Foreign Affairs

Written in clear, concise English, it is surprisingly readable considering the subject matter. Don't expect any pictures, however: there are none. However, if you want information on Iraq, North Korean, Iran, and the UN, this is your source of material. Some of the subject matter, of course, is biased: sometimes Clinton croonies contribute material, which I quickly ignore by averting my eyes. But the magazine is not meant to be a source of objective material: there is no reporting, the way you find in The Economist; all of it is first-person essays.

Michael Gordon


It is simply the best!   September 16, 2003
C. Catherwood (Cambridge UK and Richmond VA)
14 out of 18 found this review helpful

This magazine is simply the very best there is - and I too have been reading it faithfully for many years now. It is THE magazine for anyone who wants to be any kind of globally aware citizen in these troubled times - and it is always easy to understand and written in plain English as well (which certainly does help....) I will be a happy reader I trust for many more years to come. Christopher Catherwood, author of CHRISTIANS, MUSLIMS AND ISLAMIC RAGE (Zondervan, 2003)


consistently good   October 15, 2005
Justin (California, USA)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful

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.


Long Time Subscriber   August 27, 2003
Kevin M Rogers (Grafton, OH)
12 out of 12 found this review helpful

I have been reading Foreign Affairs for more than 30 years. It is an integral part of a broad-based understanding of international issues, both current and historical. It can also be very prescient at times. (See Clash of Civilizations, 1993)

The articles are not to be rushed through. Read them slowly and savor them, whether you agree with them or not. Give it a try!


Establishment Foreign Policy journal   March 10, 2006
Shalom Freedman (Jerusalem,Israel)
11 out of 23 found this review helpful

This magazine is written by many of the most influential people in the realm of foreign policy. If one wishes to know what the Establishment thinks on foreign policy issues this is the magazine to read.
But I have often found it to err in its judgment and evaluation of situations. A most recent example is a recent long analysis of U.S. - Iranian relations in which the experts led by Zbigniew Brezhinski posited that Iran would be open to conciliatory economic gestures to the U.S. in relation to its nuclear program.
This analysis was so far of the mark , so naive, so uninformed as to what the Iraniians were saying to their own people publicly and in the mullah to mullah conferences that I was astonished it had been printed and taken seriously.
Since that time of course the uncompromising determination of Iran to attain nuclear weapons, its fanatic Anti- American policy has become clear for all to see.
So my advice is that whoever reads 'Foreign Policy' on any major world program would do well to read many other sources as well.
i.e. the reader approach that by reading 'Foreign Policy' one now knows about the world is simplistic, and most often, wrong.