Foreign Affairs at 100: A look back at the first issue | Hacker News Reader

Foreign Affairs at 100: A look back at the first issue

bcmullins.github.io

I booked half year subscription, and had deep disappointment. Each and every article is without the basic substance on how the ideas were developed and what the reasoning behind their consequences. All articles are pure ideology showcasing of the author, who might or might not believe what they stated in the article...

That's the point of the magazine: it's to spread ideologies around. If you want to know what people in the state department (or adjacent/influential) are thinking, then "articles" in this magazine are one way of peering into their minds.

One example of this is the the Mr. X article. It was published anonymously in Foreign Affairs. Mr. X was George Kennan, a US diplomat, who popularized the strategy of containment which ended up as US foreign policy during the Cold War. [0]

So, if you want to know what's en vogue in certain foreign policy groups in US and western society, then Foreign Affairs is a very good magazine... But your point is right: I found very little substance and critical evidence to back many of the ideas presented when I had a subscription.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Article

More broadly, this perspective applies to most (all?) "news" media sources today. Actually fringe outlets are on average much worse, passing through the land of ideology toward pure virtue-signalling.

The goal of reading news today isn't necessarily to get facts: those are accessible through implicit analysis and triangulation of the many perspectives offered for public consideration, and unfortunately that takes a lot of time and energy to the point where it needs to be one of your daily routines to get "caught up". The goal of simply reading news more generally is to understand the ideologies driving decisions in the halls of power (legislators, ministerial positions, and "deep state" a la The Blob).

Chomsky's Manufacturing Consent was treated as an instruction manual by those whom it did not already describe at publication time, and the entire public discourse has seemed to be infected by such a strain of bad-faith ideology propagation as opposed to good-faith dialectics. It is a prisoner's dilemma after all -- if you make a good-faith argument, your opponent will capitalize on it in a bad-faith manner to dominate the narrative.

The most significant positive change to my media literacy was in paying attention to which authors represent which viewpoints, and which platforms publish which authors for which reasons.

> That's the point of the magazine: it's to spread ideologies around. If you want to know what people in the state department (or adjacent/influential) are thinking, then "articles" in this magazine are one way of peering into their minds.

No more than the pre-Bezos Washington Post (as awful as the post-Bezos WaPo, except the headlines were less linkbaity), because the same family of billionaires owned both.

An academic journal that might appeal to you is Survival[0], from the International Institute for Strategic Studies. Even though it is academic in nature, with the corresponding quality and standards for publication, it is largely jargon free and not too lost in the weeds.

[0]: https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/tsur20/current

I enjoy the breadth of the reviews in the back but typically only read 1 or 2 of the main articles. Sometimes there's an article that's in-depth on some country you don't hear that much about in other sources which justifies the subscription cost.

You may need to look past the ideology to get interesting facts the authors are presenting. I am an avid reader of the economist as it shines a light on foreign news like few publications do, and even though its rather toned down than say the New York Times on opinion, it still shows through in alot of articles. Stuff like globalism is great for the average worker, the US should adopt a land value tax, etc. I don't agree with alot of the stuff they say and just filter it out but there is alot of really great news stories you may be missing.

Out of interest. Why don't you like a land value tax? To me it seems like a great market based solution to American's lack of housing - which is a huge drag on our total economic growth.

It would make expensive cities even more expensive and encourage building for the sake of building. Open areas would be punished by having them undeveloped with a tax on everything.

America also has plenty of housing, in expensive areas(coastal, mountain) we need to ban vacation rentals and make taxes very high on second houses, also prohibit hedgefunds from buying houses for rental units. This would end the housing crisis in expensive areas over night. And the drag on our economic growth is due to companies that can support remote work not allowing it(google, apple etc) which creates fierce competition for real estate to work near a job that can be done anywhere in the US. So our problems are totally self inflicted and don't need a land value tax.

I think FA has been like that from the beginning. I once did a thorough reading of 1930s issues to get an understanding of the run-up to WW2, and it was as you describe.

Cute little article I enjoyed reading.

It seems to me that in terms of organization the author does not mention that the first section of current editions are usually organized around a single topic, and then there's a loose collection of essays.

I'm also curious whether the second release allowed readers to write replies, or whether this came much after.

In the 70s I read it cover to cover, but after Reagan took office they started going deep into the ideological crazy. Haven't hardly looked at it since.

So they disagreed with your world view?

I don't know if that was bc reaganites just took over a lot of the FP establishment for a while... at least recently, I've noticed their list of invited writers seem to reflect "bothsidisms" no matter how wacky.

You especially see this in the occasional response articles where several invited authors offer rapid-fire responses to a featured article. When there are a limited number of reasonable positions to take, wackiness is bound to seep in.

Not that this is particularly wacky, but here’s an example: https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/united-states/2021-0...

Are you suggesting that all world views, no matter how ignorant or contradictory, are equally valid?

Do you believe that the views you perceive as ignorant and contradictory, are objectively ignorant and contradictory? Could there be any bias in your perception?

Do you believe that no views are ignorant and contradictory? Or do you simply believe that we aren't equipped to tell them from ones that aren't?

If it's the former, I will have to say I disagree (If I could put words to it, in a manner that you would find ignorant and contradictory, and bad-faith and self-serving.) If it's the latter, then there's no point in discussing, well, anything.

The FPRI (Foreign Policy Research Institute) has insightful interviews with people close to the cauldron of events. At year 75 since colonial independence there is very fine interview with a historian of Pakistan which can be contrasted with what deskjob handlers have to say.

I read it more like "did you unsubscribe to the magazine because the quality decreased, or because it took an editorial position you disagreed with?"

We always talk about the importance of understanding opposing viewpoints.

There's value in paying someone to say things you already think, but in a better way than you could. But, there's also value in reading the best version of an argument you despise, and reckoning with it.

To a first approximation: Yes. What particularly bugged me was giving prominent cover placement to ideologues like Jean Kirkpatrick, who never met a tin-horned tyrant she didn't like. It was (AFAICT) part of a heavy lean by FA into an intellectually deficient ruling clique.

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