Summary Of The Ends Of The Earth By Robert Kaplan

The thought of reading about issues like skyrocketing populations, urban anarchy, environmental destruction, and slums worldwide in The Ends of The Earth never crossed my mind. But Robert Kaplan covers them all, from Ivory Coast, to Iran and China, arguing that these places are tiny windows into the future.
Although the book takes place over multiple continents and places thousands of miles apart, Kaplan maintains one point throughout: everything is connected. Colonial masters, political stability, geography, and suitable economy all are vastly important. All are extremely intertwined and to address one, you must address them all; otherwise all the aid given to a country would have a minimal effect. From this idea, he presents two sub points. He uses “Chicago” in Ivory Coast to show that places on the map are becoming less relevant than those that aren’t, and that borders are becoming increasingly irrelevant. Places like “Chicago” are more akin to a rat’s nest than to a city, with refugees from neighboring countries flooding in and increasingly outnumbering the native
Women are a bigger part of society and more educated in our sworn enemy, Iran, than in our allies Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. Both countries receive a substantial amount of aid from America; yet discriminate against many in their countries including other Muslims, Christians, and women far more than Iran.
His support comes from stories about his experiences. He looks at Africa, suggesting that the continent we know is not the few dozen countries on the map, but hundreds or thousands of different tribes and ethnic groups. That the arbitrary straight lines drawn by the colonizing powers are of little importance to those who live there whether it be in Ivory Coast, Liberia, Pakistan or Afghanistan. Massive population movements between the respective countries easily show this to be exceptionally true in countries with large third-world