Foreign Policy
Fall 1998

On Reaching the Elites

By Adam Garfinkle, Executive Editor, The National Interest

 

It would be churlish to claim that we at the National Interest do not undertake special efforts to reach the foreign policymaking and opinion élites. We do undertake such efforts, and I am happy to describe them in brief.

First, we try to attract prestigious individuals to write for us. Fine reputations attract élite interest as well as anything can.

Second, we send pre-publication copies of many, if not most, of our essays to key media opinion makers: editors, columnists, and reporters. Our hope is to be mentioned prominently in the press, so that policymaking élites become persuaded that we are a must-read. We do pretty well with these efforts even though our exertions are modest. Aside from the editor and myself, our staff consists of only three others, so there is a strict limit as to how much we can do.

Third, we have a small annual dinner, one aim of which is to assemble our advisory board together with other interesting people, so as to further our reach and reputation. This past March one of our board members (Henry Kissinger) delivered the opening “provocation.” In their own quiet way, these annual events get us appropriate attention.

That said, we believe that the key to our having influence in policymaking circles is to produce as consistently fine a product as possible. Prestigious individuals will not incline to write for us if we regularly publish the trite, the faddish, or the superficial. Important journalists will not pay attention to our solicitations if we constantly disappoint them. No one of interest will come to our dinners if the real guest of honor—the magazine itself—is not worth honoring. In short, while we do make special efforts to attract élite attention, we see these efforts as supplementary. The magazine must sell itself on merit; its influence is a byproduct of our seeking the highest quality for its own sake.

The editor of the National Interest, Mr Owen Harries, has, as far as I know, never written down his formula for high quality. But he consistently achieves it. I think I can sum up his method—as can anyone who pays close attention to the product—with reference to four principles:

First, seek the right mix of subjects. The National Interest is a broad-shouldered magazine compared with nearly all of its competitors. We run policy-oriented analysis, of course, and historically deep essays as well. (Sometimes, as with a recent lead essay by Robert Tucker on Woodrow Wilson and his advisers, we let our readers make the connection between the history and our contemporary circumstances.) We run “big think” conceptual pieces, too. But unlike our competitors, we also publish often on great figures and their works (lately including Spengler and Hayek, soon to encompass Lord Salisbury). We also run what might be called intellectual obituaries (from Isaiah Berlin to Enoch Powell to Petra Kelley to Jacques Foccart). We publish on poets and novelists, too—including recently Robert Kaplan on Conrad’s Nostromo. (Anyone who thinks that great literature has nothing to tell us about international politics is, well, wrong.)

We don’t mind being a little offbeat sometimes, and we frankly wish to broaden the minds of our readership, to the extent they will let themselves be broadened. Often times, we suspect, the more senior a figure, the more nimble and broadly experienced he or she is liable to be; we thus presume that our “mix” will appeal to such persons.

Second, edit heavily whenever appropriate. We are very invasive editors whenever the need arises. It arises often enough. In our view, literary quality is a wasting asset in American periodical literature, and we are lucky that Mr Harries just happens to be the best editor—literally and literarily—that we have ever seen. We try to make the National Interest an outright pleasure to read. We want it to be an aesthetic as well as an intellectual experience. We don’t fully succeed with every essay and every issue, but we try very hard. We believe this makes a difference and, to us, it is far more important than “page gadgets”—graphic visuals, oversized sentence excerpts, and so forth.

Third, mix reliable authors with new blood, and strive to make the mix reasonably international. Readers like a certain consistency, for careful students “apprentice” themselves to particular authors in whom they repose a certain trust. But they don’t like too much predictability. If you can look at a table of contents page of a quarterly or monthly magazine and from the authors and titles guess the essence of more than three-quarters of the contents, then something is wrong with that magazine. If a serious professional can look at the table of contents and recognize no more than one or two of the authors per issue, something is wrong too.

Same goes for topics. There are some subjects that we make a point of following more closely than others, and readers come to depend on us in that way, too. Civil-military relations has been one of those areas. East Asia has been another. EU and NATO expansion another. We have had rather little to say on Latin America, and not very much on commercial policy. More often than not, readers accept it that choices of this sort are made. And if not they are free to look elsewhere.

Fourth, establish not a “party line” but a consistent tone. At the National Interest this means that we often publish essays with which we do not fully agree, because we want a certain subject aired. But we do so within a certain framework of first principles. We are conservative, not strictly speaking by ideology or by habit, but rather by temperament. We are skeptical of claims to revolutionary change in this or that sphere. We frown on all forms of utopianism, which belongs in the realm of religion, not politics. We are not afraid to probe boundaries and challenge proprietary assumptions—witness Dr. Fukuyama’s “End of History” essay and the various provocations we have run by James Kurth—but we are not afraid to pour cold water on what we take to be excessive, unsubstantiated enthusiasms or fears—whether concerning global warming or globalization.

All of this is a matter of taste, of course, and we don’t expect everyone to share our conservative temperament. But we are determined to be true to those who do. We’re not for everybody, and we don’t want to be.

Finally, it follows from the above that we do not share the premise that magazines of international affairs have now to change dramatically to adjust to supposed dramatic change in the world. Not that things aren’t changing “out there” but, then, they always are. We are convinced that whatever is going on in the world can be adequately captured by our present manner of building the magazine issue by issue.

So we have not changed much lately, and feel no particular need to do so. We’re doing just fine; we like our own product and so apparently do others, for our circulation bears a modest but clearly upward trajectory. Within our formula for quality we strive to maintain our standards and, if possible, exceed them. We have produced more elegant covers lately, I am happy to say—which has helped our newsstand sales. We have invested in some new computer equipment, and designed and installed a World Wide Web site (www.nationalinterest.org). But we have no intention of changing our basic format, standards, sense of “mix,”, or tone.

Of course, we would like a still larger circulation—who wouldn’t? And we try for it. But, to come back to the topic at hand, who reads the National Interest is more important to us than how many read the National Interest. Experience tells us that we do reach policymaking élites, indirectly by influencing the intellectual milieu if not also quite directly from time to time. That is why when one of our staff members encounters a seemingly intelligent and serious person who has never heard of the National Interest—oh yes, this does happen now and again—our typical reaction is not “What’s wrong with us?”, but “What’s wrong with him?” As long as we sincerely feel that way, expect no major upheavals from 1112 16th Street, N.W.