Book Launch: The Jungle Grows Back: America and Our Imperiled World

Recent years have brought deeply disturbing developments around the globe. American sentiment seems to be leaning increasingly toward withdrawal in the face of such disarray. In this powerful, urgent book, Robert Kagan elucidates the reasons why American withdrawal would be the worst possible response, based as it is on a fundamental and dangerous misreading of the world. Like a jungle that keeps growing back after being cut down, the world has always been full of dangerous actors who, left unchecked, possess the desire and ability to make things worse. Kagan makes clear how the "realist" impulse to recognize our limitations and focus on our failures misunderstands the essential role America has played for decades in keeping the world's worst instability in check. A true realism, he argues, is based on the understanding that the historical norm has always been toward chaos—that the jungle will grow back, if we let it.

Robert Kagan is a senior fellow with the Project on International Order and Strategy in the Foreign Policy Program at Brookings. He is a contributing columnist at The Washington Post and Politco Magazine has named Kagan one of the "Politico 50," a select group of top "thinkers, doers, and visionaries transforming American politics." Kagan served in the State Department from 1984-1988 as a member of the policy planning staff, as principal speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz, and as deputy for policy in the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. He is a graduate of Yale University and Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government and holds a doctorate in American history from American University.

Please join us on November 5th for this armchair discussion with Robert Kagan to discuss his latest book and its impact on U.S. foreign policy.

This event was made possible through general support from CSIS.