From Hemispheric Police to Global Managers
With the end of World War II dawned what Time magazine called the American Century. Europe and Japan a bombed-out shambles, the United States emerged from the war a strapping giant of a power,...
...4. Sklar, Trilateralism, especially Chapter 3. 5. Ibid., pp...
...references FROM HEMISPHERIC POLICE TO GLOBAL MANAGERS 1. Holly Sklar, Trilateralism, the Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management (Boston: South End Press, 1980), p. 1. 2. "Overview," Ibid...
...The Commission on United States-Latin Americans Relations, The United States and Latin America, p. 7. 14...
...A new rapprochement with the Soviet Union was achieved and deals were renegotiated to guarantee U.S...
...The debate among special interests and the shaping of a coherent ruling class strategy out of this debate all must be articulated within a political system which resolutely hides the existence of that ruling class under the cloak of "democracy" and "national interest.'"4 But a ruling class there is...
...Over the course of several years, the Commission's scholars-directed initially by Zbigniew Brzezinski, later to be Jimmy Carter's national security adviser-addressed the major problems facing the capitalist world.' They tried desperately to find a way to solve the mystery of stagflation and restabilize the international monetary system...
...Recasting the initiatives of Nixon and Kissinger to alter the bipolar view of the world, President Carter sounded the new trilateralist call in a major speech at Notre Dame University in May 1977, four months after taking office, announcing an end to America's fear of communism...
...In the revulsion against Vietnam and Chile, Congress had already limited the use of many of the weapons that had maintained U.S...
...The assessed demands of the situation, political acceptability at home and abroad, and the strategic leanings of a given administration all play a part in determining the scope and nature of the response...
...Allied with them are those at the top of the professional and political structures who shape the rules and consciousness by which the system is run...
...spheres of influence...
...The general crisis only deepened with the oil embargo of 1973 and Nixon's fall from power in 1974...
...The Sino-Soviet split in 1961 and the resurgence of European and Japanese capital made the bi-polar analysis less and less useful...
...Europe and Japan a bombed-out shambles, the United States emerged from the war a strapping giant of a power, and quickly maneuvered itself and its dollar to the center of a radically altered world power structure...
...This new position brought new responsibilities...
...excepted), the United States had assisted the elites in these countries to politically and militarily consolidate their own internal class rule...
...3. G. William Domhoff, The Powers That Be: Processes of Ruling Class Domination in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), pp...
...economy was threatening the mechanisms of control of the working class which had averted serious conflict for thirty years-a concern shared as well by other countries...
...Trade rivalry among the western powers grew more fierce, ignited by Nixon's unexpected suspension of the Bretton Woods Agreements...
...capitalist interests...
...It is an annual private meeting of some of the world's political and business leaders, many of them now in the Trilateral Commission...
...Conversely, the uses made of that presence have contributed mightily to the growth of nationalist and revolutionary movements which threaten the continued potency of those very institutions...
...As regards the latter, there were unusual constraints...
...1 2 The Linowitz Report urged that a policy be adopted toward the Americas that was "respectful of the sovereignty of the countries of the region and tolerant of a wide range of political and economic forms...
...3 The complexity and pressure of both foreign and domestic issues have encouraged the growth of institutes, or "think tanks," and strengthened their role as forums in which new ideas can be "dispassionately" studied and analyzed...
...And aid would go through multilateral lending institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank, where the countries would also have a voice, albeit not an equal one, in how it would be spent...
...Sklar, Trilateralism, pp...
...8. Ibid., p. 91...
...Recognizing that hunger and poverty created discontent and repression bred rebellion, it urged reforms on client governments and backed reformist alternatives (Dominican Republic...
...Ibid...
...They would develop a more comprehensive plan while Henry Kissinger, providing continuity for the caretaker government of Gerald Ford, struggled with the new realities on a day to day basis...
...In Latin America, human rights gave way to counterinsurgency as the prospects of Carter's defeat and a Salvadorean revolutionary victory seemed more and more certain...
...But the loss of ideological justification in no way lessened the objective of the United States to preserve its hegemony in the unruly third world, particularly Latin America...
...It produced massive protests against the U.S...
...ruling class present and debate various positions and proposals, with the prospect of molding sufficient coherence and consensus to be able to unify behind candidates, provide blueprints for developing policy and in4 NACLAReportJulylAugust 5 fluence legislation and diplomacy...
...The countries of Latin America, though not in an institutional sense colonies of the United States, shared the anti-imperialist sentiment that accompanied the independence movements in Asia and Africa...
...They also were concerned that the declining U.S...
...Thomas Hughes, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1978 When the Trilateral Commission was formed in 1973, its U.S...
...Such a vision permitted no subtle complexities...
...Ultimately, the agreements that result must unite enough of them to guarantee the rule of the entire class...
...Their task, by definition, is a difficult one...
...This world view produced the conclusion that if a country was not securely bound to one camp it must be in cahoots with the other...
...7 Carter and Trilateralism Jimmy Carter was offered as a candidate to clean up the mess Nixon had left behind...
...6 In this new collective management scheme, the United States would be first among equals...
...I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912...
...Its cure was to condition arms shipments on an ending of human rights violations, to disassociate the United States from repressive regimes and to support moves to strengthen the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States and the United Nations Human Rights Commission as well as non-governmental organizations like Amnesty International...
...How many carrots, how many sticks and when to use which-that became the running battle of the Carter Administration...
...Lieuwen, U S. Policy in Latin America) b4~ 2 NACLA ReportJulylAugust 3 ing an almost total political and economic dependence on the northern giant, their skewed distribution of wealth, distorted economies and appalling rates of illiteracy and infant mortality made such distinctions between Latin America and the colonies of Africa and Asia virtually semantic...
...The empire is at stake, not only in Latin America but throughout the world...
...To win back lost prestige, Carter tried to conduct policy with more carrots and fewer sticks...
...role of international policeman and shattered the bipartisan elite consensus about its foreign policy...
...Nixon acknowledged Vietnam was unwinnable and withdrew U.S...
...This institutionalization has produced a predictable dialectic...
...CFR trilateralists included Kissinger, Brzezinski, George Bush, Lane Kirkland and Cyrus Vance.* 5 Trilateral Solutions Recognizing that the "world of separate nations" was becoming an anachronistic concept, the Trilateral Commission's aims were "to nurture habits and practices of working together" among the political and economic elites and governments of the United States, Western Europe, Japan and Canada...
...I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenue in...
...To avoid unnecessary confrontation, stalemated renegotiations should be concluded on that "most vexing symbol of U.S...
...Michael Harrison, Associate Professor of European Studies, Johns Hopkins University The Vietnam war is the touchstone of the crisis...
...Twenty-six members of the Trilateral Commission served in the Carter Administration, including President Carter himself...
...It avoided confrontation, looking first for ways to accommodate...
...One revolution during a term of office might be forgivable, particularly if it's seen as potentially "manageable," like Nicaragua...
...Trilateralism offered, if not a complete formula, then at least a general conception-what it modestly called a "broad global strategy for the management of interdependence...
...It also, ironically, forced precisely that choice on the struggling nations, by sabotaging the possibility of genuine nonalignment...
...The think tanks prepare studies, generally paid for by foundations representing the wealthiest and most powerful people in the country...
...In an effort to put the economic crisis on the shoulders of its allies, the U.S...
...Worsening inflation further debilitated Carter's support and made generous foreign aid harder to defend...
...With the stakes so high and events running well ahead of control, abuses of power reached visible new proportions: burglaries inspired by government officials, repression of dissidents, the systematic subversion of opposition movements, Watergate, political trials, Cointelpro (the FBI's counter-intelligence program...
...government power...
...Ibid., p. 14 ff...
...I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916 [occupied officially until 1924, unoffically until 1934...
...61-128...
...It has reduced the frequency with which the United States must resort to "Big Stick" or "Gunboat" diplomacy, by providing more elaborate options for political maneuver...
...dominance were designed...
...Since World War II, this process has increasingly been presided over by those representing the interests of the giant transnational banks and corporations...
...With its new postwar responsibilities, the United States' role as hemispheric policeman extended to the entire world...
...Latin America is suffering from a plague of repression," said the report...
...8 Their ideas affected domestic, economic, social and foreign policy...
...Elite planning through private commissions, research institutes and special governmental committees was not initiated with the Trilateral Commission...
...medical supplies to wean Castro from the Soviet Union...
...1 Those six and most of the rest were also 6 NACLA ReportJuly/August 7 members of the Council on Foreign Relations...
...But not Iran, the strategic lynchpin of the Middle East oilfields...
...trained and supplied domestic standing armies...
...Ibid., p. 10...
...It recommended a commitment "not to undertake unilateral military intervention or covert intervention" in their internal affairs...
...Their different special interests-at bottom economic, but often taking a political, social or even regional form-are not necessarily competitive...
...But the economy continued to falter, the hostages stayed captive and Carter headed for early retirement...
...They hold seminars to which they invite "opinion leaders" like journalists, academics, professionals...
...Congressionally approved foreign aid required guarantees of respect for human rights by recipient nations...
...1 4 Throughout the region, economic assistance was to be emphasized over military aid as the best long-run solution to regional and U.S...
...6. Ibid., p. 8 . 7. Ibid., p. 199...
...To cloak its domination of supposedly independent countries (Puerto Rico, Panama Canal, etc...
...security...
...The United States became the protector of the capitalist order and the imposer of a new stability...
...Their most important planning center for foreign policy has been the prestigious Council on Foreign Relations, which publishes the journal, Foreign Affairs...
...many of its senior agents were purged...
...Intervention with a Touch of Subtlety To institutionalize U.S presence in the region, multi-country mechanisms of coordination and control were set up, ranging from the Organization of American States (OAS), founded in 1948, to regional common markets and joint military pacts...
...The crudity of Reagan's rhetoric and, in part, JulylAugust 34 NACLA Report the very fact of his election, are measures of the crisis...
...David Rockefeller, then chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank, responding to the economic repercussions of the Bretton Woods suspensions, brought together a group of "influentials and intellectuals" in 1973 to discuss the crisis...
...Or what's acceptable to the international oil industry (rising consumer fuel prices, for example) can be anathema to the National Retailers' Association...
...Afghanistan provided the golden opportunity to justify resurgent militarism...
...To restore harmony with the nations of the south, the Carter Administration sought to further integrate their fledgling economies into the world economy through such mechanisms as the International Monetary Fund, while paying lip service to their demands for a "new international economic order...
...With the populace decidedly uninterested in any of the candidates and preoccupied with the economic pinch above all, Ronald Reagan convinced 25% of the electorate that he would save their declining prosperity and in some way "make America great again...
...Stability" was assured less through direct military intervention and more through the use of U.S...
...Of the 20 commission members, six were Trilateralists...
...Despite such contradictions and Carter's own ambivalence, the trilateralist approach was tried...
...90-131...
...both were Trilateralists...
...What is good for the apparel industry in New York (say, cheap immigrant labor) may not be of interest to a politician representing the defense establishment in southern California...
...Over them all it cast the net of a single global economy...
...For example, the countries of western Europe, much more dependent on OPEC oil than the United States, resolved to pressure OPEC in unison...
...Carter Stumbles over the Obstacles But Trilateralism was not without its own contradictions...
...troops, relying instead on the local army and continuing U.S...
...military supplies...
...It has become the principal mode through which the distinct interest groups, or factions, of the U.S...
...But pressure within the Democratic Party from unrepentant cold warriors, and poorly managed public battles over the Panama Canal, Rhodesia and SALT II weakened the Administration's political base both among the elites and at the mass level...
...Exit Jimmy Carter, accommodation and cooptation...
...global power militarily...
...Only assassination saved President Kennedy from a similar fate...
...No president since 1960 has served two full terms of office...
...They are not...
...The most obvious was the conflict between the dictates of "global capitalism" and those of a given country...
...con.ponent drew heavily from the membership of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), although other institutes were represented as well...
...Linowitz himself undertook the job...
...It raised the banner of human rights to force governments to end practices that fed revolutionary unrest (Guatemala), although it allowed some governments greater leeway where "important" security interests had to be protected (South Korea...
...Government unilaterally suspended the Bretton Woods Agreements which had governed international currency and trade...
...To control the crisis, Richard Nixon and his Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had to come to terms with a changing world...
...A law was passed cutting off assistance to guerrillas opposing the revolutionary government in Angola...
...Though the Latin American revolutionary movements in the early postwar decades were often nationalist or populist in character (Arbenz in Guatemala, Goulart in Brazil, Peron in Argentina), they were refracted in the United States through the prism of cold war anticommunism...
...On Cuba, the report urged the establishment of friendly relations, emphasizing economic ties: Cuban sugar for U.S...
...none could offer a new consensus...
...It is composed of' the major stockholders, corporate managers and bankers who control the means of creating the wealth of the society (and, in some cases, of numerous other societies as well...
...Other key centers include Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, with its journal, Foreign Policy...
...Carter did not commit the United States to the bloc...
...The world no longer resembles that of the 1950s, for which the instruments of U.S...
...1 " (As an added benefit, this latter arrangement, in which the United States has veto power, would sidestep possible conflicts with Congress over the application of human rights criteria to bilateral aid...
...9. Ibid., p. 8. 10...
...The United States encouraged decolonization to facilitate its own access to these markets, but was determined to control the process...
...Under Rockefeller's tutelage, a super-elite and supra-national organization called the Trilateral Commission was formed, composed of business leaders, professionals, academics and politicians from the United States, Canada, Japan and Western Europe (Britain, France, West Germany and Italy...
...Major General Smedley D. Butler, United States Marine Corps...
...It urged that the more affluent countries of the third world be given a greater stake in managing the affairs of their poorer cousins (Saudi Arabia...
...90-131...
...The particular mix of these factors led in their turn to the use of puppet invaders in Guatemala (1954) and Cuba (1961), Marines in the Dominican Republic (1965), economic destabilization and the CIA in Chile (1973), IMF "stabilization" in Jamaica (1977-80), failed back room bargaining and appeals to the OAS in Nicaragua (1979) and, thus far, military advisers and a flood of aid in El Salvador (1981...
...By mid-term, Cold War II was underway...
...Memos and papers prepared for meetings are marked personal and confidential...
...Economic dependence was nurtured through unequal terms of trade, investment and lending policies and the control of modern technology.**Suffer*By the time of Roosevelt's corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, the United States had intervened militarily in Latin America and the Caribbean more than 50 times...
...The Central Intelligence Agency-that sower of instability and toppler of governments-now had to abide by a charter...
...As Ronald Reagan himself has acknowledged, the United States is in crisis...
...Trade and tariff policies would offer hemispheric friends preferential treatment...
...They publish their findings in journals, permitting a wider dissemination of their ideas and encouraging public debate...
...The concept put forward by these enlightened prophets of the brave new universe was that the Commission's member nations "remain the vital center of management, finance and technology...for a world economy which [in Brzezinski's words] would 'embrace' and 'coopt' the third world and gradually reintegrate the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe and China...
...Hence the seeming contradiction of opening trade relations with China and the Soviet Union while undermining Allende's Chile...
...It was inadequate to explain the inexorable growth of third world nationalism (over 100 newly independent nations have joined the United Nations since its founding in 1945), much less the concomitant rise of the Non-Aligned Movement...
...There is, in the current view, little time for subtle intervention...
...JulylAugust 56 NACLA Report struggle over OPEC oil...
...In an era of great doubt and uncertainty, he had to define and implement new strategies that would protect and extend U.S...
...the Atlantic Council, which publishes Atlantic Community Quarterly, and, in more recent years, Georgetown University's Center for Strategic and International Studies, whose publication is the Washington Quarterly...
...On occasion, however, they are profoundly so...
...We must not forget that Vance favored more carrots and Brzezinski more sticks...
...Falling monthly in the opinion polls, Carter yielded more frequently to pressure from the right...
...To contain or eliminate opposition to imperialist rule in these countries, any of the prevailing means of intervention may be brought to bear...
...Ultimately, they are an early link in the chain of institutions whose role is to legitimize ruling class strategy...
...Thus, these interests become coalesced into temporary or permanent blocs which argue and negotiate among themselves...
...All functioned in the shadow of U.S...
...At the beginning of this century, President Theodore Roosevelt, in his blunt style, had defined the already existing relationship between the United States and its hemispheric third world neighbors: the United States had the right to exercise "international police power" to prevent "chronic wrongdoing or impotence...
...The president-makers withdrew their support...
...leaders failed to discover a foreign policy that reconciled national ambition and responsibility with the constraints of an evolving international system...
...I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914...
...By the invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, that number had nearly doubled...
...Dealing with contradictions and conflicts is a tricky business, and if foreign policy objectives are to succeed, there has to be a global view of the world and an underlying steadiness and coherence to foreign policy...
...The Commission on United States--Latin American Relations, the United States and Latin America: Next Steps (New York: Center for Inter-American Relations, 1976), p. 7. 11...
...A revised version will appear in Appeal to Reason...
...To U.S...
...1 6 The initial willingness of the elites to test accommodation and detente began to shred with the pressure of daily crises in Iran and Nicaragua and with the growing perception of Soviet advances...
...influence...
...And El Salvador followed by Guatemala would be too much...
...Financed by public debt, the war fueled the inflation and recession from which there is still no respite...
...China was recognized...
...While that decision failed to "save" Vietnam, similar action brought Uruguay, Chile, and, later, Argentina back under control...
...Some critics of both the left and right view these institutions as conspiracies and cabals...
...They tackled the increasingly destructive rivalry among the major capitalist nations, the new oil cartel and the economic and political challenge from the socialist bloc and third world movements...
...The public and leaders of most countries continue to live in a mental universe which no longer existe-a world of separate nations-and have great difficulties thinking in terms of global perspectives and interdependence...
...His pietistic honesty was to wipe away the corruption of Watergate and, after Vietnam, Chile and Angola, to refurbish the U.S...
...I helped make Honduras 'right' for American fruit companies in 1903...
...The chief threat was seen as the anticapitalist Soviet Union, with its new sphere of influence in Europe and the growing potential to challenge U.S...
...About Latin America in particular, the Carter Administration relied heavily on the Linowitz Report, prepared in 1974 by a special commission funded by the Ford Foundation and chaired by superlawyer Sol Linowitz...
...The Short-lived Century Today, the American Century is in trouble...
...U.S...
...Most operate in a quasi-public manner and superficially are as sinister as a tea party...
...colonialism," the treaty governing the Panama Canal...
...1 0 The report was further elaborated in 1976, in preparation for the incoming president...
...1 3 It was a plague fed by the unrestricted flow of weapons and money to the new protectors of the empire, the armies of Latin America...
...The American people and their political system have destroyed every president but one since Dwight Eisenhower because U.S...
...policy makers, the world appeared as a bipolar clash of forces with the United States and its allies on one side and the communist world on the other...
...Who's Making Policy...
...Trilateral Commission Task Force Report, "Toward a Renovated International System," January, 1977 The policy suggestions and programs that the Commission evolved became a kind of creed for those "whose locus of power is the multinational corporation," and became the master plan of the Carter Administration...
...An unusually high number of candidates offered their services...
...Key accommodationists Andrew Young and Cyrus Vance left the Administration, prompted by controversy and conflict about Middle East affairs...
...Another threat was the stirring in the colonies, as they strove to take advantage of the power shift to press for greater self-determination...
...Disagreements exist, often quite heated...
...predominance since World War II...
...investments in Latin America in 1965-$10 billion -were higher than in any other region of the world...
...His inept handling of Congress and troubled relations with key Trilateralist ally Helmut Schmidt of West Germany gave his Administration more problems than it could handle...
...Each year recently elected members of Congress retire, overwhelmed by their powerlessness, and longstanding members are defeated...
...The toll has been high at the locus of U.S...
...Members deny its existence...
...Hoping that detente would curb what they saw as Soviet aggression, the Commission emphasized the newer and touchier north-south issues over traditional east-west ones, brought home by the *Another international body, the Bilderberg Group, formed in the early postwar period, is also very important...
...There was little disagreement that the political and economic crisis was the worst since the Great Depression...
...image abroad...
...Draft speech by Holly Sklar for presentation at "Survival Conference," Santa Rosa, California, July 14, 1981 and University of California, Berkeley, July 23, 1981...
Vol. 15 • July 1981 • No. 4
