Imperial Brain Trust
The Council on Foreign Relations
and United States Foreign Policy
by Lawrence H. Shoup and William
Minter
Authors Choice Press, paperback,
2004
p5
The Council on Foreign Relations, despite its relative public
obscurity, plays a key part in molding United States foreign policy.
In the Council, the leading sectors of big business get together
with the corporate world's academic experts to work out a general
framework for foreign policy.
p11
The origins of the Council on Foreign Relations lie in the reactions
of a small number of American "men of affairs" to the
First World War. At the Versailles Conference a group of American
and British participants began discussing the need for an organization
which could engage in the continuous study of international relations.
p12
The conception of the scheme was primarily that of British historian
Lionel Curtis, formerly a colonial official in South Africa. 3
For the previous nine years Curtis had been in charge of setting
up a network of semisecret organizations in the British Dominions
and the United States. 4 These bodies, called the Round Table
Groups, were established by Lord Milner, a former British secretary
of state for war, and his associates in 1908-1911. "The original
purpose of the groups was to seek to federate the English-speaking
world along lines laid down by Cecil Rhodes and William T. Stead,
and the money for the organizational work came originally from
the Rhodes Trust."
Rhodes was an extremely wealthy imperialist
whose will to power is illustrated by a statement he once made
to a friend: "The world is nearly all parceled out, and what
there is left of it is being divided up, conquered, and colonized.
To think of these stars that you see overhead at night, these
vast worlds which we can never reach. I would annex the planets
if I could; I often think of that." Rhodes declared that
his life ambition was "the furtherance of the British Empire,
the bringing of the whole uncivilized world under its rule, the
recovery of the United States of America, the making of the Anglo-Saxon
race into one Empire." To achieve this grandiose end in 1891
Rhodes proposed the founding of a worldwide organization for the
preservation and extension of the British Empire. The original
purpose of the Round Table was thus to establish an "organic
union" for the entire British Empire with one imperial government,
and to try to associate other nations with the empire.
p15
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, education,
statecraft and science will have been brought to bear on international
problems.
p15
The [Council on Foreign Relations] was composed almost entirely
of 'high-ranking officers of banking, manufacturing, trading and
finance companies, together with many lawyers... concerned primarily
with the effect that the war and the treaty of peace might have
on post-war business."
p23
The Council, dominated by corporate leaders, saw expansion of
American trade, investment, and population as the solution to
domestic problems. It thought in terms of preservation of the
status quo at home, and this involved overseas expansion. As [Isaiah]
Bowman put it in 1928, "foreign raw materials, imports, and
exports were necessary if we are to avoid crises in our constantly
expanding industries." Since the era of cheap land was over
and population was increasing, "eastern social and industrial
problems cannot be solved in the historical manner by a flow of
population to another region."" Thus the United States
had to increase its exports, "sell something abroad in greater
degree-if not wheat or maize, then steel or copper. "
p28
The Second World War and the subsequent cold war ... marked a
move on the part of the United States toward a full-blown imperialism-a
largely successful attempt to organize a single, world-spanning
political economy with the United States at the center.
p30
Council on Foreign Relations principal goals
To help in the education of American public
opinion to understand and support ... the right kind of American
foreign policy.
p31
Council on Foreign Relations, 1951 report
In speaking of public enlightenment, it
is well to bear in mind that the Council has chosen as its function
the enlightenment of the leaders of opinion. These, in turn, each
in his own sphere, spread the knowledge gained here in ever-widening
circles.
p33
[Council on Foreign Relations] members and leaders had a key role
in the tactical decision to use the atomic bomb on Japan. Secretary
of War Henry L. Stimson was President Roosevelt's senior adviser
on atomic questions, and headed the special Interim Committee
which President Truman established in late April 1945 to recommend
action on the bomb. The eight-man committee was dominated by five
Council members, including Stimson, the chairman, who had been
active in Council programs for over ten years. 61 One of the five
Council men, scientist Karl T. Compton, president of M.I.T., stated
at the time that the bomb should be used to "impress the
world," giving credence to those who have argued that the
bomb was used on Japan primarily to intimidate the Russians, and
thereby reinforce the American position of world dominance.
Decisions on the proper postwar political
economy for Germany also occupied a key place in United States
foreign policy between 1944 and 1946. The choices made by the
Council and American officials played a central role in the development
of the cold war. The basic question facing the policymakers was
whether a moderate or harsh peace should be made with Germany.
A corollary to this issue involved a decision as to which nation-Germany
or the Soviet Union was the main long-term threat to the United
States, and thus which nation should be given preference in allocating
resources to rebuild from the extensive devastation both countries
suffered during the war.
Two positions on these interrelated questions
emerged in the 1944 -1946 period. One was the famous Morgenthau
Plan proposed by Secretary of the Treasury Henry M. Morgenthau,
which envisaged Germany as the main enemy and proposed a harsh
peace. Such a settlement involved the creation of a deindustrialized,
agrarian Germany incapable of conducting a modern war. The second
American position on this question was put forward mainly by Council
members and the War and Peace Studies groups. It involved a "moderate"
peace for Germany -denazification, destruction of war potential,
some reparation, but also the reintegration of Germany into the
American-dominated postwar world economy, and the avoidance of
measures which might cause political instability or unrest. The
Council position implied that Germany was not a long-term threat
to the United States and that Germany's economic reconstruction
should be given precedence over the needs of the Soviet Union.
The conflict with the Soviet Union over reparations and the rebuilding
of the German economy was the crucial reason for the break with
the Soviets over Germany and the consequent partition of that
nation.
p50
[Council on Foreign Relations] goals remain, as always, to influence
the government and public opinion in favor of an imperial role
for the United States. Since World War II, such a role has involved
being the leading counterrevolutionary power, the policeman of
the world.
p11
The Council Foreign Relations and the New York financial oligarchy,
which it primarily represents, have a leading position in molding
United States foreign policy.
p117
Near the end of the Second World War, two of the Council's senior
directors wrote that the CFR had "served an increasingly
useful function in the period of the twenties and thirties; but
it was only on the outbreak of World War II that it was proved
to have come of age." They were referring to the Council's
successful efforts, through its special War and Peace Studies
Project, to plan out a new global order for the postwar world,
an order in which the United States would be the dominant power.
The War and Peace Studies groups, in collaboration with the American
government, worked out an imperialistic conception of the national
interest and war aims of the United States. The imperialism involved
a conscious attempt to organize and control a global empire. The
ultimate success of this attempt made the United States for a
time the number one world power, exercising domination over large
sections of the world-the American empire.
p172
Leaders of the United States have always declared that the foremost
objective of their policies has been the promotion of the country's
collective interest-the "national interest." As Secretary
of State Charles Evans Hughes put it in the 1920s, "foreign
policies are not built upon abstractions. They are the result
of practical conceptions of national interest." The national
interest is rarely an objective fact, however, as is indicated
by the truism that in every country it is always redefined after
a revolution.
The very idea of "national"
interest assumes that everyone's interests are identical, or nearly
so, and this is far from
true in a capitalist society. The working
class and upper class have very different interests at home and
abroad. The working class is most concerned with domestic society
and change: redistribution of income and wealth, full employment,
worker control of industry, and more egalitarianism generally.
The capitalist class, on the other hand, has an interest in preventing
basic changes in society, and a desire to maintain the socioeconomic
system from which it greatly benefits. Since domestic problems
can be solved through foreign expansion, without alteration of
the existing domestic system from which the corporate upper class
obtains its power and privilege, it has a much greater interest
in foreign policy.
The concept of the national interest put
forth by the Council on Foreign Relations laid the basis for American
war aims in the Second World War. The nation's interest was first
of all defined and discussed within an economic framework, focusing
on the most basic facts and long-term trends: the type of economic
structure existing in the United States, its requirements, and
the regions of the world crucial to the satisfaction of these
needs. It was therefore inherently a status quo formulation, aimed
at preservation rather than change. If one accepts the set of
assumptions, values, and goals implied in the Council's sketch
of the national interest - a capitalist system with private ownership
of the productive property of the society, resulting in inequality
in the distribution of wealth and income and attendant class structure
- the analysis cannot be refuted. The Council planners had identified
the basic needs of such a system, and any discussion o the national
interest necessarily had to address itself to these requirements.
Since those in power define the national interest as the preservation
of the existing set of economic, social, and political relationships
and of their own rule, the national interest in a capitalist society
is little more than the interest of its upper class. The Council,
as a key organization of this class, was in the lead in defining
its class interest. One has to transcend its values, assumptions,
and goals in order to question its formulation of the national
interest.
The American capitalist class, through
the Council, had proposed to preserve and extend American capitalism
by a policy of empire-building-overseas expansion of United States
power. This necessarily meant conflict and possible war ...
p262
For the past several years there has been, within the Council
and among ruling-class leaders, a "great debate" over
the future of American foreign policy. Two main conceptions have
emerged. The first, the "power-realist" or balance-of-power
approach, stresses national sovereignty and the traditional concerns
of international relations-the balance of power and maintenance
of stability and military strength. Secretary of State Kissinger
and conservative nationalists generally have been leading exponents
of this perspective. Kissinger's policy, central in his term of
office, of manipulating the balance of power-especially the United
States-Soviet-Chinese triangle-is a classic example of this approach.
It attempts to combine the flexibility of a Bismarck within a
Metternichian alliance framework, to have the best of both worlds.
The second perspective, liberal internationalism
or "transnationalism," is now emerging as dominant within
the CFR. It sees the era of the nation-state drawing to a close
and transnational forces joining various regions of the world
together in political and economic federation. Arguing that the
world is becoming increasingly economically and environmentally
interdependent, it places primary emphasis on cooperative relations
with Western Europe and Japan, as well as certain compromises
with the Third World. Trilateral commissioners Zbigniew Brzezinski,
George W. Ball, Edwin 0. Reischauer, and, on a practical level,
David Rockefeller are a few of the leading exponents of this perspective.
Brzezinski, Ball, and Reischauer have
all criticized Kissinger's balance-of-power approach in recent
articles or books. Council director Brzezinski is representative
of the approach of the Trilateral Commission, which he directs.
Writing in Foreign Policy magazine, Brzezinski argues that Kissinger
has neglected both the Third World and traditional allies in his
efforts to achieve détente with the Soviets and Chinese
and in relations with the Middle Eastern nations. Summarizing
present world trends, Brzezinski states that a "profound
transformation" of the present global order is now taking
place and nation-states are losing their centrality, although
for the present time their role remains crucial.
There is a basic crisis in the present
international system because of the challenge of a stronger Western
Europe and Japan, and because of an upheaval in economic relations
between the rich advanced capitalist nations of the North and
the poor Third World nations of the South. Because of these trends,
Brzezinski concludes, the old political and economic ) system
created by the United States during and after the Second World
War is now "severely shaken. "
p264
The emerging Council perspective is thus one of transnationalism.
This has been made even more evident in the first publication
of the 1980's Project, The Management of Interdependence; A Preliminary
View, by Miriam Camps. Camps, a senior research fellow at the
Council, wrote the book after heading a CFR study group op the
subject, which met for almost two years in l971-1973.
... Central to Camps's book is a vision
of a world political economy where power to manage or "steer"
the global order is shared by the United States, Western Europe,
and Japan. In her conclusion, called "Collective Management.
... Camps argues that no nation today
can play the determining role that the United States has played
in the past and that therefore collective management on the part
of the advanced industrial capitalist powers is required. The
"United States, Western Europe, and Japan will in effect
share leadership." 41 These three regions, the "Trilateral
World," make up the core / of the highly industrialized,
rich capitalist nations.
... a global system is the goal, with
far-reaching coordination of domestic and foreign policy among
the advanced capitalist nations - collective management - and
the "steering" of the structure by the Trilateral World-the
United States, Western Europe, and Japan." A free-trade perspective
is also evident. This, Camps argues, would be "desirable
on many grounds. "
p269
Another of the central focuses of the Council [on Foreign Relations]
-Trilateral Commission's planning for the future concerns the
role of the Third World in the new international economy. Active
Council member C. Fred Bergsten, a former National Security Council
staff member under Kissinger and presently a senior fellow at
the Brookings Institution, has taken the lead in defining the
importance of and the "threat" from the Third World.
Bergsten chaired a discussion group at the Council during 1972
and 1973 on "American Interests in the Third World,"
and continued as the discussion leader of a similar Council group
during 1974 -1975. Bergsten published his views in the summer
of 1973, criticizing the Nixon administration's neglect of the
Third World and its treatment of this region of the globe "solely
as pawns on the chessboard of global power politics." Bergsten
argued that the Third World is currently very important to the
United States, Europe, and Japan. The United States "is rapidly
joining the rest of the industrialized countries in depending
on the Third World for a critical share of its energy supplies
and other natural resources." Oil, copper, natural rubber,
bauxite, timber, and other Third World raw materials were mentioned
as vitally important to the Trilateral World. American investments
in the Third World are of "strategic importance" for
the United States balance of payments and important for corporate
profit levels. The real market value of American investments in
the Third World is "at least" $46 billion. The United
States, Bergsten concluded, faces a serious threat from the Third
World. Supplies could be withheld or the Trilateral World could
be forced to compete for scarce resources, dividing the Trilateral
World and driving up prices. The Third World, therefore, should
be higher on the list of American foreign policy priorities. Trilateral
Commission director Brzezinski also said at the commission's spring
1975 meeting in Japan: "The main axis of conflict at most
international conferences today is not between the Western world
and the Communist world but between the advanced countries and
the developing countries. The Third World wants an equal distribution
of gains from a world economic system, and its general strategy
is to use its control over many raw materials to break the traditional
patterns of world trade and thus create a new international economic
order.
p273
The Council's present plans for the Third World involve no real
changes in the global distribution of wealth and power. The most
that can possibly be expected by the Third World from Council
blueprints is more access to the markets of the advanced countries,
some shift in older industrial technology from the Trilateral
World to the Third World, higher raw material prices, a somewhat
greater voice in the management of some world economic institutions,
and little else. Developing nations are still viewed primarily
as sources of raw materials and export markets for the Trilateral
World. An international division of labor would be maintained
which would give the Third World little chance to develop the
manufacturing which produces wealth. The overall aim of Council
planning efforts for a new world economy is, thus, to preserve,
as much as possible, the existing structure of Western power and
predominance. Council plans include, as a prime goal, increasing
integration of the world capitalist system, a structure which
perpetuates underdevelopment in the Third World ...
p273
There is a large body of evidence ... that the actual result of
multinational corporate capitalism in the Third World is poverty
and repressive governments.
p274
The real problem, which Council on Foreign Relations leaders in
general cannot recognize because of their class interests, is
that it is capitalism itself and capitalist institutions like
the IMF which perpetuate poverty and underdevelopment.
p278
This study has revealed the roots of United States imperialism
in the economic, political, and strategic needs of the dominant
sector of the American ruling class, led by the Council on Foreign
Relations. Their will to power, a drive for world hegemony, has
made the United States the largest imperial power in human history,
deploying forces on every continent and controlling the economics
and politics of much of the world. The basic reason for these
policies has been, as we have shown in our case studies, the need
of American capitalism for a world order open and receptive to
its expansion. In contrast to the die-hard ultra-right perspective
of laissez-faire and nationalistic competition, there is a measure
of realism on the part of the Council in accepting irreversible
changes, rejecting the extreme anti-communist "roll-back"
position, and showing a willingness for détente. But there
is an(equally)firm determination to maintain a world in which
United States capitalism will feel at home. War in Indochina,
the fantastic waste of vast military spending, the encouragement
of assassinations of foreign leaders, support of reactionary regimes
the world over, bribes and corruption, as well as the domestic
repression necessary to maintain imperialism abroad-political
trials of dissenters, FBI-CIA harassment of radicals, and wiretaps-are
all the result of and testimony to the destructive nature of imperialism.
p279
In the Council on Foreign Relations the leading sector of the
upper class has a very useful instrument. There it can get together,
and bring in others of its choice recruited from academia and
government service, to discuss just what sort of foreign policy
it judges to be reasonable. There corporate leaders can set the
agenda of issues to be discussed and the terms of debate. Through
their media connections and in other ruling class-sponsored organizations
they can widen the debate. When Council leaders take up government
office, they have the opportunity to implement the ideas of the
capitalist class, while keeping in touch with their peers currently
not in government office. If it does happen that a policy alternative
emerges from some other source that deviates too radically from
their assumptions, the weight of ruling-class opinion can be brought
to bear to label it foolish and unrealistic, unworthy of serious
consideration. It is these men who deem themselves competent to
judge what is the "national interest" in foreign relations.
If, as invariably happens, their idea of the national interest
corresponds with what serves their own interests as a class, then
to such men this state of affairs is only natural, and the way
things should be.
The Council's War and Peace Studies Project
established the framework for a stable capitalist world under
United States leadership following World War II. This framework
lasted almost a quarter of a century, although the world's self-appointed
policeman was unable to enforce complete stability on a troubled
world. By the 1970s the postwar system was obviously inadequate,
and the opinion leaders of the United States ruling class are
... planning a new global structure, engineering a new consensus
which might ensure another quarter century of relative stability,
enhancing cooperation among the advanced capitalist powers, and
attempting to hold off revolutionary change for yet another generation.
New World Order
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