The Sasakawa Peace Foundation has invited Dr. Robert Kagan, Senior Associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to speak on the theme of 'The Return of History' on March 30, 2010. Dr. Kagan wrote, in 2003, a book entitled ‘Of Paradise and Power - America and Europe in the New World Order', which has since become a national and international bestseller. additionally, he served as a foreign policy advisor to John McCain, the Republican Party's nominee for President of the United States, in the 2008 election.

Dr. Kagan holds the position that, contrary to many predictions made at the end of the Cold War, the present world order has come to be characterized by competition for geopolitical advantage between and increasing divergence among the major world powers, paralleling the situation in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The rise of two massive autocracies -China and Russia- has also put democracy on the defensive worldwide.

In the course of his lecture, Dr. Kagan will illustrate factors that will define the future international order, as well as the role of US-Japan relations, in an era when new nations are emerging and power struggles are continuing apace.

Details of the event are as follows: