He was co-founder and co-editor of The National Interest, a Washington-based foreign policy magazine, which they turned into one of America’s most influential political publications. Over the years, they published famous essays by among other authors Francis Fukuyama, Samuel Huntington, Henry Kissinger, Fareed Zakaria and his long-time friend and publisher Irving Kristol. According to The Bulletin, during his co-editorship from 1985 to 2001 he was "known as probably the most famous Australian in Washington". Since his return to Sydney in 2001, Harries has remained editor emeritus at The National Interest while he serves as an editorial board member of The American Interest magazine in Washington, DC. He has been a senior fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies as well as a visiting fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. In his last years, he collaborated with the Australian conservative writer Tom Switzer.
Ideas and writings
Harries has been widely praised as a prolific writer and compelling conversationalist whose long journey from Wales to Sydney brought him global eminence as an elder statesman of international relations. His success and influence stem from the same source – realism, a foreign policy school of thought he first learned in the 1950s and then thoroughly absorbed while teaching at university, serving in government and editing a magazine. For much of his career, Harries was a major player in policy debates, especially US-Australia relations. While being among the strongest supporters of the US-Australia alliance, he did not shy away from criticism of the US. In the 1960s, he was a prominent supporter of Australia’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Four decades later, he was a trenchant critic of the Iraq War, of the leading intellectual architects of that war, and of Australia’s involvement in it. In the heat of the Iraq debate, he delivered the ABC’s Boyer Lectures, which have been published under the title. Harries was a member of the Australian Association for Cultural Freedom, a group that produced Quadrant magazine, on whose editorial board he sat. Over the years, he edited and contributed to several books on culture, politics and international relations. He has also been a regular contributor to several newspapers around the world, including the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, The Times, as well as magazines Commentary, Foreign Affairs, National Review and The New Republic. In 2011, Harries was presented for admission to the degree of Doctor of Letters at the University of Sydney. He died in Sydney on 25 June 2020.
