Robert Kagan spoke before a small DC group last night, a liberal group, heavily laced with retired diplomats. It was a difficult crowd for him–in his jocular warm-up, he dubbed himself “a human sacrifice” –but generally he did well. Kagan was one of the major cheerleaders for the Iraq war, but takes pains to separate himself from some of the more extreme neocons. He’s an attractive speaker and smart guy, and before a crowd like this everyone is a little too thrilled he doesn’t come across like Norman Pod or Michael Ledeen. He very explicitly said he would defend his own writings, but not those of other neocons, including pieces that appear in the Weekly Standard.

Kagan is McCain’s chief foreign policy adviser, and the likely NSC adviser to a McCain administration. So his words bear watching.

He stressed the necessity of the United States taking care to listen to and try to accommodate other country’s views and interests. When I asked if this applied to Israel-Palestine, which Arabs and Muslims seem to care about a lot, he ducked. The problem seemed insoluble to him.

The most alarming thing he said in a generally fluid presentation concerned Georgia and the Ukraine. “Would the United States really want to live in a world where Russia held sway over Georgia and the Ukraine?” (I’m not sure the quote is verbatim, but the “really want to live in a world” is.) Kagan said this in the context of discussing potential “flashpoints” with other great powers, Russia and China.

I don’t know. I’ve lived most of my life in a world where Russia not only maintained a predominant interest in those states, but actually controlled them, as part of the Soviet Union. I have to confess it didn’t bother me too much. Would a McCain administration really start a war over the status of Georgia? Stalin’s birthplace? That’s a pretty alarming thought.