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“Mobilizing America for An Internationalist Foreign Policy”: The Role of the Council on Foreign Relations

This article attempts to examine the processes by which the United States was transformed from an “isolationist” power to an “internationalist” one in the World War II period, focusing on the role of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), an influential and controversial foreign policy organization.It is clear, however, that the internationalist-isolationist dichotomy is too simplistic; it has been demonstrated, notably by corporatist historians (on whom more below), to be at odds with the historical record. It is also of some importance, however, to take seriously the fact that the participants in the seismic foreign policy shift that did occur - even if there were interconnections and continuities between the two eras - categorized the past as “isolationist” and the future as “internationalist.” Their reading of the past - or at least of the interwar years - that they had all lived was that it was blighted by isolationism, even if the Hoover and other administrations had encouraged private bankers and others to engage in various international efforts. Their hopes, or rather strategies, for the future were pinned on globalism as the guiding star of U.S. foreign policy, but only after the spectre of isolationism - as an organized force, an intellectual current, even, perhaps, as a prejudice or as common sense - had been exorcized. “Isolationism” may not withstand the test of history, but it was real because the main political actors of the day believed it to be so, and their political strategies were constructed on such beliefs. See the following studies of the CFR: Lawrence Shoup and William Minter, Imperial Brain Trust (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1977); Robert D. Schulzinger, The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs: History of the Council on Foreign Relations (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984); G. William Domhoff, The Power Elite and the State (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1990); Inderjeet Parmar, “The Issue of State Power: The Council on Foreign Relations as a Case Study,” Journal of American Studies, (1995); for an extreme right-wing view, see Phoebe Courtney, Nixon and the CFR (New Orleans: Free Men Speak, 1971). In focusing on an organization, I certainly imply that the transformation process was not driven purely by the logic of world events - Nazi domination of Europe or Japanese aggression - but also by concerted efforts by people dedicated to a set of principles and ideas about America's place in the world – ideas which challenged the isolationist status quo, sought to undermine it and to ultimately replace it with an internationalist consensus.