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

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The Bulwark Daily · Robert Kagan: We’re Transitioning to a Post-American World · 3 Apr 2026 podcast

decimated country like Iran, we will blow them up for as long as we possibly can.

Does that tell the Chinese anything about what we would do in the event of a crisis in the Taiwan Strait other than not wanting to send our ships into harm's way?

You know, we all enjoyed Hegseth noting that the reason we weren't sending our ships in to the Strait was because the Iranians would shoot at it.

Yes, that is...

That is how that works.

And that's also how it will work in a China scenario.

Look, the big picture after we finish patting ourselves on the back for blowing everything up is we started this war and we are unable to win it.

And we are unable to win it at a cost that is acceptable to us and to many of our allies.

You know, we allegedly did this to some extent for the Gulf states.

The Gulf states are furious at us now because we have kicked the hornet's nest and are threatening to walk away and leave them with the mad hornets.

What did we demonstrate in this war that we could start it, but we couldn't finish it, that we could hit Iran, but we couldn't protect our allies in the region?

You know, the UAE is arresting people for taking pictures of the damage that's being done by Iranian weapons.

Right.

So they are not so far net beneficiaries of this.

And they certainly aren't looking at the United States as the solution to their problems, since clearly we are not the solution to their problems.

So the biggest takeaway from this is

I'm not at all sure we have increased our credibility.

I think we may have decreased our credibility in dealing with Russia and China, not to mention the boon that this war has been for Russia specifically in its war against Ukraine.

We're going to read a very good article in Foreign Policy Magazine right now, which is basically recounting this distinguished former American ambassador to South Korea, who has spent his whole life in South Korea, basically an American, telling the South Koreans that they really need to start striking out on their own now because the United States has become completely unreliable.

And

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