Summarized by Justin Schmidt


The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs:  The History of the Council on Foreign Relations

by Robert D. Schulzinger (Columbia University Press N.Y. 1984)

Contents:
Chapter 1 – Hopes & Realities in the Twenties  pg.1
Chapter 2 – The Council Confronts Depression, 1930-1938  pg. 31
Chapter 3 – Preparing for War, 1938 – 1941  pg. 59
Chapter 4 – Planning for Peace, 1942-1945 pg. 81
Chapter 5 – The Experts’ Cold War, 1944-1952  pg. 113
Chapter 6 – Massive Retaliation and Its Critics , 1953-1960 pg. 145
Chapter 7 – Southeast Asia, China and a Strained Alliance, 1953-1968 pg. 165
Chapter 8 – The Establishment at Bay, 1968-1980  pg. 209
Conclusion – The Limits of Expertise  pg. 243 – 254

Author Robert D. Schulziner is a Professor of history at the University of Colorado.
He served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and in 1982 was an International Affairs Fellow of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Overview:
What is the Council on Foreign Relations? What has it done since its founding in the wake of the 1st World War?  What impact has it had on public perceptions of international relations? How have its workers been judged by critics?  Have its studies, publications, social gatherings, and occasional phone calls to officials made any difference in the conduct of American foreign relations?

These are the questions addressed in this history of the central organization of the foreign policy establishment from its birth at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to the 1980's.  This book describes the ambitions of foreign policy experts and the limits of their influence.  He outlines the hopes the Council study groups had for the management of an interdependent world economy, the eagerness the key figures for American participation in the 2nd World War, the plans for postwar order presented to the State Dept. from 1939 to 1945, the articulation of containment of the Soviet Union in the early days of the Cold War, and the experts’ anguish over Vietnam.

The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs measures the impact of Council deliberations and publications.  The author concludes that its critics have consistently exaggerated the Council’s influence.  A major theme of study is the relationship between members of professional and financial elite and the rest of the American society.  Like other 20th century elites, Council members have eagerly sought the approval of the larger society while keeping the less privileged at arms’ length.  The study ends by describing how the establishment has recently scrambled to respond to the collapse of foreign policy concensus by becoming more public and reaching out to a broader spectrum of opinion.

The author uses adjectives like modest, respectable, dull, smug, self-righteous and pompous to describe the Council.  It is nonsense to say, as John Birchers does, that the Council is a secret, invisible government.  It is quite another matter to notice that Council members fit the mold of people who have been in charge of American foreign policy since at least the second World War.  “It fits the mold, because the same sort of people belong to the Council as take positions in Washington or with businesses or universities interested in foreign affairs.”  The Council was founded to provide private foreign affairs information to important figures and offer a platform for diplomats, financiers, academics, reporters, and statesmanlike politicians. It enjoyed its greatest successes from the 1920’s to the 1960’s, as did the United States in the world at large.