"Of course it cannot be expected that the whole body of any people will study international law; but a sufficient number can readily become sufficiently familiar with it to lead and form public opinion in every community in our country upon all international questions as they arise." — Elihu Root, U.S. Secretary of State (1905–1909)
"At Google, as we strive to organize all the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful, our success depends on users, employees, and partners understanding the reality of interdependence in today's world. Resources like Foreign Policy Digest will help the next generation of leaders engage more effectively in an important global dialogue about the issues which shape their lives." — Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google
Americans today increasingly live in boundaryless communities that stretch beyond local, state, and national realms. Technology and innovation have created global interconnectedness that enhances the flow of communication, relationships, and ideas. Unfortunately, while the capacity for creating an international dialogue has never been greater, major news outlets scaled back their international coverage significantly in the 2000s.
A study by Public Radio International found that only about 20% of evening news coverage was devoted to international affairs — and of that, the majority pertained to Iraq and Afghanistan. This disconnect left Americans uninformed about the present and unprepared for the future.
Foreign Policy Digest was founded to address this gap. FPD focused exclusively on world affairs and provided a platform designed specifically for the social-media generation — to give a new generation of Americans who had grown up online greater access to international issues.
Every month we published a series of articles covering five regions of the world: Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe/Russia, and the Middle East. Each article highlighted a significant news event with a clear explanation of the issue, appropriate background context, and an analysis of how that issue was likely to affect American lives.
Our advantage over established print outlets like Foreign Affairs or The Economist was content designed specifically for distribution through virtual networking — accessible on websites, blogs, email, Facebook, and mobile. We understood that the new generation gets its news online, and we met them there.
This archive preserves the articles published by Foreign Policy Digest between 2007 and 2012. Content was recovered from the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine and original export files. Some articles appear as partial excerpts where the full text could not be recovered. The archive was rebuilt in 2024–2026 to make this body of work accessible to researchers, educators, and the public.