Robert David Kaplan is an American journalist, currently a National Correspondent for The Atlantic magazine and a writer for Stratfor. His writings have also been featured in The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Republic, The National Interest, Foreign Affairs and The Wall Street Journal, among other newspapers and publications, and his more controversial essays about the nature of US power have spurred debate in academia, the media, and the highest levels of government. Kaplan is the author of the influential article "The Coming Anarchy", published in The Atlantic Monthly in 1994. A frequent theme in his work is the reemergence of cultural and historical tensions temporarily suspended during the Cold War. From March 2008 to spring 2012, Kaplan was a Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security in Washington. He is currently working for Stratfor in Austin, TX. In 2009, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates appointed Kaplan to the Defense Policy Board, a federal advisory committee to the United States Department of Defense. In 2011, Foreign Policy magazine named Kaplan as one of the world's "top 100 global thinkers." 

June 23rd, 1952 in New York City (Age 72)