International Policy Journaling
Where have all the blog posts gone
Hello, Wars of Future Past subscribers.
The last time you heard from me, over 19 months ago, I sent out a newsletter as part of a campaign challenging the editorial decisions of Substack as a publisher. I can’t say I’ve found that Substack was responsive to the critique, and most of my fellow co-signatories have either moved platforms or quit newslettering entirely. As for my part, I’ve de-monetized this newsletter, pausing all payments indefinitely.
This pause came at a pretty convenient time career-wise for me. In November 2023, I joined the Center for International Policy, leaving my freelance hodgepodge of journalism income streams to be a full-time think tanker. It’s that work which brings me back to Wars of Future Past today.
My job at CIP is editing, publishing, and promoting the International Policy Journal, a journal of progressive foreign policy ideas. IPJ is the spiritual and ideological successor to Fellow Travelers Blog, the collaborative all-volunteer project I started and ran with several friends in the optimistic years of 2018-2020, where we dreamed of better foreign policy through better ideas. Thanks to the support and sponsorship of CIP, the International Policy Journal is now publishing and promoting these ideas, and paying writers a fair rate to write them.
This is what prompts me to email today. I’ve soft-launched a substack page for the International Policy Journal, where I’ve been simultaneously publishing our new stories since March, with a test-publish of an archival post in February.
If you’re still on Substack, and you’re fine subscribing to a newsletter that will not ask you for money, I would love if you’d subscribe to the International Policy Journal.
Want smart essays and some original reporting on what better foreign policy looks like? Subscribe to the International Policy Journal.
I might be back at this newsletter in a personal capacity, though in the meantime if you’d like to read my latest you can do so at MSNBC or read the sermon I delivered in June at the old personal wordpress. I’ve got a long essay on Andor Season 2 kicking around in my mind that seems like it would be a best fit here, so I haven’t fully abandoned the site. But barring an abrupt change in my life fortunes and career, I won’t ask you to give Substack money as a way of giving me money, and even if that change comes, I’ll send out a heads up before restarting any payments.
In the meantime, why not subscribe to the International Policy Journal?
Best,
Kelsey