Robert Kagan

Robert Kagan (Template:IPAc-en; born September 26, 1958) is an American columnist. He is a neoconservative<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> scholar. He is a critic of U.S. foreign policy and a leading advocate of liberal internationalism.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref name="Moyn 2023">Template:Cite magazine</ref>

A co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century,<ref name=neoconreader>Template:Cite book</ref><ref>Template:Usurped About PNAC</ref><ref name=pnac>Template:Cite web</ref> he is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Kagan has been a foreign policy adviser to U.S. Republican presidential candidates as well as Democratic administrations via the Foreign Affairs Policy Board.<ref name="statedept">Template:Cite web</ref>

He wrote a monthly column on world affairs for The Washington Post. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kagan left the Republican Party due to the party's nomination of Donald Trump and endorsed the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, for president.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Personal life and education

Kagan was born in Athens, Greece. His father, historian Donald Kagan, was the Sterling Professor of Classics and History Emeritus at Yale University and a specialist in the history of the Peloponnesian War, was of Lithuanian Jewish descent.<ref name="Moyn 2023" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> His brother Frederick is a military historian and author. Kagan has a B.A. in history (1980) from Yale, where in 1979 he was editor-in-chief of the Yale Political Monthly, a periodical he is credited with reviving.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> He later earned a Master of Public Policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a Ph.D. in American history from American University in Washington, D.C.

Kagan is married to American diplomat Victoria Nuland,<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> who previously served as deputy national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs in the Obama administration.

Career

In 1983, Kagan was foreign policy advisor to New York Republican Representative Jack Kemp. From 1984 to 1986, under the administration of Ronald Reagan, he was a speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz and a member of the United States Department of State Policy Planning Staff. From 1986 to 1988, he served in the State Department Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.<ref name="Three-Part Lecture Series at the Kluge Center Looks at Foreign Policy Through the Lens of Realpolitik">Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1997, Kagan co-founded the now-defunct neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century with William Kristol.<ref name=neoconreader /><ref name=pnac /><ref name=pnac2>Template:Cite web</ref> Through the work of the PNAC, from 1998, Kagan was an early and strong advocate of military action in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan as well as to "remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power."<ref>Template:Citation</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref> After the 1998 bombing of Iraq was announced Kagan said "bombing Iraq isn't enough" and called on Clinton to send ground troops to Iraq.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

From 1998 until August 2010, Kagan was a Senior Associate with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He was appointed senior fellow in the Center on United States and Europe at the Brookings Institution in September 2010.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Robert Kagan, "I Am Not a Straussian", Weekly Standard 11: 20 (February 6, 2006)</ref>

During the 2008 presidential campaign he served as foreign policy advisor to John McCain, the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States in the 2008 election.<ref name="BBC 2008-04-29">Template:Cite news</ref>

Since 2011, Kagan has also served on the 25-member State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board under Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> and John Kerry.<ref>Current Board Members" Template:Webarchive, State Department webpage. Retrieved March 29, 2015.</ref>

Andrew Bacevich referred to Kagan as "the chief neoconservative foreign-policy theorist" in reviewing Kagan's book The Return of History and the End of Dreams.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

A profile in The Guardian described Kagan as being "uncomfortable" with the 'neocon' title, and stated that "he insists he is 'liberal' and 'progressive' in a distinctly American tradition."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In 2008, Kagan wrote an article titled "Neocon Nation: Neoconservatism, c. 1776" for World Affairs, describing the main components of American neoconservatism as a belief in the rectitude of applying US moralism to the world stage, support for the US to act alone, the promotion of American-style liberty and democracy in other countries, the belief in American hegemony,<ref>Template:Cite book, pages 217–18</ref> the confidence in US military power, and a distrust of international institutions.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> According to Kagan, his foreign-policy views are "deeply rooted in American history and widely shared by Americans".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In 2006, Kagan wrote that Russia and China are the greatest "challenge liberalism faces today": "Nor do Russia and China welcome the liberal West's efforts to promote liberal politics around the globe, least of all in regions of strategic importance to them. ... Unfortunately, al-Qaeda may not be the only challenge liberalism faces today, or even the greatest."<ref>"US: Hawks Looking for New and Bigger Enemies? Template:Webarchive". IPS. May 5, 2006.</ref><ref>Template:Cite newsTemplate:Third-party-inline</ref> In a February 2017 essay for Foreign Policy, Kagan argued that U.S. post-Cold War retrenchment in global affairs has emboldened Russia and China, "the two great revisionist powers," and will eventually lead to instability and conflict.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In October 2018, Kagan said, "Unless are you willing to punish" Saudi Arabia for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, "then they own you."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Writings

Kagan was a columnist for The Washington Post.<ref name="Three-Part Lecture Series at the Kluge Center Looks at Foreign Policy Through the Lens of Realpolitik" /> He has also written for The New York Times, Foreign Affairs, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, World Affairs, and Policy Review.Template:External media In 2003, Kagan's book Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order, published on the eve of the US invasion of Iraq, created something of a sensation through its assertions that Europeans tended to favor peaceful resolutions of international disputes while the United States takes a more "Hobbesian" view in which certain kinds of disagreement can only be settled by force, or, as he put it: "Americans are from Mars and Europe is from Venus." A New York Times book reviewer, Ivo H. Daalder wrote:

When it comes to setting national priorities, determining threats, defining challenges, and fashioning and implementing foreign and defense policies, the United States and Europe have parted ways, writes Mr. Kagan, concluding, in words already famous in another context, 'Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus.'<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>{{#if:|

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In Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (2006) Kagan argued forcefully against what he considers the widespread misconception that the United States had been isolationist since its inception. Dangerous Nation was awarded the 2007 Lepgold Prize by Georgetown University.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Kagan's essay "Not Fade Away: The Myth of American Decline" (The New Republic, February 2, 2012)<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> was very positively received by President Obama. Josh Rogin reported in Foreign Policy that the president "spent more than 10 minutes talking about it...going over its arguments paragraph by paragraph."<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> The essay was excerpted from Kagan's book, The World America Made (2012).

John Bew and Kagan lectured on March 27, 2014, on Realpolitik and American exceptionalism at the Library of Congress.<ref name="Three-Part Lecture Series at the Kluge Center Looks at Foreign Policy Through the Lens of Realpolitik"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Criticism of Donald Trump

In February 2016, Kagan publicly left the Republican party (referring to himself as a "former Republican"), endorsing Democrat Hillary Clinton for president. He argued that the Republican Party's "wild obstructionism" and an insistence that "government, institutions, political traditions, party leadership and even parties themselves" were things meant to be "overthrown, evaded, ignored, insulted, laughed at" set the stage for the rise of Donald Trump. Kagan called Trump a "Frankenstein monster" and compared him to Napoleon.<ref name=Kagan25Feb>Template:Cite news</ref> In May 2016, Kagan wrote an opinion piece in The Washington Post regarding Trump's campaign entitled "This is how fascism comes to America".<ref name="washingtonpost">Template:Cite news</ref> Kagan has said that "all Republican foreign policy professionals are anti-Trump."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In September 2021, Kagan wrote a related opinion essay published in The Washington Post by the title "Our constitutional crisis is already here".<ref name="WP-20210923">Template:Cite news</ref> He continued his criticism of Trump in November 2023 with another essay in The Washington Post entitled "A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

In October of 2024, he resigned as editor-at-large from the Post due to its decision not to endorse a candidate in the 2024 United States presidential election between Trump and Kamala Harris.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Select bibliography

• A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990. (1996) Template:ISBN
• Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in America's Foreign and Defense Policy, with William Kristol (2000)
• Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. (2003) Template:ISBN
• Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century. (2006) Template:ISBN
• The Return of History and the End of Dreams.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> (2008) Template:ISBN
• The World America Made. (2012) Template:ISBN
• The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World. (2018) Template:ISBN
• The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941 (2023) Template:ISBN
• Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart - Again<ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref> (2024) Template:ISBN

See also

• Stop Trump movement

External links

• Template:C-SPAN
• "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy" by William Kristol and Robert Kagan
• Articles at Brookings
• Articles at Weekly Standard
• Articles at Carnegie Endowment
• Foreign Policy Folly by Willian Ruger
• Superpowers don't retire, but Robert Kagan should by Tom Switzer
• 'Dangerous Nation' trilogy Book One Review by Michael Lind
• 'Dangerous Nation' trilogy Book Two 'The Ghost at the Feast' Review by Thomas Meaney
• Robert Kagan Foresees Critical Geopolitical Juncture - Essay on Robert Kagan