The National Interest
Encyclopedia
The National Interest (NI) is a prominent conservative American
bi-monthly international affairs
magazine
published by the Center for the National Interest
. It was founded in 1985 by Irving Kristol
and until 2001 was edited by Anglo-Australian Owen Harries. The National Interest is not restricted in content to “foreign policy
” in the narrow, technical sense but attempts to pay attention to broad ideas and the way in which cultural and social differences, technological innovations, history, and religion impact the behavior of states.
controversial article, "The End of History?
." In covering the fall of the Soviet Union, The National Interests featured contributors included not only specialists like Richard Pipes
and Robert Conquest
but also Nobel Prize
-winning novelist Saul Bellow
. The magazine was one of the first to devote attention to questions such as geoeconomics
and has explored concepts such as "superpower fatigue" and "developmental realism."
In 2005, 10 of the 14 members of NIs editorial board, led by Fukuyama and upset by the Nixon Center's changes to editorial policy, decided to leave the journal and create a rival publication, The American Interest
. This split was seen as representative of a larger schism among Republicans and the end of an uneasy alliance between neoconservatives and realists that had characterized the Reagan years. In recent issues articles broadly critical of the direction of foreign policy under the George W. Bush
administration have been published by senior members of the old Republican party establishment, most recently Brent Scowcroft
and James Baker
.
While The National Interest still has contributions from neoconservative and liberal authors, it articulated growing opposition to a number of Bush Administration policies, including skepticism about democracy promotion and the feasibility of taking military action against Iran; in recent years, NI has even published some right-wing libertarian views regarding freedom, the role of the executive, and foreign intervention.
The magazine tends to support continued engagement with China and Russia despite non-democratic practices at home and challenges to U.S. policies abroad. Articles by a number of long-time conservative thinkers—Robert Tucker and Graham Fuller
among them—have questioned the conservative credentials of the administration, and the magazine has tended to gravitate toward positions taken by Senator Chuck Hagel
, to a lesser extent Richard Lugar (with the exception of his stance on policy toward Russia) and John Warner
.
, Financial Times
, The Australian
, International Herald Tribune
, Shin Dong-A, The Spectator
, and Austria's
Europäische Rundschau, as well as on online sites such as the Russian Inosmi.ru.
In 2006, the magazine adopted a new, glossier cover format, based around a central image and tagline, making it look more like the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
or Foreign Policy
than Foreign Affairs
or Commentary
, which have only text on their covers. The magazine also added daily online content to its website.
. The magazine's honorary chairman is Henry Kissinger
. Dimitri K. Simes is the Publisher, while Paul J. Saunders is the Associate Publisher.
Among the members of the magazine's advisory council are Morton Abramowitz, Graham Allison
, John Mearsheimer
, Daniel Pipes
, and Dov Zakheim
. The contributing editors are Andrew J. Bacevich, Ian Bremmer
, Ted Galen Carpenter, Bruce Hoffman
, John Hulsman
, Andrew Kohut
, and Ray Takeyh
. Anatol Lieven
, Daniel Drezner
, former editor Nikolas Gvosdev
, Jacob Heilbrunn
, and Ximena Ortiz serve as senior editors.
Alexis Debat
resigned as a contributing editor in September 2007 after revelations appeared in the French and American press that he had fabricated interviews with leading U.S. political figures for the French magazine Politique Internationale
.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
bi-monthly international affairs
International relations
International relations is the study of relationships between countries, including the roles of states, inter-governmental organizations , international nongovernmental organizations , non-governmental organizations and multinational corporations...
magazine
Magazine
Magazines, periodicals, glossies or serials are publications, generally published on a regular schedule, containing a variety of articles. They are generally financed by advertising, by a purchase price, by pre-paid magazine subscriptions, or all three...
published by the Center for the National Interest
Center for the National Interest
The Nixon Center was a Washington, D.C.-based public policy think tank. On March 9, 2011 it was renamed The Center for the National Interest....
. It was founded in 1985 by Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol
Irving Kristol was an American columnist, journalist, and writer who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism"...
and until 2001 was edited by Anglo-Australian Owen Harries. The National Interest is not restricted in content to “foreign policy
Foreign policy
A country's foreign policy, also called the foreign relations policy, consists of self-interest strategies chosen by the state to safeguard its national interests and to achieve its goals within international relations milieu. The approaches are strategically employed to interact with other countries...
” in the narrow, technical sense but attempts to pay attention to broad ideas and the way in which cultural and social differences, technological innovations, history, and religion impact the behavior of states.
Positions
In 1989, NI published Francis Fukuyama'sFrancis Fukuyama
Yoshihiro Francis Fukuyama is an American political scientist, political economist, and author. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law at Stanford. Before that he served as a professor and director of the International Development program at the School of...
controversial article, "The End of History?
The End of History and the Last Man
The End of History and the Last Man is a 1992 book by Francis Fukuyama, expanding on his 1989 essay "The End of History?", published in the international affairs journal The National Interest...
." In covering the fall of the Soviet Union, The National Interests featured contributors included not only specialists like Richard Pipes
Richard Pipes
Richard Edgar Pipes is an American academic who specializes in Russian history, particularly with respect to the Soviet Union...
and Robert Conquest
Robert Conquest
George Robert Ackworth Conquest CMG is a British historian who became a well-known writer and researcher on the Soviet Union with the publication in 1968 of The Great Terror, an account of Stalin's purges of the 1930s...
but also Nobel Prize
Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prizes are annual international awards bestowed by Scandinavian committees in recognition of cultural and scientific advances. The will of the Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, the inventor of dynamite, established the prizes in 1895...
-winning novelist Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow
Saul Bellow was a Canadian-born Jewish American writer. For his literary contributions, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts...
. The magazine was one of the first to devote attention to questions such as geoeconomics
Geoeconomics
Broadly, geoeconomics is the study of the spatial, temporal, and political aspects of economies and resources. The formation of geoeconomics as a branch of geopolitics is often attributed to Edward Luttwak, an American economist and consultant, and Pascal Lorot, a French economist and political...
and has explored concepts such as "superpower fatigue" and "developmental realism."
In 2005, 10 of the 14 members of NIs editorial board, led by Fukuyama and upset by the Nixon Center's changes to editorial policy, decided to leave the journal and create a rival publication, The American Interest
The American Interest
The American Interest is a non-partisan bimonthly magazine focusing primarily on foreign policy, international affairs, global economics, and matters related to the military...
. This split was seen as representative of a larger schism among Republicans and the end of an uneasy alliance between neoconservatives and realists that had characterized the Reagan years. In recent issues articles broadly critical of the direction of foreign policy under the George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
administration have been published by senior members of the old Republican party establishment, most recently Brent Scowcroft
Brent Scowcroft
Brent Scowcroft, KBE was the United States National Security Advisor under Presidents Gerald Ford and George H. W. Bush and a Lieutenant General in the United States Air Force. He also served as Military Assistant to President Richard Nixon and as Deputy Assistant to the President for National...
and James Baker
James Baker
James Addison Baker, III is an American attorney, politician and political advisor.Baker served as the Chief of Staff in President Ronald Reagan's first administration and in the final year of the administration of President George H. W. Bush...
.
While The National Interest still has contributions from neoconservative and liberal authors, it articulated growing opposition to a number of Bush Administration policies, including skepticism about democracy promotion and the feasibility of taking military action against Iran; in recent years, NI has even published some right-wing libertarian views regarding freedom, the role of the executive, and foreign intervention.
The magazine tends to support continued engagement with China and Russia despite non-democratic practices at home and challenges to U.S. policies abroad. Articles by a number of long-time conservative thinkers—Robert Tucker and Graham Fuller
Graham Fuller
Graham E. Fuller is an American author and political analyst, specializing in Islamic extremism. Formerly vice-chair of the National Intelligence Council, he also served as Station Chief in Kabul for the CIA...
among them—have questioned the conservative credentials of the administration, and the magazine has tended to gravitate toward positions taken by Senator Chuck Hagel
Chuck Hagel
Charles Timothy "Chuck" Hagel is a former United States Senator from Nebraska. A member of the Republican Party, he was first elected in 1996 and was reelected in 2002...
, to a lesser extent Richard Lugar (with the exception of his stance on policy toward Russia) and John Warner
John Warner
John William Warner, KBE is an American Republican politician who served as Secretary of the Navy from 1972 to 1974 and as a five-term United States Senator from Virginia from January 2, 1979, to January 3, 2009...
.
Readership and design
NI has an international readership, and excerpts from its articles have been published in the New York TimesThe New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
, Financial Times
Financial Times
The Financial Times is an international business newspaper. It is a morning daily newspaper published in London and printed in 24 cities around the world. Its primary rival is the Wall Street Journal, published in New York City....
, The Australian
The Australian
The Australian is a broadsheet newspaper published in Australia from Monday to Saturday each week since 14 July 1964. The editor in chief is Chris Mitchell, the editor is Clive Mathieson and the 'editor-at-large' is Paul Kelly....
, International Herald Tribune
International Herald Tribune
The International Herald Tribune is a widely read English language international newspaper. It combines the resources of its own correspondents with those of The New York Times and is printed at 38 sites throughout the world, for sale in more than 160 countries and territories...
, Shin Dong-A, The Spectator
The Spectator
The Spectator is a weekly British magazine first published on 6 July 1828. It is currently owned by David and Frederick Barclay, who also owns The Daily Telegraph. Its principal subject areas are politics and culture...
, and Austria's
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
Europäische Rundschau, as well as on online sites such as the Russian Inosmi.ru.
In 2006, the magazine adopted a new, glossier cover format, based around a central image and tagline, making it look more like the Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
Georgetown Journal of International Affairs
The Georgetown Journal of International Affairs is a semi-annual foreign policy magazine published by the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. The magazine takes a holistic approach to international relations, giving voice to leading academics,...
or Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy
Foreign Policy is a bimonthly American magazine founded in 1970 by Samuel P. Huntington and Warren Demian Manshel.Originally, the magazine was a quarterly...
than Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs
Foreign Affairs is an American magazine and website on international relations and U.S. foreign policy published since 1922 by the Council on Foreign Relations six times annually...
or Commentary
Commentary (magazine)
Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...
, which have only text on their covers. The magazine also added daily online content to its website.
Editors
Since September 2011, the magazine's editor is Robert W. Merry. The Advisory Council is chaired by James SchlesingerJames R. Schlesinger
Dr. James Rodney Schlesinger is an American politician. He is best known for serving as Secretary of Defense from 1973 to 1975 under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford...
. The magazine's honorary chairman is Henry Kissinger
Henry Kissinger
Heinz Alfred "Henry" Kissinger is a German-born American academic, political scientist, diplomat, and businessman. He is a recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. He served as National Security Advisor and later concurrently as Secretary of State in the administrations of Presidents Richard Nixon and...
. Dimitri K. Simes is the Publisher, while Paul J. Saunders is the Associate Publisher.
Among the members of the magazine's advisory council are Morton Abramowitz, Graham Allison
Graham T. Allison
Graham Tillett Allison, Jr. is an American political scientist and professor at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. He is renowned for his contribution in the late 1960s and early 1970s to the bureaucratic analysis of decision making, especially during times of crisis...
, John Mearsheimer
John Mearsheimer
John J. Mearsheimer is an American professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago. He is an international relations theorist. Known for his book on offensive realism, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, more recently Mearsheimer has attracted attention for co-authoring and publishing...
, Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes
Daniel Pipes is an American historian, writer, and political commentator. He is the founder and director of the Middle East Forum and its Campus Watch project, and editor of its Middle East Quarterly journal...
, and Dov Zakheim
Dov Zakheim
Dov S. Zakheim is a former official of the United States government.Born December 18, 1948 in Brooklyn, New York, Zakheim earned his bachelor's degree in government from Columbia University in 1970, and his doctorate in economics and politics at St. Antony's College, Oxford University...
. The contributing editors are Andrew J. Bacevich, Ian Bremmer
Ian Bremmer
Ian Bremmer is an American political scientist specializing in US foreign policy, states in transition, and global political risk. He is the president and founder of Eurasia Group, a leading global political risk research and consulting firm...
, Ted Galen Carpenter, Bruce Hoffman
Bruce Hoffman
Bruce Hoffman is the Director of the Center for Peace and Security Studies at Georgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service and a specialist in the study of terrorism and counter-insurgency...
, John Hulsman
John Hulsman
John C. Hulsman, PhD is an American-born professor and foreign policy expert. He currently lives in Europe.He writes for the Aspen Institute of Italy and the Hague Centre for Strategic Studies. He used to write for the Heritage Foundation and he was a Senior Research Fellow in International...
, Andrew Kohut
Andrew Kohut
Andrew Kohut is an American pollster. Kohut currently serves as the president of Pew Research Center and director of two of Pew's sub-projects: Pew Research Center for the People and the Press and Pew Global Attitudes Project...
, and Ray Takeyh
Ray Takeyh
Ray Takeyh, PhD is an Iranian-American Middle East scholar, former United States Department of State official, and a Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He is also an Adjunct Professor at Georgetown University....
. Anatol Lieven
Anatol Lieven
Peter Paul Anatol Lieven is a British author, journalist, and policy analyst. He is presently a Senior Researcher at the New America Foundation, where he focuses on US global strategy and the War on Terrorism, Associated Scholar of the Transnational Crisis Project, Chair of International...
, Daniel Drezner
Daniel Drezner
Daniel W. Drezner is currently a professor of international politics at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, the author of several books, the author of many Op-Ed pieces in major publications, a blogger, and a commentator.In 2005, he was denied tenure by the University of...
, former editor Nikolas Gvosdev
Nikolas Gvosdev
Nikolas N. Gvosdev is the former Editor of the bi-monthly foreign policy journal, The National Interest. He was appointed to the post in 2005, after having been the journal's Executive Editor and the founding Editor of the journal's now-defunct separate web edition, In The National Interest...
, Jacob Heilbrunn
Jacob Heilbrunn
Jacob Heilbrunn is an American writer who has written for Commentary, the Atlantic Monthly, and World Affairs, among other publications. He is a senior editor at The National Interest. His book They Knew They Were Right: The Rise of the Neocons explores the neoconservative movement and its...
, and Ximena Ortiz serve as senior editors.
Alexis Debat
Alexis Debat
Alexis Debat is a French commentator on terrorism and national security issues, based in Washington D.C., USA. He worked as a reporter, consultant, and source for ABC News for six years, as a senior fellow at the Nixon Center, and was a contributing editor to The National Interest...
resigned as a contributing editor in September 2007 after revelations appeared in the French and American press that he had fabricated interviews with leading U.S. political figures for the French magazine Politique Internationale
Politique internationale
Politique internationale is a French political affairs journal, dedicated in particular to international relations. Over the past 32 years, Politique Internationale has been recognized as one of the influential French-language publications addressing international issues...
.
See also
- The American InterestThe American InterestThe American Interest is a non-partisan bimonthly magazine focusing primarily on foreign policy, international affairs, global economics, and matters related to the military...
, founded in 2005 by former members of the NI editorial board - National AffairsNational AffairsNational Affairs, Inc. is a U.S. organization which publishes a public-policy quarterly by the same name. It began publishing National Affairs in September 2009, describing itself as "a quarterly journal of essays about domestic policy, political economy, society, culture, and political thought...