Robert Kagan is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. He is an expert in US national security and foreign policy, US relations with Russia, China and Europe, the European Union, NATO expansion, the Balkans, Eastern Europe, and Iraq. His book Of Paradise and Power (Knopf, 2003), was on the New York Times bestseller list for ten weeks and the Washington Post bestseller list for 14 weeks. It was also a bestseller in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain, Italy, the Netherlands, and Canada and has been translated into more than 25 languages. His next book, Dangerous Nation: America in the World, 1607-1898, was published in 2006, and his book The World America Made was published in 2012.

Kagan writes a monthly column on world affairs for the Washington Post, and is a contributing editor at both the Weekly Standard and the New Republic. He served in the State Department from 1984 to 1988 as a member of the Policy Planning Staff, as principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs.

He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government and holds a PhD in American history from American University.