An Interview with Ryan Evans, Editor-in-Chief of War on the Rocks

17 Dec 2014

This month, we revisit our interview with Ryan Evans, who is the founder and Editor-in-Chief of War on the Rocks (WOTR). In this short interview, Mr Evans first explains what inspired him to start his web magazine, which focuses on foreign policy and national security affairs, and who provides its support. He then explains why political realism is the primary lens WOTR writers use to focus on the exercising of power and strategy in the modern world. Finally, Mr Evans talks about the plans he has for War on the Rocks in the near-term.

What inspired you to start War on the Rocks?

When I came back to Washington from Afghanistan, where I worked with British and Danish forces as a civilian employee of the US Department of Defense, I was unimpressed with the tone and content of the foreign policy commentary I was reading. Many articles coming out were cheap, unserious, and seemed to value snark over substance. What’s more, so many of the people writing these articles had no personal experience with war, intelligence analysis and diplomacy – the very subjects on which they claimed authority and expertise. War on the Rocks began as a humble and small remedy to this problem. I wanted to carve out a tiny corner on the Internet where people with experience could write and speak about the subjects they knew well. I knew where to find these people and ideally bring them to a larger audience.

Can you tell us more about your network of contributors?

We have dozens upon dozens of regular contributors, in addition to our editorial family. My WOTR partner John Amble and I are proud to have a full range of voices in our stable, from ‘grunts’, to admirals, to former diplomats, to former intelligence officers, to top-level scholars. I like to believe we have the best stable of contributors in the business and I’m honored to be able to bring their analyses, commentaries and experiences to a broader audience.

War on the Rocks features content on foreign policy and national security issues “through a realist lens.” How do you define political realism?

Because this is a touchy subject for many scholars (definitions always are), we deliberately take an ecumenical approach to defining realism. For WOTR's purposes, we simply define it as the study of human relations with a focus on power and strategy. This definition works for us because it acknowledges that realism doesn’t teach us what to think. Instead, it disciplines how we think, by forcing us to begin with interests and power. The best way to learn about realism, in my opinion, is to look to history and the lives and times of figures such as Castlereagh, Metternich, Churchill, Eisenhower and George Kennan.

What are your future plans for War on the Rocks?

The future is already here. We've expanded our production of high quality content, which our readers have to come to expect from us, and we've expanded into multimedia content, particularly podcasts. I’m personally very excited about these developments and I hope our readers are too. We really do believe that the sky is the limit for War on the Rocks.

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