The Council on Foreign Relations, a leading U.S. foreign policy institute and publisher of Foreign Affairs magazine, this spring launched a network of the world's influential policy institutes. The initiative aims at creating a forum for serious discussion among policy researchers to address pressing global issues and generate practical solutions.

The founding membership of the network, called the Council of Councils (CoC), roughly tracks the composition of the Group of 20 major economies, and includes such prominent organizations as Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House), the French Institute of International Relations and Russia's Institute of Contemporary Development.

To my surprise, Genron NPO, a nonprofit group that I founded 10 years ago, was chosen as a member of the global network to represent Japan. Eventually I was invited to attend the inaugural CoC conference in Washington in mid-March.