Sydney, Tuesday 08 October 2024: Trying to make sense of a world where great power rivalry, war and competition for resources are not ghosts of history but present realities?
From the Middle East to Ukraine to the South China Sea, world leaders are confronted by complex crises with no easy solutions in sight. Esteemed US journalist, author and foreign policy advisor Robert D. Kaplan thinks we must learn to think tragically if we are to avoid or mitigate tragedy.
Leaders should be neither optimists nor pessimists but realists, Kaplan will argue in his upcoming Ramsay Lecture, The Tragedy of 21st Century Geopolitics, based on his book The Tragic Mind.
A work reflecting hard-won wisdom, The Tragic Mind was written as Kaplan grappled with his promotion, as an influential journalist and respected analyst, of the second Iraq War, the US-led military intervention which toppled Iraqi tyrant Saddam Hussein but unleashed further bloodshed and anarchy. He was also deeply affected by former US President Bill Clinton hesitating to intervene in the Balkans after reading his 1993 book Balkan Ghosts.
Tragedy is not merely imperfection, Kaplan notes, nor is it the fact that progress is intermittent and reversible. Humans confront tragedy when they recognise that whatever they do, including nothing, some good will be lost. Disaster may be warded off but not entirely avoided, and leaders must weigh all options, choosing the least worst and taking account of consequences as well as intentions.
After a period of deep personal reflection and exploration of the ancient Greeks and classics, Kaplan determined a tragic mindset was necessary to guide foreign policy in particular.
In his talk later this month titled The Tragedy of 21st Century Geopolitics Mr Kaplan will explain that tragedy is not common misfortune or crime but the triumph of one good over another, and about the narrow choices we face however vast the landscape.
He will discuss Ukraine, Gaza and the South China Sea as illustrations of tragedy and employ the works of ancient Greek dramatists, Shakespeare, German philosophers, and the modern classics to explore the central subjects of international politics: order, disorder, rebellion, ambition, loyalty to family and state, violence, and the burdens of what is always limited power.
Robert D. Kaplan is the bestselling author of twenty-two books on foreign affairs and travel including The Loom of Time, The Tragic Mind, Adriatic, The Good American, The Revenge of Geography, Asia’s Cauldron, The Coming Anarchy,and Balkan Ghosts.
He holds the Robert Strausz-Hupé Chair in Geopolitics at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and for three decades reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. A member of the Pentagon’s Defence Policy Board and the U.S. Navy’s Executive Panel, Foreign Policy magazine has twice named him one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers.”
Join us Thursday October 31 at the Domain Theatre, Art Gallery of NSW from 5:30pm (registration) -8pm for this exciting exploration of how a ‘tragic mindset’ could guide decision making and leadership and how the classics can help inform current conflicts.
Limited seating available. To register to attend click here:
Media contact: Sarah Switzer 0407 816 098 / sarah.switzer@ramsaycentre.org