During the early and mid-1980s Council leaders also stated that they were trying to add “more spice from the left and right” to the organization.112 During 1981 and 1982 this meant particularly more “spice” from the right as more neoconservatives were added to the usual mix of establishment moderates and conservatives. The new neocon members during these years included Richard B. Cheney, Paul D. Wolfowitz, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, John D. Negroponte, Casper Weinberger, and Francis Fukuyama.113 Few if any additions from the left were added, although apparently CFR leaders believed that a relatively few liberals represented a kind of “left wing” in the organization.
The Case of Condoleezza Rice
The process of diversification of the Council and the potential payoffs for the capitalist class can be illustrated with Condoleezza Rice. The year 1984 saw the election to membership of this obscure junior academic who would later play a key role as National Security Adviser and Secretary of State in the George W. Bush administration. Rice, in 1984 an Assistant Professor at Stanford University, became one of 228 female CFR members, and part of the 65 percent of Council members that had been elected to membership during the ongoing diversity drive that had started during the early 1970s.114 The rise to prominence of Condoleezza Rice took place to a large extent through her association with the CFR. This was reminiscent of Henry A. Kissinger’s rise to power a quarter-century earlier. Kissinger, a Harvard professor, had worked at the Council in the 1950s, wrote a book there, became a member, met and worked for Nelson Rockefeller, then solidified his career as a key member of President Richard M. Nixon’s foreign policy team, later commenting to the CFR’s leaders, “You invented me.”115 In Rice’s case, she became a member first, then was invited to become a Council International Affairs Fellow during 1986–87.116 During that year she also presided at some CFR meetings and was selected to serve on the board of directors’ term membership committee.117 Clearly satisfied with her potential as a representative of a more diverse CFR, as well as her service to the organization, the board then selected Rice to chair a 1988 task force on increasing minority representation.118 As revolutionary changes swept through Eastern Europe during the 1988–91 period, Rice, an academic expert on the USSR, was invited to speak on these changes at CFR programs in September of 1989 and April 1991.119 During these years of activity at the CFR, Rice met many of the individuals who helped her get better connected to the capitalist class and she was appointed to corporate directorships at Chevron, Transamerica, and Hewlett Packard, to higher positions at Stanford, and met and mingled with members of the Bush family. As a trustworthy minority female, well trained in the Council’s worldview, Rice’s CFR connection put her on the road to power, fame, and fortune as an enabler and legitimator of that worldview during her later years in government. Notably, her memoir conveniently leaves out these early years and her long relationship with the Council.120
The true role of women and minorities in the CFR in the 1980s and early 1990s is illustrated by the fact that in 1990 the Council membership was still 87 percent male and 93 percent white. After almost two decades of stressing the need to diversify and increase the numbers of women and minority members, the numbers had reached only 13 percent and 7 percent respectively.121 During this period, however, there was a high level of loyalty within this membership. Chair Peter G. Peterson reported in 1990 for example, that over one-half of all members made annual gifts (above and beyond dues), to the organization, a higher level than any national organization as far as he knew.122
Membership since the Early 1990s
The year 1992 was a banner year for the Council, its leaders, and members as William J. Clinton, a CFR member, was elected president of the United States. Chair Peter Peterson reported that “dozens of other Council colleagues were called to serve in cabinet and sub-cabinet positions, as many others were returning to private life…. These appointments testify to the value of maintaining a pool of leaders thoroughly informed about international issues and prepared to assume the burdens of office. That task is one of the hallmarks of the Council on Foreign Relations.”123 Warren Christopher, the vice chairman of the Council, was quickly selected as the new Secretary of State. Four CFR directors—Richard Holbrooke, Donna Shalala, Strobe Talbott, and Cliffton R. Wharton Jr.—resigned to enter the government, and among those who replaced them on the Council board was Richard B. Cheney, a future vice president.124 Peter Tarnoff resigned as CFR president to become undersecretary of state for political affairs. Leslie Gelb, the New York Times national security correspondent, replaced him as the Council’s president. Gelb immediately remarked that there were many foreign policy membership organizations and many think tanks, but only one had the strengths of both. This continued to be a key source of the CFR’s “uniqueness” and enabled it to play a “special role,” as “the world’s premier foreign policy organization.”125
Under the leadership of Gelb, the CFR intensified its drive to diversify its membership and spread its reach across the United States and into the wider world. One example was the establishment of a joint venture with the Los Angeles–based Pacific Council on International Policy. CFR members, officers, and directors all had been involved in forming the PCIP in order to further Council expansion west of the Rocky Mountains. By 1994 there were 358 CFR members in this section of the country, and the PCIP’s purpose was to tie them to both organizations and develop CFR-type meetings and programs, especially on the West Coast.126 At the same time, the Council’s “Committees on Foreign Relations,” in existence in dozens of U.S. cities since 1938 in order to strengthen ties to local power wielders, were transformed into new “Council on Foreign Relations” committees. CFR members in each city directly controlled these committees. As had been the case for over a decade, about a third of all Council members now resided outside of New York and Washington, and a more comprehensive and ambitious national program was now pushed forward more vigorously by Gelb and the other CFR leaders.127 At the same time, the Council program in Washington was expanded, giving the CFR three main venues for its activities—New York, Washington, and nationally in varied cities around the country. One member, lawyer Richard Mallery, remarked that the Council was now becoming “an umbrella organization for the country.”128
During the mid-1990s the Council printed in its Annual Reports quotes from a number of members focusing on what the organization meant to them. This provides a window into the organization at the membership level, and illustrates that an important part of what happens at the CFR goes on privately and informally between members who network with each other in a variety of settings, including within the government:
The Council has given me a tremendous range of important associations. When I was on Wall Street, the Council allowed me to interact in a non-pressurized setting…. It also broadened my thinking quite a bit…. It has been a very enriching experience, both in terms of the people with whom I have been able to build relationships and also in terms of ideas.
—JEFFREY E. GARTEN, Dean, School of Management, Yale University129
The Council is sort of the land of opportunity for a junior scholar. You are immediately dropped into an environment where you have access to an incredible array of people from all the communities involved in policymaking in your field—-journalists, top academics, heads of corporations, and, of course,