Rebellion
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A chilling and clear-eyed warning about the threats to our democracy posed by the increasing radicalization of the Republican Party, from a leading historian and intellectual.
Robert Kagan is the Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow with the Strobe Talbott Center for Security, Strategy, and Technology in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings and a contributing writer for The Atlantic. Until recently, he also served as a contributing columnist at The Washington Post.
His latest book, “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — Again,” was released in April 2024 by Knopf. One of his previous books was The New York Times bestseller, “The World America Made” (Knopf, 2012). He is also the author of “The Ghost at the Feast: America and Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941” (Knopf); “The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World” (Knopf, 2018); “Return of History and the End of Dreams” (Knopf, 2008); “Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century” (Knopf 2006); “Of Paradise and Power” (Knopf 2003); and “A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990” (Free Press, 1996).
For his writings, Politico Magazine named Kagan one of the “Politico 50” in 2016, the “thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016.” He served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the policy planning staff, as principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.
He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and holds a doctorate in American history from American University.
Affiliations:
- Foreign Policy Initiative, board member
- Leigh Speaker’s Bureau, speaker
- Working Group on Egypt, co-chairman
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Current Positions
- Contributing Writer, The Atlantic
- Member, Foreign Affairs Policy Board, U.S. Department of State
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Past Positions
- Columnist, The Washington Post
- Senior Associate, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (1988-2010)
- Principal Speechwriter for Secretary of State George Shultz (1984-88)
- Deputy for Policy, Bureau of Inter-American Affairs
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Education
- B.A., Yale University
- M.P.P., John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
- Ph.D., American University