Council on Foreign Relations

Orientation: describes itself as independent and nonpartisan, and its membership spans both parties' foreign policy professionals. Funding: individual and corporate memberships, foundations and a sizeable endowment. Founded in 1921, the Council publishes Foreign Affairs, the journal that in 1947 carried George Kennan's anonymous essay The Sources of Soviet Conduct, which set out the containment strategy that framed American Cold War policy. With more than 5,000 members, its task force reports and explainers are a reliable guide to mainstream Washington thinking on a crisis, which is useful precisely because readers can then see where the populist right and the anti-war left depart from it.