Showing results by author "Robert Kagan"

Recent years have brought deeply disturbing developments around the globe. American sentiment seems to be leaning increasingly toward withdrawal in the face of such disarray. In this powerful, urgent essay, Robert Kagan elucidates the reasons why American withdrawal would be the worst possible response, based as it is on a fundamental and dangerous misreading of the world. Like a jungle that keeps growing back after being cut down, the world has always been full of dangerous actors who, left unchecked, possess the desire and ability to make things worse.

What would the world look like if America were to reduce its role as a global leader in order to focus all its energies on solving its problems at home? And is America really in decline? Robert Kagan, New York Times best-selling author and one of the country’s most influential strategic thinkers, paints a vivid, alarming picture of what the world might look like if the United States were truly to let its influence wane.

Of the remarkable things we have learned this election year, the most significant is that the current Republican Party is unfit to lead the country.

When historians want to find out about the ideas that motivated American foreign policy in the early years of the twenty-first century, they would do well to read this book. Robert Kagan has formally set out a case for unilateralism on the part of the United States, as opposed to the multilateralism now characteristic of Europe. Kagan believes that the United States can disregard a weak Europe, and have a free hand in pursuing its global interests.

"This Is How Fascism Comes to America" is from the May 18, 2016, Opinions section of The Washington Post. It was written by Robert Kagan and narrated by Sam Scholl.

Post-Cold War, the world remains "unipolar", but international competition among the United States, Russia, China, Europe, Japan, India, and Iran raise new threats of regional conflict. Communism is dead, but a new contest between western liberalism and the great eastern autocracies of Russia and China has reinjected ideology into geopolitics.

"Trump Is the GOP's Frankenstein Monster. Now He's Strong Enough to Destroy the Party." is from the Opinion section of The Washington Post. It was written by Robert Kagan and narrated by Sam Scholl.

The three pillars of the ideology — isolationism, protectionism and restricting immigration — were gaining popularity before Donald Trump became President and may outlast his tenure.

"‘America First’ Has Won" is from the September 27, 2018 Opinion section of The New York Times. It was written by Robert Kagan and narrated by Keith Sellon-Wright.

Many Americans have an odd fascination with the idea of the reforming autocrat, the strongman who can “modernize” and lead his nation out of its backward and benighted past. This was the hope for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, a hope now somewhat diminished by the hit he appears to have ordered against Post contributing columnist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey.

"The Myth of the Modernizing Dictator" is from the October 21, 2018 Opinion section of The Washington Post. It was written by Robert Kagan and narrated by Sam Scholl.

"Would Checks and Balances Stop Trump? Don't Bet on It" is from the June 16, 2016 Opinion section of The Washington Post. It was written by Robert Kagan and narrated by Sam Scholl.

Hanna Halaburda, an economist at the Bank of Canada, and Felix Oberholzer-Gee, a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, write about how the well-known strategic rules of markets with network effects – move first and get big – are often dead wrong.