3 Takeaways - America, War, and the Myths We Still Believe (#321)

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

What if one of the things Americans believe most deeply about America simply isn’t true?Americans have a powerful story about who they are and why America acts when it does.Historian Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, says America's own history tells a very different story.He discusses:● The biggest myth Americans believe about their own country● What American history looks like when you strip that myth away● Why America keeps doing something it insists it doesn’t want to do● Whether America’s wars were really forced upon it● The unexpected connection between American power and the threats America faces● What China and Russia may understand about America that Americans don’t● What happens if America turns inward againWhat if the biggest thing Americans misunderstand about their role in the world isn’t the world?It’s America.

What if Americans are wrong about America? We think America spent much of its history minding its own business and only got involved when the world forced us to. What if almost the opposite is true? Hi, everyone. I'm Lynn Toman and this is three takeaways. On three takeaways, I talk with some of the world's best thinkers, business leaders, writers, politicians, newsmakers, and scientists.

Each episode ends with three key takeaways to help us understand the world and maybe even ourselves a little better. Today I'm delighted to be with Robert Kagan. Bob is one of America's leading historians, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, and the author of Dangerous Nation and the Ghost at the Feast. He spent decades studying Americans' role in the world and challenging the story Americans' about ourselves. Bob, welcome to three takeaways. Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here. It is my pleasure. Bob, what is the biggest myth Americans believe about America's role in the world? That Americans think that for the most part, they're just sitting here minding their own business

and then other countries come along and do things that either attack the United States in some way or upset it, and then Americans have to respond when the reality, I think, as you suggested, it is much different. The United States has been an expansionist power since the very beginning. In fact, since before even the revolution, it's been expansionist territorially, commercially. And I would say in this vague sense, ideologically, in the sense that it is always shown some concern for the fate of hell of human beings on many different fronts. Cuba, the Philippines, Nicaragua, Haiti, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and now Venezuela and Iran. And that's not even the full list. Why is America intervened so often and in so many parts of the world?

Well, I think if you compare the United States to other really great global powers in history, Great Britain, for instance, you would not think that the United States was intervening more frequently. than they tend to do. When a nation becomes very powerful, that often uses power to achieve those goals, and I think the United States has been no different in that regard. Certainly, some of the wars were portrayed as being defensive, but they weren't all defensive. They all were in service to one or another American interest or set of beliefs that have often gotten Americans involved in other countries. America often goes in thinking we can fix a problem and then leave. why do we keep underestimating how hard that is?

Well, it's partly because, and this is the way the United States is different from, say, the British Empire. When the British moved into some region of the world, they moved in for good. Whereas the Americans, even though America sometimes behaves like an empire, they have a very anti-imperial approach to the world. And they never think they're staying. Every time the United States goes into, as you say, try to solve a problem or address, a crisis or etc. The assumption is that we'll go in and take care of that and get out right

away. And often that has turned out not to be true. We have never left Korea. Obviously, we've never really pulled troops out of Germany and Japan. And so what you see is a record of sort of half attempted, half finished interventions. Sometimes America's actions have consequences that we don't expect, how often as America helped create the very threats that we later had to fight? Every conflict, which may solve whatever problem, that conflict was designed to solve, and opens up new problems. I mean, just consider World War II. I don't think most people in America would doubt that World War II was the right war to fight, but one of the consequences of World War II was the division of Europe and the imprisonment of the Eastern European countries

under Soviet rule. And so every solution to one problem leads to other problems. So we're continually shocked that conflict continues to emerge, including by our own actions. I think Americans would do better to understand that the world is sort of inherently a more tragic place and that unless the United States becomes truly isolationist, there's not going to be any escaping the kinds of conflicts that Americans have found themselves involved in. Can you give some specific examples of consequences that America did not expect after it intervened? One obvious example is the first Persian Gulf War when George H.W. Bush sent troops of the United States to drive Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait after he'd invaded it. And then the United

States left a substantial number of troops in place to defend Saudi Arabia and to continue to provide some defense against Saddam Hussein. And of course, the presence of American troops in the region created all kinds of hostility. Foreign interlopers in the Middle East have always led movements in the Middle East to expel them. One of the prices was the rise of terrorist groups who were specifically upset, not about the second Iraq War, but about the first Iraq War. And so that was the backlash that American actions created. And why are we surprised when other countries react to what we do or there's a backlash? I think that part of the part of the partly we're a little unconscious of the effect that we have on other peoples, even when it should

be pretty obvious. My other favorite example of this is American attitudes towards Japan. When Japan struck Pearl Harbor in 1941, many Americans were shocked and they treated it like it was an attack, quote, out of the blue, unquote. But of course, it was a direct response to American policies, which were seeking to strangle the Japanese economy in order to slow down its war machine in its fight against China, Americans knew that in putting on those embargoes against Japanese oil, that there was a chance that they would provoke a Japanese attack. And so, again, it was one of those situations where Americans are doing things in the world which are affecting and in some cases annoying and in some cases frightening other people, but they're just not

conscious of it until the attack comes. If you add it all up, do you think American power has made the world safer or more dangerous? I really don't have any questions. I really don't have any about that, that it's made the world more safer. And I don't say that unaware of the ways in which the United States has also sometimes made the world less safe. But the overall American record, I think, is really quite extraordinary, because although there have been some wars during the period since 1945, there have been no great power conflicts. And I think it's important to understand how significant that is. Prior to the end of World War II, great power conflict was the norm. Obviously, in the first half of the 20th century, there were major wars among major states,

but also in the 19th century, wars among great powers were frequent. And those wars tend to be devastating, to cost many lives, but also to really have a devastating impact on the global economy. And so one reason that the global economy has been so remarkably healthy since 1945 is in part because there have been no great power wars, because the United States has been able to maintain global security based on its alliances that it formed after the war. Americans have repeatedly been enthusiastic or at least supportive about going to war and then become deeply disillusioned once we're in it. Why do we keep repeating that cycle? That is the great question. And I think part of the answer is when the United States goes into a

conflict. Americans are usually highly concerned about whatever threat they see posed at the time. Then they addressed the threat. And so then, of course, now the threat is diminished. And the only thing left is the cost of the war and the conflict that was required to deal with that crisis. Americans going into World War I had no doubt in their minds that they were doing the right thing in trying to defeat Germany, which was trying to conquer Europe at the time. But the minute the war was over, Americans were disillusioned by the whole process. Europe was not, in fact, put back together. It did not become a perfect, peaceful utopia. And so it all seemed like it was a failure. And so this pattern repeats itself again and again. The second Iraq war was very popular when

Americans went into it. I think that was partly because of fears stemming from 9-11, which had lowered American tolerance for various threats around the world. It was an overwhelming vote in the Congress and the polls were highly supportive, and it was only when the war took a bad turn that Americans then decided that not only were they opposed to it, but they wanted to know who'd gotten them into it in the first place. What do you see as America's greatest successes in intervention and greatest failures? Well, the greatest successes are really, Germany, Japan, and Korea. Those governments became democratic. They became economically prosperous and successful, but also to take off the chessboard, so to speak, aggressive powers that were responsible for

numerous wars. I mean, Germany fought a war against France every 40 years or so. They fought three times between 1870 and 1945. And to take Germany off the table as a potential aggressor had a hugely beneficial impact on Europe as a whole because it allowed the integration of the German economy, was the most powerful economy in Europe and basically was the key to establishing the long and successful peace in Europe. There's no greater success in history than the peace that has been kept in Europe since 1945. And I think you could say the same thing about Japan in its region. Japan had become a serial aggressor in the region and was clearly seeking hegemony in the region until it was defeated. And since then, I think it has largely been an overwhelmingly beneficial

power in the region from an economic point of view. And the same, I think, can be said of Korea. So those are tremendously successful examples of intervention. The first Gulf War was a success insofar as it reversed an act of aggression in the region. Saddam Hussein was a serious threat. And so I think stopping him made an important difference to the region. But again, these are not unmixed results. I wouldn't want to overstate the degree of success. In general, the keeping of a relative balance of power in the world and not letting any particular country become so powerful that it can disrupt that order, that has been the overall success. Rather than looking at any particular policy here or there, it's the big picture success that I think people need to

focus on and maybe even have lost sight of. Because people are so disillusioned with some of the recent interventions. That's certainly part of it, but I would say from my point of the bigger part of it is how much more beneficial the American world order has been to them than the alternative is, in fact, you're going to be. When people started talking about the end of history after 1989, saying we've really moved into a new era, I think that was an understandable response to the end of the Cold War, but it was really quite misleading ultimately.

There is no escape from great power politics and geopolitics and all those things that have always wound up dragging us back into conflicts. What do you think America's role in the world should be today? I don't know what to say about today, quite honestly, because I think that we have now destroyed the American liberal world order. I think we have broken the essential bonds of trust with our allies, which made that order possible. It really was quite an extraordinary thing

when great powers like Britain, France, and Germany and Japan ceded their great power status and put themselves completely under the security umbrella of the United States. That trust is a very fragile thing, and I think now it's been broken. And so under these circumstances, the only thing I could recommend for the United States for the moment is do no harm, but I would be spitting into the wind by saying that because I think we're now doing immense harm in all directions, and particularly to the liberal world order that the United States had supported, I think that order is unfortunately gone. And so charting the new path in a new kind of world is going to be extremely complicated and extremely dangerous. Me too. Me too. We have not yet

talked about China. Where is China gaining influence around the world? And what is China's leader Xi Jinping doing that's working? What's working is allowing the United States to mess up. There's a wonderful quotation from Napoleon when he said that when you, your enemy is making a mistake, don't interrupt him. China and Xi Jinping have been pursuing that policy. The United States has so alienated the rest of the world and now has demonstrated its weakness in a critical confrontation with a much weaker power, Iran, that China can, in some respects, just sit there and wait for the world to come to it. If the United States is ceasing to be the kind of superpower that it was in the past, then others will look increasingly to China,

both for protection, also they've already looked at China for financial support. And so China's influence in the Middle East and Persian Gulf is going to increase because now Iran is going to become the dominant power in that region. And China is a close ally of Iran. And we're always seeing that cooperation in the sense that Chinese oil shipments do get through the Strait of Ormuz with Iran's permission. And I think that's a harbinger of the future. What is Russia's Putin and China's Xi Jinping?

understand about America and American weakness that Americans don't? I don't know that they have understood anything about America's weakness in particular, because I don't think they have assumed America's weakness until very recently. The Chinese periodically decide that America's about to be in decline. I think that's part of their worldview in some respects. So they keep going back and forth. Their number one goal has not been facilitating American decline. It's been breaking up the American world order.

That remains their goal. And I think they do see now with the Iran war that America may be even weaker than they thought. I mean, for the United States to run down to perilously low levels of critical missile and anti-missile defense interceptors, having fought a war with what is at most a middle-level power, raises serious questions about whether the United States would be able to take on a Chinese or Russian conflict, given those shortages of those weapons. And that's a new development. I don't know how much it's going to play into Russian and Chinese calculations, but it certainly is going to play into them to some extent.

If Americans understood our own history the way you do, what's the biggest thing we'd see differently about ourselves? I think we would recognize that we are not a people that just sits here minding our own business. We clearly are involved in the rest of the world for all kinds of reasons, commercially, if for no other reason, but also in terms of our feelings about the world, our belief about the world. You know, Americans did not wait in the 1930s for a direct threat to the American homeland before they started taking action against Nazi Germany and Italy and Japan because they decided

they didn't want to live in a world where those countries were running rampant and basically in control of Europe and Asia. It was not so much a direct threat to our country. security. And I think that that is just a characteristic of Americans that they've demonstrated time and again. They are not indifferent to what happens in the world. They are not truly isolationist, and they do wind up getting involved. I think if Americans understood that, they would ideally have a steadier level of involvement rather than the oscillation. A steady low level of involvement is sometimes more effective than completely withdrawing and then rushing back in again, you know.

My example of that would be after World War I, according to the Versailles Treaty, the United States was supposed to keep a few thousand troops in the Rhineland as guarantee of security for both France and Germany. That was a pretty low expenditure. It didn't mean fighting a war. But because we pulled out of the Versailles Treaty, we pulled out those troops ultimately by 1923. And the result was a steady breakdown of the European order. And so I think there are times when if we just were steady at a low level, we would do back. better than this kind of constant backing and forthing. But that is very much a product of our democracy. Bob, what are the three takeaways you'd like to leave the audience with today? One is, among the many myths that are out there is that there is such a thing as Americans fighting wars of necessity versus wars of choice. I would argue that America has never fought a war of necessity, that every war in the United States has ever fought has been a war of choice. And the

question is, was it the right choice or the wrong choice? I think it's important that people not think that there's ever a moment when war is necessary and actually take responsibility for the choices that we make. The second thing I would say is, while Americans are constantly looking for venal motives in American foreign policy, and those certainly exist, the idea that it's just commercial imperialism that ever drove American foreign policy, I think, is mistaken. I think it's much more complicated than that. And I think that in fact it was more our intention to try to do good that led us into a series of interventions which probably did more harm than good. It continues to lead us into conflicts that we may not be ready for. My third takeaway is that there's no such

thing as a natural state of peace in the world. They are usually constructed. They require defending. They require support. And the same goes true for liberal democracy. It is a not the natural end point of human evolution. It is very rare and fragile. And I've often used the metaphor of a garden that has to be constantly tended to so that the weeds and the vines don't strangle it. And I think that's my image of what you need for a decent world order. But unfortunately, I think we have already squandered that opportunity. Bob, thank you. This has been wonderful. And thank you for all your research and your work on American foreign policy to understand it better. Well, thank you. I appreciate it. If you're enjoying the podcast,

and I really hope you are, please review us on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It really helps get the word out. If you're interested, you can also sign up for the Three Takeaways newsletter at three takeaways.com, where you can also listen to previous episodes. You can also follow us on LinkedIn, X, Instagram, and Facebook. I'm Lynn Toman, and this is Three Takeaways. Thanks for listening.