The 2025 Dahrendorf Lecture by Robert Kagan - After Paradise: The US, EU an UK in a disordered world

Reflections from the 2025 Dahrendorf Lecture at St Antony’s College, Oxford

At a time of profound global upheaval, Robert Kagan delivered this year’s Dahrendorf Lecture with a sobering message: the liberal order, painstakingly constructed after the Second World War, is not merely under strain — it is collapsing. Speaking with rare candour and urgency, Kagan did not offer a celebration of past achievements but a eulogy for what he called the “American World Order”. The occasion was not, he admitted, one he would have chosen: “It’s not particularly fun,” he said, “to come here as the American spokesman when my country is descending into dictatorship.”

Kagan, a leading historian and foreign policy commentator, traced the trajectory of the post-war international order from its inception to its apparent unravelling. The order that emerged after 1945 — underwritten by American power and liberal ideals — was not universal, he insisted, but real. Within its boundaries, particularly in the Euro-Atlantic world, relations were largely governed by rules, institutions, and a shared commitment to democracy and economic openness. “It really was,” he said, “a liberal order.”

Crucially, that order rested not only on American might, but on a widespread willingness to accept, or at least tolerate, that might. The U.S., he argued, defied the laws of international relations by becoming a hegemon that much of the world did not resist. Not because it was flawless — it wasn’t — but because it was, relatively speaking, restrained, reluctant, and often motivated by liberal impulses. This was a superpower that did not seek territorial conquest, and that — despite its many contradictions — generally sought to prevent autocratic domination, not impose its own.

But that delicate balance, Kagan warned, is disintegrating. The rise of Trump and the ideological energy of the MAGA movement represent not just a change in leadership but a fundamental break with liberalism. This is not a reversion to isolationism, as in the 1920s, but something more dangerous: a major power actively seeking to dismantle the liberal world order it once led. “We are now faced with an anti-liberal superpower,” he said. “And that changes everything.”

In this new world, Europe finds itself hemmed in — by an aggressive, anti-liberal Russia to the east, and by an ideologically hostile America to the west. The continent, Kagan insisted, must abandon the post-Cold War illusion that liberalism and peace are self-sustaining. “Rearm,” he urged. “You will have to live in a world where force matters again.” The soft language of “strategic autonomy” or “readiness” will no longer suffice. Liberal Europe, he argued, must now do what the United States long did for it: defend the liberal order, materially as well as morally.

In a lively and sometimes tense discussion following the lecture, Kagan was pressed on several fronts. Could liberalism survive in an age of information disorder, disinformation, and digital manipulation? Could Europe realistically shoulder the security burden after decades of reliance on the United States? What of China — was it an ideological adversary like Russia and Trump’s America, or a more pragmatic actor?

Kagan's answers were candid. He did not downplay the difficulty of the road ahead. Liberalism, he reminded the audience, is the exception, not the norm in human history — a brief and fragile experiment, often misunderstood as the natural arc of progress. “After the Roman Empire,” he noted wryly, “people forgot how to make cement.” Liberalism, too, can be forgotten. And in the multipolar world now emerging, ideological clarity will give way to strategic compromise: Europeans may one day need to make uncomfortable deals with illiberal states, including China.

On China, Kagan saw a fundamentally realist actor — less committed to exporting anti-liberal ideology than Russia or MAGA America, but still operating within a global system that is rapidly shedding the constraints of shared values and rules. China, he suggested, may see an opportunity to pose as the more stable and rational power, especially if Trump’s second term becomes as erratic and disruptive as his first.

The most unsettling portion of the conversation, however, concerned the question of whether there could be a “way back” for the United States. Could liberal internationalism be revived after such a rupture? Perhaps, Kagan said, but not easily. Trust, once broken, is hard to regain. Allies may forgive, as they did after America’s isolationism in the 1920s and 30s, but they will not soon forget the vulnerability of having trusted a partner now in the throes of authoritarianism.

Asked whether Europe could do anything to support liberal forces within the U.S., Kagan hesitated. International pressure is unlikely to make a difference, and most world leaders are now hedging their bets. But liberals, he insisted, should at least make their views clear. “If another major democracy were sliding into dictatorship,” he said, “the U.S. would once have led a global campaign to oppose it. That’s not going to happen now.”

Still, even amid the gloom, a faint glimmer of hope remained. Liberalism has endured crises before. It may yet endure again — but only if its defenders recognise that peace, order, and justice are not gifts of progress, but achievements of power, resolve, and sacrifice. If the American-led paradise is gone, Kagan implied, Europe must now decide whether it has the strength and will to build something new.