What an admission. “The threat of terrorism” from the Middle East, an influential US columnist wrote a fortnight ago, “was a consequence of American involvement, not the reason for it”. If the US had “not been deeply and consistently involved in the Muslim world since the 1940s,” he added, “Islamic militants would have little interest in attacking” it. He went further still: “Contrary to much mythology, they have hated us not so much because of ‘who we are’ but because of where we are.”

After a quarter of a century of disastrous US wars in the Middle East, that may sound like common sense. But this is Robert Kagan, one of the godfathers of neoconservatism, the creed that zealously championed military adventurism at the height of the era of US exceptionalism. In the 1990s, he repeatedly agitated for war with Iraq, a demand that became a rallying cry after 9/11, when he insisted that “the Iraqi threat is enormous”.

To be clear, Kagan is not rejecting US hegemony so much as mourning its decline. His startling admission is buried in an article lamenting the Iran war as a strategic disaster, straining western alliances and aiding Russia and China. The journey........

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