Lawrence Kaplan launches World Affairs

Politico discusses the launch of a new quarterly called World Affairs with Lawrence Kaplan. Kaplan has reported from Iraq for The New Republic six times. He hopes that World Affairs contributors “can explain the world to people like me, who really don’t know what to believe anymore.” The ten member editorial board includes Christopher Hitchens, Leon Wieseltier, Andrew Bacevich, and P.J. O’Rourke.

Now, fully aware of the irony in a 24-hour news cycle, Kaplan is launching a quarterly “journal of ideas and debate.” “We’re a little out of step,” Kaplan admitted to Politico. “But that’s sort of the whole point of the enterprise, to really to get back to arguments.” While even highbrow publications are churning out bite-sized blog items, World Affairs is indeed providing a venue for meatier ideas. But most importantly, Kaplan said, World Affairs is designed to serve a specific niche as a foreign policy journal that encourages heterodoxy, with writers openly disagreeing with one another. link