The world before its Weimar

Robert Kaplan, American journalist and writer, a prestigious analyst of international politics, is becoming darker and darker. Or is it the world that is taking on more dramatic tones? "I realize how obsessively negative I am being," he acknowledges in his new book; but he becomes negative not out of melancholy or pessimism, but as a consequence of describing what in his opinion is happening. His message is that the world is like Germany in the Weimar Republic: in a progressive decline that is moving towards chaos; whether in the end a Hitler will emerge or whether, on the contrary, a certain institutionalism will be recomposed that will allow a recovery is open. Precisely because nothing is predetermined, Kaplan wants to warn about the risk we run: only by becoming aware of it can we avoid falling into the abyss.

The question of anarchy on the international scene in recent decades has been a long-standing theme in Kaplan's work; it has been a source of frequent concern for staff. More recently he addressed the topic in 'The Tragic Mentality' (it is better to put oneself in the worst to avoid it) and in 'The Loom of Time' (empires decay and at their end spread disorder). Now, in 'Tierra baldía' he looks a little closer to the precipice, as suggested by the degree scroll itself.

The growing authoritarianism of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping is an expression of the decline of Russia and China, which at the same time is accelerating. The United States is also in a clear downward trend, although Kaplan considers that in his country, although deteriorated, the institutions continue to function. It is possible that today the author was more vehement in his criticism of the United States, in light of the actions of Donald Trump, whose return to the White House had not been consummated at the time of writing the book and is therefore not taken into account in the arguments.

Kaplan's concern transcends the political game and addresses a broader framework : the challenges of civilization. We live in a globalized world in which any local crisis affects the whole, sometimes seriously, but there is no global government; not that this will be achieved -it certainly does not appear on the horizon-, but this absence highlights the chaos and the sense of fragility. The loneliness of the individual, increasingly isolated within himself by the technology that is supposed to connect us, easily leads to populist phenomena that in turn lead to authoritarianism.

Kaplan longs for order, without which, he argues, there can be no freedom. This sounds very politically incorrect. He believes that the monarchies that had come before the 20th century, though authoritarian, were less damaging than the totalitarian regimes that in some countries followed: in the first months of Lenin's regime alone, the secret police executed 15,000 people, almost twice as many as were executed by the Romanovs in the previous 100 years, Kaplan notes. "The reason the 20th and early 21st centuries have been so bloody is because the stabilizing force of monarchy in Central Europe, Russia, the Middle East and elsewhere has, in deep historical terms, disappeared," he says. And so he argues that had the Shah of Persia not been overthrown, the country could have evolved into a parliamentary monarchy that would have helped stabilize the Middle East. Logically, the author does not advocate autocracy, but in the event that democracies, even imperfect ones, are not possible, he values as the lesser evil a stable, secure and orderly political system that adheres to rules and is based on solid institutions.

Neither Deng Xiaoping's China nor the Russia that embraced change after the dissolution of the USSR were systems distinguished by their respect for human rights, but they maintained their norms and institutions; however, their evolution towards increasingly authoritarian empires under Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin anticipates a collapse that, in Kaplan's opinion, will feed chaos in the world, perhaps opening the door to even more pronounced totalitarianisms.

Kaplan rejects fatalism, but warns that information technology does not financial aid to reverse this drift. He recalls that in the United States mass democracy worked well in the era of printing and typing; however, the seriousness of its leaders has declined with the spread of social networks and digital media.

The purpose of the book is not to prescribe - to recommend what should be done - but to describe what is happening and what is on the horizon so that this awareness will make it possible to articulate a change of course.