(The above video highlights a recent National Interest event with former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.) 

Our Publication: What Is The National Interest? 

The National Interest is an award-winning online publication focusing on defense issues, national security, military affairs and hardware, foreign policy, and U.S. politics.

We are located just two blocks from the White House in Washington, D.C. 

Our Editors and experts also contribute to media outlets such as CNN, NPR, FoxNews, the Washington Post, and many other outlets across the political spectrum. 

The National Interest was founded in 1985. 

You can find National Interest content on places like Flipboard and Google News. 

This publication is active on Facebook and Twitter as well. 

National Interest also has a syndication deal with Microsoft and Microsoft Start. 

Transparency Statement: 

The National Interest is owned and operated by the Center for the National Interest, founded in 1994 by U.S. President Richard M. Nixon.

All National Interest content should be considered opinion or analysis unless marked otherwise.  

Our Honorary Chairman was former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger from 1994 until his passing in 2023. 

The current Chairman is Drew Guff. 

The President is Paul Saunders. 

The Editor of The National Interest is Jacob Heilbrunn. Heilbrunn is the author of the book America Last: The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators. 

The Executive Editor of The National Interest is Harry J. Kazianis. Kazianis also serves as Senior Director of National Security Affairs at the Center for the National Interest. 

Address: 1025 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 709 Washington, DC 20036

Phone: 202-887-1000

Email: [email protected] 

Corrections Policy: All corrections are noted at the bottom of any content that is in need of revision due to a mistake. Please email any corrections to [email protected]. 

Mission Statement 

For nearly four decades, The National Interest, founded in 1985 by Irving Kristol and Owen Harries, has displayed a remarkable consistency in its approach to foreign policy.

It is not, as the inaugural statement declared, about world affairs. It is about American interests. It is guided by the belief that nothing will enhance those interests as effectively as the approach to foreign affairs commonly known as realism—a school of thought traditionally associated with such thinkers and statesmen as Disraeli, Bismarck, and Henry Kissinger. Though the shape of international politics has changed considerably in the past few decades, the magazine’s fundamental tenets have not. Instead, they have proven enduring and, indeed, appear to be enjoying something of a popular renaissance.

Until recently, however, liberal hawks and neoconservatives have successfully attempted to stifle debate by arguing that prudence about the use of American power abroad was imprudent—by, in short, disparaging realism as a moribund doctrine that is wholly inimical to American idealism. This has been disastrous. After the Bush administration’s failure to discover weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, it became abundantly clear that the lack of a debate in Washington was part and parcel of a larger foreign policy failing, which was the refusal to ponder the larger implications and consequences of the promiscuous use of American power abroad. A reflexive substitution of military might for diplomacy, of bellicose rhetoric for attainable aspirations, dramatically weakened rather than strengthened America’s standing around the globe. But today, as China, Russia, and other nations assess and act upon their own perceived national interests, Washington must attempt to understand those nations as they understand themselves.

This is why a return to realism has seldom been more imperative. It is notions of interdependence, the end of sovereignty, and the inutility of power that have all proven wanting in the past decade. International relations was not reinvented in 1989. While it may be an old foreign policy concept, the notion of national interest is not an antiquarian one. On the contrary, it has never possessed more relevance than now.

(National Security Advisor Robert C. O'Brien Addressing a recent National Interest Conference on the Korean War.)

What actually constitutes true realism is, of course, an appropriate source of controversy. The National Interest seeks to promote, as far as possible, a fresh debate about the course of American foreign policy by featuring a variety of leading authors from government, journalism, and academia, many of whom may, at times, disagree with each other. But it is only out of such disagreements that dogmas can be dispelled and clarity about America’s proper aims achieved. By contributing a vital stimulus towards fashioning a new foreign policy consensus based on civil and enlightened contention, The National Interest seeks to serve this country’s wider national interest.

Updated on 10/29/2024