A major voice on the dynamics of global power.


Highlights

Robert Kagan is an invaluable voice for audiences that seek to understand the dynamics that are shaping 21st century geopolitics and American foreign and domestic policy. He consistently offers valuable historical context and fresh, often startling, and indispensable insights into the issues that businesses, industries and nations face today.

His most recent book, The Return of History and the End of Dreams, looks broadly at all the major international challenges of our time, from the rise of China and Russia, Japan and India, to the assault on democracy and the threat of radical Islamic terrorism.

In his previous book, Dangerous Nation, Robert redefined how we understand America and America’s foreign policy traditions. Dangerous Nation won the 2008 Lepgold Prize and was a finalist for the Lionel Gelber Prize.

Famous for the observation, "Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus," Robert’s book Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order was a national and international bestseller.

Robert is Senior Fellow of Foreign Policy at the Center for United States and Europe, Brookings Institute and Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund. He writes a monthly column in the Washington Post, is a syndicated columnist with the New York Times Syndicate, and is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and the New Republic.

Kagan served in the United States State Department as a deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, and was a member of the policy planning staff as principal speechwriter to the U.S. secretary of state.

Dr. Kagan is listed as one of the world's "Top 100 Public Intellectuals" by Foreign Policy and Prospect magazines.

America’s Place in the World

In The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Robert Kagan pulls us back from the euphoria that followed the end of the Cold War to the reality that the challenges of nationalism and ideology never really disappeared. He maps the international rivalries that define our immediate future and the role that American leadership could and should play in a world in which the U.S. will remain the sole superpower. This is an extremely valuable message for policy makers and business leaders that hope to chart a secure and prosperous course in the coming years.

Dangerous Nation, Kagan’s most recent book, argues that a policy of aggressive expansion has been inextricably linked with liberal democracy throughout American history. Even before the birth of the nation, Americans believed they were destined for global leadership. Dr. Kagan's "powerfully persuasive, sophisticated …provocative" reexamination (Publishers Weekly, starred review) makes clear why America, from its very beginning, has been viewed worldwide, not only as a wellspring of political, cultural, and social revolution, but as an ambitious and, at times, dangerous nation. Dangerous Nation won the Lepgold Prize in International Relations from Georgetown University.

In his previous book, the New York Times bestseller Of Paradise and Power, Robert analyzes the historical causes of the gulf between European and American perspectives on power and the forces that seem to be widening the rift inexorably. The book redefined how we understand European-American relations and helped shape a new debate about America’s role in the world. Of Paradise and Power was on the New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks and the Washington Post bestseller list for fourteen weeks. It was also a bestseller in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Canada and has been translated into more than 25 languages.

Credentials

• Senior Fellow of Foreign Policy, Center for United States and Europe, Brookings Institute
• Former senior associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; director of the Endowment’s U.S. Leadership Project
• Member, Council on Foreign Relations
• Monthly columnist, Washington Post
• Contributing editor, The Weekly Standard and The New Republic
• Policy positions in the U.S. Department of State
• Recipient, Lepgold Prize in International Relations, Georgetown University
• Member, the Aspen Strategy Group
• Member, the Trilateral Commission
• Board of directors, U.S. Committee on NATO
• Ph.D., American University
• M.P.P., John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
• B.A., Yale University

Selected Publications:

"End of Dreams, Return of History," Foreign Policy, August/September, 2007.

The Return of History and the End of Dreams (due April 2008)

Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century (Knopf, 2006)

Of Paradise and Power (Knopf, 2003);

Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy, edited with William Kristol (Encounter Books, 2000);

A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977–1990 (Free Press, 1996)

Areas of Expertise:

Kagan is an expert on democracy, human rights, U.S. national security and foreign policy, U.S. relations with Russia, China and Europe, the European Union, NATO expansion, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Iraq, and the use of force.