The occasional tendency to take his points too far, however, does not deter from the greater body of work. The strongest points are made in the book's second essay, "Was Democracy Just a Moment," originally published in 1997, in which Kaplan delivers a scathing indictment of the US' crusade to export democracy to Haiti and other states where the lack of a substantial middle class, ethnic tension and low education levels condemn populations to an inevitable downward spiral into chaos. The author instead holds up so-called "hybrid regimes" with open markets and authoritarian governments, such as China under Deng Xiaoping and Jiang Zemin, as preferable models for countries where democracy, in his view, stands little chance of surviving. It was unreasonable, Kaplan says, "to put a gun to the head of the peoples of the developing world and say, in effect 'Behave as if you have experienced the Western Enlightenment to the degree that Poland and the Czech Republic did."
A decade into the post-Cold War era, we are rapidly learning that the new world order is shaping up much more in line with Kaplan's disturbing vision than, for example Francis Fukuyama's starry-eyed prediction of the end of history. The Coming Anarchy, by laying bare the "uncomfortable truths" of our times, solidifies Kaplan's position as one of the leading voices on international relations.
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