George Soros, Charles Koch team up to form antiwar think tank
Liberal billionaire businessman George Soros and libertarian billionaire businessmen Charles Koch have teamed up to form a nonprofit centered on advancing pacifist foreign policy.
Known as The Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, the new organization was named after former president John Quincy Adams, who championed isolationism, according to a Boston Globe story published Sunday.
According to its website, the Quincy Institute says that it seeks “a new foreign policy centered on diplomatic engagement and military restraint.”
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“Political leaders have increasingly deployed the military in a costly, counterproductive, and indiscriminate manner, normalizing war and treating armed dominance as an end in itself,” stated the Institute.
“The current moment presents a once-in-a-generation opportunity to bring together like-minded progressives and conservatives and set U.S. foreign policy on a sensible and humane footing. Our country’s current circumstances demand it.”
As of Monday, the Institute was still in its infancy when it came to social media outreach. The Facebook page’s earliest post was from last Thursday. While its Twitter account is listed as beginning in March, the first post was on Sunday.
The partnership is significant as both Soros and Koch are the subject of much partisan hatred in American politics, with both usually being associated with political conspiracy theories.
In response to the news, Nick Gillespie of the libertarian-leaning publication Reason celebrated the creation of the Institute as “a welcome sign that worn-out, old political coalitions are making way for new alliances.”
“The Quincy Institute, drawing financial and ideological support from parts of the political spectrum that aren't supposed to row in the same direction, is the latest sign that a 21st-century politics, one rooted in the way we live now and committed to finding answers to our present and future predicaments, is at long last emerging,” wrote Gillespie.
Noted conservative writer and co-founder of The Weekly Standard Bill Kristol was more critical, taking to his Twitter account to defend U.S. foreign policy.
“75 years of a US-led liberal international order, based on a US forward presence and backed by US might, with regional and bilateral alliances and relatively free trade, has enabled remarkable peace and prosperity. But let’s go back to the 1920’s and 30’s!” tweeted Kristol.
Soros and Koch have also teamed up along with others for the After Charlottesville Project, which is aimed at combating online extremism.
Created in response to the white nationalist rally held in the Virginia city of Charlottesville in 2017, the Project is scheduled to hold a conference later this month, according to the Observer.
