Essaying to Influence Foreign Policy

When Henry Kissinger and Cyrus Vance wanted to influence the future course of U. S. foreign policy they didn’t go on “Nightline,” grant an interview to USA Today, or write an Op-Ed piece.

Instead, they published an essay in Foreign Affairs, a venerable and influential periodical that most Americans never see.

That they did so, and that the New York Times considered the event important enough to cover in its news pages, is a measure of the power wielded by sometimes obscure, small-circulation journals of opinion on the nation’s capital. Although there are important differences in tone and substance between the various journals competing for the attention of policy makers, together they provide a forum for an elite of politicians, corporate executives, academics and journalists who influence and control foreign policy.

Though they may not agree on much else, the two strong-minded former secretaries of state, writing under a joint by-line, concur that the bipartisan consensus that was the foundation of American foreign policy from World War II through the Vietnam era must be restored.

Distinguished Contributors

Other contributors to the current issue include the director of the Afghanistan/Southwest Asia Center of Freedom House in New York; director of the Middle East program at the State University of New York, Binghamton; a former Czech diplomat, now senior consultant at the National Defense University in Washington; a former Carter Administration National Security Council member, now at the Institute of East-West Studies in New York; two eminent nuclear physicists, and the director of the State Department’s Center for Foreign Affairs.

The idea for the Kissinger- Vance essay was generated in a seminar sponsored by the Council on Foreign Relations, publisher of the five-times-a-year trade paperback-sized journal. During most of its 66-year history as the voice of the foreign policy Establishment, Foreign Affairs has held unquestioned sway over the formulation of foreign policy.

In the wake of the dissolution of the bipartisan foreign policy consensus in the caldron of Vietnam, Foreign Affairs lost its cool aura of authority. Although it has been challenged by newer publications in recent years, lately as the foreign policy elite has begun to coalesce (as the Kissinger-Vance collaboration suggests), it has, under the sure-footed editorship of William Hyland, begun to regain its composure.

Foreign Affairs’ clout stems in part from longevity. “Over the decades,” as managing editor Peter Gross commented, “it has been a forum for world-class figures to express world-class ideas.” At 91,175, its circulation far outpaces that of its rivals. Gross reports that about 10% of copies are sent overseas, and “somewhat less than half are distributed in the Northeast Corridor.” The remainder are mailed to subscribers in all 50 states.

The Council on Foreign Relations, which is privately endowed and receives no government money, also conducts a “big program of book and monograph publishing, conferences, and study groups,” said Gross. The session that inspired Kissinger and Vance was one of perhaps a dozen going on at once. Foreign Affairs costs $5.95 for a single copy or $23 a year from Foreign Affairs, Subscriber Service, P.O. Box 2615, Boulder, Colo. 80321.

Foreign Affairs chief rival is Foreign Policy, published quarterly since 1970 by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Livelier, more internationalist, and newsier, it stresses “realism,” meaning restraint in the application of military power. Its pages are more open to writers who are not part of the foreign policy Establishment and, according to associate editor Thomas Omestad, it has “made it a policy to look for and publish exposes.”

As an example of the latter, last fall Foreign Policy printed an authoritative refutation, based on documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, of administration claims of chemical warfare in Southeast Asia. Among the more contentious opinion pieces was Ethan A. Nadelmann’s call in the Spring 1988 issue for a drug control program that would include some form of legalization.

Like its bigger rival, Foreign Policy (circulation 26,800) leads its current Summer number with an essay on foreign policy formulation, “Campaign ’88 and Foreign Policy,” by William A. Galston, issues director in the Mondale presidential campaign, now at the Roosevelt Center for American Policy Studies, and Christopher J. Makins, newly appointed professor in the School of Public Affairs at the University of Maryland. In an election where the Democrat is perceived to be a foreign policy neophyte and the Republican is saddled with the Iran-Contra affair and the generally sorry foreign policy record of the previous administration, the authors argue that the way the parties play the foreign policy card might tip the balance in a close contest.

Less Heavyweight

Contributors to the current issue are less heavyweight than those in Foreign Affairs. They include a law professor who runs the law and international relations program at the American University in Washington, a member of the House of Representatives, a professor of war studies at Kings College, University of London, a vice chairman at Goldman, Sachs, and a former French Foreign Ministry official.

Foreign Policy costs $5.25 a copy. A yearly subscription is available for $16 from Foreign Policy, Subscription Dept., P.O. Box 984, Farmingdale, N.Y. 11737.

Nipping at the heels of Foreign Affairs and Foreign Policy are smaller, generally newer publications, usually with more of an ideological bent. Possibly closest in style and content is Washington Quarterly, a 40,000-circulation periodical edited in the District of Columbia and published by the MIT Press, 55 Hayward St., Cambridge, Mass 02142, ($7/copy; $25/year).

The neoconservative position, summed up, perhaps, by the title of Eugene V. Rostow’s article in the Spring issue of Global Affairs, “There Is No Alternative Stategy,” is represented aggressively by Global Affairs and more elegantly by the National Interest. The latter, a 3-year-old journal founded by publisher Irving Kristol, has failed to catch fire and is barely cracking 5,000 circulation. The Summer issue will feature a symposium on what Soviet leader Mihail Gorbachev means to the Third World ($5.25/copy, $18/year, National Interest, 1627 Connecticut Ave., N.W., Washington D.C. 20009).

Of more interest is the passionate Global Affairs, which has built a circulation of nearly 10,000 in just three years. Its ambition, lack of imagination and bad-boy attitude are summed up in its slavish imitation of Foreign Affairs’ cover and layout. The magazine’s charm is captured in this sample: In “The Reagan Detente,” decrying the President’s “credulity” in dealing with the Soviets on the INF treaty, Albert L. Weeks concludes, “The titular leader of the country’s only conservative party chose to listen to those who would swap the prior, safer assumption that the Soviet leopard is incapable of changing its spots for the risky, illusory belief, based on naivete if not ignorance, that the Soviet shrimp can learn to whistle.” A single issue of the quarterly is $5, or $20 for a year’s subscription from Global Affairs, P.O. Box 5000-MK, Ridgefield, N.J. 07657.

Holding up the progressive side of the debate is the 5-year-old World Policy Journal, which circulates 10,000 copies. An example of the magazine’s commitment to new or critical perspectives on foreign policy questions is its current project to design an alternative set of security policies to include political and economic as well as conventional military factors. In the current issue, author Michael Lucas challenges the idea that the United States must build up conventional forces in the wake of the treaty signing. Instead, his article, “The United States and Post-INF Europe,” suggests that the real risk to U.S. interests is in the political and economic uncoupling the United States and Western Europe will suffer as our allies move closer to economic union. World Policy Journal is $5.25 per copy or $20 per year from World Policy Institute, 777 U.N. Plaza, New York, N.Y. 10017.

Figures like 5,000 or 95,000 seem insignificant when measured against a population of 235 million. But all of these journals have very high pass-along rates, four or five times their circulations. And there is the matter of who receives them. Ask the editors of these journals who they’re trying to reach and they will answer, “the policy makers.” Or as Thomas Omestad put it, “The people who are making, have made, or will make foreign policy,” including academics and the press.