It is not a common phrase in the mouth of a conservative American intellectual. But Robert Kagan, historian and one of the leaders of neoconservative thought in foreign policy, he said it bluntly in an interview with: “As long as Trump is in power, the United States is your enemy”in . No, these are not the words of a progressive thinker.
Kagan is not a fringe analyst. He was one of the influential voices of liberal interventionism in the decades after the Cold War and a firm defender of the international order led by Washington after 1945.
That is why his rhetorical turn has weight: he does not speak from the anti-American left, but from the conservative tradition that defended the liberal hegemony of the United States for years.
“A potential dictator”: his diagnosis of Trump
In the conversation with the German weekly, Kagan maintains that The US already has “one foot in the dictatorship” and defines Donald Trump. In his opinion, the threat is not only institutional, but structural: he denounces the control of the Department of Justice, the FBI or the CIA, and warns about political use of federal agencies.
He also mentions by name key figures in the Republican environment, such as Stephen Miller y Russell Voughtwhom he accuses of actively undermining liberal democracy.
Kagan is had warned in 2016 that American fascism would not arrive in uniformsbut with a populist and media leader. In the interview he insists that his diagnosis is not exaggerated, but rather consistent with a drift that — according to him — seeks to dismantle the liberal order built after the Second World War.
The end of the American umbrella and the German problem
The most delicate part of the interview comes when he talks about Europe. For Kagan, The post-1945 international system was a historical anomaly: old powers such as Germany, France and the United Kingdom gave up competing as empires, while the US acted as a guarantor of security through NATO and the liberal architecture.
If Washington withdraws—or stops offering credible guarantees—Europe faces a dilemma: either submit to the spheres of influence of great powers such as Russia or China, or rearm.
Kagan formulates it almost as a law of geopolitical physics. And he warns of something that sounds uncomfortable in Germany: the return of the so-called German problem. That is to say, a Germany too big and powerful for the European balancea central issue from 1871 to 1945.
When asked whether Germany should even consider a nuclear capability, he responds that it needs a “normal” capability to take on a nuclear power like Russia, although he acknowledges that would make countries like Poland nervous.
Multipolar world: more dangerous than the Cold War?
Another axis of his argument is historical. Kagan argues that the period after 1945 was, comparatively, more stable than almost any previous period in the last two centuries. Remember that between Germany and France there were three wars in 70 years and that the continent experienced two world wars before the liberal order led by the US.
In his vision, A multipolar world—with the US, China and Russia competing without a dominant arbiter—is more unstable by definition.. Not because the Cold War was idyllic, but because the balance of power without clear rules often leads to conflict.
Trump, Europe and support for the populist right
Kagan sees the Trump administration’s support for European nationalist forces as especially dangerous. He explicitly cites parties like the German AfD or figures like Marine Le Pen or Nigel Farage.
In his analysis, it is not just about American domestic politics, but about a broader strategy that erodes the European project from within. Hence his most controversial phrase: that as long as Trump is in power, Europe cannot count on the US as a reliable ally.
A disturbing electoral scenario
The interview also enters domestic territory: Kagan speculates on the possibility of mechanisms such as the Insurrection Act of 1807 being used in a context of riots prior to legislative elections, and raises scenarios of institutional tension .
Robert Kagan is not an anti-establishment activist, but a figure of the establishment conservative intellectual who for decades defended American global leadership. That someone with that profile talks about potential dictatorship, European rearmament and transatlantic rupture reflects the extent to which the debate on the future of the alliance between the US and Europe has ceased to be academic and has become strategic.
