America and the Crisis of Legitimacy

Version: Unabridged
Author: Robert Kagan
Narrator: Robert Kagan
Genres: History, Politics, United States, United States, Lectures, World Affairs, History
Publisher: Chautauqua Institution/ The Great Lecture Library
Published In: N/A
Length: 1 hour, 15 minutes
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Overview

Robert Kagan of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace speaks about "America and the Crisis of Legitimacy."

He said during election time there is always a desire to make it appear there are huge differences among the candidates, that they have divergent views.

But John Kerry and George Bush, he said, have similar views on some important issues. By extension, he said, a new administration really will not be so different from the present one. Historically, American foreign policy over the past 400 years, even before there was a country, is consistent.

During the last 20 years, Kagan said, "the United States has conducted eight fairly significant military interventions," approximately one every two years. The United States is less a peaceful nation than its citizens think.

People have said Mc-George and Bill Bundy led the country into the Vietnam War, but most Americans favored it at the beginning. It is the same with the Spanish-American war, Kagan said.
"The truth is, … the United States is a fairly warlike country."

Author Details

Author Details

Kagan, Robert

Robert Kagan is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund, and a columnist for The Washington Post. He is also the author of A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990, and editor, with William Kristol, of Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy.