Bob Kagan

speaker

1,471 appearances 4 recordings 1 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 29 Jul

Bob Kagan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

Appearances

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The Bulwark Daily · Robert Kagan: A Total and Complete Shutdown of Trump · 27 May 2026 podcast

And we sat down and we talked about it.

And his view was that every use of American force since World War II had been a mistake, every single one.

And basically did not believe in the use of American power.

So.

So that's one version of what they have always been saying, and I've never been saying that.

Now, does that mean that therefore we should be using force everywhere, no matter what, whether it's smart or not smart?

So from my point of view, I'm not opposed to war as a concept.

I'm certainly not opposed to the United States using force, but this clearly wasn't going to work and has now led to the disaster that was clear.

So I don't even think this is really an ideological question.

I think it's mostly a practical question.

I feel like I've been pretty consistent, whereas I don't think that the liberal Democrats have been consistent.

I was amused to see after the Obama administration spent really years saying Ukraine was not a vital interest of the United States and making it perfectly clear to the Russians and to Putin that the United States did not regard Ukraine as a vital interest of the United States.

Obama said, I'm not going to have a nuclear war over Ukraine.

As soon as the Russians invaded Ukraine, people like Ben Rhodes were up there saying, we have to stop them from doing this.

This is terrible.

We have to support democracy.

And I was glad.

Yes, I agree 100%.

But it's like, so what's the doctrine here?

The doctrine is, let's never do Iraq.

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