In the current (April 24) issue of The Nation, Perry Anderson reviews Francis Fukuyama’s new book. Being what The Nation is, and Perry Anderson being Perry Anderson, the result is not surprising – except for one thing.
On the last page of the review (p. 29, as it happens), Anderson writes that the best that can be said for the book’s proposals is that “they seal a well-advertised vote for Kerry and understanding with Brzezinski, who co-edits The American Interest with Fukuyama.” On the previous page, Anderson writes: “Fukuyama may criticize American exceptionalism, but he has certainly not relinquished the national portion of his inheritance. His new journal is not called The American Interest for nothing.”
Here, below, is the full text of the letter I wrote to The Nation. Suspecting that the editor may not publish it, or not publish all of it, I wanted to make sure to place it in the public domain.
To the Editor:
It’s nice to see, I suppose, that Perry Anderson’s imagination is still active. In “Inside Man” (April 24, 2006) he imagines, among many other things, that Francis Fukuyama co-edits The American Interest with Zbigniew Brzezinski, thus sealing, he writes on page 29, “a well-advertised vote for Kerry.” The facts, however, are these: Dr. Fukuyama chairs the editorial board, of which Dr. Brzezinski and a number of others are members. I am the editor of The American Interest, which Dr. Anderson would know had he bothered ever to look at a copy—and I, as it happened, did not vote for Kerry (or Bush). Does Dr. Anderson also get wrong the meaning of the magazine’s name on the previous page? Well yes, he does; but again, what would one expect from someone who characterizes a magazine without ever having laid eyes on it?
Dr. Adam Garfinkle
Editor, The American Interest