Fact Sheet
Mission and Vision
Founded in 1989, the Henry L. Stimson Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution devoted to enhancing international peace and security through a unique combination of rigorous analysis and outreach.
We are self-consciously committed to making the world a better place through our work. Our vision is of "a world in which instruments of security cooperation and peace overtake historic tendencies toward conflict and war." We pursue this vision through work that is intensely practical, nonpartisan, and oriented toward real-world policy makers.
Guided by our motto of "taking pragmatic steps toward the ideal objectives of international peace and security", we pursue our mission in the following ways:
- Combining analysis with carefully designed outreach, dialogue, networks and partnerships to achieve greater impact.
- Conducting analysis that is independent, creative, anticipatory, and integrative.
- Producing work of excellence and influence to lead our field.
- Building a culture of collaboration that infuses our work with a unique team spirit, intellectual energy, and honesty.
- Providing each employee an opportunity to grow professionally and personally, and in the process, nurturing future leaders.
- Viewing a nonpartisan, nonideological approach to issues as one of our greatest strengths.
- Conducting a constant, rigorous self-assessment of our work, both as an institution and as individuals.
Current Research
Reducing WMD and Transnational Threats
Building Regional Security
Strengthening Institutions for Peace and Security
History
Founded in 1989 by Barry Blechman and Michael Krepon, the Stimson Center is a nonprofit, nonpartisan institution dedicated to offering practical solutions to problems of national and international security. From the beginning, the Stimson Center has been a place devoted to meaningful impact, a thorough integration of analysis and outreach, and a creative and innovative approach to problems.
Perhaps the Center's chief advantage has been the unquestioned expertise and credibility of its senior staff, a quality the Center is committed to maintaining. The Stimson Center has a 15-year track record of meaningful work on key international security issues.
The Center draws inspiration from the life and work of Henry L. Stimson, whose distinguished career in foreign and defense policy reflected a singular ability to steer a steady course toward long-range public policy goals while serving presidents of both political parties.
Although Henry Stimson could not have anticipated many of the challenges that confront the world a half-century after his second tenure as secretary of war, we believe that his practical, non-partisan approach to the issues remains as relevant today as in his lifetime.
About Henry L. Stimson
The Center is named after Henry L. Stimson, an individual whose distinguished career in defense and foreign policy spanned four decades in which the United States grew into its new role as a global power. His non-partisan spirit and sense of purpose enabled him to set long-range national security goals clearly and to steer and steady course toward them, combining idealism with pragmatism.
- As Secretary of War under President William Howard Taft, Stimson concentrated on reforms to streamline the US Army. When the United States entered World War I, he volunteered his services at the age of forty-nine and served as an artillery officer on the front lines in France.
- As Herbert Hoover's Secretary of State in 1930, he negotiated the London Naval Treaty for the United States.
- As Franklin D. Roosevelt's Secretary of War, Stimson managed both the buildup and operations of a twelve-million-person armed force engaged in conflict in all parts of the globe. His responsibilities during this last phase of his career included the development of the atomic bomb.
- His last preoccupation in office, and in the last few years of his life, was how this devastating weapon could be controlled.
