Robert Kagan: Sometimes US intervention is worth blowback

Robert Kagan surprised some people. One of America’s most influential hawks condemned the Trump administration’s botched war in Iran, suggesting in The Atlantic in March that U.S. involvement in the Middle East has been a catalyst of, rather than a prudent response to, Islamic terrorism.

A senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and prolific historian, Kagan has advocated U.S. primacy for decades, starting with his support for Nicaragua’s Contra insurgents as the head of the State Department’s Office of Public Diplomacy (1985-88).

In 1997, Kagan co-founded Project for the New American Century, a neoconservative think tank that lobbied for a muscular foreign policy and the maintenance of U.S. global hegemony. The group exercised its considerable influence to push regime change in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Kagan’s advocacy has always been based on a belief that the world would collapse into disorder without American leadership, even though U.S. military misadventures have repeatedly destabilized parts of the world.

So, is Robert Kagan now reconsidering his past hawkishness? I interviewed him to find out. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Martin Di Caro: Are you undergoing a conversion? Is that fair?

Robert Kagan: I don't think so, because I never denied that blowback was a reality. In fact, my writing shows that when the United States is out there acting in the world, Americans tend to not even be aware of the effect of American power on other nations. And so they're constantly shocked whenever the use of American power leads to a response. The best example is Japan and Pearl Harbor. Many Americans acted like it was out of the blue when Japan attacked us when, in fact, the U.S. pursued policies that were likely to lead to a Japanese attack. The same was true of 9/11 in the sense that it was at least in part a response to the American presence in the Middle East.

The question is, do you act even though you know that there is going to be blowback because the stakes are worth it. So, I never doubted it and, as I say, recognizing the effect of American power on other nations is an important part of my history.

Di Caro: Yet for decades you have advocated for U.S. interventionism and, in the case of the Iraq invasion of 2003, a preemptive war…

Kagan: Wait a minute. Can we stop right there? When you say that I’ve advocated for intervention for decades, what in particular are you talking about? I certainly supported the interventions in Bosnia and Kosovo, but it's not like I was just calling for intervention everywhere at all times. That's a shorthand that you use, but it's what people think, you know?

Di Caro: Well, you've never called for an invasion of Iran, but you did support the Contras when you were a member of Reagan's State Department going back to the 1980s.

Kagan: Totally. Right.

Di Caro: So that's what I'm referring to.

Kagan: I definitely believe in the exercise of U.S. power in the world. Sometimes that means intervention, but frequently it doesn't necessarily mean intervention.

Di Caro: Do you reject the neoconservative label?

Kagan: I do reject it, not only because it has taken on connotations that I think are frankly antisemitic, but because it's just a bad description of what I am. What I am is a liberal. Lib-er-al. My foreign policy is liberal. If you look back on the history of American foreign policy, the people who have pursued the policies that I favor have always tended to be progressive and liberal. And conservative foreign policy in America has always tended to be in the direction of restraint.

I worked for the neoconservatives. I worked for Irving Kristol. They were called neoconservatives because they had been on the left and then they were newly on the right. I have never accepted it as a reasonable definition [of my views].

Di Caro: We can set aside definitional debates because it may be more important to talk about the consequences of the policies that you've advocated, however you’re labeled, because you're not just some blogger. You’ve been an influential voice in foreign policy. Given your recent commentary about Iran, have you reconsidered your past support for U.S. wars, namely the invasion of Iraq in 2003?

Kagan: I went through the process of thinking about my support for the Iraq war long before this Iran issue came up. Look, the key thing about Iraq then and Iran now is the circumstances are just totally different than in 2003. That's not to say that, in retrospect, [the Iraq war] did not turn out to be a mistake, but the strategic arguments were completely different than they are now, and the overall aim of American foreign policy at that time was entirely different from the overall aim of foreign policy now.

The strategic context mattered. In 2003 we were not concerned about rising great power challenges. Russia was essentially still on its back. The Chinese were in their Hu Jintao-Wen Jiabao mode. There was no particular threat to the world order when the United States went to war in Iraq.

To answer your question, I haven't really fundamentally changed my mind. These are different circumstances. You'd have to assume that I had some kind of doctrine of always invading the Middle East whenever possible. But that has not been my doctrine.

Di Caro: In 2003 I thought invading Iraq was justified. I'm ashamed that I had such poor judgment. The Iraq war was unnecessary.

Kagan: You say it was unnecessary because you don't take seriously the nature of the threat that was posed.

Di Caro: What threat did Saddam Hussein pose? He was a tinpot dictator with a hollowed-out military.

Kagan: I don't agree with you. He was not just a tinpot dictator. He was actually special. He had already committed two major acts of aggression against his neighbors. By the way, that’s something that Iran has never done. Saddam had invaded Iran. He had invaded Kuwait. He clearly wanted to be the Saladin of the Middle East. You can feel however you want about it, but you were not alone in supporting the Iraq war.

It's bizarre to look back and think that it was somehow a peculiar judgment that Saddam posed a threat, when almost everybody including the Clinton administration thought Saddam was a threat. It was practically a consensus view.

When the war went bad, a lot of people wanted to pretend that they never supported it and decided that it was an incredibly stupid thing to do. I just don't think it's right to go back and say this was a silly activity when such a significant majority of Americans, including members of Congress, thought that it was an important thing to do.

Di Caro: But we can see how disastrous the consequences were. According to The Costs of War Project at Brown University, there were at least 180,000 civilian deaths from direct war violence, and it was the U.S. invasion that triggered all the chaos and the civil war that ensued. 4,500 U.S. service members and 3,600 American contractors were killed…

Kagan: In ten years! Over ten years.

Di Caro: …millions of people were displaced across the Middle East in the post-9/11 wars. Trillions of dollars for the U.S. Treasury when we factor in decades of long-term care for our veterans. I'm having trouble understanding why you can't admit that this was a mistake.

Kagan: Well, I didn't say I can't admit that it was a mistake. I'm not sure what the utility of admitting that it was a mistake is. It's not going to bring anybody back to life. But, you know, there were obviously elements of the Iraq war that were a mistake. I was very clear about it at the time when it was obvious that the administration not only hadn't sent in enough troops initially, but also didn't understand the role that those troops had to play because [Donald] Rumsfeld, from the moment that they invaded, wanted to get out. And so we didn't accept the responsibility that, as Colin Powell said, when you break it, you own it.

The biggest effect that I regret is how it influenced Americans’ attitudes towards foreign policy in general… In retrospect it is clear that Americans had become increasingly unenthusiastic about the role the United States was playing in the world.

Di Caro: There were good reasons for Americans souring on what I call military misadventures. There’s the harm done to other peoples, but also the returns for the United States have been meager.

Kagan: That's what you say, but your whole line of discussion takes for granted all the ways in which the overall American approach to the world produced enormous benefits both for much of the world and for the United States. You take for granted the world order that was in existence. And I'll tell you what, we're not going to be able to take it for granted anymore because we are now experimenting with the world that, I guess, you think would’ve been better, a world in which the United States is basically staying at home and minding its own business.

Di Caro: That's not true. My position is that the United States has other tools rather than the almost exclusive application of hard power and coercion.

Kagan: You think we didn't use any of the other tools as well? I think we wound up using military force because the other tools weren't working.

Di Caro: Soft power. This is something the political scientist Robert Keohane has discussed…

Kagan: You’re going to teach me about soft power now?

Di Caro: No, but don’t you agree the U.S. has neglected soft power recently?

Kagan: I do not. I do not. And there’s a whole myth about the Iraq war that it somehow led to the disenchantment of the rest of the world with the United States and, therefore, we suffered a reputational disaster. In fact, the U.S. alliances, including countries that opposed the Iraq war, were not only strong but actually strengthened in the second half of [George W.] Bush’s presidency.

If your view is that the United States has undermined its position in the world, then why do all the allies continue to rely on the United States for their protection, even though it's allegedly this ogre? There's just no logic to that. As the Trump administration destroys the U.S. position, the rest of the world is basically in mourning for a United States that used to be.

Di Caro: Do you think the GCC states still want American bases within their boundaries?

Kagan: Not now, but not because of the Iraq war. It’s because the United States has proved [under Trump] to be a terribly unreliable ally. Not because they think the United States is immoral. Do you think they're worried about American morality? What they’re upset about is that the United States proved to be an inadequate protector. If Iran had not been able to hit them with all the drones and the missiles, I don't think they would have turned against the United States. They were largely supportive of getting rid of the regime in Iran. It's just that the United States both failed to do that and was unable to protect them.

Another reason that I thought this was a bad idea, which is not about changing doctrines, is that the one thing we learned in the 1990s was that you cannot bomb your way to success in these situations. When they went after Slobodan Milošević [in Yugoslavia], I remember getting a briefing from [General] Wesley Clark, who said after four days of bombing, Milošević is going to cave. And 90 days later, it required the threat of an American ground force to get him to retire. So I think we knew that you couldn’t get rid of [Iran’s] nuclear program and certainly not get regime change simply by bombing people.

My problem with some of the critics of American policy is that they don't care what happens when America is not involved. They're only interested when America is involved. So when Saddam Hussein, for instance, was killing 200,000 Kurds and other minorities in Iraq using chemical weapons, nobody cared about those 200,000. They only care about the lives that are lost as a consequence of American action. There's quite a double standard in judging American behavior…

Di Caro: You mentioned Saddam and the Kurds. That double standard also applies to the U.S. government.

Kagan: Yes, I know. We also abandoned the Kurds.

Di Caro: The United States looked the other way in the 1980s when Saddam gassed the Kurds, and right up until the eve of the invasion of Kuwait in August 1990, George H.W. Bush was sending Saddam Hussein chummy letters telling him how much he wanted to nurture their relationship. It was only after the invasion of Kuwait when Saddam Hussein became Adolf Hitler.

Kagan: I agree. Do you want to make the case that the United States is a deeply flawed country that does the wrong thing sometimes? Because if you do, I'm perfectly in agreement with that.

Di Caro: My point is that the Gulf War was a Pyrrhic victory. The United States has never been able to extract itself from the Middle East.

Some would argue Israel is one reason why the United States can't seem to extract itself, at least from the conflict with Iran.

Kagan: Well, that's certainly been true.

Di Caro: Why have recent U.S. administrations utterly failed to restrain Israel despite the fact that the U.S. has considerable leverage?

Kagan: There are multiple elements to the answer. One is obviously the role of Jews in influencing American policy, which is a reality just the way the Irish, Italians, or Greeks have influenced American policy. The other thing is America is broadly Islamophobic, and so any enemy of Islam is a friend of ours for many Americans. I think Islamophobia is a reality in the United States, and Israel is supposed to be the bulwark against Islam.

That's unfortunate. My view is that we should not have a foreign policy based on Islamophobia. We should be able to have perfectly good relations with Islamic countries and with Islam itself.

Di Caro: What's your view of Israel's conduct in Gaza? How can we talk about a “rules-based order” after the world allowed that to happen? Israel’s conduct was enabled by the United States.

Kagan: I myself almost never talk about a rules-based order because the United States has definitely pursued a double standard with regard to the rules-based order. You could say that we supported the rules-based order in the breach as much as in the observance.

Di Caro: You sound like a restrainer now.

Kagan: Well, this is the thing again. It’s like if you acknowledge that America does bad things in the world, then that makes you a “restrainer.” In my view, it just makes you analytically honest. Knowing that the United States does bad things does not answer the question of should the United States be involved in the world.

Di Caro: The question is how the U.S. should be involved in the world.

Kagan: Critiques of the American order are legitimate. The question is what is a better alternative? If you want to tell me let's never get involved in the Middle East again, I would say sure. I'm delighted to never get involved in the Middle East again. But that is not what the restrainers are fundamentally talking about. They're talking about getting out of the whole alliance structure system and ending the nature of American leadership since 1945.

The assumption behind that has to be that the world is going to be at least as calm or calmer, and there'll be less turmoil. And I just absolutely reject that. I think there is going to be more turmoil. And I think there are a lot of things that the restrainers are not thinking about and they're almost in my view a little utopian in their assumption that a multipolar world can exist in some kind of peaceful harmony when I think history suggests otherwise.