Press: Trinity Day

Irving Kristol, often described as the godfather of neoconservatism, came up with the notion about three years ago. The Public Interest (circ. 12,000), the neocon-servative quarterly devoted to domestic issues that he helped found 20 years ago, had shown that it could attract an in-tensely loyal audience. So why not start a similar journal on foreign policy? This week Kristol will test that idea when the National Interest hits the newsstands. The new quarterly, says Kristol, will provide a forum where conservatives “can argue with one another.”

According to an editors’ note in the premier issue, the National Interest makes three assumptions: the primary purpose of U.S. foreign policy must be to defend the national interests of the U.S.; international politics remains power politics; and the Soviet Union represents the single greatest threat to America’s interests. Two decades ago, the journal’s editors contend, those statements were considered truisms, but today they have become almost exclusively conservative beliefs.

Articles in the first issue cover topics ranging from terrorism to the paralyzing effect Congress has on the President’s ability to forge foreign policy. Jeane Kirkpatrick, who serves on the journal’s advisory board, contributes a speech arguing the morality of U.S. aid to anti-Communist rebels. In an essay, Kristol says that support is growing in the U.S. for a muscular foreign policy grounded in the belief that the conflict between the U.S. and the Soviet Union is not one of clashing national interests, as some liberals say, but of ideologies. Kristol predicts that the U.S. will be quicker to use its military power in the years ahead if there is a commitment to victory. “That there should be ‘no more Vietnams’ . . . is something American opinion is unanimous about,” writes Kristol. “But no one . . . is now declaiming ‘No more Grenadas.’ “

The magazine, co-edited by Robert Tucker and Owen Harries, has a press run of 5,000. But Executive Editor Tod Lindberg predicts circulation will reach 12,000 within two years. The nonprofit magazine is supported by several conservative groups, including the John Olin Foundation, which contributed $600,000. Kristol is already optimistic enough about the journal’s potential influence to label it part of a new “trinity,” along with Foreign Affairs (circ. 90,000) and Foreign Policy (25,000).