The Return of Marco Polo's World

A bracing assessment of U.S. foreign policy over the past two decades, anchored by a major new essay commissioned by the Pentagon about changing power dynamics among China, Eurasia, and America—from the bestselling author of The Revenge of Geography. Drawing on decades of firsthand experience as a foreign correspondent and military embed for The Atlantic, and deep reading that ranges from the lessons of Thucydides and Sun Tzu to contemporary outcomes in the Middle East, Robert D. Kaplan makes a powerful case for what timeless principles and factors should shape America's role in the world: a respect for the limits of Western-style democracy; a delineation between American interests versus American values; an awareness of the psychological toll of warfare; a projection of military power via a strong navy; and much more. In a series of vivid and clear-eyed assessments, renowned foreign policy analyst Kaplan describes an increasingly unstable...