The New Foreign Policy Online

My January/February issue of Foreign Policy came in the mail over the weekend.

I always get a little rush when my journals arrive, and I feel lucky if I have a few minutes right then to skim over the contents and read an article or two (International Security, which publishes full-blown academic research, requires some set-aside time, however).

Well, as I skimming through Foreign Policy last night I noticed a blurb for the magazine's new website redesign, which included an announcement that Daniel Drezner would be joining Foreign Policy in-house. I started blogging because of Drezner (after reading his page for a year or two), so the announcement caught my attention. Of course, as I've noted recently, academic bloggers rarely put their necks out too far - especially on issues requiring moral clarity - and Drezner's been stupendously wrong on some of the big questions in international relations lately. So, it'll be interesting to read him a little more often in the future.

Still, Foreign Policy's web upgrade is pretty hip. As far as I can tell, the website's abandoned subscription-only access to its current articles (or they need to make free access permanent, as the Atlantic did sometime last year). This will be a boon to bloggers, who will now have a (larger) trove of cool resources for discussion and dissemination

What's particularly interesting is that some major political scientists will be joining Drezner as in-house bloggers. Stephen Walt, one of the top scholars in international security, will be blogging at Foreign Policy. Walt made the "realist" case against the war in Iraq, in "An Unnecessary War." (Note that foreign policy realists of late have been drawn from the liberal and paleoconservative camps, and they are policy nemeses of neoconservatives.) To balance this, Peter Feaver's apparently another of the bevy of political scientists who have signed up. Feaver, who's also a top scholar of international relations, writes periodically at Commentary.

Joshua Keating's got the official scoop at Passport.

(Note to readers: Try not to blow off Foreign Policy as "academic." The fact that the magazine's bringing on so many political scientists as bloggers indicates the influence of regular bloggers like us.)

Hat Tip: Memeorandum.