Ryan will also be keeping the counsel of some of the Republican Party’s most recognized foreign policy experts, many of them veterans of the 2012 campaign in which he was Mitt Romney’s running mate.
That roster, according to Ryan aides, includes: Dan Senor, a prominent foreign policy adviser to the Romney campaign who previously worked as spokesman for the Coalition Provision Authority in Iraq; Elliott Abrams of the Council on Foreign Relations, who worked as a national security adviser to former President George W. Bush; and Eric Edelman, a former ambassador who served in Bush’s Defense Department.
Dan Senor used to be an Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). He also established a think tank called Foreign Policy Initiative, along with William Kristol and Robert Kagan.
As the article mentions, Elliott Abrams works at CFR, where he is a Senior Fellow for Middle East Studies.
Eric Edelman, a Distinguished Fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA). Among other things, he is also a member of the Board of Directors at the US Institute of Peace (USIP).
Here is a previous Think Tank Watch post on Ryan's deep connection to think tanks.