The New York City based Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has long been the leading internationalist "think tank" in the United States. Its members populate the upper echelons of business, academe, and the media.

The Council's presence has long been felt most acutely in government, where its members – including luminaries like Colin Powell, Henry Kissinger, Condoleezza Rice, and Dick Cheney – have often been the internationalist powers behind the thrown. It is, moreover, reliably internationalist in outlook. In a now notorious article published in the CFR flagship publication Foreign Affairs in 1974, Richard Gardner called for an "end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece...."

Now, according to the New York Post, this internationalist "old boy's network" has determined that it needs to freshen its image by adding to its ranks a bit of Hollywood glitz and glamour. To that end, according to the Post, the CFR has admitted Tomb Raider star and Oscar-winning actress Angelina Jolie to its membership rolls. At least one member of the CFR was smitten with the prospect of Jolie's membership. "Bring her on," said international affairs professor Gordon Adams. "The idea of having Henry Kissinger and Angelina Jolie in the same organisation is dazzling."

While an admittedly strange move, the addition of Jolie to the CFR does make a kind of weird sense. Since 2001 the actress – who is expected to play the role of Dagny Taggart in the upcoming film version of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged – has shored up her bona fides as an internationalist by serving as a "Goodwill Ambassador" for the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.