Lessons From 250 Years of U.S. Foreign Policy, With Robert Kagan

This episode unpacks the history of 250 years of U.S. foreign policy and examines patterns of the United States’ engagement with the world.

Host:

James M. Lindsay, Mary and David Boies Distinguished Senior Fellow in U.S. Foreign Policy, CFR

Guest:

Robert Kagan, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution; Author, Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World From Its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the Twentieth Century and The Ghost at the Feast: America and Collapse of World Order, 1900-1941

We Discuss:

Why Robert Kagan argues that Americans misunderstand their own history and have long been a “dangerous nation” rather than an insular one.

How American foreign policy debates have always been entangled with domestic politics, and what the polarized fights of the founding era reveal about the true norm of American political life.

Which forces have consistently pulled the United States outward, producing an oscillation between intervention and retrenchment.

Why the era of American imperialism following the Spanish-American War, including the humanitarian motives behind U.S. intervention in Cuba, is among the most misunderstood chapters of U.S. history

Why Americans tend to enter wars with enthusiasm only to sour on them afterward.

Whether the United States is forgetting the lessons of the postwar order.