Andropov’s Ghost

flow of technical information. Were it not for obvious signs of modernity, one might mistake it for the Russia of Catherine the Great.

Contemporary Russia is not politically free in any Western sense of the term. It is best understood as an authoritarian regime tempered by the pretense of democracy. Nonetheless, it is at least as open as any government in Russian history and perhaps more so. If under Putin the Russian people have lost the political rights they once briefly enjoyed amidst the chaos of Yeltsin’s presidency, they have gained a substantial measure of prosperity and the now clearly established right to an individual existence. That may yet prove to be a Devil’s Bargain, but for the moment at least the Russian people are satisfied. Now nearing the end of his second presidential term, Putin remains overwhelmingly popular: according to a recent poll, his approval rating stands at an astonishing 71%.

But for Western policymakers – and especially, for President Bush – it is important to remember that Putin’s Russia is the child of the Andropov reforms; and at the heart of these reforms lay the decision to trade geopolitical stability for Western trade, technology, and investment. And while Russia has received much of what it wished for, it has received far less than it expected. Putin’s angry complaints of mistreatment at the hands of the Bush Administration are not mere propaganda. They reflect the bitterness of a people that truly believe they have not received their due.

It is perhaps even more important for Western leaders to remember the intent of the Andropov reforms. They were not designed to bring about a better government or a more humane society. They were explicitly crafted to improve the Soviet Union’s relative power position, by creating a more effective political control structure based upon a more agile and productive civilian economy. More to the point, the trade-off of geopolitical stability for Western trade, technology, and investment on which it was based was never intended to be permanent.

Fixated upon the War on Terror and – especially – the war in Iraq, the Bush Administration has remained seemingly oblivious to possibility of a serious geopolitical crisis erupting with the Russian Federation. This is deeply disquieting, because any such crisis would inevitably involve China and the four other Central Asian states that comprise the Shanghai Pact. With a combined troop strength of 3,600,000, the Pact is the single largest military alliance in the world; and it may be the most capable. Armed with advanced Russian weaponry paid for by Chinese largess, the Pact has already altered the balance of power in Central Asia. In time, it may change the balance of power throughout the world.

For this reason, the United States and its allies may soon be forced to shift their focus away from the Middle East – which is at best a sideshow in the Great Game of Nations – and return to their more traditional preoccupation with the Eurasian Landmass. There they will find a far more capable adversary, still guided by the hand of Andropov’s ghost.

Notes

1. Editor’s Note: Formally known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Shanghai Pact consists of Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Krygyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Iran, Pakistan, India and Mongolia are affiliated with the Pact as Observer States; and according to some accounts, Iran has applied for Associate status.

2. Editor’s Note: In actual fact, Andropov had once been a riverboat navigator. But since he was supposedly a great fan of Mark Twain, KGB disinformation specialists gave him a post facto promotion to riverboat captain.

3. George Friedman. Russia’s Interest in Litvinenko. STRATFOR (Online Edition), November 29, 2006.

Connecting the Dots; Part II

Joseph d. douglass, Jr., PhD. & Charles s. Viar
 

Editors Note: In January of 2007, CFIS Chairman Charles S. Viar published an historical essay entitled Connecting the Dots. In this essay, Mr. Viar addressed one of the great paradoxes of modern democracy: specifically, the increasing willingness of democratically elected political leaders to pursue deeply unpopular policies in the face of overwhelming public opposition; and argued that the phenomenon resulted from a series of historical events that began at the Battle of Alhama in 1482, and ended in the rise of a global financial elite some three centuries later. Operating through a series of front organizations that came to include the British Round Table, the American Council on Foreign Relations, the Bilderberger Group and, most recently, the Tri-Lateral Commission, Mr. Viar argued that this global financial elite has been attempting to remake the world in its own image for more than a century by co-opting the political elites of the developed world.

Although Mr. Viar’s essay aptly described the manipulation of the political class, due to a shortage of space and time it did not address what might be described as the mechanical process – that is, the process by which the broad objectives of the global financial elite are translated into specific governmental policies – which occurs at the secondary level of the very large tax-exempt grant-making foundations and endowments. In order to assist our readers in better understanding this process – and especially, the extraordinary efforts taken to hide it from public view – we are presenting this follow-on essay entitled Connecting the Dots: Part II.

I.

In 1953, a new Congressional Committee was formed to investigate the large tax-exempt foundations. This followed an earlier investigation led by Representative Eugene E. Cox, who had become alarmed by the fact that certain clearly anti-American activities seemed to have originated in the large, tax-exempt foundations that litter the Washington landscape. After Cox’s untimely death, the subsequent Congress authorized the follow-on investigation under the leadership of Congressman Carroll Reece of Tennessee.

Representative Reece selected Norman Dodd to head his research staff, because Dodd had both an excellent reputation and considerable experience in banking and finance. This expertise was important, because the large tax-exempt foundations were then the primary source of funding for large-scale long-term politically consequential projects.

Dodd and his staff soon uncovered a maze of inter-related, foundation-funded projects; the majority of which appeared to have been deliberately designed to undermine the United States. When taken as a whole, it became clear that these foundation-funded projects were part of a much larger effort designed to facilitate the replacement of traditional American beliefs and values with a vaguely collectivist ideology; and to manipulate domestic and foreign policies through aegis of foundation-funded professional associations, and through the academic institutions that the foundations controlled or influenced. Moreover, the network of individuals the foundations employed to direct these projects, or placed within the associations they created, or recruited from within the academic institutions they supported, was so extensive in size and influence that the Reece Committee described it as a “Cabal” in their Final Report.

II.

Simply put, the Cabal was a consortium of foundation-funded universities, think tanks, academic associations, academic journals, and professional organizations governed or controlled by interlocking directorates – within which key individuals moved freely from one to another and on into government, where policy decisions were presumably made. As a group, these key individuals controlled appointments to highly paid positions, perquisites of office, access to the major media and to the major publishing houses, speaking and consulting fees, publicity, and power - and none of these were awarded for actions undertaken for the benefit of the United States. Rather, they were awarded for actions taken on behalf of financial interests; foreign interests; industrial interests; and ideological agendas - most specifically, for the promotion of collectivist ideologies; and for efforts to facilitate the imposition of socialism/communism; for efforts designed to undermine national sovereignty; or for advancing what we now refer to as globalism in general, or for attending to miscellaneous and particular interests of the self-appointed and financially powerful elite.

As the Committee began to discern the nature of the beast, the beast awakened to the danger; and retaliation was not long in coming. In order to facilitate a behind-the-scenes effort to force the dismissal of key staff members, the news media initiated a concerted effort to disgrace and discredit their reputations; and as the White House pressured the leadership of the House of Representatives to cut off funds for the investigation, senior officials from some of the foundations and related organizations attempted to intimidate the staff. Dodd was threatened over lunch by one of these people; and while he had the fortitude to withstand the pressure, others apparently did not. Later, a Committee member began disrupting the Committee’s activities from within, by repeatedly interrupting the testimony of distinguished and knowledgeable witnesses; and in the end, he was so successful that Chairman Dodd had no choice but to cut the hearings short. After less than a year of minimally funded operation, the Congressional leadership instructed the Committee to cease operations and prepare their final report. 

Due to the dedication of Chairman Reece, Norman Dodd, and the loyal members of the Committee staff, a Final Report of the Committee to Investigate Tax-Exempt Foundations was eventually produced; and the information it contained was both profuse and damning. Two creditable books were later written based upon the evidence contained therein: William McIlhaney’s Tax-Exempt Foundations and Rene Wormser’s Foundations: Their Power and Influence. But unfortunately, the general public remained almost entirely unaware of either the Final Report or the two above referenced books because of the media blackout that was imposed upon them. Never widely distributed, copies of the Final Report are now very difficult to find; and were it not for the fact that it was reprinted in Wormser’s book and posted on the Internet, it would be almost lost to history. Copies of McIlHaney’s can occasionally be found in used-book stores.

III.

Although the Reese Committee was disbanded before it could establish the connection between the great tax-exempt foundations and the global financial elite that either encouraged or directed their establishment, its admittedly incomplete investigation was and remains exceeding important for all Americans. What the Committee found and later described in its Final Report was a deliberate, concerted, and systematic effort to reshape American public education, assert control over the law-making function of Congress, and to encourage policies destructive to the national interest either through acts of commission or omission. Among the many current examples that might be cited are the failed war on drugs; the willful failure to secure our borders against the tidal waves of illegal immigration that are sweeping across them; the growing crisis within our educational system, where critical thought has been replaced by politically correct sophistry; and the intense, systematic, and sustained effort to drive Christianity from the public square. But these are only the most visible contemporary examples – the actual list goes on and on. Indeed it is almost impossible to identify a single recent crisis, the flames of which have not been fueled and fanned by the policies and the propaganda of the Cabal or, as it was also referred to in the Final Report, “The Interlock.”

These arguably include most of the wars we have fought in this century. Formed in 1911 “to promote the advancement and diffusion of knowledge,” the Carnegie Foundation is one of the major foundations that at once funds and forms the mechanism that translates the global financial elite’s goals into government policy. Quite incredibly, the original Board of Directors of the Carnegie Foundation spent their first four years discussing how social change could be most quickly and easily achieved. After their lengthy and presumably thoughtful deliberation, they concluded in 1915 that war was the most effective device. Thus it should be no surprise that even as the Carnegie Foundation’s leadership publicly advocated neutrality during the run-up to America’s entry into World War I, they were privately advocating armed intervention on behalf of France, Russia, and Great Britain. More appalling still is the fact that once the United States entered the war, the leadership of the Carnegie Foundation used their influence with President Wilson to prolong it. In this, their motive was both simple and obvious: the concentration of federal power in Washington and the social disruption that resulted from the Great War facilitated their publicly denied but privately acknowledged efforts to create a global regime based upon socialist principles. 

Another foundation that pursued the same end was the Ford Foundation, which in 1953 was led by Rowan Gaither. In a discussion with Norman Dodd, he explained that they operated on directives from the White House; and that the essence of these directives was to utilize their resources to facilitate “the comfortable merger” of United States and the Soviet Union. Given the grim reality of life in the USSR, this statement seemed even more incredible then than it does now – but when you take into consideration the changes they sought – specifically, the end of national sovereignty, and America’s entry into a global world order – it becomes comprehensible. And indeed, the Cabal made every effort to achieve Mr. Gaither’s stated objective.

Given the undoubted historical fact of Gaither’s remark, one might reasonably ask why any American would be willing to contemplate union with a regime built upon police repression, mass-murder, and an inherently bizarre ideology. But the why is readily apparent when one considers the who – the financial elite that had initially bankrolled the Bolsheviks, and still profited from their reign of terror. To this end, they promoted three policies through the web of institutions they controlled: first, to hide the crimes of communism from public view; second, to create a false image of the Soviet Union by promoting notions of social and moral equivalency; and third - and most importantly - to undermine American culture and to discredit American institutions. Ultimately, their most critical goal was to reduce the United States to the same low level as the USSR – a corrupt, poorly managed dictatorship freed from all moral restraints. Those willing to quietly support these policies found their career paths subtly blessed; those that did not failed to win promotion, or found themselves shunted aside.

IV.

Through the Columbia Teachers College and other pedagogical institutions underwritten by the Rockefeller Foundation and the other grant-making institutions of the Cabal, the global financial elite began to enlist teachers, school administrators, and what were then professional educational associations to change the focus of education from “reading, writing, and arithmetic” to the promotion of a globalist ideology that pre-supposed the value of a supra-national union; and to emphasize the importance of the collective over the individual, the supremacy of the state, and a secular worldview. And quite specifically, it sought to eliminate all vestiges of Christianity. For the separation of Church and State commanded by Christ not only places the responsibility for moral choice squarely upon the shoulders of the individual - it also divides the sacred from the profane; and inevitably, that division gives rise to alternative sources of moral authority and, quite often, alternative sources of power as well. 

When the Cabal initiated its activities in the early decades of the 20^th century, the United States did not possess a standardized system for training teachers and school administrators. Nor did the United States have any real governmental policy-making or policy-implementing apparatus. With virtually unlimited money, the Interlock began to build both; and the structures they created remain the central pillars of the Cabal to this day. In this effort, two foundations were dominant: The Rockefeller, which focused upon both domestic and foreign policy; and the Carnegie, which was primarily concerned with questions of war and peace. In order to reshape the larger culture, these two foundations proceeded to educate their own historians; and to create a host of national academic associations for them, and for psychologists and sociologists as well. More or less concurrently, they also created an assortment of specialized foreign policy institutes for Europe, Latin America, Asia and the Pacific; and a new series of academic journals. Through monetary gifts to universities, the elite also aided those who understood and agreed to their larger game plan. Institutional grants were quietly tied to the recipient institutions’ willingness to promote supporters of the Cabal; and to ensure that their books and articles were published. Thus through interlocking directorates and circulating policy professionals, they built and staffed the domestic and foreign policy institutions that still dominate the policy-making and implementation process. 

For more than a century, the global financial elite has been engaged in what Chapman Pincher once called “The Long March Through the Institutions.” Their long-term objective is a unified global government under their control, masked in the guise of “democratic socialism.” To achieve this end they have sought to change and corrupt our core cultural and political institutions, as a necessary prerequisite for their plan to incrementally replace our republican form of government. They achieved their first major milestone with the establishment of the British Round Table in the United Kingdom in 1909; and their second in extending its reach throughout what was then known as the “White Commonwealth.” They achieved their third major milestone by co-opting the emerging financial elite in the Lost Colony of America – who either at their encouragement or at their direction, established the major tax-exempt foundations that lie at the core of what the Reece Committee so aptly termed the “Cabal” – and their fourth by successfully imposing the Federal Income Tax and the Federal Reserve System upon the United States in 1913. Arguably, they achieved their fifth by orchestrating America’s intervention in World War I. To this end, J. P. Morgan – who would later organize The Council on Foreign Relations – hired a group of experienced journalists and editors to analyze the American press, and determine which newspapers were necessary to control American public opinion. After receiving a “short list” from his hired experts, he proceeded to either purchase the listed papers outright, or to buy the controlling interest of their stock. Once he had placed his own editors in charge, the Morgan-dominated press began agitating for America’s entry into the war – unpalatable facts recounted by two actual participants, Edward Bernays, in his book entitled Propaganda; and Walter Lippmann, in his book entitled Public Opinion.

But after more than seven decades of unchallenged advance, the global financial elite encountered unexpected resistance from a resurgent American Right. Technological breakthroughs in the field of data processing made it possible for ordinary citizens to band together and pool their resources; and Conservative organizations and institutions arose to give battle. From the late 1970’s through the millennium, Conservatives succeeded in reversing many of the elite’s gains; but unfortunately, the election of George W. Bush brought yet another globalist to the White House, and the tide of battle has turned again. In addition to reaffirming the U.S. government’s commitment to NAFTA, President Bush has turned a blind eye to illegal immigration; supported amnesty for tens of millions of illegal immigrants; and quietly sponsored the so-called Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America. Indeed, the President has implicitly stated his willingness to sacrifice American sovereignty by expressing his hope that America will one day cease to be a place, and become instead a global ideal. 

At the time of this writing, both the Administration and the Congressional leadership are committed to creating some form of supra-national entity that will embrace the United States, Canada, and Mexico; and for the moment at least, the odds seem to favor their success.

But the battle for the future has not yet been lost. For those that still believe in America, it has barely begun.

This paper was commissioned by the Center for Intelligence Studies and written by Dr. Joseph D. Douglass, Jr. and Charles S. Viar; and it remains their shared intellectual property. In the interests of public education, however, copyright protection has been partially waived. Provided that full attribution is given and textual integrity preserved, recipients of this paper are encouraged to reproduce and redistribute it to the interested public.

That Presidents routinely pursue policies opposed by a majority of the electorate that placed them in power is one of the great puzzles of American democracy. Rare in the first century of the Republic, it became increasingly common in the second; and now as we approach the midpoint of the third, it has arguably become the norm. For despite overwhelming public opposition to illegal immigration and open borders, President Bush has adamantly refused to either enforce the law or to defend our frontiers. Indeed, during the first six years of his administration the President has used the power and the authority of his office to undermine lawfully mandated efforts to curtail illegal immigration; and more recently, to encourage the integration of the three North American governments of Mexico, the United States, and Canada.

Given the public’s vehement opposition to illegal immigration, open borders, and transnational integration, it is astonishing that a crippled administration would persist in pursuing such deeply unpopular policies. For a cursory examination of the 2006 electoral map reveals that the President would have kept – and likely expanded – his party’s congressional majorities had he not defied the public’s opinion.

The fact that the President did so suggests that his Administration values the favor of the individuals and institutions that profit from illegal immigration, open borders, and transnational integration more highly than it values electoral success. As a practical matter, then, the democratic process has been eclipsed by the power of these individuals and institutions, now commonly referred to as “Special Interests.”

Although most Americans are unaware of the fact, the Special Interests are not new. They are deeply rooted in history; and oddly enough, their origins may be traced to the Marquis de Cadiz’s daring attack upon the Muslim stronghold of Alhama on the tenth of February 1482. 

Better known to history as Don Rodrigo Ponce de Leon, the Marquis de Cadiz would seem an unlikely progenitor of the Special Interests that exert so much power and influence today. And yet, his successful night assault upon Alhama dealt an ultimately fatal blow to the Moorish occupation of Grenada; and set in motion a series of events that eventually culminated in the creation of the world’s first central bank and the rise of Special Interest politics. 

In 711 a mixed Muslim force of Arabs, Africans, and Berbers crossed the Straight of Gibraltar and landed in Spain, aided and abetted by a Christian ally known only as Count Julian. Although Julian was nominally a vassal of the Visigoth kingdom of Hispania, he ruled the African portion of the Pillars of Hercules as an independent fief. To ensure Julian’s loyalty, the king of the Visigoths had demanded his daughter as a hostage; but sometime after her arrival in the Visigoth capital of Toledo, she became pregnant. According to one account she was the innocent victim of King Roderic’s lust; according to others, she had willfully seduced him. Whatever the actual truth, Count Julian was deeply offended; and to exact revenge, he conspired with the Visigoths’ Muslim enemies to invade Spain. As part of the bargain, he granted them safe passage through his territory in Africa to staging areas along the coast.

The Muslims landed at Gibraltar on April 30, and two and a half months later they crushed King Roderic at the Battle of Guadalete. They spent the next ten years expanding north into Europe, until their advance was checked by Eudes of Aquitaine near Toulouse in 721. Perhaps in the same year, a band of Visigoth guerillas ambushed and destroyed a Muslim army at the Battle of Covadonga; and by the time Charles Martel won a decisive victory over a Muslim invasion force at the Battle of Tours in France in 732, the Spanish Reconquista was well under way. Having lost the initiative, the Muslims never regained it.

After almost eight centuries of episodic warfare, Muslim holdings in Spain had been reduced to Grenada and its immediate environs. When the Moors foolishly violated a truce in 1482, they provided the joint monarchy of Ferdinand and Isabella with both the pretext and the opportunity to drive them from Spain. And since the citadel of Alhama was the lynchpin of the Moors’ defense, their fate was sealed when it fell to Ponce de Leon. Although it took another ten years of hard fighting to secure southern Spain after the capture of Alhama, the outcome was never in doubt. The only real question was how harshly Ferdinand and Isabella would deal with the Jews and Protestants that had flocked to the Muslim occupation zone. 

Religion and politics were tightly interconnected in the Middle Ages, and this was especially true in Spain where Jews and Protestants had offered their services and often their swords to the Muslim regime. Jewish historians often refer to the Moorish Occupation as a “Golden Age” for Spanish Jews; and had the Protestants a comparable time frame there, it is likely that their historians would have described their experience in similar terms. Throughout the nearly eight centuries of the Muslim Occupation, Jews had served in high offices throughout the regime; and in the final decades of Muslim rule, Protestant mercenaries had filled the ranks of their armies.  

Although the historical record is subject to dispute, it seems most likely that Ferdinand and Isabella had been initially prepared to offer the Jews and Protestants the traditional option of converting to Catholicism or departing their lands. But after Jewish enclaves rose twice in armed rebellion against them, Ferdinand and Isabella seized control of the Inquisition and hurled it against them. Although from the vantage point of the Twenty First Century we are inclined to view this as an exercise in religious fanaticism, observers at the time harbored no such illusions: Ferdinand and Isabella recast the Inquisition as a pacification program, designed and implemented for the sole purposes of subduing sullen and hostile minorities unwilling to accept defeat. In modern parlance, it was a “Dirty War.”

The first phase of the Inquisition ran thirteen years, overlapping the final ten years of combat; and by the time it ended, most of the Jews and Protestants had fled. Although the two groups had scattered to the four winds, substantial numbers of each ended up in the Netherlands where their descendants created the first modern banks.

Although the Norwegians employed paper currency centuries before, the role of paper money remained inconsequential until Dutch banks introduced a conditional form of fractional reserve banking. But it was not until the Dutch provisional government began offering bond issues backed by future tax receipts that the Dutch currency gained broad acceptance, and Dutch banks became immensely profitable. The “Dutch System” of public debt - which offered long-term debt instruments backed by future receipts from the taxation of individual incomes - persuaded otherwise skeptical investors to freely invest in Dutch bonds; and it was the Hollanders’ ability to raise essentially unlimited amounts of funds that ensured their successful fight for independence against the Spanish Empire in the Eighty Years War (1566-1648). Ironically, many of the Dutch bankers that bought and brokered the insurgent government’s debt were descendants of the Jews and Protestants driven from Spain more than a half century before.

Following Dutch independence in 1648, Holland emerged as the Continent’s leading financial power. The Dutch System made it possible for the Dutch government to raise more revenue per year than any other country in Europe; and permitted the Dutch to both finance and lead the coalition of European states that frustrated the expansionist policies of the French Empire under Louis VIV.

It was the success of the Dutch financial system that persuaded the English Parliament to depose the Stuart Dynasty in favor of Holland’s Prince William of Orange in 1688. For in addition to his other virtues – Prince William was Protestant, childless, and an experienced battlefield commander – he had an excellent relationship with the Dutch financial elite.

With an unsecured loan of two million gulden - which was then a staggering sum - William was able to raise an army and land in England. After overcoming token opposition from loyalist forces in the summer of 1688, William marched upon London; and was crowned King William III by Parliament the following year. Having successfully consolidated power, William invited his financial backers to join him in England; and in 1694, he rewarded them with a royal charter for the Bank of England. With statutory authority to issue paper currency, the Bank of England became in fact - although not in name - the world’s first central bank.

Eleven years after the establishment of the Bank of England, a Scottish economist by the name of John Law published an academic paper entitled Money and Trade Consider’d; With a Proposal for Supplying the Nation with Money. Although Law is sometimes ranked as one of the great classical economists, historians have more often judged him harshly. For it was Law who placed France on the road to Revolution with his scheme for a “managed inflationary economy.”

Having discerned the link between money supply and overall economic activity, Law pointed out the then-still-theoretical possibility of increasing the Gross National Product by increasing the availability of money. Noting the obvious – that in the presence of unfulfilled demand, any increase in the money supply will inevitably result in the purchase of additional goods and services – Law argued that governments could and should exploit the twin mechanisms of fractional reserve banking and paper currency to stimulate economic growth. The intellectual predecessor of John Maynard Keynes, Law argued that the goal of government monetary policy should be full employment rather than stable prices.

Although Law was fully cognizant of the fact that his proposed policies would introduce a form of artificially created inflation into the economic system, he believed the benefits of full employment would offset the inevitable erosion of purchasing power. It was a powerful argument, deeply rooted in Utilitarian philosophy; but it was perhaps rooted even more deeply in Law’s own psyche. Arguably the best gambler of the age, Law never suffered the need for gainful employment. He made a handsome living at the gaming tables, which he interrupted - occasionally - to advise the King of France.  

Law’s success as a gambler may have blinded him, for it was not until he had wrecked the French economy with a surfeit of paper money in 1719 that he realized his scheme was fatally flawed. Control of the money supply was not enough; to make his managed inflationary economy work, he needed to control tax rates as well. As a practical matter that would have required subverting the Estates-General, the French equivalent of Parliament.

Although both Law and his theories were discredited by the implosion of the inflationary bubble they had created in France, neither were entirely forgotten. This was especially true in Great Britain, which in the next century fell under the sway of an aristocracy of wealth. Although Britain remained a monarchy in name, the Parliament that had deposed the Stuart Dynasty and placed William of Orange upon the throne had constructed a republic-in-fact. Political power lay in the hands of the Parliament; and after the modest democratization of 1832, the aristocratic landowners that had once dominated that august body were slowly but surely displaced by a financial elite that owed their fortunes – directly or indirectly – to the Bank of England.

By the latter part of the Nineteenth Century, the British Empire had reached its apogee. The “New Men” of the emergent financial elite were as committed to the Empire as the landed aristocracy had been before them, but unlike the aristocracy – who were remnants of Britain’s feudal past – the New Men were less inclined to behold it in traditional geopolitical terms. Where the aristocracy had once framed the world in terms of nation-states and spheres of influence, the New Men were inclined to cast it in terms of  “capital pools,” i.e., concentrations of monies available for investment. The fact that these pools of capital were separated by national boundaries and subject to a bewildering welter of national laws was, from their perspective, the great tragedy of their time. For those engaged in the business of finance capital - which for them was a term synonymous with economic development - national boundaries and national laws imposed staggering inefficiencies. Their remedy was policy of Free Trade that would, inevitably, reduce nation-states to economic zones.

But their proposed solution was a double-edged sword. By exploiting comparative national advantages, Free Trade was certain to produce in time a global rationalization of capital allocation and – eventually – a corresponding rationalization of production and distribution. If managed wisely and well, the rationalization of the world’s economy would eventually result in a dramatic increase in the global standard of living. But Free Trade presupposes an unhindered movement of capital, goods, services, and labor; and in the short term, this would wreak havoc upon the fortunes of peasants, farmers, and working men in general due to existing wage and price differentials. Mindful of the social disruption Free Trade would cause – and the corresponding political risks it entailed – the New Men realized they would have to proceed quietly, by increments.

Distinguishing between an elite consensus and an elite conspiracy is a difficult task at best; and as a practical matter, the distinction depends upon the degree of public acknowledgement. But when addressing a subject matter as obtuse as macroeconomics, it is altogether possible to openly present both the means and ends of policy without reference to their predictable and easily foreseen political results; and the New Men took full advantage of this fact. Thus the British financial elite’s decision to remake the world through the mechanism of Free Trade can be reasonably termed a conspiracy; albeit one conducted openly, and in plain sight.

The eminent historian Carroll Quigley addressed this conspiracy in 1966, in a 1300-page tome entitled Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. ⁵ Then a professor at Georgetown University, Dr. Quigley traced its inspiration to an Oxford professor by the name of John Ruskin. During the 1870’s and 1880’s, the sons of England’s financial elite passed through his lecture hall; and by all accounts, he made a profound impression upon them. Noting that for the first time in human history there was sufficient capital and technology to lift the entire world out of ignorance and poverty, Ruskin taught his students that it was their personal responsibility to establish a New World Order based upon wealth and plenty. Cecil Rhodes - one of his more prominent pupils - claimed to have dedicated his life to precisely that purpose. In 1891 he established a secret society that eventually revealed itself as the British Round Table, and in 1919 - with the active assistance of J. P. Morgan - an American chapter known as The Council on Foreign Relations.

In the centuries that have passed since Ponce de Leon stormed the Muslim fortress of Alhama, the descendants of the Jewish and Protestant refugees that fled the Spanish Inquisition for Holland to become the world’s first true international bankers have prospered, broadened in composition, and extended their geographic range. Once a multiethnic consortium that spoke broken Dutch with Spanish accents, it expanded across the English Channel in the late Seventeenth Century to embrace first the Anglo-Saxons and then the Scots. In the late Eighteenth Century it expanded throughout the British Empire; and in the late Nineteenth Century, it successfully co-opted the emerging financial elites of Canada, Australia, New Zeeland, and the lost colony of America. In the late Twentieth Century, it spread throughout the world.

Since the late 1800’s it has attempted to coordinate the foreign policies of the English-speaking countries through the British Round Table; and since the 1920’s it has exerted enormous influence upon American foreign policy through The Council on Foreign Relations. In the aftermath of the Second World War it created the Bilderberger Group in a successful effort to co-opt the financial elites of Continental Europe and Asia, and in the mid-1970’s it created the Trilateral Commission to manage trans-oceanic trade policies. In the process it has become a truly global financial elite; and it now stands on the verge of realizing its long-held dream of global financial integration. Through the mechanism of Free Trade, the world’s once separate and distinct capital pools have been linked together to form a series of interconnected ponds; and through that same mechanism, the world’s nation-states are slowly but surely being reduced to inter-related economic zones.

A single global market for capital, goods, services and labor looms large upon the horizon; and already, the task of subsuming the world’s nation-sates into a global confederation has begun.

Similarly, the global financial elite supported the creation of the ASEAN trading block in Asia; and the North American Free Trade Association in the Western Hemisphere. And working through the mechanism of The Council on Foreign Relations, it has more recently championed the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America and the so-called NAFTA Superhighway.

The clear objective of the global financial elite is to construct a series of regional trade organizations, in preface to creating a single global trading zone. In the process, the sovereignty of nation-states first established by the Peace of Westphalia in 1648 is being steadily eroded. This erosion is far-advanced in Europe, proceeding apace in Asia, and fairly begun in North America. Thus the question is: what can be done to stop it?

Banks once inspired fear and resentment, and none more so than the central banks that first appeared in the Seventeenth Century. Save for Alexander Hamilton, the Founders of the American Republic replied to the concept of centralized banking with varying degrees of fear and loathing. In the course of their lamentable relationship with the British Empire, they had learned that financial policies pursued by central banks have profound and often corrupting political consequences; and they doubted the Republic they had created could long withstand them. It was for this reason that Jefferson publicly railed against the concept of a central bank, and Washington privately warned against it; and it was for this reason as well that Jackson gambled his presidency. Indeed, the bank controversy roiled the Republic for the first 50 years of its existence; and with the sole exception of slavery, it was the most divisive issue of the age. It returned a half-century later in different guise, when the populist insurrection of William Jennings Bryan made monetary policy the central issue of American political life.

But unfortunately, the realization that government financial policies inevitably produce political consequences seems lost with the passage of time. In the same year that Congress created the Federal Reserve Bank, it also passed the Sixteenth Amendment that legitimized the income tax. With little fanfare and even less public apprehension, the Dutch System of public finance was imposed upon the Republic; and with it, a slightly improved version of John Law’s managed inflationary economy. It is little wonder, then, that elected officials have become increasingly unresponsive to public opinion overtime – for the Dutch System provides essentially unlimited funds for their pet projects and schemes; and so long as projected tax revenues balance expected interest payments on the national debt, the political class has little to fear. Less beholden to the electorate than to the global financial elite that controls the institutions that buy and broker the government’s debt, they are more responsive to the elite’s interests than they are to the concerns of the common man or, indeed, the nation. As in the rest of the economically developed world, political success in America now amounts to little more than fooling most of the people, most of the time.

For those that believe the nation-state remains relevant - and for those that wish to preserve their national identity - salvation lies in public education. For more than three centuries, the individuals and institutions that have deliberately and self-consciously sought to remake the world in their own image have hidden in plain sight; protected not by government secrecy, but rather by a shroud of popular ignorance. Thus the first necessary step toward restoring popular sovereignty and halting the unbridled rush toward global integration is to restore the link that was once so well understood between government financial policies and their inevitable political results – to restore to public consciousness what an earlier age so clearly understood as political-economy.

This paper was commissioned by the Center for Intelligence Studies and written by Charles S. Viar; and it remains the shared intellectual property of both. In the interests of public education, however, copyright protection has been partially waived. Provided that full attribution is given and textual integrity preserved, recipients of this paper are encouraged to reproduce and redistribute it to the interested public.

^1.Buchanan, Patrick. State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2006. Pages 17-18, 69, 246-47

^2.SPP.gov on the World Wide Web.

^3.Although the majority of Holland’s financial elite descended from the Spanish Jews that had fled to Holland to escape the Inquisition, by 1688 most had become nominally Protestant.

^4.Editor’s Note: For an excellent summary account of John Law’s career, see Chapter Six of James Macdonald’s A Free Nation Deep in Debt: The Financial Roots of Democracy. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2003.

^5.Quigley, Carroll. Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in Our Time. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1966. See especially pages 949-956.