Module 1: Pax Americana & The Grand Arena
I would like to begin this fascinating story with a quote from a declassified, top-secret US State Department document:
We have about 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. This disparity is particularly great as between ourselves and the peoples of Asia. In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.
-George Kenan, US State Department, Director of Policy Planning, 1948
<Source: Memo by George Kennan, Head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff. Written February 28, 1948, Declassified June 17, 1974. George Kennan, “Review of Current Trends, U.S. Foreign Policy, Policy Planning Staff, PPS No. 23. Top Secret. Included in the U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, volume 1, part 2 (Washington DC Government Printing Office, 1976), 509-529.>
During the 1930’s when the entire United States was reeling from the Great Depression, a highly influential group of bankers, businessmen, academics and government representatives were meeting to devise a strategy for the new “Pax Americana.” As William Engdahl documents in his fascinating book, Seeds of Destruction, “Their aim was simple: to consolidate an American succession to the failing Pax Britannica of the British Empire.”
They realized, well before WWII, that the US market was too small for their appetites. In their eyes, “Manifest Destiny,” in the 20th century should entail unlimited American expansion globally.
Towards that end, members of the American East Coast Establishment (the elite members of society… the movers and the shakers… those in-the-know) formed a highly influential policy group in 1939, the War and Peace Studies Group of the New York Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). This project was confidential at the time as top members of the CFR worked collaboratively with the US State Department in order to determine US policy. Financed by the Rockefeller Foundation, this secret group would come to define post-war strategic planning for the US State Department (DOS). After 1942, most of its members would be signed onto the State Department’s payroll. In the end, this group’s strategy would also define the post-war American business empire globally. From that time onward, CFR members have continually fueled the corridors of power.
To this day, the CFR remains influential within foreign policy circles at the highest level. It is no coincidence that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated the following at a CFR meeting on July 15, 2009:
Thank you very much, Richard, and I am delighted to be here in these new headquarters. I have been often to I guess the mother ship in New York City, but it’s good to have an outpost of the Council right here down the street from the State Department. We get a lot of advice from the Council, so this will mean I won’t have as far to go to be told what we should be doing and how we should think about the future.
<Source: Clinton, Hillary Rodham. “Foreign Policy Address at the Council on Foreign Relations.” Council of Foreign Relations. Washington, DC. 15 July 2009. Speech. Web. Accessed April 19, 2016. http://video.state.gov/en/video/29636586001>
Now, let’s get back to our story.
One of the prime objectives of the War and Peace Studies Group was to identify target areas around the world that had to be CONTROLLED in order to support robust economic growth in the United States. Thus, the concept of an American “GRAND ARENA” was born. This area included Europe; Latin America; Britain, its colonies and commonwealth nations; and all of Southeast Asia (as a source of raw materials).
Thus, the integration and defense of the “Grand Arena” became one of the top national priorities. After WWII, the mechanisms for accomplishing this grand task would become evident. The United States would achieve the integration and defense of the Grand Arena with the help of new supranational organizations like the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.
The CFR conducted another important study at this time called the Financial and Economic Experts. This study looked at the United States’ economic needs during a time of war (this was just prior to U.S. entry into WWII). The study divided the world into 4 main areas: continental Europe; the U.S. and Western hemisphere; United Kingdom along with its colonial and commonwealth nations; and the Far-East-Pacific (Japan, China, Dutch East Indies). The study then compiled a list of all significant imports and exports within those 4 blocs.
The study was completed in the fall of 1940 and sent to President Roosevelt and the State Department. Among the conclusions was that larger export markets were needed… that America needed ‘living space’ throughout the entire Western hemisphere and beyond… that America needed TRADE and ‘ECONOMIC INTEGRATION’ with the British Empire/Commonwealth blocs and with the Far East… America needed free access to both raw materials and global markets.
William Engdahl documents the subtleties of their refined strategy in his fascinating, must-read book, Seeds of Destruction:
“Their strategy had been to create a kind of informal empire, one in which America would emerge as the unchallenged hegemonic power in a new world order to be administered through the newly-created United Nations Organization.
The architects of the post-war US-dominated global order explicitly chose not to call it an ‘empire.’ Instead, the United States would project its imperial power under the guise of COLONIAL ‘LIBERATION,’ support for ‘DEMOCRACY’ and ‘FREE MARKETS.’ It was one of the most effective and diabolical propaganda coups of modern times….
These American policy makers were largely concentrated among the select membership of the New York Council on Foreign Relations. Unlike the British Empire, their American vision of global domination was based on economic goals rather than physical possession of a colonial empire. It was a brilliant refinement which allowed the US corporate giants to veil their interests behind the flag of democracy and human rights for “oppressed colonial peoples,” support of “free enterprise” and “open markets….”
In early 1941, some 10 months before the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, Henry Luce, publisher of “Time” and “Life” magazines, and a well-connected member of the East Coast elite, wrote an editorial in the Feb 17 issue of “Life” entitled, “The American Century.” In his essay, Luce described the emerging consensus of the US East Coast establishment around the CFR.
‘Tyrannies,’ Luce wrote, ‘may require a large amount of living space; but Freedom requires and will require far greater living space than Tyranny.’ He made an open call for Americans to embrace a new role as the dominant power in the world, a world in which the US had not yet entered the war. He wrote, ‘the cure to this: to accept wholeheartedly our duty and our opportunity as the most powerful and vital nation in the world and in consequence TO EXERT UPON THE WORLD THE FULL IMPACT OF OUR INFLUENCE, FOR SUCH PURPOSES AS WE SEE FIT AND BY SUCH MEANS AS WE SEE FIT.’
Luce was reflecting the emerging view of the internationally-oriented US business and banking establishment around Morgan and Rockefeller. They needed unfettered access to global resources and markets after the war, and they saw the golden chance to get it while all contending powers had been devastated by war.…
The American banking and industrial giants needed room, or what some called a Grand Area. The Economic & Financial Group of the CFR War & Peace Studies made a survey of world trade in the late 1930’s. They proposed linking the Western Hemisphere with the Pacific into a US-dominated bloc, which was premised on what they called ‘military and economic supremacy for the US.’ (pg. 105)
As Bowman and others of the CFR State Department study group saw it, the champions of the new American economic geography would define themselves as the selfless advocates of freedom for colonial peoples and as the enemy of imperialism. They would champion world peace through multinational control. Since the late days of WWI, when Bowman had worked on the Inquiry, a top-secret strategy group of President Woodrow Wilson, Bowman had been occupied with HOW TO CLOTHE AMERICAN IMPERIAL AMBITIONS IN LIBERAL AND BENEVOLENT GARB.
As Bowman and other CFR planers envisioned it, the American domination of the world after 1945 would be accomplished via a new organization, the UN, including the new Bretton Woods institutions of the IMF and World Bank, as well as GATT.
Bowman’s CFR group had drafted the basic outline for President Roosevelt of what would become the UN organization. Under the BANNER OF “FREE TRADE” and the OPENING OF CLOSED MARKETS AROUND THE WORLD, US big business would advance their agenda, forcing open new untapped markets for cheap raw materials as well as new outlets for selling American manufacturers after the war. (pg. 106)
For the CFR and the forward-looking members of the US policy-making establishment, after WWII, global power would no longer be measured in terms of military control over colonial territories. The British and European empires proved to be a system far too costly and inefficient. Power would be defined directly in economic terms. It would be based on what one Harvard proponent, Joseph Nye, later was to call ‘soft power.'” (pg. 107)
<Source: Engdahl, William F. Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation. Quebec: Global Research, 2007. Print. (See pages 105-107)>
Fascinating history, isn’t it? How many of you learned that history growing up? I expect not many! But, it’s not the fault of teachers or historians because much of this history was classified for decades.
These obscure historical accounts provide an important backdrop for understanding the roots of the quest to control food on a global scale. It has become commonplace to assert that the establishment of American hegemony was accidental and that it has been benevolent, desirable and reluctant. As historical record shows, that assertion is far too simplistic.
By the end of this story you will see that the control of food is merely the means to an important end—the control of humans on a planetary scale. As one of the most renowned former national security advisors is rumored to have said:
Control the oil, and you control nations. Control the food, and you control the people.
-Henry Kissinger, Former US Secretary of State & National Security Advisor
Starting after WWI and culminating at the start of WWII, the strategy for establishing an informal American empire was set in place.
Stay Tuned: We will be continuing this fascinating story in underground US history in the next module. Check back periodically as new modules will be added on an ongoing basis.