Reimagining American Statecraft for a New Era
The Robert M. Gates Global Policy Center (GGPC) is dedicated to reimagining and revitalizing America’s non-military instruments of power to ensure long-term national security and global leadership.
Robert M. Gates, U.S. Secretary of Defense (2006–2011), founded the GGPC in 2020 to reverse the decline of America’s statecraft capabilities—from diplomacy to development assistance, strategic communications, geoeconomics, and other non-military tools—in a world of complex global challenges and emerging threats.
The United States won the Cold War by conducting what Secretary Gates calls “a symphony of power” integrating all national instruments of power into a cohesive strategy to accomplish a clear goal. The symphony worked. The USSR disintegrated, the Iron Curtain fell, and the U.S. emerged as the world’s dominant power.
Our military remains strong. But not all global challenges can—or should—be solved through military force alone.
Moreover, America’s major-power rivals and competitors are deploying new economic, technological, diplomatic, and informational levers of power with increasing sophistication and are exploiting vacuums in American influence and leadership.
To compete effectively and sustain national security and global leadership, the United States must revitalize, reimagine, restructure, and integrate its own statecraft instruments into a new symphony of power.
Why Statecraft Matters
Forging Solutions
We convene experts and leaders from across the political spectrum to develop actionable strategies for the long-term redevelopment of American instruments of power.
Our Approach
Statecraft Education
We teach the art and science of statecraft to current and next-generation leaders.
Informing Policymakers
We help decision-makers move our recommendations toward implementation.
“Structures and procedures designed for the exercise of power during the Cold War and a simpler time are no longer adequate for the more complicated and more technologically advanced post-Cold War world...Failure to remedy those deficiencies and to strengthen all our nonmilitary instruments of power will tie one hand behind our back. We cannot afford that.”
— Robert M. Gates, Exercise of Power