The Iraq war debacle, the relative (to Bush) restraint of the Obama administration, and the 2016 anti-interventionist campaign of Donald Trump may have seemingly discredited the neo-conservative movement and its personalities, but they have come roaring back. This new stage in American foreign policy could be characterized as Kaganism: neither Democrat or Republican, but rather a non-partisan 21st century crusade for “liberalism.” Donald Kagan, the patriarch of Kaganism, followed a similar intellectual trajectory to his colleagues Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz: Marxist academics who transformed into rabid Reaganoid Cold Warriors in response to the Soviet Union’s support for Arab nationalism...
