EastWest Institute

• 1. Introduction

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  The EastWest Institute was born in 1980, in the depths of the Cold War, when the Iron Curtain divided Europe and military standoffs between East and West felt permanent. John Edwin Mroz and Ira D. Wallach founded it with a deceptively simple premise: that if rival powers could be brought together in trusted settings, candid conversation might do what armies could not. What began as the Institute for East-West Security Studies would spend four decades facilitating dialogue between adversaries who rarely sat in the same room. How did a small, non-partisan think tank broker talks between NATO and Warsaw Pact officers? What role did it play when old alliances collapsed and new conflicts erupted? And why, after forty years, did it quietly close its doors on the 31st of January 2021?

• 2. The Iron Curtain Table

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  In 1984, EWI did something no comparable organization had managed: it hosted the first track 2 military-to-military discussions between NATO and Warsaw Pact countries. Track 2 diplomacy means unofficial dialogue, conversations that governments can plausibly distance themselves from if talks go badly. These particular discussions focused on confidence-building measures, the formal mechanisms by which rival militaries signal their intentions to avoid accidental war. The outcome was concrete. Both sides agreed to notify each other of troop movements, a modest but meaningful step toward de-escalation at a time when any miscommunication between superpowers carried catastrophic risk. Mroz served as president and CEO of EWI for 34 years, a span that stretched from those early Cold War table-settings all the way to his death in 2014.

• 3. After the Wall

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  When the Berlin Wall fell, the orderly geometry of Cold War confrontation dissolved into something far messier. Conflicts erupted across Southeastern Europe, and EWI turned its attention to the fragile states emerging from the collapse of the old order. The institute worked to encourage cross-border economic cooperation and to train leaders for the new democratic states that were forming. Rather than purely focusing on military threat reduction, EWI engaged directly with governance, helping to build institutions in a region where they had been suppressed or destroyed. By the 2000s, EWI had expanded its geographic reach to China, Southwest Asia, and the Middle East. New threat categories had emerged alongside the old ones: cybersecurity, economic security, and countering violent extremism all entered the institute's portfolio.

• 4. Bridging Washington and Beijing

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  Since 2008, EWI partnered with the China Association for International Friendly Contact to organize a recurring series of forums known as the U.S.-China Sanya Initiative. The initiative brought together retired People's Liberation Army officers and retired U.S. military personnel for structured dialogue. Funding came from the China-United States Exchange Foundation, a Hong Kong-based nonprofit established by billionaire Tung Chee-hwa. Retired officers, no longer bound by active-duty political constraints, could speak with a frankness that serving generals could not afford. The Sanya Initiative represented a particular brand of track 1.5 diplomacy, sitting between purely unofficial talk and formal government-to-government negotiation, with retired officials who still carried institutional knowledge and credibility.

• 5. The Iran Assessment

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  In May 2009, EWI released a Joint Threat Assessment on Iran, produced by senior U.S. and Russian experts the institute had convened. Its central finding was pointed: the ballistic missile defense system proposed by the Bush administration would not protect against an Iranian nuclear threat. That assessment reached the Obama administration at a pivotal moment. The administration subsequently scrapped the Bush-era plan and replaced it with a system of its own. Whether the EWI paper was decisive or simply one input among many, the episode illustrated what a well-timed, jointly authored document from former adversaries could accomplish. A non-partisan institute, drawing on both American and Russian expertise, had produced something neither government could easily produce on its own. In 2016, EWI extended its work into critical infrastructure, helping to establish an information portal that allowed operators to share security information across borders.

• 6. Closure and Legacy

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  The organization that Mroz and Wallach had built over four decades discontinued operations effective the 31st of January 2021. The board reached that decision at the conclusion of a four-month strategic assessment, conducted against the backdrop of the global pandemic and the financial pressures it placed on nonprofits worldwide. EWI had survived the end of the Cold War, the chaotic 1990s, and the post-September 11 shift in global security priorities. It had extended its networks through political, military, and business establishments across the United States, Europe, and the former Soviet Union. The four-month assessment period before closure suggests the decision was not made hastily. The institute that had once helped negotiators agree on how to announce troop movements did not announce its own exit quietly; it took stock, then drew a deliberate line.