An Empire Wilderness: Travels Into America's Future

Robert Kaplan is a writer for whom I have much admiration. I have followed his work for a while and I eagerly read his dispatches in "The Atlantic". His writings about the third world- the Balkans, Asia and Africa -is stunningly good work. He brings a critical eye to these regions and reports little known or appreciated facts about these places. "An Empire Wilderness" is about Kaplan’s travels through North America’s faster-growing Western regions. Along the way Kaplan reports on what he sees as being the big cultural and economic forces at work in these places: immigration from Mexico and Asia, the collapse of America’s urban centers, the globalization of American business, the spread of the new type (post-urban) suburbs, etc. Along the way, Kaplan makes a number of startling statements and discoveries:Kaplan’s declaration about a bus trip that American buses were less safe than ones he had been on in the third world did startle me. The notion that America has some of the forces acting upon it the same way Kaplan saw those forces acting on the Third World societies he has visited probably terrifies most Americans and explains why Kaplan is on record as being frustrated at what he perceives to be an inaccurate assessment of "Empire Wilderness" by newspaper reviewers as a tract pessimistic about the future of the United States. Kaplan sees the future as bright . . . for most people. With the decline of the middle class, those who are in the upper-middle class bracket (with advanced degrees) are the ones who will prosper and succeed. Ethnicity will not entirely matter. Many- or maybe even most -East and South Asian immigrants will make far more money than do middle class or poor whites. And in any case, white racism is rapidly dying. (As Kaplan points out in Vancouver, white men *do* like Asian women.)The city is also dead. This is an observation of Kaplan’s that I can verify just by looking out my window. (I live in Pittsburgh: after seven at night this city’s downtown section is utterly deserted. Few people live here, and even fewer live here by choice. Middle-class and wealthier workers flee for the suburbs. Eventually the city’s taxes on business are going to drive businesses out to the suburbs.) Across the country, communities are springing up around the black hole that is the city. Thus, the spider-web of little autonomous communities outside of St. Louis that Kaplan saw is hardly unique. Everyone wants to preserve their independence from urban mismanagement. Nobody wants to commute anymore either, which is why the quasi-urban business districts in Orange County are so important as well. The growth of industrial parks will eviscerate cities. What is interesting is to see is how Kaplan grapples with where America is going. Kaplan is a classical realist who believes that ancient history is the clearest indication of where a society is going. Throughout his travels in the Near East Kaplan refers to ancient historians like Livy and Herodotus and

Robert Kaplan has always excelled in explaining little known parts of the world to Americans. Balkan Ghosts and The Coming Anarchy more than demonstrate his ability to see behind the scenes and point out the deeper threads that television and radio news (and news magazines) overlook. In fact, it might be fair to describe him as an All Things Considered or 60 Minutes for serious grownups. I have never finished one of his books without being a much better informed, and generally just better, reader for my trouble.In Empire Wilderness, Kaplan does all of this for the United States, although in the quieter portions of the nation from the Mississippi to the Pacific, with emphasis on the deep Great Plains and Arizona. In doing so, as ususal, the author picks up on some social and demographic trends that are significant and profound in how they will change the "white bread" America of the 20th Century into something a good deal different. Kaplan's work seldom cheers the reader up with prospects for the future, although it is always impeccably well written. On the other hand, it absolutely never fails to educate, usually on an underappreciated subject. This time, the subject isn't just close to home, it is home.

I am always surprised when I hear that someone finds this book to be pessimistic. I find the book to be a very realistic and accurate observation of where America is today and where we might be heading in the future. In fact, some parts of the book are extrodinarily optimistic, especially the discussions of how North Americans on the west coast -- from Vancouver to Los Angeles -- are building a successful multi-cultural society.The nation-state is a relatively new phenomenon and there isn't any reason to believe that it's the final model of human political organization. The fall of communism and the revolution in computer and communication techologies are exterting great pressures for new models to emerge in which people control politics, language, and culture at the local level, while coming together across borders to trade with each other. This trend is very prevelant in Europe.As Kaplan points out, this trend is present North America as well, for example with people in Vancouver (not to menton Quebec) feeling apart and seperate from the Canadian union while clamoring to expand trade through NATFA.There are big societal changes on the way. Kaplan clearly sees glimpses of them today. I find this book to be one of the most compelling books of our time. I highly recommend it.

After traveling and reporting in 70 countries, Kaplan comes back home and wonders, in light of his other trips, what will happen to the United States in the promising but difficult future ahead. This trip is a real challenge, for it is harder to talk about one's country than about other, foreign places. So Kaplan, a man of the East Coast, decides to go west, where the population is growing fastest, and social trends are newer and stranger. Starting and finishing among military people, what Kaplan finds in North America, from Mexico City to Vancouver, is the same trend he has found everywhere: the silent transformation of the Nation-state into something different. He finds the post-urban society, in both ends of the economic and social spectrum: the suburban secluded communities, light-years away from the poor, living in fortresses protected from the immediate outside and connected to the remote through computer terminals. And the slums, the Indian reservations, the misery belts, ridden with gangs and night shootings and strange people alienated from the modern comfort. Kaplan finds that the federal government is increasingly irrelevant for the determination of where the nation is going to. The City-state is more likely than the nation, in the future. The world transforming itself every day, under our very eyes.

Empire Wilderness, though awkwardly named, is a very readable, very interesting look at how cities and communities are developing in the US. I read Kaplan's previous book, Ends of the Earth and my one criticism of Empire Wilderness holds true for both books. Kaplan's impressions are occasionally surface deep since he breezes in and out of towns in a matter of days or a couple of weeks. I have heard Kaplan argue that he feels that first impressions can be quite telling and that is true. However, the complexities of a community are sometimes deeper than the surface lets on. That having been said, Kaplan's prose is extremely interesting and readable. I think the scenarios he paints are quite plausible and the implications for individuals and policy makers are profound. I hghly recommend this book for anyone who is interested/concerned about what their communities will look like in the next decade.