Three years ago Russia began a cruel war against Ukraine, expelling more than six million people who fled the conflict and killing another hundreds of thousands. On the other hand, Israel Masacra Gaza, skipping the signed truces and bombing indiscriminately, … To avenge the atrocious murders and kidnappings that Hamas perpetrated on October 7, 2023.
A high -level arms race is underway in the Indo -Pacific region, focused on Taiwan and the South China Sea; They will accelerate the passage to the nuclear pump; The United States has taken arms against everything and against all after Donald Trump’s return and, meanwhile, the European Union is trying to find its place.
Before this panorama … Can you be optimistic? For Robert D. Kaplan (New York, 1952) Traveler, journalist, writer (in that order, according to himself), a kind of eminence for geopolitical analysts, the diagnosis is nothing encouraging. “Right now there is a world system where there is a permanent crisis that affects everyone,” he explains from his New York office in an interview with ABC.
Kaplan presents his new book: ‘Tierra Baldía. A world in permanent crisis’ (RBA, 2025). He uses the same title as Ts Eliot in his immense poem ‘Tierra Baldía’, where the British-American poet talks about the collapse of civilization after the First World War. Kaplan makes with this title an analogy of the time in which we live, where he sees great similarities with Eliot’s poem, in which the political and institutional foundations of the order are eroding both inside and between the states.
-Are we on the edge of the abyss?
-No, society is not one step away from falling into the abyss. Society really does not fall anywhere, but gradually improves or decays. They are very gradual processes and what I speak in this book is the gradual decline. The world is so interconnected now through so many technological means that there is a world system where there is a permanent crisis that affects everyone.
-The main argument is that we live the equivalent of a Second Weimar Republic, such as the one that governed Germany between 1918 and 1933, just before the arrival of Adolf Hitler, where the world authority staggers.
-That’s how it is. Analogies can be useless, since nothing is exactly the same. However, they are a good way to communicate and explain. The Weimar Republic was a weak and wobstly political body that ruled Germany for 15 years, from the ashes of World War I until the rise of Adolf Hitler. Weimar, where the crisis of a state became a crisis for all, obviously led Hitler. But Hitler was not inevitable. Weimar could have succeeded.
-If a new Hitler is not waiting for us, what should we expect?
-Hitler was like a kind of shot within one million. And I see the trajectory of our world as something that does not lead us directly to Hitler, but perhaps it takes us to a broader war. What really worries me is that there is a bigger military conflict in the west Pacific between the United States and China, or between the US, China and Japan. Look, the war in Gaza or the war in Ukraine have not overwhelmingly affected financial markets. Obviously they have harmed, but in a conflict between the US and China we would see how the greatest world economies are involved in a high military conflict. I think that would be devastating for world financial markets and for our world in general as a consequence. We would end in a new era. The first half of the 21st century can be as scary and revealing as the first half of the twentieth century was.
-In his essay he argues the decline of these great powers. Also the decline of Russia.
-EE.UU, China and Russia, the three great powers, the three great empires, are weakened and have much to do with it the use of social networks and these new technologies. The era of the printing press and typing machines was a golden era for journalism and also for leaders. Journalism was exercised professionally, data crossed and that made everyone more serious, especially politicians, since they depended on the means to gain knowledge and form opinions, but the digital age is different.
Social networks have to do with passions and passion is the enemy of the analysis and the enemy of maturity. It is impossible to imagine someone like Donald Trump outside the digital era and video.
If you make a list of all American presidents during the Cold War, from Harry Truman to George W. Bush, and compare them with the presidents of the cold post-war, from Clinton to Trump, you will see a decline in the quality of the leadership and I believe that that decline is partly due to the lack of seriousness in the media.
-And Europe, what role does it play? Because Donald Trump’s return to the US presidency seems to be again offended, he has failed to react to war in Ukraine …
-Europa has been living in an era of dependency for decades. A dependency towards the US when providing security, and dependence in turn leads to a degree of immaturity. The same as we talked before with the leaders of my country (USA), I see it in Europe. Most European leaders of the last decades have not been serious people. I do not consider Angela Merkel a serious person, or Olaf Scholz, but rather reacted to what the media wanted at that time and they did. And the results have not been good. If you compare them with some of the leaders of the Cold War, such as Charles de Gaulle, Helmut Schmidt or Willy Brandt, once again there has been a great decline in the quality of leadership.
-In the book it shows some optimism for a country that continues to scare, especially for its nuclear capacity: the Islamic Republic of Iran.
-It will be one of the countries on which I have some optimism. I think the Iranian regime has very little support within. It has destroyed its own middle class, its currency, its energy sources do not work. He has very little support inside and outside and I think it is possible that in the coming years we will see a new Iran. An Iran who can have good relations with the West and even with Israel.
To end the interview, we propose to Kaplan a game: to describe in a few words a series of current world leaders, such as Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Vladimir Putin, Volodimir Zelenski and Xi Jinping. Only one is well stopped. Despite Kaplan’s pessimism, his conclusion seems the only one possible: “We have no choice but to continue fighting, since the result is not given to us in advance.”
US President
Donald Trump
«Trump knows how to read, but only social networks. He doesn’t know anything about history, nor does he have culture. It has no appreciation for the tradition of the Atlantic Alliance »
Businessman
Elon Musk
«It is a brilliant mind, but as an engineer. I think he is a very limited individual within his brilliance in engineering. But socially it is underdeveloped »
President of Russia
Vladimir Putin
“He likes to assume risks and is much more dangerous than Stalin, he is not a communist leader as Brézhnev or Gorbachev were, and that’s why I think it’s more dangerous”
President of Ukraine
Volodimir Zelenski
«Who was going to say that a comedian lived up to the challenge? He has made mistakes, but I am very impressed with him »
President of China
Xi Jinping
«Xi Jinping is a Leninist. Believe in totalitarian control. The relationship between the United States and China has deteriorated much under its leadership and that is something dangerous »
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