Robert Kagan

Historian, foreign-policy writer, and Stephen & Barbara Friedman Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution, where his work focuses on U.S. foreign policy, national security, and the history of American foreign policy. He is also a contributing writer for The Atlantic and author of books including “Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart — Again.”

U.S. Anti-Liberalism and Retrenchment Are Weakening the Postwar Order

Foreign policy analyst Robert Kagan argues that the United States is not simply declining but voluntarily abandoning the liberal principles and global commitments that gave its power strategic purpose. In a live Aspen Ideas Festival conversation with former national security officials Jake Sullivan and Jon Finer, Kagan links America’s retrenchment abroad to an anti-liberal turn at home, warning that the result could be a more unstable multipolar world and a domestic test over whether the country still believes in the Declaration’s universal claims.

The Aspen InstituteJun 27, 202619 min read