for the Western culture that today rules economics and politics, but it wasn't comparable to the Indian Ocean in terms of scale and diversity. The Americas' Conquest gave way to 500 years of a central role for the Atlantic Ocean, but since a few years ago, and for the foreseeable future, China's and India's resurgence, plus the threatening presence of Iran and Pakistan, as well as the importance of the Arab countries, have caused the Indian Ocean to recover all its geostrategic importance. Kaplan begins by outlining the current situation: a large part of the world's fossil fuels are transported above its waters and cross some of the most vulnerable and dangerous enclaves in the world, that is the straits of Bab-el-Mandel, Ormuz, and Malacca. Moreover, piracy in Africa's East coast and in the myriad islands between Indonesia and the Philippines, trade in the region, China's crucial supply lines and, in general, the great ethnic, religious, and ideological diversity, with its concurrent social and political instability, make this ocean the focal point of the future.As in all his books, Kaplan makes wide and deep use of history and culture to reinforce his theses. His analysis begins in Oman, that strange and peaceful Sultanate, a model of benevolent and illustrated despotism, and throws the first stone: is necessarily Western democracy the right model for all peoples? Is it the best one? He, of course, doesn't offer definitive answers, but sows doubt. Then he goes on to recover the memory of Colonialism: the astonishing and sudden retreat of the Chinese, in the XV Century, just when they were about to make the Indian their Mare Nostrum, changed history forever, by leaving the way free for the Portuguese invasions that started the Western expansion (told in fascinating detail by Camoes in "Os Lusiadas"). Kaplan goes on then to tell about the complex events taking place in Pakistan and India, with the Chinese struggle to find supply lines as alternatives to Malacca. From Bangladesh and Kolkata to Sri Lanka, Burma and Indonesia, he examines every region's history and shows how it is related with current events.It is there, in the Indian Ocean and its littorals, to which the Monsoon gave their commercial and military calendar, where the new winds of change will determine the world's shape. It will be the theater of war (hopefully only commercial and strategic), the chessboard for the governments of billions of people in flux. Islam, the new middle classes, huge infrastructure projects, trade and energy routes, and ideological and practical clashes, will make the Indian Ocean again the matrix of the world.As always, a fascinating reflection, a mix of in-depth reporting, geostrategic, economic, and political analysis, and narrative, that raises the relevant questions and examines them without prejudices to try and find the future of the world.

Well written and engaging for a part of the world often neglected in the mainstream. Adds a deeper understanding of the importance of the area and why the focus of Western powers has shifted.

It is difficult to fully remember everything I read in 2010, though it does show that dinasours who live in a modern world without caring about their job, are dangerous to the future and humanity.

Written, I suspect, for a US audience ignorant of a lot of the basics of the countries around the Indian Ocean. There's quite a lot of travellogue and potted history that I skipped through. The author's comments on the geo-strategic issues facing India and the US are interesting, but there could have been more detail on this.

A lot of western propaganda regarding our democracy and future. Even in some moments it seemed biased and just go on to criticise World's most popular leader and our PM Modi. This book remind me of Vikram Sood " Nationalism in other countries has never been an accepted ideology in West "

Interesting. Informative. If you read this you must also want to explore yourself this very interesting space on the globe.