Robert D. Kaplan Quotes

Bosnia is a complicated country: three religions, three nations and those 'others'. Nationalism is strong in all three nations; in two of them there are a lot of racism, chauvinism, separatism; and now we are supposed to make a state out of that.

I cannot accept a divide between Malagasy people and a civil war.

I expected to find a contest between a government and a people: I found two nations (French and English) warring in the bosom of a single state: I found a struggle, not of principles, but of races.

Every [political] contest is one of French and English in the outset, or becomes so ere it has run its course.

… the idea of nationality, has caused more damage to the economic system of Europe, however extraordinary that may seem, than the idea of plunder… The stumbling block is the difficulty of separating racial groups in Europe. Apart from the large countries where war, often prolonged for centuries, has cemented the nations, the races which fought for the possession of the continent--Latin, Teuton and Slav--have remained in conflict. They are still encamped upon the ground, always in a state of hostility, yet subject to interpenetration.

I started moving towards Serbia when I felt my country, Yugoslavia, was being taken away from me. My feeling of nationality was not as strong as those around me who were attaching themselves to these absurd new entities.

Central Europe is full of little countries standing shoulder to shoulder with no window to the sea. They are like the passengers in a rush-hour train which has stopped between stations for three centuries. And they all hate one another. And they're all crushed together waving their national flags, clanking their national chains, jabbering their national language.

We Germans fear God, but nothing else in the world.

Thus, Protestantism will always stand up for the advancement of all Germans as such, as long as matters of inner purity or national deepening as well as German freedom are involved, since all these things have a firm foundation in its own being; but it combats with the greatest hostility any attempt to rescue the nation from the embrace of its most mortal enemy, since its attitude toward the Jews just happens to be more or less dogmatically established.

We can feel in Poland a kind of phantom pain for lost multi-ethnic territories.

The State of Israel is a state that was formed before the people were even in it. You have to understand: In India, in Burma, in Pakistan - all of the people were already there. Their problem was for the English to leave so they could be independent.

Many Israelis are educating their kids in a very nationalist, powerful identity, since kindergarten - and the Arabs as well.

For a lot of Croats, if you're a Serb, they don't want to associate with you. It's just stupid.

There's a distinct unease about Americans when they are outside the United States. I can't say quite what it is, but they are easily spooked or driven to cynicism - the country is diverse but, paradoxically, extremely insular.

There was a lot of prejudice towards Russians in Latvia. When I went to school, often Latvians didn't like me, and Russians and Latvians didn't like Americans, so that was a whole other prejudice.

Germany is a nation which must always win.

There is a wind of nationalism and freedom blowing round the world, and blowing as strongly in Asia as elsewhere.

All over the world, the nativist perspective is being privileged over those who are more recent arrivals.

...despite all this, it is still hard to admit that there is no one more English than the Indian, no one more Indian than the English. There are still young white men who are angry about that; who will roll out at closing time into the poorly lit streets with a kitchen knife wrapped in a tight fist. But it makes an immigrant laugh to hear the fears of the nationalist, scared of infection, penetration, miscegenation, when this is small fry, peanuts, compared to what the immigrant fears - dissolution, disappearance.

The Welsh... I mean, what are they for?

That was the fear that there would be no identity anymore, for Canada. It was foolish, because there are so many examples of separatism, and nothing has disintegrated, unless they went to war.

Nationalism as we know it, is the result of a form of state-sponsored branding.

Nationalism will keep its venom until we succeed in creating an image of the nations of the whole world as so many provinces.

The emphasis of that statement about my temptation to switch to the separatist side in Quebec was that someone who obviously loves Canada with everything he has, has been right here and fights for Canada all the time - for him to say something like that, something must be very wrong with Canada.

The most interesting acquaintanceship I have struck up here is that of Colonel Lapinski. He is without doubt the cleverest Pole - besides being an homme d'action [man of action] - that I have ever met. His sympathies are all on the German side, though in manners and speech he is also a Frenchman. He cares nothing for the struggle of nationalities and only knows the racial struggle. He hates all Orientals, among whom he numbers Russians Turks, Greeks, Armenians, etc., with equal impartiality.... His aim now is to raise a German legion in London.