by Maj. Bart R. Kessler
March 1997

from OldThinkerNews Website
 

Disclaimer
The views expressed in this academic research paper are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the US government or the Department of Defense.



Abstract

The phrase “New World Order” has been widely used on the political scene since first publicly coined by former president, George Bush. Although quickly adopted as the catch phrase of the 1990s, few people actually agree on what “New World Order” really means.

 

Since “New World Order,” while elusive in definition, is most frequently used to describe aspects of the post Cold War international scenario, understanding the true meaning of that phrase is critical to projecting our future strategic environment and prospects for the new millennium. The attempt of this paper is to reveal that true meaning.

Historical analysis will be the primary methodology used to reveal the meaning of George Bush’s specific terminology describing his concept of “New World Order.”

 

In a January 16, 1991 speech, he identified the opportunity to build a New World Order,

“where the rule of law… governs the conduct of nations,” and “in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN’s founders.”

These words will be dissected and historically analyzed to develop a clear picture of “New World Order.”

 

Additionally, the primary mechanisms for implementing New World Order will be addressed; and finally, specific strategic environment and national security implications will be drawn from those conclusions.
 

 


Chapter 1
What “New World Order?”

Out of these troubled times, our…objective - a New World Order - can emerge… Today, that new world is struggling to be born, a world quite different from the one we have known…
 - Former President George Bush September 11, 1990

The phrase, “New World Order” has been widely used since first coined by George Bush in his 1990 speech before a joint session of Congress.

 

Although quickly adopted as the catch phrase of the 1990s, few people actually agree on what “New World Order” really means. It has been used to describe such diverse contemporary issues as the post Cold War balance of power, economic interdependence, fragmentation and the rise of nationalism, and technology advancement and integration - basically any issue that appears new and different.

 

The general feeling is that while elusive, this “New World Order” is likely significant. Since “New World Order” is most frequently used to describe aspects of the post Cold War international scenario, understanding the true meaning of that phrase is critical to projecting our future strategic environment and prospects for the new millennium.

 

The attempt of this paper is to reveal that true meaning.
 

 

New World Order Interpretations
In relation to world politics, there are a few basic paradigm-driven interpretations of the New World Order.

 

Joseph Nye, in his 1992 Foreign Affairs article, “What New World Order?” identifies two of those:

“Realists, in the tradition of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, see international politics occurring among sovereign states balancing each others’ power. World order is the product of a stable distribution of power among the major states. Liberals, in the tradition of Woodrow Wilson and Jimmy Carter, look at relations among peoples as well as states. They see order arising from broad values like democracy and human rights, as well as from international law and institutions such as the United Nations.” 1

Another dichotomy of New World Order interpretations is presented by Lawrence Freedman in his Foreign Affairs article, “Order and Disorder in the New World.”

“The first [interpretation] is that the slogan reflects a presumption that international institutions and, in particular, the United Nations, will be taking a more active and important role in global management… [T]he second interpretation…[is] that the phrase ‘New World Order’ is merely descriptive, requiring no more than acceptance that the current situation is unique and clearly different in critical respects” from the past.” 2

The struggle to ascertain George Bush’s true meaning of New World Order is not unique to this author.

 

Richard Falk, in his 1993 work, The Constitutional Foundations of World Peace, struggled with the realist and liberalist - or more aptly termed - globalist interpretations.

“We could never be quite sure, especially in the months of crisis leading up to the war itself, whether George Bush was promising a new structure of international relations based on respect for international law and on centrality for the United Nations, or whether his use of the phrase ‘a New World Order’ was little more than a bid for public support and an invitation that governments join the North in one further war in and against the South.” 3

So far there are three New World Order paradigms presented: realist based, focused on balance of power; globalist based, focused on global management and the United Nations (UN); and finally, idealist based, focused on nothing more than the identification of change.

 

To make an accurate assessment of Bush’s precise meaning, more information is obviously needed.

 

On January 16, 1991, he further clarified his position in a speech announcing the hostilities with Iraq by identifying the opportunity to build a New World Order,

“where the rule of law… governs the conduct of nations,” and “in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN’s founders.” 4

These specifics in describing Bush’s concept of New World Order clearly lean toward the globalist interpretation.

 


Methodology
Joseph Nye pointed out, that the,

“1991 Persian Gulf War was, according to President Bush, about ‘more than one small country; it is a big idea; a New World Order…” 5

Bush’s words, highlighted in the quote above, will be analyzed in detail to reveal the nature of his globalist “big idea” called New World Order.

 

Specifically, Chapter 2 will focus on the identification of the “UN’s founders.” Chapter 3 will attempt to frame their “vision.” Chapter 4 will address a “credible United Nations” and its “peacekeeping role.” Chapter 5 will analyze “the rule of law” in terms of governing “the conduct of nations.”

 

Following the detailed analysis of Bush’s words, the mechanisms for implementing the New World Order will be addressed in Chapter 6 as well as the implications of New World Order in Chapter 7. Chapter 8 will reflect this authors final thoughts on the subject.
 

 

Notes

1 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “What New World Order?” Foreign Affairs (Spring 1992), 84.
2 Lawrence Freedman, “Order and Disorder in the New World,” Foreign Affairs (1991/1992), 22.
3 Richard A. Falk, Robert C. Johansen, and Samuel S. Kim, The Constitutional Foundations of World Peace (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1993), 13.

4 George Bush, “Operation Desert Storm Launched,” Address to the Nation from the White House, 16 January 1991. US Department of State Dispatch (21 January 1991), 38.

5 Nye, 83.


 

 

Chapter 2
The United Nations’ Founders

Forty-five years ago, while the fires of an epic war still raged across two oceans and two continents, a small group of men and women began a search for hope amid the ruins. They gathered in San Francisco, stepping back from the haze and horror, to try to shape a new structure that might support an ancient dream.
 - George Bush October 1, 1990

Interpreting Bush’s concept of New World Order begins with identifying the “UN’s founders.”

 

Who were these men and women “gathered in San Francisco?”

 

Before pursuing that question, though, it is interesting to note that Bush was not basing his “big idea” on the founding fathers of this great nation, but on a less infamous group of UN founders. In fact, our nation’s founding fathers may not have been enamored with the whole concept of a United Nations.

 

For instance, George Washington commented in his farewell address that,

“the great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, but to have with them as little political connection as possible.” 1

 

San Francisco Conference
The United Nations charter was established at the San Francisco Conference in June, 1945. By analyzing the events leading up to the conference and identifying some of the key players, it may be possible to pinpoint Bush’s “UN founders.”

The War and Peace Studies of World War II provided the backdrop for the development of the United Nations. After 1942, all study groups of the War and Peace Studies shifted focus from the war effort to developing the structure and responsibilities of the future United Nations organization.2

 

In fact,

“quite a few members of the War and Peace Studies groups, after leaving the program, participated in the preparatory conference at Dumbarton Oaks or served in advisory positions at the organizing conference of the United Nations in San Francisco in June 1945. Some of them actually attained positions of considerable influence.” 3

So exactly who were these people that transitioned from the War and Peace Studies to the development and establishment of the United Nations?

 

On 12 September, 1939, more than two years prior to United States involvement in World War II, Hamilton Fish Armstrong (then editor of the Council on Foreign Relations publication, Foreign Affairs) and Walter Mallory (then Executive Director of the Council) contacted the State Department to offer the services of the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The men of the Council proposed a…program of independent analysis and study that would guide American foreign policy in the coming years of war and the challenging new world that would emerge after. The project became known as the War and Peace Studies.” 4

Aware of the fact that the State Department would not be able to create a brain trust within a short period of time, both Secretary of State Cordell Hull and Hull’s undersecretary, Sumner Welles, agreed to the Council’s plan.5

 

The State Department/Council relationship was not public knowledge, though.

 

Isaiah Bowman, then a Council on Foreign Relations Director, wrote in November of 1939 that,

“the matter is strictly confidential, because the whole plan would be ‘ditched’ if it became generally known that the State department is working in collaboration with any outside group.” 6

Over the next five years, almost 100 men, financed by nearly $350,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation, formulated 682 memoranda and drafts for the State Department.

 

The studies were divided into four primary functional groups:

  • economic and financial

  • security and armaments

  • territorial

  • political,

...all headed and staffed by Council members.7

 

Determining the precise impact of those memoranda on the decisions of the State Department is impossible, but Armstrong and Mallory were convinced that their efforts both defined the boundaries of debate within the government and secured the Council’s role as the center of attention for setting foreign policy priorities.8

The cooperation between the Council and the State Department was further enhanced when, in 1942, the State Department invited Council members to participate in the newly created Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy.

“This group…concentrated on the United Nations organization, the successor to the League of Nations, a subject that always received keen attention at Council meetings.” 9

In the spring of 1943, Armstrong and Norman H. Davis (a Council Director) proposed a plan to Secretary of State Hull for a “supranational organization” based on the Wilsonian ideals of liberal internationalism. Hull subsequently asked Davis to present the proposal to President Roosevelt.

Roosevelt liked the idea and within a short time blueprints for a charter of the successor to the League of Nations were drafted and discussed... In his discussions with Davis, President Roosevelt proposed changes, and Davis introduced these into the discussions and revisions of drafts. Roosevelt, in August 1943, took the final draft with him to the Quebec Conference, where it was accepted by Britain’s Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Foreign Minister Eden.

 

With only minor changes, the text was taken to Moscow and signed by delegates of the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union as the Moscow Declaration on 1 November 1943.

 

In this document, the nations not only pledged to coordinate and cooperate in their war aims but also declared,

‘that they recognized the necessity of establishing at the earliest predictable date a general international organization, based on the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states, and open to membership by all such states, large and small, for the maintenance of international peace and security.’ 10

The framework for the United Nations was clearly in place. The culmination would come at the San Francisco Conference. Authors of the subject disagree as to the specific amount of influence levied by the Council.

 

Dan Smoot, in The Invisible Government, concludes that:

“The crowning moment of achievement for the Council came at San Francisco in 1945, when over 40 members of the United States Delegation to the organizational meeting of the United Nations…were members of the Council.” 11

Cleon Skousen in The Naked Capitalist deduced a different number when he said:

“There were 74 CFR members in the American delegation to the UN Conference at San Francisco in 1945.… These…CFR members occupied nearly every significant decision-making spot in the American delegation…” 12

Whatever the number, it is clear that the Council was a major player in both the conference and the founding of the UN.

 

Even Michael Wala, who is much less convinced of the power of the Council than Smoot and Skousen, said in The Council on Foreign Relations and American Foreign Policy in the Early Cold War that,

“only in the founding of the United Nations did their [Council] discussions about organization and responsibilities have a direct and immediate impact.” 13

Based the discussion so far, it seems reasonable to conclude that Bush’s “UN’s founders,” are represented, maybe not entirely, but at least in large part by the Council on Foreign Relations.

 

A more detailed look at the Council is required, though, to determine their importance as related to a New World Order.

 


Council on Foreign Relations
For the Council on Foreign Relations, as a “UN founder,” to play a significant role in the creation of Bush’s New World Order, one would think that they must have some impact on the formulation and/or implementation of American foreign policy.

 

The relationship between the Council and American foreign policy will now be further analyzed.

 


Inquiry
The internationalist ideal of the United Nations was not new.

 

The Council members viewed this as a “second chance” at internationalism through a supranational organization.14 The first, the League of Nations, was a concept formulated with the help of the “The Inquiry,” the predecessor to the War and Peace Studies and catalyst for the creation of the Council on Foreign Relations.

 

The Inquiry was a working,

“fellowship of distinguished scholars tasked to brief Woodrow Wilson about options for the postwar world once the Kaiser and imperial Germany fell to defeat.” 15

In the few years immediately following the Paris Peace Conference, the leaders of the Inquiry established the Council on Foreign Relations.

“The vision that stirred the Inquiry became the work of the Council on Foreign Relations over the better part of a century,” according to the Council’s own 75 year history, Continuing The Inquiry." 16

The Council was formally incorporated on July 29, 1921 with the specific purpose,

“to afford a continuous conference on international questions affecting the United States.” 17

As supporters of Wilson and the League of Nations, Council members were greatly disillusioned by the Senate’s rejection of the League and the swell of isolationist sentiment in America.

 

They “resolved to awaken America to its worldwide responsibilities.” 18

 

Hence, began the Council’s long-standing drive to advocate globalist foreign policies. Their internationalist bent was clearly demonstrated by one of the Council’s first internal controversies. Within the first year or so of the Council’s existence, an avowed isolationist was invited to speak at private Council dinner meeting.

 

Many members were outraged.

“Russell C. Leffingwell, a partner of J.P. Morgan’s bank, refused to stand at the lectern alongside an isolationist; Paul Warburg of Kuhn Loeb vented outrage that an ‘uneducable demagogue’ should be offered Council hospitality.” 19

In response, Isaiah Bowman, of the original Inquiry, presented a different perspective:

“What has Wall Street to gain by refusing to hear even a demagogue? Certainly if he is a dangerous demagogue we ought all the more to hear him to discover why he is dangerous and just how dangerous he is.” 20

This episode established the precedent for Hamilton Fish Armstrong’s strategy of presenting the Council as impartial by inviting varied speakers, but limiting the membership to those “influential figures who shared an internationalist perspective.” 21
 

 

Foreign Policy Process Impact
The Council on Foreign Relations has been singled out as one of the most influential organizations impacting American foreign policy.22 The degree to which the Council has influenced foreign policy over the last 75 years is heavily debated; the fact that it has is not. The Council on Foreign Relations is populated with powerful figures from all walks of life.

 

Their own 25 year history stated that,

“the Council’s membership has been unusual in that it has included leaders of industry and finance, authorities on international law, economics, and international relations, officers of the Foreign Service and of the armed services of the United States in Washington and abroad, and prominent authors, editors and newspapermen. Members have thus had direct access to the facts which affect foreign policy.” 23

Numerous United States presidents, secretaries of state, CIA directors, and many other influential foreign policy positions have been filled with names from the rolls of the Council on Foreign Relations.

 

Just by scanning the very short list of Council on Foreign Relations past and present Directors and Officers, one can quickly identify several key players in our recent administrations:

A review of the entire Council roll (which this author did not have the resources to pursue) would produce many more.

The Council on Foreign Relations, because of wealthy, influential members such as the Rockefellers, has been traditionally associated with the “elites” in America and has been referred to by some as representative of the “Eastern Establishment.”

 

There are many conspiracy theories associated with the Council’s influence on American foreign affairs. This paper is not intended to adopt any of those theories, but to show that regardless of support for these theories, most students of the Council have concluded that there is substantial linkage between the Council and American foreign policy.

Michael Wala, who clearly denies support for the conspiracy view, still concludes at the very end of his book, that,

“the Council on Foreign Relations provided a well-organized, yet informal, link between elites concerned with U.S. foreign relations and the administration. At the same time it served as a connection between elite and public opinion. The Council thus fulfilled an important function in a corporatist strategy to devise the foreign policy of the United States.” 25

Professor G. William Domhoff has concluded in his studies that through the Council,

“the power elite formulates general guidelines for American foreign policy and provides the personnel to carry out this policy.” 26

As an example, he highlights that twelve of fifteen presidential committees dealing with aspects of foreign and military policy established between 1945 and 1972 were headed by members of the Council on Foreign Relations.27

Anthony Lukas debunked the conspiracy theory in his article, but pointed out that,

“everyone knows how fraternity brothers can help other brothers climb the ladder of life. If you want to make foreign policy, there’s no better fraternity to belong to than the Council.” 28

Carroll Quigley, a former Georgetown professor, who once taught President Clinton, provided the most intriguing commentary on the subject.

 

In his 1966 mammoth 1300 plus page work, Tragedy and Hope - A History of the World in Our Time, Quigley commented on the conspiracy theory:

“This radical Right fairy tale, which is now an accepted folk myth in many groups in America, pictured the recent history of the United States… as a well-organized plot by extreme Left-wing elements… to destroy the American way of life.” 29

He goes on to further clarify that,

“this myth, like all fables, does in fact have a modicum of truth. There does exist, and has existed for a generation, an international Anglophile network… I know of the operations of this network because I have studied it for twenty years and was permitted for two years, in the early 1960s, to examine its papers and secret records. I have no aversion to it or to most of its aims and have, for much of my life, been close to it and to many of its instruments.” 30

Quigley continues:

“The two ends of this English-speaking axis have sometimes been called, perhaps facetiously, the English and American Establishments. There is, however, a considerable degree of truth behind the joke, a truth which reflects a very real power structure.” 31

The linchpin is that Quigley identifies the “American Establishment” half of the “Anglophile network” as the Council on Foreign Relations.32

 

These words probably provide the greatest testimony of the power and influence of the Council on Foreign Relations because they come from a man on the inside intimately familiar with the organization and its linkage to the foreign policy process.

Regardless of their perspective, several students and one insider of the Council have all concluded that the Council is a significant player in the American foreign policy process.

 

This author would have to agree despite the Council’s defense that it is nothing more than,

“a privately sponsored, privately financed, privately managed post-graduate academy of political science, functioning in the true spirit of public service.” 33

This picture just doesn’t wash with the comments of members such as Richard Barnet who stated that,

“membership in the Council on Foreign Relations…is a rite of passage for an aspiring national security manager… The Council takes itself very seriously.” 34

Given the Council’s role as a “UN founder” and their influence on foreign policy, two more linkages need to be discussed prior to proceeding.

  • The first is the role of the Council publication, Foreign Affairs

  • The second is the relationship between the Council and tax exempt foundations

 

Foreign Affairs
Part of the Council on Foreign Relation’s purpose is to provide a foreign affairs educational forum.

 

One of their primary tools to achieve that purpose is their publication, Foreign Affairs. Officially, Foreign Affairs does not represent the views of the Council, but those of individuals, and is open to all perspectives. However, Wala and Schulzinger have slightly different interpretations.

 

Wala points out that through discussion groups and Foreign Affairs, Council members sought to,

“build a consensus, not of the broad public, but of the elites of finance and business, of academicians at prestigious universities, and of ‘responsible’ officials in the State Department. This was to serve as the basis and legitimization of foreign policy decisions. When results of the discussion at the at the Council were considered important and relevant, they could be published in Foreign Affairs.” 35

Schulzinger, in The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs adds that,

“while the editors saw themselves as the models of impartiality, no reader could be fooled into thinking that the journal was anything other than a plea for forward United States foreign policy.” 36

Since articles published in Foreign Affairs primarily represent the ideologies and policies important to the Council, they will be frequently utilized as primary sources later in this paper.

 


Foundations
It is important to note that the Council on Foreign Relations is not a stand-alone entity with a monopoly on foreign policy influence.

 

No one organization can be all powerful in today’s complex society. There are many influential organizations, but the Council is one of the few that has been consistently identified throughout the last 75 years.

One additional linkage important to highlight for the rest of this analysis, though, is that of tax exempt foundations.

 

Republican Congressman Carroll Reese, heading a Special Committee on Tax-Exempt Foundations, concluded the following in his final report published December 16, 1954 by the Government Printing Office:

Miss Casey’s report (Hearings pp.8777, et seq.) shows clearly the interlock between The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and some of its associated organizations, such as the Council on Foreign Relations and other foundations, with the State Department…

 

They have undertaken vital research projects for the Department; virtually created minor departments or groups within the Department for it; supplied advisors and executives from their ranks; fed a constant stream of personnel into the State Department trained by themselves or under programs which they have financed; and have had much to do with the formulation of foreign policy both in principle and detail.…

 

They have, to a marked degree, acted as direct agents of the State Department.…What we see here is a number of large foundations, primarily The Rockefeller Foundation, The Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, using their enormous public funds to finance a one-sided approach to foreign policy and to promote it actively, among the public by propaganda, and in the Government through infiltration.

 

The power to do this comes out of the power of the vast funds employed.37

Nearly twenty years later, Professor Domhoff further evidenced the linkage by pointing out that,

“in 1971, 14 of 19 Rockefeller Foundation trustees were members of the Council on Foreign Relations, with 4 of those members also serving as directors of the council. Ten of 17 trustees of the Carnegie Corporation, as the most important of four Carnegie foundations is named, were members of the council at that time, as were 7 of 16 trustees at the Ford Foundation.” 38

The foundations have provided a funding source for many activities of the Council and related organizations. Recall the earlier mentioned financier of the War and Peace Studies - the Rockefeller Foundation.

 

The foundation linkage will reappear in later discussions on the “vision” of the “UN founders.”

 


George Bush and New World Order Linkage
Two final questions need to be addressed prior to proceeding.

 

The first is, could George Bush have actually inferred involvement of an organization like the Council on Foreign Relations in his “UN founders” phrase? Given Bush’s long-standing involvement with the organization, it seems reasonable to conclude that the answer is, yes!

 

Bush was on the Council Board of Directors in the years 1977-1979 and a member long before that.39 He stepped down from the boards of the Council, Yale, and the Trilateral Commission to shed his “establishment” image prior to his run for the Republican presidential nomination.40

 

But, despite early momentum, he lost the 1980 Republican primary to Ronald Reagan due largely to what Holly Sklar calls,

“right wing opposition to his…association with the Eastern Establishment.” 41

Obviously, Bush knows a thing or two about the workings of the Council and as such, clearly understands their linkage to the formation of the United Nations.

The second question is, why has such a significant amount of effort gone into describing the relationships of the Council on Foreign Relations prior to proceeding with the analysis of Bush’s New World Order words? Understanding the Council relationship is critical to establishing the framework for the upcoming description of New World Order vision and implementation mechanisms.

 

Council related writings will therefore provide the predominant sources for the rest of this paper.

 


Notes

1  Gary Allen, Say “No!” to the New World Order (Seal Beach, Calif: Concord Press, 1987), 13.
2  Michael Wala, The Council on Foreign Relations and American Foreign Policy in the Early Cold War (Providence, R.I.: Berghahn Books, 1994), 42.
3  Ibid., 44.
4  Peter Grose, Continuing the Inquiry: The Council on Foreign Relations From 1921 to 1996 (New York, N.Y.: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996), 23.
5  Wala, 31.
6  Ibid.
7  Grose, 23.
8  Robert D. Schulzinger, The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1984), 79.
9  Wala, 34.
10 Ibid., 35.
11 Dan Smoot, The Invisible Government (Dallas, Tex.: The Dan Smoot Report, 1962), 5.
12 Cleon W. Skousen, The Naked Capitalist. Salt Lake City, Utah: Reviewer, 1970), 52.

13 Wala, 42.

14 Ibid., 43.

15 Grose, 1.

16 Ibid.

17 John W. Davis, The Council on Foreign Relations, 1921-1946 (New York, N.Y.: Council on Foreign Relations, 1947), 7.
18 Anthony J. Lukas, “The Council on Foreign Relations--Is It a Club? Seminar? ‘Invisible Government’?” The New York Times Magazine (21 November 1971), 124.
19 Grose, 15.
20 Ibid.
21 Schulzinger, 18.
22 Wala, ix.
23 Davis, p11
24 Grose, 69-72.
25 Wala, 243.
26 Lukas, 124.
27 William G. Domhoff, Who Rules America Now? (New York, N.Y.: Simon & Schuster, Inc., 1983), 133.
28 Lukas, 125.
29 Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope-A History of the World in Our Time (New York, N.Y.: MacMillan Company, 1966), 949.

30 Quigley, 950.

31 Ibid., 956.

32 Ibid., 952.

33 Schulzinger, 246.
34 Ibid., 248.
35 Wala, 12.
36 Schulzinger, 11.
37 Smoot, 163.
38 Domhoff, 93.
39 Grose, 70.
40 Schulzinger, 239.
41 Holly Sklar, ed. Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management (Boston, Mass.: South End Press, 1980), 573.


 

 

Chapter 3
New World Order Vision

In a quite literal sense, world order visions can, like religion, act as opiates… It is necessary to practice, as well as preach, global reform, and to embody world order values in present public policy choices.
 - Richard A. Falk World Order Models Project

The current task at hand is to build a clear picture of the New World Order “promise and vision” of Bush’s UN founders. To accomplish this, the ideas that evolved from the War and Peace studies will first be examined. Then two, more contemporary world order studies related to the Council on Foreign Relations will be evaluated.

 

The aspects of New World Order vision that impact national security strategy are those that will be highlighted.
 

 

War and Peace Studies
In his 1992 Foreign Affairs article, Joseph Nye, comparing the present with the past, concluded that,

“when the decline of Soviet power led to Moscow’s new policy of cooperation with Washington in applying the UN doctrine of collective security against Baghdad, it was less the arrival of a New World Order than the reappearance of an aspect of the liberal institutional order that was supposed to have come into effect in 1945.” 1

And the vision of that liberal institutional order was driven by the Council’s War and Peace Studies. The first critical challenge to world order vision was to resolve the competing nature of universal order on one hand and national sovereignty on the other.

 

Walter R. Sharp, a general working on the War and Peace Studies Politics group, denounced the,

“popular fetishism of sovereignty” and advocated the creation of “an international society which will be physically secure, economically stable, and culturally free.” 2

Sharp foresaw the advancement of economic interdependence as means of eroding national barriers.

On the security side, the studies concluded that the new United Nations must have responsibility for policing international disorders. Several recommendations were presented for the creation of an international police-like force. Rather than creating a true multinational army, Colonel George Fielding Eliot advocated assigning whole units of national forces on a two-year rotating basis to UN command.

 

Eliot’s fear of a permanent UN multinational police force was that a centralized Chief of Staff,

“devoid of nationality and the restraints of loyalty and his own country’s laws, might well seek to carve out a Napoleonic future of his own.” 3

Another Armaments group staffer, Theodore P. Wright, presented a truly visionary strategy for international policing which may be viewed as a prophesy of the outcome of the Gulf War.

 

Wright foresaw air power as the wise solution to overcoming the difficulties of forging a true international army. Air power provided the opportunity for awesome destructiveness while employing relatively few personnel.

 

Wright explains:

“The war has…taught us the lesson that now, with the advent of air power, the small state is indefensible, a position analogous to that of the feudal castle with the advent of gunpowder.”

Minor powers lacked air forces of any significance and were helpless against superpower fighters and bombers acting under UN direction.

 

He expected an international air force to apply “quick and certain” retribution against peace violators. Such action, according to Wright would promote the “development of feelings of world citizenship.” 4

The Gulf War could be viewed as fulfillment of that vision. Asymmetrical coalition air forces under UN authority (via resolution) provided the “quick and certain” retribution against the violator, Iraq.

 

In fact, George Bush alluded to the,

“development of feelings of world citizenship” when he hoped that out of the “horror of combat,” Iraq would recognize that “no nation can stand against a united world” and bring itself to “rejoin the family of peace-loving nations.” 5

Grayson Kirk, also of the Armament group, envisioned the necessity of an “intermediate arrangement” between the jump from world war to world sovereignty. He advocated an intermediate step of regional security arrangements built around the United States, Great Britain, Soviet Union, and China. Additionally, he felt that regionalism could only be a catalyst for international integration if it remained informal and flexible.6

The Council strongly backed the loosening of the definition of American interests to include applying military force “wherever a serious threat to peace may arise.”

 

Aggressor nations must be thwarted by collective force. As such, a criteria for determining aggression must be established.

 

The Armaments group identified an aggressor as a,

“nation which has 1) committed specified, overt military acts; 2) steadfastly refused to submit their dispute to an international agency; and 3) refused to comply with the decisions of these agencies.” 7

The War and Peace Studies therefore formulated a foundational vision of a New World Order of transitional sovereignty, aided by economic interdependence; collective security maintaining international order through a multinational police force under centralized authority; and, a shift from unilateral actions based solely on national interests to support of collective actions based on common interests, especially against “aggressor nations.”

The authors of the War and Peace Studies provided both the framework of the New World Order vision and the realization that the international transformation would be a long term venture.

 

Unlike their Paris Peace Conference predecessors, the studies staffers recognized that shift to greater world sovereignty would take time and that the,

“United States would have to participate in years of conferences to create the New World Order.” 8

In addition, regional arrangements would provide the stepping stone to world order.

Since this evolution - as predicted - has been a long term venture, it pays to look at some more recent Council related studies to provide more fidelity to the contemporary New World Order vision.

In the 1970s, two independent studies related to New World Order were undertaken.

 

One, the World Order Models Project, was directed by Council member and former Rutgers Professor of Law, Saul H. Mendlovitz, with heavy academic contributions by another Council member, Princeton Professor Richard A. Falk, and financed by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the Rockefeller Foundation. 9

 

The second, The 1980s Project, was an extensive study produced by the Trilateral Commission, a Council offshoot created by David Rockefeller to focus on developing trilateral regional cooperation between the United States, Western Europe, and Japan.

 


World Order Models Project
Richard Falk and other World Order Models Project (WOMP) contributors give credit to Mendlovitz as having “done much to shape the course of this world order journey” over the past 25 years.10

 

The WOMP provides probably the most idealistic vision for the New World Order, concentrating on evolving a “transnational framework of world order values, thinking, and action.” 11

 

The four central world order values are:

“(1) The minimization of large-scale collective violence; (2) the maximization of social and economic well-being; (3) the realization of fundamental human rights and conditions of political justice; (4) the rehabilitation and maintenance of environmental quality, including the conservation of resources.” 12

It is interesting to note that Robert S. McNamara was a member of the WOMP Sponsoring and Policy Review Committee.13 The WOMP, while idealistic, was surely not utopian.

 

Mendlovitz describes the action-oriented WOMP methodology:

“In fact, each author was asked to attempt a diagnosis of the contemporary world order system, make prognostic statements based on that diagnosis, state his preferred future world order and advance coherent and viable strategies of transition that could bring that future into being. A stringent time frame [for implementation], the 1990s, served to discipline and focus thought and proposals.…

 

There was also general agreement that we should go beyond the nation-state system…to use a much broader range of potential actors, including world institutions, transnational actors, international organization, functional activities, regional arrangements, the nation-state, subnational movements, local communities, and individuals.” 14

While the WOMP values seem mundane enough, their conclusions were not.

 

With the main concern of the WOMP being war and its destructive nature, one of their central New World Order visions in Falk’s A Study of Future Worlds was the,

“dismantling [of] the national security apparatus in the major states of the world.” 15

Hidemi Suganami, in his review of world order proposals, summarizes Falk’s New World Order guiding principles as world disarmament, establishment of an international police force to settle disputes, implementation of a global checks and balances system, and constitution of a coordinating body to provide unity to the global structure.16

WOMP-related work has continued throughout the years. Mendlovitz more recently developed specific time phased objectives to support what he called a “Movement For A Just World Peace.”

 

His short run objectives for 1991-1993 included,

“initiating an annual process of five percent reductions in defense budgets over a ten-year period with savings being allocated for basic needs, domestically and globally.”

His intermediate targets for 2001-2003 included:

  • the “establishment of a small but permanent peacekeeping force for the UN with the authority of humanitarian intervention in civil wars”

  • the “submission to the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice for all treaties concluded during and after the decade of 1990”

  • the “establishment of a court to deal with individuals who commit crimes against humanity”

And finally, Mendlovitz’s long range goals for 2011-2013 were much more ambitious.

 

They included,

  • a “global tax scheme to establish and maintain a basic needs regime for global society”

  • a “complete and general disarmament with alternative security system in place”

  • a “regional and global human rights regime with compulsory jurisdiction” 17

Mendlovitz presents a vision of evolutionary disarmament accompanied by corresponding strengthening of a UN security apparatus. Additionally, he advocates a mechanism - global tax - to fund international organizations and foresees an enhancement of international judiciary powers.

 

This vision at first blush may seem somewhat radical, but a closer look shows it not to be far off the mark. The process of disarmament, spurred by the end of the Cold War, did in fact begin about the time Mendlovitz predicted. The UN security apparatus has strengthened through the course of recent activities in Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, and Rwanda.

 

The United States seems to have fully adopted the concept of UN sponsored and supported actions based on the extent of UN/multinational related doctrine being published by the Department of Defense. Several recommendations for a tax on international flights to financially support the UN have recently been presented, the most notable by former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali.18

 

And finally, the enhancement of international judiciary powers is demonstrated by such recent events as the 1996 swearing-in of 21 judges constituting the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea.19


The reason for success in implementing world order visions is not chance. These visionaries do not perceive their actions as academic exercises. They do not advocate passive acceptance of evolutionary world order shifts, but active engineering of the transition process.

 

Falk clearly states that,

“transition tactics and strategy involve accelerating the process and devising ways to assure its completion in accordance with our specified value preferences. In this sense, it adopts an activist or engineering posture…” 20

Later, in A Study of Future Worlds, Falk provides a specific strategy:

“Symbolic world leaders such as the Secretary General of the United Nations or the Pope might espouse [the WOMP agenda]… as a program for the future, and national leaders in prosperous, homogenous, and stable countries of intermediate size such as Sweden or Canada may also be led to lend open support.

 

These kinds of external developments, together with much more vital citizen efforts within the United States, would initiate a world order dialectic within American politics that would begin to break down decades of adherence to [the Westphalian system] and its infrastructure of values, perceptions, and institutions.” 21

The articulated philosophies of former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali and the active advocacy of UN peacekeeping by Canada, may be evidence of reasonable success of Falk’s twenty year old strategy.

 


1980s Project
There is one additional New World Order project which needs to be addressed prior to proceeding. In the 1970s, the Council on Foreign Relations, primarily through its offshoot - the Trilateral Commission - undertook a five year, $1.6 million research effort titled the “1980s Project.”

 

According to its Director, Richard H. Ullman, the 1980s Project was,

“the largest single research and studies effort the Council on Foreign Relations has undertaken in its…history, comparable” only to the War and Peace Studies of World War II.22

The 1980s Project’s task was to define the issues and policies required to respond to a post Cold War international scenario. Unlike its predecessors, the Inquiry and the War and Peace Studies, the 1980s Project was a study effort open to members and non-members, and openly published to stimulate a broad professional audience - not just government decision-makers.23

The primary focus of the 1980s Project was social and economic issues, but a few security related studies were pursued. In fact, Cyrus Vance, former Council director, chaired a group charged with studying weapons of mass destruction immediately prior to becoming Secretary of State.24
 


One clear influence on our current military came from the study titled International Disaster Relief (1977)

It recommended that Washington should do more to coordinate its relief efforts to assist flood, earthquake, famine, and other disaster victims. Relief agencies should be given more direct responsibility for operations.

 

And, all nations should accept the,

“common responsibility of all people and governments to provide protection and relief to the victims of natural disasters.” 25

This concept has manifest itself this decade in the likes of Somalia and Rwanda. The United States has adopted humanitarian assistance as a military mission and corresponding military doctrine is currently on the street and being written to more effectively involve the relief agencies in humanitarian assistance operations.

The 1980s Project, under the auspices of the Trilateral Commission, primarily involved authors from the United States, Europe, and Japan. The broadly based recommendations ignored the centrality of the Cold War and as a whole indicted the “narrow, ethnocentric, and ideological course of American foreign policy since 1945.26

 

The diverse set of policy recommendations, clearly globalist in nature, advocated an incremental approach to functional interdependence. The project ideas, while seemingly ahead of their time, set the agenda for the next couple of decades. The Carter administration attempted to implement some of the 1980s Project “world order politics” in 1977 and 1978, but fell victim to the reality of the Cold War.27

The Council, in its own historical account, again highlights its ability to influence the implementation of its own world order ideas:

“As it turned out, the title of the project was a little premature; not until the 1990s did the issues explored truly dominate the international agenda. But many 1980s Project authors were by then installed in government policy-making positions, and when the Cold War came to its unexpectedlysudden end the Council had provided for the public record an impressive database for the global issues confronting coming generations.” 28


Visionary Conclusion
By analyzing the above studies, the “vision of the UN founders” comes into a little better focus.

 

The vision is clearly globalist.

 

It advocates:

  • a shift in sovereignty from the state to the international level

  • increased authority, security, and judicial powers of an international body

  • a focus on “common” interests of humanity

  • collective vs. unilateral security actions

  • enhanced social and economic interdependence through functionalism

  • some significant level of military disarmament of the nation states

This New World Order vision provides the framework for interpreting a “credible United Nations” and its “peacekeeping role” in the upcoming chapter.

 


Notes

1  Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “What New World Order?” Foreign Affairs (Spring 1992), 90.

2  Robert D. Schulzinger, The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1984), 85.

3  Ibid., 88.

4  Ibid., 90.

5  George Bush, “Operation Desert Storm Launched,” Address to the Nation from the White House, 16 January 1991. US Department of State Dispatch (21 January 1991), 38.

6  Schulzinger, 90-91.

7  Ibid., 92-93.

8  Ibid., 108.

9  Richard A. Falk, A Study of Future Worlds (New York, N.Y.: Free Press, 1975), xxvii.
10 Richard A. Falk, Robert C. Johansen, and Samuel S. Kim. The Constitutional Foundations of World Peace (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1993), 3.

11 Falk, Johansen, and Kim, 3.

12 Falk, 11.
13 Ibid., xxxi.
14 Ibid., xxii-xxiii.
15 Ibid., 17.
16 Hidemi Suganami, The Domestic Analogy and World Order Proposals (Cambridge, Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 149.
17 Richard A. Falk, Samuel S. Kim, and Saul H. Mendlovitz, eds., The United Nations and a Just World Order. (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1991), 567-568.
18 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “Groping for a New World Order.” U.S. News & World Report, (28 September 1992), 52.
19 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, United Nations Press Release SG/SM/6089 SEA/1534 18 October 1996 (On-line. Internet, 25 March 1997. Available from http://www.un.org), 1.
20 Falk, 280.
21 Ibid., 419.
22 Schulzinger, 225.
23 Peter Grose, Continuing the Inquiry: The Council on Foreign Relations From 1921 to 1996 (New York, N.Y.: Council on Foreign Relations, 1996), 61.
24 Schulzinger, 231.
25 Ibid., 234.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid., 236.
28 Grose, 62.


 

 

Chapter 4
A Credible United Nations and its Peacekeeping Role

The founding of the United Nations embodied our deepest hopes for a peaceful world.
 - George Bush October 1, 1990

To be “credible,” the United Nations is dependent upon the full development of its “peacekeeping role” as envisioned by its founders.

 

As a second attempt to implement Wilsonian-like internationalism, the United Nations must achieve international credibility to shed the stigma of its aborted predecessor, the League of Nations.

 

The interdependence between credibility and peacekeeping is most clearly articulated by former Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali:

“Under Article 42 of the Charter, the Security Council has the authority to take military action to maintain or restore international peace and security. While such action should only be taken when all peaceful means have failed, the option of taking it is essential to the credibility of the United Nations as guarantor of international security.” 1

So, credibility of the UN as a guarantor of international security is contingent upon having both the authority and means to take military action. In understanding the UN’s peacekeeping role, it is important to note the semantic difference between war and peacekeeping from the UN founders’ perspective.

Peacekeeping is a more contemporary word for what the UN founders envisioned as international police action.

 

Payson Wild of the War and Peace Studies Armaments group distinguished between war and international policing (or peacekeeping in today’s vernacular) by defining police action as force used “in behalf of the community” for “the maintenance of order and the establishment of the supremacy of law” versus war which is “conducted for a national authority” to achieve “the defeat of the enemy.”

 

Policing or peacekeeping implied that armed forces are “under community control and used only against those who break community laws.” 2 The supremacy of law in this context relates to Bush’s “rule of law” which will be covered in the next chapter.

Roosevelt himself used the police analogy in describing credible UN peacekeeping:

“The Council of the United Nations must have the power to act quickly and decisively to keep the peace by force, if necessary.” 3

In discounting the extreme leverage applied by Security Council members such as the United States, Roosevelt continued his analogy:

“A policeman would not be a very effective policeman if, when he saw a felon break into a house, he had to go to the Town Hall and call a town meeting to issue a warrant before the felon could be arrested.” 4

Again, it is clear that the UN must possess both the authority and means to be an effective and credible international “policeman.”

The authority comes through reduction in the role of the Security Council veto. The “means” most generally advocated is that of a permanent UN peacekeeping force.

 

Robert C. Johansen in the WOMP related work, The Constitutional Foundations of World Peace explains:

“To give a substantial boost to its capacities for war prevention, the United Nations needs a permanent peacekeeping force of its own.

 

A permanent force could be immediately available; it would be less subject to charges of bias than ad hoc personnel now drawn from the national armed forces of UN members; it could be more effectively trained, organized, and better commanded, equipped with specialized units, and judiciously employed to carry out the unusually delicate tasks of peacekeeping, which seldom resemble conventional military action.…

 

The proposed UN force could help stimulate the transition to a warless world because it would remind nations of the difference between police enforcement and military action.” 5

He then paints a very quaint picture of international police enforcement:

“Armies try to achieve victory; police seek tranquility. Police try to enforce law on individuals, whereas armies impose their will on entire societies. Although UN peacekeepers sometimes carry arms, these soldiers have no enemies.” 6

Boutros Boutros-Ghali, also a permanent force advocate, recommended that negotiations commence to create the,

“special agreements foreseen in Article 43 of the Charter, whereby Member States undertake to make armed forces, assistance and facilities available to the Security Council for the purposes stated in Article 42, not only on an ad hoc basis but on a permanent basis.” 7

He felt that the end of the Cold War removed the major political obstacles preventing earlier fulfillment of this Charter vision.

Burns H. Weston, another Constitutional Foundations of World Peace author, provides the most comprehensive strategy for achieving “credible” UN peacekeeping.

 

He suggests:

  1. guaranteeing military units trained for peacekeeping to the UN on a permanent standby basis

  2. stockpiling military equipment and supplies to support short notice peacekeeping operations

  3. avoiding the obstructions posed by the Security Council veto by instituting automatic peacekeeping actions based on predetermined levels of crisis or thresholds of conflict and automatic financing arrangements

  4. ensuring access to areas of conflict without requiring initial or continuing permission of theconflicting parties

  5. tying UN peacekeeping to peacemaking to ensure focus on the desired end-state of long-term stability in the troubled area.8

In summary, further clarification of George Bush’s words identifies a New World Order where a “credible United Nations” achieves authority by minimizing the role of Security Council veto and uses permanently assigned/allocated armed forces in a “peacekeeping role” to fulfill the international policeman “vision of the UN’s founders.”

 

 

Notes

1  Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace--Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peace-keeping” Report of the Secretary-General, 17 June 1992 (Online.Internet, 25 March 1997. Available from http://www.un.org/Docs/SG/agpeace.html.), 9.

2  Robert D. Schulzinger, The Wise Men of Foreign Affairs (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1984), 93.

3  Hidemi Suganami, The Domestic Analogy and World Order Proposals (Cambridge, Great Britain: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 121.
4  Ibid.
5  Richard A. Falk, Robert C. Johansen, and Samuel S. Kim. The Constitutional Foundations of World Peace (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1993), 46-47.

6  Falk, Johansen, and Kim, 47.

7  Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace”, 9.

8  Falk, Johansen, and Kim, 362.


 

 


Chapter 5
Rule of Law

America and the world must support the rule of law. And we will.
 - Former President George Bush September 11, 1990 Address before Congress

Our ideal is a world community of States which are based on the rule of law and which subordinate their foreign policy activities to law.
 - Mikhail Gorbachev December 7, 1987 Address to the UN General Assembly

Critical to the interpretation of Bush’s call for a New World Order “where the rule of law... governs the conduct of nations,” is the understanding of the context of “rule of law.”

 

It is interesting that while using the same “rule of law” phrase in their addresses, Bush failed to provide any clarification of meaning, yet Gorbachev explicitly highlighted that states “subordinate their foreign policy activities to law.” 1

Former Secretary of State James Baker provided some “rule of law” clarification on September 26, 1990 when he advised the House Foreign Affairs Committee that,

“we must act so that international laws, not international outlaws, govern the post-Cold War period. We must act so that right, not might, dictates success in the post-Cold War world.… We must stand with the world so that the United Nations does not go the way of the League of Nations.” 2

Henry Kissinger additionally pointed out that “conventional American thinking” supports the notion of “a New World Order,” emerging from a “set of legal arrangements.” 3

 

It is important to note the linkage created between New World Order, rule of law-international law, and the United Nations. Just how would these New World Order “legal arrangements” of international law be implemented and what is the relationship to the United Nations?

James Baker once again provided some insight.

 

Responding to House Foreign Affairs Committee questioning, Baker said that we, the United States,

“are party to the United Nations’ charter by virtue of a treaty, a treaty that basically says we will respect the decisions of that body.” 4

Author Laura L. Kirmse, after researching the details of Baker’s premise, has concluded that Bush’s New World Order refers to a move toward world authority under the auspices of a revitalized United Nations, and that UN treaties, once ratified by the Senate, may override and supersede the laws of the US, and even the Constitution itself.5

The Constitution of the United States directs the following in regard to treaties:

(Article II, Section 2) He (the President) shall have the power by and with the advice and consent of the Senate to make treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur…

(Article VI) This Constitution, and the laws of the United States which shall be made in pursuance thereof; and all treaties made, or which shall be made, under the authority of the United States, shall be the supreme law of the land; and the judges in every State shall be bound thereby, anything in the Constitution or laws of any State to the contrary not withstanding.6

In the Jeffersonian tradition, treaties were intended to affect state-to-state actions, not to have direct authority within a country over the laws, regulations, or the relationship between the government and its citizens.

 

Several legal decisions and constitutional interpretations have demonstrated otherwise, though. Kirmse identifies several legal rulings which support the supremacy of the UN Charter.

 

Fuji v. the State of California provides the most eye-opening position:

The Charter of the United Nations, as a treaty, is paramount to every law of every state in conflict with it. The Charter of the United Nations, upon ratification of the Senate, became supreme law of the land, within Constitutional provision relating to treaties, and every state is required to accept and act upon the Charter according to its plain language, and its unmistakable purpose and intent. United Nations Charter. 59 Stat.1035 et seq.; U.S. Const. art. 6. (Fuji v. State of California, 217P.2d. rehearing denied).7

John Foster Dulles understood this concept well as attested by these comments made in a 1952 speech [documented in the Congressional Record] of his prior to being appointed Secretary of State:

“The treaty-making power is an extraordinary power liable to abuse. Treaties make international law and also they make domestic law. Under our Constitution, treaties become the supreme law of the land. They are indeed more supreme than ordinary laws, for congressional laws are invalid if they do not conform to the Constitution, whereas treaty laws can override the Constitution.

 

Treaties, for example, can take powers away from the Congress and give them to the Federal Government or to some international body and they can cut across the rights given the people by the Constitutional Bill of Rights.” 8

Several wise Americans in the 1950s began to fear both the legal power of United Nations-related treaties to supersede the Constitution and the vague authority of the President through the “conduct of foreign affairs” to bind the United States legally by executive agreements requiring no Senate ratification.

 

The deals at Yalta between President Roosevelt and Stalin, the Potsdam agreement between President Truman and Stalin, and according to then Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, over 10,000 NATO agreements all fall within the context of “executive agreements.” Many were never published.

 

As a result, Senator John W. Bricker, supported by 63 other Senators, sponsored an amendment to close the perceived Constitutional loopholes.

 

The Bricker Amendment would have added the following language to clarify the Constitution:

A provision of a treaty which conflicts with this Constitution shall not be of any force or effect. A treaty shall become effective as internal law in the United States only through legislation which would be valid in the absence of treaty.

Congress shall have power to regulate all executive and other agreements with any foreign power or international organization. All such agreements shall be subject to the limitations imposed on treaties by this article.9

Although seemingly patriotic and simple, the amendment was killed by President Eisenhower.10

 

Not to infer cause and effect, but only to note the curious - Dwight D. Eisenhower was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.11 The fears that United States citizens may be legally subject to trials of international courts were not suppressed.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee discussion with Secretary of State Baker in September of 1990 reveals that this concern is not antiquated:

Sen. Moynihan: Does the President have a constitutional right to violate international treaties?

Secretary Baker: No.

Sen. Moynihan: A treaty is the supreme law of the land?

Secretary Baker: That’s right.12

The evidence of constitutional logic, legal precedence, and executive and legislative intent seems to support Kirmse’s conclusion that:

“By the signing of the treaty to join the United Nations in 1942 and by the signing of the revised Charter in 1945 - which are both multilateral treaties and constituent agreements - both the Constitution and the sovereignty of the United States were in effect relinquished under an established precedent in favor of rule by the United Nations, its Charter, and all subsequent treaties formulated and signed under UN auspices.

 

Our laws in all jurisdictions must conform Constitutionally by treaty to those of the United Nations, much as our state laws had to conform to those of the Constitution.” 13

The international “rule of law” then has the potential to govern much more than the “conduct of nations.”

 

It also may govern the conduct of the individual. In the Council on Foreign Relations and American Assembly (founded in 1950 by Dwight D. Eisenhower) 1992 work, Rethinking American Security - Beyond Cold War to New World Order, John H. Barton and Barry E. Carter identify the most notable aspects of international law evolution over the last 50 years.

 

They recognized that,

“the individual person has emerged as an independent actor” demonstrating that “the international system is no longer confined to relations among nations.” And, “national and international tribunals are offering new - and more effective - means for enforcing international law.” 14

Former UN Secretary-General Boutros Boutros-Ghali provided insight into recent events related to international law and tribunals.

 

In his 1992 Agenda for Peace, Boutros Boutros-Ghali, in an attempt to reinforce the role of the International Court of Justice, recommended that,

“all Member States should accept the general jurisdiction of the International Court under Article 36 of its Statute, without any reservation, before the end of the United Nations Decade of International Law in the year 2000.” 15

Note the similarity to Mendlovitz’s WOMP decade of the 1990s goal of “submission to the compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court of Justice” identified in Chapter 3.

The most revealing fulfillment of Barton and Carter’s revelation was the October 1996 swearing-in ceremony of twenty-one Law of the Seas Tribunal’s Judges by Boutros Boutros-Ghali.

 

During his swearing-in statement, Boutros Boutros-Ghali said:

“This is a situation without precedent in international law... With the establishment of this Tribunal we enter a new era. The Tribunal will be a modern institution upholding the rule of law not only between States, but also among States, the International Seabed Authority, companies and individuals engaged in the exploitation of the international seabed area.” 16

Boutros Boutros-Ghali continues with words that seem to be extracted directly from Bush’s New World Order speech:

“The Tribunal has an important role to play in the building of an international society governed by the rule of law. The Law of the Sea Tribunal will be part of the system for peaceful settlement of disputes as laid down by the founders of the United Nations.” 17

It seems like everyone in the business of New World Order is singing from the same sheet of music.

Nearly twenty years ago, Peter Jay, in his 1979 Foreign Affairs article, “Regionalism as Geopolitics,” noted that:

“The Carter Administration has done much in its UN role…to reestablish the American willingness to play by the rules of a system of international law…But the threads of a particular action have not been woven together into a generally understood…doctrine or strategy to capture the imagination and respect of a suspicious, cynical and unstable world. That will be a worthy task for a new year, a new decade and, perhaps, a new presidential term.” 18

The breakdown of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War reduced the suspicion and cynicism by creating the perception of stability.

 

The 1990s then provided George Bush the opportunity to fulfill Jay’s New World Order prophesy.

  • the “rule of law” wheels of international justice are turning

  • the New World Order train has left the station

  • the Americans on board have no knowledge of the destination

 

Notes

1  Richard A. Falk, Robert C. Johansen, and Samuel S. Kim. The Constitutional Foundations of World Peace (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1993), 149.

2  Laura L. Kirmse, “The United Nations and the New World Order,” Conservative Review (June 1991), 3.
3  Graham Allison, and Gregory F. Treverton, eds., Rethinking America’s Security: Beyond Cold War to New World Order (New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1992), 239.
4  Kirmse, 3.

5  Ibid., 2.

6  Ibid., 3.

7  Ibid., 4-5.

8  Ibid., 4.

9  “ABC’s of Bricker Amendment,” U.S. News and World Report (22 January 1954), 39.

10 Kirmse, 4.

11 Kent and Phoebe Courtney, Disarmament: A Blueprint for Surrender. (La.: Pelican Printing Company, 1963), 167.
12 Kirmse, 4.
13 Ibid.
14 Allison, 280.
15 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace--Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peace-keeping” Report of the Secretary-General, 17 June 1992 (Online.Internet, 25 March 1997. Available from http://www.un.org/Docs/SG/agpeace.html.), 8.
16 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, United Nations Press Release SG/SM/6089 SEA/1534, 18 October 1996 (On-line. Internet, 25 March 1997. Available from http://www.un.org.), 12.

17 Ibid., 2.

18 Peter Jay, “Regionalism as Geopolitics.” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 58, No. 3 (1979), 514.


 

 

Chapter 6
The Road to New World Order

Something of a world-wide order has been set up, by the general consent of mankind, and is in active work, of which it is impossible to say that any parallel existed before.
 - F. S. Marvin The New World-Order, 1932

World order as a set of concepts, objectives, and strategies is anything but “new.”

 

George Bush was not the father of New World Order thinking, just an advocate that happened to be in the right position at the right time to flame the fires of the next significant thrust in the evolutionary development of world order.

 

The Bush instigated post-Cold War New World Order thrust can be interpreted as the third major attempt in this century to create a world ordered by a “credible” universal authority enforcing the international “rule of law” through collective security measures, police action or “peacekeeping.”

 

The “vision” of world order has remained fairly constant throughout this century; specific strategies for attainment, though, have varied widely. The climax of the three most significant world emotional events in this century, World War I, World War II, and the Cold War, have provided the catalyst for successive attempts at New World Order.

 

The first two attempts were manifested in the form of the League of Nations and the United Nations. The third attempt at achieving New World Order is much more complex, amorphous, and difficult to distinguish.

 

Discernment of the third attempt is the subject of this chapter.

 


Third Try at New World Order
The epigraph quote on the previous page by F.S. Marvin referred to the world order precedent set by the formation of the League of Nations.

 

Marvin was careful to point out, though, that the League was an important symbol, but not the genesis or end-all of world order:

“World co-operation, of which the League of Nations is the symbol and the chief organ, is the characteristic of the new age…” 1

He provides further clarification by describing the New World Order goal and limited role of the League:

“The League then, though the chief political fact since the War, should be regarded as a part only of a great movement and set of organizations all having as their purpose to implement this new consciousness of world-unity… Nationality must rank below the claims of mankind as a whole, but in its immediate effects on individuals it is of greater moment.” 2

So, we can see that 65 years ago, there was perceived to be a New World Order movement towards world unity and decreased nationality/sovereignty. The League was an unparalleled symbol of the movement, but a symbol nonetheless. The League, as a mechanism of the world order movement, failed to fulfill expectations largely due to lack of support from isolationist Americans.

Recall from Chapter 2 the framework for the League of Nations was formulated by the “Inquiry” - the predecessor to the Council on Foreign Relations World War II War and Peace Studies. World War II conveniently provided an opportunity for the “founders of the UN” to propose a second attempt at world order which would presumably account for the flaws inherent in the League structure.

 

In Michael Wala’s words:

“The Council members, like so many other internationalists, were convinced that the United States should not let this ‘second chance’ to participate in a supranational organization evaporate.” 3

The establishment of the United Nations became the second attempt.

 

Although more successful than its predecessor, the UN again failed to meet New World Order expectations largely because of the Cold War friction between the United States and the Soviet Union. International dynamics had to change for the world to accept a “credible” UN fulfilling the “vision” of its “founders.”

 

The trigger event was the fall of the Berlin Wall and corresponding end to the Cold War. The fact, though, is the third attempt, very dissimilar to the first two, was well under way prior to that event.

 

Evidence of this was provided by Harlan Cleveland, former Assistant Secretary of State, former Ambassador to NATO, and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, in his comments regarding a 1976 report he helped author, United Nations, released by the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations:

“I hope that in the hearing and whatever report is released by the Committee, you will make a distinction between the future of the United Nations and the future of world order. There is a long agenda of creative effort just ahead, a complex agenda of international action… Taking it all together, this amounts to a third try at world order - the League of Nations having died and the United Nations being unable in its present condition to cope.” 4


New World Order Paths
The third attempt, more complicated than the others, involves traversing three interlinked paths that pave the road to world order.

 

One path involves strengthening the powers of the United Nations and its associated institutions to enhance their world authority. The second path on the road to New World Order is through evolutionary regionalism.

 

The idea is to develop regional entities that bind states through super-state political, economic, and legal arrangements.

 

The third path is built on the foundation of piecemeal functionalism whereby functional issues such as economics and trade, environmental conservation, and weapons of mass destruction proliferation drive international interdependence and further international law constraints. Much of “piecemeal functionalism” is directly related to UN subsidiaries.

 

The following sections briefly describe the historical and recent support for the three paths on the road to world order.

 


United Nations Strengthening
The call for strengthening the United Nations from the world order advocates has been strong and consistent.

 

Robert Ducci in his 1964 Foreign Affairs article, “The World Order in the Sixties,” said that:

“It is indeed difficult to see how the world order is to be kept... unless the United Nations undergoes a thorough overhaul. Not inconceivably the two present superpowers may one day agree that the strengthening of the United Nations might be in the interest of both.… If that happens, the future organization of the world might not be very dissimilar in principle from the one which was drafted in Dumbarton Oaks 20 years ago by the victors of World War II.” 5

A detailed plan for strengthening the UN was articulated by John Logue, Vice-President of World Federalist Association.

 

On December 4, 1985, he gave the following testimony to the Human Rights and International Organization subcommittee of the House Foreign Affairs Committee joint hearing on the United Nations:

It is time to tell the world’s people not what they want to hear, but what they ought to hear.…[W]e must reform, restructure and strengthen the United Nations and give it the power and authority and funds to keep the peace and promote justice. The Security Council veto must go. One-nation, one-vote must go. The United Nations must have taxing power or some other dependable source of revenue.

 

It must have a large peacekeeping force. It must be able to supervise the dismantling and destruction of nuclear and other major weapons systems. In appropriate area, particularly in the area of peace and security, it must be able to make and enforce law on the individual.6

Over the last few years, almost all of those recommendations have been pursued by the United Nations and its supporters.

 

As one example, Boutros Boutros-Ghali was aided by the Ford Foundation (tax-exempt foundation link to financing New World Order strategies) in creating an advisory group of financial specialists and bankers to identify “dependable sources of revenue.” Their recommendations included imposing a UN tax on international plane tickets.7

 

Another example was the previously discussed establishment of the International Law of the Sea Tribunal providing the mechanism “to make and enforce law on the individual.”

The continuous strengthening and legitimization of the UN sets the stage for Bush’s observation that:

“Not since 1945 have we seen the real possibility of using the United Nations as it was designed…” 8


Trilateral Regionalism
The strategy of building world order on the framework of regionalism has also been around for quite some time.

 

In 1929, N.S.B. Gras in his Foreign Affairs article, “Regionalism and Nationalism,” stated:

“The direct effect of regionalism may be to make the state weaker politically but stronger economically and socially. Or the region, looking to regional convenience, may make new alignments leading to the creation of new states, or to international states (European, American, and so on), or ultimately to a world state.” 9

Gras emphasized the importance of the region to a “super-state of some kind.”

The “region, which because it is nearer to the individual, is likely to exercise a more potent influence over him.”10

A reasonably accurate fulfillment of this vision is found in the European Community which is well on its way to becoming a super-state containing its own political, economic, and judicial systems.

A more radical concept in the evolutionary development of world order regionalism was presented in 1949 by Maurice Parmelee in Geo-Economic Regionalism and World Federation:

“There can be no permanent peace so long as each nation retains its sovereignty. There can be no effective world organization to solve the economic and social problems of mankind so long as the nation is the unit of organization. The region, limiting national sovereignty and furnishing a suitable unit of organization for a world federation, is a practicable solution.” 11

Parmelee further specifies that,

“regionalism postulates interdependence…rather than self-sufficiency,” and that, “geo-economic regionalism is by far the most constructive proposal for the future of the world.” 12

In fact, geo-economic, interdependent regionalism is exactly the policy advocated and pursued over the last twenty-five years by the Trilateral Commission. The Trilateral

Commission was founded in July 1973 by David Rockefeller, then Council on Foreign Relations Chairman of the Board. Its purpose was previewed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, former National Security Advisor, Council Director, and Trilateral Commission President, in his 1973 Foreign Affairs article when he stated that,

“the active promotion of such trilateral [American-European-Japanese] cooperation must now become the central priority of U.S. policy.” 13

Brzezinski and the Trilateral Commission took their mission very seriously:

“Creation of the Trilateral Commission reflects an awareness that the present moment is of very great importance for the future of mankind.” 14

With the Cold War still at the forefront of international relations, the Trilateral Commission seemed somewhat omniscient when in the 1970s they observed that the,

“bipolar leadership system of the cold war is diffusing into what may be the first truly global political system, with many actors playing significant parts at different levels.” 15

The Trilateral Commission recognized that this third attempt at world order, building a “global political system” primarily through economic interdependence, would not come quickly:

The renovation of the international system will be a very prolonged process. The system created after World War II was created through an act of will and human initiative in a relatively restricted period of time. One power had overwhelming might and influence, and others were closely associated with it.

 

In contrast, a renovated international system will now require a process of creation - much longer and more complex - a process in which prolonged negotiations will have to be engaged and developed. In nurturing habits and practices of working together among the trilateral regions, the Commission should help set the context for these necessary efforts.16

The Commission’s primary undertaking was to create a new international economic order through trilateral cooperation.

 

Some of their early successes were highlighted by former Washington Post reporter, Jeremiah Novak:

“According to sources in the State Department, the trilateral papers have directly influenced the summoning of the Rambouillet and Puerto Rican conferences, the sale of IMF gold, the Law of the Sea conferences, the formation of the International Energy Agency, and steps to establish a new international currency, which replaces the U.S. dollar and gold. The commission’s record and its powerful influence after the 1976 elections deserve a great deal of respect.” 17

Recall that trilateral regionalism represents only one world order path.

 

In the words of William Hoar,

“Trilateralism…is only a way station on the road to the New World Order.” 18

Boutros Boutros-Ghali provided the contemporary linkage between regionalism and the first path to world order, UN strengthening. In his “Agenda for Peace” speech, Boutros-Ghali said,

“…regional arrangements or agencies can render great service if their activities are undertaken in a manner consistent with the Purposes and Principles of the Charter…” 19

His focus at that point was security arrangements, but the concept of regional linkage to UN authority applies universally.

Not to lose sight of the objective of this analysis - interpreting George Bush’s meaning of “New World Order” - it is important to come full cycle to Bush’s vision as articulated to the United Nations General Assembly:

“I see a world building on the emerging new model of European unity - not just Europe but the whole world, whole and free.” 20


Piecemeal Functionalism
The final, and most intriguing path supporting the third attempt at world order is referred to as piecemeal functionalism. Several Council on Foreign Relations related authors and studies have advocated world order strategies based on piecemeal functionalism.

 

The Trilateral Commission recommends piecemeal functionalism as a means of achieving the interdependence between nations and regions as discussed in the previous section.

 

The 1977 Trilateral Commission Task Force Report, Towards a Renovated International System, laid out a specific definition and strategy for piecemeal functionalism:

“In general, the prospects for achieving effective international cooperation can often be improved if the issues can be kept separate - what we call piecemeal functionalism.…Coalitions of specialists can be built across national boundaries in specific functional areas, blunting the nationalism that might otherwise hinder international agreement.…

 

The same countries which will often indulge in fanciful rhetoric in a broad, multipurpose organization (such as various UN agencies) will often be negotiating seriously and cooperatively in another organization (such as GATT) on the same issue at the very same time.” 21

Richard N. Gardner, former Carter advisor, Ambassador to Italy, Council member, and Columbia University law professor, presented the most revealing look at an integrated New World Order strategy in his 1974 Foreign Affairs article, “The Hard Road to World Order”

 

He answered the call for an innovative third attempt at world order by advocating a decentralized functional - ”piecemeal functionalism” - approach anchored by the “rule of law” and integrated with the United Nations:

In this unhappy state of affairs, few people retain much confidence in the more ambitious strategies for world order that had wide backing a generation ago... If instant world government, Charter review, and a greatly strengthened International Court do not provide the answers, what hope for progress is there?

 

The answer will not satisfy those who seek simple solutions to complex problems, but it comes down essentially to this: The hope for the foreseeable future lies, not in building up a few ambitious central institutions of universal membership and general jurisdiction as was envisaged at the end of the last war, but rather in the much more decentralized, disorderly and pragmatic process of inventing or adapting institutions of limited jurisdiction and selected membership to deal with specific problems on a case-by-case basis, as the necessity for cooperation is perceived by relevant nations.

 

Such institutions of limited jurisdiction will have a better chance of doing what must be done to make a ‘rule of law’ possible among nations... In short, the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than from the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing confusion,’…but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than an old-fashioned frontal assault.

 

Of course, for political, as well as administrative reasons, some of these specialized arrangements should be brought into an appropriate relationship with the central institutions of the UN system….22

Gardner’s specific functional institution-building issues were: the international monetary system, international trade, environment, population explosion, food shortages, the world’s oceans, weapons proliferation, and peacekeeping.23

 

All of those issues have indeed been catalysts for international action over the last twenty-three years. It’s apparent that the international growth of interdependence at the functional level that we have experienced over the last quarter of a century may not have been the result of random “booming, buzzing confusion,” but in fact a more calculated strategy of world order.

 

Twenty-three years seems to be beyond the planning range of most, but not Gardner and certainly not the Council.

 

Gardner realistically explained that:

“Some may object that a generation of arduous and possibly futile negotiations on specific functional problems is not a very inspiring prospect.…The road to world order will still be a long and hard one, but since the short cuts do not lead anywhere we have no choice but to take it.” 24


Notes

1  F. S. Marvin, ed., The New World-Order. (Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, Inc., First published 1932, reprinted 1967), 8.
2  Ibid., 3.
3  Michael Wala, The Council on Foreign Relations and American Foreign Policy in the Early Cold War (Providence, R.I.: Berghahn Books, 1994), 42.
4  Gary Allen, Say “No!” to the New World Order (Seal Beach, Calif: Concord Press, 1987), 58.
5  Roberto Ducci, “The World Order of the Sixties,” Foreign Affairs (April 1964), 390.
6  Gary Allen, 54.
7  Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “Groping for a New World Order,” U.S. News & World Report (28 September 1992), 52.
8  George Bush, “The UN: World Parliament of Peace,” Address before the United Nations General Assembly, New York City, October 1, 1990. US Department of State Dispatch (8 October 1990), 151.
9  N. S. Gras, “Regionalism and Nationalism,” Foreign Affairs Vol 7, No 3 (April 1929), 466.
10 Gras, 467.
11 Maurice Parmelee, Geo-Economic Regionalism and World Federation (New York, N.Y.: Exposition Press, 1949), v.
12 Parmelle, 1-3.
13 Zbigniew Brzezinski, “U.S. Foreign Policy: The Search for Focus,” Foreign Affairs (July 1973), 723.
14 Trilateral Commission Task Force Reports: 1-7. A Compilation of Reports from the First Two Years of the Trilateral Commission (New York, N.Y.: New York University Press, 1977), 53.
15 Ibid.
16 Richard N. Cooper, Karl Kaiser, and Masataka Kosaka. Towards a Renovated International System, A Report of the Trilateral Integrators Task Force to The Trilateral Commission (New York, N.Y.: The Trilateral Commission, 1977), inside back cover.
17 Jeremiah Novak, “Trilateralism: A New World System,” America (5 February 1977), 96.
18 William P. Hoar, “The New World Order,” American Opinion (April 1977), 101.
19 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace--Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peace-keeping” Report of the Secretary-General, 17 June 1992 (Online. Internet, 25 March 1997. Available from http://www.un.org/Docs/SG/agpeace.html., 13.
20 George Bush, “The UN: World Parliament of Peace,” Address before the United Nations General Assembly, New York City, October 1, 1990. US Department of State Dispatch (8 October 1990), 152.
21 Cooper, Kaiser, and Kosaka, 32-33.

22 Richard N. Gardner, “The Hard Road to World Order,” Foreign Affairs (April 1974), 558-559.

23 Ibid., 559-562.
24 Ibid., 576.


 

 


Chapter 7
New World Order Implications

The intent of this paper was to derive some conclusions about the strategic environment and prospects for the new millennium based on the interpretation of George Bush’s New World Order - where the,

“rule of law governs the conduct of nations,” and a “credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the UN’s founders.” 1

This author’s perspective of Bush’s New World Order will be briefly recapped.

  1. First, the Council on Foreign Relations and other closely linked organizations have significantly shaped the New World Order vision and strategy for achievement of that vision.

  2. Second, those organizations have demonstrated a significant influence on the foreign policy process of the United States.

  3. Third, the New World Order vision consists of a transition of sovereignty from the state to the international level; increased authority, security, and judicial powers of the United Nations; a shift in focus from national to “common” interests; collective vs. unilateral security actions; enhanced social and economic interdependence through functionalism; and some level of military disarmament of the nation states.

  4. Fourth, United Nations credibility is essential to the fulfillment of the New World Order vision and contingent upon achievement of its envisioned peacekeeping/international police role of applying collective force against violators of the “rule of law.”

  5. Fifth, the third attempt at New World Order consists of a complex strategy involving the strengthening of the UN, enhancing regionalism, and increasing interdependence through piecemeal functionalism.

The implications of new world orderism, taken independently, do not appear to be surprising revelations.

 

Taken as a whole and taken within the context of the New World Order vision laid out over the past chapters, these implications may raise some concern.

 


Multilevel Interdependence
The first conclusion drawn from this analysis involves the structure of the international system. One of the current hot topics of political discussion is projecting the nature of the post-Cold War international system. The simple bipolar structure no longer exists.

 

Many scholars present variations of what Daniel S. Papp calls the three primary possibilities,

”a unipolar world based on American military might, a regionalized world organized around three economic trading blocs, and a multipolar world based on several measures of national and international capabilities.” 2

The truth, though, is that the complexity of the strategy for world order drives an international structure that does not lend itself to simple models. Joseph Nye, a Trilateral Commission author, provides the most descriptive world analogy in his model termed “multilevel interdependence.”

 

In a 1992 Foreign Affairs article, he said:

“The distribution of power in world politics has become like a layer cake. The top military layer is largely unipolar, for there is no other military power comparable to the United States. The economic middle layer is tripolar and has been for two decades. The bottom layer of transnational interdependence shows a diffusion of power.” 3

Note the reflection of trilateral regionalism and piecemeal functionalism in this model.

 

He adds that:

“Power is becoming more multidimensional, structures more complex and states themselves more permeable.” 4

State permeability implies the leakage or transfer of national authority and sovereignty to some other medium. One willing and active recipient is the United Nations.

 


United Nations Sovereignty
Boutros Boutros-Ghali in his 1992 Agenda for Peace first emphasized that respect for the state’s,

“fundamental sovereignty and integrity are crucial to any common international progress.”

Then he refined his statement by declaring that,

“The time of absolute and exclusive sovereignty, however, has passed; its theory was never matched by reality. It is the task of States today to understand this…” 5

The attack on national sovereignty is real, but subtle. The League of Nations failed in part because of its overt grab at national sovereignty. The UN proponents are careful not to repeat that mistake.

 

Joseph Nye predicts that,

“multinational infringement of sovereignty will gradually increase without suddenly disrupting the distribution of power.” 6

Foreign Affairs published an article in 1996 by conservative Senator Jesse Helms which, not surprisingly, was critical of the United Nations’ attempt to dissolve national sovereignty.

 

Senator Helms, who was severely blasted in the letters to the editor of the following Foreign Affairs issue, said that,

“the United Nations is being transformed from an institution of sovereign nations into a quasi-sovereign entity in itself. That transformation represents an obvious threat to U.S. national interests.”

He continues by noting that,

“the United Nations has moved from facilitating diplomacy among nation-states to supplanting them altogether. The international elites running the United Nations look at the idea of the nation-state with disdain; they consider it a discredited notion of the past that has been superseded by the idea of the United Nations.

 

In their view, the interests of nation-states are parochial and should give way to global interests. Nation-states, they believe, should recognize the primacy of these global interests and accede to the United Nations’ sovereignty to pursue them.” 7

The subtle complexity by which the United Nations is likely to enhance their sovereignty at the expense of the sovereignty of the states is best described by a model presented by Farida Aziz in his work, New World Order, the 21st Century.

 

He astutely concludes that,

“the world is now witnessing, in fact, an attempt… to establish a ‘condominium model’ of a world order, in lieu of a world government, in which the state sovereignty would be modified from the ‘freehold’ title to the ‘leasehold’ title, and in which the terms of the lease will conform to the ‘rules’ of the condominium. Those ‘rules’ will be established and enforced by a Board of Directors.… The Board meetings will take place in the UN Security Council.” 8

This analogy nicely integrates the “rule of law” concept and resolves the dichotomy of Boutros Boutros-Ghali’s statement apparently supportive of fundamental state sovereignty yet against exclusive state sovereignty. State sovereignty will be relegated to “leasehold” activities under the “rule of law governing the conduct of nations.”

 

The landlord becomes the United Nations and the lease enforcement mechanism is international “peacekeeping.”
 

 

Peacekeeping
With the decline of state sovereignty will come the increase in types and frequency of United Nations peacekeeping actions. Recall that to be “credible,” the UN must develop the capability to enforce international order.

 

Under the vision of its founders, this collective security mechanism was to be a UN military force under Security Council control. When those key elements did not materialize, the UN pursued a role not originally foreseen - ”peacekeeping.”

 

Now that the United Nations is within sight of fulfilling the vision of its founders, the “peacekeeping” concept must be expanded to encompass world order enforcement. “Peacekeeping” is a convenient phrase to spin-off of because of its non-threatening nature.

 

Therefore,

“peacekeeping” operations will comprise a broader spectrum of military and non-military actions. Senator Helms has already concluded that, “peacekeeping has evolved into a term without meaning. It is used to justify all sorts of UN activities…” 9

Bruce Russett, former Director of the Executive Office of the UN Secretary General, and James S. Sutterlin present a comprehensive discussion of the UN collective security and peacekeeping roles in their 1991 Foreign Affairs article, “The UN in a New World Order.”

 

They also note the flexible application of the term peacekeeping:

“Since the Suez crisis of 1956, the United Nations has developed a notable elasticity in using peacekeeping forces, to the point that it is now difficult to formulate a precise definition - or the limits -  of… peacekeeping… This flexibility greatly enhances the value of peacekeeping forces as an instrument available to the Security Council in dealing with potential or existing conflicts.” 10

Their most revealing observation is that,

“nothing in the charter prohibits the Security Council from deploying peacekeeping forces without consent of all parties, or from including troop contingents from the permanent members of the council in such forces where the need for deterrence arises.” 11

So the concept of Security Council decision making autonomy is introduced. That autonomy is an integral aspect of UN “credibility.”

Many internationalists now advocate full execution of Article 43 of the UN Charter whereby member nations make units of their armed forces available for UN enforcement actions in accordance with special agreements between themselves and the Security Council.

 

Boutros Boutros-Ghali reinforced the concept when he declared:

“Stand-by arrangements should be confirmed…between the Secretariat and Member States concerning the kind and number of skilled personnel they will be prepared to offer the United Nations as the needs of new operations arise.” 12

Richard Gardner more specifically addresses the possibility of Security Council autonomy in his explanation of the benefits of full implementation of Article 43:

“It would constitute a true UN military force, with a UN commander responsible to direction by the Security Council with the advice of the Military Staff Committee.…In addition, under the UN Participation Act, once an Article 43 agreement between the United States and the Security Council is concluded and approved by the Senate, U.S. forces designated under the agreement can be sent into hostilities without further action by Congress.” 13

The Senate is probably not ready to sign up to that level of United States commitment to the UN in the near future, but a move in that direction is possible.

 

The shift will likely come in the form of apportioned rapid deployment forces fully trained in and available for UN operations. This concept is widely advocated by likes of Boutros Boutros-Ghali, Richard Gardner, Joseph Nye, and many others. Boutros Boutros-Ghali envisions the capability for a 24-hour call-up contingency force sourced from any of a number of nations.14

 

Gardner and Nye intuitively highlight the necessity of common training and multinational exercises to develop an effective UN command and control structure and operational procedures.15

 

The United States is likely to move in this direction - enhancing UN peacekeeping related doctrine, training, and exercises, while for the meantime, maintaining control over commitment of forces.

 


Common vs. National Interests
The commitment of forces to UN peacekeeping missions will most likely continue to increase, though.

 

The principle driver will be the shift of emphasis of the American leadership from the protection of vital national interests as commitment criteria to the protection of “common” world interests. This is a reflection of the interdependence created by years of piecemeal functionalism.

 

The Washington Times presented an interesting perspective on the relationship between the UN, New World Order, and U.S. interests in an April 18, 1986 article:

“A report by the General Accounting Office analyzed 90 UN media programs between 1983 and 1985 on apartheid, disarmament, ‘New World Order’ and Palestine. Only one supported U.S. interests.” 16

Will the United States send American soldiers across the globe to support UN actions that may not directly support United States interests? We have and we will. George Bush clearly articulated his position on this issue in his “Toward a New World Order” speech to Congress.

 

He emphatically stated:

“America and the world must defend common vital interests. And we will.” 17

We have already seen a dilution of the meaning and application of “national vital interests.”

 

The concept of “common vital interests” is even more fluid, and can be used to justify United States involvement in almost any contingency. Consequently, as the UN grows in strength, we will likely experience increased United States military operations tempo supporting more ambiguous missions. At the same time, military force structure will continue to decline due to budget and New World Order pressures.

Again, nothing is particularly new about the “New World Order.” The issues of armed force, sovereignty, and national interests have been the focus of world order discussions and recommendations for decades.

 

The “founders of the UN,” though, just seem to have a particularly peculiar vision that has survived through years of evolution of the international system.

 

Former Council on Foreign Relations member and influential Kennedy administration State Department Official, Walt Whitman Rostow in his 1960 work, The United States in the World Arena, said:

“It is a legitimate American national objective to see removed from all nations - including the United States - the right to use substantial military force to pursue their own interests. Since this residual right is the root of national sovereignty, and the basis for existence of an international arena of power, it is, therefore, an American interest to see an end to nationhood as it has been historically defined.” 18

An odd interpretation of national interests, indeed!

 


Summary
The road to New World Order at the international level is somewhat comparable to the path this country has taken over the past two hundred years at the national level.

 

Our founding fathers perceived the states to be the sovereign foundation of the United States of America, with the central government only exercising control over those areas allowed by the states. But, as time passed and the central government grew in power and size, the states lost more and more of their sovereignty.

 

Each successive gain of authority at the central level was justified on the basis of altruistic motives. But, one day the country wakes up to discover that the altruistic piecemeal expansion has resulted in a bloated bureaucracy that consumed countless valuable resources, limited state freedoms, and created a debt structure that no generation is likely to recover from.

What is to say that the same will not happen at the international level?

 

The nation states are espoused by the likes of Boutros Boutros-Ghali as the sovereign foundation of the New World Order just as our country’s states were the sovereign foundation of America. But as with our federal government, achievement of the New World Order is contingent upon shifting that sovereignty from the state to central level.

 

Again, the justification is righteous - peace and prosperity for all mankind. What will be the end result, though? Bloated bureaucracy, limited freedoms, and international debt?

Many internationalists argue that the only way to end wars is through the creation of a New World Order based on world authority and collective security. The trouble that comes with that New World Order will be overshadowed by the benefit of peace and prosperity. The problem is that all governmental entities are run by people.

 

And not all people have the purest of motives. International “peacekeeping” may not always be used in an altruistic manner. Hundreds of years ago, the Old Testament prophet, Daniel, prophesied that in the end times,

“a king of fierce countenance… shall stand up… and by peace shall destroy many.” 19

Current momentum favors implementation of the internationalist world order model as advocated by George Bush. Success, though, will be dependent upon the dynamics of world politics.

 

There are too many factors and unknowns in the world to declare New World Order victory, but continued progress in that direction seems inevitable.

 


Notes

1  George Bush, “Operation Desert Storm Launched,” Address to the Nation from the White House, 16 January 1991. US Department of State Dispatch (21 January 1991), 38.
2  Daniel S. Papp, Contemporary International Relations (New York, N.Y.: Macmillan College Publishing Company, 1994), 207.
3  Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “What New World Order?” Foreign Affairs (Spring 1992), 88.
4  Ibid.
5  Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace--Preventive Diplomacy, Peacemaking, and Peace-keeping” Report of the Secretary-General, 17 June 1992 (Online.Internet, 25 March 1997. Available from http://www.un.org/Docs/SG/agpeace.html), 3.

6  Nye, 93.

7  Jesse Helms, “Fixing the UN,” Foreign Affairs (September/October 1996), 2-3.

8  Farida J. Aziz, New World Order, the 21st Century (Islamabad: Monza Corporation, 1992), 17.
9  Helms, 6.
10 Bruce Russett and James Sutterlin, “The UN in a New World Order,” Foreign Affairs (Spring, 1991), 70.
11 Ibid., 71-72.
12 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “An Agenda for Peace,” 11.
13 Graham Allison, and Gregory F. Treverton, eds., Rethinking America’s Security: Beyond Cold War to New World Order (New York, N.Y.: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1992), 274-275.
14 Boutros Boutros-Ghali, “Groping for a New World Order,” U.S. News & World Report (28 September 1992), 52.
15 Nye, 93; Allison, 273.
16 Gary Allen, Say “No!” to the New World Order (Seal Beach, Calif: Concord Press, 1987), 17.
17 George Bush, “Toward a New World Order,” Address before a joint session of Congress, Washington, D.C., September 11, 1990. US Department of State Dispatch (17 September 1990), 92.
18 Kent and Phoebe Courtney, Disarmament: A Blueprint for Surrender. (La.: Pelican Printing Company, 1963), 50.

19 The Holy Bible, King James Version, Scofield Reference, (New York, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1945), 913.


 

 

Chapter 8
Final Thoughts

In this author’s assessment, the Gulf War was a cornerstone event in the fulfillment of the internationalist vision of world order. The UN sanctioned collective multinational military retribution against an aggressor nation that violated the territorial integrity of a nation state validated the concept of world order and provided the catalyst for the culminating third attempt at “New World Order.”

 

They key is not to view the Gulf War as a specific model for future UN actions, but as a trigger event that jumped the evolution of the international system from its derailed Cold War state back on the tracks or road to New World Order.

 

Bush recognized the significance of this event as evidenced by his statement to the UN General Assembly:

“And when the Soviet Union agreed with so many of us here in the United Nations to condemn the aggression of Iraq, there could be no doubt…that we had, indeed, put decades of history behind us.” 1

There has been a lot of conjecture over the reason for terminating the Gulf War ground offensive at 100 hours.

 

One candidate explanation has to be that at the 100-hour point all UN objectives had been met. The United States had not achieved its own objective of destroying the Republican Guard, but as a collective security force, the coalition had fulfilled all the requirements of the UN resolution. That established the precedent for a “credible United Nations” to use its “peacekeeping role” against international aggressors under the “rule of law.”

 

The cornerstone had been laid for the final fulfillment of the “promise and vision of the UN’s founders.”

 

 

Notes

1  George Bush, “The UN: World Parliament of Peace,” Address before the United Nations General Assembly, New York City, October 1, 1990. US Department of State Dispatch (8 October 1990), 151.


 

 

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