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Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft

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Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft
Formation2019; 5 years ago (2019)
Type501(c)(3) organization
84-2285143
Websitequincyinst.org

The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft is a U.S. think tank founded in 2019 and located in Washington, D.C., named after former U.S. president John Quincy Adams. It has been described as "realist" and advocating for "restraint" in U.S. foreign policy.

History

The Quincy Institute was co-founded by Andrew Bacevich, a former US Army colonel in Vietnam and retired professor of history at Boston University.[1]

Initial funding for the group, launched in November 2019,[2] included half a million dollars each from George Soros' Open Society Foundations and Charles Koch's Koch Foundation.[3][4][5] Substantial funding has also come from the Ford Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and Schumann Center for Media and Democracy.[6] The institute distinguishes itself from many other think tanks in Washington, D.C. by refusing to accept money from foreign governments.[7]

The think tank is named after U.S. President John Quincy Adams, who as Secretary of State said, in a speech on July 4, 1821, that the U.S. "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy".[7] It has been described as "realist" and "promot[ing] an approach to the world based on diplomacy and restraint rather than threats, sanctions, and bombing".[8][9]

David Klion wrote: "Quincy's founding members say again and again that 9/11 and the Iraq War were turning points in their careers."[7] Many fellows at the institute are veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.[10][non-primary source needed]

Purpose

The Quincy Institute states that it is a nonprofit research organization and think tank that hosts scholars, participates in debates, publishes analysis pieces by journalists and academics, and advocates for a "less militarized and more cooperative foreign policy".[11] According to its statement of purpose, it is opposed to the "military-industrial complex" described by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in his farewell address.[11]

Co-founder Trita Parsi, an Iranian-born author and analyst, has described the Quincy Institute as "transpartisan", and, according to The Nation, has described the need for "an alliance of politicians on the left and right who agree on the need for restraint, even if they do so for different reasons".[7][12] Bacevich said: "Our purpose is to promote restraint as a central principle of U.S. foreign policy — fewer wars and more effective diplomatic engagement."[13]

According to The Nation, the Quincy Institute founders believe that the existing foreign policy elite is out of step with the American public, which is "far more skeptical of military adventurism".[7] Mother Jones said that the Quincy Institute offers "a rare voice of dissent from foreign policy orthodoxy."[14]

Daniel W. Drezner, writing in The Washington Post, described the institute as a "think tank that advocates a sober version of restraint", and said that it joined the Cato Institute, the Center for the National Interest, and New America "in the heterodox foreign policy basket".[15] Hal Brands, writing in Bloomberg News, described it as a "well-funded think tank" that is part of the "restraint coalition", a "loose network of analysts, advocates and politicians calling for a sharply reduced US role in the world".[16]

Criticism

The Quincy Institute is a frequent target of criticism by advocates of a strong US military presence abroad, neoconservative commentators, lobbyists for the state of Israel, and think tanks funded in whole or in part by the US defense industry.

Critics of the Quincy Institute have argued that its agenda puts it in league with the Trump administration's foreign policy on some issues, such as negotiating with North Korea, but has a different approach from the Trump administration on others, such as U.S. involvement in the war in Yemen.[8][17]

Writing in Survival, the journal of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Daniel Deudney and John Ikenberry criticized the "restraints" that the Quincy Institute advocates for as "misplaced and inadequate". Deudney and Ikenberry argue that liberal internationalism would offer a more historically effective basis for institution-based restraint, than transactional agreements between states supported by the geopolitical restraint school.[17]

In January 2020, The Jerusalem Post reported that a number of fellows of the Institute, including Lawrence Wilkerson, Stephen Walt, and John Mearsheimer, had been accused of antisemitism for the ways they have criticized the Israel lobby in the United States, AIPAC, and Israel.[13] One such accusation came from Republican U.S. Senator Tom Cotton, describing it as an "isolationist, blame America First money pit for so-called scholars who've written that American foreign policy could be fixed if only it were rid of the malign influence of Jewish money."[18][13] The Jerusalem Post quoted Eugene Kontorovich as saying that Quincy scholars had singled out Jews and Israel for "particular demonization".[13] Quincy president Andrew Bacevich described Cotton's claim as "absurd".[19]

According to an April 2021 article in Tablet, two Quincy Institute fellows have cast doubt on whether the Chinese government's persecution of the Uyghur population amounts to a genocide.[20]

During the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, there were two resignations in protest at the Institute's dovish response to the conflict: non-resident fellow Joseph Cirincione of Ploughshares Fund, who had raised money for Quincy, and board member Paul Eaton, a retired senior Army major officer and adviser to Democratic politicians and liberal advocacy groups. Cirincione said he "fundamentally" disagrees with Quincy experts who "completely ignore the dangers and the horrors of Russia’s invasion and occupation and focus almost exclusively on criticism of the United States, NATO, and Ukraine". Eaton said he resigned because he "supports NATO".[14][21]

Co-founders

According to the Quincy Institute, its co-founding leaders include:[11]

References

  1. ^ Rich Barlow (July 23, 2019). "Professor Emeritus Andrew Bacevich Cofounds a Think Tank Promoting Democracy, Funded By Ideological Opposites George Soros and Charles Koch". Boston University. Archived from the original on July 13, 2021. Retrieved June 7, 2022.
  2. ^ "Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft". Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Archived from the original on 2019-07-01. Retrieved 2019-07-01. as we near our public launch in November!
  3. ^ Kinzer, Stephen (June 30, 2019). "In an astonishing turn, George Soros and Charles Koch team up to end US 'forever war' policy". Boston Globe. Archived from the original on July 1, 2019. Retrieved July 1, 2019.
  4. ^ Embury-Denis, Tom (1 July 2019). "George Soros and Charles Koch to fund new 'anti-war' think tank". The Independent. Archived from the original on 1 July 2019. Retrieved 1 July 2019.
  5. ^ Coleman, Justine (December 3, 2019). "George Soros, Charles Koch foundations help launch pro-peace think tank". The Hill. Archived from the original on February 19, 2020. Retrieved May 23, 2020.
  6. ^ "Our Financial Supporters". Archived from the original on 2022-04-19. Retrieved 2022-05-25.
  7. ^ a b c d e Klion, David (July 29, 2019). "Can a New Think Tank Put a Stop to Endless War?". The Nation. Archived from the original on August 3, 2019. Retrieved August 3, 2019.
  8. ^ a b Mills, Curt (2019-07-01). "Realism Resurgent: The Rise of the Quincy Institute". The National Interest. Archived from the original on 2020-12-16. Retrieved 2020-05-23.
  9. ^ "Charles Koch and George Soros teamed up on a new foreign-policy think tank. I have questions". Washington Post. Archived from the original on 11 September 2021. Retrieved 29 July 2021.
  10. ^ "Experts". Archived from the original on 2022-04-19. Retrieved 2022-05-24.
  11. ^ a b c "About QI - Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft". Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. Archived from the original on 24 July 2021. Retrieved 28 July 2021.
  12. ^ Spinelli, Dan; Friedman, Dan (August 2022). "America's Top Anti-War Think Tank Is Fracturing Over Ukraine". Mother Jones. ISSN 0362-8841. Retrieved 2022-09-05. The institute is proudly not progressive; it prefers to call itself "transpartisan." Its experts often align with the anti-militarist worldview shared by many progressive Democrats and libertarians, a coalition that is reflected in the organization's primary funders: George Soros and Charles Koch.
  13. ^ a b c d "New US think tank accused of antisemitism". The Jerusalem Post. 2020-01-29. Archived from the original on 2021-01-01. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  14. ^ a b Spinelli, Dan; Friedman, Dan (August 2022). "America's Top Anti-War Think Tank Is Fracturing Over Ukraine". Mother Jones. ISSN 0362-8841. Retrieved 2022-09-05.
  15. ^ "Charles Koch and George Soros teamed up on a new foreign-policy think tank. I have questions". Archived from the original on 2021-09-11. Retrieved 2021-07-29.
  16. ^ "The World Doesn't Need a More Restrained America". Bloomberg. 2022-06-01. Retrieved 2022-09-05.
  17. ^ a b Deudney, Daniel; Ikenberry, G. John (2021). "Misplaced Restraint: The Quincy Coalition Versus Liberal Internationalism". Survival. 63 (4): 7–32. doi:10.1080/00396338.2021.1956187. ISSN 0039-6338.
  18. ^ Dolsten, Josefin (9 January 2020). "Republican senator accuses Soros-funded think tank of fostering anti-Semitism". Times of Israel. Archived from the original on 22 February 2021. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
  19. ^ Chotiner, Isaac (January 13, 2020). "Andrew Bacevich on U.S. Foreign-Policy Mistakes". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on 12 December 2020. Retrieved 5 January 2021.
  20. ^ Rosen, Armin (April 28, 2021). "Washington's Weirdest Think Tank". Tablet. Archived from the original on April 30, 2021. Retrieved May 1, 2021.
  21. ^ "'That conversation is over': Jason Greenblatt talks on Khashoggi, Israel and Saudi Arabia". POLITICO. 2022-07-07. Retrieved 2022-09-05.

Further reading

  • Bender, Bryan (2019-12-02). "George Soros and Charles Koch take on the 'endless wars'". POLITICO. Retrieved 2021-01-04.
  • David Klion, "Go Not Abroad in Search of Monsters: The Quincy Institute, a new DC think tank, will fight the Blob at home while advocating restraint overseas", The Nation, vol. 309, no. 3 (August 12 / 19, 2019), pp. 18–21.
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