Robert Kagan

1 week ago | theatlantic.com | Robert Kagan

The current debate over bombing Iran is surreal. To begin with, bombardment is unlikely to lead to a satisfactory outcome. If history has shown one thing, it is that achieving a lasting resolution by bombing alone is almost impossible. There was a reason the United States sent ground forces into Iraq in 2003, and it was not to plant democracy. It was that American officials believed they could not solve the problem of Saddam Hussein’s weapons programs simply by bombing. They had tried that.

1 month ago | businessandamerica.com | Robert Kagan

“Vladimir, STOP!” That Truth Social post by President Donald Trump put a fitting capstone on one of the least successful negotiations in recent memory. For the past year or more, the conventional wisdom was that Vladimir Putin needed a deal on Ukraine. Russia’s economy was struggling under the weight of international sanctions, and its military had suffered staggering losses on the battlefield. Putin was supposed to be desperate for at least a pause in the fighting.

2 months ago | theatlantic.com | Robert Kagan

“Vladimir, STOP!”  That Truth Social post by President Donald Trump put a fitting capstone on one of the least successful negotiations in recent memory. For the past year or more, the conventional wisdom was that Vladimir Putin needed a deal on Ukraine. Russia’s economy was struggling under the weight of international sanctions, and its military had suffered staggering losses on the battlefield. Putin was supposed to be desperate for at least a pause in the fighting.

Mar 17, 2025 | theatlantic.com | Robert Kagan

The Founders knew that Americans, for better or worse, had an insatiable desire for overseas trade.

Mar 17, 2025 | flipboard.com | Robert Kagan

8 hours ago“Original Sins,” “Strike,” “Notes on Surviving the Fire,” and “There Lives a Young Girl in Me Who Will Not Die.” Original Sins, by Eve L. Ewing (One World). This stark critique of America’s schools anchors our current educational system in eighteenth-century ideas about race and intelligence. …