BY
My own journey in the world of foreign policy has been richly rewarding and while I have learned much I have truly only scratched the surface. In understanding any one given area there is an incredible amount of relevant information, from history and ethnicity to politics and religion. If I had to describe the task at hand one word would more than suffice: intimidating. But in the spirit of encouraging, edifying, and guiding anyone looking to become more informed, I wanted to put together a small list of tips that can help you master any foreign policy area.
Getting off on the right foot when it comes to consulting good resources to follow is a good practice no matter what field of study one is engaged in. Luckily, in the modern media age, we don’t have to satisfy ourselves with old guard periodical pieces and filtered, curated opinions. The internet provides a myriad of different media-forms and convenient tools with which to process them.
News sites and blogs are an obvious, more traditional source. News aggregators like Antiwar.com provide a broad but central repository for keeping informed on current events and researching historical news as well as serving to provide a filter with which to group and understand foreign policy perspectives. Other typically trustworthy sources for written web content are libertarian and paleo-conservative news sources and blogs, such as Zero Hedge, the Mises Institute blog, and, a personal favorite, The American Conservative magazine/blog. These resources do not solely focus on foreign policy, but when they do, they track closely with a non-interventionist viewpoint.
More modern media avenues like YouTube channels, podcasts, audiobooks, and Twitter can provide even more versatile ways to learn from and interact with those who specialize in foreign policy. The Ron Paul Liberty Report and The Scott Horton Show are great examples of resources that can be consumed on demand especially in circumstances which are not conducive to dedicated reading, like at work or during commutes.
And there are plenty of tools to help manage all of that content. Podcast apps like Apple Podcasts and Stitcher help organize and track podcast listening progress and I personally use Feedly as a blog aggregator to help me organize and consume blog and news sources. The moral of the story here is to dive in, find a trustworthy resource, and start learning. The podcasts and blogs that I follow today are not what I first started following and as your interests focus and your expertise advances, resources gain and lose their relative usefulness. Don’t be afraid to look for new resources or drop old ones.
One of the best pieces of advice that I can share with anyone from my experience in studying foreign policy is that you will never feel informed enough to understand half of what you read or hear at first. So embrace it! Early on, whether one is reading news reports from foreign correspondents, op-eds from this or that pundit vying for page views, or even the odd Twitter post, it can easily feel like you are reading a foreign language. But the key goal here is to simply take it all in. It can seem nonsensical at first to surround yourself with information that you only partially understand but the constant immersion is part of the process. You will very quickly find that the language, the terminology, the people, places, and events being referred to become part of the fabric of your understanding.
Another great advantage of purposefully studying broadly is that it helps to ignite fascination and interest in an organic way. Much like man, no subject in foreign policy is an island and understanding any one subject can easily involve a multitude of other related areas. For me, this is one of the great thrills that make studying this area of knowledge so satisfying.
I know, this seems contradictory, but hear me out. The universal fact about any one event, any one notable person, is that history never happens in a vacuum. One person’s life intersects with another, one event occurs as a culmination of events prior. And so, studying any one portion of history or foreign policy can almost never be done without at least touching upon the events and conditions that surrounded it.
For instance, a year or so ago, in pure late ’20s fashion, I decided to embark on reading the biographies of the U.S. presidents. Since much of formal American history takes place against the backdrop of the presidency, it made sense to me to understand the men and the events that surrounded their administrations. And while those biographies did give me particular knowledge about each president, I was surprised by how much that study actually affected my understanding of the timeline of American history even more. By studying each of these men deeply, it was impossible not to learn about the places they were from, the events that they presided over, and the people that they surrounded themselves with.
We must also consider the fact that, as you become more acquainted with the material, you will undoubtedly wish to specialize in some particular region, person, people group, event, etc. This is one of the great factors that drives passion in study; the desire to know something more deeply and to gain mastery of that knowledge. By all means, don’t restrain that passion simply because it doesn’t suit the goal of acquiring broad knowledge. Follow that passion, see where it leads. And you will likely find that your knowledge increases in ways that you did not expect.
The truth is that studying broadly and studying deeply complement each other enormously in creating real, recallable knowledge of any subject, especially diplomatic history and foreign policy. I think of this learning process as being similar to getting to know the layout of a town after having moved there. There are some obvious landmarks that one begins with, like ones’ house, ones’ workplace, and the coffee shop in between. Everything else is a massive jumble of people and places. But slowly and surely those landmarks help to serve as launching points for understanding the geography and organization of everything else around them.
This will either make perfect sense or seem completely silly but if I had to pinpoint one thing that has ignited my curiosity and boosted my confidence the most in understanding foreign policy and just plain being a well-informed person, this would be it. I have felt an endless satisfaction from taking time to learn more about world geography and I cannot think of a more useful tool to help one better understand history and foreign policy (and almost any other subject, for that matter). For example, in the past, when I would read something about The Cold War or World War I, when I encountered talk of troop movements or invasions or diplomatic scuffles, talk of countries or geographical regions seemed lifeless to me, like footnotes, not the focus. But when I could visualize the proximity of the USSR to Afghanistan, when I could trace in my mind Germany invading Belgium, suddenly, the same references that I would skim over previously became so much more real. Something about seeing people and places in real, spatial relationship to one another on the world stage helped me to better appreciate the historical realities.
I truly cannot overemphasize how much I would recommend simple geographic memorization. I personally love the World Maps app for iOS. It includes many great tools and training modes for political maps, like countries, capitals, and cities, as well as physical maps for locating important rivers and mountains. Not to mention that not a year goes by that we don’t hear regular anecdotes about how many Americans can’t locate some country in the Middle East or Europe on a world map. There is something empowering about having useful knowledge that so many ignore.
Just as one might develop a fondness for a favorite movie director, so you will likely find that, as you narrow down on resources to follow, you are drawn to particular journalists, pundits, or authors. Knowing that a resource’s information is sound is one thing; finding the way that information is presented interesting, engaging, or efficient for you is another. So identifying key individuals to follow can be very useful for ongoing study.
This really can be for almost any reason. For instance, you may be drawn to a particular current events columnist like Jason Ditz or Daniel Larison. Or you may develop a love for international journalism from reporters in the field, like Patrick Cockburn. It may track closely with your choice of resources to follow, if there are particular authors that work for or are syndicated by particular publications exclusively. It could be subject matter or style. Any reason is a good reason, just find one.
The key takeaway is simply to pay attention to who it is you’re reading and how you feel or what you learn while you read them. For me so far, I really enjoy the international writers for The Independent, like Cockburn and Robert Fisk. Cockburn has a clarity and conciseness that I admire. Fisk, on the other hand, can be overwhelming with his sheer understanding of the backstory and history behind any given place or person. His reporting is like getting a mini history lesson. I also love more political authors like Bill Kauffman and Pat Buchanan. Long-time figures of anti-interventionism in politics, they both have a great understanding of history and the politics behind it and their styles are both informative and entertaining.
The one thing that has surprised me and stretched me the most as an individual in recent history is my study of all things foreign policy. But one of the most surprising and challenging aspects of that has actually been how to approach that study. Oftentimes when one has a strong political philosophy, it is natural to restrict one’s exposure to news and media to sources that are agreeable to their point of view. While there is nothing wrong with this per se, and while it may tend to work well for many areas, this strategy is not a sound one in studying foreign policy. Anti-interventionism is a very broad philosophy and movement which has been in vogue with and has been advocated by very diverse groups in American political past. As such, you may find that some of the best resources (wait for it) are from the other side!
The fact is that one’s foreign policy can often differ independently from their domestic policy. In matters domestic, authors and pundits can differ wildly with what they find appropriate or effective. And while that same diversity can be found in foreign policy, it does not always track on partisan lines. So you will likely find yourself making strange alliances with many you would not expect. As a libertarian or conservative, you might usually avoid The Guardian, Slate, The Nation, or any number of publications that would normally vilify you and your worldview. But to do so would mean that you miss out on very good content on foreign policy. Many left-of-center media outlets feature staff and syndicated writers that do amazing reporting on civil liberties, war, diplomatic politics, and international events. This is simply a reality of media; that they serve to curate content to the sensibilities of their editorial staff and of their readership. Sometimes that means picking and choosing from a very broad palate and this is no more true than for areas of foreign policy.
I was hesitant at first. My guard is always up when l’m looking at media sources, as it should be. But while it may seem counterintuitive at first, there are many good reasons to develop a healthy perspective and to open oneself up to material from alternative news sources. For one, it humanizes those whom we typically think of adversarially. They are people with their own diverse opinions that can often not be pigeonholed into a neat category. Political affiliation or party often does not track with truth. Oftentimes party stance on issues has much more to do with social or political factors that shape the course of the platform far more than philosophy. And, most of all, it reinforces that foreign policy is an area of universal applicability and can be something that unifies us which is amazingly important when the time comes to preserve liberty.
BY
Originally published at NoKingButChrist.org (Part 1 & Part 2)
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Listen to the Podcast episode reviewing these tips with Adam
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Find it on 
