The Heritage Foundation’s long-standing foreign-policy director, Jim Carafano, will step down from his current role after more than a decade leading the conservative think tank’s national-security center, its leadership will announce today. Former National Security Council official Victoria Coates will take the reins of Heritage’s Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy on August 1.
Heritage will publicly announce the personnel change this afternoon in a press release, which National Review obtained ahead of its release.
In the announcement, Kevin Roberts, the group’s president, said that he’s “incredibly grateful Victoria has agreed to serve as Heritage’s next vice president for national security.” Carafano will take on a new role as senior counselor to Roberts, which will involve building an international conservative network, while remaining Heritage’s E. W. Richardson Fellow.
Roberts praised Carafano’s “tireless dedication to the conservative movement over the past 20 years,” adding that it “puts him in a unique position to articulate our vision for freedom, prosperity, and security to allies and partners around the globe.”
“The most important contribution to the conservative movement I can make between now and 2025 is to help build a global footprint for Heritage and strengthen the international conservative network to ensure it is resilient, powerful, and influential. That’s a full-time job, and a challenge I’m excited to embrace,” Carafano said in the announcement statement.
Coates has previously served in the White House, the Energy Department, and in Senator Ted Cruz’s office as the Texas lawmaker’s national-security adviser.
In Heritage’s announcement, several GOP lawmakers, including Representatives Chip Roy and Mike Gallagher and Senator Cruz, praised Coates’s academic background and depth of foreign-policy experience. “She is a learned scholar, an art historian with a deep appreciation for world affairs, and I look forward to working with her to advance our shared goal of a new, stronger path forward for American national security and force projection that is rooted in ‘peace through strength,’” Roy said.
Under Roberts’s direction, Heritage has sought to carve out a “third-way” foreign policy between neoconservatism and isolationism, and it opposed a U.S. spending package to assist Ukraine last year. In an interview with NR last year, Roberts said the aid package was fiscally irresponsible because it funded Ukrainian officials’ salaries rather than just providing Kyiv with weapons. That emphasis on a third-way foreign policy reportedly led to the departures of some Heritage staffers last year.