About this episode
This episode discusses Robert Kagan's admission of defeat regarding the Iran crisis and its implications for American foreign policy.
In this episode of the Explaining History Podcast, we examine a remarkable moment: the leading architect of the Project for a New American Century, Robert Kagan, admitting that the Iran crisis is a catastrophe of unprecedented proportions – and that America has effectively lost the war.** The Project for a New American Century (PNAC) was the neoconservative think tank that shaped the foreign policy of the George W. Bush administration. Its vision was a unilateral American empire, able to fight and win two major wars simultaneously, with Iran at the top of its enemies list. But now, writing in *The Atlantic* – the house magazine of liberal interventionism – Kagan has declared that the Gulf War is unwinnable, that Iran has seized control of the Straits of Hormuz, and that the post-war American order is finished. What does it mean when the neocons themselves admit defeat? Kagan acknowledges that Iran has turned the straits from a passageway of free navigation into the world's most significant global pinch point. Iran will now decide which regimes can access Gulf shipping and which will be economically starved. America cannot project power into the Gulf; it has presented itself as an…
People in this episode
Host: Nick Shepley
Topics covered
- neoconservatism
- foreign policy
- Iran crisis
- military strategy
- American empire
- geopolitics
Keywords
- neoconservatives
- Iran
- Gulf War
- Robert Kagan
- Project for a New American Century
- foreign policy
- Straits of Hormuz
- military strategy
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Project for a New American Century, The Atlantic
Places: Iran, Straits of Hormuz, America, Taiwan, Japan, Gulf
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