Robert D. Kaplan

Robert D. Kaplan is a distinguished senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the leading contemporary writers on geopolitics, international affairs, and history. He is the author of numerous acclaimed works, including The Loom of Time, The Tragic Mind, The Revenge of Geography, Asia’s Cauldron, The Coming Anarchy, and Balkan Ghosts. Kaplan was the first American writer to warn in print of the possibility of a future war in the Balkans, and Balkan Ghosts was selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the “Best Books” of 1993.

For three decades, Kaplan reported on foreign affairs for The Atlantic. He has also served as a senior adviser at Eurasia Group, chief geopolitical analyst at Stratfor, visiting professor at the United States Naval Academy, senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and member of both the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board and the US Navy’s Executive Panel. Foreign Policy magazine named him one of the world’s “Top 100 Global Thinkers” on two occasions.

Kaplan has received numerous honors for his contributions to journalism, scholarship, and public affairs. In 2004, he received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Connecticut. In 2009, he was awarded the Benjamin Franklin Public Service Award by the Foreign Policy Research Institute in Philadelphia. In 2016, he received the International Prize from the Spanish Geographical Society in Madrid, presented by Queen Sofía of Spain. In 2024, The Loom of Time was runner-up for the Overseas Press Club’s award for best nonfiction work in international affairs. In 2025, he received the Dutch Independence Award in The Hague.

Kaplan graduated from the University of Connecticut in 1973, where he served as features editor of the Connecticut Daily Campus. Following graduation, he traveled extensively through Communist Eastern Europe and parts of the Near East. From 1974 to 1975, he worked as a reporter for the Rutland Daily Herald in Vermont before beginning a 16-year period living overseas. During that time, he served a year in the Israel Defense Forces and spent nine years living in Greece and Portugal, experiences that shaped his lifelong study of history, geography, and global affairs.