# The National Interest A foreign-policy journal founded in **1985** by **[[Irving Kristol]]** and **Owen Harries**, published by the [[Center for the National Interest]] — the think tank founded in 1994 as the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom. The journal is the companion to Kristol's earlier *[[The Public Interest]]* (1965), which covered domestic policy, and the two together are the periodical infrastructure he built. But its editorial identity diverged sharply from his: *The National Interest* positions itself in the tradition of **foreign-policy realism** and explicitly distances itself from [[Neoconservatism]], arguing that neoconservatives and liberal hawks have worked to crowd realist argument out of the debate. > [!warning] Not a neoconservative journal > This page exists because [[Neoconservatism]] cites the journal as one of Irving Kristol's foundings, which is accurate. The inference that it is therefore a neoconservative venue is not: it is the principal American journal of realist and restraint-oriented foreign policy, and a citation to it is not a citation to the neoconservative tradition. > [!info] Stub > Minimum-viable page created to resolve inbound links from [[Neoconservatism]]. Needs: editorship history, the Harries-era break with Kristol, and its role in the post-2016 restraint debate on the right. ## See Also - [[Center for the National Interest]] - [[The Public Interest]] - [[Irving Kristol]] - [[Neoconservatism]]