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.

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The Bulwark Daily · Robert Kagan and Marianne Williamson: Slipping Into Dictatorship · 4 Feb 2026 podcast

I mean, yes, I think they want to benefit from all the nations we're alienating, and it gives them an opportunity.

They're a little ham-handed in dealing with that.

They're not really great at sounding like you're a generous leader that everybody would want to side with.

But nevertheless...

People have to do what they have to do, and so they are benefiting from that.

I'm guessing, and I think if you look at what Xi has been doing and the way people interpret these purges, he may well believe that the United States is not going to be like this forever, that it will eventually revert to its old self, which means that there is a brief window of opportunity for

to really accomplish major Chinese objectives.

And I'm not a sinologist, but the sinologists that I read have been speculating that he purged at least one of these generals because they were being too cautious on a Taiwan scenario.

And Xi Jinping really wants to, as he has said, really be ready to move

in 2027.

Xi Jinping has said, you know, we're seeing great changes in the world unseen in a century, by which he basically means American retreat.

And I think both he and Putin may see the next few years as a window of opportunity.

And so I think there's a very reasonable chance that we will see a contingency, whether it's a blockade of Taiwan or some other version of a takeover sometime in the next couple of years.

that is the right thing for them to do.

Now, it's a challenge for them, obviously, because they have for so long depended on the United States for all kinds of things, intelligence and control of the oceans, which they are not even close to being able to replicate.

So it's going to require a significant transformation of these European economies and even their societies.

And whether they're up to that, I don't know.

It would be foolish of them

After we have elected Donald Trump twice.

And by the way, it's not like this is Harry Truman, Dean Acheson's Democratic Party.

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