STUDIES: THE COUNCIL’S THINK TANK, 1976–2014
The 1978 CFR Annual Report described four purposes of the Council on Foreign Relations. First, break “new ground” in the consideration of international issues. Second, “help shape American foreign policy.” Third, “provide continuing leadership for the conduct of our foreign relations.” Fourth, inform and stimulate the CFR membership “as well as reach a wider audience.”170
The serious intellectual work needed to achieve these goals is carried out in the Council’s Studies Program, its “think tank.” The CFR’s long-term approach to shaping policy and building consensus is illustrated by the following description of the Studies Program: “The Council examines the key issues in U.S. foreign policy today, considers what challenges the United States will confront in the next five to ten years, and debates policy options.”171 The board of directors and staff decides the agenda or “policy options” to be considered. In 1996 CFR director Robert D. Hormats, later a top State Department official in the Obama administration, but then vice chair of Goldman Sachs International, discussed the think tank and the role of the Council’s professional staff, most of whom are called “Fellows”:
Among the Council’s most important strengths are its membership and the Studies Program. The two interact with one another. Through the Studies Program, the Council generates new ideas about foreign policy for its membership and the broader public. In a way, it is the spark plug for the Council. Now the Studies Program is providing fresh insights into a whole new set of issues, and many of the fellows are at the forefront of this country’s intellectual probing as the issues change and new challenges arise.172
That same year another CFR director, Robert B. Zoellick, later head of the World Bank, but then with Fannie Mae, stated: “A key goal at the Council has been to build up a Studies Program that is on the cutting edge of foreign policy thinking. The purpose is to draw ideas from the studies that will be the foundation for outreach to shape intellectual and public consideration of these topics.”173
The Studies Program is made up of CFR employees who anchor the think tank. In 2013 there were 123 such employees: 14 administrative staff members headed by Senior Vice President and Director of Studies James M. Lindsay; 65 Fellows; and 44 members of the research and program staff, most of whom have the title “Research Associate.”174 Working both independently and organized into study groups, they operate under the guidance of the Committee on Studies of the Council’s board of directors. This committee must review and approve all CFR publications, generally written by Council Fellows, other employees, or members.175 As of the mid-1970s there were three main types of CFR study groups. The first is the Author’s Study Group in which a Fellow writing a Council book works together with other Fellows to complete the publication. The second is the Survey Discussion Group that produces varied written products, such as articles, monographs, or opinion pieces. And finally, the Current Issues Review Group, a less formal type of group, meets irregularly as required by conditions.176
The key programmatic challenge faced by the Council during the 1970s was what its leaders called the “problem of outreach,” that is, how to successfully market the CFR’s work product and in this way spread its ideology, reaching “wider audiences” to “make a broad impact.”177 This was partly solved by preparing numerous radio programs for National Public Radio, reaching an audience “approaching one million” that year.178 This represented a “significant extension of the Council’s general program” and helped the CFR effectively inject “… its intellectual work product into the body politic of the nation.”179 By 1977 there were CFR programs on all 196 NPR stations with an estimated three million listeners.180
The Council’s magazine Foreign Affairs (FA), founded in 1922, is another venue in which the organization’s work product appears. It “has been the leading forum for serious discussion of American foreign policy and global affairs.”181 Foreign Affairs has frequently been called the “preeminent” or “premier publication in the field.” Time has called it “the most influential periodical in print,” and it own website, ForeignAffairs.com, states that its goal is “to guide American public opinion.” It has a paid circulation of over 150,000 and is distributed throughout the world.182 This readership includes the rich and powerful globally, with subscribers having an average household net worth of $1.4 million. As the Foreign Affairs website expressed it:
For brands seeking to command the respect of today’s Influential Elite, there is no media like Foreign Affairs. We are required reading in Congress, at G-8 Summits, in the C-suites of Fortune 500 companies, and at Davos. Our influence on policy can be seen in Congress and the White House, the Pentagon and the State Department, and ministries and boardrooms around the world. Our articles are written by today’s most respected thinkers and most influential leaders. Foreign Affairs is the fuel that fires think tanks, a catalyst for economic change, and the intellectual capital that inspires businesses worldwide. For advertisers, we provide an unrivaled opportunity to have the undivided attention of the world’s most influential minds in business and politics.183
The magazine’s board of advisers is made up of CFR members who constitute a committee of the board of directors, which in turn appoint the editor, who in 2014 was Council member Gideon Rose. A substantial percentage of the authors who appear in FA are CFR members, staff, or Fellows, but there are also many authors who are not. It is a key place where the foreign policy ideas of the Council community are floated. In 1994 CFR president Gelb described one of the key roles of Foreign Affairs as “setting the agenda for policy debates.”184 Articles by CFR people sometimes get the attention of government officials in Washington, resulting in a call to government service. Such was the case with Admiral Stansfield Turner’s article on the naval balance in the January 1977 issue. The article reportedly resulted in Turner being tapped for director of the CIA.185 In 2000, FA was ranked by an independent survey as the “most influential of all print media among government decision makers.”186 By 2014 FA was expanding into social media and was reported to have 900,000 Facebook fans, as well as 300,000 Twitter followers and its own iPad app.187
In terms of actual content, the work of the Studies Program during the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s was especially focused on economics, “both directly and as components of relations with our allies, the developing world and the East.”188 Key programs included a “Soviet Project” and a two-year “Future of Canada and the U.S. Interest” project that began in 1980 and was at least one origin point of the North American Free Trade Agreement that was signed by a former CFR director, President George H. W. Bush, in late 1992.189 NAFTA’s goal and practice was to open up Canada and Mexico to neoliberalism and U.S. corporate economic penetration. As CFR chair Peterson stated in 1989, since the world was headed into a period characterized by “sea changes,” the Council needed to be in the forefront, playing a “leadership role”:
Whatever we may believe the new foreign policy agenda to be, it is clear they are likely to be strikingly different from much of the post–World War period. And the Board of Directors and the staff of the Council have decided that this institution should play a leadership role in defining these new foreign policy agenda, the root causes of these profound forces. The end product of this effort might well be to help define new and broader meanings to the concept of the national interest. Quite beyond difficult and substantive policy questions that must be asked, equally demanding challenges must be faced in the process of making foreign policy.190
Peterson