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An Empire Wilderness: Travels into America's Future

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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.

HISTORY IS DESTINY. Believe that and there's still no guarantee you'll read An Empire Wilderness: Travels Into America's Future without frustration. This is no traditional history book.

Here, geography determines history, so that life on the North American continent--from the dense jungles of Qunitana Roo at Mexico's big-toe to Canada's frozen bellybutton in Hudson Bay, and Kansas cornfields somewhere in between--is the logical result of landscape necessity. Military action is an apparent exception.

The Civil War changed everything. It was the pivot point to our present. And ever since, American military might has made the world safe for democracy, although it all may amount to a brief shining moment before democracy, too, fades in the inexorable sweep of historical tides. This could easily happen since the social contract which held us together as a nation, drawn from our viscerally felt relations to the "vast wilderness," no longer holds as national glue, dried out with the nation's expansion across the continent and the effective shrinking of the planet. But, our military should keep us from falling over the edge into the terrors of the Millennium.

These are just a few of the assumptions you've got to buy not to get angst from reading An Empire Wilderness, author Robert D. Kaplan's latest, wide-ranging, difficult and uneven work. Kaplan's project since the late 1980s is to foresee the world we'll find in the 21st century. To do this, he's chosen to write travelogues, and he has journeyed to the front lines at the most dangerous and wretched places of the earth. Kaplan has more than once risked his life to get the story. In the Balkans with warring Croats and Serbs, with the Kurds on the Iran-Iraq border, in Africa, and the Far East.

In 1997, in his To The Ends of The Earth, Kaplan told an "apocalyptic" tale of how most of the world beyond the reach of electricity, good plumbing, and decent food is flying apart. Poverty, disease and rapacious plundering of resources for the primary benefit of the First World will never allow the Third World to catch up, propelling pent forces in the "underground" of the planet to explode, rupturing the comfortable bubble covering Western civilization. Now, Kaplan turns his sights on home.

The American tour Kaplan takes is to no one place--he would journey to the horizons of an America being reborn at the harrowing precipice of the 21st century. Edging the borders of this American Century, Kaplan weaves together a tapestry of pieces bubbling over with keen observation and insight, the best of which have already appeared over the last five years in the Atlantic Monthly. What emerges is a patchwork designed to show the devolution of the United States towards a loosely-held confederation of city-states, an "empire" Kaplan foresees entering a "silver age" of civilized prosperity.

Kaplan follows the trails of soldier-explorers and pioneers who were the first to encounter the wilderness of the North American West. And like them, he finds what may seem strange and new, presenting a picture of North America that those living the experience are not likely to see.

What Kaplan finds at the edge of tomorrow includes: 1) A decentralized empire built of steel, glass, marble and polymers designed from no geographic or cultural origins, inhabited by an international mosaic of people from distant cultures, all living in city-states with a vast no-man's land between. 2) World-wide corporations replacing government services in all but regional defense and dispute resolution.

Kaplan starts and ends his journey to the New America with homages to the military strategic training center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, near where the Spanish conquistadors led by Coronado ended their entry into the American heartland.
Kaplan treks mountain roads, talks with just plain and mightier folk, and ruminates across the continent's Westside--from Canada's Rockies to the Pacific Coast, from Mississippi riverboat casinos to Orange County high-end malls, and from Mexico City north through Sinaloa and Sonora across the border to Tucson. He bypasses Phoenix, writing it off as an oasis of "lawns, shopping centers and office parks." Much of the book is written in a mournful tone, just above a dirge.
"What we call 'the border' has always been a wild, unstable swath of desert, hundreds of miles wide, where culture was always as thin as the vegetation," says Kaplan early on in his discussion of the differences between Mexico and the Arizona borderlands.
Kaplan's view of borderland history minimizes the fact that the Spanish did not come with soldiers alone. Like the good exemplar of Roman tradition it was, Spain presented a fist and an open hand. With the fist came the Conquistadores, who sought gold. With the open hand came the padres, who sought to cultivate souls. Kaplan chooses to see the borderland in terms of the Conquistadors alone, and ignores the padres who stayed. And this was slow, patient work, the cultivating of souls. The only padre Kaplan mentions is Fray Junipero Serra: Kaplan stays at a hotel named for him in Tepic, Nayarit, Mexico.
Many of those who have seen the borderlands desert for the first time see it as empty of life. Kaplan is no different. "A cindery wasteland stubbled by thorns," he calls the Sonoran Desert. He shows no signs of having read the commentators on desert life and histories such as Officer, Nabhan, Fontana, Yetman or Sheridan. But he does quote from names familiar to local politicos--Bowden, Franzi, Smith, McKasson and a mysterious unnamed Tucson city appartchik, who for all their fervor and crisp soundbites, provide here more heat than light.

Kaplan emerges from his short Arizona desert stay with the unremarkable insight that what goes on in D.C. doesn't really make much sense in the real world.

Nevertheless, the best of what Kaplan does in these pages is the result of keen observation and powerful, provocative insight. But don't expect depth.

This is a top-level view, for all Kaplan's riding in Mexican buses. It's a set of first impressions, stoked by a partial historical eye. His writing is not really for those living in the desert or any of the urban "pods."

This book is primarily directed at the members of the elite who live by cellular phone, and whose best address is an electronic mailbox. It will undoubtedly make a very compelling PBS series.
original: 09-14-1998, Tucson Weekly)

While Kaplan keeps to his usual winning combination of travel writing and social science in "Empire Wilderness," he cannot avoid falling prey to the very same flaws that marred his last book, "Ends of the Earth"; namely, a tendency to over-emphasize pervailing social trends until he begins to sound like some kind of prophet of doom, forecasting a world out of control. When writing about the Third World, this is somewhat more forgiveable approach, but when applied to the United States, the reader begins to wonder how Kaplan can, in good conscience, hype and sensationalize some of the trends on which he chooses to focus. In his writings for the "Atlantic Monthly," Kaplan has admitted to a Hobbesian, conservative view of human nature, and this, at times, makes him sound like a rabid elitist frightened by the dark, deprived "mob" seething beneath the shining surface of America. This is a somewhat unfair characterization, however, as most of Kaplan's social observations demonstrate a stunning ability to forecast history and cut to the heart of the most salient political and economic trends facing our nation. The extra hype and generalization are probably just to sell more books, so we can let Kaplan off the hook on this one. Just be prepared to read this book skeptically, and you are in for one hell of a journey.

Robert D. Kaplan presents an engaging view of the Americanwest and the closely related areas of British Columbia and Mexico. Hisjourneys take him to such disparate places as St. Louis, Vicksburg, Kansas City, Vancouver, Mexico City, Los Angeles and the Oklahoma panhandle. In some ways the book provides further insights into trends previously chronicled in "Edge Cities," "The Nine Nations of North America" and "Ecotopia."

* Kaplan provides one of the most succinct descriptions of the demise of St. Louis --- a city that has lost 60 percent of its population, which he concludes "no longer exists."

* He provides a sympathetic description of the Oklahoma panhandle, constituting what may be the most comprehensive coverage of this geographical corner virtually unknown to most of the nation.

* The book spends considerable time in discussing Arizona, its major cities and its native American preserves.

Kaplan finds that people in the emerging American communities, especially in the technology oriented edge cities, are likely to have much more in common with people they have only met through telecommunications than with their geographical neighbors, or people who live just a few miles away. In this regard, he correctly recognizes that the very meaning of community is undergoing a radical change.

The only significant problem is an uncritical acceptance of the Portland's purported land use planning success. Kaplan indicates that Portland has avoided the "unlimited growth" that has plagued other US cities. He further indicates that the cities of the Northwest (Vancouver and presumably Portland and Seattle) are devoid of sprawl. In fact, Portland sprawls at lower densities than Los Angeles and the central city of Portland is barely one-half to one-third as dense as the Orange County suburbs of Anaheim, Buena Park and Santa Ana. This mistake is often made by people who visit Portland's tiny but engaging core, while missing the other 99 percent of the urbanized area, which resembles Phoenix, though with more vegetation and more sprawl (less density).

With the noted exception the Kaplan book is important, useful and recommended as a thoughtful and apparently accurate assessment of US social trends as the 21st century approaches.

Wendell Cox
The Public Purpose

The poverty of American inland states described in this book shows that, contrary to many Asian people's belief, America is also one of victims of globalization. Benefactors of globalization tend to live in suburban pods. And the pod will be, according to Robert Kaplan, protected by private security guards. About those who are excluded, Kaplan's solution is simple: Forget the poor (though he borrowed other person's mouth). It's too cruel, isn't it?

The issues of border dissolution between U.S. and Mexico and between Pacific North West and British Columbia are empathized very much in this book. These issues are closely related with immigration and decline of nation state. The phenomena of border dissolution is not peculiar to North American continent. For example, the border line between North Korea and China is also being dissolved because of N.K.'s famine. (As a South Korean man, I'm very much concerned about future N.K.'s absorption into either China or South Korea. No small, rich country wants to share border line with a big, strong but poor country. South Korean government is helping North Korea despite political grievances to prevent such an outcome, or so I guess.) Anyway, the strict control of immigration is not universal through human history. I guess it was strengthened because of Cold War.

Reading this book after being away from the United States for 75% of the past three and a half years I looked at it as a tabula rasa for the future of America. I didn't the book from front to back. In fact I started with the end because initially I was only interested in his travels with the Northwest. What he finds there is one version of how America will embrace the future. Then I read his accounts of East St Louis and Omaha, Vicksburg, MS, and some of his chapters about Orange County.
What Kaplan finds and relates is the new sectionalism developing in America even as distances become shorter with high speed interstates and chain stores which are identical throughout the country. He predicts the formation of city-states and I'm apt to agree with him.

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.

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 Kaplans travels through North Americas 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 Americas 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:

Kaplans 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 Kaplans that I can verify just by looking out my window. (I live in Pittsburgh: after seven at night this citys 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 citys 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 to classical works of history like Gibbons Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to chart the future path of the nation he is in. The problem with America is that our history is without a paradigm to fall back on. Kaplan refers to Gibbon a few times in the text, but mostly I get the sense that he ignores the past and believes that history, here in the Americas, is still being written. Kaplan envisions North America as a massive region of free trade, movement of peoples, immigration, wealth and prosperity with regional city-states that form the hub of American enterprise. To that end, Kaplan envisions America in the next century as being a loose Confederation than a closely controlling Federal government. The old rules dont apply because America is a young country. Second and third generation immigrants from Asia and Latin America hardly consider themselves as citizens of China or Mexico as their parents might. They are Americans.

One of the things that I love about Kaplans books is the wealth of little-known information that he gives the reader. I found the chapter on the tensions between the Hopi and Navajo in the Balkanization of Arizona to be fascinating. Kaplans keen eye picked it out, remembering tensions between the Serbians and Croatians in Yugoslavia and comparing them to the Hopi and Navajo. Is he correct? Maybe. Maybe the Hopi and Navajo have more in common than Kaplan thinks, but at the same time, maybe the people who look at the Hopi and the Navajo and see Indians without seeing the distinctions between their cultures are the ones who are wrong.

In general I found Kaplans cultural observations rang true. America is getting more multi-cultural and our national identity is becoming internationalized. E.g.: My parents in suburban Philadelphia recently got an upscale grocery store that heavily features ethnic foods from France, Germany, Thailand, etc. That sort of thing didnt exist a decade ago, or even five years ago, but it is the wave of the future because Americans are hardly nationalist in their culture. Americans want to embrace the outside world and make it a part of our own. Inter-marriage of the sort Kaplan observed in Vancouver between whites and Asians is progressively more and more a part of Americas cultural mosaic and will ultimately make us a stronger and more cohesive nation. Americas paranoia about immigration from Mexico in the 1990s and our post-9/11 fear of Middle Eastern immigrants is both silly and ultimately destructive to America. Immigrations built America into the colossus it is, and immigration will continue to maintain America as a powerhouse.

Out of all of Kaplans books, I found this one to be the most different and the most interesting. Kaplans keen eye sees a new and different America. I highly recommend.

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.

Kaplan travels throughout the western US (except California, Nevada, or Utah), and also travels to Mexico and British Columbia, to seek the real meaning of the US and to divine its future. A lot of attention is given to Arizona, where the author emphasizes the economic/racial divide in cities like Tucson and Phoenix, as well as the numbing hopelessness of Indian reservations. Kaplan argues that the notion of nationhood is crumbling due to globalization coupled with economic and racial polarization. Hence, the Tucson underclass has more allegiance to the working class of Mexico than to the abstract concept of the United States, and similarly, Tucson's educated élite has more allegiance to their counterparts in Canada or Europe than to the United States as a nation. In short, Kaplan argues that patriotism is an obsolete concept.

As an essay on the meaning of the US, the author seems to overreach in making his point; it would have worked better as a magazine essay. As a travelogue, the book relies too heavily on interviews with community leaders who give the usual predictable platitudes. The best part of the book is the chapter where Kaplan forsakes his car to travel by bus, which turns out to be a rolling bin of the homeless and mentally ill. The weakest part deals with Vancouver, where the author appears to have been sucked in by local boosters who are convinced that their province will join Oregon and Washington to form a new political entity. Kaplan gushes about Vancouver but is blind to its horrible transportation problems, its poverty, and its racial friction. The author's earlier book, 'The Ends of the Earth,' was a superb work of travel-journalism, but 'An Empire Wilderness' is not its equal.