Welcome to The Institute of World Politics, a graduate school devoted to the study of statecraft and national security affairs. Statecraft is the use of the various instruments of power in service of national interests and purposes, including the cause of peace with freedom and justice.
The Institute was founded to fill a major national need: to supply professional education in statecraft, national security, intelligence, and foreign policy that no other school offers and that few people in government acquire except haphazardly by on-the-job experience over the course of an entire career, and then usually in limited fields.
We emphasize the development of a capacity to think strategically so as to detect and understand threats and political-strategic opportunities; prevent, manage, mitigate, resolve, and prevail in international conflicts; match the ends and means of policy; and to do all this in ways that minimize the necessity of using force.
At the Institute, we believe that when governments resort to force it is often a sign of the failure to use the many non-military instruments of power effectively. Thus, we maintain that the most fruitful study of statecraft involves study of all the instruments of power – including several that are often neglected – and how they must be used ethically and prudently. When force must be used, we believe that it must be strategically integrated with these other instruments in order to achieve policy goals most effectively and with minimum loss of life.
Here, the study of statecraft rests on a foundational curriculum of selected liberal arts that, today, are seldom mastered sufficiently for purposes of successful professional work in the most dangerous and sensitive functions of government.
Our curriculum is designed to serve three corollary purposes, each of which we believe is essential to effectiveness in statecraft. One is the cultivation of realism about human nature and the nature of world politics, in order to avoid a recurring tendency toward wishful thinking or willful blindness – what Solzhenitsyn called "the desire not to know," or what Orwell described as "the will to disbelieve the horrible." The second is the cultivation of civic virtue and a proper sense of responsibility in the use of power. The third is to instill a spirit of idealism – especially a spirit of service to the public in the defense of civilization. Each of these constitutes an essential part of a time-honored yet contemporary desideratum: character-building education in moral leadership.
Our faculty is truly unique, consisting of professors who not only have the necessary academic credentials, but also substantial experience as practitioners, particularly at the highest levels of government, in the subjects which they teach. Our location in Washington, D.C., just blocks from the White House, has permitted the Institute to establish an extensive network of current and former senior officials in all branches of government, who are included as guest lecturers in all our courses.
The Institute has successfully broken into the most competitive foreign affairs education market in the world by offering a curriculum that is actually useful to current and aspiring professionals in the relevant fields. An examination of the backgrounds of our students demonstrates the judgment of the market. The fact that most of our students enrolled at a time when the Institute had not yet launched its Master’s degree program reveals that they found something here more than formal academic credentials – they found education worth pursuing for the value it adds to professional work in the field. Now they have two degrees and seven certificate programs from which to choose.
With the attacks on New York and Washington on September 11, 2001, our nation has been reawakened to the need for concern about matters of war and peace, and has recognize
