I have to admit that when I subscribed to this magazine for the first time about five years ago, I did so out of a sense of duty to educate myself about all of the foreign policy and political things that I wasn't taught in school. It did seem a little dry from the get-go, but now I am a Foreign Affairs junkie, so to speak. Those who contribute articles to this magazine are professors, politicians, heads of state, and other great (and occasionally not-so-great) thinkers of our times. One gets the perspectives of world events from educated individuals from all over the world, not just America, and sometimes the points of view are very different than those of the American media. I also appreciate that Foreign Affairs publishes articles that almost seem to foreshadow news events (they were covering background on Kosovo before newscasters in this country even knew where Kosovo was.) From reading this magazine one can see that very few problems in the world are "overnight" or occur "out of nowhere" but are usually the result of problems and conflicts that have been happening for some time, if only out of the spotlight of the Western mainstream media. The analysis in these articles is deep many articles are over twenty pages long. The reader is left feeling more enlightened and not as if the issue has just been "glossed over." I enjoy reading the Letters to the Editor as well. It is great to see an article rebutted by another area expert who provides his or her insight to the problem at hand. Also,the list of contributors to Letters to the Editor reads like a list of Who's Who in Politics. It is amazing to see the people in government, here and abroad, who read this magazine. Probably more of them should.
I often wonder how Editor James Hoge manages to regularly tap the finest minds in the world for each issue. Certainly, the editorial staff of this outstanding publication is dedicated to the highest standards of excellence as well making sure that Foreign Affairs represents provocative worldwide cutting edge schools of thought.
Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, Russia, France, Mexico or Colombia...you name it, Foreign Affairs examines it in great detail. To this end, there is no hot spot in global affairs that does not considerable academic or journalistic attention. Foreign Affairs will also focus on sensitive issues such as French Anti-Americanism or Bush's Nuclear Follies with clear and concise observations. I cannot think of a mainstream publication in the United States with the courage and vision to cover such important ground.
Bert RuizThe only magazine I read from cover to cover is Foreign Affairs, published by the distinguished bi-partisan Council on Foreign Relations. Ideas and issues presented in each issue are discussed six months later in the news. A recent example of this phenomenon is the publication of Daniel Yergin and Michael Stoppard's The Next Prize, about strategic issues surrounding the future of natural gas as an energy source. The article appeared in late 2003, and since then the concerns raised in the article have reverberated in business publications, energy conferences and Sunday talk shows.
Since my childhood I have thought of Foreign Affairs as an influential publication in leadership circles. Over a quarter century ago, I remember reading that Henry Kissinger promoted Daniel Patrick Moynihan as US Ambassador to the United Nations on the basis of an article he wrote in Foreign Affairs. As the founder of a company dedicated to cultural and business travel to Russia, I need to stay ahead of the knowledge curve with regards to the world, rather than just be informed of events. I find Foreign Affairs to be the single most valuable tool to stay informed about foreign policy, trends in world affairs, and current political thought.
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I've been reading FA since 2001 and have found it to be consistently good. There are only six issues each year, so I have time to read it front to back each time. The articles are more in-depth than something you might read in the Economist or other weekly news magazine. This is not something you read for headlines, but something you read for issues.FA seems to me to be non-partisan. Condi Rice, Chuck Hagel, and Donald Rumsfeld get space to write, but so does Madeline Albright and Samuel Berger.
Recent articles I liked: "How to Counter WMD" by Ashton B. Carter, "How to Stop Nuclear Terror" by Graham Allison, and "The Outsourcing Bogeyman" by Daniel W. Drezner.
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FOREIGN AFFAIRS makes no apology for its antiquated typescript, large print, and generally stodgy appearance. It hardly needs to.It is simply one of the consistently finest sources of foreign policy discussion available from an American (thus *foreign* policy means USA vis-à-vis the world) point of view. The design folks have correctly discerned that toying with appearances could only interfere with a train that rolls just fine as it is.
FA is often the vehicle of choice for American foreign policy officers who have moved on to think tanks and other private sector roles. For example, see the Richard Holbrooke (he of the Dayton Accords) piece entitled 'Liberalism and Foreign Policy' in the most recent (July/August 2006) issue available to this reviewer.
The voice most often heard in FA is decidely that of the Washington establishment, broadly defined. Yet the editors occasionally toss in a dissenting viewpoint like that of Hugo Chávez' Ambassador to the US ('A Benign Revolution: In Defense of Hugo Chávez', July/August 2006) for color.
The writing is well informed and superbly edited. Roundtable discussions on issues of concern are common, as are themed issues. Again from the recent issue, the topic 'The Rise of India' provides space for four essays entitled 'Unshackling the Economy', 'India's Global Strategy', 'America's New Partner?', and 'The Kashmir Conundrum'. FA's genius lies in that the globe's foreign policy experts will have digested these contributions with great care, yet the business traveler on her first trip to India can easily do the same on the first flight of her journey. Such is the quality of FA's editorial work.
Long-time readers often discern an editorial drift to the right or the left, a perception that may owe as much to the changing currents of international affairs and the constantly moving matrix in which any statement must be written and read as to any real shift in the journal's political leanings.
FOREIGN AFFAIRS is a must read for career internationalists, a worthwhile educational tool for those who want to know what America's brightest (thought not always most in touch with facts on the ground) policy makers are thinking, and a diversion for hobbyists whose curiosity regularly yanks them tornado-like out of Kansas.
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