Robert Kagan is a Yale and Harvard graduate,  he is best-known as the author of the international bestseller Of Paradise and Power. Kagan started his career as a foreign policy adviser to American politician Jack Kemp. He then joined the State Department Policy Planning Staff and subsequently the Bureau of Inter-American Affairs. He was also the policy adviser of John McCain, Obama’s main opponent during the 2008 US elections. He is a columnist for the Washington Post and a contributing editor at both The New Republic and Weekly Standard. Considered as one of the leading neo-conservatives in the US, Kagan is a member of the Council on Foreign Relation and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.