The Jamestown Foundation is a

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

-based

conservative Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...

defense policy

think tank A think tank, or policy institute, is a research institute that performs research and advocacy concerning topics such as social policy, political strategy, economics, military, technology, and culture. Most think tanks are non-governmenta ...

. Founded in 1984 as a platform to support

Soviet defectors After World War II, emigration restrictions were imposed by countries in the Eastern Bloc, which consisted of the Soviet Union and its satellite states in Central and Eastern Europe. Legal emigration was in most cases only possible in order to ...

, its stated mission today is to inform and educate policy makers about events and trends, which it regards as being of current strategic importance to the United States. Jamestown publications focus on China, Russia, Eurasia, and global terrorism.

Founding and mission

The Jamestown Foundation was founded in 1984 after

Arkady Shevchenko Arkady Nikolayevich Shevchenko ( uk, Аркадій Миколайович Шевченко, russian: Аркадий Николаевич Шевченко; October 11, 1930 – February 28, 1998) was a Soviet diplomat who was the highest-ran ...

, the highest-ranking

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nation ...

official ever to defect when he left his position as Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations, defected in 1978. William Geimer, an American lawyer, had been working closely with Shevchenko, and established the foundation as a vehicle to promote the writings of the former Soviet diplomat and those of

Ion Pacepa Ion Mihai Pacepa (; 28 October 1928 – 14 February 2021) was a Romanian two-star general in the Securitate, the secret police of the Socialist Republic of Romania, who defected to the United States in July 1978 following President Jimmy Carter ...

, a former top

Romania Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, Serbia to the southwest, Moldova to the east, and ...

n intelligence officer; with the help of the foundation, both defectors published bestselling books.Jamestown Foundation
Origins
The CIA Director William J. Casey helped back the formation of The Jamestown Foundation, agreeing with its complaints that the U.S. intelligence community did not provide sufficient funding of Soviet bloc defectors. The foundation, initially also dedicated to supporting Soviet dissidents, also aided defecting intellectuals from the Eastern Bloc in disseminating their ideas in the west.

Board of directors

In the past, Jamestown's board of directors has included

Zbigniew Brzezinski Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzeziński ( , ; March 28, 1928 – May 26, 2017), or Zbig, was a Polish-American diplomat and political scientist. He served as a counselor to President Lyndon B. Johnson from 1966 to 1968 and was President Jimmy Carter' ...

, former National Security Advisor to U.S. President

Jimmy Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 1 ...

. Jamestown's current board includes Dr. Michael Carpenter, the managing director of the

Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement The Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement of the University of Pennsylvania is located in Washington, D.C. and is named for the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden. A think tank, the Penn Biden Center is, per its mis ...

. Carpenter previously served in the Pentagon as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense and in the White House as a foreign policy advisor to current President Joe Biden (when Biden was

vice president A vice president, also director in British English, is an officer in government or business who is below the president (chief executive officer) in rank. It can also refer to executive vice presidents, signifying that the vice president is on ...

under

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the ...

) as well as on the National Security Council as Director for Russia. Jamestown's board also includes Michael G. Vickers, who previously served as the

Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence The under secretary of defense for intelligence and security or USD(I&S) is a high-ranking civilian position in the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) that acts as the principal civilian advisor ...

and whose role at the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

during the

Soviet–Afghan War The Soviet–Afghan War was a protracted armed conflict fought in the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan from 1979 to 1989. It saw extensive fighting between the Soviet Union and the Afghan mujahideen (alongside smaller groups of anti-Sovie ...

was famously featured in George Crile's 2003 book '' Charlie Wilson's War.'' As of 2021, the foundation's current board includes General Michael V. Hayden;

Bruce Hoffman Bruce Hoffman (born 1954) is an American political analyst specializing in the study of terrorism and counterterrorism, insurgency and counter-insurgency. Hoffman is a tenured professor at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Forei ...

; Matthew Bryza;

Robert Spalding Robert S. Spalding III (born 1966) is a retired United States Air Force brigadier general. He currently serves as a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute. His work focuses on U.S.–China relations, economic and national security, and the Asia-P ...

, who acted as an architect of US-China strategy while serving on the National Security Council in the

Donald Trump Donald John Trump (born June 14, 1946) is an American politician, media personality, and businessman who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021. Trump graduated from the Wharton School of the University of P ...

administration; Michelle Van Cleave; Arthur Waldron; and

Timothy J. Keating Timothy John Keating (born November 16, 1948) is a retired United States Navy admiral. During his career, he served as commander of Carrier Group Five, the United States 5th Fleet, the United States Northern Command and North American Aerospace D ...

, while Jamestown's fellows included Vladimir Socor;

Janusz Bugajski Janusz Bugajski (born 23 September 1954, in Nantwich, Cheshire, England) is a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation in Washington, D.C., and host of “Bugajski Hour” television shows broadcast in the Balkans. He was formerly a senior fel ...

; Paul Goble;

Michael Scheuer Michael F. Scheuer (pronounced "SHOY-er"), (born 1952) is an American former intelligence officer for the Central Intelligence Agency, blogger, author, commentator and former adjunct professor at Georgetown University's Center for Peace and Sec ...

(who claims to have been fired for criticizing the United States' relationship with

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

), Thomas Kent, the former president of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty; Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a Hong Kong-based China specialist; Jacob Zenn, a leading expert on Boko Haram; and Stephen Ulph, a leading expert on Jihadist ideology.

Activities

Its primary focus is on China,

Eurasia Eurasia (, ) is the largest continental area on Earth, comprising all of Europe and Asia. Primarily in the Northern and Eastern Hemispheres, it spans from the British Isles and the Iberian Peninsula in the west to the Japanese archipelago ...

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

, and global

terrorism Terrorism, in its broadest sense, is the use of criminal violence to provoke a state of terror or fear, mostly with the intention to achieve political or religious aims. The term is used in this regard primarily to refer to intentional violen ...

. As of 2008, its publications were ''Eurasia Daily Monitor'', ''Terrorism Monitor'', and ''China Brief.'' Previous publications included ''Eurasia Security Trends'', ''Fortnight in Review'', ''North Korea Review'', ''Russia and Eurasia Review'', ''Russia's Week'', ''Spotlight on Terror'', ''North Caucasus Weekly'', (formerly ''Chechnya Weekly'') and ''Recent From Turkey'' and ''Terrorism Focus''. Along with these publications, Jamestown produces occasional reports and books.

Nikolai Getman collection

The foundation hosted Russian artist Nikolai Getman's paintings of

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

camps. Getman was imprisoned for eight years by the Soviet regime for participating in anti-Soviet propaganda as a result of a caricature of

Joseph Stalin Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...

that one of his friends had drawn on a cigarette box. He survived, and for four decades he secretly labored at creating a visual record of the Gulag system.Getman
Retrieved on 9 November 2010 In September 2009, the Jamestown Foundation transferred the Getman collection to the

Heritage Foundation The Heritage Foundation (abbreviated to Heritage) is an American conservative think tank based in Washington, D.C. that is primarily geared toward public policy. The foundation took a leading role in the conservative movement during the preside ...

Reception

In 2007, the Russian government said the think-tank was spreading anti-Russian propaganda by hosting a debate on violence in the Russian republic of Ingushetia. According to a statement by the Foreign Ministry of Russia: "Organisers again and again resorted to deliberately spreading slander about the situation in Chechnya and other republics of the Russian

North Caucasus The North Caucasus, ( ady, Темыр Къафкъас, Temır Qafqas; kbd, Ишхъэрэ Къаукъаз, İṩxhərə Qauqaz; ce, Къилбаседа Кавказ, Q̇ilbaseda Kavkaz; , os, Цӕгат Кавказ, Cægat Kavkaz, inh, ...

using the services of supporters of terrorists and pseudo-experts. Speakers were given carte blanche to spread extremist propaganda, incite ethnic and inter-religious discord." In response, Jamestown Foundation president Glen Howard said that Russia was "intimidated by the power of the free word and this goes against the state manipulation of the media in Russia." On 8 December 2011, Ambassador Daniel Benjamin, State Department Counterterrorism Coordinator for the Obama administration, gave the keynote address at Jamestown's Fifth Annual Terrorism Conference where he praised Jamestown for its research and analysis of terrorism issues. The Jamestown Foundation was criticized by the Right Web project (now the "Militarist Monitor" project) based at the

Institute for Policy Studies The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) is an American progressive think tank started in 1963 that is based in Washington, D.C. It was directed by John Cavanagh from 1998 to 2021. In 2021 Tope Folarin was announced as new Executive Director. ...

for alleged links to the CIA and for advancing a right-wing,

neoconservative Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and count ...

agenda. In 2020, the office of the Prosecutor-General of Russia said that Jamestown Foundation's publications sought to fan separatism in some Russian regions and posed a security threat. It described the Foundation as an "undesirable organisation", which could result in the organisation being banned in Russia under the Russian foreign agent law.

References

External links

*
Jamestown Foundation profile on Right Web
{{Authority control Foreign policy and strategy think tanks in the United States Think tanks established in 1984 Charities based in Washington, D.C. Undesirable organizations in Russia