WASHINGTON - Robert Kagan, a noted authority on the dynamics of power in the post-Cold War world, will deliver the keynote address at the NPCA's 2004 Annual Meeting, scheduled for Oct. 24-26 in Chicago, the association announced.

Kagan is senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and director of the Endowment's U.S. Leadership Project. He writes extensively on domestic politics and U.S. strategy and diplomacy, including foreign policy, military strategy and the defense budget.

Kagan's latest book, "Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order," analyzes the historical causes of the gulf between European and American perspectives on power and the forces that seem to be widening the rift inexorably, the NPCA said. The book has made the best-seller lists of the Washington Post and New York Times.

Kagan writes a monthly column in the Washington Post and is a contributing editor to the Weekly Standard and the New Republic. He is the author of "Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977-1990," and co-editor, with William Kristol, of "Present Dangers: Crisis and Opportunity in American Foreign and Defense Policy."

Plans for the NPCA Annual Meeting include forum sessions on creating and sustaining business growth and e-business and the political outlook for the 2004 general election.

More information on the Annual Meeting is available from the NPCA's Dorothy Brawner, phone 202/462.6272, e-mail dbrawner@ paint.org, or from the NPCA website located at www.paint.org/meetings/ annualreg.htm.