Robert Kagan: Sometimes US intervention is worth blowback

Robert Kagan: Sometimes US intervention is worth blowback Robert Kagan surprised some people. One of America’s most influential hawks condemned the Trump administration’s botched war in Iran, suggesting (theatlantic.com) in The Atlantic in March that U.S. involvement in the Middle East has been a catalyst of, rather than a prudent response to, Islamic terrorism.A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and prolific historian, Kagan has advocated U.S. primacy for decades, starting with his support for Nicaragua’s Contra (webhelper.brown.edu › n contras) insurgents (wola.org) as the head of the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy (1985-88). In 1997, Kagan co-founded Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative think tank that lobbied for a muscular foreign policy and the maintenance of U.S. global hegemony. The group exercised its considerable influence to push regime change in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Kagan’s advocacy (quincyinst.org › robert kagan and interventionisms big reboot) has always been based on a belief that the world would collapse into disorder without American leadership, even though U.S. military misadventures have repeatedly destabilized parts of the world. So, is Robert Kagan now reconsidering his past hawkishness? I interviewed him to find out. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.Martin Di Caro: Are you undergoing a conversion? Is that fair?Robert Kagan: I don't think so, because I never denied that blowback was a reality. In fact, my writing shows that when the United States is out there acting in the world, Americans tend to not even be aware of the effect of American power on other nations. And so they're constantly shocked whenever the use of American power leads to a response. The best example is Japan and Pearl Harbor. Many Americans acted like it was out of the blue when Japan attacked us when, in fact, the U.S. pursued policies that were likely to lead to a Japanese attack. The same was true of 9/11 in the sense that it was at least in part a response to the American presence in the Middle East. The question is, do you act even though you know that there is going to be blowback because the stakes are worth it. So, I never doubted it and, as I say, recognizing the effect of American power on other nations is an important part of my history.Di Caro: Yet for decades you have advocated for U.S. interventionism and, in the case of the Iraq invasion of 2003, a preemptive war…Kagan: Wait a minute. Can we stop right there? When you say that I’ve advocated for intervention for decades, what in particular are you talking about? I certainly supported the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, but it's not like I was just calling for intervention everywhere at all times. That's a shorthand that you use, but it's what people think, you know?Di Caro: Well, you've never called for an invasion of Iran, but you did support the Contras when you were a member of Reagan's State Department going back to the 1980s.Kagan: Totally. Right. Di Caro: So that's what I'm referring to.Kagan: I definitely believe in the exercise of U.S. power in the world. Sometimes that means intervention, but frequently it doesn't necessarily mean intervention.Di Caro: Do you reject the neoconservative label?Kagan: I do reject it, not only because it has taken on connotations that I think are frankly antisemitic, but because it's just a bad description of what I am. What I am is a liberal. Lib-er-al. My foreign policy is liberal. If you look back on the history of American foreign policy, the people who have pursued the policies that I favor have always tended to be progressive and liberal. And