Book summary Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

Book summary - Essay Example Mercator projections typically hanged on pentagon offices and classroom walls usually place the US in the middle where it is separated from Europe to its East by the big Atlantic Ocean and from Asia by to its West by the Pacific Ocean. Our preference for the perspective reflects a particular national egocentrism and has for a bigger part of the past two centuries made a recommendable deal of a strategic sense (Kaplan, 154). Through a big part of the 19th century, oceanic moats made possible the era of free security as a historian by the name C. Van Woodward called it. United States then projected much of its power primarily towards East Asia and Europe as it stepped on the World stage and grew stronger. In the 20th century, America would wage wars, cold and hot, aiming to protect vital regions against the dominion of hostile forces. Their earlier purposes, notwithstanding, the ancient maps are no longer meaningful having outlived their usefulness. After the cold war had come to an end, with much intensity and speed since 9/11, focus shifted towards South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and towards the western Pacific waters. Robert D. Kaplan in monsoon argues that fresh ways of viewing the World are needed. This is needed mostly in seeing those parts that are integral elements despite being split by old projections (Kaplan, 165). Kaplan’s goal was providing his fellow countrymen with a similar map centered the Greater Indian Ocean, the region that stretched eastward right from the Horn of Africa going past the Arabian Peninsula, Iranian plateau as well as the Indian subcontinent going all the way to Indonesian archipelago and even beyond. He was glad that the monsoon winds shifted direction regularly at six month intervals, making connecting of the far-flung shores by waters to be readily navigable even when there were primitive sailing vessels. The greater Indian Ocean was initially linked by Muslim merchants, later Portugal