Robert Kagan > Quotes

“Americans, in foreign policy, are torn to the point of schizophrenia. They are reluctant, than aggressive; asleep at the switch, then quick on the trigger; indifferent, then obsessed, then indifferent again. They act out of a sense of responsibility and then resent and fear the burden of responsibility they have taken on themselves. Their effect on the world, not surprisingly, is often the opposite of what they intend. Americans say they want stability in the international system, but they are often the greates disrupters of stability. They extol the virtues of international laws and institutions but then violate and ignore them with barley a second thought. They are recolutionary power but think they are a status quo power. They want to be left alone but can't seem to leave anyone else alone. They are continually surprising the world with their behavior, but not nearly as much as they are continually surprising themselves.”
― Robert Kagan, The World America Made

“International order is not an evolution; it is an imposition. It is the domination of one vision over others- in this case, the domination of liberal principles of economics, domestic politics, and international relations over other, nonliberal principles. It will last only as long as those who imposed it retain the capacity to defend it.”
― Robert Kagan, The World America Made

“Foreign policy is like hitting a baseball: if you fail 70 percent of the time, you go to the Hall of Fame.”
― Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America's Place in the World from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

“It turns out that human beings yearn not only for freedom, autonomy, individuality, and recognition. Especially in times of difficulty, they also yearn for security, order, and a sense of belonging to something larger than themselves, something that submerges autonomy and individuality—which autocracies often provide better than democracies.”
― Robert Kagan

“The liberal hegemony was so firmly ensconced after the 1950s that when the ‘Reagan Revolution’ arrived in 1980, it did not revolutionize things as many anti liberal conservatives hoped and many liberals feared. Reagan’s victory did return anti liberal conservatives to positions of power for the first time since the 1920s, and, perhaps more important, gave them the feeling that they were finally being listened to, which encouraged them to organize and expand their efforts to push back against the liberal onslaught. Many of the institutions that would later play a role in the takeover of the Republican Party in 2016 were hatched and nurtured during the Reagan years.”
(Pages 149-150)”
― Robert Kagan, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart – Again

“Here again, the common assumption about the inevitability of liberalism has led to constant underestimation of the power of anti liberal sentiments in America, We simply assume that, with time, people become enlightened. Yet the views of white Southerners did not change: not in the 1870s, when they fought against Black equality; not in the 1920s, when the second Klan spread across the South like wildfire; not in the 1960s, when George Wallace spoke for millions when he declared “segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” And not today when the unwarranted killing of Black people by police inspires for so many white Americans more sympathy for the police than for their victims.
(Page 91)”
― Robert Kagan, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart – Again

“The institutions that American’s founders created to safe guard liberal democratic government cannot survive when half the country does not believe in the core principles that undergrid the American system of government. The presidential election of 2024, therefore, will not be the usual contest between Republicans and Democrats. It is a referendum on whether the liberal democracy born out of the Revolution should continue. Today, tens of millions of Americans have risen in rebellion against that system. They have embraced Donald Trump as their leader because they believe he can deliver them from what they regard as the liberal oppression of American politics and society. If he wins, they will support whatever he does, including violating the Constitution to go after his enemies and political opponents, which he has promised to do. If he loses, they will reject the results and refuse to acknowledge the legitimacy of of the federal government, just as the South did in 1860. Either way, the American liberal political and social order will fracture, perhaps irrecoverably.
(Page 3)”
― Robert Kagan, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart – Again

“The better idea doesn’t have to win just because it is a better idea.”
― Robert Kagan, The World America Made

“History had not led to the triumph of liberalism; it had led to Hitler and Stalin.”
― Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World

“[Authoritarianism] appeals to core elements of human nature that liberalism does not always satisfy—the desire for order, for strong leadership, and perhaps above all, the yearning for the security of family, tribe, and nation.”
― Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World

“Liberating a people requires the same brutal force as conquering them. Even moral wars have immoral consequences. Neither people nor nations can use the tools of war and coercion and hope to keep their hands clean. Americans have never been comfortable with these brutal facts of life. Their founding ideology contains an irresolvable tension between universalism, the belief that every human being must be allowed to exercise his or her individual rights, and individualism, the belief that among those rights is the right to be left alone. This has made them ambivalent and suspicious about power, even their own, and this ambivalence is often paralyzing. No sooner do they invade and occupy a country than they begin looking for the exits.”
― Robert Kagan, The World America Made

“It was not until the late 1970s and early 1980s, when détente was abandoned and American policy grew more confrontational again, that Soviet leaders finally came to fear that that they might not be able to keep up the geopolitical competition, and not just with the United States but with the liberal order more generally.”
― Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World

“9780593535790”
― Robert Kagan, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart – Again

“Enlightenment with regard to this matter comes slowly,” the State Department’s Stanley Hornbeck mused. “Some people learn by observation, reasoning, and the use of the imagination. Others learn only by experience.”[”
― Robert Kagan, The Ghost at the Feast: America and the Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941

“That is why Russian penetration of the political systems of the United States and Europe has been so effective. It has exploited the truly dangerous fissures in Western society, which are not based on class, as the Marxists wanted to believe, but on tribe and culture.”
― Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World

“This story of human progress is a myth, however. If the last century has taught us anything, it is that scientific and technological progress and the expansion of knowledge, while capable of improving our lives materially, have brought no lasting improvement in human behavior.”
― Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World

“Many were surprised at the British vote to leave the European Union, but from a historical perspective there was nothing unusual about the English seeking distance from the continent.”
― Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World

“The question is not what will bring down the liberal order but what can possibly hold it up? If the liberal order is like a garden, artificial and forever threatened by the forces of nature, preserving it requires a persistent, unending struggle against the vines and weeds that are constantly working to undermine”
― Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World

“THERE WAS NOTHING INEVITABLE about this turn of events. No divine providence or progressive teleology, no unfolding Hegelian dialectic required that liberalism triumph after World War II.”
― Robert Kagan, The World America Made

“It is difficult to recapture the apprehension, even paranoia, that gripped the nation's most sober leaders in these early years of the American political experiment. No one was confident that the new republican institutions would survive. There was no clear path to success, and no past record against which to compare the unfolding of events. The emergence of political parties was unexpected and troubling, even to those who helped bring them into being. Each side in the great political conflict tended to suspect the other of the most dangerous and evil motives. (...) The debates were so brutal, in fact, precisely because they were so profoundly ideological. What was at stake, many Americans believed, were not merely matters of war and peace but the very soul of the republic.”
― Robert Kagan, Dangerous Nation: America's Foreign Policy from Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century

“as humans often do when confronted with a clash between interest and principle, it was the principle they jettisoned. —”
― Robert Kagan, Rebellion: How Antiliberalism Is Tearing America Apart – Again

“Democracy has spread and endured because it has been nurtured and supported: by the norms of the liberal order, by global pressures and inducements to conform to those norms, by the membership requirements of liberal institutions like the EU and NATO, by the fact that the liberal order has been the wealthiest part of the world, and by the security provided by the world’s strongest power, which happens to be a democracy.”
― Robert Kagan, The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World