By John F.W. Rogers and Frederick Kempe
As the United States celebrates its 250th birthday, the Atlantic Council is marking a milestone of its own: sixty-five years since its founding.
On July 24, 1961, US Secretary of State Dean Rusk called a meeting on the seventh floor of the State Department with a group of statesmen that included two of Rusk’s predecessors, Dean Acheson and Christian Herter. They represented various organizations focused on strengthening ties between the United States and Europe. The meeting came at a critical moment: The US and USSR were on the brink of confrontation over the future of Berlin, with the crisis set to culminate just weeks later in the construction of the Berlin Wall. To bolster support for the transatlantic alliance and its importance to American security, the young Kennedy administration needed a single, clear, and independent voice. Rusk urged his guests to create one.
By the end of that year, the Atlantic Council of the United States was born. It was founded on the idea that US democracy, freedom, and leadership are most robust when they are shared—anchored in democratic alliances, defended through common values, and renewed by collective action. In 1963, the organization held its first gala dinner at the Mayflower Hotel to honor the outgoing Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Lauris Norstad, as the Council’s new chairman. The event was attended by President John F. Kennedy, Vice President Lyndon B. Johnson, and the ambassadors to the US from all NATO countries. Kennedy subsequently met with Norstad to discuss how “the valuable talent available in such organizations as the Atlantic Council [could] be put to use in dealing with the problems of the Atlantic Alliance”; Norstad—channeling the president himself—declared that “Atlantic unity represents the true course of history.”
More than six decades later, the Atlantic Council has grown immensely in size, scope, ambition, and impact, with its programs and centers now covering all the world’s regions and most significant issues. But our founding mission continues to animate our work. We remain committed to galvanizing US leadership in shaping the global future alongside allies and partners, leveraging our convening power and the cutting-edge expertise within our community to develop solutions to the world’s defining challenges.
That mission has never been more relevant. We are confronting another pivotal moment in history on the scale of the one the Council’s founders encountered—amid seismic shocks to the international system that include wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, Trump administration moves ranging from the global rollout of tariffs to the capture of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, heightened US-China competition, and the acceleration of artificial intelligence.
We are confronting another pivotal moment in history on the scale of the one the Council’s founders encountered.
In this Annual Report, you will learn how we responded in 2025 to a spectrum of consequential global developments since the start of US President Donald Trump’s second administration—and why the Atlantic Council is now in an even stronger position both financially and substantively than it was a year ago.
As we did with the twelve US presidential administrations before it, we engaged constructively with the new administration, organizing briefings, roundtables, and public events with senior officials and providing light and not heat in our analysis and policy prescriptions. We stayed true to our unchanging values and principles while also remaining nimble in response to changing contexts. The reason US and world leaders want to engage with us is because of our relevance and preeminence on the most pressing issues of our time, built on unrivaled research (such as the Trump Tariff Tracker) and capacity to convene (through events like the Atlantic Council Global Energy Forum).
As the list of last year’s greatest hits attests, we pushed into new fields of study, welcoming the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense to the Atlantic Council and launching the GeoTech Commission on Artificial Intelligence. We also planted our flag in new parts of the world, organizing our first delegation to China, opening our Romania Office, and establishing an ambitious project on Europe-Gulf relations.
The Atlantic Council’s sixty-fifth anniversary coinciding with the United States’ 250th presents a moment not just for reflection but also for renewal. The American experiment has always been unfinished. Each generation has been asked to reinterpret freedom under new conditions, protect democratic ideals against new threats, and expand the promise of liberty to new horizons. The Atlantic Council exists to help ensure that this experiment continues—both at home and alongside others around the world.
Our organization has pursued these objectives for more than a quarter of this nation’s history. We will continue to adapt with the times but remain guided by a fact that’s been true since the American Revolution: The United States is stronger with allies and partners.
We extend our thanks to our Board of Directors, our International Advisory Board, our donors, our global partners, and our extraordinary staff, who together make our work possible—and sustain and advance a mission more than six decades in the making.
With gratitude,
John F.W. Rogers & Frederick Kempe