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Robert Kagan (; born September 26, 1958) is an American columnist. He is a neoconservative scholar. He is a critic of U.S. foreign policy and a leading advocate of liberal internationalism.
A co-founder of the neoconservative Project for the New American Century, About PNAC 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.
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.
Kagan is married to American diplomat Victoria Nuland, 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 Barack Obama administration.
In 1997, Kagan co-founded the now-defunct neoconservative think tank Project for the New American Century with William Kristol. 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." 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.
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.Robert Kagan, "I Am Not a Straussian", Weekly Standard 11: 20 (February 6, 2006)
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.
Since 2011, Kagan has also served on the 25-member State Department's Foreign Affairs Policy Board under Secretaries of State Hillary Clinton and John Kerry. Current Board Members" , State Department webpage. Retrieved March 29, 2015.
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.
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."
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,, pages 217–18 the confidence in US military power, and a distrust of international institutions. According to Kagan, his foreign-policy views are "deeply rooted in American history and widely shared by Americans".
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."" US: Hawks Looking for New and Bigger Enemies? ". IPS. May 5, 2006. 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.
In October 2018, Kagan said, "Unless are you willing to punish" Saudi Arabia for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, "then they own you."
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.
Kagan's essay "Not Fade Away: The Myth of American Decline" ( The New Republic, February 2, 2012) 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." 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.
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.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> 'Dangerous Nation' trilogy Book Two 'The Ghost at the Feast' Review by Thomas Meaney
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