Robert Kagan (; born September 26, 1958) is an American

neoconservative Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and count ...

scholar, critic of

U.S. foreign policy The officially stated goals of the foreign policy of the United States of America, including all the bureaus and offices in the United States Department of State, as mentioned in the ''Foreign Policy Agenda'' of the Department of State, are ...

, and a leading advocate of liberal interventionism. A co-founder of the neoconservative

Project for the New American Century The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a neoconservativeBrookings Institution The Brookings Institution, often stylized as simply Brookings, is an American research group founded in 1916. Located on Think Tank Row in Washington, D.C., the organization conducts research and education in the social sciences, primarily in e ...

. 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 writes a monthly column on world affairs for ''The Washington Post''. During the 2016 United States presidential election, 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, Kagan left the Republican Party (United States), Republican Party due to the party's nomination of Donald Trump and endorsed the Democratic Party (United States), Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, for president.

Personal life and education

Kagan was born in Athens, Greece. His father, historian Donald Kagan, the Sterling Professor of Classics and History Emeritus at Yale University and a specialist in the history of the Peloponnesian War, was of Lithuanian Jews, Lithuanian Jewish descent. His brother, Frederick Kagan, Frederick, is a military historian and author. Kagan has a BA in history (1980) from Yale University, Yale, where in 1979 he had been Editor-in-Chief of the ''The Politic, Yale Political Monthly'', a periodical The_Politic#History, he is credited with reviving. He later earned a Master of Public Policy from Harvard University, Harvard's John F. Kennedy School of Government, Kennedy School of Government and a Doctor of Philosophy, PhD in American history from American University in Washington, D.C. Kagan is married to American diplomat Victoria Nuland, who served as deputy national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs in the Biden administration since April 2021, and previously as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs in the Barack Obama administration. Nuland held the rank of Career Ambassador, the highest diplomatic rank in the United States Foreign Service. She is noted for her criticism of Russian policies.

Ideas and career

In 1983, Kagan was foreign policy advisor to New York (state), New York Republican Party (United States), Republican United States House of Representatives, 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. In 1997, Kagan co-founded the now-defunct neoconservative think tank

in September 2010. 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 United States presidential election, 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. 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, 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." 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."

Writings

Kagan is a columnist for ''The Washington Post''. He has also written for ''The New York Times'', ''Foreign Affairs'', ''The Wall Street Journal'', ''Commentary (magazine), Commentary'', ''World Affairs'', and ''Policy Review''. Regarding Kagan's July 2000 opinion piece "Problem with Powell", Guy Roberts stated that "PNAC co-founder Robert Kagan sought to explain core differences" between the positions of the neoconservatives and those of Colin Powell. In that piece, Kagan wrote, Clarence Lusane has described Kagan as blaming Powell "for Saddam Hussein remaining in power" in the ''Washington Post'' piece. In a subsequent opinion piece "Spotlight on Colin Powell" (''The Philadelphia Inquirer'', February 12, 2002) Kagan praised Powell for "[a]rticulately defending the new Bush Doctrine" and declaring "his support for 'regime change' in Iraq". In 2003, Kagan's book ''Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order'', published on the eve of the Iraq War, 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 some 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: 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.

Criticism of Donald Trump

In February 2016, Kagan publicly left the Republican party (referring to himself as a "former Republican") and endorsed Democrat Hillary Clinton for president and 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 also compared him to Napoleon. In May 2016, Kagan wrote an opinion piece in ''The Washington Post'' regarding Trump's campaign entitled "This Is How Fascism Comes to America". Kagan has said that "all Republican foreign policy professionals are anti-Trump." In September 2021, Kagan wrote a related opinion essay published in ''The Washington Post'' by the title, "Our Constitutional Crisis Is Already Here".

Select bibliography

*
A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990.
' (1996) *
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) *
Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century.
' (2006) *
The Return of History and the End of Dreams.
' (2008) * ''The World America Made.'' (2012) *''The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World.'' (2018) * ''The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941'' (2023)

Notes

External links

*
"Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy"
by William Kristol and Robert Kagan
Articles at Brookings

Foreign Policy Folly
by Willian Ruger
Superpowers don't retire, but Robert Kagan should
by Tom Switzer {{DEFAULTSORT:Kagan, Robert 1958 births Living people 20th-century American male writers 20th-century American writers 21st-century American writers American people of Lithuanian-Jewish descent American political scientists American University alumni Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs Jewish American writers Harvard Kennedy School alumni The Washington Post people Yale College alumni 21st-century American Jews