The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft is a non-interventionist foreign policy advocacy organization founded in 2019 with support from two major political donors, liberal George Soros and libertarian Charles Koch. [1]
It officially launches in Fall 2019, though its existence was announced by the Boston Globe months earlier. [2] Institute staff were listed on the website as of August 17, 2019. [3]
The Institute is named for former President John Quincy Adams, who opposed interventionist military and foreign policies. [4]
Funding
Soros and Koch each provided $500,000 in initial funding for the think tank. Approximately $800,000 was provided by other donors. The Boston Globe reported that the goal is to have the think tank secure $3.5 million in total funding by 2021. [5]
Mission
The Institute’s mission is to advocate for a restrained U.S. foreign policy to Congress, the public, and other stakeholders. [6]
Its five guiding principles concentrate on philosophies which limit U.S. foreign policy engagements. [7] The philosophies include, but are not limited to, diplomacy-first foreign policies, “respect[ing]…international laws and norms,” seeking to “coexist with competitors,” military force “as a last resort,” and Congress engaging in its constitutional roles related to war and foreign affairs.
Leadership
Major Supporters
George Soros is a billionaire investor and leading funder of liberal political advocacy groups and campaigns. He is founder of the Open Society Foundations.
Charles Koch is an energy magnate and billionaire funder of libertarian and conservative advocacy and campaigns. He co-founded the Koch Foundation and its related advocacy networks with his brother David.
Staff
The Institute has primarily hired left-leaning senior staff. [8] President Andrew Bacevich is Professor Emeritus of International Relations and History at Boston University. A retired U.S. Army Colonel, he was a vocal critic of the Iraq War. His son died in the Iraq conflict in 2007. [9][10]
Research director Eli Clifton was previously a journalist for left-leaning organizations such as ThinkProgress and The Nation Institute (now rebranded TYPE Media Center). He supported the Obama administration’s Iran Deal. [11]
Board of Advisors chair Suzanne DiMaggio was a senior fellow at the left-leaning New America think tank. She is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace with expertise on Middle East and Asia, and has led diplomatic dialogue related to Iran and North Korea. She facilitated the Obama administration’s secret talks with Iran and the Trump administration’s dialogue with North Korea. [12]
Executive vice president Trita Parsi worked for the United Nations Security Council and founded the National Iranian American Council. His book Losing an Enemy – Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Democracy praised the Obama administration’s Iran deal as averting war and preventing development of an Iranian nuclear weapon. [13] Parsi’s Twitter feed includes re-Tweets of claims that President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are racist, that China’s rise in the international arena is a result of its people, not its leadership, and that China is not a threat to the U.S. [14]
Stephen Wertheim is a research scholar at the Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. He holds the position of research director with the Institute. Wertheim has conducted extensive research on World War I and World War II-era foreign policy philosophies and strategies. [15]
Wertheim and Parsi co-authored an op-ed in The Guardian in 2019 which argued that leading Democrats’ criticisms of Rep. Ilhan Omar’s (D-MN) anti-Semitic and other controversial comments regarding U.S. international affairs were misguided. [16]