Everything Is at Stake The Crisis of Our Lifetime

A chilling and clear-eyed warning about the threats to our democracy posed by the increasing radicalization of the Republican Party, from a leading conservative historian and intellectual

Since 2017, and especially after the January 6 insurrection, many Americans have feared a constitutional crisis that would paralyze the institutions central to our nation’s democracy. Robert Kagan is among them. As he argues, Donald Trump will run again for president in 2024; if he loses, he will not accept the outcome. The amateurish “Stop the Steal” efforts of 2020 will be replaced by a more organized and powerful effort to rig the election in his favor. And if Trump wins, or maneuvers his way into office, there is no telling what he might do in a second term.

In Everything Is at Stake, Kagan sounds a dire warning, diving deeper than the op-eds and think pieces to explore the historical forces that have brought us to this moment—from the political compromises that led to slavery, Reconstruction, and Jim Crow; to “America First” and the latent fascism of the 1930s; and to modern conservatism’s complicated attraction to autocratic leaders such as Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orbán. Above all, he explores previous crisis moments in American history and asks whether the rise of Trumpism is a temporary phenomenon constructed entirely around a single individual, or whether it is a larger political force that is here to stay.

This is an elegant and deeply informed synthesis of history and politics and ideas that sheds important new light on this crucial moment.

ROBERT KAGAN is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a columnist for The Washington Post. He is the author of The Return of History and the End of Dreams, Dangerous Nation, Of Paradise and Power, and A Twilight Struggle. He served in the U.S. State Department from 1984 to 1988. He lives in Virginia.