- Foreign Affairs
Infobox Newspaper
name = Foreign Affairs
type =Bi-monthly Journal
format = Scholarly Journal
foundation = 1922
owners =Council on Foreign Relations
political =
circulation = 200,000
headquarters = New York
editor =James F. Hoge, Jr.
website = [http://www.foreignaffairs.org http://www.foreignaffairs.org]"Foreign Affairs" is an influential American
journal oninternational relations published by theCouncil on Foreign Relations (CFR) six times annually. The CFR is a private-sector group established inNew York City in 1921, with the mission of promoting understanding of foreign policy and America’s role in the world.History
The Council on Foreign Relations was originally composed of 75 members of mainly academic and professional backgrounds. In its first year, the Council sought discourse mainly in meetings at their headquarters in New York City. However the members of the Council wished to seek a wider audience and in 1922 began publishing "Foreign Affairs".
The Council named Professor
Archibald Cary Coolidge ofHarvard University as the journal's first editor. As Coolidge was unwilling to move fromBoston to New York,Hamilton Fish Armstrong a Princeton alumnus and a European correspondent of the "New York Evening Post " (now known as the "New York Post") was appointed as a co-editor and was sent to work in New York to handle the mechanical work of publishing the journal. Armstrong chose the light blue color to be the cover of the journal and had his two sisters, Margeret and Helen, design the logo (the man on the horse on the upper left hand side of each cover - now in the middle) and the lettering respectively.The journal "Foreign Affairs" continued the "
Journal of International Relations " (which ran from 1910 to 1922), which in turn continued the "Journal of Race Development " (which ran from 1911 to 1919) (Weber).Pre-World War II
The lead article in the first issue of "Foreign Affairs" was written by former Secretary of State under
Theodore Roosevelt 's AdministrationElihu Root . In the initial article Root wrote that the United States had become aWorld power and as such that the general population needed to be better informed about international matters.John Foster Dulles , then a lawyer from New York who would later become Secretary of State underDwight D. Eisenhower , also wrote an article in the initial issue of "Foreign Affairs" regarding the difficulties surrounding war reparations placed on Germany after theFirst World War . [ [http://www.foreignaffairs.org/about/history2 History of Foreign Affairs] ]"Foreign Affairs" published a series of articles in 1925 by prominent
African American intellectualW.E.B. DuBois . DuBois, a personal friend of Armstrong, wrote mainly about race issues and imperialism. Although in the early days of publication the journal did not have many female authors, in the late 1930s American journalist for "Time Magazine "Dorothy Thompson would contribute articles. [ [http://www.foreignaffairs.org/about/history3 History of Foreign Affairs] ]Cold War Era
[
right|thumb|George F. Kennan published his doctrine ofcontainment in the July 1947 issue of "Foreign Affairs".]The journal rose to its greatest prominence after
World War II whenforeign relations became central toUnited States politics , and the United States became a powerful actor on the global scene. Several extremely important articles were published in "Foreign Affairs", including the reworking ofGeorge F. Kennan 's "Long Telegram ", which first publicized the doctrine ofcontainment that would form the basis of AmericanCold War policy.Louis Halle, a member of the U.S. Policy Planning Staff, also wrote an influential article in “Foreign Affairs” in 1950. His article, “On a Certain Impatience with Latin America”, created the anticommunist intellectual framework that justified U.S. policy towards Latin America in the
Cold War era. Halle’s article described that the encouragement of democracy in postwar Latin America had ended. He demonstrated disgust over Latin America’s inability to assume autonomy and to become democratic. His rationalization towards Latin America was later used to justify U.S. efforts to overthrow the Communist Guatemalan government. [Schoultz, Lars. (1998). "Beneath the United States: A History of U.S. Policy toward Latin America", London: Harvard University Press, pp. 341-342.]Eleven different Secretaries of State of the U.S.A. have written essays in "Foreign Affairs."
Post-Cold War Era
Since the end of the Cold War, and especially after the
September 11, 2001 attacks , the journal's readership has grown significantly.It was in "Foreign Affairs" that
Samuel P. Huntington published his influential "Clash of Civilizations " article.In the November/December 2003 issue of "Foreign Affairs",
Kenneth Maxwell wrote a review ofPeter Kornbluh 's book "The Pinochet File: A Declassified Dossier on Atrocity and Accountability", which gave rise to a controversy aboutHenry Kissinger 's relationship to the regime of Chilean dictatorAugusto Pinochet and toOperation Condor . Maxwell claims that keyCouncil on Foreign Relations members, acting at Kissinger's behest, put pressure on "Foreign Affairs" editor,James Hoge , to give the last word in a subsequent exchange about the review toWilliam D. Rogers , a close associate of Kissinger's, rather than to Maxwell; this went against established "Foreign Affairs" policy. [ [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56719-2005Feb26.html A Plot Thickens] from theWashington Post ]Then-opposition leader and former Ukrainian Prime Minister
Yulia Tymoshenko caused a stir by publishing an article entitled "Containing Russia" in the May-June 2007 issue of "Foreign Affairs" accusingRussia underVladimir Putin of expansionism and urging the rest of Europe to stand against him;Russia n foreign ministerSergei Lavrov wrote an article in response, but he withdrew it, citing "censorship" from the "Foreign Affairs" editorial board. Tymoshenko's party went on to win the 2007 elections and became Prime Minister once again.The immediate past managing editor of "Foreign Affairs" was
Fareed Zakaria , now the editor of "Newsweek International". The current managing editor isGideon Rose , an expert on international conflict and the Middle East.Book reviews
Since its inception, "Foreign Affairs" has had a fairly long book review section. The section originated after Coolidge asked his colleague at Harvard,
William L. Langer , a historian andWorld War I veteran, to run the section. Langer initially had full control over the section and did the reviews entirely by himself. A month before the reviews were due the office in New York would ship approximately one hundred books to Langer to be reviewed and within approximately two weeks he would return the reviews for the section.By the late 1930s, the review section had been broken down into several subsections. In the magazine's current incarnation (as of April 2006), a few longer reviews, usually written by well-known figures in the field of foreign policy, begin the section, followed by a subsection titled "Recent Books on International Relations" with shorter half-page-long reviews written by eminent academics. The section's final page shows the top fifteen best selling books on U.S. foreign policy and international affairs according to
Barnes and Noble 's online book sales. [ [http://www.foreignaffairs.org/about/history3 History of Foreign Affairs] ]Bibliography
*Weber, Eugen. "Half-Brother to the World" [Review of "A Nation Among Nations: America's Place in World History" by Thomas Bender, Hill and Wang, 2006] , "The American Scholar", Vol. 75, No. 3, (Sum. 2006), pp. 123-126.
References
External links
* [http://www.foreignaffairs.org "Foreign Affairs"] Official Site
* [http://www.cfr.org/ "Council on Foreign Relations"] Official Site
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