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Robert D. Kaplan to Lecture at W&L on What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts

Robert D. Kaplan, chief geopolitical analyst for Stratfor, a private global intelligence firm, will lecture at Washington and Lee University on Thursday, Jan. 16, at 7 p.m. in Lee Chapel.

The title of his talk, which is free and open to the public and will be streamed live online, is “The Revenge of Geography: What the Map Tells Us About Coming Conflicts and the Battle Against Fate.” This is also the title of his latest book, published by Random House in 2012.

Kaplan has been a foreign correspondent for The Atlantic for over 25 years. In both 2011 and 2012, Foreign Policy magazine named him among the world’s 100 Top Global Thinkers.

Kaplan is the author of 14 books on foreign affairs and travel which have been translated into many languages. In addition to the book above, they include “Eastward to Tartary: Travels in the Balkans, the Middle East, and the Caucasus,” (2000), “The Coming Anarchy: Shattering the Dreams of the Post Cold War” (2000), “An Empire Wilderness: Travels Into America’s Future” (1998) and “The Ends of the Earth” (1995).

The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman calls Kaplan among the four “most widely read” authors defining the post-Cold War. In the 1980s Kalan was the first American writer to warn about a future war in the Balkans. “Balkan Ghosts” was chosen by The New York Times Book Review as one of the best books of 1993.

Kaplan’s essays have appeared on the editorial pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and the Los Angeles Times, as well as in all the major foreign affairs journals. He has been a consultant to the U.S. Army’s Special Forces Regiment, the U.S. Air Force and the U.S. Marines.

He has lectured at military war colleges, the FBI, the National Security Agency, the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the CIA, major universities and global business forums.  He has also reported from over 100 countries.

Mark Rush, Stanley D. and Nikki Waxberg Professor of Politics and Law, talks about Kaplan’s global perspective:

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