Written by John F. McManus
Wednesday, 26 November 2008 00:00
The team Barack Obama has begun assembling suggests that, in terms of substance, the incoming administration may not be that different from the outgoing.
In April 1992, Senator Joe Biden — now our vice president-elect — penned an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal entitled "How I Learned to Love the New World Order." Senator Biden was miffed that the Journal had cast him as a "neo-isolationist" because he had objected to the foreign-policy strategy of then-President George Bush (Senior), a strategy which Biden characterized as "America as 'Globocop.'" Sen. Biden wanted to make clear that far from being an "isolationist," he is a solid internationalist who subscribes to the doctrine of "collective security" under the United Nations Charter. He argued that "the Bush administration should be reallocating Pentagon funds to meet more urgent security needs: sustaining democracy in the former Soviet empire; supporting U.N. peacekeepers in Yugoslavia, Cambodia and El Salvador."
Biden called for "an honest debate over America's proper role in the new world order." Unfortunately, there never has been any honest debate over just what America's political elites mean (Senator Biden included) when they use the term "new world order." Nor did the senator explain his assumption that there is a "proper role" in this "new world order" for an America that would still be recognizable as a sovereign, independent republic and still be operating under our system of limited, constitutional government.
It's important to remind ourselves of the context of those 1992 remarks. Biden, a Democrat, was responding to the pronouncements and policies of President George Bush, a Republican, about this "new world order," a phrase with which most Americans were totally unfamiliar prior to September 11, 1990.
On that day, President George Bush delivered his televised "New World Order" speech on the Iraq situation to a joint session of Congress, several months before launching the U.S.-led attack on Saddam Hussein in the First Gulf War. "Out of these troubled times," said the president, "our fifth objective - a new world order - can emerge." Immediately following President Bush's address to Congress and the nation, Congressman Richard Gephardt, the House Majority Leader, gave the Democrats' official response on the Gulf crisis: "From the summit at Helsinki [on the Iraq-Kuwait conflict] ... we could see beyond the present shadows of war in the Middle East to a new world order" - that is, to the reining in of rogue states and global policing of nations.
On July 14, 1993, a little over a year after writing the Journal op-ed cited above, Senator Biden introduced Senate Joint Resolution 112 urging the new president, Bill Clinton, to initiate discussions to establish a standing United Nations army. Under his proposal, United States bases and facilities would be made available to train UN forces, and the president would not "be deemed to require the authorization of Congress" to make American troops, facilities, or other assistance "available to the Security Council on its call."
Even though Barack Obama has avoided using the term, his plans for our country fit nicely into what has long been known as the new world order, a phrase employed in recent decades by Richard Nixon, Nelson Rockefeller, Fidel Castro, Mikhail Gorbachev, George H.W. Bush, and many others. None of the proponents of such an "order" have ever fully explained its meaning or noted its origin. However, a few have come fairly close to doing so. Perhaps the one who has come closest is Zbigniew Brzezinski, arguably President-elect Obama's most important adviser. In an address to Mikhail Gorbachev's 1995 State of the World Forum in San Francisco, Brzezinski lamented that with only five years to the start of the new millennium, "We do not have a new world order." "We cannot leap into world government in one quick step," Brzezinski noted. Attaining that objective, he explained, would require a gradual process of "globalization," building the new world order "step by step, stone by stone" through "progressive regionalization." The supranational EU in Europe is an example of that regional approach, as is NAFTA on our own continent.
Brzezinski, of course, was President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser. Less well known is the fact that he also was Jimmy Carter's tutor on world affairs long before Carter came onto the national stage, while he was still a little-known governor of Georgia. Brzezinski was appointed tutor by David Rockefeller, who had tapped Carter for membership in his newly formed Trilateral Commission, one of a number of elite groups pushing for world government. The inspiration for Rockefeller's Trilateral Commission had been Brzezinski's 1970 book, Between Two Ages, in which the Polish immigrant argued that "national sovereignty is no longer a viable concept." According to Brzezinski, U.S. sovereignty should be jettisoned for "the goal of world government." He also contended, in the same book, that "Marxism, disseminated on the popular level in the form of Communism, represented a major advance in man's ability to conceptualize his relationship to his world" and that "Marxism supplied the best available insight into contemporary reality."
Don't expect Barack Obama, Joe Biden, Zbigniew Brzezinski, or the individuals they choose to help them run the new administration to explain honestly where their plans will take our country. They won't attach the word socialism to their economic plans. Yet, this is precisely what is presented in Obama and Biden's Blueprint for Change. Nor will they admit their willingness to submerge our nation and the rest of mankind into a UN-led world government. For them, the United Nations is an untouchable, even sacrosanct constant. America's deep entanglement in the world body - not only financing it but relying on its resolutions to supplant congressional declarations to authorize war - was a non-issue during the recent campaign. So, advancement toward the twin deadly features of new world order - socialism and world government - can be expected. Meanwhile, the U.S. Constitution, written to limit government power and to prevent any semblance of the New World Order taking root within our shores, received only grudging mention during the 2008 campaign. Furthermore, it will receive virtually no adherence once the oath of office is taken.
How did America arrive at such a state? Knowing the answer is essential if what is happening to our country is to be reversed. The answer begins with the realization that we are not being taken into an anti-American new world order by chance, stupidity, or unstoppable historical forces. The suicidal policies of past and present decades are the work of deceptively brilliant but determinedly driven individuals. They and their plans can be found by studying the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, several related organizations, and their membership rosters. Barack Obama and Joe Biden may not hold membership in either of these new-world-order groups, but a heavy preponderance of those being chosen for their administration does. Both Obama and Biden have been closely associated with the CFR, writing for its journal, Foreign Affairs, and speaking at its programs. In 2006, Biden and CFR President Emeritus Leslie Gelb teamed up to produce a CFR-promoted plan for partitioning Iraq into three ethnic states.
Obama's Team
Speculation about who will fill the many posts in the new administration appears everywhere. During the run-up to the election, the list of Obama advisers included CFR members George Soros, Zbigniew Brzezinski, James A. Johnson, Orin Kramer, Penny Pritzker, and Tom Daschle. Among Obama's Senior Working Group on National Security were CFR members Madeleine Albright, David Boren, Warren Christopher, Lee Hamilton, William Perry, Susan Rice, and James Steinberg. Within his economic brain trust could be found CFR members Daniel Tarullo and Michael Froman.
We can be quite sure that somewhere between 400 to 500 high-level members of the Obama administration will be members of the CFR. How can we say that? Because that's about how many CFR members occupy the current Bush administration (beginning with Vice President Dick Cheney, an in-again, out-again member of the CFR board of directors). And about the same number occupied posts in the Clinton administration. And so it has gone since the New Deal reign of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Wall Street banker John J. McCloy, chairman of the CFR from 1953 to 1970 and adviser to nine Presidents of the United States, was once quoted by the New York Times on how the system works. According to the Times:
When Henry Stimson — the group's quintessential member — went to Washington in 1940 as Secretary of War, he took with him John McCloy, who was to become Assistant Secretary in charge of personnel. McCloy has recalled: "Whenever we needed a man [in Washington], we just thumbed through the roll of Council members and put through a call to New York" [to the CFR's headquarters office].
And over the years, the men McCloy called in turn called other Council members.
Through many such "calls to New York," the council has gained a virtual lock-hold on the U.S. government, regardless of which party is in office. No other organization comes close to boasting the kind of clout that the CFR members have held: eight presidents of the U.S.; seven vice presidents; 17 secretaries of state; 20 secretaries of war/defense; 18 secretaries of the Treasury; 15 directors of the CIA. And on it has gone throughout the Cabinets, in seriatim — through Democrat and Republican administrations — with hundreds of deputy secretaries, assistant secretaries, etc.
The Obama Cabinet will be no different. Candidates for secretary of state include CFR members John Kerry, Chuck Hagel, and Bill Richardson, plus the ambitious wife of prominent CFR member Bill Clinton. The final choice will be arrived at with the help of a transition team that includes Thomas Donilon and Wendy Sherman, both CFR members. The transition team appointed to recommend who will serve as secretary of defense is being led by John P. White and Michele Flournoy, both CFR members.
Other names being mentioned by the media for federal posts starting January 20 read like a membership list of the CFR. (All the individuals whose names follow hold CFR membership.) Will octogenarian former Fed Chairman Paul Volcker actually be tapped? Will he be assisted by New York Fed official Timothy Geithner? Educated guesses for jobs in the new administration include former Cabinet officials Federico Peña, Bill Daley, Lawrence Summers, and Colin Powell. Add to these the names of Jane Harman, Thomas Kean, Jack Reed, Janet Napolitano, and John Spratt.
There will be some surprises to be sure. Some high posts will be given to men and women who aren't CFR members. But the chance that the goals envisioned by the new world order partisans at the CFR will be replaced by anything resembling true Americanism appears to be nil. In the nearly 90 years of the CFR's existence, no one has altered its drive to achieve U.S. socialism and world government. And, we have no hesitation in predicting that no one in the soon-to-be-staffed Obama administration will try to do so.
Piecemeal Socialism and Global Governance
The new world order can never be imposed on a thriving America whose unmatched productivity and power has stood in such stark contrast to so much of the rest of the world. Merging the United States with other nations becomes possible only if our country's uniqueness is significantly watered down to where it no longer stands apart from the rest of the world. So, our CFR-influenced leaders commenced building socialism here at home (the social-welfare state), giving away our wealth (foreign aid), and entangling the United States in an assortment of sovereignty-compromising pacts and agreements (the UN, WTO, NATO, NAFTA, etc.).
The National Debt has passed the $10 trillion level, but foreign aid to almost every nation on Earth continues. Obama wants another stimulus package to be financed either by printing more dollars or by borrowing. Like the United Nations, the Federal Reserve and its power to create money out of nothing is an untouchable. While steps to wrest our country from the Fed's grip and return to commodity-based currency are essential, the Obama administration has no intention of even considering them. His Blueprint and the already known Obama-Biden record in the Senate make that very clear.
All truly serious students of America's decline don't believe any of this is occurring by chance. Nor do they believe that it results from the unfolding of irreversible historical forces. America is being taken off track deliberately. Should Americans become aware that some crisis has engulfed our nation, CFR members in the media can be counted on to ramp up a campaign to persuade a worried populace that some new governmental system, a world system perhaps, is the solution to the crisis. As Rahm Emanuel, newly appointed to become the next White House Chief of Staff has stated, "You don't ever want a crisis to go to waste."
In 1966, Georgetown Professor Carroll Quigley's monumental Tragedy and Hope became available. In his 1,350 pages, this influential academic, who mentored Bill Clinton, bared details about a "secret society" (Quigley's phrase) formed to rule the world. He was one of the rare scholars who had been allowed access to the network's secret records, and he was sympathetic to its goals, though he disagreed with its intent to remain unknown. The network's front group in the United States, he said, is the Council on Foreign Relations. Toward the end of his remarkable tome, Quigley noted that the Democrat and Republican parties had converged on many of the most important issues, particularly concerning the adoption of internationalism and big government as central features of their programs, regardless of their rhetoric to the contrary. He urged continuation of the practice of insuring that the two major political parties in America would remain virtually indistinguishable and continue to work toward full achievement of CFR goals. He expressly urged the two major political parties to be almost identical "so that the American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy."
That, of course, is what has happened, with predictable, cyclical regularity. The Republicans and Democrats at the national level have become the flip sides of the same CFR coin; they both promote the steady growth of big government and internationalism, while placating their core constituencies. The Republicans are allowed to cater to the right on a few issues (pro-life, pro-gun, pro-military, pro-business) while the Democrats cater to the left (pro-abortion, pro-homosexual, anti-gun, anti-war, pro-union).
With either John McCain, a veteran CFR member, or Barack Obama happily surrounded by CFR members, the network identified by Quigley could proceed with nary a worry toward its new world order goal. And with continued dominance of the major political parties guaranteed by CFR members, the network's plan for America and the world faced little threat of exposure during our nation's most recent election.
Counteraction Needed
Those who want the new world order are very few. Most Americans certainly don't want socialistic domination and the loss of our nation's independence. Why are so many silent? Why don't they rise as one and really "throw the rascals out"?
Can it be done? Yes! Will it be done? That remains to be seen. All who love this country, love their children, love truth, and love freedom had better get busy and start using our freedoms to save our freedoms. If a mere minority of the American population can be enlisted, educated, and let loose throughout America with honest facts and perspective, the new world order will crash and be relegated to history's dust bin.
