The Council came to life in 1922 in a Chicago dominated by isolationism. It led the great debate over American participation in World War II and, after that war, over the nation’s new dominant role in the world. As a forum, it struggled with all the major issues—Vietnam, the Cold War, the War on Terrorism, and whether America is best served by an active or restrained foreign policy.
The following draws from Longworth’s book on 100 years of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, reflecting on these key periods of a tumultuous history, one full of ups and downs, driven by vivid characters, and enlivened by constant debate over where both the institution and its city belong in the world.
1922-1944 Isolationism and the Great Debate
When the Council was founded in 1922, it was a worldly outpost in a city and a Midwest dominated by isolationism. Soon, it would stand at the center of the great debate about American participation in World War II.
The early 1920s was a turbulent time. Post-Versailles resentments were already building toward the next war. Tsarist Russia had become communist. Benito Mussolini has just turned Italy fascist. Hyperinflation wracked Germany. Mahatma Gandhi pressed for Indian independence. Chicago, resolutely mid-continental, stood aloof, geographically and intellectually, from this turmoil.
Rowing against this tide, a small group of internationally-minded Chicagoans established the Council—then called the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations—"to promote general public interest in the foreign policy of the United States" by bringing in expert speakers to lecture on the events of the world. At its birth, the Council was an alliance between North Shore grandees and the international experts of the University of Chicago. By the 1930s, this remote and elitist approach gave way to the great debate over American participation in the coming war.
Speakers During This Time
In the 1930s, the Council's programs drew thousands of people to hear from interventionists, isolationists, and even outright Nazis. Its radio broadcasts also brought the debate about American involvement in World War II to hundreds of thousands of listeners around the Midwest.
On November 28, 1922, former Prime Minister of France Georges Clemenceau speaks to a Council audience of 5,000 in Chicago's Auditorium Theater.
In 1929, the Council becomes the center of debate on whether America should aid European allies. Speakers include former President Herbert Hoover (pictured), Edward R. Murrow, and Jan Mazaryk.
In 1931, the British economist John Maynard Keynes speaks to the Council on the war debts and reparations imposed on Germany at Versailles.
Edgar Ansel Mowrer, the Daily News correspondent, gives the first report to the Council on the war in the Pacific in 1941.
Behind the scenes, Council leaders led the campaign in the Midwest to give aid to European allies. When the war came, the region sent its leaders to Washington and its sons to fight and turned its industry into the arsenal that won the victory. For this, the Council could take a bow.
Continue exploring this era
1945-1955 A New Postwar World
The end of World War II presented the world with one of history's great blank slates. The Council focused on how, not whether, the United States should lead in building this new postwar world.
With the end of World War II the atomic age began, but no one knew how to survive it. Much of Europe and Asia lay in ruins. The Communists moved to control China. The Soviet Union, so recently an ally, loomed as a lethal foe. The United States was the only intact world power but was deeply divided on how to use that power.
Council leaders, especially its former president Adlai Stevenson, helped create the United Nations. Outposts of isolationism remained, led by the Council’s perennial sparring partner, the Chicago Tribune, but the Council aimed to help shape a new postwar world.
Speakers During This Time
As the Kremlin took control of half of Europe, Council speakers proclaimed the dawn of the Cold War and debated America’s new policy of containment. Secretary of State George Marshall came to explain why his Marshall Plan was vital to America’s own security. Indian Premier Jawaharlal Nehru said the great driving force in Asia was nationalism. Eleanor Roosevelt called for a foreign policy based on human rights.
US Secretary of State Edward Stettinius speaks to the Council in 1945 on the upcoming San Francisco conference forming the United Nations.
Former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt speaks to the Council in 1947 on international human rights. She's pictured here, right, with Louise Wright, the Council's executive secretary.
Abba Eban speaks to the Council in 1949. Eban would soon become Israel's first ambassador to the United Nations.
Pearl Buck, the American novelist who won the Nobel Prize for Literature for her novels about China, speaks to the Council in 1951.
Abroad, Russia became a nuclear power, and the long slog of the Cold War set in. The Korean War, the first inconclusive war, ended in a stalemate. At home, isolationism gave way to a new view of the United States as the defender of the free world, a sort of global policeman, with an indiscriminate foreign policy that would lead to involvement in a faraway place called Vietnam.
Continue exploring this era
1956-1975 Vietnam
The Vietnam War dominated world diplomacy, domestic politics, the streets of America, and the tenor of the Council itself. In the summer of 1968, the debate over the war exploded at the Democratic national convention right at the Council's front door.
Since World War II, Americans had swung from isolationism to a messianic self-image that led to Vietnam. At the start, Council speakers defended the war, but soon, they were questioning whether even the mighty United States had limits that must be obeyed. By 1966, seven years before the war ended, in a poll at a Council meeting, more than 2,000 members opposed US policy in Vietnam and overwhelmingly called for negotiations to end the war.
Speakers During This Time
Some speakers addressing Vietnam said the domino theory demanded an American victory. Others called the war "illegal, immoral, un-American, un-winnable." Two leading political scientists, the interventionist Zbigniew Brzezinski and the realist Hans Morgenthau, staged a titanic debate on America's proper place in the world.
Two of the nation’s leading political scientists, Hans Morgenthau of the University of Chicago (pictured above) and Zbigniew Brzezinski of Columbia University, came together in 1965 for a debate at the Council.
Under-Secretary of State George Ball (left), with Council members Richard Thomas and Herman Smith in 1972, was an early opponent of the Vietnam War.
While the Council brought the world to Chicago during this period, it ignored the crisis in race relations that disfigured the city itself. The assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 ignited rage and rioting in cities across the nation. Some of the worst violence took place in Chicago, which still bears the scars fifty years later, but the Council literally paid no attention. In the months after, it held no programs on racial issues, sponsored no studies, convened no panels, and made no attempt to link the crisis to the nation’s image abroad.
Later, as the Vietnam war wound down, the mood of a chastened nation shifted to restraint, so much so that the Council found it necessary to hold programs on neo-isolationism. The new watchword became not isolationism but interdependence.
Continue exploring this era
1976-1995 End of the Cold War
Council speakers began speculating whether, after 40 Cold War years, the Soviet threat might finally be crumbling. Economic issues—oil, trade, the new power of multinational corporations—replaced military rivalries on the spearpoint of American diplomacy.
For the first time since the end of World War II, the United States faced a clean slate. The Cold War was over and the Soviet Union was gone, not only vanquished but vanished. The United States ruled as the sole hegemon. Capitalism and liberal democracy had won.
After World War II, the United States created a structure that guided policy for 40 years. Now, it tried to do the same but, lacking a single foe, dithered. The Council, too, struggled to find a place. The Cold War had been the focus of all it had done; now, there were many issues but no central theme.
Speakers during this time
Titans—Mikhail Gorbachev, Boris Yeltsin, Helmut Kohl, Margaret Thatcher, Henry Kissinger—crossed the Council stage as the Cold War came to a close. Colin Powell argued that “the obligation of leadership is ours.” But how to use it? Speakers on the Council's stage worried that instant communications—"the CNN effect"—distorted any well-planned foreign policies.
Henry Kissinger, who served as Secretary of State under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, speaks to Council audiences often, including in 1976.
Jimmy Carter, then the governor of Georgia and presidential candidate, appears on the Council's stage in 1976.
In 1980, presidential candidate Ronald Reagan lays out a “grand strategy” from the Council's stage.
George H.W. Bush, who became Reagan's vice president, breaks the candidates’ general silence on the Iranian crisis in 1980.
Boris Yeltsin (second from right), the future president of Russia, speaks to the Council in 1989.
Former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher speaks to the Council in 1991.
Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev speaks to the Council in 1992.
It was a busy decade, what with the Yugoslav wars, Somalia, Rwanda, the rise of China, and, mostly, the arrival of globalization. Chicago itself had changed. Once a brawny but isolated industrial powerhouse, it had become a global city, a hub of globalization, with a different role in the world. To thrive, it needed to understand this role and it was up to the Council to lead this thinking.
Continue exploring this era
1996-2015 War on Terror
If, at the century's turn, the United States lacked an enemy and the Council lacked a focus, both were remedied, for better or worse, on 9/11, with the al Qaeda attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The United States declared war on terrorism and quickly became mired in the twin quagmires of Iraq and Afghanistan. The Council’s traditional focus on Europe shifted overnight to the Mideast, Islam, terrorism, and global inequities. In time, the Council’s focus migrated to China, to the rise of Third World countries, globalization, and, later, to populism, while Washington remained fixated on terrorism and the need for US dominance.
In Chicago, the Council probed a globalized world, with work on issues—trade, immigration, climate change, energy, global cities—that were perhaps visible first in the Midwest before they became national topics. The Council changed its name to the Chicago Council on Global Affairs in 2006 to reflect its shift toward exploring issues that transcend borders and traditional foreign policy. It also advanced its goal of becoming a think tank, first with a report on American foreign agriculture policy that became US government policy, then with original work on cities and the global economy. It established a Chicago-Shanghai dialogue and took a Chicago mayor to China.
Speakers During This Time
Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan speaks to the Council in 1997. Four years later, he would be co-recipient of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize.
Journalist Fareed Zakaria speaks at the Council in 2003. He would return in 2016 to inaugurate the Council's new conference center.
Former Under-Secretary-General of the United Nations Olara A. Otunnu speaks at the Council in 2006. He was later named President of the Uganda People's Congress.
Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, speaks to the Council in 2009.
Bill Gates, the founder of the Gates Foundation, gave the Council more than $11 million over the years, all for food and agricultural programs. He's pictured here speaking to the Council in 2011.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks at the 2012 Global Food Security Symposium: Advancing Food and Nutrition Security at the 2012 G8 Sumit.
Eventually, a Chicagoan became president and tried to extricate the nation from Iraq and Afghanistan. As these wars festered, an ambitious China and a resentful Russia became America’s great rivals. But the inequalities of globalization—or the government’s failure to deal with those inequalities—eroded the public trust in Washington, especially across the post-industrial Midwest, already described in reports by Council authors.
Continue exploring this era
2016-2022 From America First to Rebuilding Alliances
The Chicago Council was founded to combat isolationism and open America to the world. As its centenary neared, it found itself fighting the same old battles.
Across the world, populism bloomed. At home, Donald Trump, proclaiming an “America-First” nationalism, became president, largely on the votes of angry Midwesterners in the Council’s own back yard. In this debate, the Council, while nonpartisan, was not neutral.
Council programming strove to explain these new forces, at home and abroad. At the same time, its think-tank activities multiplied, to take on issues—such as trade, immigration, and especially global cities—where the Council, by virtue of its heartland location, had a comparative advantage. The Pritzker Forum on Global Cities debated the place of major cities in an urban-vs-rural world.
Speakers during this time
Academy Award winner Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy speaks at the Council's 2016 Global Leadership Awards Dinner about fighting injustice through her documentary films.
Lael Brainard, Federal Reserve Board of Governors member, joins the Council in 2016 to discuss the economic outlook for the United States and monetary policy implications.
The mayor of London Sadiq Khan speaking at the Council in 2016.
John Kerry, the Secretary of State, speaking at the Council in 2016.
Nana Akufo-Addo, the President of Ghana, visits the Council in 2019 for a special roundtable discussion.
General James Mattis, former US Secretary of Defense, speaks at the 2019 Lester Crown Lecture.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and Chief Medical Advisor to President Biden, speaks at a virtual Pritzker Forum program in 2021.
US Secretary of the Treasury Janet L. Yellen speaks to a Council audience at a virtual program in 2021.
New challenges mounted. Trump’s supporters jeered at the very way the Council viewed the world. Racial protests forced the Council to study its own obligations to diversity. The COVID-19 pandemic closed its offices. Everything—programs and studies alike—became remote. Fortunately, brand-new technology enabled the Council to spread its word more widely than ever, creating a national and international audience.
Related Video
On November 1, 2017, Vice President Biden examines America's leadership in a world of uncertainty.
On December 16, 2021, Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice discuss their experiences as trailblazers in foreign policy.
As it approached its centenary, the Council was the biggest world affairs council west of the Beltway. If it sought new audiences, it remained mostly an elite organization. As it did 100 years ago, it insisted that America’s proper view is outward and its proper policy in the world is openness.
Continue exploring this era
The Council's Second Century
With political, cultural, and technological changes and disruptions driving historical shifts in the global order, the Council’s mission is as critical today as when it was founded in 1922. We’ve spent the past 18 months planning and preparing for the Council’s second century and how we can empower more people to help shape our global future.
While "Chicago and the World" reflects on the Council’s past, in 2022, we will turn our attention to the opportunities and challenges that lie ahead for the Council, for Chicago, for our nation, and for the world. We’re excited about our future and about you being part of it. Members and donors have always made what we do possible. Thank you.
Related Videos
Author of "Chicago and the World" Richard Longworth joins Carol Marin to reflect on the Council’s century of global influence.
Richard Longworth talks with Council President Ivo H. Daalder and former Council presidents John E. Rielly and Marshall M. Bouton
On March 10, 2022, the Council celebrated its centennial anniversary at a gala dinner honoring President Barack Obama and cellist Yo-Yo Ma for their extraordinary contributions toward creating a more open and promising world for all.
Generous matching grants from Bruce and Martha Clinton and Bob and Susan Arthur made this book possible, along with support from Pat and Ron Miller and Adele Simmons.