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Welcome to the new Responsible Statecraft!

Welcome to the new Responsible Statecraft!

Analysis | QiOSK

Welcome to the new Responsible Statecraft website! If you’re a new reader, we’re delighted that you are checking us out and we hope you find the content engaging and enlightening. If you’re a long-time fan of “realism and restraint,” we know you’ll find plenty here of interest. If you’re a skeptic or even a critic of our work, we hope we can persuade you to consider the arguments here for a more sensible and successful foreign policy for the United States.

Here are three reasons why the content you’ll find at Responsible Statecraft is so valuable.

First and foremost, U.S. foreign policy has been underperforming for decades. Instead of pursuing policies that made Americans more secure, more prosperous, and advanced core U.S. values, leaders from both political parties have repeatedly acted in ways that undermined each of these goals. They have waged long, costly, and unsuccessful wars based on dubious justifications and sustained by wishful thinking instead of hard-headed analysis. Ideologically-driven efforts to expand a U.S.-led order without limits have exacerbated great power tensions and unwittingly helped provoke a tragic conflict in Ukraine.

Responsible Statecraft is must-reading because it offers clear alternatives to the policies that have repeatedly failed, based on time-honored principles of realism and restraint.

Second, Responsible Statecraft and the Quincy Institute are committed to restoring a better balance between defense and diplomacy in the conduct of U.S. foreign policy. The United States needs a strong defense, but it also needs well-funded, well-trained, and highly competent diplomatic institutions. Its leaders need to use that capability as often and as seriously as they employ the mailed fist.

Some of America’s greatest foreign policy triumphs — the Marshall Plan, the creation of the Bretton Woods institutions, the Egyptian-Israeli Peace Treaty, the peaceful reunification of Germany, etc. — were won not on a battlefield but across a negotiating table, yet that lesson seems to have been lost on recent administrations. During the “unipolar moment,” U.S. leaders tended to issue ultimatums, ratchet up sanctions, or reach for the sword, instead of engaging in the hard bargaining and empathy that can resolve conflicts without recourse to force.

At RS, we endeavor to showcase the work of staff and outside contributors — journalists, academics, former government officials and military — that seek this alternative vision.

Third, public policy is more successful when alternatives are widely and openly debated. Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. foreign policy establishment (aka “the Blob”) has embraced a set of orthodoxies that were rarely questioned no matter how often they failed. Those who embrace these ideas are rarely held accountable for the unhappy results that their decisions produced and top officials never seemed to learn from past mistakes. As Walter Lippmann once warned, “when all think alike, no one thinks very much.”

RS and Quincy think differently. We are committed to publishing alternative perspectives on contemporary U.S. foreign policy, grounded in serious scholarship and a realistic understanding of the forces that shape state behavior and global outcomes. RS represents no special interests or political party but exists to give a platform for a wider range of discussion even when consensus remains elusive. Policymakers, pundits, and the public need to know that there are alternatives and be encouraged to weigh the pros and cons carefully. Open and honest debate makes it more likely that we will choose the right approach and makes it easier to identify and revise policies that aren’t working as we hoped.

We now face an unprecedented set of global challenges, all of them occurring at once. We need ideas and approaches that are informed by past experience but are not mired in outdated conventional wisdoms. Responsible Statecraft is dedicated to providing these perspectives. Our impact is growing, requiring the new, dynamic platform you see today. I’m proud to be part of their team, and that’s why you should keep reading. Enjoy!


Analysis | QiOSK
How US incompetence empowers China in Latin America
Top image credit: Oleg Elkov

How US incompetence empowers China in Latin America

Latin America

China was recently admitted as an observer to the Andean Community — a political and economic block consisting of Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru and one of the Americas’ numerous organizations and forums.

Getting increasingly nervous about Chinese influence, U.S. policymakers made a concerted effort to limit the CCP's engagement in the Inter-American Development Bank and some even raised concerns about potential — albeit unconfirmed — ties between China and the recently elected secretary general of the Organization of American States. Now, with China starting to engage in another regional organization, analysts already warn it could serve as a conduit for expanding AI and electric vehicle sales into South America.

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Saronic Marauder
Top image credit: Saronic launches 'Marauder' Autonomous Ship After Gulf Craft Acquisition/Military Style [YouTube/Screenshot]

Are killer robot ships coming to save us?

Military Industrial Complex

Sinking warships with “kamikaze”-like strikes, attacking critical infrastructure, and “swarming” together to overwhelm enemy defenses, Ukraine’s Magura drone boats have had success countering Russian naval forces in the Black Sea — despite its Navy’s markedly limited resources.

These autonomous maritime vessels are having a moment, and the Pentagon and weapons industry alike want in on it. Flush with cash from venture capitalists and, increasingly, the DoD, which has awarded hundreds of millions in contracts to this end, defense-tech start-ups, including Saronic, BlackSea, and Blue Water Autonomy, have been building a new generation of myriad autonomous and semi-autonomous maritime vessels.

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Trump
Top image credit: U.S. President Donald Trump, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth meet with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy (not pictured) over lunch in the Cabinet Room at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., October 17, 2025. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst

Will Trump really attack Venezuela?

Latin America

It’s ironic that in the same week that President Donald Trump escalated the drug war in the Caribbean by unleashing the CIA against Nicolás Maduro’s regime in Venezuela, the Department of Justice won an indictment against former National Security Adviser John Bolton, the architect of the failed covert strategy to overthrow Maduro during the first Trump administration.

The one thing the two regime change operations have in common is Marco Rubio, who, as a senator, was a vociferous opponent of Maduro. Now, as Secretary of State and National Security Adviser, he’s the new architect of Trump’s Venezuela policy, having managed to cut short Richard Grenell’s attempt to negotiate a diplomatic deal with Maduro. Regime change is on the agenda once again, with gunboats in the Caribbean and the CIA on the ground. What could go wrong?

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