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The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) is an influential imperialist organization and think tank based in the United States of America.[1] CFR represents the interests of the capitalist ruling class of the US and plays a significant role in shaping US foreign policy in favour of corporate and imperialist interests,[2] while downplaying the needs of the working class and other marginalized groups. Founded in 1921, the CFR is a private non-profit headquartered in New York City.[3] Its funding comes from membership dues, corporate sponsorships, foundation grants, and individual donations.[4] CFR is the publisher of the magazine Foreign Affairs.[5] CFR has been described by some as "Wall Street's think tank" or "the think tank of monopoly-finance capital."[1] Many government officials, policymakers, and media outlets have close ties to the CFR, while the organization itself is not subject to public scrutiny or electoral processes, allowing its members to exert considerable influence on U.S. foreign policy behind closed doors.[1][2]
The recommendations made by the CFR typically reflect imperialistic goals aimed at maintaining and expanding U.S. global dominance.[6] It advocates for military interventions, economic sanctions, and other measures that serve the interests of multinational corporations and the capitalist ruling class, even at the expense of other nations and peoples.[2][6] The CFR’s policy recommendations tend to align with neoliberal economic principles, advocating for free trade, deregulation, and privatization. As observed by historian Laurence H. Shoup, "the Council’s leaders select the intellectuals who set the agendas, shape the critical debates, and design the policies that serve the capitalist class. The CFR also works very hard to produce and disseminate ideas about which policies are best so that the Council/capitalist class view gains 'commonsense' acceptance among the public." Shoup adds that CFR leaders and members are the "in-and-outers" who pass through the revolving door of the federal government to high positions of authority, "no matter who is elected."[6]
CFR is a proponent of the so-called "rules-based international order" of US unipolar hegemony, and frequently makes reference to the concept of "authoritarianism"[7] in its analyses of nations and movements which do not align with its aims, typically referring to those who challenge US hegemony with terms such as "authoritarian" or "autocratic".[8] CFR's magazine Foreign Affairs is noted for introducing the concept of "containment" of communism to a wide audience during the Cold War.[9] Within the context of ideological factions among the bourgeoisie, the CFR is a proponent of the "internationalist" approach to foreign affairs,[10][11] under a bourgeois concept of the term which differs from Marxist proletarian internationalism. CFR juxtaposes its imperialist internationalism against US "isolationism" and "protectionism".[10][12]
Membership
According to CFR's website as of September 2025, CFR is composed of over 5,000 members.[13] Membership is by invitation only (typically proposed by current CFR members), prospective members must undergo a rigorous nomination and vetting process based on their expertise, experience, and potential contributions to the CFR’s mission. Members include government officials, scholars, business leaders, journalists, lawyers, and other "distinguished nonprofit professionals."[13] CFR also includes a number of "fellows", who are full-time and adjunct and visiting scholars and practitioners under the CFR's David Rockefeller Studies Program as well as recipients of one-year fellowships. CFR's website states that membership is divided "almost equally among those living in New York, Washington, DC, and across the country and abroad."[13]
The US's Joe Biden administration was comprised of a number of CFR members:
The CFR is funded and led by members of the old plutocracy. For example, David Rockefeller was the CFR’s chair for fifteen years and has been its leading financial donor historically. No less than seventeen Biden team members (out of thirty total, or 56.7 percent) are members of, have close family ties to, or are otherwise connected to the CFR (see box on page 3). These include: vice president Kamala Harris; secretary of state Antony Blinken; secretary of the treasury Janet Yellen; secretary of defense Lloyd Austin; CIA head William J. Burns; national security advisor Jake Sullivan; secretary of agriculture Thomas Vilsack; secretary of commerce Gina Raimondo; secretary of homeland security Alejandro Mayorkas; chief of staff Ron Klain; climate envoy John Kerry; domestic council chief Susan Rice; Indo-Pacific coordinator Kurt M. Campbell; ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield; chief of Council of Economic Advisers Cecilia Rouse; director of science and technology Eric S. Lander; and counselor Jeffery Zients. All have at least a minimum level of commitment to the CFR, in the sense of having the necessary connections, making the effort needed to become a member, and paying expensive annual dues. Several of this group are especially close to the Council. For example, Blinken is not only a CFR member, but his wife, father, and uncle are also members. Since 2004, Blinken has also often donated to the Council’s annual fund drive. Kerry, a Boston Brahman member of the old money plutocracy whose family wealth exceeds a billion dollars, has at least four other family members in the CFR. Rouse has been a director of the Council since 2018. Vilsack was the cochair of a CFR independent task force study group in 2007. Many have spoken at CFR meetings, such as Mayorkas in June 2011.
Vice President Harris and Chief of Staff Klain are the only ones of the seventeen listed in the box on page 3 who are not members but are tied to the CFR by family. Harris’s sister Maya, who was her campaign manager, has been a Council member since 2013. Klain’s wife, Monica Media, was elected to CFR membership in 2016.3
Although not currently a CFR member, National Security Advisor Sullivan also has close ties to the Council. In recent years, he has written no less than five articles for the CFR’s in-house journal Foreign Affairs, and spoken at the CFR’s New York headquarters.
Finally, Biden himself was allowed to write an article for Foreign Affairs during the presidential campaign. Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren were the only presidential candidates invited to advertise themselves and their ideas in Foreign Affairs during the 2019–20 election period.
— Lawrence Shoup. (2021).The Council on Foreign Relations, the Biden Team, and Key Policy Outcomes
CFR has credited itself with helping launch the career of Henry Kissinger.[14]
Francis Fukuyama, author of "The End of History", is a member of the CFR[15] and a frequent contributor to Foreign Affairs.[16] Fukuyama is also on the board of trustees of the RAND Corporation.[15]
History
The CFR has its origins in the years following the First World War, with rising sentiment among some of the US ruling class that the growing economic power of the US should lead to greater US involvement and "leadership" in world affairs. The CFR was formally founded in 1921 with the merging of a New York businessmen's discussion group with the Institute of International Affairs whose members consisted largely of statesmen and academics.[2] The early council "was restricted to 650 members, 400 from New York and 250 from the rest of the country, and had a membership roster that read like a Who's Who of American leaders" in which "partners from Wall Street’s J. P. Morgan and Company interacted with professors, international lawyers, corporate leaders, syndicated columnists, clergymen, and State Department officials."[2] The council regarded "isolationists" as its primary adversaries.[2]
The Park Avenue mansion of the late oil industrialist Harold Pratt, director of Standard Oil (now the ExxonMobil Corporation), became the CFR's headquarters in 1945 and is now known as the Harold Pratt House.[17][3]
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 Laurence H. Shoup (2015). Wall Street's Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976–2014. New York: Monthly Review Press. ISBN 978-1-58367-551-9
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 G. William Domhoff (2014). The Council on Foreign Relations and the Grand Area: Case Studies on the Origins of the IMF and the Vietnam War, vol. Vol. 2: Iss. 1, Article 1. Class, Race and Corporate Power. doi: 10.25148/CRCP.2.1.16092111 [HUB]
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 “The Council on Foreign Relations is headquartered in New York City in the landmarked Harold Pratt House, located on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.”
Contact Us. Council on Foreign Relations. Archived from the original on 2025-09-16. Retrieved 2025-09-16. - ↑ "About". Council on Foreign Relations. Archived from the original on 2025-09-16. Retrieved 2025-09-16.
- ↑ "About Foreign Affairs". Foreign Affairs. Archived from the original on 2025-09-08.
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 “The Council’s work since the mid-1970s has largely focused on creating, planning, promoting, and defending a U.S.-dominated, world-spanning neoliberal geopolitical empire that, due to the resulting mass poverty of billions of people, has been called “a criminal process of global colonization” by the Brazilian theologian Frei Betto. Samir Amin labels the system as one that imposes a “lumpen development” model of pauperization and super-exploitation on the people of the South, the majority of humankind. This imperialist empire is mostly an informal one, but its rule over and exploitation of a considerable part of the world and its people is nevertheless very real.
The CFR’s connections to and relationships with economically and politically powerful people and institutions around the world mean that the neoliberal geopolitical worldview of its members and leaders matters a great deal. The Council’s leaders select the intellectuals who set the agendas, shape the critical debates, and design the policies that serve the capitalist class. The CFR also works very hard to produce and disseminate ideas about which policies are best so that the Council/capitalist class view gains “commonsense” acceptance among the public. In this way the framework for policymaking and publicity on a variety of key issues is established. More often than not, CFR leaders and members are the “in-and-outers” who pass through the revolving door of the federal government to high positions of authority, no matter who is elected.”
Laurence H. Shoup (2015). Wall Street’s think tank : the Council on Foreign Relations and the empire of neoliberal geopolitics, 1976–2014. New York: Monthly Review Press. ISBN 978-1-58367-551-9 - ↑ "Authoritarianism". Council on Foreign Relations. Archived from the original on 2025-09-16. Retrieved 2025-09-16.
- ↑ “Autocrats and other authoritarian actors have gained new means of mutual support—financially, militarily, and diplomatically. In this environment, a global network of autocratic states has emerged. Among these, China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia have garnered the most attention from policymakers, partly due to fears that they might collaborate to destabilize the international system and foster global chaos. [...] The expanded network includes Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Burkina Faso, Cuba, Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, Myanmar, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Sudan, Turkey, Venezuela, and Uzbekistan. These nations, some of which are regional powers, have distinct qualities that enable them to form this growing authoritarian bloc.”
Joshua Kurlantzick (2024-12-09). "The New, Broader Alliance of Autocracies" Council on Foreign Relations. Archived from the original on 2025-04-07. - ↑ "The Council on Foreign Relations at 100: The History." Council on Foreign Relations. YouTube, 2021-01-05. Quote: "Ham Armstrong persuades an American diplomat to adapt his State Department telegram about the Soviet Union into a Foreign Affairs article under the pseudonym X [...] George Kennan's article introduces Americans to the concept of containment which would guide America's approach to the Cold War for the next four decades."
- ↑ 10.0 10.1 "The Council on Foreign Relations at 100: The History." Council on Foreign Relations. YouTube, 2021-01-05. Quote: "As the Great Depression hits, isolationist sentiment surges, and the country embraces protectionism. But Ham Armstrong and the Council continue to advocate for internationalism."
- ↑ “In short, the council was the sustained and well-financed core of the internationalist perspective that projected a very large role for the United States in the postwar world. Its function was to create and organize the policy goals of the internationalist segment of the dominant class.”
G. William Domhoff (2014). The Council on Foreign Relations and the Grand Area: Case Studies on the Origins of the IMF and the Vietnam War. [PDF] - ↑ “The council endeavored to realize its internationalist aims through discussion groups, research studies, articles in Foreign Affairs, and book-length monographs on a wide variety of countries and issue. In attempting to foster its perspective, the council saw its primary adversaries as isolationists in Congress and the nationally oriented ultraconservative business executives that did not want the United States to become entangled in world affairs outside the southern half of the Western Hemisphere. In the early 1930s, its leaders vigorously entered a national debate in opposition to "self-sufficiency" and greater government control of the economy, and supported such steps toward internationalism as the Export-Import Bank of 1933.”
G. William Domhoff (2014). The Council on Foreign Relations and the Grand Area: Case Studies on the Origins of the IMF and the Vietnam War. [PDF] - ↑ 13.0 13.1 13.2 "FAQs". Council on Foreign Relations. Retrieved 2025-09-16.
- ↑ "The Council on Foreign Relations at 100: The History." Council on Foreign Relations. YouTube, 2021-01-05. Quote: "CFR invites a young Harvard scholar to oversee a study group on deterrence. The Council publishes Henry Kissinger's resulting book, which becomes an unexpected bestseller and launches one of the most influential diplomatic careers of the century."
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 "Francis Fukuyama." Stanford University. Archived 2025-09-16.
- ↑ "Francis Fukuyama". Foreign Affairs. Archived from the original on 2025-08-07. Retrieved 2025-09-16.
- ↑ "The Council on Foreign Relations at 100: The History." Council on Foreign Relations. YouTube, 2021-01-05.