Former President Richard Nixon established The Center for the National Interest in 1994 to serve as a voice for strategic realism in U.S. foreign policy. As he said at the time, “the United States has won the Cold War, but it has not yet won the peace.” Today, the Center seeks to stimulate debate, promote public understanding of U.S. foreign policy and international affairs, and define principled yet pragmatic policies to advance America’s national interest in the complex world of the twenty-first century.
The Center for the National Interest’s work spans a broad range of critical relationships and foreign policy challenges including U.S. ties with major powers such as China, Russia, Japan and America’s European allies; regional security in Asia and the Middle East; national security issues including armed conflict, terrorism and nuclear non-proliferation; and energy and climate change. The Center also publishes the prominent foreign policy magazine The National Interest, available bi-monthly in print and daily online at www.nationalinterest.org.
The Center is a non-partisan non-profit organization with a bi-partisan board of directors and advisory council. Its offices are in downtown Washington, DC. Originally a programmatically and substantively independent division of the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace Foundation, the Center for the National Interest was known as The Nixon Center until 2011, when it became a fully separate entity. The Center became the sole publisher of The National Interest in 2005 after serving as a partner in publishing the magazine since 2000, when National Affairs, Inc. sold the The National Interest. The National Interest was founded in 1985.
