(1950 - 1970)
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The dream of world dominance is not, nor has it ever been, the pursuit by an exclusive cadre of conspirators. The dream has been held by many different factions - often simultaneously - always in competition with one another. By 1950, at least three major forces - all competing for world dominance - were clearly identified. Each of the three major forces worked overtly and covertly to achieve their objectives. The Soviet Union had clearly defined its Marx/Lenin/Stalin version of Communism. Its systematic program of expansionism - including an active organization in the United States - fully intended to bring all the world under its control. So confident were the Soviets of their eventual success that, on his 1959 tour of the U.S., Nikita Kruschchev pounded his shoe on a podium before the television cameras and declared to America: "We will bury you!" America would have no part of a world under Communist rule. Senator Joseph McCarthy led a crusade against Communists in America. His campaign tarnished many non-communists but was successful in rooting out Alger Hiss, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, and Morton Sobell, all convicted of espionage-related crimes. (Because of the statute of limitations, Hiss could not be tried for espionage but was convicted of perjury for lying about his espionage activities.)23 More importantly, the televised McCarthy hearings awakened America to the "Communist threat,” and when U.S. troops entered Korea to fight the communists, support for the Communist Party USA diminished steadily from a high of more than 100,000 members to its current low of about 1000 members.24 American leaders did not pound their shoes, nor proclaim a program of world dominance. American foreign and economic policy, however, left no doubt that at the very least, America intended to prevent the Soviets from achieving world dominance. The third force competing for world dominance was not the United Nations, but the people whose dreams of a world government were frustrated by what the United Nations turned out to be. The annihilation of the League of Nations by the U.S. Senate left the advocates of world government with a large dose of reality. They realized that the UN could exist only by the grace of the U.S. and the Soviets, and that the UN itself could have no authority or power over the major powers. But it was a real start toward global governance which provided an official, if impotent, mechanism for the incremental implementation of their global aspirations. During the 1950s and 1960s, the UN was little more than a debating society that occasionally attempted to referee disputes among the major world powers. Public attention was riveted on domestic issues and the deepening cold war. Russia's Sputnik launch was a catalyst for the launch of the U.S. space program. Fidel Castro's embrace of Communism in Cuba stiffened America's policy of "containment” - first articulated in the CFR Journal, Foreign Affairs.25 The 1954 Supreme Court desegregation decision pushed McCarthy, Communism, and the UN completely off the domestic radar screen. Rosa Park's refusal to give up her seat on a Birmingham bus to a white man was the fuse that ignited an explosion of racial riots. Federal troops confronted Alabama National Guardsmen over Governor Orville Faubus' refusal to let nine black children enter Little Rock Central High School. Dr. Martin Luther King delivered his "I have a dream” speech to a quarter-million people on the Mall in Washington, and tanks rolled on the streets of Chicago and Detroit. Domestic events also obscured American awareness of the creation of the World Wildlife Fund. The same Julian Huxley who founded UNESCO and the IUCN, along with his friend, Max Nicholson, formed the organization primarily as a way to fund the work of the IUCN. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, served as President. An auxiliary organization called the “1001 Club” charged an initiation fee of $10,000 which went into a trust fund to provide ongoing revenues to WWF. The WWF and the IUCN share an office building in Gland, Switzerland. (In 1987, the name was changed to the World Wide Fund for Nature, but the acronym remained the same).26 Behind the scenes, America developed and launched the Nautilus, the first of a new generation of atomic powered submarines. Both Russia and America tested nuclear devices with ever increasing payloads. Bomb shelters were the mainstay of civil defense, and school children were taught to "duck-and-cover.” The official defense policy was MAD - Mutually Assured Destruction. Much, much further behind the scenes, plans were being developed to defuse the MAD policy. The UN had no authority or power in its own right to do anything about the spiraling arms race between the world's two super-powers. It became the stage, however, on which the advocates of global governance performed their strategic play, using the U.S. and the Soviet Union in the starring roles. In 1961, newly elected President John F. Kennedy presented a disarmament plan: Freedom From War: The United States Program for General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World, also known as the Department of State Publication 7277. The plan called for three phases which would ultimately result in the gradual transfer of U.S. military power to the United Nations. The plan called for all nations to follow the U.S. lead and disarm themselves to “ a point where no state would have the military power to challenge the progressively strengthened UN Peace Force.”27 A new and improved version of the same idea was presented in May, 1962, called: Blueprint for the Peace Race: Outline of Basic Provisions of a Treaty on General and Complete Disarmament in a Peaceful World released by the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (Publication 4, General Series 3, May 3, 1962) headed by John McCloy. It is neither fair, nor accurate, to say that these documents were the product of the CFR. It is accurate, and instructive, to realize that these documents were developed by men who were members of the CFR. John McCloy and Robert Lovett were described as ”distinguished individuals” in an article by John F. Kennedy which appeared in Foreign Affairs in 1957. Lovett was offered his choice of cabinet positions in the Kennedy administration but declined, choosing instead to make recommendations all of which were accepted by Kennedy. Lovett recommended Dean Rusk as Secretary of State. Rusk had been a member of the CFR since 1952 and had published an article in Foreign Affairs in 1960 on how the new President should conduct foreign policy. The New York Times reported that of the first 82 names submitted to Kennedy for State Department positions, 63 were members of the CFR.28 Like FDR and every President since, JFK filled his State Department and surrounded himself with individuals who were, perhaps coincidentally, members of the Council on Foreign Relations. Lovett, John McCloy, Dean Rusk, McGeorge Bundy, and Adlai Stevenson (JFK's Ambassador to the UN), all members of the CFR, guided Kennedy through the disastrous "Bay of Pigs” operation and the Cuban missile crisis. That members of the CFR have exercised extraordinary influence on foreign policy cannot be denied. Whether that influence is the result of organizational strategies, or the result of individuals who simply happen to be members of the same organization, is an endlessly debated question. Richard Harwood, of the Washington Post, observes that members of the Council on Foreign Relations: “ ...are the closest thing we have to a ruling Establishment in the United States. The President is a member. So is his Secretary of State, the Deputy Secretary of State, all five of the Undersecretaries, several of the Assistant Secretaries and the department's legal adviser. The President's National Security Adviser and his Deputy are members. The Director of Central Intelligence (like all previous directors) and the Chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board are members. The Secretary of Defense, three Undersecretaries and at least four Assistant Secretaries are members. The Secretaries of the Departments of Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Health and Human Services and the Chief White House Public Relations man ...along with the Speaker of the House [are members] .... This is not a retinue of people who 'look like America,' as the President once put it, but they very definitely look like the people who, for more than half a century, have managed our international affairs and our military-industrial complex."29 Article 11 of the UN Charter gives the General Assembly authority to "consider” and "recommend” principles governing disarmament and the regulation of armaments, but virtually no authority to enforce disarmament. Kennedy's proposal was a bold first step toward giving the UN the power which early, necessary compromises had stripped from the original vision of a world government. The Kennedy plan has never been revoked. Though modified and delayed by political necessity, the essential principle of relinquishing arms, as well as control of the production and distribution of arms, to the UN has guided the disarmament policy of every American President since JFK. Prior to the Kennedy Disarmament Plan, the UN sponsored a Truce Supervision Operation in 1948, and a Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan in 1949. Since the Kennedy Disarmament Plan, the number of UN Peace-keeping operations has steadily increased.30 Still further behind the scenes, the fledgling United Nations was beginning to take shape. UNICEF (United Nations International Emergency Children's Fund) was created in 1946 to provide emergency relief to the child victims of WWII. It was reauthorized in 1950 to shift its emphasis to programs of long-term benefit to children in underdeveloped countries. It became a permanent UN entity in 1953. UNESCO's purpose was to "educate” the world. UNICEF was created to provide the mechanism through which that education could be delivered to children. UN Article 55 provides for the UN to "promote higher standards of living, full employment, and conditions of economic and social progress and development.” To fulfill this charge, the UN Expanded Program of Technical Assistance (UNEPTA) was created in 1949, and expanded with a Special Fund in 1957. By 1959, the program had been transformed into the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) (now headed by James Gustave Speth, former President of the World Resources Institute) which spends more than $1 trillion annually, mostly in developing countries. The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) was created in 1949. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) was created in 1951. The UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) brought together existing international food programs in 1946 and began its World Food Program in 1963. The UN's International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was created in 1953. The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) was created in 1947. The International Labor Organization (ILO) created in 1919 as an instrument of the failed League of Nations was reconstituted and folded into the United Nations in 1948. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) was authorized in 1947. Founded in 1863, the Universal Postal Union (UPU) became an entity of the UN in 1948. The World Health Organization (WHO) was created in 1948. The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) which had existed since 1865 was folded into the UN system in 1949. The United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) was created in 1966. The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) was established in 1967. These are only a few of the 130 UN agencies and organizations that proliferated during and since the Cold War. While the UN organization was expanding exponentially, out of the media spotlight which was focused on race riots and the arms race, UNESCO plodded forward with its mission to educate the world. Robert Muller, long-time Secretary-General of the UN's Economic and Social Council under which the UNESCO operates, delivered a speech at the University of Denver in 1995. His musings and recollections provide valuable insights into the kind of education UNESCO was preparing for the world. From Muller's comments: "I had written an essay which was circulated by UNESCO, and which earned me the title of 'Father of Global Education.' I was educated badly in France. I've come to the conclusion that the only correct education that I have received in my life was from the United Nations. We should replace the word politics by planetics. We need planetary management, planetary caretakers. We need global sciences. We need a science of a global psychology, a global sociology, a global anthropology. Then I made my proposal for a World Core Curriculum.”31 The first goal of Muller's World Core Curriculum, is: "Assisting the child in becoming an integrated individual who can deal with personal experience while seeing himself as a part of 'the greater whole.' In other words, promote growth of the group idea, so that group good, group understanding, group interrelations and group goodwill replace all limited, self-centered objectives, leading to group consciousness.”32 The World Core Curriculum Manual says: "The underlying philosophy upon which the Robert Muller School is based will be found in the teachings set forth in the books of Alice A. Bailey, by the Tibetan teacher, Djwhal Khul (published by Lucis Publishing Company, 113 University Place, 11th floor, New York, NY 10083) and the teachings of M. Morya as given in the Agni Yoga Series books (published by Agni Yoga Society, Inc., 319 West 107th Street, New York, NY 10025).”33 Alice Bailey established the Lucifer Publishing Company, which was renamed Lucis Press in 1924, expressly to publish and distribute her own writings and those of Djwhal Khul, which consisted of some 20 books written by Bailey as the "channeling” agent for the disembodied Tibetan she called Djwhal Khu1.34 Until recently, the Lucis Trust, parent organization of the Lucis Press, was headquartered at the United Nations Plaza in New York.35 Bailey assumed the leadership of the Theosophical Society upon the death of Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. The Society’s 6,000 members include Robert McNamara, Donald Regan, Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, Paul Volker, George Shultz, and the names that also appear on the membership roster of the CFR.36 Hindsight reveals that - while the United States was performing on the UN stage, sparring with the Soviet Union, keeping score with nuclear warheads - the forces which heavily influenced the official policies of both the United States and the United Nations were actually outside both governments: non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Three distinct NGO influences were clear by the end of the 1960s: the CFR and its assortment of affiliated spin-off organizations; the mystic, occult, or "new-age” spiritual movement; and the growing number of organizations affiliated with the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). In 1968, the IUCN led a lobbying effort with the United Nations Economic and Social Council (headed by Robert Muller) to adopt Resolution 1296 which grants "consultative” status to certain NGOs. This resolution paved the highway for global governance. The Lucis Trust was one of the first NGOs to be granted "consultative” status with the UN. |