Imperial Transformation & The United Nations

Published on October 1st, 2019. Last updated on January 29th, 2021. All rights reserved.

Chapter 3 – Modern Transformation of Empire – The United Nations System

States have no right to claim a separate or distant morality to themselves. All actors and officials engaged in government service should be held to a higher standard of accountability and transparency given their authority and networking possibilities for personal enrichment or collective advantage. The origins and true history of international institutions should be held to this same standard. During the 20^th century we witnessed the transition from from Pax Britannica to Pax Americana, and now as we proceed into the 21^st century, we are witnessing the transition from Pax Americana to Pax Universalis. This is being achieved through the transfer of ideological, economic, political and military resources of the Atlantic powers towards the development of a global governing body in the form of the United Nations.

The United Nations history page on its website has a paltry three paragraphs devoted to its founding. Wikipedia has about two pages, an elementary overview of the formal events, rather than historical actors and influencers who worked to bring it into existence, or token reference to a few of them. This pablum for the masses seems woefully inadequate for an organization that involved deliberate planning, deep analysis, and careful organization from key elite figures prior to and during its inception. Many books on the subject are written by proponents who support the larger mission of the UN and who believe that it is the last, best hope for the future of mankind, thus glossing over the manifest weaknesses, flaws and especially the imperial nature of this institution.

The concept of United Nations springs from convergent ideas and arrangements of European origin, a grand alliance or league with antecedents such as the amphictyonic councils of the ancient Greek city states, bound by Hellenistic cultural norms governing conduct in diplomacy and warfare. Later in medieval times the Hanseatic League, an alliance of approximately 50 cities along the coast of Northern Europe, would monopolize trade and commerce in their region for 200 years, and wage war when considered necessary to protect their interests. The name United Nations is attributed to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who suggested it to Winston Churchill, who both wanted a name to distinguish the new organization from the failed League of Nations. Churchill agreed, and mentioned the use of the term in one of the poems of Lord Byron, hearkening back to the European allies who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. [1]

The idea of perpetual peace is a twin concept with military alliances and an international security system as a deterrent against foreign invasion or aggression. Underlying the doctine is the use of force and military strength to enforce peace and ensure that it is in everyone’s interest to avoid conflict. Although most of Immanuel Kant’s writings did not deal directly with politics, the German philosopher’s most influential work was his essay on perpetual peace, published in 1795. He argued that humanity would eventually and inevitably form a cosmopolitan world order, a federacy of states that would coalesce towards “the world republic”. Understanding Kant is crucial to our day, since his ideas have been reframed and reshaped over the years (particularly by American political theorists) to promote an imperial ideological paradigm in the name of peace. [2]

Empires can be built on client states, and do not have to rely on the use of force, absolute subjugation or direct rule, though creeping power instruments often lead to this final outcome. The UN uses the language of client states in its own documents and official communications, and grants itself universal authority and engages in massive scale data measurement in coordination with the OECD and other global organizations. It exercises greater influence over time in governing transnational policy over sovereign nations in an ideological fashion, and combined with its history, structure and stated purpose the UN system can best be described as a nascent or future empire – the one which mankind will have to reckon with perhaps more than any other. Emphasis in academic institutions on global studies and globalized history, while laudable and most welcome, may have the unforeseen side effect of burying or concealing the ongoing nature of Western imperial power. A web of bureaucratic control can be just as effective as any other form or source of influence. It can control the flow of information, set the agenda, shape the economic landscape and resources that client states have access to, and create supranational legal covenants and structures that supersede national laws and policies. The UN and its various organs are steadily steering all nations toward a unified global consciousness complemented with statist economic collectivism.

For a deeper understanding of this reality, we go back to the origins, context and admitted motivations of those who conceived it. Woodrow Wilson, at the head of the world’s emerging superpower, maintained that the United States was in a position to be the mediator or moral arbiter of the European powers after WWI, since it was above the fray of European great power politics. Thus American exceptionalism would become welded to international law and an authoritarian form of globalism headed by an elite great power oligarchy. It was the universal application and appeal to a higher plane of American values that gave the world the League of Nations, the antecedent of the United Nations.

“Wilson put forward the League of Nations, a quintessentially American organization. Under the auspices of his world organization, power would yield to morality and the force of arms to the dictates of public opinion… The preservation of peace would no longer spring from the traditional calculus of power but from worldwide consensus backed up by a policing mechanism.” (Emphasis added) [3]

Wilson would be responsible for creating an organization that the USA would not be a part of due to American caution for foreign entanglements, though European nations would join out of perceived self-interest. The synthesis of power and posturing for moral authority was now underway. American idealism would become formally aligned with big power politics and the ancient game of empire. The UN has departed radically from its founding vision of moral high ground. That is because it was always imperial elites who managed its creation, public perception and development, and the momentum of global governance is apparent in the face of increasing legislation, policy and the growing ideological intensity of the UN agenda.

Globalization encompasses a universal, cosmopolitan mentality, and a deeper understanding of how social phenomenon is inter-related. It reduces geographical limitations, and applies this mentality of a shrinking universal world towards a human community, one where leadership is also bound to recognize and abide by global protocols and standards, and to be held accountable to a global community. In short, we are searching for universal conditions based on common ground. This grand, universal idea is what President Woodrow Wilson advanced when he critiqued the prevailing political order of WWI during his presidency:

“The question upon which the whole future peace and policy of the world depends is this: Is the present war a struggle for a just and secure peace, or only a new balance of power?… There must be, not a balance of power, but a community of power; not organized rivalries, but an organized common peace.” [4]

What Wilson described as a community of power later came to be rebranded as “collective security”. This concept as espoused by Wilson as an alliance based on a collective agreement to prevent war and enforce peace is the modern foundation of the application of force in service to global empire. Collective security still requires leadership. The formation of a global authority to pursue, preserve and enforce peace, and to mediate or intervene during conflict – though perceived to be founded on good intentions – is the core military machinery of empire and the means to enforce its will.

In addition to a world system that now holds full sway over the global economy, one can see the merging of power centers into one great whole. The development and deliberate shaping of the world system and its close relationship with imperial power is the key story of our time. The ancient imperial powers and the precursors of world empire began in Mesopotamia along the Euphrates, with Assyria and Babylon holding sway over the region, then shifting to Persia, then a series of great empires built by Greco-Roman rulers such as Alexander the Great of Macedon, Ancient Rome and the cult of Caesar, simultaneously with a series of dynastic empires in China, then with the Great European powers and their naval rivalries resulting in a series of power shifts from Lisbon to London and finally to the east coast of the United States of America once it became the dominant global power during the 20^th century. Wealth, power and influence is now concentrated in key global capitals of the world system such as New York, Washington, London, Shanghai, Beijing, and Tokyo with regional bureaucratic capitals like Brussels for imperial entities such as the EU. These centers of influence have all become integrated nodes in a larger global system that functions in a unified manner, one that is growing in size, scope and complexity.

In order to have a proper understanding of the world system, we require a closer look at its political origins, conceived and built along American lines with ideological and socio-political support from European elites. While the United Nations is well known, it is key to understand the integral role that the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) played in the genesis of the UN, and contributing to its development after its founding as a critical antecedent and a symbiotic ally.

 

The UN and CFR: Twin engines of an imperial machine / Double helix of an imperial design

“The war should be a tremendous opportunity for America.”

-Jack Morgan, personal letter to President Woodrow Wilson, September 4, 1914 [5]

 

In Among Empires, Harvard professor Charles Maier writes that empires

“…construct a web of ritualistic mutual self-support, not only against their common adversary, but also to achieve distinction within their own societies… in empires the visit to the capital is particularly prized. Insofar as America has exercised an imperial hold, it has done so not merely through armed power of the CIA, but also through such institutions as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Kennedy School of Government, its great foundations such as Ford and Rockefeller, and its frequent convocations of opinion leaders at prestigious conferences.” (Emphasis added) [6]

The UN is not an independent entity. Besides working closely with delegates and officials from national governments, it operates in tandem with the World Bank, IMF, OECD, and is closely linked to the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) since its inception. The close relationship, and guiding influence of the CFR upon the UN is a key element of global history and the imperial-historic trajectory of power. The CFR also had a virtual monopoly on the presidency of the World Bank during the 20^th and early 21^st century. [7] A careful study of CFR literature and public comments by their senior members shows an imperial drive that was a key purpose in the founding and development of the CFR – to monitor, shape and direct public thought towards their ends. The movement to transform universal values into a universal governing organization is the driving force behind all CFR and UN activity. This is the essence of imperial behavior.

The 1919 handbook of the original CFR expresses its objectives as follows:

“The object of the Council on Foreign Relations is to afford a continuous conference on foreign affairs, bringing together at each meeting international thinkers so that in the course of a year several hundred expert minds in finance, industry, statecraft and science will have been brought to bear on international problems. It is a board of initiation – a board of invention. It plans to cooperate with the government and all existing international agencies to bring all of them into constructive accord.” [8]

One of the early (and few) scholarly accounts of the CFR ever written, Wise Men of Foreign Affairs published in 1984, was written by American historian Robert D. Schulzinger, who was a CFR International Affairs Fellow with full access to primary documents in its archives, and was sponsored by the Council to write it. Although he was a hired apologist commissioned to write a favorable history of the Council and its members, his book contains a good deal of useful information and context as to how the CFR came into being, how they envisioned themselves, and their absolute focus to create a universal global organization. Other scholarly accounts include The Council on Foreign Relations and American Policy in the Early Cold War, published in 1994 by German professor Michael Wala, another Council-sponsored work with a notably biased stance (he also had access to their archives) and more recently, Think Tanks and Powers in Foreign Policy published in 2004 by Inderjeet Parmar, focusing on the worldview of the Council with the Royal Institute of International Affairs, and their influence on foreign policy and the CFR’s role in mobilizing American public opinion. The operative goal of the CFR was to create a network of discussion that would also yield useful information to participants, present ideas, and form opinion based on sound intelligence. They wanted to be in constant receipt of socio-political intelligence to have a better grasp of foreign and domestic affairs so as to shape it and capitalize on it.

They were also a recruiting ground for and had an especially high degree of interpenetration of the US State Department, and were and still are a revolving door mechanism within the highest echelons of the US government and intelligence community, and other elite spheres of influence such as Ivy League schools, Wall Street law firms, and prestigious trusts and philanthropic entities such as the Ford, Carnegie, and Rockefeller foundations. In a NY Times article published in the early 1970’s, Senator John Kenneth Galbraith once called the Council’s off‐the‐record policy “a scandal”, and asked “Why should businessmen be briefed by Government officials on information not available to the general public, especially since it can be financially advantageous?” [9]

Schulzinger notes in his account that their initial decision to invite reporters to cover speakers and later to publish a journal was done with the express purpose of demonstrating their wisdom, in-depth knowledge and skill in foreign affairs.

“The new group also had to let the rest of the world know that members of the Council had a keener grasp of what went on in the world than did the mass of humanity unwelcome at Council gatherings… it only wanted to attract the attention of the most important members of the literate public… While the editors saw themselves as models of impartiality, no reader could be fooled into thinking that the journal was anything other than a plea for a forward United States foreign policy, interested in exploiting the world’s natural resources and putting the affairs in Washington in the hands of serene, dispassionate experts who, unlike the public at large, knew what they were doing.” [10]

The timeline and activities of the UN show that it was not simply an organization interested in advancing human rights and preserving peace, but the means to consolidating power and authority as the leading global organization. Members of the CFR have called for greater UN influence since its inception, and have developed a twin-track platform to complement the publicity and propaganda campaign of the UN. This is critical to understand, since the CFR is the most powerful think tank and elitist gathering forum – one could describe it as the American counterpart to the European Davos forums. Only the most affluent and wealthy among America’s power elite are given leadership positions, and their claim to being an unbiased forum or discussion group without any agenda is their most enduring falsehood. The Council is deeply harmonized with the United Nations ideologically and politically. The objectives and opinions of the CFR are designed to support the arguments and rationale of the broader UN agenda, as the senior editors and leaders of CFR publications clearly support greater UN leadership and authority in the US and around the world. The CFR is able to conducts polls in the US in tandem with the Pew Research Center, giving them a unique position to both analyze and potentially shape US perspectives and opinions by determining how polls are designed and administered. The CFR also surveys its own members, whose views often sharply differ from the general American populace. [11]

Often overlooked besides the elite positions of members who form the Council is the large body of documents that it produces in a systematic manner to promote a desired outcome or perspective, especially prior to and during WWII, when they operated as a twin arm of the US State Department. They would prepare reports and memoranda, and were not merely a discussion group, they were a body that would gather and present prodigious amounts of information on postwar outcomes, planning and development. CFR fellow Robert Gerald Livingston wrote the following:

“It is questionable… whether the CFR should consciously strive, as it may have during the 1930s, 40s and 50, to be a consensus builder and transmitter of that consensus to the governmental policy process. Distilling the issues and clarifying policy alternatives for the United States should be its goal.” [12]

Hamilton Fish Armstrong, the Chief Editor of Foreign Affairs (the flagship publication of the CFR) for approximately 50 years from its inception until the early 1970s, had also served in the US State Department during WWII, and was one of the key actors in stimulating President Roosevelt’s willingness to formulate an international organization.

Discussing the League of Nations with Henry R. Luce in the 1960’s, [the owner of Time Magazine] he argued that “it was the absence of the United States from the League [of Nations] that destroyed whatever chance it might have had for usefulness and survival.”… Armstrong also recalled that Franklin Delano Roosevelt learned from Wilson’s failure the lesson that he might “prejudice the general peace settlement… by tying them too closely to the plan for a world organization”, although Armstrong used his own position on the Committee on Postwar Problems “to stimulate his interest” in planning for a new League. [13]

It seems clear from Armstrong’s unguarded remarks above years later after the UN was established, that the CFR and the main UN planners were aware of the mixed or possible negative public reaction to the United States forming and leading a new global governmental organization. It is also clear from other comments which Armstrong made that their objective from the outset was not simply a community of nations or a global forum for peace, but a carefully designed strategy to exceed the sovereignty of nations under the authority of one supranational entity. In 1943 he stated:

“I am worried by the plans to reach the goal through regional Councils which seem to me to offer too easy a way for escape for American isolationists who will espouse the idea of an American Council and say that the British and Russians, for example, must handle the problems of a council of Europe. I am also worried by the talk about alliances, specifically an Anglo-American alliance, even though the ultimate goal is a world organization.” [14]

This candid admission comes from someone who interacted with Roosevelt and other key individuals in the US government, and had editorial authority over Foreign Affairs, the key elite publication that relentlessly promoted the cardinal principle that the world needed a global organization in order to govern itself effectively. The influential position which Armstrong held and his access to the network of key government figures during crucial events will be outlined in the timeline that follows.

David Rockefeller, in a chapter of his memoirs titled The Proud Internationalist has a section with the subtitle The Council on Foreign Relations. In the second paragraph, referring to the CFR, he wrote:

“Like many in my generation I returned from World War II believing a new international architecture had to be erected and that the United States had a moral obligation to provide leadership in that effort. I was determined to play a role in that process, and I found the Council of Foreign Relations in New York the best place to pursue my interest in global affairs.” (Emphasis added) [15]

Rather than a forum for discussion and exchanging viewpoints as they claim, this remark suggests that Rockefeller viewed the CFR as a means to effect change, and a setting where he could be a factor in bringing this ‘new international architecture’ into being. This is at odds with the CFR’s official statements about impartiality and total neutrality. This constant insistence that the Council is unbiased is what we could term the ‘accountability parachute’ or the chameleon policy, a means through which questionable opinions and policy ideas that conflict with national constitutional sovereignty can be passed off as just the viewpoints of individual members and not the actual pulse or main goal that drives the organization. As one explores the origins and parallel agenda of the UN and CFR, it becomes clear that the UN is in fact a creation of the CFR (which is an organization of, by and for American elites). The plan for the UN was conceived and developed by a group of CFR members in the US State Department who referred to themselves as the Informal Agenda Group. [16]

The American delegation to the UN’s founding San Francisco conference in the spring of 1945 was deeply connected to and influenced by their members’ preparation and activities that took place years in advance. Many leading delegates were, or would later become members of the Council and were all too eager to formalize and shape American power and leadership at the head of a Great Power alliance. The CFR has received ample funding from the great financial trusts such as the Ford and Rockefeller foundations, as well as private donations from individual members. One cannot think of it as a mere think tank or discussion forum as they claim, as the group is able to gather heads of state, pool resources, convene meetings, set agendas, and influence perspectives like no other foreign policy think tank group can. Their Council of Councils, connecting leading global foreign policy institutes and leading academic elites from around the world, is just one example of this global networking institutional ability (see here for an overview: https://councilofcouncils.cfr.org/ ). Harvard historian Arthur Schlesinger called the CFR “a front… for the heart of the American Establishment” [17]. Schlesinger would have known because he interacted with many of them for decades. In their book titled The American Establishment, Leonard and Mark Silk (Leonard was a NY Times economics columnist and an active Council member) wrote that “if the American Establishment is to be found in its purest form, then the Council on Foreign Relations is the place.” [18]

One of the best single volumes on the CFR written in recent years is Laurence Shoup’s Wall Street’s Think Tank, (though the author has somewhat of a Marxist-socialist perspective, the information assembled is invaluable), an in-depth study of the origins, networks, and power connections that the organization possesses. The book is an update or sequel to his original work with Willian Minter, Imperial Brain Trust. In his most recent work, he quotes from an article published in New York magazine by CFR Fellow John Franklin Campbell, who referred to the organization as “the citadel of the establishment” and that members come from the ranks of “the establishment heartland”.

“If you can walk―or be carried―into the Pratt House, it usually means you are a partner in an investment bank or law firm―with occasional “trouble-shooting” assignments in government. You believe in foreign aid, NATO, and a bipartisan foreign policy. You’ve been pretty much running things in this country for the last 25 years, and you know it… The same vulgar polarizations that have popped up elsewhere ― young against old, men against women, hawks against doves ― have at last invaded the citadel of the establishment itself… The Council’s leaders, and most of its members, are affluent New Yorkers from the financial and legal community―the establishment heartland… Increasingly, they look and act like fossils… The Council is stuffy and clubby and parochial and elitist, bit it is a place where old moneybags and young scholars are able to sit down and learn something from each other. It is pompous and pretentious, but it still draws men of affairs out of their counting-houses and into dialogue with men of intellect.” [19]

The description above was written in the early 1970’s, and since then the CFR has slowly become more diverse and expanded its activities. The organization is closely aligned in terms of ideological and socio-political approach and orientation with the UN in terms of multilateral solutions, and an eagerness to strip Americans of national sovereignty as outlined under the Constitution. Writing about the Institute of International Affairs in Britain, and its American counterpart, the Council on Foreign Relations, Georgetown historian Caroll Quigley noted that they originally meant to have only one organization, a Pan Anglo-American Council. They met informally before being formally organized, and eventually settled on two groups split along national lines. He described this organization as a ‘power structure’ and wrote that:

“On this basis… there grew up in the twentieth century a power structure between London and New York which penetrated deep into university life, the press, and the practice of foreign policy… the existence of this Wall Street, Anglo-American axis is quite obvious once it is pointed out… It was this group of people, whose wealth and influence so exceeded their experience and understanding, who provided much of the framework of influence over which the Communist sympathizers and fellow travellers took over in the United States in the 1930’s. It must be recognized that the power that these energetic Left-wingers exercised was never their own power or Communist power but was ultimately the power of the international financial coterie. [20]

The CFR must be seen in its proper light as the main precursor to and an organization designed to complement and develop UN power, and not to merely discuss policy as they claim, but to shape it. It is the main organ of the Eastern Establishment elite, and works in tandem with a host of other organizations to promote world government. The timeline that follows is a portrait of the close links of the CFR and the New York internationalist intelligentsia to the UN, and the role of the Council in its conception and development. It illustrates their true aims of acquisition of integrated political power, antidemocratic interference, and subversion of national sovereignty.

 

CFR UN Timeline – Euro-American imperialist modes of development

The Hand of the Establishment and the Council on Foreign Relations in the founding of the United Nations

September 1914 – Theodore Roosevelt, former US President, publishes an article titled The World War: Its Tragedies and Its Lessons criticizing acting President Woodrow Wilson for American neutrality during the initial period of WW1, in which he writes the following:

“Surely the time ought to be ripe for the nations to consider a great world agreement among all the civilized military powers to back righteousness by force. Such an agreement would establish an efficient World League for the Peace of Righteousness. Such an agreement could limit the amount to be spent on armaments and, after defining carefully the inalienable rights of each nation which were not to be transgressed by any other, could also provide that any cause of difference among them, or between one of them and one of a certain number of designated outside nonmilitary nations, should be submitted to an international court, including citizens of all these nations, chosen not as representatives of the nations but as judges – and perhaps in any given case the particular judges could be chosen by lot from the total number. To supplement and make this effectual it should be solemnly covenanted that if any nation refused to abide by the decisions of such a court the others would draw the sword on behalf of peace and justice and would unitedly coerce the recalcitrant nation.” Bold Italics added [20.1]

Theodore Roosevelt and Successor William Howard Taft.

1915 – Former American President and Secretary of War William Howard Taft leads the formulation of the League to Enforce the Peace, an antecedent of the League of Nations, and an early group composed of Eastern Establishment elites to promote the founding of a great power alliance under the auspices of an American-based world organization. Taft was handpicked by Roosevelt to be his successor as president. In one of the documents produced during a meeting at the Century Association in New York City, they envisioned an organization in which “The signatory powers shall jointly use forthwith both their economic and military forces against any one of their number that goes to war, or commits acts of hostility, against another of the signatories.” The central role of the League to Enforce the Peace would be to promote global collective security through a formal great power alliance that would foreshadow the UN Security Council. The League would be active until its dissolution in 1923. [20.2]

Above: Early globalist propaganda published in the NY Times by The League to Enforce Peace (see bottom right corner). The Eastern establishment had already moved to promote its vision of a global imperial Great Power alliance with institutions under Euro-American leadership.

January 25, 1919 – League of Nations is proposed by Woodrow Wilson during the Paris Peace Conference. The five Great Powers control the Supreme Economic Council (created in February) to suggest economic measures during the negotiation of peace following WWI.

Accompanying President Wilson is John Foster Dulles, future CFR member and legal counsel of the American delegation, in addition to a panel with more than 20 members from a group known as the Inquiry, a CFR prototype advisory panel and presidential think tank composed of future CFR members under the supervision of Edward (Colonel) House, also a future CFR member. The Inquiry is instrumental in shaping Wilson’s Fourteen Points speech and the concept of a universal global organization.  [21]

May 30, 1919 – Following a series of meetings in Europe, two branches of international organizations are proposed during a meeting of global financial and industrial elites at the Majestic Hotel in Paris – the Institute of International Affairs in Britain, and an American counterpart named the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The Council would not be permitted to formally join the British Institute as “American public opinion would not permit them to join with the British.” [22] 

June-July 1920 US presidential race – A young Franklin Delano Roosevelt is nominated as Democratic Party vice-presidential running mate at the Democratic Convention in San Francisco. Shortly after he is chosen, he states during a press conference that he regards the League of Nations as “the dominant issue of the campaign.”

During the hundreds of speeches he gave during his campaign, the majority were on behalf of the League, arguing that it was a “practical necessity”, warning audiences that if the USA did not join that it “would degenerate into a new Holy Alliance”, implying that the premier global organization would be dominated by Europe and that the USA would be omitted from leadership or influence in the realm of global power relations. [23]

July 29, 1921 – The Council on Foreign Relations is incorporated in New York, dominated by Wall Street lawyers and J.P. Morgan Bank associates. John W. Davis, JP Morgan personal attorney and future 1924 Democratic presidential candidate is the first CFR president. [24]

July 1928 – Franklin Delano Roosevelt publishes an article in CFR Journal Foreign Affairs titled Our Foreign Policy: A Democratic View. The purpose of Roosevelt’s article was to promote and identify the Democratic Party as effective proponents of world peace. [25]

1929 – The Council on Foreign Relations moves its permanent headquarters next door to Franklin D. Roosevelt’s house in New York. [26]

1935 – CFR member Allen Dulles calls for publication of a booklet discussing “America’s role in international security”. The report, International Security is written by Philip Jessup, Columbia University political scientist and secretary of a CFR study group on collective security chaired by Dulles. The document is 152 pages in length, and is presented as America’s position for the International Studies Conference in London in June 1935. [27]

September 1, 1939 – Secret meeting in Washington D.C. between Hamilton Fish Armstrong, CFR member and Chief Editor of Foreign Affairs, accompanied by other Council members, and representatives of the US State Department, headed by Sumner Welles – President Roosevelt’s closest adviser from this department. Armstrong suggests to Welles that the CFR play a key role in drafting future plans for US entry into the War and American post-war strategy. Armstrong further states that WWII presents the United States with a “grand opportunity” to become “the premier power in the world.” He suggests that the US State Department utilize CFR personnel as it can “call upon the best brains in international relations”. Welles and his colleagues endorse the plan and his suggestions. [28]

September 12, 1939 – Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Editor of Foreign Affairs, and Walter H. Mallory, Executive Director of the Council on Foreign Relations, formally visit the State Department to offer their services to the US government in view of the beginning of WWII. The Council would form groups of experts to conduct research on behalf of the State Department under what would become known as War and Peace Studies.

“In this way, the Council’s long experience in assembling and conducting such groups could be put to use and the Department would be provided with a cross-section of expert private opinion to supplement official opinion.”  [29]

September 1939 – US Secretary of State and CFR member Cordell Hull, after proposing a State-run research team on a global security plan (to bring about a “final peace” following WWII as described by FDR), selects Leo Pasvolsky, his long-time personal assistant, as special aid with authority to direct the project. Pasvolsky, a Russian-born economist who previously worked as a researcher at the Brookings Institution in Washington D.C. writes a memo to Hull suggesting that a larger committee be created on “problems of peace and reconstruction” to review “the basic principles” that should “underlie a desirable world order”. Pasvolsky suggests that the committee could possibly be based on the model of Wilson’s Inquiry, though this time it be retained within the State Department. In keeping with Pasvolsky’s suggestion, in 1942 Hull creates an Advisory Committee on Problems of Foreign Relations, with Hull as chairman, and Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles as vice chairman. Pasvolsky would be the executive officer.

This was the first of several committees that would encompass the “peace studies” projects under Hull’s leadership that would either end, be renamed or reformed prior to and during WWII. [30]

1939-1945 – War and Peace Studies program begins under the special CFR study group funded by the Rockefeller Foundation, engaging in research, writing and analysis with a focus on international organizations following WWII. They produce 682 memoranda for President Roosevelt, the State Dept. and other branches of the US government, dominating the flow of information in an effort to shape the narrative about the post-war international order. Knowledge and full access to the group’s research is restricted until early 1944. A superficial report is issued each year. [31] Schulzinger notes in Wise Men, that “the normal pattern of the War and Peace Studies memoranda… foresaw an active role for the United States everywhere at the end of the war. As a whole the 618 projects presented the culmination of twenty years of the Council’s modified Wilsonian internationalism… The United States had to participate in world conferences and an international organization which would somehow curtail excesses of sovereignty.” [32]

December 15, 1939 – Hamilton Fish Armstrong heads a steering committee of nine CFR members at a meeting at the Washington residence of US Assistant Secretary of State George Messersmith, who was present at the previous meeting in September with Sumner Welles. It is decided that the work of the War and Peace Studies program is to be divided into four separate groups: Security and Armaments, Economics, Politics, and Territorial. The Armaments group is led by Allen Dulles (CFR). Economics is led by two economics professors, Alvin Hansen of Harvard and Jacob Viner of the University of Chicago. Whitney H. Shepardson (CFR) heads the Politics group. Isaiah Bowman (CFR member and future signer at the UN’s founding) heads the Territorial group.  [33]

The project was officially named Studies of American Interests in the War and the Peace, and there were originally five designated study groups: Economics, Financial, Security and Armaments, Territorial, and Future World Organization. Economics and Financial were merged into one, and the Future World Organization group was renamed Politics. [34]

During the next 6 months, Dulles formulates and promotes the doctrine of gradual, progressive disarmament, arguing that previous interwar disarmament attempts failed because they treated all nations equally, and that effective disarmament proposals take differences of power into account. Disarmament is planned to begin with enemy states (the Axis), then to weaker and medium powers, before final disarmament of the world’s major nations. Schulzinger notes in Wise Men that “This disarmament scheme was only one example of the great power bias which permeated the War and Peace Studies. The work of all of the groups rested on the assumption that the United States would have to play an active role in the war and the post-war period… Too many centers of power or, worse, power vacuums were dangerous for the United States… The best way to insure predictability was to have as few nations as possible in charge of the major questions of world politics.” [35] In 1941 the Armaments group calls for an “occupation police force” for the defeated nations following WWII, though this suggestion is ignored. [36]

Shepardson’s Politics group examines the potential future of a new international organization. Committees on Foreign Relations conduct opinion polls and discover that although the League had failed for a number of reasons, more than half of Americans believe that the USA should be aligned with Europe in a post-war international organization. The American public was especially hesitant to share power with numerous smaller states. The Politics group concludes that the solution is to have a hierarchy of states. In particular, the US and other Great Powers are to serve or have input on all agencies and organs of the new organization. Grayson Kirk, a political scientist at Columbia University, wrote a report for the group outlining the faults of the League of Nations, and the best type of organization to replace it. Kirk believed unanimously with the rest of the group that the hierarchy of states was the only way to gain the acceptance and entry of the other Great Powers, and that regional arrangements would not work.  [37]

February 1940 – Isaiah Bowman, as leader of the Territorial Group, commissions a report to determine the problems caused by nationalism. The report concludes that nationalism is a “disruptive force” that threatens to further divide the world, judging by examples such as Japan, Germany, and the Middle East. It also notes in a negative light that nationalist governments pay less attention to world trade. [38]

October 1940 – Memorandum E-B19 is submitted to President Roosevelt and the US State Department from the Economics Group, summarizing the nature and potential changes of American global trade, stating that “The foremost requirement of the United States in a world in which it proposes to hold unquestioned power is the rapid fulfillment of a program of complete rearmament… Since the loss of outside markets and raw materials would force serious economic readjustments within the smaller region of the Western hemisphere, such an enlargement of the United States’ economic domain, with the attendant increase of military commitments and costs, would be essential over the course of time.” Their recommendations are largely accepted and would later be implemented by the Roosevelt administration. [39]

November 1940 – FDR wins his unprecedented third term in the White House. As an insurance policy for the Establishment, he runs against Republican internationalist Wendell Willkie. After practicing law in Ohio during his early career, Willkie became president of a major utility company in New York. Historians note that “he won the nomination with the backing of the Eastern internationalist wing of the GOP.” In 1943, Willkie would publish One World, espousing Wilsonian internationalism as the true path and ideal political structure for humanity. [40]

July 10 1941 – The Politics group recommends “the establishment of an effective system of international security”. They also advocate a model of world order based on US leadership and collective responsibility within the world community. [41]

July 22, 1941 – During a speech at the Norwegian Legation in Washington D.C., Sumner Welles declares that only an “Association of Nations” can restore a stable post-war order once Hitler has been defeated. The New York Times praises his speech as the “most significant” statement on peace aims since the beginning of WWII, assuming that Welles speaks for the President “whom he sees virtually daily”. [42]

August 1941 – FDR and Winston Churchill meet during the Atlantic Conference off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, four months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. They issue a policy statement on the Atlantic Charter, and agree on a basic arrangement for the successor to the League of Nations.

Churchill had wanted more specifics on the role of the new organization, including clear details and public endorsement of a postwar international organization. Roosevelt, mindful of an unfavorable reaction from the American citizenry on such an explicit endorsement, only gives general assurances, and calls for “the fullest collaboration between all nations in the economic field”, and “the establishment of a wider and permanent system of general security”. [43]

January 1, 1942 – Declaration by the United Nations (first official introduction of the term) is signed by USA, Britain, Russia, and China (bound allied nations together and to the Atlantic Charter; prohibited separate alliances). 21 other nations subsequently adhere, offering full support against the Axis powers under leadership of the United Nations according to the principles of the Atlantic Charter.

Under FDR, this is the first official global military alliance agreed to and lead by the USA, informally known as ‘the Allies’.  [44]  

1942 – A fifth group, the Peace Aims Group, working independently under Council supervision is integrated into the War and Peace Studies project. Hamilton Fish Armstrong is the rapporteur with Philip E. Mosley as Research Secretary. [45]

March 5, 1942 – The Commission to Study the Bases of a Just and Durable Peace, under the leadership of John Foster Dulles (CFR) and under the auspices of the Federal Council of Churches, proposes a world government, marked by a global parliament, an international court, and accompanying agencies. This world government “would have the power to regulate international trade, settle disputes between member nations, and control all military forces, except those needed to maintain domestic order.”  In an earlier radio speech in 1940, Dulles had declared that “the sovereignty system is no longer consonant with either peace or justice.” [46]

July 23, 1942 – US Secretary of State Cordell Hull (assisted by Pasvolsky in composing the announcement) delivers a national radio address broadcast worldwide, calling for the creation of an “international agency” to keep the peace “by force if necessary”. [47]

October 1942 – Sumner Welles gains FDR’s approval to complete a full-fledged UN Charter. [48]

November 28 – December 1, 1943 – Teheran Conference between FDR, Churchill and Stalin held at the Soviet Union Embassy in Teheran, Iran. They announce their intentions to create a general post-war organization.

July 1944 – IMF and World Bank institutions are founded as part of the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire. Concept of economic strategic security and development is advocated by America’s longest serving Secretary of State and CFR member Cordell Hull, who would be one of the signers and key figures in establishing the United Nations. He would receive the Nobel Peace Prize in 1945 for this central role, and FDR would refer to him as the “Father of the United Nations.”  [49]

(Hull was one of 19 US Secretaries of State who has been a CFR member). [50]

August-October 1944 – Dumbarton Oaks conference takes place in Georgetown, Virginia, just outside Washington D.C. Soviet agent Alger Hiss serves as Executive Secretary for confidential planning meetings with officials from 4 of the 5 Great Powers (USA, Britain, China and USSR).

A sense of urgency to formally complete the new international organization prior to the conclusion of the war is now a factor. “The great powers… could not wait for the building of a full public consensus; to prolong the process of constructing the framework of the new organization might run the risk of destroying existing areas of agreement as the war drew to a close.” [51]

February 4-11, 1945 – Yalta Conference in the Crimea between FDR, Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin. Discussions center on the post-war partition of Germany, and the basic structure of the UN Security Council, including the veto arrangement among the great powers. Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin agree that the 5 great powers would sponsor a UN conference on International Organization in April that year, with San Francisco as the location.

Upon his return from Yalta, Roosevelt addresses US Congress declaring that “This time we shall not make the mistake of waiting until the end of war to set up the machinery of peace.” [52]

Alger Hiss is part of the US State Department contingent at Yalta led by US Secretary of State and CFR member Edward Stettinius Jr., which continues to Moscow immediately following the conference. [53]

February-March 1945 – Chapultepec Conference in Mexico City, officially named the Inter‑American Conference on Problems of Peace and War, headed by Nelson Rockefeller (CFR member and 41^st American Vice President), Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs. He forges “a hemispheric consensus on the structure of postwar international organizations”, uniting the Latin American vote behind the American position of US delegates, preparing a coalition in advance before the main San Francisco Conference would be held later that year. [54] He would also be one of the signing American delegates for the UN charter.

During this conference “The views of some of the small states were carefully set forth”, as one account notes “somewhat to the annoyance of the US delegation.” The great powers seem to have felt entitled to dominate even before the organization came into existence. [55] Rockefeller also has FBI agents working for him in Mexico City to report on “what Latin diplomats were saying behind his back.” Unknown to Secretary of State Edward Stettinius, Rockefeller would be the main contact for all FBI intelligence to the Secretary during the future San Francisco conference, based on relations established during the Mexico City conference. FBI activities in San Francisco included spying on foreign emissaries, the US delegation itself, and a nation-wide investigation of any pressure or activist groups bound for San Francisco. [56]

April 1945 – Shortly prior to his unexpected death, FDR confides to his closest advisors that at the conclusion of WWII he would consider resigning as President and becoming the Secretary-General of the United Nations. [57]

April-June 1945 – San Francisco Conference and finalization of the UN, officially called the United Nations Conference on International Organization. Alger Hiss serves as Secretary General of the conference. Hiss sets the agenda and finalizes the UN Charter, signed by 51 nations on June 26, 1945. He becomes a member of the CFR the same year and leaves the State Department to become president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

The group of American delegates in SF has a strong CFR presence. US Delegation is chaired by CFR member Edward Stettinius Jr., son of a financier for J.P. Morgan who became Secretary of State in 1944 due to the frail health of Cordell Hull (fellow CFR member). More than 40 American delegates in SF were or would later become CFR members. [58]

August-December 1945 – American essayist E.B. White writes a series of unsigned contributions in the Notes and Comments section of the New Yorker magazine following the detonation of the Atomic bomb in Hiroshima, calling for a more potent United Nations.

“The political plans for the new world, as shaped by statesmen, are not fantastic enough… The only conceivable way to catch up with atomic energy is with political energy directed to a universal structure. The preparations made at San Francisco for a security league of sovereign nations to prevent aggression now seem like the preparations some girls might make for a lawn party as a thunderhead gathers just beyond the garden gate… Nuclear energy and foreign policy cannot coexist on the planet. The more deep the secret, the greater the determination of every nation to discover and exploit it. Nuclear energy insists on global government.” (Italics added) [58.1]

September 1945 – German born American physicist and scientist Albert Einstein writes a private letter to friend and colleague J. Robert Oppenheimer, following the discovery of the Atomic bomb:

“The wretched attempts to achieve international security, as it is understood today by our governments, do not alter at all the political structures of the world, do not recognize at all the competing sovereign nation-states as the real cause of conflicts. Our governments and the people do not seem to have drawn anything from past experience and are unable or unwilling to think the problem through. The conditions existing today force the individual states, for the sake of their own security based on fear, to do all those things which inevitably produce war. At the present stage of industrialism, with the existing complete integration of the world, it is unthinkable that we can have peace without a real governmental organization to create and enforce law on individuals in their international relations.” (Italics added)

Oppenheimer would reply that he was “in complete agreement”.

Shortly thereafter, on September 14, 1945, Einstein was interviewed by the United Press (reprinted in the NY Times, September 15, 1945. He remarked that “The only salvation for civilization and the human race lies in the creation of world government.” (Italics added) “As long as sovereign states continue to have armaments secrets, new world wars will be inevitable.” [58.2]

October 24, 1945 – The UN is officially founded. The five permanent members (P-5) of the UN Security Council (USA, Russia, China, Britain and France) sign the UN Charter.

1946 – Einstein continues his internationalist dialogue, and contributes to a pamphlet published that year by the Federation of American Scientists titled One World or None, with a similar title hearkening back to Wendell Willkie’s book from several years earlier. Einstein wrote that “It is necessary that conditions be established that guarantee the individual state the right to solve its conflicts with other states on a legal basis and under international jurisdiction. It is necessary that the individual state be prevented from making war by a supranational organization supported by a military power that is exclusively under its control.”

Another contributor to One World or None was Walter Lippmann, an original CFR member who wrote a chapter as the dean of American foreign affairs columnists. As a young man Lippmann had been part of the original team of advisers who assisted Woodrow Wilson in formulating the League of Nations. In his chapter titled International Control of Atomic Energy, he wrote that “not another League of Nations but a world state, in the exact meaning of the term, is inherent and potential in the embryonic organism of the United Nations… as an oak tree is in an acorn.” (Italics added) [58.3]

January 10, 1946 – The first session of the UN General Assembly is held at the Methodist Central Hall in London. Alger Hiss serves as chief advisor to the US delegation. [59]

1946 – League of Nations is dissolved. All services, mandates and property from the League is transferred and absorbed into the UN.

November 1946 – One year following the signing of its Constitution by 37 countries and after 20 countries complete its ratification, UNESCO is officially founded.

1947 – Julian Huxley, the first Director General of the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) publishes a brief 62-page booklet titled UNESCO: Its Purpose and Philosophy, where an ambitious and sweeping vision for humanity’s future is laid out, with blueprints for social solutions and the ultimate purpose of education:

“The moral for UNESCO is clear…It must envisage some form of world political unity, whether through a single world government or otherwise, as the only certain means for avoiding war… Specifically in its educational programme it can stress the ultimate need for world political unity and familiarise all peoples with the implications of the transfer of full sovereignty from separate nations to a world organisation. But more generally, it can do a great deal to lay the foundations on which world political unity can later be built.” (Huxley, 1947, p. 13)

The deeper philosophy that Huxley laid out throughout his booklet was scientific humanism, where a technocratic approach to managing global society would be the prime solution for humanity’s challenges and problems.

January 7, 1947 – George Kennan (CFR member) gives an address at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York on containment of Soviet power, the most influential US policy address for the next 50 years. In July 1947, he would publish an anonymous article in Foreign Affairs, under the byline Mr. X, titled The Sources of Soviet Conduct, written anonymously at that time because he was serving in the US State Department. [60]

March 1947 – UN purchases land for headquarters in New York on the Hudson River with an $8.5 million donation from John D. Rockefeller III on behalf of his father and in close cooperation with Nelson. UN Headquarters would become an international zone, no longer within jurisdiction of the US government. [61]

The Rockefellers also consider donating part of Kykuit, one of their family estates in Westchester, New York, to be the official UN headquarters, though John D. II deems it too far from the metropolitan center. [62]

1949 – David Rockefeller is appointed to the CFR board of directors as its youngest member at 34 years of age. In 1970 he becomes CFR chairman until 1985. He would simultaneously serve at Chase Manhattan Bank from 1946 until 1981, including President and CEO from 1969-1981. [63]

April 7, 1950 – National Security Council Paper NSC-68 (under the title United States Objectives and Programs for National Security) is completed and calls for “the rapid building up of the political, economic, and military strength of the free world” due to hostile Soviet designs. The 52-page secret report would later be declassified under Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. [64]

1950 – Alger Hiss is convicted of perjury and imprisoned for lying under oath about his Communist Party membership. [65]

December 8, 1953 – Following talks with France and Britain, US President Dwight Eisenhower addresses the UN General Assembly, and proposes a division and handover of available nuclear fissionable material among the USA, UK, and USSR to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which was established under Eisenhower’s direction. [66]

1954 – Eisenhower threatens a UN veto in response to France and Britain’s suggestions of the dispatch of UN observers to Guatemala following a CIA-instigated coup of democratically elected leader Jacobo Arbenz, who had requested UN assistance. Eisenhower also threatens to change US position on Egypt, the Suez Canal and North Africa, as its main leverage against French and British interests. France and Britain yield to US pressures and abstain from voting on Guatemala (no UN veto necessary). Arbenz is forced to resign.

Allan Dulles, CIA Director and CFR member, and his brother, John Foster Dulles, now Secretary of State and also a CFR member, are directly implicated, as Allan is also a director of the United Fruit Company, of which Arbenz had decided to nationalize acreage belonging to this firm. [67]

February 1962 – Nelson Rockefeller delivers a series of addresses titled The Future of Federalism during the Godkin Lectures, a weekend symposium at Harvard University. On the final day of his remarks, February 9th, titled Federalism and Free World Order, he stated the following:

“The historic choice fast rushing upon us, then, is no less than this: either the free nations of the world will take the lead in adapting the federal concept to their relations, or, one by one, we may be driven into the retreat of the perilous isolationism – political, economic, and intellectual, so ardently sought by the Soviet policy of divide and conquer. (p. 68-69)

All of these then are some of the reasons – economic, military, political – pressing us to lead vigorously toward the building of a new world order. And it urgently requires, I believe, that the United States take the leadership among all free peoples to make the underlying concepts and aspirations of national sovereignty truly meaningful through a federal approach. (p. 74) (emphasis added)

I was wholeheartedly committed to the battle at the San Francisco Conference in 1945 for inclusion of Article 51 in the United Nations Charter to permit regional arrangements within the UN framework. And I certainly do not now abandon my belief in the value and importance of regional arrangements among free nations. But I have come to the conviction that events are driving us rapidly beyond even the limits of regional concepts – to the logic of applying the federal idea wherever possible, among free nations however distant, however seemingly strong in themselves. (p. 77) (emphasis added)

Just as the operation of our own national economy and social life is interdependent with a federal system of government, assuring freedom and order, so just as dramatically do the economic and social workings of a free economy in the world require movement toward a federal idea, bringing order to the chaos of nation-states. (p. 78) (emphasis added)

That informal, intergovernmental consultations by the political leaders of free nations be undertaken to define agreed objectives and develop means to achieve them through application of the federal idea… That these consultations be supplemented by regional and functional conferences to attack specific problems and launch explicit programs. Out of this I would venture to prophesy that – sooner than we may realize and despite the enormity of the apparent difficulties – there will evolve the bases for a federal structure of the free world. (p. 80) (emphasis added)

This is why we were born as a nation – not as an economic advantage or imperial adventure. We came into being for the sake of an idea: our belief that man should be free to fulfill his unique and individual destiny – a belief based on our dedicated faith in the brotherhood of all mankind. The nation that was founded in the eighteenth century provided a home – a political structure in which free men could live a life of such fulfilment.

Yet this, in a real sense, could never be enough. No matter how this nation strove to isolate itself in past generations, it could never suppress or deny an impulse toward the world. In one age, this impulse expressed itself through missionaries; in another age, through philanthropy, medical care, deeds of charity; and most recently, through massive international aid and assistance.” (pp. 82-83)

Nelson Rockefeller’s remarks were heavily influenced by and originated from a paper provided by CFR ideologue Henry Kissinger on “the nature of freedom”, his close friend and political consultant. Kissinger biographer (and fellow CFR member) Niall Ferguson described Kissinger’s paper as “a draft for the Godkin lectures.” [67.1]

1972 – Official residence for the UN Secretary General (five-story Manhattan townhouse) built by the daughter of J.P. Morgan is donated to the UN. [68]

October 1972 – Foreign Affairs publishes it’s 50^th anniversary issue. An article titled Growth and Survival by Robert L. Heilbroner states that “economic growth must be brought to a halt as rapidly as possible”, citing The Limits to Growth study sponsored by the Club of Rome. (p. 139) He further states that “To bring environmental stability, the authority of government must necessarily be expanded to include family size, consumption habits, and of the volume and composition of industrial and agricultural output. In a word, the social price of ecological control is a vast increase in the scope and penetration of regulatory authority, designed to enforce the necessary zero-growth behavior at the micro level on which our collective safety will depend at the macro level.” [69]

April 1974 – Richard Gardner publishes an article titled Hard Road to World Order in Foreign Affairs. He uses the terms shortsighted nationalism (twice), misguided nationalism, and divisive tendencies of nationalism throughout his essay. Excerpts include the following:

“In short, the “house of world order” will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great “booming, buzzing confusion,” to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault. Of course, for political as well as administrative reasons, some of these specialized arrangements should be brought into an appropriate relationship with the central institutions of the U.N. system, but the main thing is that the essential functions be performed.”

“The hopeful aspect of the present situation is that even as nations resist appeals for “world government” and “the surrender of sovereignty,” technological, economic and political interests are forcing them to establish more and more far-reaching arrangements to manage their mutual interdependence.”

“Thus, while we will not see “world government” in the old-fashioned sense of a single all-embracing global authority, key elements of planetary planning and planetary management will come about on those very specific problems where the facts of interdependence force nations, in their enlightened self-interest, to abandon unilateral decision-making in favor of multilateral processes.” [70]

1976 – Declaration of Interdependence is released and signed by dozens of US senators and members of Congress during the American bicentennial. The document acknowledges the leading role of the CFR as one of the “prestigious organizations” contributing to the first step of the World Affairs Council program, and calls for “the strengthening of the United Nations and the world order.” It also states that “Narrow notions of sovereignty must not be must not be permitted to curtail that obligation.” in reference to environmental protection and preservation. Near the conclusion, it states “WE AFFIRM that a world without law is a world without order, and we call upon all nations to strengthen and to sustain the United Nations and its specialized agencies, and other institutions of world order…” [71]

September, 1987 – Mikhail Gorbachev, First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, publishes an article in Pravda calling upon the UN to play a more central role in world politics as a cornerstone of global security. [72]

February 6, 1991 – While the initial phase of the Gulf War in Iraq is underway with U.S-led airstrikes to soften key targets and open up the way for a ground invasion, President George H.W. Bush gives a speech before the Economic Club of New York including this statement: “My vision of a new world order foresees a United Nations with a revitalized peacekeeping function.” [72.1]

January 31, 1992 – The UN Security Council Summit convenes all heads of state from member nations at UN Headquarters in NY City. US President and former CFR member George H.W. Bush states that

“For much of history the United Nations was caught in a cold-war crossfire… Today all that has changed. The collapse of imperial communism and the end of the cold war breathe new life into the United Nations. It was just one year ago that the world saw this new invigorated United Nations in action as the Council stood fast against aggression, and stood for the sacred principles enshrined in the United Nations Charter. Now it is time to step forward again, to make the internal reforms, accelerate the revitalization, accept the responsibilities necessary for a vigorous and effective United Nations. I want to assure the members of the Council and the Secretary General that the United Nations can count on our full support in this task.” [73]

Bush Senior had actually departed the CFR (due to optics and not principle) and also the Trilateral Commission headed by David Rockefeller, as a precaution before he ran for president to avoid potential criticism. [73.1]

December 1992 – UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali publishes an article in the winter issue of Foreign Affairs titled Empowering the United Nations, in which he states that “The centuries-old doctrine of absolute and exclusive sovereignty no longer stands, and was in fact never so absolute as it was conceived to be in theory. A major intellectual requirement of our time is to rethink the question of our sovereignty.” [74]

Spring 1993 – Foreign Affairs features multiple articles in its “Borderless World” section, including The Rise of the Region State by Kenichi Ohmae. The first subheading reads The Nation State is Dysfunctional. The first paragraph states that “The Nation State has become an unnatural, even dysfunctional, unit for organizing human activity and managing economic endeavor in a borderless world. It represents no genuine, shared community of economic interests; it defines no meaningful flow of economic activity. In fact it overlooks the true linkages and synergies that exist among often disparate populations by combining important measures of human activity at the wrong level of analysis.”

Under another subheading The Challenges for Government, the author continues to denigrate nation states writing that “The implications of Region States are not welcome news to established seats of political power, be they politicians or lobbyists. Nation states by definition require a domestic political focus, while region states are ensconced in the global economy. Region states that sit within the frontiers of a particular nation share its political goals and aspirations. However, region states welcome foreign investment and ownership – whatever allows them to employ people productively or to improve the quality of life. They want their people to have access to the best and cheapest products. And they want whatever surplus accrues from these activities to ratchet up the local quality of life still further and not to support distant regions or to prop up distressed industries elsewhere in the name of national interest or sovereignty.” [75]

September 22, 1994 – American President and CFR member Bill Clinton meets with his foreign policy advisers and speech writers in preparation for his upcoming presidential address at the UN General Assembly. Displeased with their initial efforts in which they emphasized a continuum of WWII and Cold War policies and a similar approach moving forward, Clinton appeals to progression based on American leadership of the UN: “We’ve got a chance to make the UN what FDR and Churchill intended it to be before their plans were interrupted and truncated by the cold war.”

When Clinton asked for input, Vice President Al Gore responds that they are entering an era where all of humanity is reaching political and economic consensus towards universal democracy and the free market, but with an added dimension: “Jefferson argued with Hamilton that the principles of democracy were not limited to the United States, Hamilton disagreed, but Jefferson was right. We don’t want to be triumphalist, but we do need to lead. Rousseau said the body politic is a moral being possessed of a will. He was thinking on the national level. We need to take it to the international one. We need to make the leap from nationhood to a sense of identity that is truly global.” [75.1]

October 23, 1995 – Nearly 200 heads of state, many of whom requested to do so, come speak at the Council of Foreign Relations Headquarters in New York during the UN 50^th anniversary. Among them are Castro, Arafat, President Vaclav Havel of the Czech Republic, and Chinese President Jiang Zemin. [76]

January 1999 – CFR holds a dinner celebration to commemorate its new meeting facility in New York City. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan is the keynote speaker. [77]

2000 – Currency speculator/ financier and CFR member George Soros publishes Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism, arguing that the global economic and political system is out of sync and requires a more authoritarian international structure.

“…a system based on the sovereignty of states does not assure peace and stability. Since sovereign states often abuse their powers, a decline in those powers ought to be a welcome development… the weakening of the sovereign state ought to be matched by the strengthening of international institutions. This is where market fundamentalism, which is opposed to international authority just as much as state authority, stands in the way.” [77.1]

September 2000 – American President and CFR member Bill Clinton attends the UN General Assembly Millennium Meeting, where he states his support for the UN Millennium Development Goals. President George W. Bush wound take office in January 2001, and endorsed the MDGs on March 14, 2002, during a speech to the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington D.C. Bush would reaffirm American commitment to the goals during a presidential address at the UN in September 2005. [77.2]

October 31, 2003 – Former US President Bill Clinton gives a speech on campus at Yale University on American leadership in the age of globalization. Following his speech that promoted the vital role of the UN, he was interviewed by a member of YaleGlobal Online. In reference to American leadership within the global community, he stated that “We must build a global social system.” When Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott asked him what he meant, Clinton responded that “I was heavily influenced by the success of the post-WWII and cold war multilateral organizations – the establishment of the UN, NATO, IMF, World Bank, the Marshall Plan, and the OECD. I saw that they worked, and at the end of the cold war, I saw an opportunity for the first time in history to globalize them in a way the East West division had prevented.” [77.3]

2005 – Mark Malloch-Brown a senior board member of Open Society Foundation, and a close associate of George Soros (who runs and owns OSF), publishes a book titled The Unfinished Global Revolution. The Road to Global Cooperation. Malloch-Brown is a previous vice president of the World Bank who also served as Deputy Secretary-­General and Chief of Staff of the United Nations. He lays out his opinions in stark terms, with an endorsement of dwindling sovereignty to make way for expanding multilateralism:

“…some parts of national power will have to be pooled with global neighbours… my central proposition: if we are to have much reduced states, we will have to compensate with global government arrangements.” (p. 10, 15) [77.4]

March/April 2008 – Foreign Affairs runs a feature cover article titled The Clash of Peoples written by Jerry Muller. The subtitle is Why ethnic nationalism will drive global politics for generations.  Towards the conclusion, the author states that “It is true, of course, that ethnonational identity is never as natural or ineluctable as nationalists claim.” [78]

July 15, 2009 – Hillary Clinton kowtows to the CFR during a foreign policy address at their Washington headquarters, and speaking of the Council says that she “won’t have as far to go, to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.” [79]

 

December 2010 – The CFR releases a 72-page report titled UN Security Council Enlargement and US Interests. It states in the introduction that “… the UNSC is indispensable to the pursuit of U.S. national security and the maintenance of world order.” It further states that “Now is the time to lay the groundwork for UNSC reform—while the United States remains the world’s most powerful nation with unparalleled capacity to shape the debate.” (Emphasis added) [80]

September 24^th, 2015 – UN releases a video titled We The People For The Global Goals. Designed to shape the public’s mind towards collectivist sentiments, it presents an eerie undertone of global collectivism and neo-marxist rhetoric to prepare the masses for greater multilateralist control.

 

October 2015 – The UN commemorates its 70^th anniversary. An official article outlining Dag Hammarskjold’s legacy and looking to the future of the UN states the following.

“The United Nations has evolved with a changing world and it is up to Member States to keep strengthening the capabilities of the Organization and recommit to the purposes and principles of the Charter… The Charter should be enforced and Member States should reaffirm and recognize that its implementation remains their responsibility…”

• Human rights must be respected, applied and defended: The United Nations is instrumental to the development and promotion of international norms and standards. Member States must recommit to protecting and promoting human rights, including those of women and girl children, and respect and implement the fundamental values and principles as defined and endorsed in the global legal treaties and frameworks, which require compliance by all Member States.
• Justice and respect for international law should be expanded to include a provision on gender justice and environmental law: We must give broader acknowledgement to and develop new approaches regarding gender justice. We must integrate environmental law across the United Nations work on the rule of law and ensure that it is made an integral part in the development of sustainable development goals.
• Social progress must be reoriented towards global sustainable development and addressed as a responsibility for all. The Charter must be amended to include sustainability. [81]

 

January 23, 2018 – Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden casually quips during a CFR hosted event that “I work for Richard”, referring and pointing to Richard Haas, Director of the National Security Council during the first administration of George W. Bush, and CFR President since 2003.

 

September 20^th, 2020 – The UN releases an official video, UN75: Shaping Our Future Together.

In the latter half of the video, the narrator says “The challenges before us are universal, and we know that these challenges demand global solutions. We have the blueprint to achieve a better and more sustainable future for all – the sustainable development goals…. “

Youth environmentist Greta Thunberg briefly remarks at the 4:40 mark: “Change is coming. The real power belongs to the people.”

What type of change are they speaking of? The ideal of the brotherhood of man is being harnessed towards towering global government. This helps explain the vicious and dishonest attacks we are witnessing on people who express support for national sovereignty and Constitutional independence. Empires don’t tolerate subjects who understand the great game.

The timeline above briefly illustrates the close connections, past and present, and the collaborative nature of the relationship between the CFR, top American government officials and the UN itself, revealing a parallel evolution and constant coordination between them. As of this writing, the CFR is more than just a think tank or discussion group of wealthy imperialists. It is a symbiotic twin that acts as an influential PR wing of the UN, ideologically integrated and enthusiastically promoting a globalist agenda that seeks to supplant the sovereignty of nation states. The weight and influence of those in leadership positions gives it a special status as a premier destination for the power elite. The CFR also has strong ties to media organizations and conglomerates. They boast of deep analysis and intellectual rigour, and see themselves as the wise men or high priests of foreign policy knowledge. They state the following in a recent promotional video on their website:

“The battle of ideas that is raging around the world is taking place, in the Council of Foreign Relations.”

“To really have a sense, of what not only the objective truth inside a country is, but the emotional truth inside a country, you want to hear from people who are marinating in that environment as professionals each and every day.”

“And the connectors that come into the Council, who take that information and then disseminate it into out into larger audiences, that’s a breathtaking thing.”

“The Council work is so grounded in facts and what’s happening in the world without an agenda.”

“We’re not political, we’re not ideological.”

“We don’t take institutional positions here. We don’t take money from governments.”

“This policy relevant space that’s both intellectually solid, but still applied, still connected to reality, that’s the sweet spot we try to operate in.” [82]

[Full video link here]:

https://www.cfr.org/about

The United Nations should be seen in an accurate light as the brainchild of the CFR. For the global think tank to plead objectivity is laughable. They have a globalist imperial outlook, and seek to promote ideas and policies that will benefit transnational elites at the expense of the general populace. They wish to be seen as the indispensable, premier resource of foreign policy knowledge, and have taken great efforts to conceal their true agenda, deny it, and smear and discredit anyone who exposes it. Undoubtedly, much work remains to be done to shed light and contribute knowledge in this area and regain a more accurate perspective of these key events and developments in modern world history.

 

Endnotes

[1] Ziring et al. (2000). The United Nations: International Politics and World Organizations, 3^rd edition, pp. 4-5.

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_Nations#cite_note-3

[2] Mazower, M. (2012). Governing the World: The History of an Idea, 1815 to the Present, pp. 16-17.

[3] Kissinger, H., (1994). Diplomacy, pp. 51-52.

[4] Public Address, January 22, 1917. Papers of Woodrow Wilson, pp. 536-37.

[5] Prins, N., (2014). All the President’s Bankers, p. 40.

[6] Maier C. S., (2006). Among Empires: American Ascendancy and Its Predecessors, p. 33.

[7] World Bank presidents (years of service in brackets) who were also CFR members.*

Eugene Meyer (1946) CFR member and Fed Chairman

John J. McCloy (1947-1949) CFR Chairman from 1953-1970

Eugene R. Black Sr. (1949-1963) CFR member and Chase Manhattan Bank Executive

Robert McNamara (1968-1981) CFR and Trilateral Commission member

Barber Conable (1986-1991) CFR member

Lewis T. Preston (1991-1995) CFR Director from 1981-1988 and J.P. Morgan Bank Executive

James Wolfensohn (1995-2005) First foreign/non-American World Bank President (Australian)

Paul Wolfowitz (2005-2007)

Robert B. Zoellick (2007-2012) CFR Director from 1994-2001

* George Woods (1963-1968) and Alden W. Clauson (1981-1986) were the only World Bank Presidents who were not CFR members during the 20^th century.

The World Bank sees itself as more than a financial institution conducting monetary transactions. It sees itself as a source and broker of knowledge, evidenced by its use and promotion of such instruments as its Knowledge Assessment Methodology tools (KAM) and its Knowledge Economy Index – technocratic classification and evaluation of nation states.

http://web.worldbank.org/archive/website01030/WEB/IMAGES/KAM_V4.PDF

See link for full updated list of World Bank Presidents

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/President_of_the_World_Bank_Group

See link for extensive, though incomplete list of CFR members

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_Council_on_Foreign_Relations

[8] Shoup, L.H. and Minter W., (2004). Imperial Brain Trust, pp. 14-15.

[9] For Galbraith’s comments, see article link here.

https://www.nytimes.com/1971/11/21/archives/is-it-a-club-seminar-presidium-invisible-government-the-council-on-.html

[10] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men of Foreign Affairs, pp. 9-11.

[11] Shoup, L.H. (2018). Wall Street’s Think Tank, p. 65. See also: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2014/02/10/politics-stops-at-the-waters-edge-not-recently/

[12] Roberts, P. (2001). “The Council Has Been Your Creation”: Hamilton Fish Armstrong, Paradigm of the American Foreign Policy Establishment? Journal of American Studies, 35(1), p. 83. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/27556909

[13] Ibid. p. 91.

[14] Ibid. p. 92

[15] Rockefeller, D. (2002). David Rockefeller: Memoirs, p. 406.

[16] Hilderbrand, R.C. (2001). Dumbarton Oaks: The Origins of the United and the Search for Postwar Security, p. 30.

Domhoff, G.W., (1990). The Power Elite and the State: How Policy is made in America. p. 134.

See usage of Informal Agenda Group or Informal Political Agenda Group in context here:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=BFHJMfMtiKsC&pg=PA30&lpg=PA30&dq=Informal+agenda+group&source=bl&ots=PLHAWiVxAi&sig=ACfU3U1ztWaQsbkQ5gQ2ZiITgUTbOyv1cw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi_wNel0N_kAhUPSN8KHbQBCTYQ6AEwDHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Informal%20agenda%20group&f=false

And here:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=9m5QDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA134&lpg=PA134&dq=Power+Elite+informal+agenda+group&source=bl&ots=sAbsp3IwGT&sig=ACfU3U3wXV8qReU7UIVNOrI4lql5VLxwHw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiB0O-Jye7kAhUsm-AKHZMHCiEQ6AEwDHoECAsQAQ#v=onepage&q=Power%20Elite%20informal%20agenda%20group&f=false

See article by Domhoff which also uses the term and describes group members and dynamics.

https://whorulesamerica.ucsc.edu/power/postwar_foreign_policy.html

[17] Schlesinger, A.M. Jr., (1965) A Thousand Days, John F. Kennedy in the White House, p. 128.

For Arthur Schlesinger JR’s comments in context, see here:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=uFhNxX5lrNEC&pg=PA128&lpg=PA128&dq=Schlesinger+council+on+foreign+relations+heart+of+establishment&source=bl&ots=0QM496e0My&sig=ACfU3U2A34EoQOodyxcyc_i4m4DeVdcw9A&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjf747FxKXkAhUumeAKHSdqCkMQ6AEwEHoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=Schlesinger%20council%20on%20foreign%20relations%20heart%20of%20establishment&f=false

[18] McMahon, R. (1985). A Question of Influence: The Council on Foreign Relations and American Foreign Policy. Reviews in American History, 13(3), p. 445. doi:10.2307/2702104

Leonard Silk’s credentials:

Grose, P. (1996). Continuing the Inquiry: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996, p. 62.

[19] Campbell J.F. (1971). The Death Rattle of the Eastern Establishment. New York Magazine, September 20, p. 47-51, quoted from Shoup, L.H. (2018). Wall Street’s Think Tank, pp. 19-20.

[20] Quigley, C. (1966). Tragedy and Hope, pp. 953-954.

[20.1] Roosevelt’s speech was published in Outlook, September 23, 1914. Also quoted in Talbott, S. (2008). The Great Experiment, The Story of Ancient Empires, the Modern State, and the Quest for a Global Nation, p. 148.

[20.2] Talbott, S. (2008). The Great Experiment, The Story of Ancient Empires, the Modern State, and the Quest for a Global Nation, p. 149.

[21] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men of Foreign Affairs, p. 2.

Also see Grose, P. (1996). Continuing the Inquiry: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996, p. 4.

For full text of Continuing the Inquiry, see here:

https://cfrd8-files.cfr.org/sites/default/files/book_pdf/Continuing_The_Inquiry.pdf

General overview of the Paris Peace Conference;

https://www.britannica.com/event/Paris-Peace-Conference

See also:

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/wilson-colonel-edward-house/

Official summarized report of the Council War and Peace Studies

https://archive.org/details/CouncilOnForeignRelations1946TheWarAndPeaceStudies

[22] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men of Foreign Affairs, p. 5.

For more detail on the origins, British connections and key figures of the CFR, see Quigley, C. (1966). Tragedy and Hope, pp. 952-954.

[23] Schlesinger, S.C. (2003). Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations. Westview Press, Cambridge, MA, p. 25

[24] On incorporation, see Grose, P. (1996). Continuing the Inquiry: The Council on Foreign Relations from 1921 to 1996, p. 25.  For Davis as President, see Shoup, (2018). Wall Street’s Think Tank, p. 14. In describing the close connection between the Morgan NY Bank and the CFR, Quigley wrote that “The Morgan bank has never made any real effort to conceal its position in regard to the Council on Foreign Relations. The list of officers and board of directors are printed in every issue of Foreign Affairs and have always been loaded with partners, associates and employees of J.P. Morgan and Company.”

Quigley, C. (1981). The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden, p. 191.

[25] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men of Foreign Affairs, p. 11. Roosevelt is described in relation to the publication of the article as “another old Wilsonian.”

[26] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men, p. 30.

See also general article on the purchase of the home.

https://www.nytimes.com/1929/11/19/archives/world-affairs-group-buys-sixstory-home-council-on-foreign-relations.html

[27] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men, p. 55.

[28] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men, pp. 60-61.

[29] Davis, J.W. (1947). The Council on Foreign Relations: A Record of Twenty-Five Years.)

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015009229967&view=1up&seq=13

[30] Schlesinger, S.C. (2003). Act of Creation. pp. 33-35.

[31] Shoup, L.H. (2018). Wall Street’s Think Tank, p. 17. For commentary on the “sanitized” annual report, see Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men, p. 61-62.

Official summarized report of the Council War and Peace Studies

https://archive.org/details/CouncilOnForeignRelations1946TheWarAndPeaceStudies

[32] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men, pp. 108-109.

[33] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men, p. 62.

[34] Domhoff, G.W. (1990). The Power Elite and the State: How Policy is made in America, p. 117.

[35] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men, p. 63.

[36] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men, p. 75.

[37] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men, pp. 63-64.

[38] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men, p. 64.

[39] Hossein-Zadeh, I. (2006). The Political Economy of US Militarism, pp. 43-45.

Also quoted in Domhoff G.W. (1990). Power Elite and the State: How Policy is Made in America, p. 122.

See quote in context here:

https://books.google.ca/books?id=A35GpAnLR5EC&pg=PA122&lpg=PA122&dq=E-B19+memorandum&source=bl&ots=eA8020kvMZ&sig=ACfU3U0yJ-J0x9qQqDsY1M1-qUc_eQQykw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi3lcK_09_kAhUFZN8KHRxPB2sQ6AEwAnoECAoQAQ#v=onepage&q=E-B19%20memorandum&f=false

[40] Hoopes, T. and Brinkely D. (1997), FDR and the Creation of the UN. Yale University Press, pp. 1, 22.

[41] Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men, p. 76.

[42] Hoopes, T. and Brinkely D. (1997), FDR and the Creation of the UN. p. 35

[43] Ziring et al. (2000). The United Nations: International Politics and World Organizations, 3^rd edition. p. 20. See also Schulzinger, R.D. (1984). Wise Men, p. 83.

[44] Ziring et al. (2000). The United Nations, p. 20.

[45] Davis, J.W. (1947). The Council on Foreign Relations: A Record of Twenty-Five Years.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=mdp.39015009229967&view=1up&seq=15

[46] Hoopes and Brinkely, FDR and the Creation of the UN. pp. 19, 56.

[47] Schlesinger, S.C. (2003). Act of Creation. p. 40

[48] Schlesinger, S.C. (2003). Act of Creation, p. 40

[49] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cordell_Hull

[50] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Members_of_the_Council_on_Foreign_Relations

(The link above is not a complete membership list, as it only contains notable members)

CFR members who have served as US Secretary of State:

John Kerry (2013-2017)

Hillary Clinton (2009-2013)

Condoleeza Rice (2005-2009)

Colin Powell (2001-2005) (Former CFR director)

Madeleine K. Albright (1997-2001) (Former CFR director)

Warren Christopher (1993-97) Christopher also served as Deputy Secretary of State from 77-81.

Lawrence Eagleburger (1992-93)

James Baker (1989-92)

George Schultz (1982-89)

Alexander Haig (1981-82)

Edmund Muskie (1980-81)

Cyrus Vance (1977-80)

Henry Kissinger (1973-77) (Former CFR director)

Dean Rusk (1961-69)

John Foster Dulles (1953-59)

Dean Acheson (1949-53)

Edward Stettinius Jr. (1944-45) (US Ambassador to United Nations from 1945-46)

Cordell Hull (1933-44)

Elihu Root (1905-09)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Stettinius_Jr.

https://www.britannica.com/biography/George-P-Shultz

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Dean-Acheson

https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/people/root-elihu

[51] Ziring et al. (2000). The United Nations, p. 22.

[52] Ziring et al. (2000). The United Nations, p. 22.

[53] Alger Hiss at the Yalta conference:

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/21/this-day-in-politics-january-21-1110545

[54] David Rockefeller’s description of Nelson’s instrumentality in an interregional Latin American system or alliance:

“Nelson laid the foundation for a new “Inter-American” system, a true economic and political partnership within the hemisphere rather than just a security alliance. Perhaps his greatest moment came at the Chapultepec Conference in Mexico City in 1945. It was there that he, by then Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs, forged a hemispheric consensus on the structure of postwar international organizations. Against great odds Nelson held this bloc of votes together behind the United States position at the UN Organizing Conference that spring in San Francisco.”

Rockefeller, D. (2002). Memoirs, Chapter 28, South of the Border, p. 424.

[55] Ziring et al. (2000). The United Nations. p. 22.

[56] Schlesinger, S.C. (2003). Act of Creation. pp. 93-95

[57] Schlesinger, S.C. (2003). Act of Creation. p. 72.

[58] Prominent CFR members at founding UN San Francisco conference

Armstrong, Hamilton Fish, Special Adviser to the Secretary of State; Adviser, United States Delegation.

Acheson, Dean G., Assistant Secretary of State

Bowman, Isaiah, Special Adviser to the Secretary of State; Adviser, United States Delegation.

Dulles, John Foster, Adviser, United States Delegation.

Harriman, W. Averell, American Ambassador the Soviet Union; Adviser, United States Delegation.

Hiss, Alger, Director, Office of Special Political Affairs (Deputy Director, November 1944 to March 1945); Secretary-General, International Secretariat.

Hull, Cordell, former Secretary of State; United States Delegate, and Senior Adviser, United States Delegation.

MacLeish, Archibald, Assistant Secretary of State; Adviser, United States Delegation.

McCloy, John J., Assistant Secretary of War; Adviser, United States Delegation.

Rockefeller, Nelson A., Assistant Secretary of State; Adviser, United States Delegation.

Stettinius, Edward R., Jr., Secretary of State; United States Delegate and Chairman of United States Delegation.

Stevenson, Adlai E., Special Assistant to the Secretary of State; Special Assistant to the Chairman, United States Delegation.

White, Harry D., Assistant Secretary of the Treasury; Adviser, United States Delegation.

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v01/persons

https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1945v01/ch1

http://cas2.umkc.edu/TrumanCenter/Files/Signers-of-the-United-Nations-Charter.pdf

https://www.britannica.com/event/San-Francisco-Conference

https://www.carnegiecouncil.org/publications/100_for_100/report-from-san-francisco

https://ead.lib.virginia.edu/vivaxtf/view?docId=uva-sc/viu04041.xml

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/u-n-charter-signed

https://books.google.ca/books?id=sn8M2OqGC5YC&pg=PA93&lpg=PA93&dq=How+many+cfr+members+signed+the+UN+charter&source=bl&ots=0P_YAjmXq0&sig=ACfU3U2gJH8mmjusfKCAFBv6OeqfqZ4CQw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwji1O23iZXkAhUthuAKHdlDD8Q4ChDoATABegQICRAB#v=onepage&q=How%20many%20cfr%20members%20signed%20the%20UN%20charter&f=false

https://www.un.org/en/sections/history/history-united-nations/

https://www.cfr.org/blog/twe-remembers-sen-arthur-vandenbergs-conversion-internationalism

Full list of delegates found at links here:

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/001154710

https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015030752813

 

[58.1] Talbott, S. (2008). The Great Experiment, The Story of Ancient Empires, the Modern State, and the Quest for a Global Nation, pp. 196-97.

[58.2] Talbott, S. (2008). The Great Experiment, The Story of Ancient Empires, the Modern State, and the Quest for a Global Nation, p. 197.

[58.3] Talbott, S. (2008). The Great Experiment, The Story of Ancient Empires, the Modern State, and the Quest for a Global Nation, pp. 197-98.

[59] Alger Hiss as Chief Advisor at opening UN London conference in 1946

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/11/16/nyregion/alger-hiss-divisive-icon-of-the-cold-war-dies-at-92.html

[60] Ferguson, N. (2015). Kissinger Volume 1: 1923-1968: The Idealist, p. 252.

See also Rockefeller, D. (2002). Memoirs, p. 407.

Overview of the X article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X_Article

[61] John D. Rockefeller the 3^rd and UN donation to purchase property for headquarters.

https://www.unmultimedia.org/s/photo/detail/366/0036623.html

Brief overview of Nelson’s role:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_United_Nations

[62] Rockefellers considered family Westchester NY estate as UN headquarters.

https://www.businessinsider.com/coolest-secrets-about-the-united-nations-in-nyc-2015-10#7-the-united-nations-could-have-been-in-westchester-4

[63] Rockefeller, D. (2002). Memoirs, pp. 408-409.

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Rockefeller

[64] https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/NSC68

[65] While many in the press and official sources have tried to cast doubt on the guilt of Alger Hiss and his participation in communist groups in the United States, even David Rockefeller, who knew him and served with him on the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace admits in his Memoirs that “Once the evidence was all in, it appeared to me that he was a Soviet Agent.”

Rockefeller, D. (2002). Memoirs, p. 151.

[66] C. Black. (2013). Flight of the Eagle: A Strategic History of the United States, p. 498.

[67] C. Black. (2013). Flight of the Eagle, pp. 508-509.

[67B] Future of Federalism – full text here

https://archive.org/details/futureoffederali00rock/page/n103/mode/2up

Kissinger’s link to Nelson Rockefeller on the Harvard Godkin Lectures:

Ferguson, N. (2015). Kissinger: 1923-1968: Idealist, pp. 510-511.

[68] UN Secretary General residence:

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/07/15/archives/town-house-offered-to-u-n.html

See also:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/York_Avenue_and_Sutton_Place

[69] Foreign Affairs, October 1972, Vol. 51, no. 1. p. 151.

[70] Foreign Affairs, April 1974, Vol. 52, no. 3. pp. 558, 559, 563.

Link to article (full text) here:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B7UjwZXfLpG6a21IeEgyTHZsSk0/preview  

[71] See original Declaration of Interdependence document here:

http://reignoftheheavens.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/US_Declaration_of_Interdependence_1976.pdf

[72] Weiss et al. (2007). The United Nations and Changing World Politics (5th edition), p. xli of Introduction.

[72.1] Talbott, S. (2008). The Great Experiment, The Story of Ancient Empires, the Modern State, and the Quest for a Global Nation, p. 269.

[73] UN Security Council Transcript, p. 40

See full transcript here:

https://www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/.%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/RO%20SPV%203046.pdf

Press coverage:

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/01/31/world/leaders-want-to-enhance-un-s-role.html

[73.1] Former Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott wrote: “When he began running for president, Bush resigned from the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations and denounced these bastions of the American foreign policy establishment as “too liberal,” in order to make himself acceptable to conservatives. But once he succeeded Reagan, he steered American foreign policy lines associated with the East Coast establishment: heavy reliance on consultation, diplomacy, alliances, international law, and multilateral institutions.”

Quote from Talbott, S. (2008). The Great Experiment, The Story of Ancient Empires, the Modern State, and the Quest for a Global Nation, p. 262.

[74] Ghali, B.B. (1992). “Empowering the United Nations,” Foreign Affairs 72 (December) no. 5 p. 98-99

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/1992-12-01/empowering-united-nations

[75] Foreign Affairs, Spring 1993. p. 78, 83.

[75.1] Talbott, S. (2008). The Great Experiment, The Story of Ancient Empires, the Modern State, and the Quest for a Global Nation, p. 327-28.

[76] Rockefeller, D. (2002). Memoirs, p. 404.

[77] Shoup, L.H. (2018). Wall Street’s Think Tank, p. 55.

[77.1] Soros, G. (2000). Open Society: Reforming Global Capitalism (p. xv, Introduction)

[77.2] Talbott, S. (2008). The Great Experiment, The Story of Ancient Empires, the Modern State, and the Quest for a Global Nation, p. 385.

[77.3] Talbott, S. (2008). The Great Experiment, The Story of Ancient Empires, the Modern State, and the Quest for a Global Nation, p. 329.

[77.4] Malloch-Brown, M. (2005). The Unfinished Global Revolution. The Road to Global Cooperation. New York: Penguin Press.

Mark Malloch-Brown was a frequent speaker in numerous videos produced by OSF posted on their website.

[78] Foreign Affairs, March/April 2008. p. 35.

[79] Hillary Clinton speaking at Council on Foreign Relations Headquarters in Washington D.C. (Policy address in 2009).

“I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to, I guess, the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.”

[80] https://www.cfr.org/report/un-security-council-enlargement-and-us-interests

[81] See full article here:  https://www.un.org/en/chronicle/article/we-peoples

[82] https://www.cfr.org/about