The New Foreign Policy

The world enters 2015 much changed, in many ways, from one year ago: The Russian ruble is in crisis, and oil prices are at the bottom of their barrel, so to speak. The United States and Cuba are embarking on a historic rapprochement, while a Seth Rogen bro comedy has somehow redefined the notion of “international incident.”

Here at Foreign Policy, we are committed to covering such change in ever-innovative, sharp, and agile ways. To that end, we have embarked on a major change ourselves — the product of which you hold in your hands.

The January/February issue is newly, completely redesigned. Offering a vision of FP’s future, the issue is the outcome of months of intense collaboration among editors and designers. It also comes out of careful study of what FP has become since Samuel Huntington and Warren Manshel launched their journal of ideas in the winter of 1970. The magazine’s physical contours have evolved over the decades; longtime readers will recall the original narrow, rectangular design. So too has our range of 
coverage transformed: What was once the East Coast policy-
opinion echo chamber has become a big tent for readers across an enlightened, interconnected world.

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In the redesigned magazine, you will notice a greater emphasis on storytelling and on voices that are too often underrepresented in the media — the lives behind or tangled in matters of international importance. For instance, under the banner of climate change — the overarching theme of this issue’s long-form features — Pulitzer Prize winner Kenneth R. Weiss profiles an emerging class of international litigant: the climate refugee. McKenzie Funk takes readers into the shadows of carbon-trading fraud. And FP’s own Keith Johnson unpacks burning questions surrounding Big Coal, weighing its potential to lift nations out of poverty against the environmental threat it poses to the planet.

In the vein of presenting more diverse voices, we are introducing a new travel feature: The Fixer, which turns for guidance to the too-often anonymous local hands who expertly lead parachuting journalists through terra incognita. Kicking off the series is Olayinka Oluwakuse III, who tells readers where to eat, shop, relax, and even absorb some history in Lagos, Nigeria. Other voices include a pair of new, regular columnists: James Bamford and Debora Spar. An authority on U.S. intelligence, Bamford airs a proposal to turn the bloated surveillance apparatus into a humanitarian tool. Spar, an economist and the president of Barnard College, asks whether foreign investors are saviors or perpetrators in the Ebola crisis.

We’ve invited designers, photographers, and illustrators into our pages — and not just to embellish stories. Visual Statement, for example, provides space for an artist’s take on a world event or trend; graphic artist Muiz launches this feature with a poignant map of the Middle East. In Aperture, our new home for photo essays, Hungarian photographer Balazs Gardi shares his breathtaking work on the geopolitics of water.

The list of new features and contributors goes on; start turning the pages to see them all. We’ve worked to build a magazine brimming with revelations about our wide world, how it is changing, and the people who share it. We hope you enjoy the redesigned FP — and that you find it offers not just captivating perspectives, but also a unique reading experience.

Image Credit: FP