Robert Kagan: We’re Transitioning to a Post-American World
The Bulwark Podcast
The Bulwark
4.6 • 11.6K Ratings
🗓️ 3 April 2026
⏱️ 57 minutes
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Summary
The pro-Iran war hawks keep crowing about how U.S. military prowess is supposedly striking fear in Beijing and Moscow. But what’s really happening is that Trump is doing exactly what China and Russia hoped he’d do. Beijing has wanted the U.S. out of the Western Pacific and Putin, of course, wants NATO wrecked. Our major allies are scrambling to form new economic and military relationships, and America is likely to be very lonely in the world with only a few stooges to count as friends. This is what ending our role as a global superpower would look like. Plus, the U.S. is unable to win the war at a cost that is acceptable to Americans, Trump is taking a cue from Putin by bombing civilian infrastructure, and blaming NATO for not being willing to fight for the Strait of Hormuz is absurd when the world’s most powerful navy doesn't seem to want to do it either.
Bob Kagan joins Tim Miller for the holiday weekend pod.
show notes
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to the Buller podcast. I'm your host, Tim Miller. |
| 0:15.6 | Delighted to welcome back to the show, contributing writer at the Atlantic and senior fellow at Brookings. |
| 0:20.5 | His most recent book |
| 0:21.2 | is Rebellion, How Anti-Liberalism is tearing America apart again. It is Bob Kagan. How are you? I'm great. Tim. How are you? I'm doing well. It sounds like Bob missed my live stream last night on YouTube where I bimbo-fied myself. And so if you guys also missed that, it might be something to take a look at. I thought I looked pretty good. |
| 0:38.9 | I understand where Brian's coming from |
| 0:40.7 | now, what the appeal is. |
| 0:42.1 | And so we'll just kind of leave that there. I want to start a little behind the scenes. I don't |
| 0:47.7 | think this should embarrass you because it's kind of glazing you. But last June, when we engaged in the 12-day war, we started bombing the Iranian nuclear facilities. |
| 0:56.9 | You know, some of my neocon muscles were flaring a little bit on the podcast. And I was going, |
| 1:02.2 | okay, you know, I don't really trust Trump. I don't like Trump. But this is just a little, |
| 1:08.7 | you know, just a little kind of mind sweep over the nuclear facilities in Iran. |
| 1:12.7 | Don't hate that. |
| 1:14.1 | And, you know, I was kind of vacillating back and forth on it. |
| 1:16.8 | And some others in our circle were even more supportive of it than that. |
| 1:20.9 | We'll just leave it there. |
| 1:21.9 | And Bob calls me, I'm standing right outside there in my back porch. |
| 1:26.3 | And he's like, don't let these old neocons trick you into thinking this is a good idea. |
| 1:31.8 | Okay. |
| 1:32.6 | This is a disaster. |
| 1:34.8 | We can't predict how bad it is. |
| 1:36.4 | You can't trust Trump. |
| 1:38.1 | And I don't know. |
... |
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