Council on Foreign Relations

• 1. Origins And Early Formation

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  In September 1917, President Woodrow Wilson established a working fellowship of about 150 scholars called The Inquiry. This academic group directed by Colonel Edward M. House and Walter Lippmann met to assemble strategy for the postwar world. The team produced more than 2,000 documents detailing political economic and social facts globally. These reports formed the basis for the Fourteen Points which outlined Wilson's strategy for peace after the war's end. Scholars from the Inquiry traveled to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 and participated in discussions there. A small group of British and American diplomats and scholars met on the 30th of May 1919 at the Hotel Majestic in Paris. They decided to create an Anglo-American organization called The Institute of International Affairs with offices in London and New York. Ultimately the British and American delegates formed separate institutes. The British developed the Royal Institute of International Affairs known as Chatham House in London. Due to isolationist views prevalent in American society at that time the scholars had difficulty gaining traction with their plan. They turned their focus instead to discreet meetings taking place since June 1918 in New York City under the name Council on Foreign Relations. The meetings were headed by corporate lawyer Elihu Root who served as Secretary of State under President Theodore Roosevelt. Attendees included 108 high-ranking officers of banking manufacturing trading and finance companies together with many lawyers. On the 29th of July 1921 they filed a certification of incorporation officially forming the Council on Foreign Relations. Founding members included its first honorary president Elihu Root and first elected president John W. Davis.

• 2. War Studies And Government Influence

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  During the Second World War the Council achieved much greater prominence within the government and the State Department. It established the strictly confidential War and Peace Studies funded entirely by the Rockefeller Foundation. The secrecy surrounding this group was such that Council members not involved in its deliberations were completely unaware of the study group's existence. It was divided into four functional topic groups: economic and financial security and armaments territorial and political. The security and armaments group was headed by Allen Welsh Dulles who later became a pivotal figure in the CIA's predecessor the Office of Strategic Services. CFR ultimately produced 682 memoranda for the State Department which were marked classified and circulated among appropriate government departments. In 1938 the Ford Foundation and Rockefeller Foundation began financially supporting the Council. They created various Committees on Foreign Relations which later became governed by the American Committees on Foreign Relations in Washington D.C. throughout the country. These local committees served to influence local leaders and shape public opinion to build support for the Council's policies while also acting as useful listening posts through which the Council and U.S. government could sense the mood of the country. The Council published the bi-monthly journal Foreign Affairs since 1922. Edwin F. Gay gathered US$125,000 from wealthy members on the council as well as by sending letters soliciting funds to the thousand richest Americans. Using these funds the first issue of Foreign Affairs was published in September 1922. Within a few years it had gained a reputation as the most authoritative American review dealing with international relations.

• 3. Cold War Policy Formulation

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  A critical study found that of 502 government officials surveyed from 1945 to 1972 more than half were members of the Council. During the Eisenhower administration 40% of top U.S. foreign policy officials were CFR members. Under Truman 42% of top posts were filled by council members. During the Kennedy administration this number rose to 51% and peaked at 57% under the Johnson administration. In 1947 CFR study group member George Kennan anonymously published an article in Foreign Affairs titled The Sources of Soviet Conduct. He introduced the concept of containment. The essay became highly influential in shaping U.S. foreign policy over the course of the next seven presidential administrations. Forty years later Kennan remarked that he had never believed the Soviet Union intended to attack the United States. William Bundy credited CFR's study groups with helping to lay the framework of thinking that led to the Marshall Plan and NATO. Due to new interest in the group membership grew towards 1,000. Dwight D. Eisenhower chaired a CFR study group while he served as President of Columbia University. One member later said whatever General Eisenhower knows about economics he has learned at the study group meetings. The CFR study group devised an expanded study group called Americans for Eisenhower to increase his chances for the presidency. His primary CFR appointment was Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Dulles gave a public address at the Harold Pratt House in New York City announcing a new direction for Eisenhower's foreign policy. There is no local defense which alone will contain the mighty land power of the communist world. Local defenses must be reinforced by the further deterrent of massive retaliatory power. After this speech the council convened a session on Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy and chose Henry Kissinger to head it.

• 4. Membership Demographics And Evolution

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  The CFR has two types of membership: life membership and term membership lasting five years available only to those between ages 30 and 36. Only U.S. citizens native born or naturalized and permanent residents who have applied for U.S. citizenship are eligible. A candidate for life membership must be nominated in writing by one Council member and seconded by a minimum of three others. Visiting fellows are prohibited from applying for membership until they have completed their fellowship tenure. Women were excluded from membership until the 1960s. Corporate membership is divided into Associates Affiliates President's Circle and Founders. All corporate executive members have opportunities to hear speakers including foreign heads of state chairmen and CEOs of multinational corporations and U.S. officials and Congressmen. President and premium members are also entitled to attend small private dinners or receptions with senior American officials and world leaders. The CFR has a Young Professionals Briefing Series designed for young leaders interested in international relations to be eligible for term membership. Board members include David M. Rubenstein chairman and co-chief executive officer of The Carlyle Group. Blair Effron vice chairman and cofounder of Centerview Partners. Jami Miscik vice chairman and former chief executive officer and vice chairman of Kissinger Associates Inc. Michael Froman president and former U.S. trade representative under President Barack Obama. Margaret Brennan moderator of Face the Nation and chief foreign affairs correspondent at CBS News. Sylvia Mathews Burwell former United States Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Barack Obama. Kenneth I. Chenault chairman and managing director of General Catalyst.

• 5. Publications And Intellectual Output

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  The council publishes the international affairs magazine Foreign Affairs. It also establishes independent task forces which bring together various experts to produce reports offering both findings and policy prescriptions on foreign policy topics. CFR has sponsored more than fifty reports including the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America that published report No. 53 entitled Building a North American Community in May 2005. The United States in World Affairs is an annual publication. Political Handbook of the World is another annual publication. Books produced by the Council include Mobilizing Civilian America published in New York in 1940. Savord's American Agencies Interested in International Affairs appeared in 1942. Barnett's Communist China and Asia: Challenge To American Policy was released by Harper & Brothers in 1960. Bundy edited Two Hundred Years of American Foreign Policy for New York University Press in 1977. Clough wrote Free at Last? U.S. Policy Toward Africa and the End of the Cold War for Council on Foreign Relations Press in 1991. Mandelbaum authored The Rise of Nations in the Soviet Union: American Foreign Policy and the Disintegration of the USSR for the same press in 1991. Gottlieb published Nation Against State: A New Approach to Ethnic Conflicts and the Decline of Sovereignty in 1993. Bruce Hoffman and Jacob Ware God Guns Sedition: Far Right Terrorism in America came out from Columbia University Press in 2024 with 448 pages. Recent reports include Confronting Reality in Cyberspace: Foreign Policy for a Fragmented Internet published in May 2022.

• 6. Controversies And Public Reception

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  In an article for The Washington Post Richard Harwood described the membership of the CFR as the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States. The CFR has been criticized for its perceived elitism and influence over U.S. foreign policy. Detractors argue that it serves as a networking hub for government officials corporate executives and media figures reinforcing an establishment consensus prioritizing globalist policies over national interests. In 2019 CFR was criticized for accepting a donation from Len Blavatnik a Ukrainian-born billionaire with close links to Vladimir Putin. The council was reported to be under fire from its own members and dozens of international affairs experts over its acceptance of a $12 million gift to fund an internship program. Fifty-five international relations scholars and Russia experts wrote a letter to the organization's board and CFR president Richard N. Haass. They stated It is our considered view that Blavatnik uses his philanthropy funds obtained by and with the consent of the Kremlin at the expense of the state budget and the Russian people to advance his access to political circles. Critics have accused the CFR of promoting interventionist foreign policies stating that its reports and recommendations have often supported U.S. military interventions and regime-change efforts. Some opponents say its influence contributes to a bipartisan consensus favoring global military engagement economic neoliberalism and the interests of multinational corporations.