Charles Koch Institute Announces Major Gift to International Crisis Group

The Charles Koch Institute has announced major grants to the International Crisis Group and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace that are aimed at expanding the marketplace of ideas around U.S. foreign policy and supporting new talent.

The $4.5 million grant to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace will support its new multiyear project – the American Statecraft Program – including staff, events, and research activities aimed at better shaping and defining a more restraint-oriented foreign policy. Similarly, the $2.4 million dollar grant to the International Crisis Group will provide funding to expand its U.S. Program – along with accompanying staff and support activities – that will challenge assumptions around the effectiveness of U.S. interventions abroad and encourage non-military solutions to foreign policy challenges.

“We are proud to support new programs and talent at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the International Crisis Group – two of the most respected foreign policy institutions in this country and around the world,” said William Ruger, Vice President of Research and Policy at the Charles Koch Institute. “For far too long, the marketplace of ideas in Washington around foreign policy has been overly narrow and unrepresentative of the range of options available regarding America’s role in the world. This has contributed to poor outcomes for our country. We hope by supporting new talent and scholarship we can help foster a more robust discussion around the current state of U.S. foreign policy and ultimately a more prudential and restrained approach to statecraft.”

“There is an urgent need to reinvent America’s international role to reflect rapidly changing domestic and international landscapes,” said Thomas Carothers, Senior Vice President for Studies at the Carnegie Endowment. “We must define a more disciplined and restrained U.S. foreign policy that is clear-eyed about our competitive and disordered world; realistic about the limits of American power as well as our enduring strengths; and resolute in managing rivalry with other major powers, especially China, and overarching global challenges like climate change. All of these efforts must be rooted much more systematically in domestic renewal. We are grateful to the Charles Koch Institute for recognizing Carnegie’s ongoing work in this space and making a substantial investment in independent analysis that aims to translate a new vision for America’s role in the world into practical policy initiatives.”

“Twenty-five years of cutting-edge work on conflicts around the world have time and again led us back to the United States, and the ways in which its over-militarized approach to resolving complex crises has tended to cause more problems than it solves,” said Robert Malley, International Crisis Group’s president and CEO. “We are thrilled that this support from the Charles Koch Institute will allow us to expand our research into the United States’ role as a conflict actor, as well as our advocacy for a foreign policy that better prioritizes diplomatic over military solutions to the challenges of the day.”

These new grants in 2021 follow major new grants the Charles Koch Institute announced last year as part of its foreign policy initiative to the Rand Corporation, the Atlantic Council, the Center for the National Interest, and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.