The latest episode of The President’s Inbox is live! This week, Jim sat down with Robert Kaplan, acclaimed foreign affairs journalist and author of the new book Waste Land: A World in Permanent Crisis. They discussed Bob’s argument that humanity’s increasing interconnectedness has set the stage for greater conflict and chaos because crises spill across borders.   

Here are three highlights from their conversation:

1.) Globalization has led to increased global chaos. Technology has reduced the physical limitations of geographic distance. The movement of people, goods, and ideas through globalization means that all countries today are affected by forces beyond their control. The result, as Bob put it, is that “a crisis in one region now ripples around the globe instantly.” No country, not even a powerful one like the United States, can simply withdraw behind political or man-made walls to wait out the storm. Global crises will be the norm in the coming decades.  

2.) The United States, China, and Russia may not be able to prevent future global chaos and may even fuel them. Bob argues that great powers are all declining in different ways. The United States is falling prey to internal divisions. China is becoming ideologically inflexible. Russia is exhausting its military in Ukraine.  But “when great powers decline,” Bob notes, “the world doesn’t get better—it gets more chaotic.” He points to the decline of the British Empire and the United States’ embrace of isolationism in the 1930s as clear lessons on the dangers of a vacuum of power. Then, like today, international institutions that held up global order relied on the active and willing support of great powers. Without them, conflict erupted and spilled over across borders. If great powers are truly in decline, global order will be difficult to preserve.  

3.) Individual leadership matters in creating or preventing global crisis. Leaders do not control history, but they certainly help shape its course. Think of how JFK resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis, or how Deng Xiaoping pushed China onto the road to prosperity. So, the quality of leaders and the wisdom of their decisions matters. On that score, Bob worries that “the world’s most powerful nations are all led by volatile men.” He sees Donald Trump as unpredictable, Xi Jinping as rigidly ideological, and Vladimir Putin as aggressive and intractable. Reckless leadership makes it more likely that countries will miscalculate or try to make a show of strength, increasing the odds of a dangerous confrontation between the great powers.

If you’re looking to learn more about Bob’s argument, check out his Foreign Affairs article “The Downside of Imperial Collapse.”