Inquiring Minds: The Story of the Council on Foreign Relations
Article Summary and Author Biography
In his history of the Council on Foreign Relations, Peter Grose conveys the broad-minded spirit of the undertaking, then the bittersweet broadening of an institution after Vietnam fractured the consensus.
David C. Hendrickson is Professor of Political Science at Colorado College.
This sprightly work tells the story of the Council on Foreign Relations, established in the aftermath of the First World War and now in its 75th year. Peter Grose, a managing editor and executive editor of Foreign Affairs from 1984 to 1993, locates the origins of the council in the Inquiry that Woodrow Wilson's envoy, Colonel House, with the journalist Walter Lippmann's aid, established for the benefit of the American peace delegation at Versailles. What had prompted the Inquiry in the first place -- the absence within the State Department of the detailed knowledge of European conditions that would be required for redrawing, as fairly as could be done, the map of the world -- led some Inquiry members, together with a select group of English citizens, to concur on the need for an organization that would "continue the inquiry" after the war. The plan for a joint Anglo-American enterprise miscarried, as both sides developed sober second thoughts; and there was a moment, on the American side, when physical exhaustion and spiritual depletion made the whole venture seem dauntingly problematic. But the project was revived, and the scholars -- badly in need of money, as always -- joined forces with a parallel undertaking of financiers and international lawyers. The council incorporated itself on July 29, 1921, with the first issue of its flagship journal, Foreign Affairs, rolling off the presses in September 1922. Its mission was not only to "inform" but also to "guide" American public opinion.
QUIZZICAL INTERNATIONALISM
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