Robert Kagan speaks on political theory

The first thing that Robert Kagan, last night's Foreign Affairs Symposium (FAS) speaker, did after thanking the audience was to acknowledge the challenges facing the United States and the world today.

"I want to talk about the world that Barack Obama has inherited," he said. "Even setting aside the current financial crisis, it's very complicated."

Kagan, a former member of the State Department Policy Planning Staff, speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Schultz and deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs, focused most on what he described as a common theory that the U.S. was in decline.

"I think that view is mistaken," he said. "If the economy resembles what things were like in the 1930s, it would a great tragedy if foreign policy followed suit ... because there is no doubt that the world depends extraordinarily on the U.S."

Although Kagan served as foreign policy advisor to Senator John McCain during the recent presidential election, he acknowledged that Obama's global popularity had the potential to help reshape the United States's interaction with the rest of the world.

"He is in the unique position of being more popular than most countries' own elected leaders," Kagan said. "I think our image has been substantially repaired by the results of the presidential election."

He jokingly referred to former president George W. Bush as "the ogre in the White House," but also went on to more seriously discuss the historical image of the U.S., stating that prior to Bush, there were many other issues that had caused it to suffer.

Then he moved on to discuss the rightful place of the U.S. in the world.

One of the key concepts that he stressed was that although after the Cold War many believed that the geopolitical struggle between great powers had become a "geoeconomic" conflict and that money had replaced political theory in importance, this has not come to pass. He felt that the popular belief had been that democracy was taking root around the world and would almost develop of its own accord.

"Obviously it seems that neither of those assumptions were quite true," he said.

This discrepancy between reality and previous expectations, according to Kagan, is one of the reasons that people believe the U.S. and the world is in decline.

"I think we need to be a little bit more careful that our Enlightenment philosophy does not blind us to the fact that autocracies may be sustainable," he said. "It's not clear who owns the future."

As a result of these issues, Kagan felt that the struggle between democracy and autocracy is a more important "big-picture" concern for the U.S. than terrorism, especially terrorism based in radical Islam.

"Radical Islam can't succeed," he said. "They want to roll back the clock ... the problem is that people in the Islamic world don't want to go back. I think what we're seeing is the death throes of this ideology."

In light of this, he wants the U.S. to focus on encouraging the development of democracies and bringing together democracies in cooperation.

"I think we need to take seriously again the idea of promoting democracy and not count on it promoting itself," he said.

These comments led to a number of different questions from the audience. One was concerning the method of spreading democracy, with the example of Iraq as a flawed attempt.

"We didn't go into Iraq with the goal of promoting democracy," Kagan said. "No one in their right mind thinks that democratic promotion is about invasions."

He was concerned, however, that the lesson from the Bush years might be perceived as "the promotion of democracy is impossible."

Claire Cravero, one of the FAS co-chairs, described Kagan as "the voice of a new conservative movement."

"We've had a lot of liberal speakers, and we thought he would balance the range and help provide a more well-rounded symposium," she said. "That was our goal."

Of the roughly 100 to 150 people in attendance, many seemed to think that Kagan had managed to remain somewhat apolitical in his analysis.

"I thought he gave a very neutral perspective," freshman Alex Treiger said. "While we have different political views, I thought he gave an interesting perspective of the future of what the international system will look like."

Sophomore Nicholas Mark agreed. "It was very informative and he tried not to be political," he said.

Freshman Nicole Salter also had a positive impression of the event.

"I thought it went well. His views were unique, but they made sense and he explained himself well," she said.

Cravero was pleased with the turnout and also pointed out the presence of several Baltimore citizens not connected to the University.

"There's one couple that always comes to all of our events. It's great because I love getting the community involved."