About
Expert

Robert Kagan

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. He is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. His latest book, “The Ghost at the Feast: America and Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941” (Knopf), was released January 2023. One of his previous books was The New York Times bestseller, “The World America Made” (Knopf, 2012). Kagan’s upcoming book, “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — Again,”  is slated to publish April 2024 by Knopf.

He is also the author of “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
  • The Washington Post, monthly columnist
  • Working Group on Egypt, co-chairman
  • Areas of Expertise

    • U.S. national security and foreign policy
    • History of American foreign policy
    • U.S. relations with Russia, China and Europe
    • European Union
    • NATO expansion
    • Egypt
  • Current Positions

    • Columnist, The Washington Post
    • Member, Foreign Affairs Policy Board, U.S. Department of State
  • Past Positions

    • 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
  • Education

    • B.A., Yale University
    • M.P.P., John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
    • Ph.D., American University
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