Revisiting the Council on Foreign Relations Study Group on International Theory, 1953–54: An Introduction to the Special Section

Abstract

Across seven months in 1953 and 1954, the prestigious foreign policy think tank the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) brought together a set of prominent scholars and practitioners of international affairs to discuss the topic of the theory of international relations. In this special section, a distinguished group of historians of international thought assess the significance of this recently-uncovered set of meetings. In this introduction, I situate the group within two literatures in IR and intellectual history, prompting increased dialogue between them. The first is an active debate among historians on the relationship between the state and the academy during the Cold War. To what extent was early theorizing about world politics shaped by the exigencies of geopolitical conflict? Given the subject matter, one would expect maximal impact in the CFR group record, but is that the case? The second literature the special section engages is a debate within IR specifically on the historical development of the discipline, and particularly the turn to theory after the Second World War. I conclude by previewing the contributions to the section.