IWP Launches Center
For Intermarium Studies
At IWP’s (Institute of World Politics) 7th annual Kosciuszko Chair Spring Symposium on April 8, Dr. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz announced a new academic center at IWP: The Center for Intermarium Studies (CIS).
CIS will serve as an academic hub focused on the strategically critical “geographic pivot of history,” the area between the Baltic, the Black, and the Adriatic Seas formerly dominated by the Soviet Union, in which IWP faculty have exceptional expertise. In the context of newly resurgent Russia, EU realignment, competing energy policy interests, the migrant crisis, the Islamist threat, information warfare, etc., the project focuses on much-needed analysis of political events and rapidly evolving risks facing the West and NATO in the pivotal region between East and West.
The Center will provide political analysis and risk assessment of this strategic region for IWP students and the larger foreign policy community. CIS will serve as an intellectual hub for various initiatives pertaining to the Intermarium region, and seeks to foster friendship and understanding amongst the nations of the Intermarium. It will conduct people-to-people diplomacy between Americans and those in the Intermarium. CIS will also stress the importance of Trans-Atlantic relationships and will reconfirm America’s commitment to Europe, including the Intermarium region.
CIS will be directed by Dr. Marek Chodakiewicz, and will include the many activities of the Kościuszko Chair of Polish Studies. Several IWP professors, including Dr. John Lenczowski, Dr. John Dziak, and Dr. Matthew Daniels, will be involved with this program. IWP alumnus Michael Maibach will serve on the Center’s Advisory Board and facilitate its business outreach.
Please click here to read more about the Center: www.iwp.edu/cis
The Institute of World Politicis is located at 1521 16th Street, NW, Washington, D.C. 20036-1464
202-462-2101 – info@iwp.edu
Overview
Center for Intermarium Studies (CIS) extends IWP’s academic offerings and analytics to include the strategically critical “geographic pivot of history,” the area between the Baltic, the Black, and the Adriatic Seas formerly dominated by the Soviet Union, in which IWP faculty have exceptional expertise. In the context of newly resurgent Russia, EU realignment, competing energy policy interests, the migrant crisis, the Islamist threat, information warfare, etc., the project focuses on much-needed analysis of political events and rapidly evolving risks facing the West and NATO in the pivotal region between East and West.
Objectives
The purpose of The Center for Intermarium Studies is to build on IWP’s traditional strengths and regional expertise to address the practical academic need for political analysis and objective risk assessment in a strategically important and notoriously misinterpreted area on the borderlands of the Western world. Drawing on IWP’s unique understanding of international realities and commitment to scholarship tested by praxis, the program will enhance existing academic offerings and focus on identifying and interpreting observable threats in order to offer both theoretical understanding and actionable, open-source intelligence to IWP students and the larger foreign policy community.
CIS serves as an intellectual and organizational hub for various initiatives pertaining the region, including statecraft, intelligence, public diplomacy, military issues, and strategic communications. CIS intends to promote the Intermarium as a strategic concept in its unity and diversity at various levels, including academic, official, and popular. CIS aims to inform foreign policy elites in the United States and abroad. It seeks to inspire Intermarium leaders to foster friendship and understanding among their nations. And it plans to conduct people-to-people diplomacy both between Americans and the peoples of the lands between the seas as well as among the peoples of the post-Soviet zone.
One of the most important goals of CIS is to champion the continuity of Trans-Atlantic relationships to re-stimulate US-European amity, and to reconfirm America’s commitment to Europe — a Europe that includes the Intermarium. This is particularly crucial in the ear that needs reminding that America’s systemic arrangements, institutions, law, and culture were transplanted from the Old Continent and the Mediterranean Basin. The spirit of Jerusalem-Athens-Rome via London arrived in the New World to forge a new nation. We inherited and enriched it with our heritages of successive waves of immigrants, thus contracting and acknowledging a civilizational debt to the original source of our spiritual and intellectual strength — Europe.
Organizational Structure
The Center For Intermarium Studies constitutes an umbrella structure, with its Director, Prof. Marek Chodakiewicz and its own Advisory Board, headed by IWP’s President John Lenczowski. The Center will focus on the territory of the former Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, (including Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, and Ukraine), as well as Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, Moldova the Balkans, and the Caucasus. The Center will also focus on the Intermarium’s relations with its various neighbors, including Russia, Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, and Turkey.
CIS will include the programs run by the Kościuszko Chair in Polish Studies. As part of this new regional and thematic academic program, The Kościuszko Chair will be more seamlessly integrated into IWP’s structures, consistent with the Institute’s emphasis on statecraft, security, international affairs, and the role of major regions of the world .
Program Profile
The Center for Intermarium Studies offers IWP’s students of statecraft, business leaders, and government officials an opportunity to understand a region that has been notoriously misinterpreted “geographic pivot of history.” It will offer both historical and political strategic analysis and risk assessments that will attempt to be free of the political/historiographical biases of the hegemonic regional powers whose historical narratives have all too often dominated American understanding of this region. The initiative will build on IWP’s unique expertise in all facets of statecraft, security, international affairs, and strategic intelligence studies.
IWP experts in complementary thematic and geographic aspects of Intermarium, Dr. John Lenczowski, Dr. John J. Dziak, Dr. Sebastian Gorka, Dr. Matthew Daniels, Dr. Caitlin Schindler, and Dr. Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, will oversee the academic program, supported by visiting scholars and lecturers familiar with the region. The Center for Intermarium Studies will offer in-depth classes for academic credit and present intensive one-day risk assessment and policy overview seminars for business leaders and government officials seeking bird’s eye view understanding.
Michael C. Maibach, an IWP alumnus and former President of the European-American Business Council, will become a member of the Center’s Advisory Board. He will facilitate the active engagement of European embassy officials and international business executives in CIS programs. He may also help IWP identify organizations and executives seeking political risk intelligence that The Center For Intermarium Studies is planning to offer in the longer-term.
Funding
The Center will be funded through donor grants, and revenue from custom-made seminars and risk analysis. To support the Center, please visit www.iwp.edu/donate and designate the Center for Intermarium Studies in the Comments box.
