The Return of Robert D. Kaplan
BarcelonaIt is surprising and shocking that an American journalist and researcher like Robert D. Kaplan, a democrat, humanist and well-versed in Europe – let us remember his Balkan ghosts– declare himself, I wouldn't say an adept, but certainly sympathetic to some of Donald Trump's approaches. First of all, Kaplan, following the recent publication of his book Waste Land (RBA Editorial, 2025), on the risk of global geopolitics becoming an immense Weimar Republic—and, therefore, a threat of self-destruction for democracy—he dares to disqualify Trump as a politician, treating him as an ignoramus who represents nothing beyond social media propaganda. But when media outlets of various persuasions ask Robert Kaplan whether he sees a tyrant in the US president, the analyst and reporter says that perhaps Trump doesn't respect the judiciary, but then seems to exonerate him: "Trump isn't serious enough to be a fascist. A fascist has devised a plan, and Trump doesn't have one." Kaplan ignores or obviates statements about Trump's fascism expressed by historian Robert Paxton and Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman.
Avoiding a forceful disqualification of Trump's authoritarian components gives Kaplan the opportunity to appear sympathetic, especially with Trump's positions toward Europe. Robert Kaplan is not surprised Donald Trump's tariff threats in the European Union, nor the demand for more spending from NATO members. And be careful with what Kaplan says: "The defense of Europe has been paid for by the United States for 80 years... European paradisiacal pacifism has been a luxury paid for by American taxpayers." Is Robert D. Kaplan telling us that, since 1945, Europe has lived at the expense of the US? A kind of parasitism? According to the journalist, the European welfare state has been able to be built because, in inter-Allied relations, Europe has played the extractive role of the beggar.
At no point does Kaplan mention how Europe's status as a "protectorate" has influenced the development of the US as a state and imperial power. And if there has been a "protectorate": Is it the kind of protection that an empire exercises over its favorite colonies? And since we're talking about a welfare state, I wonder: What has prevented the US from building a similar one? Was it perhaps the lack of the budget that would have been allocated to protecting Europe? I would say that the impediments have been structural, institutional, emotional, and ideological. And the ideas of John Maynard Keynes, the British economist who devised the remedies to rebuild the US economy after the collapse of 1929, were not subsequently applied to building a social state, as was done in postwar Europe.
The "new normal"
It seems that Kaplan has done an exhaustive accounting of the 80 years of US presence in Europe and established who the creditor is and who should pay. This question connects with Mark Rutte's saccharine smile when justifying the 5% of GDP demanded from NATO members, most of whom are European. Smile that becomes viscous when he talks about Trump as daddyRobert Kaplan claims that Trump has turned American politics upside down forever, and that Weimarization –which comes from Weimar—we must not lose sight of this—will not lead to catastrophe, but rather to "a new normal." This Kaplan, then, has nothing to do with Robert D. Kaplan, who rigorously narrated the dissection of the Balkan ghosts. And perhaps because he had always been rigorous, his short-sightedness toward Trump is now surprising. It's surprising, but perhaps it's just resignation.