The Center for the National Interest is a Washington, D.C.-based public policy think tank. It was established by former U.S. President Richard Nixon on January 20, 1994, as the Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom. The group changed its name to The Nixon Center in 1998. In 2001 the center acquired The National Interest, a bimonthly journal, in which it tends to promote the realist perspective on foreign policy. The center's president is Dimitri K. Simes.