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 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 4 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.
Appearances
You know, we'll never do Iraq again.
OK, I get that.
But from a doctrinal point of view, we have to come out of this not with the view that the United States should never use force.
On the contrary, we have to come out of this with a view that the world depends on American power, but it has to be used intelligently.
And I guess, I mean, this is a much longer argument.
Even the misses I don't regard as entirely misses.
I think this point is important.
The countries that rely on us for their protection, that have relied on us for their protection,
counted on us being willing to use force, okay?
And so if we never used force, we would not have been a useful country to be allied to.
And so, which is why, even during the Vietnam War, the European alliance held.
You know, in one of my books, I'm quoting a German chancellor saying, look,
We need the Americans to fulfill their commitments.
This is one of those commitments that they made.
And so we shouldn't be cheering for them to abandon their commitments because then they're someday going to abandon us.
So it's more complicated than that.
And the kinds of wars that we fought in during the Cold War were not wars of conquest.
They were not wars that you win because you plant your flag in the other guy's capital.
They were wars of global order management.
Right.
Showing 661–680 of 1,471 · page 34 of 74
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