Fmr. Secretary of State John Kerry Joins Carnegie Endowment

It was just announced that former Secretary of State John Kerry will be joining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as the think tank's inaugural Visiting Distinguished Statesman.

At Carnegie, Secretary Kerry will be focusing on conflict resolution and global environmental challenges, according to a press release.

What is the main reason that Kerry is joining Carnegie and not another big-name think tank like Brookings or Atlantic Council?  The answer appears to be Bill Burns, the current President of Carnegie who served as Deputy Secretary of State in the Obama Administration.

It is a fitting position for Kerry, as the Carnegie Endowment is like a mini-State Department.  The think tank, which has research centers in Washington, DC, Beijing, Beirut, Brussels, Moscow, and New Delhi, has over 100 experts living and working in 20 countries.

Here is more on that from the Boston Globe:

Kerry singled out by name the think tank’s president, former ambassador Bill Burns, as a reason he was drawn to the gig. Kerry first got to know Burns, a longtime foreign service official who served as US ambassador to both Russia and Jordan, when Kerry served as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and was working on opening a secret diplomatic back channel to Iran via Oman. That secret dialogue would bolster Kerry’s ability as Secretary of State to ink an historic nuclear agreement with Iran in 2013.

Burns delayed his retirement as deputy secretary of state several times at the request of Kerry and then-President Obama. He stepped down as the nation’s No. 2 diplomat in October 2014.

In the waning days of the Obama administration, Kerry indicated in interviews with the Globe that he hoped to continue to play a role in world affairs even after he left his formal position as the nation’s top diplomat.

Others connected with Kerry also work at the think tank, including Middle East Program Fellow Perry Cammack, who worked as part of the policy planning staff at the State Department during Kerry's tenure.  Cammack was also a senior professional staff member for then Sen. Kerry on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

Just weeks before, it was announced that Kerry will serve as Yale University's first-ever Distinguished Fellow for Global Affairs.

Meanwhile, there are rumors that Jon Huntsman, the Chairman of Atlantic Council, is in the running to be either the next US Ambassador to Russia or the Deputy Secretary of State.

The White House-think tank revolving door has been spinning fast the past few weeks, with a number of think tankers leaving for the Trump Administration and a number of Obama Administration officials finding positions at think tanks.

Carnegie India to Launch in April 2016

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP) announced today the launch of Carnegie India, a branch of the think tank which will open in New Delhi.  The new think tank, which will open in April 2016, will be Carnegie's sixth international center.  CEIP is headquartered in Washington, DC and has branches in Beijing, Beirut, Brussels, and Moscow.

C. Raja Mohan, a Nonresident Senior Associate at Carnegie since 2012, will serve as the founding director of Carnegie India.  Shivnath Thukral, former group president of corporate branding and strategic initiatives at Essar, will serve as Carnegie India's Managing Director.

Carnegie India has been supported by Carnegie India's Founders Committee, a group of Indian and international donors co-chaired by former cabinet secretary and Indian ambassador to the US, Naresh Chandra, and former US Ambassador to India, Frank Wisner.

Others on Carnegie India's Founders Committee include:  Carnegie Corporation of America, Shobhana Bhartia/HT Media, C.K. Birla, General Electric, Gilead Sciences, Chip & Cheryl Kaye/Warburg Pincus Foundation, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, Sunil Mittal, The David & Lucile Packard Foundation, Saroj Poddar, G.M. Rao, Tata Sons Ltd., and Tata Consultancy Services Ltd.

Carnegie is not the first major US think tank to open a branch in India.  Several years ago, the Brookings Institution opened a think tank in New Delhi, the same city where Carnegie's new think tank will be located.

India only has 192 think tanks according to the latest University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings.  With a population of 1.25 billion, that means India has one think tank for every 6.5 million people.  As a comparison, the US, with 1,830 think tanks and a population of around 320 million people, has one think tank for every 175,000 people.

Carnegie Slammed for Being Too Close to Putin

A well-respected think tank has just been slammed for being too cozy with Russian President Vladimir Putin.  It also stands accused of being a "trojan horse" for Russian Influence.

James Kirchick, a Fellow with the conservative think tank Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI), has some pretty harsh words for the Carnegie Moscow Center (a subdivision of the Carnegie Institute for International Peace) and certain scholars there.  Following are some of Think Tank Watch's favorite excerpts from the piece, entitled "How a US Think Tank Fell for Putin."

On the "Secret" Boisto Meeting to Solve the Russia/Ukraine Tensions:

The Boisto Group’s meeting was sponsored by three entities: the Finnish Foreign Ministry, the Institute for World Economy and International Relations (a think tank affiliated with the Russian Academy of Sciences), and the Carnegie Corporation of New York, one of the largest funders of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, which describes itself as “the oldest international affairs think tank in the United States” (Such a long-running pedigree hasn’t been without its hiccups: a former president of Carnegie was Alger Hiss, the State Department official who spied for the Soviets.) Boisto’s first three signatories were Tom Graham, a former associate at the Carnegie Endowment, and a managing director at Kissinger Associates; Andrew Weiss, the Carnegie Endowment’s vice president for studies who also serves as a senior adviser at the Albright Stonebridge Group, and Deana Arsenian, vice president of the international program and director of the Russia program at the Carnegie Corporation. On the Russian side, the delegation included, among others, Alexei Arbatov, a scholar-in-residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center, and Vyacheslav Trubnikov, a former head of the country’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR).

Think tank vs. Business Consulting - A Conflict of Interest?

Policy analysts who simultaneously work for major consulting shops founded by former secretaries of state (Henry Kissinger and Madeleine Albright, respectively), Graham and Weiss—who also served as co-chairs of the Boisto initiative—are influential players in the transatlantic conversation about Russia, although it’s unclear where their analytical work stops and their business interests begin.

“I don’t want to be holier than thou,” a Russia analyst at a prominent Washington think tank said when asked about Graham and Weiss’s work as business consultants while also dispensing ostensibly objective analysis. “It seems to be a direct conflict of interest.

On Western Think Tanks in Russia

Carnegie was the first major Western think tank to open a branch in Russia following the breakup of the Soviet Union, and, ironically, it may be the last. 1994, when the Moscow center was founded, was a period of optimism for liberal reform of the post-communist system, and Carnegie Moscow was one of the leading Western outposts providing independent and reliable analysis of Russian domestic politics and foreign policy. After Vladimir Putin came to power in 2000, and throughout his rise as Russia’s new tsar, the center built a reputation for quality and insight. That reputation was built in part upon the work of three individuals: Lilia Shevtsova, a political scientist and one of the most well-respected analysts of Russian politics; Nikolai Petrov, who headed the center’s Society and Regions Program; and Maria Lipman, a journalist and author who edited the center’s renowned Russian-language Pro et Contra journal. All three have been vocal and prominent critics of Putin and the corrupt and sclerotic system he has imposed.

On Recent Turnover at Carnegie's Moscow Center

The center began to undergo serious change, however, after Putin returned to the presidency in 2012 following a rigged election and violent crackdown on pro-democracy protesters. In January 2013, Petrov left after his program was canceled, not due to lack of funds, he contends, but a desire not to ruffle Kremlin feathers.

Next to go was Lipman, laid off in the summer of 2014 due to what she was formally informed were “personnel cuts.” This came as a surprise, not least because in 2013 Carnegie Moscow had received a three-year grant of $350,000 from the MacArthur Foundation to fund the publication of Pro et Contra.

Last out the door in October was Shevtsova, who only two months earlier had signed the open letter protesting the Boisto manifesto, pitting her against her superiors, Arsenian and Weiss. Shevtsova, who is now affiliated with the Brookings Institution, told The Daily Beast: “Carnegie has been a wonderful place over the years with a strong a tradition of pluralism of views, including most prominently liberal principled views. Over the past year or two, however, I have sensed that this has changed, with a squeezing out of different points of view.”

On Carnegie's New Hired in Moscow

Three months after Shevtsova’s departure, in January 2015, Carnegie announced the hiring of three new analysts in its Moscow office, ostensibly to replace the veterans who had left. “I’m a great admirer of [Lilia] Shevtsova, Masha Lipman and Nikolai Petrov and their remarkable contributions to the Carnegie Moscow Center over many years,” Weiss said in an email. However, one current Carnegie staffer has referred to Lipman and Shevtsova as “dinosaurs” in this author’s presence.

Carnegie Not a Target of Russia's Campaign Targeting Think Tanks, NGOs

As the Russian government ratchets up a xenophobic campaign targeting Western nongovernmental organizations, accusing them of espionage and attempting to foment a coup, Carnegie’s presence in Moscow continues to be tolerated. Its name is conspicuously missing from the latest list of “undesirable organizations” compiled by the Russian government, which includes many other institutions of similar profile: George Soros’s Open Society Foundation, the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation, the latter of which announced last week that it will leave Russia due to Kremlin pressure.

Adding to the mystery of Carnegie’s absence from the list of “undesirable organizations” is the fact that MacArthur, Mott, and Open Society have all funded the Moscow center. 

Carnegie Moscow Center Doesn't Do Anti-Russia?

A list of events held by the Carnegie Moscow Center on its website provides one clue to why this might be the case: Scarcely any have addressed internal Russian politics or, more amazingly, the ongoing war in Ukraine. “[Carnegie Moscow] used to be a venue where events were held regularly, and, I would say, quite frequently, that discussed current developments in looking at various aspects of Russia. I don’t see such events any more and if they still hold them they are much fewer,” Lipman said.

Carnegie Moscow Center Cozy with Russian Intelligence?

According to Garry Kasparov, the Russian chess grandmaster, human rights activist, and Daily Beast contributor, Carnegie functions in a role not unfamiliar to students of the Cold War: as a tribune to the West through which Russian intelligence whispers the official Moscow line—or rather, what Moscow wants the West to believe is that line. The Moscow center is the sort of operation that influential actors in the Kremlin, he said, “use at a time when they need to communicate their messages to the West not from official structures but from something that is viewed as independent and even American.”

Has Carnegie Lost Its Independence?

Over half a dozen Russia analysts at prominent Washington-based think tanks consulted for this article chose not to go on the record with their concerns out of professional courtesy. But they joined Kasparov in assessing that Carnegie has decided to place a premium on maintaining its presence in Moscow, sacrificing its intellectual independence and analytical rigor in the process.

Russia Moscow Center Influenced by Putin-Connected Think Tank?

Last December, Graham, Rumer and Weiss attended a conference in Moscow hosted by the Russian Institute for Strategic Studies (RISI), a think tank that, until 2009, was connected to Russia’s foreign intelligence service (SVR) and now provides analysis directly to the presidential administration. Under the leadership of Leonid Reshetnikov, a retired SVR general, the institute strongly supported the annexation of Crimea, and, according to former institute researcher Alexander Sytin, has hosted the separatist leader Igor Girkin (aka Igor Strelkov), himself a former operative in Russian intelligence and a purported “friend” of the institute’s director.

The Carnegie Moscow Center, which started its activities in 1994, was recently ranked as the 14th best non-US think tank in the world by the University of Pennsylvania think tank rankings.  It was ranked as the 26th best think tank in the world.  It was also ranked as the best think tank in Central and Eastern Europe.

CEIP was ranked as the world's third best think tank, and the second best think tank in the United States (after Brookings).

Carnegie Endowment Rescinds Biden Invite

Did anyone else get that think tank dinner invite to hear Vice President Joe Biden speak only to later be disinvited?  Here is the story from Al Kamen, who writes the In The Loop column for The Washington Post:

The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace sent an invitation Friday for a private dinner Monday night with Vice President Biden, who’ll be giving “remarks” on the “Future of the U.S.-India Partnership.”

It was rather late notice, but folks were doubtless thrilled at the honor. Besides, you don’t want to miss a speech by Biden.

So we hustled to get the suit ready.

But then came this e-mail: “Earlier this evening you may have received an invitation to a private dinner on Monday, July 13 featuring remarks by Vice President Joe Biden. This invitation was sent in error, and the dinner is full.”

Think Tank Watch has seen a number of think tank invitations that have later been rescinded for a variety of reasons.