Interesting Organization: Council on Foreign Relations

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an American bipartisan foreign policy membership organization founded in 1921. Located at 58 East 68th Street (Park Avenue) in New York City, with an office in Washington, D.C. Some international journalists believe it to be 'the most influential foreign-policy think tank.' It publishes a bi-monthly journal Foreign Affairs. It has an extensive website, featuring links to its think tank, The David Rockefeller Studies Program, a new geoeconomic center, Emmy award-winning multimedia Crisis Guides Foreign Affairs, and many other projects, publications, history, biographies of notable directors and other board members, corporate members, and press releases.


Mission
The Council's mission is promoting understanding of foreign policy and the United States' role in the world. Meetings are convened at which government officials, global leaders and prominent members debate major foreign-policy issues. It has a think tank that employs prominent scholars in international affairs and it commissions subsequent books and reports. A central aim of the Council, it states, is to "find and nurture the next generation of foreign policy leaders." It established "Independent Task Forces" in 1995, which encourage policy debate. Comprising experts with diverse backgrounds and expertise, these task forces seek consensus in making policy recommendations on critical issues; to date, the Council has convened more than fifty times.

The internal think tank is The David Rockefeller Studies Program, which grants fellowships and whose programs are described as being integral to the goal of contributing to the ongoing debate on foreign policy; fellows in this program research and write on the most important challenges facing the United States and the world.[6]

At the outset of the organization, founding member Elihu Root said the group's mission, epitomized in its journal Foreign Affairs, should be to "guide" American public opinion. In the early 1970s, the CFR changed the mission, saying that it wished instead to "inform" public opinion.[7]


[edit] Early history
The earliest origin of the Council stemmed from a working fellowship of about 150 scholars, called "The Inquiry," tasked to brief President Woodrow Wilson about options for the postwar world when Germany was defeated. Through 1917–1918, this academic band, including Wilson's closest adviser and long-time friend Col. Edward M. House, as well as Walter Lippmann, gathered at 155th Street and Broadway at the Harold Pratt House in New York City, to assemble the strategy for the postwar world. The team produced more than 2,000 documents detailing and analyzing the political, economic, and social facts globally that would be helpful for Wilson in the peace talks. Their reports formed the basis for the Fourteen Points, which outlined Wilson's strategy for peace after war's end.[8]

These scholars then traveled to the Paris Peace Conference, 1919 that would end the war; it was at one of the meetings of a small group of British and American diplomats and scholars, on May 30, 1919, at the Hotel Majestic, that both the Council and its British counterpart, the Chatham House in London, were born.[9]

Some of the participants at that meeting, apart from Edward House, were Paul Warburg, Herbert Hoover, Harold Temperley, Lionel Curtis, Lord Eustace Percy, Christian Herter, and American academic historians James Thomson Shotwell of Columbia University, Archibald Cary Coolidge of Harvard, and Charles Seymour of Yale.

In 1938 they created various Committees on Foreign Relations throughout the country. These later became governed by the American Committees on Foreign Relation in Washington, D.C.


[edit] About the organization
From its inception the Council was non-partisan, welcoming members of both Democratic and Republican parties. It also welcomed Jews and African Americans, although women were initially barred from membership. Its proceedings were almost universally private and confidential.[10] A study by two critics of the organization, Laurence Shoup and William Minter, found that of 502 government officials surveyed from 1945 to 1972, more than half were members of the Council.[11]

Today it has about 5,000 members (including five-year term members between the ages of 35-40), which over its history have included senior serving politicians, more than a dozen Secretaries of State, former national security officers, bankers, lawyers, professors, former CIA members and senior media figures. As a private institution however, the CFR maintains through its official website that it is not a formal organization engaged in U.S. foreign policy-making, and its reports regularly take issue with U.S. government policy.[citation needed]

In 1962, the group began a program of bringing select Air Force officers to the Harold Pratt House to study alongside its scholars. The Army, Navy and Marine Corps requested they start similar programs for their own officers.

Vietnam created a rift within the organization. When Hamilton Fish Armstrong announced in 1970 that he would be leaving the helm of Foreign Affairs after 45 years, new chairman David Rockefeller approached a family friend, William Bundy, to take over the position. Anti-war advocates within the Council rose in protest against this appointment, claiming that Bundy's hawkish record in the State and Defense Departments and the CIA precluded him from taking over an independent journal. Some considered Bundy a war criminal for his prior actions.

Seven American presidents have addressed the Council, two while still in office – Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

The Council says that it has never sought to serve as a receptacle for government policy papers that cannot be shared with the public, and they do not encourage government officials who are members to do so. The Council says that discussions at its headquarters remain confidential, not because they share or discuss secret information, but because the system allows members to test new ideas with other members.

Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., in his book on the Kennedy presidency, A Thousand Days, wrote that Kennedy was not part of what he called the "New York establishment":

"In particular, he was little acquainted with the New York financial and legal community-- that arsenal of talent which had so long furnished a steady supply of always orthodox and often able people to Democratic as well as Republican administrations. This community was the heart of the American Establishment. Its household deities were Henry Stimson and Elihu Root; its present leaders, Robert Lovett and John J. McCloy; its front organizations, the Rockefeller, Ford and Carnegie foundations and the Council on Foreign Relations; its organs, the New York Times and Foreign Affairs."

Influence on foreign policy
Beginning in 1939 and lasting for five years, the Council achieved much greater prominence with government and the State Department when it established the strictly confidential War and Peace Studies, funded entirely by the Rockefeller Foundation.[15] The secrecy surrounding this group was such that the Council members (total at the time: 663) who were 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 OSS. It ultimately produced 682 memoranda for the State Department, marked classified and circulated among the appropriate government departments. As a historical judgment, its overall influence on actual government planning at the time is still said to remain unclear.

In an anonymous piece called "The Sources of Soviet Conduct" that appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1947, CFR study group member George Kennan coined the term "containment." The essay would prove to be highly influential in US foreign policy for seven upcoming presidential administrations. 40 years later, Kennan explained that he had never meant to contain the Soviet Union because it might be able to physically attack the United States; he thought that was obvious enough that he didn't need to explain it in his essay. William Bundy credited the 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."[16] The CFR study group devised an expanded study group called "Americans for Eisenhower" to increase his chances for the presidency. Eisenhower would later draw many Cabinet members from CFR ranks and become a CFR member himself. His primary CFR appointment was Secretary of State John Foster Dulles. Dulles gave a public address at the Harold Pratt House in which he announced 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. Kissinger spent the following academic year working on the project at Council headquarters. The book of the same name that he published from his research in 1957 gave him national recognition, topping the national bestseller lists.

On 24 November 1953, a study group heard a report from political scientist William Henderson regarding the ongoing conflict between France and Vietnamese Communist leader Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh forces, a struggle that would later become known as the First Indochina War. Henderson argued that Ho's cause was primarily nationalist in nature and that Marxism had "little to do with the current revolution." Further, the report said, the United States could work with Ho to guide his movement away from Communism. State Department officials, however, expressed skepticism about direct American intervention in Vietnam and the idea was tabled. Over the next twenty years, the United States would find itself allied with anti-Communist South Vietnam and against Ho and his supporters in Vietnam War.

The Council served as a "breeding ground" for important American policies such as mutual deterrence, arms control, and nuclear non-proliferation.

A four-year long study of relations between America and China was conducted by the Council between 1964 and 1968. One study published in 1966 concluded that American citizens were more open to talks with China than their elected leaders. Kissinger had continued to publish in Foreign Affairs and was appointed by President Nixon to serve as National Security Adviser in 1969. In 1971, he embarked on a secret trip to Beijing to broach talks with Chinese leaders. Nixon went to China in 1972, and diplomatic relations were completely normalized by President Carter's Secretary of State, another Council member, Cyrus Vance.

In November 1979, while chairman of the CFR, David Rockefeller became embroiled in an international incident when he and Henry Kissinger, along with John J. McCloy and Rockefeller aides, persuaded President Jimmy Carter through the State Department to admit the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, into the US for hospital treatment for lymphoma. This action directly precipitated what is known as the Iran hostage crisis and placed Rockefeller under intense media scrutiny (particularly from The New York Times) for the first time in his public life.


Global Governance: World Order in the 21st Century
The CFR started a program in 2008 to last for 5 years called "International Institutions and Global Governance: World Order in the 21st Century" which aims in setting up global institutions in different levels to foster a global governance, in order to tackle different trans-national problems.

Countering Transnational Threats, including terrorism, proliferation of WMD, and infectious disease
Protecting the Environment and Promoting Energy Security
Managing the Global Economy
Preventing and Responding to Violent Conflict
In August 2009, Obama's government urged cooperation with UN to tackle the same points covered by CFR plan's. "The Obama administration will work with the United Nations to fight terrorism and other major world challenges...like nuclear programs of Iran and North Korea, the global financial crisis, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, pandemics and global warming."

Membership
Main article: Members of the Council on Foreign Relations
There are two types of membership: life, and term membership, which lasts for 5 years and is available to those between 30 and 36. Only U.S. citizens (native born or naturalised) 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.

Corporate membership (250 in total) is divided into "Basic", "Premium" ($25,000+) and "President's Circle" ($50,000+). All corporate executive members have opportunities to hear distinguished speakers, such as overseas presidents and prime ministers, chairmen and CEOs of multinational corporations, and U.S. officials and Congressmen. President and premium members are also entitled to other benefits, including attendance at small, private dinners or receptions with senior American officials and world leaders.

Board of directors

OFFICE NAME

Co-Chairman of the Board Carla A. Hills
Co-Chairman of the Board Robert E. Rubin
Vice Chairman Richard E. Salomon
President Richard N. Haass

Board of Directors
Director Peter Ackerman
Director Fouad Ajami
Director Madeleine Albright
Director Charlene Barshefsky
Director Henry Bienen
Director Alan Blinder
Director Stephen W. Bosworth
Director Tom Brokaw
Director Sylvia Mathews Burwell
Director Frank J. Caufield
Director Kenneth Duberstein
Director Richard N. Foster
Director Stephen Friedman
Director Ann M. Fudge
Director Maurice R. Greenberg
Director J. Tomilson Hill
Director Richard Holbrooke
Director Alberto Ibargüen
Director Shirley Ann Jackson
Director Henry Kravis
Director Jami Miscik
Director Joseph Nye
Director Ronald L. Olson
Director James W. Owens
Director Colin Powell
Director David Rubenstein
Director George E. Rupp
Director Anne-Marie Slaughter
Director Joan E. Spero
Director Vin Weber
Director Christine Todd Whitman
Director Fareed Zakaria
The Board of Directors of the Council on Foreign Relations is composed in total of thirty-six officers. Peter G. Peterson and David Rockefeller are Directors Emeriti (Chairman Emeritus and Honorary Chairman, respectively). It also has an International Advisory Board consisting of thirty-five distinguished individuals from across the world.


Corporate Members
ABC News
Alcoa
American Express
AIG
Bank of America
Bloomberg L.P.
Boeing
BP
CA, Inc.
Chevron
Citigroup
Coca-Cola
De Beers
Deutsche Bank
Duke Energy
ExxonMobil
FedEx
Ford Motor
General Electric
GlaxoSmithKline
Google
Halliburton
Heinz
Hess
IBM
JPMorgan Chase
Kohlberg Kravis Roberts
Lockheed Martin
MasterCard
McGraw-Hill
McKinsey
Merck
Merrill Lynch
Morgan Stanley
Motorola
NASDAQ
News Corp
Nike
PepsiCo
Pfizer
Shell Oil
Sony Corporation of America
Tata Group
Time Warner
Total S.A.
Toyota Motor North America
UBS
United Technologies
United States Chamber of Commerce
U.S. Trust Corporation
Verizon
Visa



[edit] Notable current council members
Erin Burnett - CNBC News Anchor[24]
Timothy Shriver[25]
Ruth J. Simmons - President of Brown University
Katrina vanden Heuvel - Editor of The Nation Magazine

[edit] Notable historical members
Graham Allison
Robert Orville Anderson
Les Aspin
Kenneth Bacon (1944-2009), Department of Defense spokesman who later served as president of Refugees International.[26]
J. Bowyer Bell[27]
W. Michael Blumenthal
Amy Bondurant
Harold Brown
Zbigniew Brzezinski
William P. Bundy
George H. W. Bush
Dick Cheney
William S. Cohen
Warren Christopher
E. Gerald Corrigan
William J. Crowe
Kenneth W. Dam
John W. Davis
Norman Davis
C. Douglas Dillon
Thomas R. Donahue
Lewis W. Douglas
Elizabeth Drew
Peggy Dulany
Allen Welsh Dulles
Dianne Feinstein
Tom Foley
Leslie H. Gelb
David Gergen
Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
Joachim Gfoeller
Maurice R. Greenberg
Alan Greenspan
Chuck Hagel
Najeeb E. Halaby
W. Averell Harriman
Theodore M. Hesburgh
Carla A. Hills
Stanley Hoffmann
Richard Holbrooke
James R. Houghton
Charlayne Hunter-Gault
Bobby Ray Inman
Otto H. Kahn
Nicholas Katzenbach
Lane Kirkland
Jeane Kirkpatrick
Roger T. Moritz
Walter Lippmann
Winston Lord
Charles Mathias, Jr.
John McCain
John J. McCloy
William J. McDonough
Donald F. McHenry
George J. Mitchell
Bill Moyers
Peter George Peterson
Frank Polk
John S. Reed
Elliot L. Richardson
Alice M. Rivlin
David Rockefeller
Jay Rockefeller
Robert Roosa
Elihu Root
William D. Ruckelshaus
Brent Scowcroft
Donna E. Shalala
George P. Shultz
Theodore Sorensen
George Soros
Adlai E. Stevenson
Strobe Talbott
Peter Tarnoff
Fred Thompson
Garrick Utley
Cyrus Vance
Paul Volcker
Paul M. Warburg
Paul Warnke
Clifton R. Wharton, Jr.
Owen D. Young
Robert Zoellick
Source: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996:Historical Roster of Directors and Officers


[edit] List of chairmen and chairwomen
Russell Cornell Leffingwell 1946-1953
John J. McCloy 1953-1970
David Rockefeller 1970-1985
Peter George Peterson 1985-2007
Carla A. Hills (co-chairwoman) 2007-
Robert E. Rubin (co-chairman) 2007-



[edit] List of presidents

John W. Davis 1921-1933
George W. Wickersham 1933-1936
Norman Davis 1936-1944
Russell Cornell Leffingwell 1944-1946
Allen Welsh Dulles 1946-1950
Henry Merritt Wriston 1951-1964
Grayson L. Kirk 1964-1971
Bayless Manning 1971-1977
Winston Lord 1977-1985
John Temple Swing 1985-1986 (Pro tempore)
Peter Tarnoff 1986-1993
Alton Frye 1993
Leslie Gelb 1993-2003
Richard N. Haass 2003-


Source:The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996: Historical Roster of Directors and Officers

[edit] Alternative Perspective
The Council has been the subject of many conspiracy theories, as shown in the 2006 film by Aaron Russo, America: Freedom to Fascism and a 2007 documentary Zeitgeist, the Movie. This is partly due to the number of high-ranking government officials in its membership, along with world business leaders, its secrecy clauses, and the large number of aspects of American foreign policy that its members have been involved with, beginning with Wilson's Fourteen Points. The John Birch Society believes that the CFR plans a one-world government.[30] Wilson's Fourteen Points speech was the first in which he suggested a worldwide security organization to prevent future world wars.

Historian Carroll Quigley included the CFR in his discussion of the Anglo-American Establishment's efforts to shape international developments during the 20th century. His book "Tragedy and Hope" was cited by conspiracy theorists as showing that the CFR was engaged in a conspiracy against American interests, though Quigley himself denied this.

Systems theorists working with tools developed at MIT by Jay Forrester counter David Rockefeller's support for his goals with the claim that an attempt to build an integrated global political and economic structure is a serious danger to humanity's freedom and prosperity. They argue that a dearth of distributed systems on a global scale would mean, first, a globe more susceptible to total economic and/or resource calamity, and second, a world in which lack of competition between rival political systems would make totalitarianism—if ever globally established—extremely difficult to challenge. Supporting the former charge, they cite the recession of 2008, which was exacerbated by the global nature of capital and derivative markets, as an example of the dangers of extreme economic interdependency.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_on_Foreign_Relations