Robert Kagan

Robert Kagan is co-founder with William Kristol of the Project for the New American Century. He is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a contributing editor at the Weekly Standard, and a columnist for the Washington Post.

Kagan was born in Athens, Greece, in 1958. He holds a bachelor's degree from Yale College, a master's degree in public policy and international relations from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, and a Ph.D. in history from American University.

In 1981, Kagan was Assistant Editor at the Public Interest. In 1983, he served as foreign policy advisor to Congressman Jack Kemp and as Special Assistant to the Deputy Director of the United States Information Agency. From 1984-1985, he was a member of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and principal speechwriter to Secretary of State George P. Schultz. From 1985-1988, he was Deputy for Policy in the State Department's Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.

According to independent counsel Lawrence E. Walsh, Kagan obtained $25,000 from Oliver North's secret cache of funds to continue the operations of the Contras political office in Washington in 1986. He was serving as Elliot Abrams' special assistant for the State Department's office of public diplomacy at the time.

Publications

Books

• A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990, Free Press, 1996.
• co-edited with William Kristol, Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign Policy, Encounter Books, 2000.
• Of Paradise and Power , Knopf, 2003.
• Dangerous Nation: America’s Place in the World from its Earliest Days to the Dawn of the 20th Century, Knopf, 2006.
• The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Knopf, 2008.

Affiliations

• Project for the New American Century - co-founder