Robert Kagan cofounded the neoconservative letterhead group Project for the New American Century (PNAC) in 1997 with fellow neocon Wiliam Kristol, with whom he has also co-written articles and books. Kagan remains a director of the basically defunct, yet previously influential group, which has had no significant actions since 2005. Kagan is a monthly columnist on international affairs for the Washington Post, a contributing editor at the New Republic, and a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where he focuses on international relations and security issues.
Kagan has impressive neocon credentials; his father Donald and brother Frederick are neocon historians who have written on the need for a stronger and more interventionist U.S. military. Robert Kagan was recently cited by presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) as being one of several conservatives whom the senator calls up for guidance and advice on foreign policy; the group also included Kristol and George P. Shultz (Associated Press, March 9, 2007).
Kagan writes frequently on post-Cold War strategy, transatlantic relations, U.S.-China relations, military strategy, defense budget, and U.S. diplomatic history.
In a January 2007 column for the Washington Post, Kagan opined: "Those who call for an 'end to the war' don't want to talk about the fact that the war in Iraq and in the region will not end but will only grow more dangerous ... To the extent that people think about Iraq, many seem to believe it is a problem that can be made to go away. This is a delusion, but it is by no means only a Democratic delusion. Many conservatives and Republicans, including erstwhile supporters of the war, have thrown up their hands in anger at the Iraqi people or the Iraqi government" (Washington Post, January 28, 2007). Many of Kagan's fellow neocons, including Richard Perle and Kenneth Adelman, who both initially supported the Iraq War, have reversed course to become highly critical of the Bush administration's handling of the war.
Kagan supports the idea of increasing troop levels in Iraq. "It is precisely the illusion that a political solution is possible in the midst of rampant violence that has gotten us where we are today. What's needed in Iraq are not more clever plans but more U.S. troops to provide the security to make any plan workable. Even those seeking a way out of Iraq as soon as possible should understand the need for an immediate surge in U.S. troop levels to provide the stability necessary so that eventual withdrawal will not produce chaos and an implosion of the Iraqi state" (New Republic, November 27, 2007). His brother Frederick led an American Enterprise Institute panel that concluded a vast troop surge is necessary; the January 2007 report was called "Choosing Victory: A Plan For Success in Iraq."
Kagan's latest book is Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century (2006), the first volume in what is likely to be a two-part series. In it, Kagan argues that America is not the isolationist power that he says many conceive it to be. His previous book was Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order (2003), in which he argues that "Americans are from Mars and Europeans are from Venus: They agree on little and understand one another less and less." Kagan claims that because Europe has benefited from 60 years of U.S. security guarantees, it has not been forced to spend as much on defense as the United States and is softer when it comes to issues like Iraq and other "rogue states."
According to a BBC profile of him, "Kagan disputes that the United States' attitude was altered by the events of September 11. He says that the country 'only became more itself' in its intolerance for the enemy ... Critics accuse him of over-simplifying the argument, overlooking the influences of economic and cultural strength as well as military, and also a certain brutalism in his acceptance that 'American power, even deployed under a double standard, may be the best means of advancing progress'" (BBC News, April 17, 2003).
Kagan was appointed by Elliott Abrams in 1985 to head the Office of Public Diplomacy, which was created to push for U.S. support for Nicaraguan Contras. After the Iran-Contra scandal broke, Abrams pleaded guilty to two counts of withholding information from Congress. Kagan, however, failed to mention Abram's illicit activities or guilty plea in his 1996 book A Twilight Struggle, which was touted as the "definitive history" of the U.S. anti-Sandinista campaign. (Kagan does mention the convictions of Oliver North and John Poindexter.) The book received financial backing from the Bradley Foundation and the Carthage Foundation, two key conservative funders (Burch, Research in Political Economy).
He is coauthor, with William Kristol, of a 1997 Foreign Affairs article called "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy," which argued that the United States should establish a "benevolent hegemony." Kagan edited, also with Kristol, Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign Policy (Encounter Books, 2000). Kagan's writing has been published in numerous venues, including Foreign Affairs, Commentary (where Norman Podohoretz is the longtime editor-at-large), Foreign Policy, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, National Interest, Policy Review, and Weekly Standard (where Kristol is editor).
In a 2002 article for Policy Review that became the basis for Of Paradise and Power, Kagan argued, "It is time to stop pretending that Europeans and Americans share a common view of the world, or even that they occupy the same world. On the all-important question of power—the efficacy of power, the morality of power, the desirability of power—American and European perspectives are diverging. Europe is turning away from power, or to put it a little differently, it is moving beyond power into a self-contained world of laws and rules and transnational negotiation and cooperation. It is entering a post-historical paradise of peace and relative prosperity, the realization of Kant's 'Perpetual Peace.' The United States, meanwhile, remains mired in history, exercising power in the anarchic Hobbesian world where international laws and rules are unreliable and where true security and the defense and promotion of a liberal order still depend on the possession and use of military might" (Policy Review, June/July 2002).
Kagan is married to Victoria Nuland, the U.S. representative to NATO. She served as Vice President Dick Cheney's deputy national security adviser from 2003 to 2005.