Foreign Policy Research Institute

A US education and research center founded in 1955, the Foreign Policy Research Institute has a mission to “bringing the insights of scholarship to bear on the development of policies that advance U.S. national interests. We add perspective to events by fitting them into the larger historical and cultural context of international politics”. It is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, which forbids its participation in partisan politics. While it encourages its staff to comment in the media and testify to government hearings, it has always emphasized publication, public education, and providing educational materials. Its main publication is the quarterly journal Orbis.

Its goals are to advance US and Western interests, and its priorities are "the war on terrorism, developments in the Middle East, nuclear proliferation, relations with China, Russia, and Japan— and long-term questions, such as the roles of religion and ethnicity in international politics, or the nature of Western identity and its implications for the U.S. and the Atlantic Alliance."

Mearsheimer and Walt called it part of the Israel lobby, but its publication list addresses many issues not concerned with the Middle East. Some of its publications address issues for teaching history, not necessarily accepting American exceptionalism, or, in the case of the Vietnam War, a hard Cold War logic.