Robert Kagan: "The Jungle Grows Back"

Thursday, November 9, 2017
5:00 PM - 6:30 PM
(Pacific)
Speaker: 
  • Robert Kagan

Amidst, domestic political battles and growing tensions across key regions, Americans are actively questioning their country’s role in the world. On Thursday, November 9, Robert Kagan, senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy at the Brookings Institution, will speak on the fragility of the global system that the United States constructed, as deeply etched patterns of history return.

Following World War II, American statesmen embarked on a series of policies that yielded today’s relatively peaceful, prosperous, and democratic world – carving a garden out of the international jungle. Yet, this environment is artificial and impermanent. Preserving it has been a constant struggle. As Americans tire of this struggle, nature will reassert itself, and the future of this world that the United States imposed on the globe is far from certain.

Speaker Bio:

Robert Kagan is a senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy program at Brookings. He is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post. His most recent book is The New York Times bestseller, The World America Made. His previous books include: The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century, Of Paradise and Power, and A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990. For his writings, Politico Magazine named Kagan one of the “Politico 50” in 2016, the “thinkers, doers and visionaries transforming American politics in 2016.” His most recent pieces include “The Twilight of the Liberal World Order” in Brookings Big Ideas for America and “Backing into World War III” in Foreign Policy. He served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the policy planning staff, as principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and holds a doctorate in American history from American University.

Robert Kagan