Robert Kagan

He has been a foreign policy adviser to U.S. Republican presidential candidates as well as Democratic administrations via the Foreign Affairs Policy Board. Kagan wrote a monthly column on world affairs for The Washington Post. During the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign, he left the Republican Party due to the party's nomination of Donald Trump and endorsed the Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton, for president.

• Name — Robert Kagan • Born — 26 September 1958 • Birthplace — Athens, Greece • Occupation — Columnist, political scientist • Political Party — Republican (before 2016) Independent (since 2016) • Spouse — Victoria Nuland • Education — Yale University (BA) Harvard University (MPP) American University (PhD) • Relatives — Donald Kagan (father) Frederick Kagan (brother)

Kagan was born in Athens, Greece. His father, historian Donald Kagan, of Lithuanian Jewish descent, was the Sterling Professor of Classics and History Emeritus at Yale University and a specialist in the history of the Peloponnesian War. 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. He later earned a master's in public policy from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government and a PhD in American history from American University in Washington, D.C. 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 Obama administration.

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. 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 and Afghanistan, as well as to “remove Mr. Hussein and his regime from power” in Iraq. 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. 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 twenty-five-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 U.S. moralism to the world stage, support for the U.S. to act alone, the promotion of American-style liberty and democracy in other countries, the belief in American hegemony, confidence in U.S. 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 you are willing to punish” Saudi Arabia for the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi, “then they own you.”

Robert Kagan is recorded as political scientist, writer and historian.

• 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).. • Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart—Again (2024)..