Along with similar and related groups like Freedom House, Project for the New American Century, U.S. Committee on NATO, Project on Transitional Democracies, National Endowment for Democracy and its International Forum for Democratic Studies, World Movement for Democracy and its Network of Democracy Research Institutes, International Republican Institute, National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and a myriad of complementary non-governmental organizations bankrolled by billionaire currency speculator George Soros and others - all identified as non-profit, non-partisan (which in the U.S. denotes bipartisan Democrat-Republican) organizations, though many are funded by the U.S. government - the Atlantic Council and the sites it links to are collectively the best example of what for over a century has been described as the invisible government. More particularly, an unaccountable foreign policy establishment for which Euro-Atlantic strategic ties with emphasis on the NATO military bloc are given central emphasis.
Officers and members of the think tanks and nominal non-governmental organizations shift effortlessly and regularly between those groups and top positions in the State Department, Defense Department, National Security Council and elsewhere in the federal government.
The Council on Foreign Relations offers fellowships, an example being the Cyrus Vance Fellowship in Diplomatic Studies, for one-year studies for State Department personnel.
As mentioned earlier, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice is currently on leave from the board of directors of the Atlantic Council. She has also temporarily departed the Brookings Institution and has been a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group, a project of the Aspen Institute. The next-to-last group's co-chairs are the Atlantic Council's Brent Scowcroft and the Sultan of Oman Professor of International Relations at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University Joseph Nye. Its members include Josef Korbel and Zbigniew Brzezinski protegees Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice, and Richard Armitage, Richard Haass, Richard Lugar, William Perry and Strobe Talbott.
Haass has been the president of the Council on Foreign Relations since 2003, and before that was Director of Policy Planning for the State Department. Strobe Talbott is the president of the Brookings Institution and was the Clinton administration's Deputy Secretary of State and Special Adviser to the Secretary of State on the New Independent States in the former Soviet Union.
The Aspen Strategy Group's director is R. Nicholas Burns, who served on the National Security Council from 19901995, seamlessly transitioning from the George H.W. Bush to the Bill Clinton administration as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia Affairs. Burns was also U.S. permanent representative to NATO from 2001-2005 under the George W. Bush administration and serves on the Board of Directors of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the Atlantic Council.
The roster of the Atlantic Council is packed with former Pentagon, State Department and Central Intelligence Agency veterans. Its chairman is former Republican Senator Chuck Hagel. Its president and chief executive officer is Frederick Kempe, a journalist with the Wall Street Journal for thirty years who is now a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and who serves on the Senior Advisory Group of Admiral James Stavridis, commander of U.S. European Command and NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe.
Its senior adviser on international security is Kurt Volker, U.S. ambassador to NATO from 2008-2009 until he was replaced by the Brookings Institution's Ivo Daalder, and also former analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, deputy director of NATO Secretary-General George Robertson's private office, acting director for European and Eurasian Affairs for the National Security Council, and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.
The chairman of the International Advisory Board is Brent Scowcroft.
The board of directors includes (with former titles) Defense Secretaries Harold Brown and William Perry; R. Nicholas Burns; former NATO top military commanders Joseph Ralston, Wesley Clark and Bantz John Craddock; Under Secretary of State for Democracy and Global Affairs from 2001-2009 Paula Dobriansky (an Eastern Europe and former post-Soviet states hand); Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman; Deputy Secretary of the Treasury and U.S. ambassador to the European Union Stuart Eizenstat; Clinton administration envoy to the Balkans Robert Gelbard; Special Envoy for European Affairs, Special Envoy for Eurasian Energy and ambassador to the European Union C. Boyden Gray; Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs and Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Marc Grossman; National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley; Richard Holbrooke; National Security Council Director of West European Affairs and Director of Middle East Affairs, ambassador to NATO and current RAND Corporation Senior Advisor Robert E. Hunter; Henry Kissinger; Assistant Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Deputy U.S. Representative to NATO General Barry McCaffrey; Deputy Commander of U.S. European Command Charles Wald; Central Intelligence Agency director R. James Woolsey and U.S. Central Command chief Anthony C. Zinni.
Honorary directors include six of the last seven secretaries of state: George Schultz, James Baker, Warren Christopher, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice. Frank Carlucci, regime change engineer from the Belgian Congo to Portugal and ex-Defense Secretary, is another, as is fellow former Pentagon chief James Schlesinger and former director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation and current chairman of the Homeland Security Advisory Council William Webster.
The Atlantic Council's International Advisory Board counts among its members Spain's Jose Maria Aznar, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Rupert Murdoch and Lord (George)Robertson.
Its Strategic Advisors Group (SAG) was founded in 2007 by James Jones and Brent Scowcroft and includes many of the members of the Board of Directors and a higher percentage of European and other non-American members. It includes former Deputy Commander of U.S. European Command General Charles Boyd, former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Navy Admiral Edmund Giambastiani, former chief of the German armed forces and chairman of the NATO Military Committee General Harald Kujat, and ex-Director-General of the European Union Military Staff Lieutenant-General Jean-Paul Perruche.
"In 2008, the SAG focused its efforts on the topic of NATO reform, teaming up with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the National Defense University, and John's Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies to produce a report entitled "Alliance Reborn: An Atlantic Compact for the 21st Century.' This effort outlined ways in which Allies should reinvigorate NATO, including improving decision making, enhancing capabilities, and tackling major challenges to ensure NATO's relevance for new and emerging threats." [12]
The Atlantic Council receives funding from numerous foundations, including the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Institute, the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the Cuba Policy Foundation. It also receives support from the U.S. Departments of the Air Force, Army, Navy and Energy and from the U.S. Mission to NATO and the U.S. Mission to the European Union.
Its corporate members consist of almost 100 companies which include arms manufacturers Boeing, EADS North America, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, and other concerns as varied as AT&T, Chevron U.S.A., Daimler, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, MSNBC, Sony, Textron, Time Warner, Toyota and Viacom.
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