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by Carl Teichrib
March 03,
2021
from
ForcingChange Website
New
World Order
The
Fast-Approaching of the
New World (Dis)Order...
"What is at stake is
more than one small country," said the President of the
United States.
"It is a big idea: a
New World Order."
The phrase, "New
World Order," was coined far in advance of its
famed Presidential utterance.
Indeed, it spans
generations, showing up in the literature of internationalism before
even the Wright brother's first flight. The meaning, however, has
remained consistent.
And yes, it is a "big
idea"...
The following is taken from my book,
Game of Gods - The Temple of Man in the Age of
Re-Enchantment.
On September 11, US President
George Bush told Congress that
America would,
"serve together with
Arabs, Europeans, Asians and Africans in defense of principle
and the dream of a New World Order." 1
It was the Persian Gulf
crisis of 1990, and
George H.W. Bush was in the
Oval Office.
On January 16, 1991, the
day before Operation Desert Storm commenced, he contextually
placed this military engagement within the framework of
the United Nations,
"We have before us
the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future
generations a New World Order - a world where the rule of law,
not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations.
When we are
successful - and we will be - we have a real chance at this New
World Order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use
its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the
U.N.'s founders." 2
Thirteen days later he
said the following,
"What is at stake is
more than one small country; it is a big idea: a New World
Order, where diverse nations are drawn together in common cause
to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind - peace and
security, freedom, and the rule of law.
Such is a world
worthy of our struggle and worthy of our children's future."
3
Many Americans were
perplexed by this repeated phrase, New World Order. Some
commentators erroneously credited Bush as using it first.
He certainly said it
often, but others had used this phrase too.
President Reagan
did in 1982, noting that all countries need to,
"strive together,
motivated by the firm determination to build a New World
Order which guarantees political justice, economic justice,
and social justice." 4
In 1977 President
Carter said,
"the creation of
that New World Order demands bold initiatives and global
solutions." 5
President Franklin
D. Roosevelt employed it in the negative, describing
Adolf Hitler's global aspirations as "his New World Order."
6
For over a century before
Bush's presidency, social and political visionaries, diplomats, and
heads-of-state have uttered those words.
And it nearly always
meant the same thing:
a new paradigm in
international relations with a corresponding change in
civilization - a global restructuring couched in some ideal of
homogenization and interdependence...
This does not mean,
however, that all who desire a New World Order follow the same
pattern or methodology or philosophy.
How it is arrived at
and what it entails can be nuanced.
Nevertheless, it
remains "a big idea."
And it is an old idea...
In the 1600's,
Moravian Bishop Johann Amos Comenius,
"maintained that
all men were citizens of the world" and should
assemble "in one community under international law."
William Penn
called for a European Diet in 1693, in which nations
would pool military resources against any state that refused to
submit.
In 1796, Carl J.A.
Hofheim recommended an Assembly of European rulers to meet
in a central, neutral city, and form a Perpetual Congress of
Nations.
Thomas Paine
argued for an Association of Neutrals, a grouping of
countries using their combined naval strength to sanction
aggressors, with ships of the Association sailing under a
rainbow colored flag.
United States Senator
Charles Sumner advocated for "a Congress of Nations with
a high court" in 1849.
Each was longing for a
New World Order, even though the phrase was not part of their
lexicon. 7
The desire for a new order is normally associated with political and
economic restructuring.
This correlation is
accurate, but a wider rearrangement is also envisioned.
In the 1870s the
founder of the Bahá'í faith, Bahá'u'lláh, spoke favorably
of a coming New World Order. 8
John Ferraby,
a respected Bahá'í leader from the last century, fleshed out
what this entails:
a "world
executive, backed by an international force," a World
Parliament and a global tribunal, "a uniform and universal
system of currency," collective security, a universal
language, and a worldwide system of inter-communication -
"embracing the whole planet, freed from national hindrances
and restrictions."
Science and faith
would merge, religions would harmonize, East and West would
unite. 9
A "most great
peace" would prevail on Earth...
A managerial city was
pictured:
"A world
metropolis will act as the nerve centre of a world
civilization, the focus towards which the unifying forces of
life will emerge and from which its energizing influences
will radiate." 10
The Bahá'í
International Community, which deliberates with the UN on global
governance agendas, understands the connection between world
order and the social acceptance of oneness,
"Laying the
groundwork for global civilization calls for the creation of
laws and institutions that are universal in both character
and authority.
The effect can
begin only when the concept of the oneness of humanity has
been wholeheartedly embraced by those in whose hands the
responsibility for decision making rests, and when the
related principles are propagated through both educational
systems and the media of mass communications." 11
Faith in The
Hague
The allure of world order has excited luminaries and
pragmatists alike with its promise of administrative salvation.
In 1889, the first
organizational model was established, the Inter-Parliamentary
Union (IPU), bringing together parliamentarians from different
nations.
International arbitration
as the means of securing order was the goal.
At the first Hague Peace Conference in 1899, national
governments, enraptured by the prospects of a new century,
established the Permanent Court of Arbitration.
Confidence soared as
international law was on the agenda. Peace would come through
judicial decisions, birthing the IPU vision.
Intensely joyful by
what happened at The Hague, Andrew Carnegie, 12
a believer in the directed evolution of society, became a
proselytizer for this new faith in world order.
At the same time he
knew the Court of Arbitration could not stand-alone; it
would require a larger political structure and the engagement of
civil society.
Giving an address at
St. Andrew's University in 1905, he proposed a League of
Peace and encouraged the students - and all universities and
churches and professionals - to unite in this "holy work."
13
The sure path to peace
would come through international arbitration, backed by a League who
would isolate offending nations and, if necessary, use collective
force to maintain discipline.
Social and cultural
leaders, enamored by this newfound faith in cooperative human
destiny, would need to act as prophets and saints - pointing the way
for others to follow and providing moral legitimacy for its broader
acceptance.
"Progressive men in
the Old World and New are actively supporting the direct
movement for the political unity of the world," penned
Raymond Bridgman in 1905. 14
A member of the American
Peace Society, Raymond Bridgman had petitioned lawmakers for
world organization.
His was an intoxicating
optimism in a vast coalescence, predicting a utopia so grand as to
surpass all of history,
"First and greatest,
there would be realized the political self- consciousness of
mankind, hitherto never achieved.
The world, unified
and intelligent, would for the first time in human history come
to the grandeur of its existence as one, and would feel the
thrill of intelligent unity as it first said 'I' of itself...
When it shall have
been attained the united race, knowing its unlimited powers,
looking over the earth and recognizing its directorship amid all
the forces of nature and man, feeling its strength and realizing
its boundless opportunity, will say 'I will.'
Thus and then would
be accomplished the grandest revolution in human history. The
world would have found itself, would have come into
self-consciousness, realized its true supremacy, and discerned
its opportunity.
It would be
thenceforth and forever a new being.
All the preceding
centuries, it is hardly exaggeration to say, would count for
almost nothing in the existence of mankind as an organic whole."
15
Less hubristic but still
politically ostentatious was Theodore Roosevelt's advocacy of
world federalism during his 1910 Nobel Lecture.
His desire too was for a
League of Peace, built upon the model of American federalism
and the Hague process.
Roosevelt ended his
lecture by saying:
"The ruler or
statesman who should bring about such a combination would have
earned his place in history for all time and his title to the
gratitude of all mankind." 16
During this same period
the US House of Representatives considered a resolution to
combine the navies of the world.
Congressman Richard
Bartholdt notified his colleagues,
"The work of world
organization or world federation was auspiciously begun by the
creation of the Hague court, and we do not propose to have it
stop there, but must insist that modern conditions which impress
all with the absolute interdependence of nations imperatively
demand its early completion." 17
And in The Hague,
Carnegie erected his magnificent Peace Palace - a "Temple of
Peace" - with the resolute belief in a great and glorious
universal brotherhood of nations.
Peace on Earth would come at last...
Kingdom by
League
When the Great War ripped through Europe, starting in 1914,
internationally minded men recognized an opportunity within the
crisis.
A catastrophe of this
magnitude required a post-war restructuring of global
proportions.
Nicholas Murray Butler,
then President of Columbia University and the person most
responsible for convincing Andrew Carnegie to establish his
Endowment for International Peace, voiced his support for a
new order in response to the world conflict.
Speaking to the New
York Times in 1914 on the subject of a "United States of
Europe," Butler announced,
"…the time will come
when each nation will deposit in a world federation some portion
of its sovereignty for the general good.
When this happens it
will be possible to establish an international executive and
international police, both devised for the especial purpose of
enforcing the decisions of the international court." 18
Approximately one year
later Butler gave an address to the Union League of Philadelphia,
highlighting an envisioned New World Order,
"The old world order
changed when this war-storm broke.
The old international
order passed away as suddenly, as unexpectedly, and as
completely as if it had been wiped out by a gigantic flood, by a
great tempest, or by a volcanic eruption.
The old world order
died with the setting of that day's sun and a New World Order is
being born while I speak." 19
Butler, who had personal
access to kings and presidents and prime ministers, understood the
enormity of the change being forced upon all by the circumstances of
the war.
"It is essentially a
war for a new world," the citizen diplomat wrote.
"It is a war for a
new international world." 20
Teddy Roosevelt
pontificated on this theme.
He recommended that,
"the efficient
civilized nations - those that are efficient in war as well as
in peace" band together in a "world league for the peace
of righteousness."
"What I propose," he explained, "is a working and
realizable Utopia." 21
In New York City's
Century Club a small group of eminent men who regularly dined
together came up with an idea:
a league to impose
world peace.
In time this fellowship
evolved into a committee led by former US President William Taft,
a member of the original dinner group.
The League to Enforce
Peace (LEP) was birthed:
"A world organization
which will tend to prevent war by forcing its members to try
peaceable settlement first." 22
Essentially the League
was to focus on arbitration as a way to resolve disputes between
nations.
However, if judicial
mediation failed to bring resolution, the League would rally its
members to engage in collective measures, particularly economic
boycotts and blockades.
If needed, the League
could employ joint military action against a non-compliant country.
Prominent editors, lawyers and judges, university presidents and
other influencers rallied around the cause.
John B. Clark,
Professor of Political Economy at Columbia University and a
League to Enforce Peace executive member, stated that,
"the world demands a
league of some kind for preserving peace and, for the first
time, much of the world expects to get it." 23
At the League's 1916
conference, President Woodrow Wilson would not directly
commit to the LEP scheme, but avowed a "creed," a,
"great
consummation... when coercion shall be summoned not to the
service of political ambition or selfish hostility, but to the
service of a common order, a common justice, and a common
peace." 24
Wilson ultimately chose a
different path of internationalism, the more organic approach of
parliamentarianism.
Frederick Lynch, a Social Gospel minister who was part
of the dinner group at the Century Club and a figure within
Carnegie's Church Peace Union, 25 worked to bring clergy
around to the idea of world order as a high Christian duty.
Because he was intimately
involved with the Federal Council of Churches (FCC), Lynch
was effective in raising the FCC's stature as a progressive voice
for world federal authority.
Taking cues from
scientific pragmatism and Positivism, the God-force of
Spinoza and Liberal Theology, the Social Gospel movement sought a
managed evolution to collective betterment - a process salvation
leading to a humanized Kingdom of God on Earth.
Thus, Lynch's 1916 book,
The Challenge - The Church and the New World Order,
recommended that christians band together,
"and form a compact,
or league of nations, or some sort of united nations of the
world." 26
Another noted clergyman,
American Baptist minister and Social Gospel campaigner, Samuel
Zane Batten, likewise pushed for a new civilization.
Similar to Lynch, Batten
placed this "big idea" within a Christian calling.
Consider what he said in
his 1919 book, The New World Order,
"If there is to be a
new world it must come first of all through a new spirit in the
nations.
There must be created
an international mind and conscience; men must learn to think of
humanity as one family and to have a world patriotism; they must
keep their minds free from jealousy and selfishness, and base
their policy and practice upon true and christian principles;
they must be quick to resent injustice by a nation as by an
individual.
Humanity must become
an ideal in order that it may become an actuality.
World patriotism must
be a faith, a chivalry, before it can be an organization.
International peace must become an aspiration, a religion,
before it will become a reality...
There must be some
international organization which shall make the new ideas
effective and secure world justice." 27
Social Gospel
ministers believed that the intrinsic goodness of humanity could
be democratically unlocked nation-by-nation.
The Brotherhood of Man
would be realized and empowered through righteous internationalism.
Heaven on Earth
would manifest as mankind embraced political deliverance, for the,
"fundamental defect
is with society itself." 28
Batten therefore called
for a,
"league of free
nations, a federation of the world." 29
The political Temple
of Man - a global parliament, an international court, and a
world police force 30 - would usher in the 'Kingdom'...
Endnotes
1 - George H.W. Bush,
Address Before a Joint Session of the Congress on the Persian
Gulf Crisis and the Federal Budget Deficit, September 11, 1990.
2 - George H.W. Bush, Address to the Nation Announcing Allied
Military Action in the Persian Gulf, January 16, 1991.
3 - George H.W. Bush, Address Before a Joint Session of the
Congress on the State of the Union, January 29, 1991.
4 - Ronald Reagan, Toasts of President Reagan and President
Soeharto of Indonesia at the State Dinner, October 12, 1982.
5 - Jimmy Carter, Visit of President Perez of Venezuela, at a
Dinner Honoring the Venezuelan President, June 28, 1977.
6 - Franklin D. Roosevelt, Address for Navy and Total Defense
Day, October 27, 1941.
7 - See Edith Wynner and Georgia Lloyd, Searchlight on Peace
Plans: Choose Your Road to World Government (E.P. Dutton and
Company, 1944), for Comenius, p.35; Penn, p.36; Hofheim,
pp.54-55; Paine, pp.58-59; and Sumner, pp.77-78.
8 - Bahá'í World Faith: Selected Writings of Bahá'u'lláh and `Abdu'l-Bahá'
(Bahá'í Publishing Committee, 1943), p.35 - a selection from The
Kitáb-i-Aqdas, 1873, paragraph 181.
9 - John Ferraby, All Things Made New (Bahá'í Publishing Trust,
1975), see chapters 2-5. See also, William D. Hatcher and J.
Douglas Martin, The Bahá'í Faith: The Emerging Global Religion
(Harper and Row, 1985).
10 - Ibid., p.83.
11 - The Prosperity of Humankind (Bahá'í International
Community, Universal House of Justice, 2006 ebook edition,
originally published in 1995), p.17.
12 - For an accounting of Carnegie's response to the first Hague
conference, see the Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie (Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1920), pp.283-285.
13 - See Andrew Carnegie, A League of Peace: A Rectorial Address
Delivered to the Students in the University of St. Andrews, 17th
October, 1905 (Ginn and Company/International Union, 1906).
14 - Raymond L. Bridgman, World Organization (Ginn and Company,
1905), p.146.
15 - Ibid. p.148.
16 - Theodore Roosevelt's Nobel Lecture, "International Peace,"
was delivered four years after receiving the 1906 Peace Prize.
The full text of his lecture can be found at Nobelprize.org.
17 - Quoted in War Obviated by an International Police: A Series
of Essays, Written in Various Countries (The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff, 1915) p.181.
18 - Nicholas Murray Butler, A World in Ferment: Interpretations
of the War for a New World (Charles Scribner's Sons, 1918),
p.36.
19 - Ibid., p.106.
20 - Ibid., p.5.
21 - Quoted in War Obviated by an International Police (Martinus
Nijhoff, 1915), p.150.
22 - Thomas Raeburn White, "The Platform," Enforced Peace:
Proceedings of the First Annual National Assemblage of the
League to Enforce Peace, Washington, May 26-27, 1916 (League to
Enforce Peace, 1916), p.13.
23 - John Bates Clark, "The European Nations and the League
Reform," Enforced Peace, p.85. Bates was also the Director
of the Department of Economics and History with the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace.
24 - US President Woodrow Wilson, closing address, League
conference, May 27, 1916, Enforced Peace, pp.163-164.
25 - The Church Peace Union was renamed the Council on Religion
and International Affairs in 1961. It was later restructured as
the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs. Then
in 2005 it became the Carnegie Council for Ethics in
International Affairs.
26 - Frederick Lynch, The Challenge: The Church and the New
World Order (Fleming H. Revell Company, 1916), pp.22-23. Lynch
would later become a member of the Committee on the League of
Nations.
27 - Samuel Zane Batten, The New World Order (American Baptist
Publication Society, 1919), p.116-117.
28 - Ibid., p.5.
29 - Ibid., p.124.
30 - Ibid., p.124.
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