The 2008–2011 years have been characterized by a gradual increase in Fellows briefings to U.S. and foreign government officials: 333 in 2009, 348 in 2010, and 438 in 2011.228 At the same time, media mentions of the CFR have skyrocketed from only about a thousand in 2003 to over 25,000 in 2008 and over 37,000 in 2010.229 A small section of these were articles and op-eds written by CFR Fellows: 350 in 2008, over 500 in 2010, and 570 in 2011.230 At the same time the Council’s website, CFR.org, was expanding rapidly, in 2011 reaching an average of over 1.2 million page views and 450,000 unique visitors each month.231 The Studies Program also added a new publication series, Policy Innovation Memoranda, which targets critical areas where the Council believes new thinking is needed.232
The year 2011 also saw a major new CFR program, the Renewing America initiative, a prime example of “mission creep,” that is, the recent tendency for the Council to expand its focus of activity beyond foreign policy to the domestic realm. The CFR leadership believes that this new initiative is needed because the underpinnings of U.S. global power are weakening as unsolved problems grow within the country. The first problems to be examined as part of this program were trade policy and education reform, with ITF reports from two different study groups, one led by Thomas A. Daschle and Andrew H. Card, and another led by Condoleezza Rice and Joel Klein.233 Other ITF reports were on “Global Brazil and U.S.-Brazil Relations,” which endorsed the Brazilian bid for a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and “U.S.-Turkey Relations: A New Partnership,” which encouraged a new and closer relationship between the leaders of these two nations.234 In 2012 the Council published an ebook, Iran: The Nuclear Challenge, edited by Henry A. Kissinger and CFR Senior Fellow Robert D. Blackwill. This volume “maps objectives, tools and strategies for dealing with Iran’s nuclear program…. The volume aims to provide clarity on policy choices.”235 Reflecting the gradual globalizing of the Council’s work, a U.S.-India Joint Study Group was also formed in 2012, co-sponsored by the CFR and Aspen Institute India. Intellectual, business, and policy leaders from both nations participated in this study group.236
In the spring of 2012 the Council published a list of its think tank scholars, its CFR Experts Guide, a list of seventy-four Fellows and other experts working at the CFR who produce a key part of the intellectual output of the organization, including books, reports, articles, and op-ed pieces.237 The experts are also active in giving briefings and media interviews. At least twenty-three of the seventy-four have been or are university professors, ten have been or are journalists, and six are or have been business executives.238 The index covering the expertise of this group, together with their biographies, is instructive, indicating the current regional and issue foci of the Council. Geopolitical economics, a concentration on the most militarily powerful and resource-rich (especially oil) areas and nations, is a clear theme in terms of the interests and expertise of the seventy-four. Each scholar typically has a number of issues and areas of expertise, so the numbers below add up to much more than seventy-four. By region, the number of these Fellows and other experts is as follows, with the nations most commonly focused on in parentheses:
• Asia, 28 (India, Afghanistan, China)
• Middle East, 23 (Iran, Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia)
• Europe/Russia, 16 (Russian Federation)
• Americas, 15 (United States, Mexico, Colombia)
• Africa, 12 (Nigeria, Algeria, Tunisia)
• Polar Regions/Antarctica, 1
By issue, the most common areas of expertise for these scholars are as follows:
• U.S. Strategy and Politics, 24
• Economics, 18
• National Security/Defense, 18
• Business and Foreign Policy, 16
• Defense/Homeland Security, 16
• Economic Development, 15
• Public Diplomacy, 14
• Defense Strategy, 14
• Terrorism, 14
• Trade, 13
• Democracy and Human Rights, 13
• Media and Foreign Policy, 13
A large majority of these seventy-four are “in-and-outers,” experts who have spent significant time in the U.S. government. The largest group served in the State Department (20), followed by the National Security Council (16), the Defense Department or as a higher officer in the Armed Services (14), and in economic institutions such as the Treasury Department, the Fed, World Bank, Trade Representative’s Office, etc. (8).
Output of the Studies Program
The CFR’s Studies Program has resulted in a truly prodigious output of publications aimed at influencing private and public policy agendas on a wide range of issues at home and worldwide. Statistics compiled from the Council’s website (CFR.org) offer a glimpse of this output. A total of 185 full-length books came out of the Council’s work during the 1987 to 2014 period alone. There were 1,796 academic and journal articles published by CFR scholars during the 1993 to 2014 years and 4,457 op-ed pieces during the 1998 to 2014 years. Since Independent Task Forces were first established in 1995, seventy-six of them had completed reports by 2013. There have been sixty-six Council Special Reports (2004–2013); 1,311 Analysis Briefs (2006–2013); 1,552 interviews (2001-2013); 198 cases of testimony before Congress (1998–2013); 597 podcasts (2006–2013); 201 videos (2010–2013); eighty-three Expert Roundup reports as well as smaller numbers of Policy Innovation Memoranda (30) and Contingency Planning Memoranda (19). These figures alone add up to over 10,000 products during the years mentioned, many more if a longer period is included.
MEETINGS: THE CONTINUOUS CAPITALIST-CLASS CONFERENCE ON FOREIGN POLICY
The fourth major fundamental feature of the Council is its meetings program, which amounts to a continuous conference starring global political, economic, and intellectual leaders. Council members are invited to attend a session with an important figure, introduced by a Council “presider.” The photos and lists of meeting participants in the Council’s Annual Reports over the years are impressive. To name only a few meetings among many over the years since 1976: David Rockefeller, presider, hosted on different occasions former President Carter, President Salinas of Mexico, King Juan Carlos of Spain, President Anwar el Sadat of Egypt, President Sarney of Brazil, Jessie Jackson, and President Mugabe of Zimbabwe. Cyrus Vance, presider, hosted China’s foreign minister and President Mubarak of Egypt. Henry Kissinger, presider, hosted the King of Morocco, Secretary of State Albright, and President Jiang of China. Peter Peterson, presider, hosted former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, Alan Greenspan of the Federal Reserve, Prime Minister Koizumi of Japan, former president William J. Clinton, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, and Vice President Richard Cheney.239
There are also informal, often unreported meetings between CFR leaders and foreign officials, reflecting the knowledge among foreign leaders that the Council represents the key capitalist-class power wielders behind the U.S. government. Only occasionally does information get published about such encounters. One such instance was when CFR president Haass wrote in the Financial Times about his September 2013 discussions with Iran’s new leadership, which had not yet met with President Obama: “In my two meetings with Mr. Rouhani and his foreign minister, I heard flexibility on the possibility of giving up uranium already enriched to higher levels—but not going back to the day when Iran had only a small number of centrifuges. So it is far from clear that what will be enough for Iran in the way of nuclear capacity will not be too much for Israel or the U.S.”240 Here is a case where the president of the CFR had two meetings with Iran’s new president, while the president of the United States was limited to one telephone call.
In recent years the Council has organized almost a thousand meetings of different types each year, mainly