THE MASS MEDIA AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER
By
MARK PAUL ANDERSON
Integrated Studies Project
submitted to Dr. Gloria Filax in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Arts – Integrated Studies
Athabasca, Alberta
April 2011
Abstract
As globalization marches on with its triumphs and disappointments, the phrase ‘New World Order’ has become increasingly popularized. Yet, the words symbolize very different hopes and fears for different people. To the Radical Right of the US, for decades the ‘New World Order’ has signified a tyrannical if not unholy plan of international bankers and other shadowy power elites to institute a world government. Most commonly, the figures alleged to be in the quest for this New World Order are depicted as residing in private policy discussion groups such as the Trilateral Commission. One aspect of the alleged plan often mentioned by the Radical Right is control of the mass media. While it is true that many media outlets are represented in the Trilateral Commission, in order to understand the actual effect of these relationships this study examines one link in particular, that of Trilateral Commission member, CEO and Chairman of The Washington Post Company, Donald E. Graham. This is done by comparing the action recommendations of the most recent Trilateral Commission Task Force Report, Engaging Iran and Building Peace in the Persian Gulf Region (2008) with the editorial positions of The Washington Post during the year 2008. While the study includes a historical genealogy of the New World Order that proves a conspiracy for world federation in which both the Trilateral Commission and The Washington Post are directly linked, the comparison of discourse shows rather that The Washington Post does not merely propagandize the position of the Trilateral Commission but presents and legitimizes a spectrum of scenarios amenable to a wider range of corporate elites, supporting instead a view of the mass media rather in accordance with Herman & Chomsky’s propaganda model.
1
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ______4
PART I -THE POLITICO-ECONOMIC MARKETPLACE ______10
THE US POLICY MAKING PROCESS ______10 THE MEDIA AND THE POLICY MAKING PROCESS ______13 THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION IN THE POLITICO-ECONOMIC MARKETPLACE______16 PUBLIC CHOICE THEORY ______24 PUBLIC CHOICE AND THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION______26 TRILATERAL COMMISSION FOREIGN POLICY______40 COMPLEX INTERDEPENDENCE______42 MANAGING INTERDEPENDENCE______43 SUMMARY OF PART I______44
PART II – CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE______45
STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIPS AND THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION ______45 A ‘NEOLIBERAL’ HEGEMONY?______47
PART III - A GENEALOGY OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER ______52
PRE-WAR ATLANTICISM______54 THE MILNER GROUP______54 JP MORGAN & CO.______59 LEADING CLASS FRACTIONS AND CONFUSION OF THE RADICAL RIGHT______60 RESISTING REGULATION AND INSTITUTIONALIZING DOMINANCE ______63 POST-WAR ATLANTICISM – THE RISE OF ROCKEFELLER ______68 TRILATERALISM ______72 JOURNALISM, THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER______74 PHILIP L. GRAHAM AND WISNER’S GANG ______79 PHIL GRAHAM VS JOE MCCARTHY – AN EPITOMIZING BATTLE______81 THE POST IN THE TRILATERAL ERA ______83 LESSONS FROM THE GENEALOGY ______84
PART IV – THE STUDY______87
TAKING AN ISSUE ______87 CONTEXTUALIZATION OF IRAN ______88 ENGAGING IRAN – A TRIANGLE PAPER ______91 ACTION RECOMMENDATIONS ______92 SANCTIONS ______93 CENTRAL ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES ______94 EUROPE: THE TASKS OF PRACTICAL COOPERATION______95 COMMON TASKS ______96 NEGOTIATING URANIUM ENRICHMENT______96 MIDDLE EAST AND REGIONAL SECURITY IN THE PERSIAN GULF______97 WHAT IRAN SHOULD CONSIDER ______98 TANAKA’S CONTRIBUTION ______98 THE WASHINGTON POST EDITORIALS ______99 METHODOLOGY ______99 ARTICLES ‘ABOUT POLICY TOWARDS IRAN’ ______100 ARTICLES ‘ PARTIALLY ABOUT POLICY TOWARDS IRAN’ ______106 ARTICLES THAT ‘MENTION POLICY TOWARDS IRAN’ ______109 DATA ANALYSIS ______112
2 A CONVENIENT DEBATE ______112 SPECTRUM OF OPINIONS ______115 TRILATERALS ON THE MAINSTREAM LEFT ______117 IDEOLOGICAL CONSONANCE______120 FREE MARKET MASS MEDIA PRACTICES ______123
CONCLUSION______125
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1. An Oligarchical Model of National Policy Making. ______12 Figure 2. Policy Clusters in the 1970's ______17 Figure 3. Policy Clusters in the 1980's. ______18 Figure 4. Policy Clusters in the 1990's. ______18 Figure 5. Twenty-Seven Key Players and Their Organizational Affiliations, 1996. ______23 Figure 6. Twenty-Seven Key Players and Their Organizational Affiliations, 2006. ______24 Figure 7. The Effect of Alternative Decision Rules ______26 Figure 8. The Power Elite.______27 Figure 9. A plaque commemorating the founding of the Club, the origins of the New World Order. ______55 Figure 10. Allen Dulles, right, with the Shah of Iran and Russell C. Leffingwell. Dulles ______71 Figure 11. A spectrum of opinions regarding how the US should engage Iran in the Post 2008. ______116
LIST OF TABLES
Table 1. Media Representatives of the 2008 Trilateral Commission. ______7 Table 2. Trilateral Commission Policy Discussion Group Interlocks. ______19 Table 3. Multinational Corporate Interests of the Trilateral Commission. ______28 Table 4. Banking and Financial Interests of the Trilateral Commission. ______30 Table 5. 2008 Trilateral Commission with former North American government service. ______31 Table 6. 2008 Trilateral Commission Intellectuals from the North American contingent. ______34 Table 7. Trilateral Commission members appointed to the Barack Obama Administration. ______38 Table 8. Rhodes Scholars of the 2008 North American contingent of the Trilateral Commission. ______58 Table 9. Foundations represented in the Trilateral Commission. ______67 Table 10. Editorial contributors and their Institutional Affiliations. ______121
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
CFR - Council of Foreign Relations CIA - Central Intelligence Agency ExCom – The Trilateral Commission Executive Committee IAEA – International Atomic Energy Agency NIE – National Intelligence Estimate NPT- Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty NSA –National Security Advisor OSS = Office of Strategic Services RIIA = Royal Institute of International Affairs
3 INTRODUCTION
Now we can see a new world coming into view. A world in which there is the very real prospect of a New World Order.1
President George H.W. Bush Address to US Congress 11 Sept 1990.
The phrase ‘New World Order’ has a long and uneven history. One of the first to popularize the term was Woodrow Wilson, who used the three words in conjunction with his ideal vision of a world ideologically based on his famous fourteen points and politically integrated through the League of Nations. Another early figure helping to engrave the term in the popular consciousness was science fiction writer H.G. Wells. The New World Order (1940) however was not a far-fetched work of the imagination, but “simply [an attempt] to state the things we must do and the price we must pay for world peace if we really intend to achieve it.”2 Adding many of his own thoughts and criticisms, Wells envisioned a world built upon a political idea then espoused by the Rhodes Scholar New York Times journalist Clarence Streit: a world federation that was to begin with the union of the English speaking world. For Wells, a man passionately committed to understanding the future impact of technological advancement, the New World Order was inevitable. However, because such a political model was essentially collectivist, he foresaw that the defenders of more individualistic freedom would violently oppose it: [W]hen the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people, from maharajas to millionaires and from pukkha sahibs to pretty ladies, will hate the New World Order, be rendered unhappy by frustration of their passions and ambitions through its advent and will die protesting against it.3
Though history has yet to prove Wells right about the inevitability of a New World Order, he was certainly correct about the polarization such an idea could have on the population. Thus when President George H. W. Bush began to liberally use the phrase, he not only popularized
1 George H.W. Bush. Toward a New World Order. U.S. Congress, Joint Session. Washington, DC. 11 Sept 1990. 2 H.G. Wells. The New World Order. (London: Hesperides Press, 2008) 1. 3 Wells 127.
4 the term to new heights but the words became a locus symbolic of very different hopes and fears for different people. To those in the policy establishment, the term is now often used with the same positive connotation that Bush explicitly stated—that in a post-Soviet world, it was now possible to imagine a peaceful family of nations united and governed by universal values: In the words of Winston Churchill,4 a ‘world order’ in which ‘the principles of justice and fair play ... protect the weak against the strong ...’ A world where the United Nations, freed from cold war stalemate, is poised to fulfill the historic vision of its founders.5
On the other hand, critics of neoliberalism, the political and economic philosophy that flourished in the wake of the fall of the USSR, increasingly began using the term pejoratively. For them, the New World Order was symbolic of the international institutionalization of corporate excesses; a phenomenon not infrequently depicted as the driving force behind US imperial ambitions. Many mainstream conservatives worried as well. Though generally supportive of corporate behaviour as a productive expression of economic freedom, not unlike Wells’ envisioned dissenters, the loss of sovereign authority brought about by global regimes threatened to trample the individual freedoms mainstream conservatives held so dear. It was in the view of the ultra-conservative Radical Right however, that these fears were amplified many times over. In the words of one commentator, Bush’s utterance of the New World Order “surged through the Christian and secular hard right like an electric shock.”6 Undoubtedly, this was partly because elements of that significant sector of the US population-- perhaps most notably the John Birch Society7--had for decades associated the phrase ‘New
4 It is rather ironic that Bush invokes Churchill. The former British Prime Minister was one of the greatest critics of the actual policies (to be discussed later) of the group of elites covertly striving for a New World Order in his time. 5 Bush, Toward a New World Order. 6 Chip Berlet, “Dances with Devils: How Apocalyptic and Millennialist Themes Influence Right Wing Scapegoating and Conspiracism,” PublicEye.Org 15 Apr 1999.
5 World Order’ with what they believed was a tyrannical if not unholy plan of international bankers and other shadowy power elites to institute a world government whereby a rather neo-feudal control of the population would be constituted beyond reparation.8 Most commonly the figures and power of the quest for a New World Order are currently depicted by the Radical Right as residing in internationalist private policy discussion groups, especially the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and the Council on Foreign Relations. This study will particularly focus on investigating the validity of these last claims, and more specifically of one aspect of the alleged plan to install a New World Order often mentioned by the Radical Right—control of the mass media. The following quote, purportedly uttered at a 1991 Bilderberg conference in Germany by David Rockefeller, a central figure in the New World Order conspiracy, is often mentioned to buttress these claims: We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost 40 years...It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subjected to the lights of publicity during those years. But, the world is more sophisticated now and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto-determination practiced in past centuries.9
Former Office of Strategic Services10 (OSS) agent and international correspondent Hilaire du Berrier first reported the above quote to American audiences. Du Berrier himself translated the statement as it appeared in two far-right French publications, Minute and Lectures Françaises, which themselves were reporting on the claim of a Swedish journalist. As the particular language of the quote happens to fuel the indignation of these ultra-nationalist publications, and as the Bilderberg Group is an annual closed-door meeting of power elites from North America and Western Europe, there is certainly reason to doubt the authenticity of the quote. But lack of authenticity has never been a necessary condition for belief and proliferation of ideas, and ideas—regardless of origins—can have enormous consequences. Of particular and the Rockefellers, government agencies like the Federal Reserve System and the Internal Revenue Service, and nongovernmental organizations like the Bilderberg Group, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Trilateral Commission." Sean Wilentz, “Confounding Fathers: The Tea Party’s Cold War Roots,”The New Yorker, 18 Oct 2010. The John Birch Society reached its zenith in influence in the 1960’s and 70’s. Fred Koch of Koch industries, the world’s largest private corporation and, often cited as one of the most powerful ultraconservative forces today, was also a founding member. 8 The discursive parallels concerning the eventuality of such a world government with the coming of the final antichrist depicted in the Bible is not insignificant. 9 qtd. in W.N. Grigg, The New American 10 Feb 2003. The New American is a John Birch Society publication. 10 The precursor to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), established by President Roosevelt in 1942.
6 concern to the US government security apparatus and population alike, one group adhering to these ideas is the more radical segment of the growing American Patriot movement, to which the Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh belonged. The possibility that the current study can clarify and diffuse some of the differences between these opposing forces alone is reason enough to render this a worthwhile study. To begin with, we must also acknowledge that the probable lack of authenticity of the du Berrier quote also does not nullify the possibility of it being true. Included in the Trilateral Commission, the most international of these New World Order organizations, there are indeed several prominent media personnel:
Table 1. Media Representatives of the 2008 Trilateral Commission.11 Alejandro Junco de la Vega, President and Director, Grupo Reforma Bill Emmott, Former Editor, The Economist Charles Rose, Host of the Charlie Rose Show and Charlie Rose Special Edition, PBS David G. Bradley, Chairman, Atlantic Media Company David Gergen Editor-at-Large, U.S. News and World Report Donald E. Graham, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, The Washington Post Company Fareed Zakaria, Editor, Newsweek International Franco Venturini, Senior Editorial Commentator on Foreign Affairs, Corriere della Sera Hong Seok Hyun, former Chairman and CEO, Joong Ang Ilbo Ivan Krastev Editor-in-Chief, Bulgarian Edition, Foreign Policy Janne Virkkunen, Senior Editor-in-Chief, Helsingin Sanomat Jerzy Baczynski, Editor-in-Chief, Polityka Karen Elliott House, frmr Snr VP, Dow Jones, and Publisher, The Wall Street Journal Klaus-Dieter Frankenberger, Foreign Editor, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Lee Cullum, former regular commentator, "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer," and columnist Mortimer B. Zuckerman, Chairman and Editor-in-Chief, U.S. News & World Report, and Publisher, New York Daily News Nicolas Beytout, Former Editor of Le Figaro and Les Echos Richard Plepler, Co-president, HBO Salvatore Carrubba, Director of Strategies and Columnist, Il Sole 24 Ore Sergei Karaganov Chairman, Editorial Board, Russia in Global Affairs Tøger Seidenfaden, Editor-in-Chief, Politiken Yoichi Funabashi, Chief Diplomatic Correspondent and Columnist, The Asahi Shimbun
Undoubtedly, the relationships are intriguing. But what is the actual effect of these relationships on the news produced by these media outlets? In this study, we will examine one of these links in depth, the relationship of the Trilateral Commission to one of its members:
11 Data taken from the 2008 Trilateral Commission Membership List received by email upon request from the Trilateral Commission.
7 Bilderberg attendee, CEO and Chairman of The Washington Post Company, Donald E. Graham. If there were some form of direct media control of the Trilateral Commission over The Washington Post or if the two organizations were part of a coordinated cabal as the Radical Right suggests, surely we should find a high degree of consonance between the action recommendations of Trilateral Commission policy and what appears on the editorial pages of The Washington Post. This study will therefore include a comparison of the action recommendations of the most recent Trilateral Commission Task Force Report, Engaging Iran and Building Peace in the Persian Gulf Region (2008) with the editorial positions of The Washington Post during the year 2008. In order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the significance of the discourse we propose to analyze, we will profit highly by contextualizing the Trilateral Commission and The Washington Post within a general theoretical framework. This will be achieved in several steps. First, we shall examine some of the theoretical foundations of the Trilateral Commission as espoused by Stephen Gill, one of the only persons to have devoted a lengthy scholarly treatise on the organization. A component of Gill’s approach employs public choice theory and posits the Trilateral Commission as an organization operating within (what I have interpreted as) an ideological apparatus put forth in a model by power elite theorist Thomas. R Dye. Dye’s Oligarchical Model of National Policy Making depicts generalized structured processes of the US politico-economic marketplace, and is intended to generally explain where ideas on the political agenda originate and how they are transformed into government action. As the issue chosen concerns Iran and The Washington Post, we will also examine the general foreign policy positions of the Trilateral Commission as well as the role of the mass media in this ideological apparatus. Having achieved this, we shall then investigate two analytical shortcomings of this theoretical framework. The first is that this framework does not adequately investigate the discrepancy between these aspects of the theoretical framework put forth by Gill, as well as the stated aims of the Trilateral Commission as accepted by Gill, and the actual effects of Trilateral Commission policy. By pointing out the contradictions between the effects of the self-interested strategic relationships of Trilateral Commission member corporations and other beneficiaries throughout the chain of power and the theoretical framework and altruistic sounding discourse and policies implemented by the group, we can identify systematically obscured dynamics of
8 power that must be taken into account if we are to more accurately gauge the group’s significance and legitimacy. The second critique is constructivist in nature. While another aspect of Gill’s theoretical foundation adds a historical and transformative dimension by employing a Neo-Gramscian methodology to explain the dynamics of world hegemony, it will be found that his analysis focuses too narrowly on higher order institutionalizations of the power of capital. Though Gill’s approach explains the Trilateral Commission and other institutions of global governance as the reification of ideas and material capabilities, a more detailed exposition of the genealogy of the leading class fractions behind the New World Order reveals that the efforts of these circles of power has reified not only in policy organizations but in all nodes of Dye’s ideological apparatus. Thus, the institutionalized power of capital is far more pervasive than Gill assumes, rendering the question of the legitimacy of the Trilateral Commission, and other products of the ideological apparatus much more complex and problematic. Moreover, this genealogy in fact exposes an early conspiracy of international bankers and intellectual elites, although it shall also be found that the explicit cooperation towards the goal of a New World Order is limited to a particular time period and leading class fraction among many other competing eras and circles. In short, it does not extend as neatly and completely as many versions of the Radical Right would have it. Of particular note to this section is the revelation that both the Trilateral Commission and The Washington Post can be explicitly linked to this genealogy of elite class fraction led hegemony and the conspiracy contained within it, thus underlining the value of determining the level of cooperation that exists between these two organizations today. After this critiqued theoretical framework and historical account, we will then examine and analyze the discourse of the Trilateral Commission Task Force Report and that of The Washington Post editorials.
9 PART I -THE POLITICO-ECONOMIC MARKETPLACE
Ideas and opinions are not spontaneously ‘born’ in each individual brain; they have a centre of formation, or irradiation, of dissemination, of persuasion – a group of men, or a single individual even, which has developed them in the political form of current reality. The counting of the ‘votes’ is the final ceremony of a long process, in which it is precisely those who devote their best energies to the State and the nation (when such they are) who carry the greatest weight. Antonio Gramsci12
THE US POLICY MAKING PROCESS
Thomas R. Dye’s extensive analysis demonstrates that on a macro-level the US policymaking process operates according to a generalized structure. The processes depicted in figure 1 are representative of various policymaking networks bound within liberal economic ideology. A key feature to note of this model is that ideas that become policy tend to originate in corporate and personal wealth, which we shall hereafter refer to as corporate elite interests. Quite simply, throughout a progressive process of research, decision making, opinion making and finally policy decisions, the superior resources of corporate elite interests are able to out- compete ideas from less endowed sources, such as those from the liberal-labour coalition or more grassroots movements. For this reason, the policymaking process can be aptly described as a ‘politico-economic marketplace’. Moreover, as these structural process function so that it is primarily the wealthier subset of the population’s ideas that manifest in policy, Dye's model can also be viewed as a general ideological apparatus. This furthermore means that the ideology and beliefs of the personnel involved within the dominant organizations of these processes-- including public officials requiring resources to outcompete others in elections—also will tend to be consonant with the ideology of the corporate elite.
Befitting the geographical beginnings of the US, historically the ‘Eastern Establishment’ has dominated the American policymaking process. The rather liberal values of these elites are summarized below:
12 Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (New York: International Publishers, 1973) 192-193.
10 Although the origins of the Establishment are ecclesiastical and aristocratic, in America it is firmly joined to both democratic and capitalist institutions. But its ambitions go beyond: it seeks to protect and advance social, moral, and aesthetic values that transcend the interests of any single person, economic group political constituency or organization; it affects to be a harmonizer, an arbiter, a wise instructor of the nation—and particularly of its political and business leaders.13
In recent decades however, with foundations in the equally new wealth of the South and Southwest, Eastern Establishment dominance of national policy has been increasingly challenged by an elite conservative network, marked by a more Manichean world view and a desire to revert America towards the small-government practices of earlier times. This elite factionalization between the Eastern Establishment and conservatives of the South and Soutwest is sometimes referred to as 'the Yankees vs. the Cowboys.'14 Though by no means absolute, today Yankees tend to be liberal Democrats while Cowboys are conservative Republicans. Yet, however irreconcilable and antagonistic these groups may appear toward each other on the political scene, at bottom they share a common belief in liberal democratic values (however distorted by a corporate elite bias) as the basis of a prosperous society. It can therefore be said the two dominant factions of the political systems tend to disagree on the means of policy rather than the ends.
13 Leonard and Mark Silk qtd. in Thomas Dye, Who’s Running America? The Bush Restoration 7th ed. (McGraw- Hill: Prentice Hall, 2002) 115-116. 14 Thomas Dye, Who’s Running America? The Bush Restoration 7th ed. (McGraw- Hill: Prentice Hall, 2002) 210.
11
Figure 1. An Oligarchical Model of National Policy Making.15
15 Dye qtd. in Stephen Gill, “Hegemony, Consensus and Trilateralism,” Review of International Studies.12.3 (1986): 216.
12 THE MEDIA AND THE POLICY MAKING PROCESS
In figure 1 we may note that the ‘National News Media’ is integrated at the 'Opinion- Making’ stage of policy formation, interacting with policy discussion groups and universities as well as government commissions and officials. From this perspective, the issues on the policy agenda as well as how the different corporate elite factions are approaching them has already largely been decided in processes that have taken place even before the mass media becomes significantly involved. One-time owner of The Washington Post, 'the most powerful woman in the world' Katharine Graham once remarked the following of her paper: “The power is to set the agenda. What we print and what we don’t matter a lot.”16 Regarding Dye’s model however, this is not quite correct. It is true that the Post sets the agenda for smaller papers that follow its lead, and therefore the Post plays a major role in proliferating the agenda, but the mass media generally is not what Gramsci referred to as the ‘point of irradiation’ of ideas. That distinction generally belongs to the corporate elite, whose aggregated needs define the issues. On the other hand, as we shall later see, it is rather revealing that Graham thinks of the mass media as the agenda-setter, and this false self-attribution of power may demonstrate just how obscured the setting of the agenda is even to the owners of major mass media outlets and the higher echelons of the corporate elite in general. For obvious reasons, the mass media does not like to portray itself merely as the stooges of corporate power. They prefer to see themselves as nobly performing the watchdog role, of holding power accountable, and simply reporting the news objectively as it happens. But even assuming this is true, ‘what happens’ in the politico-economic marketplace has already been determined by corporate elite interests, and the media and its personnel will come to reflect that dominance, whether the media itself recognizes this ideological apparatus or not. Therefore, these simplistic defenses and claims of the mass media as independent of the system and objective in its analysis must be rejected. Concerning the issues that are to be discussed, media personnel are however, not only reporting on what others say and do but are important contributors both to the shaping of public opinion and the discussion itself. The most prestigious columnists are often highly regarded
16 Carol Felsenthal, Power, Privilege and the Post: The Katharine Graham Story (New York: Seven Stories, 1993) 444.
13 experts in the fields they write about. As such, they may even belong to policy discussion groups such as the Trilateral Commission. And yet, here again, we must realize that their subjects of expertise and the perspectives they are likely to hold are the very issues and attitudes that have survived the attrition of the politico-economic marketplace. The political system as an ideological apparatus suggests that if journalists chose to ignore the prominence of these issues and instead constantly wrote about issues of no concern to corporate elite interests, or if journalists constantly took radical positions outside of the legitimized spectrum, they themselves would be unlikely to survive long in their illustrious position, which is after all a product of the market, created and sustained by corporate elite power. The following quote by Trilateral Commission member Henry Kissinger succinctly makes this point: In our ‘age of the expert’ the expert has his constituency— those who have a vested interest in commonly held opinions; elaborating and defining the consensus at a high level has, after all, made him an expert.
Kissinger goes on to mention the unlikelihood of the expert to even maintain the capacity to think outside the spectrum: “Since the expert is often the product of the administrative dilemmas…he is usually in a poor position to transcend them.”17 Thus the ideological and practical constraints of the market greatly influence the nature of mass media discourse and personnel. Such constraints are buttressed by the reality that mass media organizations themselves are large businesses, often part of much larger conglomerates, with boards of directors whose members are integrated into other boards of directors within the interlocking corporate elite milieu. One celebrated ‘free-market analysis’ of the production of media discourse under such conditions is that of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. In their basic ‘propaganda model’, highly compatible with Dye’s model of policymaking, market and organizational constraints systematically filter the news so that the end product generally—but not absolutely-- accords with the corporate elite’s agenda.18 It likewise follows that the ideology from this hegemony is reflected not only in the news produced but, as Kissinger and I have suggested, in the minds of the producers of the news. Most biased choices in the media arise from the pre-selection of right-thinking people, internalized preconceptions, and the adaptation of personnel to the
17 Henry Kissinger, “Domestic Structure and Foreign Policy,” Daedalus Vol. 95, No. 2, Conditions of World Order (Spring, 1966) 514. 18 While I am in agreement with Herman & Chomsky's general thesis, this is not to say that I am not critical of certain aspects of their model or thought.
14 constraints of ownership, organization, market, and political power. Censorship is largely self-censorship, by reporters and commentators who adjust to the realities of source and media organizational requirements, and by people at higher levels within media organizations who are chosen to implement, and have usually internalized, the constraints imposed by proprietary and other market and governmental centers of power.19
While Herman & Chomsky’s analysis “deals with an extraordinarily complex set of events, and only claims to offer a broad framework of analysis”,20 this study is essentially a second order analysis on that general framework. To verify their theory, Herman & Chomsky have conducted several studies on the end product of the news. They typically track the biases of specific issues as they have appeared in specific mass media outlets. This study on the other hand aims to examine specific relationships between organizations within the ideological apparatus, and thus begins at an earlier stage of the news-making process than Herman & Chomsky’s studies. It examines the ideological congruence between the action recommendations of the Trilateral Commission and the editorials of The Washington Post, two organizations with a long- standing affiliation. One of the primary benefits of this study is therefore that it offers this new methodology to understand and test the mechanisms of the US ideological apparatus. At this point however, we will merely provide some evidence of the Post’s position within the liberal economic spectrum. When Spiro Agnew’s inappropriate relationships were brought to light by the Post forcing him to resign, the US Vice President rhetorically asked the reporters to ask themselves what kind of biases they held, and if these biases were serving the nation. Interestingly, several prominent Post writers and editors did just that. These admissions happen to provide evidence of the Post’s then Eastern Establishment attitudes: Agnew had spoken of Eastern bias but it is really cultural. It turns up in the columns of The Post, Times, and other members of the media axis. The core of it is the unspoken assumption that the rest of the country is filled with boobs, simple folk who look eastward for their model of the nobler goals, but can be expected to do the wrong thing.21
We are, for the most part, a collection of Easterners, middle and upper-middle class, well-educated, relatively sophisticated, generally liberal. This shows in our reporting.22
19 Noam Chomsky, and Edward S. Herman, Manufacturing Consent. (New York: Pantheon, 1988) xii. 20 Edward S Herman, “The Propaganda Model: A Retrospective.” Propaganda, Politics, Power. 1 (2003): 1-14. 21 Former Reporter and Editor William Greider qtd. in Chalmers M Roberts, In the Shadow of Power: The Story of The Washington Post (Washington: Seven Locks Press, 1989) 412. 22 Former Foreign and National Editor Peter Osnos qtd. in Roberts 414.
15 Indeed, the liberalism of the Post was considered so pervasive in the decades following the Second World War that when reporter Bernard Nossiter introduced himself to Che Guevara, the revolutionary happily referred to the paper as “the Pravda of the United States.” Senator McCarthy was also a bitter enemy of the paper and continually referred to the publication as ‘The Washington Daily Worker.’ Phil Graham, who preceded his wife Katharine as publisher, was himself a crusading liberal whose personal influence left a lasting impression on US policy. In fact, President Lyndon B. Johnson admits that it was Graham who actually wrote his Great Society programs.23 Regarding market constraints, Katharine Graham biographer Carol Felsenthal noted that in several instances, unsurprisingly, that Phil was careful not to alienate advertising revenue by printing stories these financial supporters might not like. In the current era of his son Donald, Post official biographer Chalmers M. Roberts freely admits that the ‘bottom-line’ has been the priority, and that, in accordance with the rise of conservatism and America's general shift to the right over the past few decades, the editorial stance of the paper was also brought in this direction to become more centrist. In sum, the anecdotes and facts provided here serve as glimpses of evidence that The Washington Post exhibits tendencies congruent with the characterization of the media’s role in US ideological apparatuses as described by both Dye and Herman & Chomsky; the general notion that ‘the National News Media’ will tend to represent a spectrum of corporate elite perspectives greatly conditioned by the market.
THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION IN THE POLITICO-ECONOMIC MARKETPLACE
Let us now examine the role of the Trilateral Commission in the politico-economic marketplace. As the organization seeks a high degree of legitimacy and consensus, it attempts to pursue a centrist position. When the organization began operations in 1973, it had therefore tended to represent the then hegemonic Eastern Establishment liberal end of the corporate elite spectrum. Like The Washington Post, with the rise of conservatism, the organization’s position has oscillated to the right over recent decades, especially with regard to economic philosophy.
23Felsenthal 162. In this exceptional case then, The Washington Post really was setting the agenda.
16 In figures 2, 3, & 4, beginning in the 1970's and spanning three decades, Burris (2008) topographically depicts the constellation of major policy groups in the US. In these figures, distance and shading between organizations is determined by the amount of overlap in respective boards of directors. Burris names the three main clusters according to their economic philosophy. 'Corporate liberal' (including for example the Trilateral Commission) is roughly equal to the Eastern Establishment, 'moderate conservative' (including for example the Business Round Table) of mainstream conservative Republicanism while 'ultraconservatism' (including for example the Hoover Institution) also tends towards the Republican Party though adhering to a much less compromising economic neoliberal philosophy. We will henceforth use these terms to describe these major factions.
Figure 2. Policy Clusters in the 1970's24
24 Figures 2, 3 and 4 from Val Burris, “The Interlock Structure of the Policy-Planning Network and the Right Turn in U.S. State Policy,” Research in Political Sociology, 2008.
17 Figure 3. Policy Clusters in the 1980's.
Figure 4. Policy Clusters in the 1990's.
18 A notable trend over the three figures is the oscillating distance between the two main clusters of corporate liberalism and moderate conservatism, indicative both of the shift to the right of American economic policy, as well as the varying degrees of polarization and reconciliation between those groups. These trends may be seen as the displacement of the corporate liberal hegemony of the post-World War II era and/or accommodation of the neoliberal tendencies of the moderate conservative faction. To this topographical view, in the following tables we can add a vertical dimension by examining more closely the interlocking directorates of policy discussion groups within the broader corporate liberal policy cluster, (two of which, the Aspen Institute and the Carnegie Endowment of International Peace, are prominent but not represented in Burris’ figures). Doing so, it is clear that the Trilateral Commission appears as an apex of that cluster, containing the leaders and other senior members of these other major policy discussion groups.25 As the issue we shall eventually be concerned with is US foreign policy towards Iran, we have also included two prominent security related policy discussion groups: RAND and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
Table 2. Trilateral Commission Policy Discussion Group Interlocks.26
COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS27
Slaughter Anne-Marie Former Director Hills Carla A. Co-Chairman Rockefeller David Former Chairman Bradley David G. Director David G. Blair Dennis C. Leadership Staff Zakaria Fareed Senior staff
25 However, we must also remember that in seeking legitimacy the Trilateral Commission also contains a minority faction of prominent members of the moderate conservative cluster. 26 All information for membership from all policy discussion groups compiled from SourceWatch. Lisa Graves (Executive Director). Center for Media and Democracy. < http://www.sourcewatch.org>. 27We should also note that Dye considers the Trilateral Commission the ‘multinational arm’ of the CFR, so that while the Trilateral Commission contains many senior members of the CFR, the Trilateral Commission may be more accurately portrayed as an organ attempting to internationalize the perspective of the CFR, rather than as merely hierarchically superior. Thomas Dye and Harmon Zeigler, The Irony of Democracy: An Uncommon Introduction to American Politics (Boston: Cengage Advantage Books, 2009) 92.
19 Stern Jessica Fellow Einhorn Jessica P. Former Director Deutch John M. Independent Task Force on Energy and U.S. Foreign Policy Nye Jr. Joseph S. Director House Karen Elliot Director Duberstein Kenneth M. Director Cullum Lee Director Feldstein Martin S. Trustee Froman Michael B.G. Senior fellow Haas Richard N. President Blackwill Robert D. Counselor Burwell Sylvia Mathews Director Pickering Thomas R. Former director Dobson Wendy K. Independent Task Force on the "Future of North America". Lord Winston Former President Brzezinski Zbigniew Former Director 40 plus other members
BROOKINGS INSTITUTION
Armitage Richard L. U.S. Advisory Group Bergsten C. Fred Senior Fellow 72-76 Brainard Lael VP Founding Director, BI Global Economy and Development Center Cooper Richard M. Fellow 60-61 Deutch John M. Distinguished Fellow, Foreign Policy Duberstein Kenneth M. Trustee Einhorn Jessica P. 1977-8 at BI on a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship Haas Richard N. Former Director of Foreign Policy Studies Kanter Arnold Research staff McNamara Robert S. Honorary trustee O'Sullivan Meghan Fellow 1998-2001 Rice Susan Senior Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies and Global Economy and Development Programs Rubio Luis Contributing Writer Slaughter Anne-Marie BI-Princeton Partnership, Advisory Board of the National Brookings Doha Center. Steinberg James Former VP and Director of the Foreign Policy Studies Program
20
THE ASPEN INSTITUTE
Armitage Richard L. Strategy group Blackwill Robert D. Strategy group Brainard Lael Strategy Group Burwell Sylvia M. Strategy group Campbell Kurt M. Director of the Aspen Strategy Group Coleman Jr. William Lifetime Trustee Cooper Richard M. member Deutch John M. Strategy group Donilon Thomas Strategy group Gergen David Director Haas Richard N. Strategy group Kagan Robert Strategy group Kanter Arnold Strategy group Kissinger Henry Honarary Trustee McNamara Robert S. Lifetime Trustee Nye Jr. Joseph S. Fmr Senior Fellow, Fmr Director of Strategy group Pickering Thomas R. Lifetime Trustee Rice Susan Strategy group Rockefeller David Several former connections Ross Dennis Middle East Strategy Group Slaughter Anne-Marie Strategy group Steinberg James Strategy group Volcker Paul A. Lifetime Trustee Webster William H. Strategy group Zakaria Fareed Strategy group Zuckerman Mortimer Trustee
CARNEGIE ENDOWMENT FOR INTERNATIONAL PEACE
Bergsten C. Fred Senior Fellow 1981 Ferguson, Jr. Roger W. Trustee Fukuyama Francis Fellow Haas Richard N. Senior associate Kagan Robert Senior Associate Nye Jr. Joseph S. 1968 Visiting Professor
21
CENTER FOR STRATEGIC AND INTERNATIONAL STUDIES
Armitage Richard L. Trustee Robert Jr. Joseph E. Trustee Hamre John J. President and CEO Slaughter Anne-Marie Member, Advisory Committee Jones James L. Former Trustee Campbell Kurt M. Former Executive Nye Jr. Joseph S. Director Kissinger Henry Counselor, Trustee Hills Carla A. Counselor, Trustee Brzezinski Zbigniew Counselor and Trustee Brown Harold Counselor and Trustee House Karen Elliot Advisory Committee Rubio Luis Adjunct Fellow, Americas Program
RAND
Brown Harold Trustee Emeritus Brzezinski Zbigniew Chair Rand Center for Middle East Public Policy Advisory Board Davis Lynn E. Director, Washington Office. Former VP and director of the Arroyo Center. Fukuyama Francis Board of Trustees Geithner Timothy F. Former Trustee House Karen Elliot Vice Chairman on Board of Trustees Kanter Arnold Program director in the 1980s. Kissinger Henry Former consultant Steinberg James Former Senior Analyst
With a vertical dimension added to our view, in extending this to an international scale, we then find that the Trilateral Commission is truly a “network of networks”28 forming an apex over the policy discussion networks of the entire capitalist world. Note that while the Trilateral Commission is more to the political left within the US, taking into account the more social democratic polities of Europe and Japan, the Trilateral Commission is rather centrist on a global
28 Stephen Gill, American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009) 142.
22 scale. Carroll and Sapinski (2010) examined the 27 power elites most connected to the world’s top 500 corporations and 11 international policy discussion groups and found the Trilateral Commission (followed by the Bilderberg Group) to have the highest rating of ‘coreness’ (see figures 5 & 6). The study also found that, despite the relatively recent inclusion of the Asia Pacific region, the North Atlantic remains the center of policymaking power and that over the last ten years there has actually been gravitation away from North America and back towards Western Europe.
Figure 5. Twenty-Seven Key Players and Their Organizational Affiliations, 1996.29 TC = Trilateral Commission, BLDBRG = Bilderberg Group, CFRIAB = Council on Foreign Relations International Advisory Board. The two graphs display the centrality of the Trilateral Commission amongst the top 500 corporations, 11 discussion groups and the top 27 most connected power elite (those belonging to the boards of multiple top 500 corporations and 11 top policy discussion groups).
29 Figures 5 and 6 from William K. Carroll and Jean Philippe Sapinski, “The Global Corporate Elite and the Transnational Policy-Planning Network. A Structural Analysis”, International Sociology, (2010) 25: 501.
23
Figure 6. Twenty-Seven Key Players and Their Organizational Affiliations, 2006. TC = Trilateral Commission, BLDBRG = Bilderberg Group, CFRIAB = Council on Foreign Relations International Advisory Board. The two graphs display the centrality of the Trilateral Commission amongst the top 500 corporations, 11 discussion groups and the top 27 most connected power elite (those belonging to the boards of multiple top 500 corporations and 11 top policy discussion groups).
PUBLIC CHOICE THEORY
Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing my family and me as 'internationalists' and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - one world, if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it.30
David Rockefeller
30 David Rockefeller, Memoirs (New York: Random House) 405.
24 In examining prominent policy discussion groups, we have found the Trilateral Commission as an apex of a very diffuse and complex politico-economic marketplace, but we have yet to discuss any theory as to what these organizations and their members actually do. The methodology Gill employs to understand the processes by which government agendas are produced in liberal democracies through private policymaking discussion groups is public choice theory. In its basic form, public choice theory posits that cost-benefit minded actors, each equipped with imperfect knowledge of the world (‘bounded rationality’), form organizations and/or coalitions in order to achieve goals they could not on their own. Decisions arrived at by these organizations may be entirely executable in the private sphere, as a set of industry protocols may be for example. On the other hand, organizations may require execution through law or other governmental powers. It is this latter case with which we shall be primarily concerned. Many fundamental factors, such as the feasibility of specific purposes and the power and/or capabilities of the actors involved, will determine the membership of an organization as well as the nature of its government policy recommendations. As any consensus derives from the members’ ability to agree amongst themselves, a group with as few members as possible is ideal-- provided that these few members possess enough power to achieve their collective goals. Likewise, though self-interested actors would ideally collaborate with those of similar attitudes, at times it may be necessary to derive a consensus from a number of conflicting views simply because each side may require the power and legitimacy possessed by the holders of alternative viewpoints. On an international level, Frey (1983) summarizes the results of these somewhat obvious principles of self-interest and efficiency by analyzing the output of Group of 5 (US, UK, West Germany, France, Japan), Big Seven (plus Italy and Canada), Group of 10 (plus Belgium, Netherlands and Sweden) and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)(plus 13 more nations). He found that as the number of participating nations rose, the marginal cost of achieving consensus (the amount of concessions in one area to acquire gains in another) increased in an exponential rather than linear fashion. Similarly, as the number of voices increased and the denominators of consensus were lowered, the marginal policy contributions also produced diminishing returns (see figure 7). Nations are thus dissuaded from pursuing high levels of consensus should interests conflict, a trend especially true for large nations required to
25 assume more of the financial burden of implementing international agreements. Large powerful nations thus have an incentive to discuss amongst themselves, while small nations seek to be included in talks with larger nations in hopes of enjoying gains of which others shoulder the bulk of the costs.
Figure 7. The Effect of Alternative Decision Rules31
PUBLIC CHOICE AND THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION
Let us now look at the Trilateral Commission vis-à-vis these principles of public choice theory. The Trilateral Commission is made up of approximately 390 elites from North America, Europe and the Pacific Asian region. As we have seen that the Trilateral Commission is a ‘network of networks’ and it members are often persons who sit on multiple boards of major corporations and institutions, it is clear that a large portion of the organization belong to a leading class fraction sometimes referred to as the ‘power elite’. Power elite theorist G. William Domhoff defines the power elite as
31 Reproduced from Bruno S. Frey, “The Public Choice View of International Political Economy,” Collaborative Papers 7 (1983): 37.
26 the institutionalized leadership group for those who have an economic stake in preserving the governmental rules and regulations that maintain current wealth and income distributions.32
However, as we shall see, this group of power elites is concerned not only with maintenance of the status quo but with extending this hegemony to the entire world: i.e. the formation of a New World Order. As seen in figure 8, the power elite straddle the social upper class, corporate community and policy-planning network. Moreover, within the Trilateral Commission itself are the 36 directors of the group’s activity, the Executive Committee (ExCom), who may be said to belong to the innermost triangle of the world’s power elite.
Figure 8. The Power Elite.33
Following Gill, Trilateral Commission members essentially fit into three categories: economic, political and intellectual. As the study will eventually examine the ideological consonance between a 2008 Trilateral Commission Task Force Report and an American newspaper, all data is taken from the 2008 Trilateral Commission membership list.
32 G. William Domhoff, Who Rules America? Challenges to Corporate and Class Dominance 6th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010)103. 33 Domhoff 116.
27 Economic representatives are generally the top executives of many of the world’s largest multinational corporations in banking, financial services, insurance, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, utilities, computing, communication and electronics, automobiles, and trading companies, as well as energy and commodities concerns.34
There are few representatives of small business, as this sector simply does not have enough power to be considered for significant membership. There are also, somewhat surprisingly, few members from the industrial component of the military-industrial-complex. This is undoubtedly because military-industrial complexes are often bound to nationalist policy, while the Trilateral Commission is internationalist in scope.35 There are also few representatives of organized labour. Unions too are often bound geographically to sites of production within national borders and—despite the famous Marxist rallying cry “Workers of the world unite!”— have historically found it difficult to organize internationally, while the business community is increasingly free to relocate production around the world, taking advantage of competing pools of labour. Indeed, as this growing power of transnational capital fundamentally defines the globalizing economy, it is similarly and primarily the interests of transnational capital, often at the expense of labour, that are represented in the economic sphere of the Trilateral Commission. Though the organization brings together many facets of the economy, from the high number of representatives and centrality of the industry to the capitalist world, as well as an examination of its historical roots (explored in the next section), it is clear that the dominant interests of the Trilateral Commission lie with multinational corporations and banking/financial institutions. Listed in the following tables is the formidable array of firms from these two sectors represented within the Trilateral Commission:
Table 3. Multinational Corporate Interests of the Trilateral Commission.36
Anadarko Petroleum Kansai Electric Power ABB Kerry Group Air Liquide Kikkoman Akzo Nobel KONE ALFA Insurance Kraft Foods
34 Gill, American 157-158. 35 There are however often retired generals and admirals since these persons can provide invaluable knowledge about the possibilities of the apparatuses of security, which relate to economic issues. 36 Data in Tables 3 and 4 taken from the 2008 Trilateral Commission Membership List. Numbers in brackets represent the number of representatives if more than one.
28 Almatis Lhoist Group Amorim Turismo LS Industrial Systems Areva Mattel Assurances Générales de France Miba ATCO Group Mitsubishi BAE Systems Norwegian Oil BP (2) NTT Docomo British American Tobacco ORIX CEMEX Outokumpu Group Charoen Pokphand P.T.Gesit Maju Chugai Pharmaceutical Palliser Furniture Cogema PepsiCo Conroy Diamonds & Gold Phillip Morris Daikin Industries Pirelli & C Daimler AG Poongsan Danaher Prudential Financial Deere & Company PT Freeport Indonesia Electricité de France Rakuten EMOBILE Research in Motion Empresas Matutes Royal Dutch Shell (3) ENI S&B Group Fiat Samsung Electronics Fortis San Luis Franz Haniel & Cie Siemens Fuji Xerox SMS, Düsseldorf GE International Sony Hellenic Telecom Sotheby’s Higa Industries Techint Group Hyosung Group Telefónica de España-Méx & CA IBM Japan Tokyo Electric Power Italcementi Toyota ITOCHU Umicore J.E. Robert Companies UK Atomic Energy Authority James Richardson & Sons WPP Group Japan Petroleum Exploration
29 Table 4. Banking and Financial Interests of the Trilateral Commission.
Accor Goldman Sachs (8) AIB Group Gruppo Banca Sella Allianz (3) ING Group AmBank Group Intesa Sanpaolo Aozora Bank Institutional Banking Bain Capital Japan JPMorgan Chase & Co Banco Bilbao K & H Bank Banco de Chile KKR Asia Banco Finantia Lehman Brothers Japan Banco Itaú S.A. (2) MCC (Mediocredito Centrale Bank Handlowy Mediocredito Centrale Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Merrill Lynch International Bank Santander Negocios Morgan Stanley Bankar Holding N M Rothschild & Sons (2) Banque Industrielle et Mobilière Privé Nomura Holdings BAWAG P.S.K Omega Capital Chinatrust Investment Oppenheim Bank Citibank (7) Power Corporation (2) Commerzbank Portland Capital & The Portland Trust Creditanstalt Bankverein Rizal Commercial Danske Bank Scotiabank Deutsche Bank Skandinaviska Enskilda Elderslie Finance Corporation Société Générale de Belgique Empire Company Ltd Tong Yang Group Erste Bank der Oesterreichischen UBS Investment Bank Export Import Bank of Thailand UniCredit Bank (2) Fortis Warburg Pincus LLC Globe Capital Partners
Within the political sphere, although heads of state must resign if elected to office, the Trilateral Commission contains former heads of major states, the UN, World Bank, IMF, diplomats, ambassadors, bureaucrats and other powerful domestic politicians, such as heading important government committees on economic and foreign policy. As mentioned, in an effort to gain legitimacy and achieve consensus, most political figures are centrists. There are thus no
30 communists, socialists, very few progressives, ultra-nationalists, hard-liner neo-conservatives, populists, peace groups, environmentalists, or anti-nuclear proliferationists. The following are 2008 North American Trilateral Commission members with former government experience. It is a formidable group indeed; one that no doubt would have and has had tremendous influence on the governments of North America. Note the emphasis on security, economics and foreign policy:
Table 5. 2008 Trilateral Commission members of the North American contingent with former government service.37 Armitage Richard L. US Deputy Secretary of State, US Assistant Secretary Department of Defense Bergsten C. Fred Assistant Secretary for International Affairs at the US Treasury Department, Assistant for Int. Economic Affairs at the National Security Council, Undersecretary for Monetary affairs, Representing the US on the G-5 & G-7 summits. Bertini Catherine Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Food and Consumer Services at the US Department of Agriculture, and as Acting Assistant Secretary of the Family Support Administration in the US Department of Health and Human Services. Blackwill Robert D. Deputy Assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Planning, Ambassador to India Blair Dennis C. US Director of National Intelligence, US Navy Admiral, Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Command. Brainard Lael Deputy National Economic Adviser and Chair of the Deputy Secretaries Committee on International Economics during the Clinton Administration Brown Harold US Secretary of Defense Brzezinski Zbigniew National Security Advisor Burwell Sylvia Deputy Chief of staff (Clinton), Chief of Staff to Treasury Mathews Secretary, Staff Director for the National Economic Council Campbell Kurt M. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Asia and the Pacific, Director on the National Security Council Staff, Deputy Special Counselor to the President for NAFTA, and as a White House fellow at the Department of the Treasury Chrétien Raymond Associate Under-Secretary of State of External Affairs, Ambassador of Canada to the Congo, Belgium, Mexico, the United States and France Coleman Jr. William US Secretary of Transportation, Committee on Government Employment Policy, Senior Consultant and Assistant Counsel to the President's Commission on the Assassination of President
37 All information compiled from SourceWatch. Lisa Graves (Executive Director). Center for Media and Democracy. < http://www.sourcewatch.org>.
31 Kennedy, Consultant to the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency
Cooper Richard M. US Under Secretary of State for Economic Affairs Corrigan E. Gerald President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York Davis Lynn E. US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Plans. Deutch John M. US Deputy Secretary of Defense, Director of Central Intelligence Dobson Wendy K. Canadian Associate Deputy Minister of Finance Donilon Thomas Assistant Secretary of State under both James Earl Carter, Jr. and William Jefferson Clinton Duberstein Kenneth M. Chief of Staff to President Ronald Reagan Einhorn Jessica P. US Deputy Secretary of Defense Feinstein Dianne Senator (current) Feldstein Martin S. Chairman, US President’s Council of Economic Advisors Ferguson, Jr. Roger W. Vice Chairman, Board of Governors, US Federal Reserve System Fischer Stanley Governor of the Bank of Israel (current) Foley Thomas S. US Ambassador to Japan, Speaker of the US House of Representatives Forbes Kristin J. Member of the US Council of Economic Advisors. US Treasury Department as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Quantitative Policy Analysis, Latin American and Caribbean Nations Froman Michael US Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Treasury B.G. Fukuyama Francis Policy Planning Staff of the US Department of State, specializing in Middle East affairs, Deputy Director for European political-military affairs. US delegation to the Egyptian-Israeli talks on Palestinian autonomy. Geithner Timothy F. President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Under Secretary for International Affairs Gephardt Richard A. Member (D-MO), US House of Representatives. House Majority Leader, Minority Leader Gergen David Presidential Advisor (Nixon, Ford, Reagan, and Clinton) Gil-Diaz Francisco Secretary of Finance Gotlieb Allan E. Canadian Ambassador to the United States; Graham Bill Member of Canadian House of Common, Minister of Foreign Affairs, Minister of Defence, Leader of the Opposition and interim Leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Haas Richard N. Director, Policy Planning, Advisor to Colin Powell. Ambassador and US Coordinator for the Future of Afghanistan. Special Assistant to US G. H. W. Bush and National Security Council
32 Senior Director for Near East and South Asian Affairs Hamre John J. US Deputy Secretary of Defense and Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) Heredia Carlos Advisor to the Governor of Michoacán. Senior positions with Mexican Treasury Department and the Government of Mexico City. Hills Carla A. US Trade Representative, US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, US Department of Justice - Assistant attorney general Jones James L. US Secretary of State as special envoy for Middle East security. Kagan Robert State Department Policy Planning Staff, Speechwriter for Secretary of State George P. Shultz Kanter Arnold US Under Secretary of State Kissinger Henry US Secretary of State, US Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs Koonin Steven E. Advisory bodies for the National Science Foundation, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Energy Lord Winston US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Ambassador to China Lougheed E. Peter Premier of Alberta MacLaren Roy Canadian High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Canadian Minister of International Trade Manley John Canadian Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance McNamara Robert S. US Secretary of Defense Mendoza Herminio Chief Mexican negotiator of NAFTA, Secretary of Commerce Blanco and Industry Moore James MP (BC), Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister of Public Works and Government Services Canada and the Pacific Gateway and Vancouver 2010 Olympics Morial Marc Mayor of New Orleans and President of Mayors Nye Jr. Joseph S. Chair, National Intelligence Council and US Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs O'Sullivan Meghan Special Assistant to President George W. Bush and Deputy National Security Advisor for Iraq and Afghanistan, National Security Council Pickering Thomas R. US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs; former US Ambassador to the Russian Federation, India, Israel, El Salvador, Nigeria, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, and the United Nations Ralston Joseph W. Commander, US European Command, and Supreme Allied Commander NATO, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Department of Defense Rangel Charles B. Member (D-NY), US House of Representatives (current) Rice Susan Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for African Affairs,
33 National Security Council Rockefeller John D. (Jay) Member (D-WV), US Senate, Senate Commerce Chairman IV (current) Ross Dennis Director of Policy Planning in the State Department under President George H. W. Bush, the special Middle East coordinator under President Bill Clinton Serra Jaime Mexican Minister of Trade and Industry Smith Gordon Canadian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and Personal Representative of the Prime Minister to the Economic Summit Steinberg James US Deputy National Security Advisor, Deputy National Security Advisor to the President, Director of the State Department's Policy Planning Staff and Deputy Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Research Stern Jessica President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council Staff Tenet George J. US Director of Central Intelligence Volcker Paul A. Chairman, Board of Governors, US Federal Reserve System Webster William H. US Director of Central Intelligence, Director, US FBI, Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit Zedillo Ernesto President of Mexico
Trilateral Commission intellectuals are chosen not only for their outstanding academic reputation but because of their expertise in and sympathies for the facilitation of globalization, especially from the perspective of the North American, European and the Pacific Asian regions. Most intellectuals are linked to the most prestigious universities, think tanks, and elite press organs from their respective nations. In the following list, note the prominence of economists, political scientists and international relations theorists.
Table 6. 2008 Trilateral Commission Intellectuals from the North American contingent.38 Bergsten C. Fred Economist Bertini Catherine Public Affairs Mendoza Herminio Blanco Economist Brainard Lael Economist Brzezinski Zbigniew International Relations Campbell Kurt M. International Relations Cooper Richard M. Economist Curtis Gerald L. Political Science Davis Lynn E. Political Science Deutch John M. Chemistry
38 2008 Trilateral Commission Membership List.
34 Dobell Peter C. Political Science Dobson Wendy K. Business/Finance Einhorn Jessica P. International Relations Farrell Diane Economist Feldstein Martin S. Economist Forbes Kristin J. Economist Fukuyama Francis Political Science Gergen David Journalist Haas Richard N. Political Science Hamre John J. International Relations Heredia Carlos Economist House Karen Elliot Journalist Kagan Robert History Kissinger Henry Political Science Koonin Steven E. Scientist Krauze Enrique History Munroe-Blum Heather Scientist Nye Jr. Joseph S. International Relations O'Sullivan Meghan Political Science Piper Martha C. Scientist Heroles Federico Reyes Political Science Rice Susan International Relations Rogoff Kenneth Economist Ross Dennis International Relations Rubio Luis Political Science Slaughter Anne-Marie International Relations Smith Gordon Political Science Steinberg James Law Stern Jessica Public Affairs Tenet George J. Public Affairs Ferguson, Jr. Roger W. Economist Fischer Stanley Economist Froman Michael B.G. International Relations Geithner Timothy F. Economist Gil-Diaz Francisco Economist Serra Jaime Economist Volcker Paul A. Economist
Combined with the political and economic power of the other members, the Trilateral Commission is able to open a functional dialogue between intellectuals and power, a process that
35 is imagined to have a positive effect both on the legitimacy of directions taken by the economic and political communities as well as the practical relevance of intellectual theories. This dynamic is regarded as essential to the group, as seen in these remarks by the first European Chairman, Max Kohnstamm: [This theorizing of the future path] which must be done by absolutely first- rate intellectuals will tend to become irrelevant unless it is done in constant checking with those who are in power or who have a considerable influence on those in power. It seems to me that the linkage between the kind of people we must get for our Trilateral Commission and the intellectuals doing the indispensable work of thinking about the elements for a new system is one of the greatest importance. A Trilateral Commission without the intellectuals will become very soon a second-class negotiating forum. The intellectuals not being forced to test their ideas constantly with the establishment of our world will tend to become abstract and therefore useless…[It must be] the joint effort of our very best minds and a group of really influential citizens in our respective countries.39
Clearly, with the Trilateral Commission personnel, there is an abundance of both power and competence, two of the most important factors determining the effective functioning of an organization in the politico-economic marketplace according to public choice theory. Moreover, within the stated theoretical foundations of the Trilateral Commission, we find that the organization has also taken into account which voices and how many should be included in order to translate their goals into effective policy. In Zbigniew Brzezinski’s Between Two Ages (1970), the work that inspired the formation of the Trilateral Commission, the author calls for a ‘realistic response’ to changing global realities. This essentially means the diminished capacities of the nation state as well as the rising power of private corporations must be taken into account. The nation state as a fundamental unit of man's organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: ‘International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation state’.40
Consensus must thus be derived to a large degree from the wielders of real private power, who then must coordinate policy through their respective governments, which are after all still the site of legitimate sovereign power, however anachronistically. In this way, and in accordance
39 Qtd. in Gill, American 52. 40 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era (New York: The Viking Press, 1970) 28. Internal quote from A. Barber.
36 with the calculus of public choice theory, the voices that are included reflect the principles of efficiency, for the transnational power elite from the capitalist poles are more likely to achieve a higher denominator of consensus amongst themselves compared to an idealistic body like the United Nations (UN) with its surfeit of ideologies, interests and sheer number of voices weighted nominally rather than according to actual power. Indeed, as Bush pointed out in a quote presented at the outset of this study, the often-irreconcilable ideologies of the members of the UN Security Council have historically rendered that very exclusive institution highly ineffective. For Brzezinski, since its overshadowing power was then an undeniable fact, it is specifically the US that must be led by the private interests of the members of the Trilateral Commission and other like-minded internationalist forces to undertake the task of creating lasting global regimes. And indeed, Trilateral Commission efforts have met with considerable success in this area. The very existence of the G7 summits began as a Trilateral Commission initiative41 and ever since, there has been a high level of correspondence in both the agendas and positions of the Trilateral Commission and the foreign policies of the G7, especially on economic matters.42 In addition: The Trilateral Commission has played a major role in virtually every important international agreement involving the industrialized democracies over the past three decades…[advancing] the global economy through the World Trade Organization and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund.43
Over the span of its existence, the collective economic power of multi-national corporations and international banks of the Trilateral Commission has unsurprisingly not found it difficult to gain an audience from heads of state—though such meetings are often conducted in secret so as not to inflame public opinion.44 Even more effectively, members may be elected or appointed to government. This has happened in innumerable cases with the Trilateral Commission in the past and present. The following members were named to the Barack Obama administration. Again, note the emphasis on security and economic issues.
41 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Interview with Brian Lamb, “Brzezinski on Trilateral Commission,” Youtube.com 6 Mar 1989. 15 Sept 2010.
37 Table 7. Trilateral Commission members appointed to the Barack Obama Administration.45 Blair Dennis C. Director of National Intelligence Bosworth Stephen Special Representative for North Korea Policy Brainard Lael Under Secretary of the Treasury for International Affairs Campbell Kurt M. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Donilon Thomas 2nd National Security Advisor Farrell Diane Deputy Director of the United States National Economic Council. Presidential Task Force on the Auto Industry Feldstein Martin S. Economic Recovery Advisory Board Ferguson, Jr. Roger W. Obama-Biden Economic Advisory Team Froman Michael B.G. Deputy assistant to the president. Deputy assistant secretary. Geithner Timothy F. Secretary of the Treasury Hamre John J. Chairman of the Defense Policy Board Holbrooke Richard US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Jones James L. 1st National Security Advisor Koonin Steven E. Under Secretary of Energy for Science at the United States Department of Energy Ralston Joseph W. Special Envoy for Countering the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) Rice Susan US Ambassador to the UN, National Security Adviser to candidate Barack Obama Ross Dennis Special adviser for the Persian Gulf and Southwest Asia. Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for the Central Region (including Iran). Slaughter Anne-Marie Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department Steinberg James Deputy Secretary of State Summers Lawrence H. Director, National Economic Council Zoellick Robert B. President, World Bank
In addition to those appointed, it is interesting to note that Trilateral Commission member Susan Rice was Obama’s chief campaign foreign policy advisor, with Zbigniew Brzezinski and Dennis Ross also playing prominent roles. Trilateral Commission advisors, including Henry Kissinger, Robert Kagan and Richard Armitage, were also highly influential in the team of Republican candidate John McCain.
45 Compiled from Sourcewatch.
38 Recent Presidents Bill Clinton and George Bush Sr., as well as Vice-Presidents Al Gore and Richard Cheney were also former Trilateral Commission members. The rise of Jimmy Carter from obscurity to the presidency through his association and promotion by the Trilateral Commission is not only legendary but also a highly plausible theory.46 On the other hand, we must not forget the tenets of public choice. It should be noted that once Carter became President, he acted more to the nationalistic line of policy than the Trilateral Commission had hoped for.47 The office of the Presidency and the various pressures he was forced to respond to, and even come to sympathize with, often constrained him to override his commitment to the goals of the Trilateral Commission despite their key role in his becoming president. Moreover, though Carter was equally infamous for filling his administration with other Trilateral Commission members, such as National Security Advisor Brzezinski and Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, these two men were notorious rivals in the direction they wanted to take US foreign policy. In short, unlike a conspiratorial view that sees officials simply carrying out orders from for example the Trilateral Commision ExCom, we must remember that these are self-interested actors not compelled to do anything they do not wish and that because the Trilateral Commission strives to achieve a high level of consensus and legitimacy resulting generally in a centrist position, there is room for vigourous disagreement within that spectrum, the organization and any potential influence on government policy. Of course, building the organization’s main task of creating “a strategic consensus, based upon the highest common factor of Trilateral Commission agreement” 48 must be done before any ideas reach government executives. Consensus is pursued at the Trilateral Commission’s four annual closed-door meetings, which themselves may be preceded by several unofficial smaller meetings composed of subgroups. Meetings take place under Chatham House rules,49meaning that frank and open discussions are encouraged but that sensitive opinions are not to be publicly divulged---the gentlemanly rules of confidence alluded to in the du Berrier quote at the beginning of the study. Of course, it must be understood that the ideas to be discussed and the legitimized spectrum with which they are approached have already been
46 See Laurence H Shoup, “Jimmy Cater and the Trilateralists: Presidential Roots,” Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, Ed. Holly Sklar. Boston: South End Press, 1980. 47See Fred Block, “Trilateralism and Inter-Capitalist Conflict,” Trialteralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, Ed. Holly Sklar. Boston: South End Press, 1980. 48 Gill,American 143. 49 Chatham House is the informal name for the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), constituted by the Milner Group. The RIIA is a genealogical predecessor of the Trilateral Commission.
39 shaped by historical circumstances, and most likely, their contemporary existence in the agenda of several other policy discussion groups of the politico-economic marketplace. Along with much informal discussion and speeches on currently relevant issues by Trilateral Commission members or guests, to aid in developing a consensus position on which to act, the group periodically commissions Task Force Reports or ‘Triangle Papers’. The ExCom decides upon topics to be addressed and these reports may take up to two years to produce. They are written by like-minded experts (who may or may not be members themselves) often in consultation with Trilateral Commission members and other relevant elites. Though all opinions are their own, all experts “are required to approach problems from a 'Trilateral' perspective, to produce 'Trilaterally' optimal policy proposals.”50 Some of the wide range of problems the Trilateral Commission have examined in the past are monetary order, macroeconomic co- ordination, global commons, ecology, North-South relations, reform of international institutions, governability of democracy, integration of Japan, terrorism, how to engage certain nations of contemporary interest such as Iran and Russia, and many other international topics. Action recommendations developed through these Task Force Reports (or more informal means) are then in competition with the ideas of other organizations in the politico-economic marketplace.
TRILATERAL COMMISSION FOREIGN POLICY
The kooks that pop up with this theory [that the Trilateral Commission guides the foreign policy of the US] come either from the extreme loony left wing or the loony right wing perspective. If it's a loony right-winger, he will stand up and say: ‘You are a conspiracy of people who want to impose one world government and deprive us of our sovereignty’. And if its an extremely loony left-winger he’ll stand up and say: ‘You are a conspiracy of rich capitalists who want to control the world for the sake of global profits. Zbigniew Brzezinski51
50 Gill, Consensus 215. 51Zbigniew Brzezinski, Interview with Brian Lamb, “Brzezinski on Trilateral Commission,” Youtube.com March 6 1989. 15 Sept 2010.
40 Having discussed the significance of the Trilateral Commission as an organization acting according to the tenets of public choice theory and competing with others in the politico- economic marketplace, let us now examine the foreign policy positions the group has tended to advocate. As the behavior of states towards each other is the domain of international relations (IR) theory we will examine the positions of the Trilateral Commission, as Gill does, in terms of the two most dominant IR theories, realism and liberalism. Realism assumes that life is anarchic, that the basic order of a stable society is not a given but an achievement requiring constant effort simply to maintain. This view of life as a Hobbesian struggle of all against all is similarly applicable at the international level. States are thus the basic unit of analysis of realism, acting according to their capabilities, ultimately aiming for military supremacy and economic self-sufficiency. Though realists have historically viewed the social reality of states as competing ‘groups’ bound together by geography, blood, history, culture, etc., such conceptions have necessarily been modified for the New World context. In the absence of these typical commonalities, it is the defense of ‘American’ values (liberal democracy, freedom, rule of law, etc.) that is understood as the cohesive narrative behind the motivations of the American state. On the geopolitical battlefield, the existence of international and liberal ‘free’ trade might suggest states have transcended their self-interest, yet realism holds that such co- operation occurs only insofar as it benefits the hegemon nation, the unassailable raw power of which has made this self-benefiting less-restrictive trade possible. Often formulated within the neo-realist interpretation of Hegemonic Stability Theory (HST), a corollary is that if the hegemon declines, all nations will increasingly revert to mercantilism, tearing apart any international trade regimes constructed in halcyon days. Historically, the main challenger to realism in IR theory has been liberalism. Liberalism does not take the state as the basic unit of analysis but rather rational self-interested actors (individuals, organizations, corporations, etc. As such, public choice theory applied to the international level is often associated with liberalism.) States therefore do not act strictly according to capabilities but to the preferences of the actors who have ‘captured’ the state. These preferences need neither be nationalistic or entirely selfish, but may be transnational, altruistic and even sacrificial. As the various actors that capture the powers of the state will tend to be representatives of domestically or internationally minded interests, state foreign policy will also reflect a mixture
41 of “protection and openness.”52 On a global level a complex pattern of interaction results from each state’s ever changing mixed policies. Internationalist actors seeking openness often claim that liberal trade has made nations interdependent on several issues, so that any notion of the national interest is antiquated or actually international to a large degree. Contrary to realism, the neo-liberal view of HST is more optimistic for the prospects of international regimes. Though a hegemon is necessary to create international regimes, it is thought that these regimes may continue to serve as a global authority even in the event of the hegemon’s eclipse. Contrary to internationalist actors, protection-seeking domestic oriented actors are often structurally constrained to operate under sovereign banners (military-industrial-complexes, national trade unions, those bound by cultural and geographic reasons, etc.). These actors tend to claim that a national government’s responsibility and legitimate domain is properly only towards its own citizens, and may also assert that international interests simply reflect the interests of transnational actors, most notably multi-national corporations, which are attempting to subvert the nationalist interest for their own sake. As is clear, the division of these groups essentially derives from the growing incompatibilities, as Brzezinski mentioned, between the recognized domains of legitimate sovereign power and the natural and human activities that would operate of these synthetic borders.
COMPLEX INTERDEPENDENCE
Let us now apply these two theories to the Trilateral Commission. Gill actually situates the group’s attitude within both, suggesting the organization is generally neoliberal. (That is, essentially liberal but containing realist elements.53) More precisely, it could be said that the quintessential outlook and hope of the Trilateral Commission is that of “complex- interdependence.” Theorized by Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Jr., 54 complex interdependence is an ideal concept that posits nations so economically interdependent that the need for security no longer dominates their international relationships, as realism would suggest.
52 Gill, American 26. 53 While neoliberalism in IR is employed to understand problems within that discipline, it is (somewhat unfortunately and confusingly) not equivalent with economic neoliberalism, though the two theories contain many similar assumptions. 54 Nye is today the Trilateral Commission’s North American Chairman.
42 Security remains an important issue but becomes increasingly one of burden sharing and ‘free riding’55 within the bloc as well as how non-incorporated states and blocs should be engaged. Completely manifest complex interdependence—not unlike the vision of a New World Order--is thus the ideal polar opposite of a strict realism. According to Keohane and Nye, neither extreme actually exists in the world but instead, the two ideal-types form a scale in which regions of the world may be said to generally lie. The tumultuous regions of the Middle East for example tend towards the realist pole, saddled with the primacy of security concerns and often forcing these states into economically debilitating, isolated postures. The Trilateral nations however are interdependent in so many ways that trade flourishes between them and military conflict is almost unthinkable. 56 The Trilateral Commission’s purpose has long been to manage the interdependence of the three capitalist poles while working towards a New World Order, the extension of this seamless integration between states to the entire world.
MANAGING INTERDEPENDENCE
Success in coordinating transnational endeavors by the Trilateral Commission through influencing the policy of its constituent governments has had worldwide repercussions with regard to both economic and security issues. The political harmonization of the most powerful regions of the world, North America, Europe and Pacific Asia has effectively produced a hegemony of neoliberal economic policy, constraining the rest of the world to follow. Constraint may be institutionalized as in the already mentioned Trilateral Commission influence on the official policies of UN affiliated economic institutions. Yet, we must not lose sight of the fact that this policy of co-ordination can be viewed as merely a mode of management of an already occurring phenomenon—-the technological advancements that create the possibilities of globalization. Even without such management for example, the possibilities afforded to capital from technological gains alone promotes to some degree the deregulatory and privatization incentives of neoliberalism as nations compete with each other to attract foreign investment by offering conducive business environments.
55 Reaping the benefits of public goods while not assuming a proportionate share of the cost. 56 The relationship between Canada and the US is one of the closest to this ideal. Germany and France is another often-cited example, undoubtedly because their current interdependence underlines how cooperation can overcome the differences of historically antagonistic nations.
43 As harmonization of the most powerful capitalist poles is largely sought to promote economic growth, a constant concern is the protection and expansion of neoliberal political and economic regimes. In addition to managing the security concerns between constituent states, this entails pressuring refractory states to making available their resources and markets, promoting peace conducive to prosperity, and ideally, the institution of the neoliberal political model. In its approach toward powerful refractory states, the Trilateral Commission has historically sought “containment without confrontation.”57 Unlike more militaristic approaches, neoliberals tend to take the position that the human cost, economic loss, and lingering animosity bred by large scale war is to be avoided at all costs. Though a spectrum of hawkish and dovish action is possible, to use Nye’s terminology, the general strategy of neoliberalism and the Trilateral Commission to ‘get what it wants’ is through ‘smart power’, the effective combination of ‘soft power’, the transformative effect of the attraction of one’s culture on the polity of other nations (a sort of passive cultural imperialism) and ‘hard power,’ the effective deployment of deterrents, such as a formidable military capability, which hopefully is never used. Ideally, refractory states would voluntarily assimilate into the complexly interdependent New World Order for the benefit of all.
SUMMARY OF PART I
According to certain components of the theoretical framework provided by Gill and other researchers whose findings we have presented, the liberal democratic system is essentially the product of rational, free, cost-benefit minded actors, and that the possession of organized wealth operates as an ideological apparatus, allowing the ideas of the corporate elite to generally prevail in this competitive atmosphere. Based on a myriad of factors--historical, ideological, material, geographical, etc.--corporate elites in the US have divided into several overlapping camps, most notably those of liberals and conservatives, and those with internationalist and domestic interests. As a means for actors to achieve goals they could not individually achieve on their own, policy discussion groups operating according to a calculus of efficiency are formed. A constellation of such groups compete with others in the politico-economic marketplace with the hope of influencing government policy towards their interests.
57 Gill, American 16.
44 Within the entire capitalist world, the Trilateral Commission policy discussion group represents a ‘network of networks’ with a higher degree of ‘coreness’ than any other group. This corporate liberal-leaning, internationalist organization generally represents the interests of transnational capital. Thus far, the Trilateral Commission has been highly influential in building neoliberal international regimes though ultimately the organization works towards the formation of a New World Order, a world everywhere operating to a large degree under prosperous conditions of complex interdependence. As for the media’s role in the policy making process, accepting the bases theses of Dye and Herman & Chomsky, we have put forth that the media’s role in the general ideological apparatus and the policy making process in particular is to interface with, report on and influence the competition of ideas in the politico-economic marketplace. As the corporate media is thus also largely a product of market competition, mass media outlets will also tend to reflect corporate elite interests both in discourse it produces and the mindset of the producers of such discourse.
PART II – CONTRADICTIONS BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE
STRATEGIC RELATIONSHIPS AND THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION
‘Where is the railway station?’ he asks me. ‘There,’ I say, pointing at the post office, ‘and would you post this letter for me on your way?’ ‘Yes,’ he says, determined to open the envelope and check whether it contains something valuable.58
Nobel Prizewinning economist Amartya Sen points out an essential problem with public-choice theory: the difficulty in gauging honesty.
The above analysis largely reflects part of the theoretical framework employed by Gill. Though it is a comprehensive view of the significance of the Trilateral Commission in the current politico-economic marketplace, Gill does not offer much criticism of the organization other than stating that it is not a “people’s party”59that tends to instead represent the interests of
58 Amartya K. Sen, “Rational Fools; A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory,” Philosophy and Public Affairs, (1977) 6: 332. 59 Gill, American 61.
45 transnational capital. With such a presentation, Gill has essentially accepted the Trilateral Commission’s own general self-characterization that it is not an autocratic organization as the Radical Right suggests, but legitimately built on the self-interests of free rational actors. Moreover, it represents a sort of enlightened self-interest, rising above shortsighted mercantilist policies of anachronistic and antagonistic sovereign nations to create a peaceful and prosperous New World Order. This picture may indeed be an accurate assessment of the Trilateral Commission’s relative position in the politico-economic marketplace as well as its motivations, yet it may be that this perspective cannot withstand looking beyond the prima facie evidence. It ignores for example, Michel Foucault’s insightful warnings about estimating power by asking the “labyrinthine and unanswerable question ‘Who then has power and what has he in mind?’”60 That is, understanding stated purposes of an organization is not equivalent to understanding the actual impact of that organization, but it is the impact that is ultimately of importance to us in understanding the significance and legitimacy of the organization. What is missing from Gill’s analysis is any discussion of the actual effects of this power elite-led mode of world management.61 We have seen that the theoretical goals of the Trilateral Commission has become policy but what happens to this neoliberal policy as it travels throughout the chains of power, from World Bank policies to farmers in the distant fields of far flung third world nations? To what extent are results equal to intentions? To what extent do strategic relationships throughout the chain of power result in quite unintended consequences, such as corruption? Cui bono? Looking more closely at the effects of the regimes built by the Trilateral Commission, there is certainly a good case to be made for egregious strategic abuse that contradicts rather glaringly with the more altruistic aims of the group. For example, though Gill writes that “initiating the Trilateral Commission without David Rockefeller is as unimaginable as Hamlet without the Prince”62 he expresses little concern that precisely because almost every member of the Trilateral Commission was personally recruited by David Rockefeller, that this obviously has potential to be particularly advantageous for this one powerful private citizen. Nor does Gill mention that the resulting majority of the ExCom had demonstrable “intimate business
60 Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures,” Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings, Ed. Colin Gordon (New York: Pantheon, 1980) 97. 61 Gill does note that the Trilateral Commission itself has taken as a subject of inquiry the contradictions of late capitalism. Yet, these self-evaluations are not particularly critical of the organization’s role in any problems, but place the Trilateral Commission in the role of attempting to correct the deficiencies of other sectors of the economy. 62 Gill, American 140.
46 relationships”63 with Rockefeller, or that the unaccountable possibility of only recruiting those amenable to self-interested goals of the ExCom and member organizations continues to exist because all new members are chosen by the ExCom. In short, though Trilateral policy has considerable impact on the public, it is not the public that has a voice in determining who shall be involved in the creation of this policy but an intimate network or power elites. There is no safeguard that the Trilateral Commission will take interests other than its own or that of individual members of the commission into account. One of the fundamental purposes of democracy is of course violated here: democracy is meant to ensure that the interests of the electorate are represented in the political process, not merely those of the unelected but materially powerful. In a related criticism, Anthony Sutton pointed out decades ago in a radio conversation with Trilateral Commission Coordinator George Franklin Jr. that Rockefeller’s Chase Manhattan Bank (among other corporations affiliated with the Trilateral Commission) paid exactly zero tax in 1976, a profitable year for the bank.64 This of course is a typical criticism of the contemporary multinational corporation (MNC); that their leverage over nations competing for their patronage allows them to pay absurdly low taxes in comparison to the general population. Though it may be a legitimate market pursuit, when we consider that the consortium of multinationals and banks involved in the Trilateral Commission may be building international regimes such as the WTO in their self-interest, the fact that they themselves are not equally contributing to the maintenance of these regimes is a serious question of legitimacy essentially akin to taxation without representation.
A ‘NEOLIBERAL’ HEGEMONY?
Though there are several points of criticism possible in this vein—essentially that of creating and presiding over regimes that operate according to a double standard65--let us
63 Anthony Sutton, Trilaterals Over America (Blue Ridge Summit: Tab Books, 1995) 120. 64 Sutton 125-126. 65 Another example is hiding funds in offshore accounts, of which several Trilateral Commission member banks are some of the most severe offenders. See James S Henry, “Tax Offshore Wealth Sitting In First World Banks,” Forbes.com 19 Jul 2010. 4 Feb 2011. < Tax Offshore Wealth Sitting In First World Banks>. Another example is the ‘too big to fail’ banks in the crash of ’08, where the risks of the market at the heart of neoliberalism seem to apply to everyone but the largest banks and MNC’s.
47 continue with a more particular analysis, taking as an example the effects of the Washington Consensus, of which the Trilateral Commission (among other economic advisory groups) contributed greatly. What will become clear is that this global economic regime contains obscured but systematic strategic relationships that not only greatly benefit the economic interests of the Trilateral Commission (among other exploitative interests) but do so paradoxically, in a manner that is directly contradictory to the philosophy of neoliberalism promoted by the Trilateral Commission. This can be explicated through several but by no means exhaustive points. Firstly, a condition of a nation receiving structural adjustment loans is that the IMF and World Bank oversee the economic governance of that nation. Yet, according to neoliberalism as theorized by Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, the basis of neoliberalism is political and economic freedom. Free trade and small government must be chosen. The population recognizes the benefits of moving towards a more efficient economy through privatization, but this economic policy cannot be imposed--let alone by the very foreign banks that created IMF and World Bank policy. The citizen’s choice over privatization and its pace, as espoused by Hayek and Friedman, is required partly to prevent the catastrophes that have resulted from sudden slashing of government programs that citizens have chosen, that have been de facto culture for centuries, or which citizens have become dependent on in the short term.66 Secondly, the purpose of small government is to put wealth and the decision making power inherent with it in the hands of citizens, again because of the general neoliberal belief that a market determined by citizens outperforms the central planning of government. But the immediate purpose of IMF and World Bank ‘austerity measures’ is not to enable citizens a more efficient means to spend their money but to service foreign debt. Austerity measures simply take while giving nothing in return. Moreover, this debt has often been incurred by an assault on the currency orchestrated by the very banks, many of whom are Trilateral Commission members, who not only wrote the Washington Consensus, but who then reappear as the creditors behind the IMF and World Bank policy the beleaguered nation now must turn to. Alternatively, debt may be incurred by a corrupt regime, which in many cases was put in power there by Western military intervention that orchestrated the coup of a non-cooperative regime. Economist Michel
66 For many detailed examples see Michel Chossudovsky, The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order 2nd ed. Montreal: Global Research, 2003.
48 Chossudovsky explains this strategic relationship between the military and financial sectors quite removed from macro-economic theory: The Pentagon is an arm of Wall Street; NATO coordinates its military operations with the World Bank and the IMF’s policy interventions, and vice versa. Consistently, the security and defense bodies of the Western military alliance, together with the various civilian governmental and intergovernmental bureaucracies (e.g. IMF, World Bank, WTO) share a common understanding, ideological consensus and commitment to the New World Order.67
Extreme resistance or defiance to this ‘neoliberal’ hegemony may result in non- conformist states becoming vilified pariahs. Then the necessity of ‘liberation,’ clearly in relation to that nation’s economic or strategic importance, may become a pressing political issue to the powers and governments of the neoliberal regime. What happens to countries that refuse to ‘open up’ to Western banks and MNCs, as demanded by the World Trade Organization? The Western military intelligence apparatus and its various bureaucracies routinely interface with the financial establishment. The IMF, the World Bank and the WTO—which police country level economic reform—also collaborate with NATO in its various ‘peacekeeping’ endeavors, not to mention the financing of ‘post-conflict’ reconstruction under the auspices of Bretton Woods institutions…At the dawn of the third millennium, war and the ‘free market’ go hand in hand. War68 does not require the WTO or a multilateral investment treaty…War physically destroys what has not been dismantled through deregulation, privatization and the imposition of the ‘free market’ reforms. Outright colonization through war and the installation of Western protectorates is tantamount to providing ‘national treatment’ to Western banks and MNCs (as stipulated by the WTO) in all sectors of activity.69
Thirdly, the principal of IMF and World Bank loans is simply taken from first-world nations in the form of public debt. In many cases it is implicit that it is never expected to be paid back, except with additional loans. But true neoliberalism is subject to market conditions, and does not allow a nation’s money supply to be arbitrarily expanded, let alone at the discretion of cooperating politicians and bank directors. This is not neoliberalism but simply a strategic relationship between international banks, politicians and corrupt dictators. Compliant politicians allow and facilitate for bankers to lend public funds to bribe compliant third world
67 Chossudovsky 11. 68 Note here that war generally does not mean war with a major state. As we have stated, neoliberals are wary of engaging in wars but in reality this means ‘wary of engaging in wars of uncertain outcomes’. History shows that minor conflicts with nations that clearly will not greatly hinder the designs or reputation of the trilateral nations is much less problematic in the expansion of ‘neoliberalism.’ 69 Chossudovsky 10.
49 leaders who enrich themselves, hand over the nation’s natural resources when default occurs, and resign their citizens into a vicious circle of debt-peonage to the same banks. Fourthly, though ‘free trade’ is promoted by internationalist economists (and vilified by critics) as a ‘disinterested’ theory, the fact is that it hardly exists. As Nobel Prize winning economists from both the right (e.g. Friedman) and left (e.g. Stiglitz) have pointed out, if free trade really existed, agreements would be two paragraphs long, not thousands of pages. The extra pages are provisions written by first world lobbyists of MNCs--yet special interests of any kind are contrary to doctrine of neoliberalism.70 None of this in fact, is neoliberalism, but merely strategic relationships, corruption, corporatism and neo-imperialism. These facts bear out that in reality, [t]he ideology of the ‘free’ market upholds a novel and brutal form of state interventionism predicated on the deliberate tampering of market forces.71
On the other hand, ‘neoliberal’ globalization is perhaps rightfully lauded for such achievements as “lifting a million people a month out of poverty”72 in China, and may indeed have greater overall benefits than not. The question of overall benefits and detriments is beyond the scope of this study, but even this possibility should not predicate that the particular modes of operation of ‘neoliberalism’ are to go uncriticized. The point for our purposes is to acknowledge that the significance of the Trilateral Commission must go beyond claims of legitimacy of the Trilateral Commission based on what is theorized by their intellectuals, or the purely theoretical foundations by which the Trilateral Commission has been partly characterized by Gill, in this case public choice theory and the politico-economic marketplace. To understand the significance of the Trilateral Commission we must also take account of the effects of their policies. This means the value of the Trilateral Commission and indeed the very possibilities of global governance are also bound up with questions of flows of power from implementation of policy to the results ‘on the street’, and the strategic relationships that appear to exploit that structure of power. (Ironically, this criticism of
70 Incidentally, though an earlier Washington Post article had claimed that the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) held “no surprises” it was later revealed that CEO and Chairman Donald Graham had successfully lobbied Senator John Danforth for a special provision to the benefit of the corporation’s telecommunications holdings. A later Washington Post ombudsman article later called this “a heavy blow to the newspaper’s credibility.” Graham offered that “In hindsight, there should have been an editorial that mentioned this provision in the GATT treaty. We clearly should have done that” yet defended himself by saying “[w]e run a business and make no apologies for the fact that we try to run it well.” Graham qtd in Scott Sherman, “Donald Graham’s Washington Post,” Columbia Journalism Review. (Sept/Oct. 2002) 3. 71 Chossudovsky 11. 72 Tim Harford qtd, in Thomas Sowell, “Curing Poverty or Using Poverty,” Capitalism Magazine 9 Jan 2006.
50 unintended consequences is itself a central tenet Hayek’s neoliberalism in Road to Serfdom.) Moreover, since these unintended consequences are a phenomenon that is fundamentally illegitimate, if not criminal, failure is systematically obscured, not least by those who are profiting from the situation. It is not outside the realm of possibility to imagine that bank economists developed and implemented the Washington Consensus as a model from which all could benefit, while the very same banks, according to the profit motive and at an operational level, may be ruthlessly exploiting that policy, and even structurally compelled to do so. Now in an advantageous situation, there is incentive for those banks and other fortuitous parties to fight to continue this regime, as well as to obscure on a political level, even to themselves, the demonstrable fact that ‘neoliberalism’ is masquerading as a ‘brutal form of state interventionism.’ The phenomenon is one of the institutionalization of power partly based on a structurally enforced cognitive dissonance, an effect explored in more depth and from a historical standpoint in the next section. Yet, if one dispels these useful self-serving myths by merely observing the effects and pointing out the contradictions between theory and practice, we find that the actual effects of this mode of global governance may only in the end provide “a shaky legitimacy to those in the seat of political power”,73 as opposed to the rather generous legitimacy granted by prima facie analysts such as Gill, as well by the Trilateral Commission’s own self-appraisal. In addition—and perhaps most importantly for our purposes—this also includes the possibility that the mass media, as a systematically sycophantic adjunct of power is also complicit; structurally incentivized to propagate the myths of neoliberalism and the modes of global governance presided over by the Trilateral Commission and other crowning expressions of the complex networks that form in the current capitalist system.
73 Chossudovsky 11.
51 PART III - A GENEALOGY OF THE NEW WORLD ORDER
The past 15 years of my life have been devoted almost exclusively to studying the problem of world peace and, especially, the relation of the United States to these problems. These studies led me, 10 years ago, to the conclusion that the great question of our time is not whether or not one world can be achieved, but whether or not one world can be achieved by peaceful means. We shall have world government, whether or not we like it. The question is only whether world government will be achieved by consent or by conquest.
James Warburg74
In Gill’s characterization as we have depicted it thus far, the policy making process of US capitalism is based on the aggregate interactions of rational, free, cost-benefit minded actors. Out of these interactions, multi-leveled systemic processes and hierarchies have inevitably formed. The Trilateral Commission is a ‘network of networks’ forming an apex over interlocking institutions of the three main poles of the liberal democratic world. Gill has also accepted what Dye has shown; that the liberal democratic system is not democratic in the sense that the ideological apparatus does not produce a hegemony representative of the aggregate of the will of the citizenry but rather, as a result of competition in a politico-economic marketplace largely based on organized wealth, tends to reflect the interests of the corporate elite. To this picture we have added the criticism that understanding the significance of the Trilateral Commission must also take account of strategic relationships that result from the policy created by the Trilateral Commission, and that such strategic relationships are often quite at odds with the stated goals of the implemented policies. We highlighted that an important aspect of this distortion of intentions was a systematic obscuring, abetted by the mass media, of these very strategic relationships, a phenomenon in which the lucrative beneficiaries of these relationships are incentivized to continue to support these often-destructive regimes of global governance without ameliorative criticism. Concerning the constitution and significance of the Trilateral Commission, there is another aspect of Gill’s theory we have not yet discussed however; a historical dimension to the materially influenced origins of ideology and hegemony. Employing a historical materialist Neo-
74 United States. Cong. Senate, Revision of the United Nations Charter: Hearings Before a Subcommittee of the Committee on Foreign Relations,. 17 Feb. 1950, 81st Congress, 2d Session, Washington: Government Printing Office, 1950. As an international banker, CFR member, advisor to FDR and former OSS officer, Warburg is a fine example of the institutionalization of the power of capital explored in this chapter.
52 Gramscian methodology pioneered by his mentor Robert W. Cox and compatible with the idea of free actors in a politico-economic marketplace, Gill essentially posits society as the product of a constant dynamic of social forces. In the Neo-Gramscian view, social forces are defined as the product of reflexive relationships between ideology, institutions and material capabilities. In accordance with Antonio Gramsci’s departure from classic Marxist thought, a key aspect of the Neo-Gramscian approach is that, while accepting the general base-superstructure analysis, the direction of history is not predetermined to conclude in a proletarian dictatorship but is very much the uncertain product of struggle and human agency. Gill’s American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission posits that social forces in recent decades manifest in the global hegemony of neoliberalism, and that a key actor in establishing and symbolizing this hegemony is the Trilateral Commission. In tracing the roots of Trilateral Commission enabled neoliberalism or ‘Trilateralism’, Gill identifies predecessor ‘Atlanticist’ institutions such as the CFR and the Bilderberg Group. Much of this analysis accepts the work of Kees van der Pihl,75a fellow Neo-Gramscian whose 1984 title The Making of an Atlantic Ruling Class frequently refers to the work of historian Carroll Quigley for evidence of the important cooperative links between leading class fractions of the Anglo-American world. This source is not surprising since Quigley was in the unique position of being allowed to examine the confidential papers of many important actors in the formation of this Atlanticist bloc. As many key figures of the leading class fractions belonged to influential private policy discussion groups, Gill rightfully posits these institutions as emblematic of different phases of hegemony, as embodiments of the fusion of ideology and material capabilities. However, in focusing primarily on these macro phenomena, Gill may have underestimated the significance of the institutionalization of the power of capital. Quigley (among others) reveals that in the first decades of the 20th century, a number of cooperative circles of leading class fractions, most notably intellectual and political networks often connected to Oxford and Ivy League universities, an “international financial coterie”76 (the main powers of financial capitalism or as Quigley sometimes refers to it, the “Money Power”77) and monopoly industrial capitalists, established dominance in or even created all of the nodes of Dye’s ideological apparatus. Beyond policy discussion groups, for our purposes these especially concern a “triple front penetration in
75 Gill, American 90. 76 Carroll Quigley, Tragedy and Hope: A History of the World in our Time (New York: Macmillan, 1966) 954. 77 Quigley, Tragedy 57.
53 politics, education and journalism”,78 a coordinated propaganda effort by one circle of these cooperative leading class fractions, the ‘Round Table’ groups, to create a New World Order. In order to investigate this secretive attempt of the Round Table groups as well as a more general institutionalization of the ideology of the leading class fractions in the ideological apparatuses of society, we will undertake a genealogy that begins in 18th century London and extends to the present. In addition to augmenting our understanding of the significance of the Trilateral Commission vis-à-vis ideological apparatuses, such a genealogy will also serve a number of other purposes: as a history of New World Order ideology, institutions and methods, as an inquiry into the claims of the Radical Right of close conspiratorial cooperation amongst the leading class fractions, as a continued examination of the obscured strategic relationships and practices that undermine and contradict the avowed philosophy and policies of leading policy discussion groups, and as a specific inquiry into the historical relationships of some of these class fractions with the mainstream media, most notably of the conspiratorial Round Table groups with The Washington Post.
PRE-WAR ATLANTICISM
THE MILNER GROUP
Esto perpetua! 79
Motto of the Club, the origin of the New World Order
Certainly many persons and organizations throughout history have dreamed of a united world. But one of the first groups in a political, financial and technological position to imagine it actually within their possibilities was undoubtedly the Round Table groups, a secretive alliance of Anglo-American statesmen, intellectuals, and financiers. These originators of the modern concept of the New World Order first sought to federate the English-speaking world. This political arrangement would then serve as an indomitable basis towards global governance. Quigley, who studied this networks of persons “for twenty years and was permitted for two years,
78 Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden (New York: Books in Focus, 1981) 15.
79Let it be perpetual!
54 in the early 1960's, to examine its papers and secret records” 80 dubbed the original British component ‘the Milner Group’ while the American contingent revolved around the interests of the JP Morgan & Co. banking house. Together with other members in various British colonies and beyond, this network of elites has sometimes been referred to as the Round Table groups. Both van der Pihl and Gill recognize this alliance as the beginnings of an Atlanticist hegemony that later led to the formation of the Trilateral Commission. The Milner Group can be traced to an exclusive group of London intelligentsia known to themselves as “Society.”81 Comprising no more than 60 members, the Society met in two overlapping dining clubs of 40 members each: “The Club”, founded in 1764 and “Grillion’s”, founded in 1812. The roots of capitalism, although hardly a dominant idea within these groups at this stage, could not be clearer as the Club included none other than Adam Smith as an early member.
Figure 9. A plaque commemorating the founding of the Club, the origins of the New World Order.82
Eventually the Society led to what Quigley dubs the Cecil Bloc, an increasingly politicized network centered on Lord Salisbury.83 The first of three generations of the Bloc begins with the formation of the Conservative and Unionist parties. 84 The Bloc contained not only the high-ranking members of these two parties but the four leaders of the Liberal party as well, including Lord Asquith,85 thus assuring the Bloc political domination of the then hegemonic British Empire. In the second generation, the majority of this conservative network and its wider social circle generally failed to
80 Quigley, Tragedy 950. 81 Quigley, Anglo-American 30. 82 Man Vyi, Nouormand: Pliaque à Londres, December 2008, 15 Apr 2011.
55 adjust to the changing material conditions of the industrial revolution and the corresponding ideological transition towards liberalism. As a result, Quigley characterizes this second generation as “spectacularly frivolous” and yet “much more intellectual”86 than the first, attitudes perhaps best caricatured in Oscar Wilde’s plays as it is in fact “The Souls”, a social circle within the Cecil Bloc that Wilde took as his subject. 878889 In the third generation, the hegemony of the British Empire was in undeniable crisis and the Cecil Bloc came to be dominated by the Milner Group, so named for its leadership by statesmen and colonial administrator Lord Alfred Milner. The Milner Group was actually a secret society patterned on the Jesuits, organized by diamond and gold magnate Cecil Rhodes—a fact pounced upon with fervour by various factions of the Radical Right. The structure of the secret society was originally as follows: 1. General of the Society 2. Junta of Three: 3. Circle of Initiates: 4. The Association of Helpers 5. A College ‘…to be established to train people in the English-speaking idea.’90
The Milner Group were originally only a “major fief” 91 of the Cecil Bloc, but effectively ousted the conservative leadership of Lord Alfred Balfour (successor to Lord Salisbury), who could not compete with the energetic determination of these liberal supplanters to whom the changing times were more amenable. The particular liberalism of the Milner Group—the ideological origins of the New World Order—is reflective of a transition from aristocratic to modernist worldviews. In brief, the qualities and values once inflexibly reserved for the upper class were now envisioned as universal and absolute. The English ruling class was not great because it was male, wealthy, white, or English but because its members were the products of timeless, universal institutions first embodied in the Ancient Greeks and now surviving in the English ruling class. Though the Milner Group believed in ‘freedom’, under this Hegelian-like tradition, freedom is tantamount to choosing selfless duty to the State with the aim of hoisting up
86 Quigley, Anglo-American 30. 87 Among connections to Bloc, Wilde was an Oxford (Magdalen) attendee, and worked with the Pall Mall Gazette and the Daily Chronicle, publications under Cecil Bloc influence. 88 Quigley, Anglo-American 31. 89 Much of the factual evidence of the Souls comes from the diary of Margot Tennant, wife of Asquith. Tennant epitomized the frivolity of the Souls by Lord Alfred Milner, with whom she had had a brief romantic fling in Egypt, appointed to Chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue merely by writing to Lord Balfour (UK Prime Minister from 1902-1905), successor to Lord Salisbury as leader of the Bloc. Quigley, Anglo-American 30. 90 Quigley, Anglo-American 39. 91 Quigley, Anglo-American 15.
56 the lives of the less fortunate so that they too may one day partake in the glory bestowed by these institutions. In the early stages of this intellectual attitude, both liberal economics and immediate universal enfranchisement were generally rejected. An ‘invisible hand’ could never be superior to the direction of enlightened minds—an elitism many modern conservatives argue remains at the fallacious heart of contemporary liberalism. 92 Similarly, not unlike Athenian political arrangements, democracy is only for the polished products of these hallowed institutions, not for the ignorant masses--a practice (though not a theory, and thus again systematic obfuscation and contradiction) one could argue that effectively continues today when considering the dominance of Ivy League trained policy-makers (especially in the corporate liberal cluster) of the politico- economic marketplace.93 As the Milner Group believed ancient Greece fell because of the inability of the city- states to federate, it similarly became the mission of the Milner Group to federate first the British Empire and the US, and then the world. As an interim measure, the Group sought to create a stable world through balance of power politics. They were working to establish what I call a three-power world: England and the U.S., Hitler's Germany and Soviet Russia. They said, 'We can control Germany because it is boxed in between the Atlantic bloc and the Russians. The Russians will behave because they're boxed in between the Atlantic bloc and the American Navy in Singapore.’94
As such, the Round Table groups had much to do with covertly building up Germany, Italy and Japan after World War I. Among other major political decisions, one of the now most fateful and controversial was the Balfour Declaration, which Quigley maintains was actually drafted by Milner, paving the way for the creation of Israel.95 These and several other examples prove that the concentration of tremendous and yet secretive political power in the Round Table groups, essentially treating the world as if nations and peoples were pieces on a chessboard, often ended in unimaginable tragedy. This stands as a reminder that there is always cause for concern when power lies in too few hands, even in liberal democratic countries, no matter how
92 See especially Thomas Sowell’s Intellectuals and Society and A Conflict of Visions. 93 The phrase of market analyst Gerald Celente summarizing rule in America is particularly succinct, however informal: ‘Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Bullets, Bombs and Banks’. 94 Quigley qtd. in Maxa. It is furthermore interesting to note the similarity between the Milner Group interim world plan and George Orwell’s three power world of 1984, where Oceania was the combined state of the Americas and Britain. Orwell was close to Milner Group instruments such as the colonial government in Burma, the Fabian Socialists, the British war and post-war propaganda efforts as well as The Observer, a Milner Group newspaper whose editor David Astor was a close friend of Orwell. 95 Quigley, Anglo-American 169.
57 magnanimous the goals . The question that has not yet been addressed here of course is how exactly the Round Table groups achieved and exercised so much power. In short, the Milner Group employed the strategies of the Cecil Bloc it had taken control of: “shameless nepotism”, “the influencing of public policy by placing members…in positions of power shielded as much as possible from public attention” and a covert “triple-front penetration in politics, education, and journalism.”96 This triple-front penetration is of great interest to this study, for the Trilateral Commission is easily genealogically linked to the Milner Group, and a question at the heart of this study is whether the same institutionalized covert apparatus continues to exist in modern journalism. As the journalistic aspect is of particular interest, we shall later devote a section of this study to a specific investigation of this third of the apparatus especially as it pertains to The Washington Post. Regarding education, though the Group controlled several professorships and had influence in many prominent universities, Oxford’s All Soul’s College was particularly valuable. From this elite college, promising and able young men were recruited into the Group and soon ushered into positions of great governmental power, ‘shielded as much as possible from public attention.’ In addition to this nepotistic control of political power, as outstanding scholars in their own right, many of these men literally wrote the British history of that period--- without informing of the Group’s secretive yet massively influential role in crucial world events. The Rhodes Scholarships were also set up for the purpose of educating capable persons to aid in the task of world federation. Interestingly, the following members of the North American contingent of the Trilateral Commission today are also Rhodes Scholars:
Table 8. Rhodes Scholars of the 2008 North American contingent of the Trilateral Commission.97 Dennis C. Blair Former Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Command Richard N. Haas President, Council on Foreign Relations Joseph S. Nye Jr. North American Chairman, Trilateral Commission Susan Rice Current US Ambassador to the UN. Allan E. Gotlieb North American Deputy Chairman, Trilateral Commission
This connection is intriguing, especially when considering that three of the most powerful persons of the organization--the President of the Council on Foreign Relations as well
96 Quigley, Anglo-American 15. 97 Compiled from SourceWatch. In addition, Lord Patten of Barnes, Chancellor of the University of Oxford is also a Trilateral Commission member.
58 as both the North American Chairman and the deputy Chairman are all Rhodes Scholars. However, without further evidence it is impossible to determine exactly the significance of this. Concerning United Kingdom politics, overtaking the supremacy of the Cecil Bloc, by 1916 the Milner Group had made its entrance into the citadel of political power and for the next twenty three years steadily extended its influence until, by 1938, it was the most potent political force in Britain.98
In order to instruct the governments of the Empire, the Group established several influential policy making institutions. Emanating from the Royal Institute of International Affairs99 (RIIA), still Britain’s most important foreign affairs policy discussion group, the Group’s ideas were disseminated throughout the Empire in local Institutes of International Affairs advising colonial governments.100 Following the establishment of these local policy discussion groups, the Group then expanded with the creation of several Pacific Councils and Institutes of Pacific Relations set up in non-British territories as disparate as China, Japan, France, the Netherlands, and the USSR. Beyond furthering Anglo-American interests of the day, these were intended to prepare those lands for integration into the envisioned global system.
JP MORGAN & CO.
The RIIA was created at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference where the Milner Group dominated the British delegation. The American delegation of the same conference was dominated by JP Morgan banking representatives, who at that time often doubled as diplomats for the laissez-faire governments of the US.101 The Milner Group had already been associated with Morgans through the international banking fraternity,102 but at the peace talks the London-
98 Rudy Maxa, “The Professor Who Knew Too Much,” The Washington Post Sunday Magazine 23 March 1975. 10 Oct 2010.
59 friendly American financiers grew closer and agreed to be state-side partners in the Milner Group’s secretive plan. At the same conference, plans were drawn up for the Council on Foreign Relations, the most influential foreign policymaking body in the history of the US. Set up by Colonel Mandell House, a man close to both America’s most prestigious financial institution103 and Woodrow Wilson, the organ was soon dominated by Morgans. Like the Milner Group in Britain, the JP Morgan network can be considered the apex of power in the American system. Beyond domination of Wall Street, the bank operated a similar ‘triple front penetration’ in the US. Amongst the power of the Morgan bank were strong government ties, Ivy League universities indebted by patronage104 (with Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study founded to mirror the utility of All Soul’s College), tax-exempt foundations as formulators of social policy, and press organs as moulders of public opinion. In tandem with their British components, the power of in the hands of the Round Table groups was tremendous indeed.
LEADING CLASS FRACTIONS AND CONFUSION OF THE RADICAL RIGHT
With the cooperation between the overlapping circles of leading class fractions from the Milner Group to JP Morgan and the international banking fraternity, we can begin to see where some of the convictions of the Radical Right originate and appear valid—but we also clearly find where they cannot withstand scrutiny. It is probable that the exposition by Quigley of Rhodes’ secret society has led the Right to attribute the same degree of loyalty and conspiratorial
and was an early member of Rhode’s secret society, managing the Rhodes Trust among other Group financial affairs. The House of Rothschild often cooperated with Morgans in financing projects. 103 To give an idea of Junius Pierpont Morgan’s financial might “[o]ne way or another, through control of boards, investment partnerships, or just implicit understanding that a bank’s or an insurance company’s investment committee would follow Morgan’s lead, he and his partner disposed of perhaps 40 percent of the liquid industrial, commercial, and financial capital of the United States, by far the largest pool of money in the world.” Charles R. Morris, The Tycoons: How Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Jay Gould, and JP Morgan Invented the American Supereconomy (New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2006), 235. 104 This is not to suggest that universities in general serve corporate interests. Indeed, Domhoff puts forth the argument that because universities generate some of the greatest resistance to corporate domination, they should not be considered part of the policy making process. What is being suggested here, in agreement with Dye and Domhoff, is that strong relationships have been developed by business interests with certain colleges, which in effect act as recruiting grounds for capital interests (to be technicians, organic intellectuals, policymakers, etc.). Thus, Domhoff speaks of the ‘mixed role of universities’; that despite the trend of general (but often ineffectual) resistance, a “handful of prestigious private schools such as Harvard, Yale, Stanford, and the University of Chicago, which have very large endowments to support their students and programs” play a significant role in “the power equation” i.e. corporate supportive policy making (Domhoff 99).
60 cooperation that existed in the higher levels of the Milner Group to much wider circles. In truth, beyond the special case of the Milner Group, the same fluctuating and easily inflamed group allegiances that existed at every level of society (such nationalism, racism, classism, general competition, etc.) also existed within circles of the leading class fractions. Indeed, even within the Milner Group, the level of intimacy was not uniform. There was: an inner core of intimate associates, who unquestionably knew that they were members of a group devoted to a common purpose; and an outer circle of a larger number, on whom the inner circle acted by personal persuasion, patronage distribution, and social pressure. It is probable that most members of the outer circle were not conscious that they were being used by a secret society.105
The Right point to the fact that the various houses of the international banking fraternity frequently cooperated under the Gentleman’s Banker Code to form trusts, and that Quigley exposed the plan of the international banking fraternity to establish perpetual global financial hegemony: The powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland, a private bank owned and controlled by the world's central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.106
Yet, despite this cooperation, “[t]he syndicate structure of investment banking made it a world of sharp but sheathed rapiers.”107 It is not uncommon for example for the Radical Right to claim that the world is actually controlled by a close-knit Jewish banking conspiracy headed by the Rothschild family, and that JP Morgan was actually a Rothschild agent. Yet, history shows that
105 Quigley, Anglo-American x. 106 Quigley, Tragedy 324. Considering the current repeated calls for a global financial system and world currency, it is worth considering what modern plans have in common with this historical plan for ‘feudal’ financial rule mentioned in the quote. 107 Ron Chernow, The House of Morgan: An American Banking Dynasty and the Rise of Modern Finance. (Grove Press: New York, 2010) 196.
61 this is merely a belief of convenience. Both Junius Pierpont Morgan and his successor son Jack Pierpont Morgan, Jr., though often cooperating with the Rothschilds and other Jewish houses for mutually self-interested purposes--were highly anti-Semitic, and that the world of haute finance, including the profile of clients, was rather divided between Anglo-American (and even English vs. Yankee) and German-Jewish factions. In addition and unsurprisingly, enmity was particularly strained during times of war. Morgan’s main American Jewish rival, Jacob Schiff of the Rothschild affiliated Kuhn, Loeb banking house for example, constantly and understandably undermined the pogrom-declaring Russian Czar, while Morgan financially and morally supported the wartime ally. Similarly, before 1917, when America was officially neutral in World War I, the German-Jew Henry Goldman of Goldman, Sachs understandably supported Germany, the country of his ancestry, much to the fury of Jack Morgan—who after the war, and rather hypocritically, became Germany’s main banker himself. Nevertheless, before this self- interested move, the political actions of the German-Jewish banking houses even led Morgan to support and sympathize with the anti-Semite Henry Ford’s dissemination of the venomous Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fabricated document that itself would become a leading source of ‘proof’ for the anti-Semitic factions of the Radical Right. That Morgan aided in this propaganda of course is quite irreconcilable to the allegation that he himself was part of the alleged Jewish conspiracy. The Radical Right also tends to erroneously extend the close-knit conspiracy of the Milner Group, JP Morgan and the international bankers to the great tycoons of turn-of-the- century American industry. But here we find a similar reality that dispels the claim. The tycoons’ relationships with each other were greatly complicated; sometimes of intense rivalry and dislike, and at other times of close, mutually beneficial co-operation. Moreover, Morgan was the leader of financial capitalism or Big Banking while his most formidable tycoon rival was John D. Rockefeller, a leader of a new generation of monopoly capitalists or Big Business, whose enormous wealth ushered in an era that strove to eliminate the previously indispensable Wall Street financing. In general, [t]he structure of financial controls created by the tycoons of "Big Banking" and "Big Business" in the period 1880-1933 was of extraordinary complexity, one business fief being built on another, both being allied with semi-independent associates, the whole rearing upward into two pinnacles of economic and financial power, of which one, centered in New York, was headed by J. P. Morgan and Company, and the other, in Ohio, was headed by the Rockefeller
62 family.108
In short, it is likely that the Radical Right has been seduced by the mystique of Rhodes’ secret society and the frequent high level of cooperation between British aristocrats, intellectuals, high finance and monopoly capitalists, enabling them to overlook the many very real and understandable differences between these groups. A faithful adherence to facts cannot accept all of these dominant individuals and groups as a continually operating close conspiracy, but instead must accept overlapping circles of power, each with varying and oscillating levels of cooperation and allegiance. In general, we will do much better to keep our working definition of the persons behind the New World Order to this more diffuse and complex characterization of the relationships of the leading class fractions.
RESISTING REGULATION AND INSTITUTIONALIZING DOMINANCE
Another debatable point of the Radical Right is the degree to which the banks controlled government. It is certainly true that the House of Morgan and the US government in early decades of the 20th century were in many areas one and the same. To name one enormous benefit of Morgan partners being actual or de facto diplomats, US gunboats and marines could enforce the debt service on foreign loans negotiated by the bank, a fact rather reassuring for investors and dealmakers to say the least. Here we can see the very clear origins of the frequent interfaces between banks, government and the military as described in part II. However, it is also true that the Morgan bank was also sequestered into service, quite against its own preferences, by the US government seeking to use the expertise, reputation and power of the bank for the political designs of the State Department.109 The same non-uniform power relations between JP Morgan and the government are also true of domestic policies. While these men enjoyed great and undeniable influence over government, Quigley notes that ultimately “this group could not control the Federal government and, in consequence, had to adjust to a good many government actions thoroughly distasteful to the group.”110 Examples chosen here however, including ‘trust
108 Quigley, Tragedy 72. 109 Chernow 132. A good example here is the US State Department’s direction of a consortium of banks’ ‘open- door’ policy in China beginning in 1909. 110 Quigley, Tragedy 938.
63 busting’, the creation of the Federal Reserve, and the introduction of the income tax/creation of tax–exempt foundations, illustrate the ability of these capital interests to turn attempts at regulation into institutionalized power befitting their ideology. Though Quigley maintains the JP Morgan network were committed to a spectrum of core Western values, regarding economic philosophy both Junius Spencer Morgan and his son Junius Pierpont Morgan “used the words ‘ruinous’ and ‘competition’ as if they were hyphenated.” 111 Similarly, John D. Rockefeller famously declared that ‘competition was a sin.’ (Pierpont was also deeply religious.) Though these men had emerged the victors of laissez-faire capitalism, since they had power, the ‘creative destruction’ of free markets–essentially the same philosophy of modern day neoliberal theory, which itself often views this largely unregulated ‘System of ’96’112 as exemplary--rendered life much too volatile for the liking of these powerful men. As a result, in their opinion and actions, the world would be a far superior place if it were controlled by giant cartels and trusts, which they were in a position to create and control of course. These actions, unsurprisingly, were extremely unpopular with the general public, and elements in the Progressive era of government, the so-called ‘Trust-busters,’ acted on these demands. Yet in the case of trust busting, as with every case of government attempts to curb the power of the banks and tycoons explored here, these efforts of regulation largely failed, and actually gave more power to the wielders of capital. Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, for example, the most famous target of government anti-trust campaigns became far more valuable after it was divided, and even then it effectively recombined through the legal device of a holding company, and “made even more money.”113 Indeed, on a much wider level, since this era, an astounding amount of corporate power has been legally institutionalized, mostly through the courts rather than by legislation.114 Likewise, the Federal Reserve Act, based on a document actually written by the Morgan dominated banking trust115, turned out to be a “Morgan godsend” that “took some heat off the bank”116 by making it appear as if the government controlled it. Yet because the central bank’s technicians, now with the power to create booms and busts—sometimes identified as the greatest
111 Morris 231. 112 1896 of course. 113 Paul S. Boyer, Clifford Clark, Joseph F. Kett, Neal Salisbury, Harvard Sitkoff, The Enduring Vision: A History of the American People. 6th ed. (Houghton Mifflin: Boston, 2008) 540. 114 See Morton J Horwitz’s The Transformation of American Law, 1870-1960: The Crisis of Legal Orthodoxy, Oxford University Press, 1992. The legal status of corporations as a person with rights is especially consequential. 115 The difference between the original document and the eventual Federal Reserve Act was essentially that the trust wanted the central bank to be completely privately controlled. 116 Chernow, 181.
64 power in the world--were effectively chosen by the private banks which also owned the Fed’s stock, these circumventions would “mock any notion of the new Federal Reserve system as a curb on [Morgan] private banking power.”117 One of greatest examples of the power of capital’s ability to resist capture and turn attempts at regulation to its own advantage occurred with the income tax laws of 1913 that prompted the wealthiest classes to devise ways to protect their wealth. [Income] tax laws drove the great private fortunes dominated by Wall Street into tax-exempt foundations, which became a major link in the Establishment network between Wall Street, the Ivy League, and the Federal government.118
Just as many in the Radical Right assert that the Federal Reserve Act was a conspiracy from the outset, the same group charge that the tax-exempt foundations came about as a conspiracy so that the upper classes, instead of paying taxes, could use that money to mould social policy, in effect creating a society conforming to their ideals. They point to the fact that it was in the income tax bill after all in which the foundations received a clear legal status, and that the bill was introduced by Senator Nelson Aldrich, a man Quigley identifies as key to forging not only financial but familial alliances between the Morgans and the Rockefellers.119 Despite these facts, it seems more probable to Quigley and Morgan biographer Chernow that especially Morgan and other adherents to the System of ‘96 were merely adapting to, compromising with, manipulating and evading government attempts at regulation that were at times truly adversarial.120 Regardless of origins however, the effect of the income tax law was disastrous for the middle classes who could not escape it. Not only did it hamper the ability of the middle class to compete (another measure preserving dominance for the leading class fractions) but in effect, it is the middle class who subsidizes the social programs so often put forth by the leading class fraction serving foundations which “were coming to exercise major influence not only in the climate of opinion but on the specific context of American policy.” 121 A n emblematic picture of the attitudes towards this new moral leadership of the leading
117 Chernow 244. 118 Quigley, Tragedy 938. 119 Quigley, Tragedy 530. Among connections, Aldrich’s daughter married John D. Rockefeller Jr., and Morgan senior partner Henry Davison worked closely with Aldrich in government. The two were highly influential in the creation of the Federal Reserve Act, for example. 120 In this view a good case can be made (and has been made by many neoliberal intellectuals) that the fault that the brunt of these policies primarily falls on the middle classes lies with government who overestimates their ability to corral power, and which should, in their view laisser faire. 121 Thomas Ferguson, “From Normalcy to the New Deal: industrial structure, party competition, and American public policy in the Great Depression,” International Organization 38:1 (1984): 68.
65 class fractions provided by private foundations can be seen in the words of steel magnate Andrew Carnegie122 who argued that the amassed fortunes of people like himself should not go to the state as taxes or merely given away where foolhardy spendthrifts (as most of the population were in his opinion) would squander it. The “true solution” leading to the “ideal State” that will “some day…solve the problem of the rich and the poor” is that such monies should be placed in foundations, where people like himself can become the mere trustee and agent for his poorer brethren, bringing to their service his superior wisdom, experience, and ability to administer, doing for them better than they would or could do for themselves. 123
Unfortunately much of the institutionalized ‘superior wisdom’ of the leading class fraction went beyond fiduciary concerns. Far from the inclusive vision of the Milner Group intellectuals, a closer look at the tycoon worldview (including that of JP Morgan and Co., who were supposedly supportive of the Milner Group’s naïve but laudable ideals124) frequently reflected in the foundations’ objectives, shows them to be often egregiously classist and racist. One of the most tragic examples of this was fervent support of eugenics by some circles of these leading class fractions. 125 Another example, more in line with the ‘triple-front penetration’ is the origin of the US public education system, to which the Carnegie and Rockefeller foundations contributed more funding and policy than even the US government in the seminal years. The first mission statement of Rockefeller’s General Education Board (1906) clearly indicates that public education was hardly infused with an egalitarian spirit, but was intended to train the lower classes to serve a supportive function for elites: In our dreams...people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions [intellectual and character education] fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians, nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample
122 Later bought out by JP Morgan to create the US Steel cartel. 123 Andrew Carnegie, “The Gospel of Wealth.” Ed. M. Kammen, Contested Values (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1995), 45-50. 124 Chernow draws a “rough profile” of Morgan partners that seems to fit almost exactly the very prejudices the intellectual founders of the Milner Group consciously tried to repudiate: “white, male, Republican, Episcopalian, and Anglophile, with an Ivy League education and eastern seaboard antecedents. Harvard was…the preferred school. The bank was perhaps selective about religion…Jews were definitely forbidden” (258) as were Catholics generally. 125 Many within the network championed and funded the eugenics movement. See F. William Engdahl, Seeds of Destruction (Montreal: Global Research, 2006).
66 supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple...we will organize children...and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers are doing in an imperfect way.126
Considering the present, it may certainly be argued that the dated ideology of the tycoons has evolved into the reign of corporate elite interests in the politico-economic ideology. To be sure, present day tax-exempt foundations have not lost their integral influence, as Dye points out: [t]he foundations are essential linkages between wealth and the intellectual community. The foundations provide initial ‘seed money’ to identify social problems, to determine national priorities, and to investigate new policy directions. At a later period in the policy-making process, massive government research funds will be spent to fill in the details in areas already explored by these initial studies… [Other proposals] that do not fit the previously defined ‘emphasis’ on foundation interests are usually lost in the shuffle of paper.127
Though interlocking directorships create a much larger web of relationships, the following foundations have representatives in the Trilateral Commission:
Table 9. Foundations represented in the Trilateral Commission.128
Asia 2000 Foundation Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation BMW Herbert Quandt Foundation Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Friedrich Naumann Foundation International Peace Research Institute Oslo Polish-American Freedom Foundation Repsol-YPF Foundation Research Institute for Peace and Security Shibusawa Ei’ichi Memorial Foundation Synergos Institute The Foundation for Workers Welfare and Cooperative Insurance The Free and Democratic Bulgaria Foundation The Global Business Coalition on HIV/AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria The Japan Foundation The Machine Industry Memorial Foundation
126John Taylor Gatto, The Underground History of American Education: a Schoolteacher's Intimate Investigation into the Problem of Modern Schooling (New York: Oxford Village Press, 2000) 67. 127 Dye, Who’s 174 128 2008 Trilateral Commission Membership List.
67 The Myer Foundation
In sum, in this section we have seen that government attempts at regulation often resulted in greater power for the interests of the leading class fractions. The Radical Right tends to view these events as having conspiratorial origins with government controlled by the banks, while historians generally believe them to be the result of the power of this class fraction to evade capture and transform adversity to their own advantage. What they might agree on however is the effect--that the leading class fractions were able to maneuver to institutionalize power by creating and/or strengthening domination of important nodes of the ideological apparatus, in effect partially ensconcing and normalizing the cartelization many of them desired.
POST-WAR ATLANTICISM – THE RISE OF ROCKEFELLER
The multi-polar world that emerged with the eclipse of the British Empire brought two world wars, a great depression and eventually a transition from the System of ’96 to a new corporate liberal hegemony. According to Quigley, though continuing to exist at least up until the publishing of his Tragedy and Hope (1966), the brilliant influence of the Round Table groups was eroding and slowing grinding “its way to a finish of bitterness and ashes”, 129 while blaming much of their disappointment on growing American isolationism.130 Unfortunately, with the waning of the Round Table groups and the passing of Quigley himself, for much of this section and beyond, we can no longer make use of what only he could provide—access to the private records of a secret society that confirmed the co-ordination of elite plans to politically unite the world. We might reasonably ask however whether the surviving members of these networks and their successors attempted to continue such covert influence in some form. Even though the Round Table, as well as the international bankers, “were sharply reduced in power about 1931-1940, when they became less influential than monopolized industry”, 131 considering the enormous and often tragic consequences of their influence, there is clearly much value in attempting to verify any continuation of leading class fraction covert influence, especially within the leaders of monopolized industry, who were after all, close to and co-operative with the
129 Quigley, Anglo-American 310. 130 Quigley, Anglo-American 237. 131 Quigley qtd. in Maxa.
68 Round Table groups. Though without Quigley it is equally difficult to confirm the continuance of the ‘triple-front penetration’ of these groups with the same degree of certainty, it is relatively simple to illustrate the political dominance of successor leading class fractions from the post- Wordl War II era to the present. Much as the Milner Group had supplanted the Cecil Bloc from within, it could be said that during the shift from pre-war to post-war Altanticism, Rockefeller interests supplanted those of Morgan and their British counterparts. Over the decades leading up to the Second World War, we may trace a shift of power from London to New York and Washington, from the fiscally conservative, financial capitalist, Morgan-dominated laissez-faire ‘System of ‘96’ to the corporate liberal, monopoly (industrial) capitalist, Rockefeller-dominated New Deal. We also find a fierce though ultimately conciliatory battle between Morgan and Rockefeller interests, which again is rather contrary to the more unified conspiratorial picture put forth by the Radical Right. In the early decades of 20th century Europe, political parties generally separated into those representing capital and those representing labour. Capital interests generally sought protectionist measures and, because their industries were so labour intensive, an anti-collective bargaining stance. Labour parties were naturally concerned with acquiring what they considered to be more equitable and humane working conditions. In the US however, this more or less clear separation of interests into parties did not happen. Like Europe, America did have capital interests represented in a party--the dominant Republican Party—itself long-dominated by JP Morgan.132 Naturally, Morgans had a fierce interest in maintaining the status quo where it was pre-eminent. However, the US political and economic environment also had elements European nations did not have, namely capital-intensive (and thus relatively low dependency on labour) multinational corporations that dominated world markets, most notably John D. Rockefeller Jr.’s Standard Oil of New Jersey. Ferguson (1984) shows that as the head of a bloc of capital-intensive multinational interests with dominance of the world oil market, Rockefeller sought free trade but could afford to co-opt organized labour by granting it concessions (of little cost to these multi- nationals), quite in opposition to protectionist and capital-oriented Morgan interests.
132Quigley characterizes the Democrats as traditionally “the party of the fringes” (Tragedy 1247) and that “Morgan occasionally had extensive influence in the national Democratic Party” (532) (‘national’ as opposed to state level Democratic groups).
69 A major political actor in the forging of Rockefeller’s new corporate liberal historic bloc133 was Colonel House, founder of the CFR, a one time close associate of Morgan and former ‘brain’ of Woodrow Wilson, but who was now much closer to Rockefeller through familial and business connections. In the late 1930’s, House “helped chart [Franklin Delano] Roosevelt’s early path.” By making “him acceptable to all factions of the [Democratic] party” 134 —the capital-intensive multinational bloc, organized labour and a new array of international bankers that had developed with the growth of monopoly capitalism and were eager to carve into Morgan dominance by banding together. Rockefeller policy organs then crafted the New Deal to reflect these values.135 Although inclusive of major gains for labour, the conditions were also naturally favourable to the House of Rockefeller. The hegemony of this new historic bloc, which Gill characterizes as “corporate liberalism, Fordism, Keynesianism, welfarism and a permanent arms economy rationalized through Cold War ideology”,136 was so antagonistic to Morgan that after Roosevelt was elected, the president and Rockefeller’s son-in-law Winthrop Aldrich even had Morgans investigated, leading to the Glass-Steagall Act, 137 separating commercial and investment banking, the heart of Morgan power. It was a political move that opened “the way to a financial structure crowned by a giant bank with special ties to high- technology industry—oil”; 138 in other words--Rockefeller’s Chase National Bank 139 and Standard Oil of New Jersey.
133 A historic bloc is a Gramscian term denoting a coalition of classes and political forces that form a hegemony under a banner of universal values achieved through compromise. 134 Ferguson 80. 135 It is interesting to note the legacy of a people’s champion that has been bestowed upon FDR, especially by Democrats, when the truth of the origins of his policies is rather different. Curtis Dall, Lehman Brothers banker and FDR’s son-in-law, commented on how even he was at first largely unaware of this reality: “For a long time I felt that FDR had developed many thoughts and ideas that were his own to benefit this country, the U.S.A. But, he didn't. Most of his thoughts, his political ‘ammunition’, as it were, was carefully manufactured for him in advance by the CFR-One-World Money group. Brilliantly, with great gusto, like a fine piece of artillery, he exploded that prepared ‘ammunition’ in the middle of an unsuspecting target, the American people—and thus paid off and retained his internationalist political support. Perhaps he copied Woodrow Wilson unduly, in that respect, and readily fell for the One-World Money intervention and the United Nations hoax. My feeling is that he accepted that support merely as a practical means to gain and retain for himself more personal and political power.” Curtis B. Dall, Franklin Delano Roosevelt: My Exploited Father-in-Law, (Christian Crusades Publications: Tulsa, 1968) 185. Dall also supports the theory of heavy Wall Street involvement in the Russian Revolution and the formative years of USSR, as part of a plan towards world government, a notion mentioned later in this study. 136 Gill, American 128. 137 Former Morgan director Alan Greenspan was very instrumental in finally repealing the Glass-Steagal Act, a move often associated with the banking crisis of 2008. 138 Ferguson 83. 139 Chase National Bank was itself once a joint operation between Rockefeller and Morgan. Rockefeller wrested control of the bank in 1932. Ferguson 81.
70 And yet, after the formulation of the latter manifestations of the New Deal, namely the introduction of free trade policies, these conditions were also highly lucrative for some of the now legally separated elements of Morgan interests who not only came to endorse the new alignment but continued to play a major role in American policy planning alongside the newly ascended Rockefeller. The influence of both Morgan and Rockefeller interests is unmistakable in the CFR’s War-Peace Studies, what became America’s official foreign policy for the post-war world. Around 100 CFR bankers, lawyers, executives, economists, and military experts defined: [t]he minimum geographical area that was needed for the American economy to make full utilization of its resources and at the same time maintain harmony with Western Europe and Japan. This geographical area, which came to be known as the ‘Grand Area’, included Latin America, Europe, the colonies of the British Empire, and all of Southeast Asia...which led to plans for the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund, and the World Bank.140
In Western Europe, the ameable interests emerged in the Bilderberg Group buttressing this realigned post-war Atlanticist hegemony, an effort that eventually led to the creation of the European Union. Not surprisingly, American Bilderberg presence was also dominated by Rockefeller interests.141 Another important group with much cross-membership to Bilderberg and the CFR was the Atlantic Institute, created with funding provided by the Ford Foundation. Led by these Atlanticists, a dominant America and the rapid development and introduction of several pivotal technologies, much of the Grand Area flourished. Massive post-war private American investment in Western Europe and Japan was in turn followed by a massive investment by those rejuvenated powers in the US in the 1970s, homogenizing corporate liberal hegemony, economic, political, and cultural relations. In a Gramscian sense, the “system of earthworks” that makes the political and civil societies inseparable in capitalism was solidifying. In Nye’s terms, the capitalist poles and their peripheral areas were moving closer to complex interdependence.
Figure 10. Allen Dulles, right, with the Shah of Iran and Council Director and JP Morgan senior partner Russell C. Leffingwell. Dulles (a former lawyer for Sullivan & Cromwell, one of the main law firms for JP Morgan, a relationship that continues to the present) was an American and JP Morgan representative at the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, president of the CFR in 1927, head
140 Dye, Who’s 106. 141 Gill, American 132.
71 of the Armaments subcommittee in the War-Peaces studies group, OSS member and first director of the CIA, an agency that grew out of those studies. Dulles was head of the CIA during Operation Ajax, the overthrow of Iran’s Mossadegh, which placed the Anglo- American amenable Shah back in power. Dulles’ CIA connections also extended to The Washington Post, as we shall see later.142
TRILATERALISM
I don't believe that the Trilateral Commission is a conspiratorial group, but I do think its interests are devoted to international banking, multinational corporations, and so forth. I don't think that any administration of the US Government should have the top nineteen positions filled by people from any one group or organization representing one viewpoint. No, I would go in a different direction.
Ronald Reagan on the campaign trail 17 Mar 1980 when asked if he would allow Trilateral Commission members to serve in his cabinet as Carter had. Despite his negative response, Reagan's campaign manager, William J. Casey (former Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission and later appointed to Director of the CIA) was a Trilateral Commission member.
Though post-war Atlanticist hegemony was an enormously successful period sometimes known as ‘the Golden Age of Capitalism’, it did not last more than a few decades. Ironically, it might be said that its very success led to its relative demise. In the early 1970’s, as a hegemon, America was clearly still the most powerful nation, but it had lost economic and political ground to the very countries its universalizing policies had built up both directly, (such as West Germany and Japan) and more indirectly (such as the Soviet Union). 143 This relative loss rendered the American political scene ripe once again for mercantilism and unilateral isolationism. President Richard M. Nixon responded to these trends by abandoning the banker beloved gold standard for domestic trade advantages, by rebuking free trade in applying a 10% tariff on foreign imports, as well as adopting the realist Nixon-Kissinger doctrine of foreign policy. In doing so however, he
142 War_peace1, http://www.cfr.org/about/history/cfr/war_peace.html. These materials are included under the fair use exemption. 143"For impressive evidence of Western participation in the early phase of Soviet economic growth, see Anthony C. Sutton's Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development: 1917-1930, which argues that 'Soviet economic development for 1917-1930 was essentially dependent on Western technological aid.'” Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era (New York: The Viking Press, 1970) 56. Brzezinksi takes this aid to be contradictory result of profit-seeking, but (like Dall) Sutton, on the basis of this work, Quigley’s, and studying the secrets paper of the Skull & Bones society, believes it must strongly be considered whether the entire Soviet regime is part of a New World Order plan to build a one world government synthesized out of capitalism and socialism.
72 confirmed the crisis of post-Atlanticist hegemony, made himself an enemy to the internationalist establishment, and provided the conditions for the creation of the Trilateral Commission.144 Though much of the current function and significance of the Trilateral Commission has been addressed in the section concerned with the politico-economic marketplace, here we will briefly remark on the genealogical continuity of the New World Order as it transitioned from post-war Atlanticism to Trilateralism. Based on new economic realities that became ever apparent in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, most notably the increased mobility of capital and the correlative waning power of both the nation-state and organized labour, internationalists reformulated their vision for the world through the creation the Trilateral Commission. In Between Two Ages, Brzezinski notes that along with the inexorably technological foundations of globalization, there existed a parallel teleology of global consciousness. Since the beginning of time: [t]here has thus been at work what Teilhard de Chardin has called ‘an augmentation of consciousness ... a stream whereby a continuing and transmissible tradition of reflection is established and allowed to increase.’145
Thus far, according to Brzezinski, only Western values truly satisfy humanity’s ‘quest for a universal vision’ based as they are on equal rights for all peoples. The most advanced thinkers along this teleological dialectic—not least the leading class fraction of powerful internationalists-- grasp the need for mutual supra-national co-operation, which is at the same time an understanding that the once useful political concept of the nation state is destined to be discarded. Tension is unavoidable as man strives to assimilate the new into the framework of the old. For a time the established framework resiliently integrates the new by adapting it in a more familiar shape. But at some point the old framework becomes overloaded. The new input can no longer be redefined into traditional forms, and eventually it asserts itself with compelling force. Today, though, the old framework of international politics —with their spheres of influence, military alliances between nation-states, the fiction of sovereignty, doctrinal conflicts arising from nineteenth century crises— is clearly no longer compatible with reality.146
Contrary to the charges of his many Radical Right critics, Brzezinski did not call for this effort to be obtained by a world government in Between Two Ages, but only for a “high level
144 Gill, American 97. 145 Brzezinski, Between 31. 146 Brzezinski, Between 140.
73 consultative council for global cooperation.”147 Essentially, this entailed expanding the New World Order private governance model by including Japanese elites. Though there was initial resistance to this idea from Bilderbergers who did not wish to give up their exclusive relations with the leading class fraction of Americans, the booming Japanese economy, its preeminence in a part of the world of increasing importance and the fact that Rockefeller interests and the CIA had been extremely instrumental in organizing the post-war Japanese political and economic system made such an expansion a logical choice. 148 As mentioned, David Rockefeller, then Chairman and CEO of Chase Manhattan Bank, on the steering committee of the Bilderberg Group, Chairman of the CFR, and arguably the most powerful man in the world at the time turned this Trilateral idea into reality in 1972-73 by personally recruiting almost every member. Many ideologically consonant institutions—all of which can be traced to the Round Tables, the international bankers and the great tycoons---were important precursors or direct contributors to the creation of the new torch bearer organization for the New World Order, the Trilateral Commission. These include the CFR, Bilderberg, The Aspen Institute, Brookings Institution, The Ford Foundation, the former Institute of Pacific Relations, and the Shimoda Conferences.149
JOURNALISM, THE WASHINGTON POST AND THE NEW WORLD ORDER
Prior to summarizing the findings of the previous genealogy, let us first return as promised to the one third of the Round Table’s triple front penetration we have not yet discussed: journalism. The Milner Group controlled several newspapers through ownership, editorial and directorial positions. The most important of these was undoubtedly The Times, England’s most influential newspaper. Quigley notes how the influence of The Times operated in conjunction with the efforts of other aspects of the Group: The greater part of its influence arose from its position as one of several branches of a single group, the Milner Group. By the interaction of these various branches on one another, under the pretense that each branch was an autonomous power, the influence of each branch was increased through a
147 Brzezinski, Between 112. 148 See Robert Whiting, Tokyo Underworld New York: Vintage Books, 1999. 149 Organized through the American Assembly of Columbia University and founded by Dwight D. Eisenhower in 1950. Columbia University had been the closest to JP Morgan of all universities (Quigley, Tragedy 980).
74 process of mutual reinforcement. The unanimity among the various branches was believed by the outside world to be the result of the influence of a single Truth, while really it was the result of the existence of a single group. Thus, a statesman (a member of the Group) announces a policy. About the same time, the Royal Institute of International Affairs publishes a study on the subject, and an Oxford don, a Fellow of All Souls (and a member of the Group) also publishes a volume on the subject (probably through a publishing house, like G. Bell and Sons or Faber and Faber, allied to the Group). The statesman's policy is subjected to critical analysis and final approval in a ‘leader’ in The Times, while the two books are reviewed (in a single review) in The Times Literary Supplement. Both the ‘leader’ and the review are anonymous but are written by members of the Group. And finally, at about the same time, an anonymous article in The Round Table strongly advocates the same policy. The cumulative effect of such tactics as this, even if each tactical move influences only a small number of important people, is bound to be great. If necessary, the strategy can be carried further, by arranging for the secretary to the Rhodes Trustees to go to America for a series of ‘informal discussions’ with former Rhodes Scholars, while a prominent retired statesman (possibly a former Viceroy of India) is persuaded to say a few words at the unveiling of a plaque in All Souls or New College in honor of some deceased Warden. By a curious coincidence, both the ‘informal discussions’ in America and the unveiling speech at Oxford touch on the same topical subject.150
It was through political control of both armies and outright propaganda from The Times (to garner popular support in England) that the Milner Group was able to create the Union of South Africa out of the British and Boer colonies, a war that left tens of thousands dead and bequeathed to the world the concentration camp. The worrying aspects of this ‘big picture’, ends-justifies-the-means strategy seems to have weighed lightly on the conscience of the Group, for from this success The Round Table was published in each colony so that the Milner Group might “accomplish for the whole Empire what they had just done for South Africa.” 151 According to Quigley, [t]he American branch of this ‘English Establishment’ exerted much of its influence through five American newspapers (The New York Times, New York Herald Tribune, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, and the lamented Boston Evening Transcript). 152
Of these newspapers, with its proximity to legislators, the Post was unique in influence.
150 Quigley, Anglo-American 114. 151 Quigley, Anglo-American 82. 152 Quigley, Tragedy 953.
75 Lord Northcliffe,153 owner of The Times before Vincent Astor,154 certainly noted this: “Of all the American newspapers, I would prefer to own The Washington Post, because it reaches the breakfast table of the members of Congress.”155 Unfortunately, beyond noting that the Post was an instrument of the Round Table groups, Quigley does not discuss particular details of influence over the paper. In examining the history of the publication, despite the fact that the power of the Group waned after 1931, it would seem that for several reasons, significant Group control over the Post was unlikely prior to 1933. House of Morgan biographer Ron Chernow explains that public hostility and scrutiny on the bank led to a full-blown scheme for entering publishing. Along with Wall Street friends, the Morgan partners planned to buy papers in major cities—Washington, Chicago, and New York…156
Yet, at the time of this decision (around 1912), Chernow also notes that negotiations to buy the Post failed. In addition, the Post in the McLean era (1905-1933) does not fit the Round Table group profile for several reasons. While the McLeans were wealthy and powerful, they were nonetheless not of the same tier as the circles of JP Morgan who “catered to many prominent families, including the Astors, Guggenheims, du Ponts, and Vanderbilts… [but] shunned dealings with lesser mortals…”157 Furthermore, the McLeans emulated the often openly anti-Anglophile, anti-Morgan bank Hearst 158 sensationalist style geared towards increasing circulation while a paper like “The Times was to be a paper for those who are influential, and not for the masses.” 159 On the other hand, the dissolute Ned McLean was extraordinarily close to Morgan friendly Republican presidents Warren G. Harding160 and Calvin Coolidge. Circles and agendas did overlap to some degree and therefore the possibility of intermittent propaganda efforts between Morgan and the Post cannot be entirely ruled out. What perhaps makes early Group control most unlikely however is that Eugene Meyer, a man most
153 Northcliffe was possibly not aware of the secret society. When he bought the paper he wanted to change its format to be more of a tabloid style, though the editors, who were Group members, persuaded him to leave it as it was. 154 Astor was one of the largest financial backers of the Group. He was also FDR’s cousin. 155 Roberts 76. 156 152. 157 Chernow, xii. 158 Hearst also frequently played upon the conspiratorial fears of the public, attacking the international bankers, sometimes with an anti-Semitic bent. This extended to personal attacks from The Washington Star to later Post owner and close Round Table affiliate Eugene Meyer. 159 Quigley, Anglo-American 114. 160 Ned was even caught in the Tea Pot Dome scandal that forever marred Harding’s presidency.
76 certainly connected to the Group, bought the paper at a 1933 bankruptcy auction after McLean had rebuffed an earlier (and much more lucrative) offer from Meyer. These affairs would rather indicate that the Group had understood the paper’s potential and had finally gained control of it. Quigley makes no mention of Meyer, but the connections to the Group are too close and numerous to dismiss. Meyer's father for example was a partner in Lazard Frères, part of the international banking fraternity and a major financial backer of the Group. Meyer himself was a fantastically powerful and capable man who once served as Chairman of the Federal Reserve in the morning and head of Hoover’s Reconstruction Finance Corporation in the afternoon, thus making him one of the greatest wielders of government financial power in the history of the US.161 He also started the Allied Chemical Corporation (now Honeywell), was the first World Bank president, and served in several other administrations. Interestingly, one of the other participants in the Post auction was the Rockefeller and Morgan affiliated (and sometimes rival) W. Averell Harriman,162 representing Astor, one of the primary backers of the Group. This again suggests that while these power elites were cooperating to some degree on far-sighted covert goals, they were still competing with each other in an ordinary business sense. Incidentally, amidst great competition, Phil Graham, Meyer’s son-in-law, later scored a financial in buying Newsweek from the Astor Foundation on the enthusiastic recommendation of Harriman. Ferguson also notes that Newsweek once provided “Averell [Harriman] and Vincent [Astor]…with a means for influencing public opinion generally outside both parties...” 163 According to Felsenthal, Meyer bought the Post “to influence government” 164 and he promptly hired three Rhodes Scholars to do so, a rare practice at the time, and one that seems simply too coincidental to be ignored as a direct link to the Milner Group. One of these writers, Hedley Donovan, as editor-in-chief of Time, later ran stories about the ‘outsider’ candidate Jimmy Carter’s refreshing lack of Establishment connections, though both Donovan and Carter were Trilateral Commission members at the time. Another of Meyer’s Rhodes Scholar editors was Felix Morley (whose two brothers165 were also Rhodes Scholars), former director of the
161 At a young age, Meyer had decided that after he established himself, he would devote 20 years to public service (Roberts 196), a goal rather in line with the philosophical roots of the Round Table groups. 162 Harriman (along with Prescott Bush) was a key figure in Wall Street’s funding of the Nazi regime, a building up of Germany in line with the Round Table’s plans. 163 Ferguson 68. Ferguson also verifies The New York Times as a media instrument used for propaganda purposes, referring to the paper as “the free-trade organ of international finance.” 164 Felsenthal 68. 165 Felix’s brother Christopher studied under Group member H.A.L. Fisher at Oxford. It is likely that Felix did as well. Christopher was also a journalist writing at various times for Ladies' Home Journal, The Philadelphia Ledger
77 Geneva office of the League of Nations Association of the United States. This also is no co- incidence, as the Milner Group “had a great deal to do with the formation and management of the League of Nations...”166 If we recall, at the beginning of this study we mentioned that Woodrow Wilson, in the context of the League of Nations, was one of the first to proliferate the idea of the New World Order but we have seen that Wilson, especially through Colonel House, was close to the Group’s instruments. In addition, we remember that Rhodes Scholar journalist Clarence Streit, who influenced H.G. Wells, was a journalist of The New York Times. Streit was also a member of the Milner Group167 and was actually the paper’s correspondent on the League of Nations. He also later founded the Atlantic Union Committee, which was highly instrumental in the formation of NATO. Moreover, Wells was a great friend of Thomas Lamont, the most powerful Morgan partner in Jack Morgan’s stable, and his Columbia professor son Corliss, a prominent socialist/communist. The covert penetration of the Milner Group begins to look formidable indeed when we consider how this ‘big idea’ of a New World Order can be traced to these seemingly unrelated facts that mesh together and find points of origin in the Round Table groups. Returning to the Post, Morley wrote editorials at one with the Group’s unpopular plan (with the unrevealed motive of building a three power world) of building up Germany in the post- Great War world by denigrating the Treaty of Versailles and applauding UK Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement policy, of which the Milner Group had also been instrumental in designing.168 Strengthening the connection to the Group, within writings on a trip to Europe with Meyer before the Second World War, Morley reports that he consulted with two friends, then Times staff members, another coincidence not easily dismissed.169 It should be
and The New York Evening Post. (Haverford College Libraries – Special Collections - Morley Family Papers, 1890, 1986. Haverford.edu 1999. 78 noted however that Meyer did not agree with Morley on many of these issues170—showing that the Group, though unified in their determination to achieve one-world, still operated within the corporate elite liberal democratic spectrum and were thus capable of heated, irreconcilable dispute. As a publisher, to his credit, while losing millions of dollars in the early years, Meyer was perfectly willing to publish Morley’s contrary views more or less as the Post’s official position. PHILIP L. GRAHAM AND WISNER’S GANG When Meyer accepted the job as first (CFR-created) World Bank President in 1948, control of the Post was handed over to his son-in-law Phil Graham, a man who in his twenties was not infrequently referred to as ‘the most outstanding man of his generation.’171 Before Graham ever met Meyer’s daughter Katharine however, he had his own intriguing connections to the Group. After Harvard Law School, Graham was a clerk to Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Felix Frankfurter, a man of major instrumental support to the founding of the CFR, Rockefeller’s multinational corporate liberal bloc and a member of the Intercollegiate Socialist Society a child organization of the Fabian Society, itself affiliated with the Milner Group through overlapping membership and ideas.172173 After graduating, Graham moved to 1913 S Street Washington, D.C, a frequent meeting place for both the younger 174 and older generation of Eastern Establishment elites, and thus a kind of social network and setting to develop protégés. The house had recently been vacated by two of Meyer’s Rhodes Scholar editors. Among those dropping in was Lord Lothian, British ambassador to the U.S., prominent member of the Milner Group, and frequent house guest of Eugene Meyer. When war broke out, Graham worked with the OSS breaking Japanese code (and was thus within the organization at the same time as du Berrier). It has never been officially confirmed that Graham was later a fully operational CIA agent after the war, though when Post 170 Meyer, being Jewish, could not support appeasement to the likes of Hitler and was a staunch fiscal conservative on the side of Morgan and the System of ’96, quite against New Dealism. Morley enthusiastically supported FDR but Meyer resigned his government post when ‘That Man in the White House” (a term of denigration used by critics who refused to call FDR by name) was elected. 171 Felsenthal 86. 172 Another famous clerk to Frankfurter was Alger Hiss, the ‘communist spy’ outed by Joe McCarthy. 173 Ferguson 69. Furthermore, the chief justice of the Supreme Court was formerly Rockefeller’s top policy advisor. 174 One, Edwin Huddleson went on to co-found RAND, a think tank that has always been closely associated with the Trilateral Commission. Felsenthal 96. 79 publisher, he certainly had a very cozy relationship with the organization. He was in fact so close to the once Morgan affiliated CIA chief Allen Dulles and a number of other CIA agents that they were dubbed the ‘Georgetown Set’ or ‘Wisner’s gang’, named after Frank Wisner, the CIA official in charge of Operation Mockingbird, the ‘mighty Wurlitzer’ of American propaganda operating through the mainstream media. The CIA agents and young intellectuals of the Georgetown Set, who Nixon later personally fingered as enemies seeking his downfall, “mixed effortlessly at…Sunday suppers” at the Graham’s.175 Adding to the connections, Post editor “Bob Estabrooks says that Phil was in daily touch with people in the intelligence community and that he knew more about the Bay of Pigs, for example, than he would tell his own reporters”,176 a fact corroborated by official Post biographer Chalmers M. Roberts.177 Carl Bernstein, one of the Post reporters of Watergate fame, quotes a former deputy director of the CIA as saying that "[i]t was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from." The same agent also claims that Wisner was actually “Phil Graham’s closest friend.” 178 We might pause here to consider the connection between these leading class fractions and the CIA. JP Morgan interests in the CFR were unquestionably influential in the War-Peace studies, out of which came the CIA, which was soon operating covertly through mainstream media. In fact, the head of the OSS was William ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, once Jack Morgan’s personal private investigator, hired “to investigate the Communist International (Comintern), formed in 1919, which had singled out bankers as archenemies of the working class.”179 One time Morgan lawyer Allen Dulles, friend of Phil Graham and one of the main actors in the War- Peace studies was the first head of the CIA, and later headed Operation Mockingbird. An interesting question to ask here is to what extent it is even possible for Dulles, the CFR and the CIA to completely separate its goals from JP Morgan, the Money Power and Round Table interests? This is tantamount to asking to what extent are some of the most powerful elements of the United States security apparatus and JP Morgan one and the same. It is the same question we may apply to the foundations and certain Ivy League programs, in fact. It is also an excellent example of Gramsci’s assertion that in capitalist societies, state interests are ultimately based on and indistinguishable from private interests. A definitive answer to this massive question is 175 Felsenthal 223. 176 Carl Bernstein, “The CIA and the Media: How Americas Most Powerful News Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the Church Committee Covered It Up,” Rolling Stone 20 Oct 1977. 177 Roberts 349-350. 178 Bernstein. 179 Chernow 211. 80 difficult but the connection is undeniable, disturbing and yet another instance of the insidious institutionalization of capital interests in legitimized power. PHIL GRAHAM VS JOE MCCARTHY – AN EPITOMIZING BATTLE In the bitter and very public quarrel between Phil Graham and Senator Joseph McCarthy there is an interesting story that resonates greatly with the wider significance of this study. When McCarthy began his anti-communist crusade, he was wildly popular not only because his dogged quest fit seamlessly with Cold War political rhetoric—which greatly contributed to Eisenhower coming to power (Graham had also enthusiastically supported Eisenhower in the Post)—but because it allowed the state to crack down with impunity on persons and organizations it found troublesome—not unlike today’s War on Terror. Today however, McCarthy is an object of embarrassment and shame, associated with the political dangers of excessive paranoia. Conventional thought tells us that this is a just conclusion: McCarthy and his exploits really did embody those distasteful qualities. But let us put forth another hypothesis: that conventional thought paints McCarthy so also because he came dangerously close to a very real and conspiratorial power structure at the heart of US society—those of the leading class fraction and in particular JP Morgan--and the influence of that power over the media sealed McCarthy’s fate in the popular mind. In fact, a great deal of the so-called American communist movement can actually be traced to Morgan to whom “all political parties were simply organizations to be used, and the firm always was careful to keep a foot in all camps.” 180 Jack Morgan decided to act on his growing paranoia of class warfare by controlling several most prominent far left-wing organs.181 With this strategy in mind, in the early decades of the twentieth century the Morgan firm decided to infiltrate the Left-wing political movements in the United States. This was relatively easy to do, since these groups were starved for funds and eager for a voice to reach the people. Wall Street supplied both. The purpose was not to destroy or take over but was really threefold: (1) to keep informed about the thinking of Left-wing or liberal groups; (2) to provide them with a mouthpiece so that they could ‘blow off steam,’ and (3) to have a final veto on their publicity and possibly on their actions, if they ever went ‘radical.’182 180 Quigley, Tragedy 945. 181 These fears did have some basis. Morgan himself survived assassination attempts and the grandson of Morgan partner Dwight Morrow was the famous kidnapped Lindbergh baby. 182 Quigley, Tragedy 938. 81 Owen Lattimore, editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR), an organization created by the Round Table group, was a product of these strategies and one of McCarthy’s most high profile targets. When McCarthy hit upon this propaganda arm, which he thought led to the Kremlin, it became necessary for the Morgan network to jettison the communists, whose ideology after all was never reflective of the higher levels of power. Before this could be done, however, a congressional committee, following backward to their source the threads which led from admitted Communists like Whittaker Chambers, through Alger Hiss, and the Carnegie Endowment to Thomas Lamont183 and the Morgan Bank, fell into the whole complicated network of the interlocking tax-exempt foundations...It soon became clear that people of immense wealth would be unhappy if the investigation went too far and that the ‘most respected’ newspapers in the country, closely allied with these men of wealth, would not get excited enough about any revelations to make the publicity worth while, in terms of votes or campaign contributions.184 Yet, Phil Graham however did ‘get excited.’ Not by trumpeting these alarming findings however but by launching bitter, constant and vitriolic attacks on McCarthy who, as mentioned, referred to The Washington Post as The Washington Daily Worker.185 Others from Operation Mockingbird joined in on the public flaying of McCarthy, including Milner Group member Walter Lippmann, the most famous and respected journalist in America.186 The point of this anecdote is not primarily that The Washington Post was part of a conspiracy to destroy McCarthy—though that does indeed seem to have been the case—but rather that ‘McCarthyism’ (a term incidentally coined by Post cartoonist Herb Block) and indeed much of the Red Scare, a major event in US history, is not exactly what society believed it was. The confusion, paranoia and fear behind the meta-narratives of American society at that time were not wholly due to the Kremlin’s ominous power but also to purposeful deception ultimately 183 Lamont belonged to the communist party at one point, though perhaps only strategically for the firm’s purposes, of course.. He is also the man who negotiated the loans that helped Hiller, Mussolini and Imperial Japan maintain and increase power, setting up propaganda bureaus in the US for the latter two. The Morgan firm and Lamont were also implicated by Major General Smedley Butler as attempting to recruit him to orchestrate a fascist military coup in America, an allegation Lamont vehemently denied as ludicrous. To his credit, though Lamont did help support Japanese expansion to Manchuria, he withdrew support when the Japanese became too militant. Yet the fact the Lamont had so much influence on the survival and fostering of these regimes, perhaps in accordance with the Round Table end-justifies-the-means balance-of-power plan, is a disturbing display of power. 184 Quigley, Tragedy 954-955. 185 Then FBI head J. Edgar Hoover, a large part of the investigation to root out communism, referred to the Georgetown Set as ‘Wisner’s gang of weirdos.’ The episode is a fascinating struggle of private and government power. 186 Lippmann later worked for the Post. 82 rooted in the formidable covert power of the Morgan bank and other overlapping circles of power. Moreover, though the case has never been clear, since McCarthy target Alger Hiss was a prominent man (Secretary General of the San Francisco United Nations Conference on International Organization, President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) and was convicted of attempting to pass State Department secrets to Moscow, it is possible that his cloak-and-dagger actions may have been related to the Milner Group balance-of-power solution that one day would fully integrate into world governance. Needles to say, in any case, the reality of the incident is quite incompatible with the world-view of the US population, supplied in large part by a media functioning as an adjunct of powerful and sometimes occluded interests. THE POST IN THE TRILATERAL ERA After Phil Graham lost his mind and shot himself in the head with a .22, 187 his wife Katharine Graham, totally unprepared, took over the Post. She soon joined the Trilateral Commission and grew extraordinarily close to Robert McNamara, an original Trilateral Commission ExCom member, for personal reasons (there was even speculation of marriage) and operational advice for her paper. Is it co-incidence that the Post took down President Nixon, the man whose mercantilist policy spurred the very creation of the Trilateral Commission? Was this famed pinnacle of journalistic achievements only possible because Nixon was not in tune with the world’s greatest financial powers? It is an extremely interesting question, though perhaps in the realm of forever being definitively unanswerable. Interestingly however, under Katharine Graham’s leadership and partly in response to widespread criticism, such as Agnew’s, the Post created an ombudsman position whereby a semi- retired journalist could point out and publish company faults with impunity. One such piece entitled ‘Ruling Class Journalists’ by Richard Harwood is quite revealing regarding the power structure of the US and the place of the media within it: [The CFR is] the closest thing we have to a ruling Establishment in the United States.... [Its members are] the people who, for more than half a century, have managed our international affairs and our military-industrial complex…the president is a member. So is his secretary of state, the deputy secretary of state, all five of the undersecretaries, several of the assistant secretaries and the department's legal adviser. The president's national 187 Wisner suffered a similar fate. 83 security adviser and his deputy are members. The director of Central Intelligence (like all previous directors) and the chairman of the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board are members. The secretary of defense, three undersecretaries, and at least four assistant secretaries are members. The secretaries of the departments of housing and urban development, interior, health and human services and the chief White House public relations man, David Gergen*, are members, along with the speaker of the House and the majority leader of the Senate. . . . In the past 15 years, council directors have included Hedley Donovan* of Time Inc, Elizabeth Drew of The New Yorker, Philip Geyelin of The Washington Post, Karen Elliott House* of the Wall Street Journal and Strobe Talbott* of Time magazine. . . . The editorial page editor, deputy editorial page editor, executive editor, managing editor, foreign editor, national affairs editor, business and financial editor, and various writers as well as Katharine Graham,*the paper's principal owner, represent The Washington Post in the council's membership. The executive editor, managing editor and foreign editor of The New York Times are members, along with executives of such other large newspapers as the Wall Street Journal and Los Angeles Times, the weekly news-magazines, network television executives and celebrities - Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw, and Jim Lehrer, for example - and various columnists, among them Charles Krauthammer,** William Buckley, George Will** and Jim Hoagland**. . . . They do not merely analyze and interpret foreign policy for the United States; they help make it.188 * Trilateral Commission members. ** Current Washington Post writers. As we have already seen, after Katharine passed control to her son Donald, the link of The Washington Post to the Trilateral Commission remains unbroken. The two organizations thus have a long and intertwining history within an ideological apparatus crowned and permeated throughout by the New World Order. LESSONS FROM THE GENEALOGY The information elucidated in the genealogy serves us in several ways. One, we have found that the ideology of the New World Order as well as the personnel and material interests behind that vague moniker can easily be traced from the Club to the Milner Group through to the Trilateral Commission. Through the evolution of generations, many of the original ideas are clear enough in the present formula: it is the task of enlightened elites with a material power base 188 Richard Harwood, “Ruling Class Journalists The Washington Post 30 Oct 1993. 84 in international banking and later multinational corporations to covertly guide governments and peoples beyond their petty localized interests to its predestination, a New World Order based on timeless, universal Western values.189 Two, though the history of the New World Order does contain an early and elaborate conspiracy best exemplified by the Milner Group, we have also seen that the level of co-operation and control of these leading class fractions is not as tight and uniform as the Radical Right often alleges. The extreme on the Radical Right frequently point to Rhodes’ secret society and extrapolate these conspiratorial ties to all international banking houses and American tycoon industrial capitalists. Yet, as we have shown, power elite dominance is better characterized as leading class fractions composed of overlapping circles often centred on key figures but each often concerned primarily with their own self-interest. Far from a slavish devotion to an Idea or each other, relationships between the individuals and groups oscillated wildly between close-co- operation and outright dislike and bigotry, generally operating according to the same self- interested motivations existing in all sectors of the population—albeit with much more power and influence. Three, that the results of covert elite governance have often been disastrous, thus underlining the necessity of studies such as this that inquire into the extent of covert power of leading class fractions. The fourth finding is perhaps the most important for our purposes, as it greatly modifies Gill’s presentation of the significance of the Trilateral Commission. Gill has presented a picture of the Trilateral Commission more or less as a legitimate actor in the politico-economic marketplace, a ‘network of networks' ultimately based on the interactions of millions of rational free actors. Though this mostly ‘ground up’ characterization is augmented with the employment of a reflexive Neo-Gramscianism that allows for a two-way flow of power where human agency plays a significant role, Gill has focused mostly on the Trilateral Commission and other global institutions as the reification of ideology and material capabilities, while inadequately examining the impact of the power of capital on the reification of other nodes of the ideological apparatus. The preceding genealogy corrects this deficiency by demonstrating that the networks of power circles of leading class fractions, materially based in international banking and multinational corporations, have dominated or even bequeathed all of the institutions identified by Dye as the 189 Some of the more recent versions of this quintessentially liberal dream can be A New World Order and The Idea that is America by Trilateral Commission intellectual and current Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department, Ann-Marie Slaughter. 85 principle nodes of the ideological apparatus: corporate wealth, personal wealth, foundations, Ivy League universities, policy discussion groups, the most important government officials and committees, and the national news media (as well as adding factors not considered by Dye such as the intelligence agencies). Moreover, it should be recognized that some of these institutions, such as tax-exempt foundations and intelligence agencies, are decidedly neither inherent to democracy nor capitalism but contain the possibility to function as translating the wealth of the leading class fraction into an institutionalized capacity to produce amenable domestic and foreign policy, and more generally, hegemonic control. In short, this genealogy has provided constructivist evidence that the influence of the institutionalized power of capital is much more insidious upon closer inspection than Gill has portrayed. This thorough domination of the ideological apparatus essentially means that what qualifies as legitimate--and even to a certain extent the possibilities of thought itself--are likely to be reflective of and amenable to this institutionalized power. The Trilateral Commission is therefore not merely a lofty organization among many. Capital interests, which are perhaps most concentrated in such an organization, are much more pervasive, found throughout the ontological fabric of society itself, partly institutionalized by the Trilateral Commission and its direct predecessors. We might also consider that the fact that this domination and power structure is seen as legitimate is a wider application of the findings of the second part of the study. In the second part of this study we exposed the contradictions between theory and practice vis-à-vis the myths of neoliberalism, strategic relationships, and the systematic occlusion of this phenomenon. Now however it appears that what was discussed in part II is perhaps only one example of the general discrepancies between domination of the ideological apparatus and the promulgated narratives of freedom and democracy, a much more general phenomenon of the power of capital interests to occlude their dominance so as to legitimize its pre-eminence and strategic advantages. As specifically relevant examples of institutionalizing power, we have seen that the methods of control of the New World Order can be partly traced to the Cecil Bloc’s covert triple- front penetration of education, journalism and politics, a level of influence and intervention that exceeds the ‘free market analysis’ of Herman & Chomsky’s propaganda model. In particular, convincing evidence has been provided that in the middle decades of the 20th century, The Washington Post had been an active and influential press organ in the service of this secretive effort, just as the Radical Right has alleged. Whether this relationship remains intact, as the 86 Radical Right continues to allege, or whether it is merely an important media institution tightly integrated within the Establishment’s ideological apparatuses (operating generally according to the propaganda model) remains unknown. However, with the picture of the significance of the historical and present relationships between the Trilateral Commission and The Washington Post drawn thus far, we are now in an adequate position to inquire into the question of the actual effects of this relationship today. PART IV – THE STUDY TAKING AN ISSUE There is no doubt that The Washington Post is a newspaper influential in shaping public opinion. But under what conditions does it do so? The study thus far has clearly discarded as naïve the uncritical view that The Washington Post simply covers events and issues as objectively as possible without any constraints, despite the fact that the mass media often portrays itself as merely performing this public service. Alternatively, we have accepted that The Washington Post functions within a generalized ideological apparatus, more or less in accordance with Herman & Chomsky’s ‘free market analysis’ and/or the role attributed to media in Dye’s Oligarchical Model of National Policy Making. As we have also shown that the publication has a history of being used as an instrument of propaganda for secretive groups committed to particular goals, in addition to a generalized ideological apparatus, it is possible that such direct means of influencing public opinion continue to exist today. In order to examine if this is indeed the case, as the Radical Right suggests, we shall investigate the correlation between the action recommendations of the 2008 Trilateral Commission Triangle Paper Engaging Iran and Building Peace in the Persian Gulf Region, and the 2008 Washington Post editorials. 87 CONTEXTUALIZATION OF IRAN Let us first briefly contextualize the issue of Iran vis-à-vis the Trilateral Commission and U.S. foreign policy. The oscillating rift between corporate liberals and moderate/ultra conservatives seen in the three Burris figures began to starkly manifest in US foreign policy after the fall of the Soviet Union. A number of Trilateral Commission members began to see the New World Order as distinctly possible. President George H.W. Bush pronounced that [w]hat is at stake is more than one small country, it is a big idea - a New World Order...to achieve the universal aspirations of mankind...based on shared principles and the rule of law...The illumination of a thousand points of light...The winds of change are with us now.190 David Rockefeller announced that: [t]his present window of opportunity, during which a truly peaceful and interdependent world order might be built, will not be open for too long. We are on the verge of a global transformation. All we need is the right major crisis...and the nations will accept the New World Order.191 Francis Fukuyama put forth his end-of-history thesis. Based partly on Quigley’s theories of civilizations, Samuel Huntington published his influential Clash of Civilizations. Brzezinski laid out the conditions on which the future depended, connecting physical obstacles to the idea that if the ‘window of opportunity’ for the New World Order was not seized, that multi-polar chaos would result: For America the chief geopolitical prize is Eurasia... America's global primacy is directly dependent on how long and how effectively its preponderance on the Eurasian continent is sustained. Obviously, that condition is temporary. But its duration, and what follows it, is of critical importance not only to America's well being but more generally to international peace. The sudden emergence of the first and only global power has created a situation in which an equally quick end to its supremacy—either because of America's withdrawal from the world or because of the sudden emergence of a successful rival—would produce massive international instability. In effect, it would prompt global anarchy.192 Rising powers like China and the Muslim world, as well as others that would surely soon reawaken, such as Russia, had to be taken into the fold before they became strong enough to 190 Bush, Toward a New World Order. 191 Rockefeller, David. Speaking at the UN. 14 Sept. 1994. 192 Zbigniew Brzezinksi, The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives (New York: Basic Books, 1997) 30. 88 resist American-led neoliberal dominance. Failure might result not only in multi-polar chaos but the emergence of a new hegemony under more authoritarian auspices from one of these alternative civilizations. In addition to and in some case overlapping with the generally neoliberal Trilateral views expressed above, a rather tightly knit group of neoconservatives, some of whom, such as Fukuyama and Richard Cheney, were Trilateral Commission members, took a more realist approach towards this “new strategic center of concern…shifting to East Asia.”193 Many of the foreign policy objectives of these often Cold Warriors from previous administrations, who again were appointed to power with the election of George W. Bush, can be viewed in the influential neoconservative think tank, The Project for A New American Century (PNAC). A key report entitled Rebuilding American Defenses claimed that even in that moment of unchallenged military supremacy, “absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event – like a new Pearl Harbor”,194 a lack of public support for military expenditures would leave America without the ability to secure its interests “plac(ing) at risk an historic opportunity”,195 the chance to secure a New World Order. The attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon on 9/11 were that new Pearl Harbor, affording the neoconservatives a tremendous amount of political capital to secure long- term US interests with hard power. While more neoliberal Trilateral forces such as Brzezinski and Nye continued to warn against non-UN approved militarism, the empowered neoconservatives seized the opportunity to transform the Middle East and Central Asia. Frustrated with the multi-lateral approach they believed proved less and less effective in proportion to relative US economic decline, the neoconservatives believed it virtuous to transcend this ‘all talk, no action’ approach and employed the superior military capacity of the US to make a positive historic change in the world. The crusading neo-Wilsonian Bush Doctrine explicitly abandoned containment for preemption, and the US embarked on two major wars while giving many not so subtle hints of more to come (i.e. Iran). Alarmed at the swiftness with which the US conquered Baghdad, Iran surprisingly offered a ‘grand bargain’ to the US: an end to the decades of reciprocal hostilities between the two nations, the source of much of the Middle East’s troubling low-intensity conflict. Believing 193 Project for a New American Century, The, Rebuilding America’s Defense:Strategy, Forces and Resources For a New Century (September , 2000) 3. 194 Project for a New American Century, The 51. 195 Project for a New American Century. The 1. 89 itself so unassailable that it no longer needed to compromise with Iran, the US rejected the offer.196 It would be a major missed opportunity of reconciliation. Needless to say, the fantasy of the US simply wiping away all opposition and being greeted by hordes of grateful liberated peoples did not go as smoothly as planned. It did however succeed tremendously in weakening the appeal of American led ‘neoliberal’ hegemony worldwide. It also reversed the conditions of leverage with Iran, who now felt that the US could neither afford to confront them militarily or outlast their revolutionary zeal to rid the Middle East (and indeed the world) of US and Zionist ‘satanic’ imperialism. In the US policy establishment as well, attitudes decidedly soured on the hawkish approach. A turning point in favour of the neoliberal position, leading to a general bipartisan consensus occurred when a 2006 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated that Iran had likely suspended its weapons program in 2003. In the Trilateral Commission, the blistering criticism of Bush’s reckless military unilateralism found in Brzezinski’s Second Chance and the more measured but clear condemnations in Nye’s Soft Power are current examples of a growing consensus of pleas to restore American appeal by returning to a smart power ‘containment without confrontation’ approach. While George W. Bush continues to declare that one day the future will vindicate his legacy, his own administration eventually became divided on Middle East policy near the end of his second term. The hawkish Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was replaced by Robert Gates, a former director of the CIA (1991-1993) who co-chaired a CFR report entitled Iran: Time for a New Approach with Brzezinski. Similarly, after Colin Powell stepped down, new Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice197 unveiled a new soft power approach, an $85 million three pronged program that included “expanding ‘independent’ radio and television… funding pro-democracy groups” and “boosting cultural and education fellowships and exchanges”;198in other words, a soft power approach. Still however, Vice President Richard Cheney and others continued to urge military action on Iran. Bush himself tread a dual path, authorizing in addition to Rice’s program, a $400 million plan to destabilize the regime though 196 Today, many neoconservatives now conveniently dismiss the Iranian offer as disingenuous. 197 Rice joined the Trilateral Commission after the Republicans handed over power in 2009. 198 Lionel Beehner, “U.S. Soft Diplomacy in Iran” CFR.org 17 Feb 2006. 3 Feb 2011. 90 covert operations including arming dissident organizations, propaganda, and intelligence gathering on Iran’s nuclear facilities.199 In taking all approaches at once, Bush left the door wide open for the next president. Essentially this same ideological split of Democratic/ neoliberal/multilateral/smart power versus Republican/realist/unilateral/hard power continues to bound the spectrum by which the US and policy elites approach Iran. ENGAGING IRAN – A TRIANGLE PAPER Within this context, the Triangle Paper Engaging Iran was prepared and then discussed at the April 2008 plenary Trilateral Commission meeting in Washington, D.C. It is not insignificant that this was during the heat of a US Presidential campaign, of course. Clearly, the Trilateral Commission believed that Iran was the security issue of greatest importance for the next US president. Triangle papers usually feature one author from each of the capitalist poles. The North American contributor to Engaging Iran is Ray Takeyh, Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the CFR, and former Middle East adviser to President Clinton. In 2009, President Obama appointed Takeyh to Special Adviser for the Gulf and Southwest Asia where he served under another Trilateral Commission member, Dennis Ross. Although, these appointments alone show the tremendous influence of the Trilateral Commission, we are presently concerned with the impact of this report in the mainstream media. In 2006, the CFR published Takeyh’s book Hidden Iran: Paradox and Power in the Islamic Republic and in fact, his contribution to Engaging Iran is simply a condensed version of Hidden Iran, indeed with long passages transferred verbatim from one work to the other. This gives credence to Dye’s description that the Trilateral Commission to be the ‘multinational arm of the CFR.’ Though authors of Triangle Papers usually prescribe specific recommendations, Takeyh only provides a historical overview and current sketch of the Iranian regime. It would seem that the European author, German political scientist Volker Perthes, Director of the 199 Seymour M Hersh, “Preparing the Battlefield: The Bush Administration steps up its secret moves against Iran,” The New Yorker 7 July 2008. 5 Mar 2011. 91 German Institute for International and Security Affairs and now a Trilateral Commission member, was responsible for providing action recommendations for both the North American and European contingent. This may be because, as we shall see, the acting in concert of Europe and North America is itself one of the study’s imperative action recommendations. Perthes’ contribution is also much longer than the other two, comprising approximately 2/3 of the entire report, and it is thus clear that he is the main writer. While it is often the practice of selected experts to consult with other Trilateral Commission members in preparation for a report, unfortunately, it is unclear to what extent Perthes did this, although he did travel to Tehran between Feb 2-7, 2008 to speak to various Iranian elites. The Pacific Asia contributor to Engaging Iran is Hitoshi Tanaka, Trilateral Commission member, Senior Fellow at the Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE)200 and Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs in Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s Liberal Democratic administration until 2005. ACTION RECOMMENDATIONS In Perthes’s view, the capitalist world successfully engaging Iran depends on three factors: 1) The ability of the international community to reach a consensus that Iran must not be allowed to go nuclear. 2) Establishing that the contentious issue is nuclear proliferation, not the theocratic nature of the Iranian regime. 3) Iran’s co-operation. A key point is the issue of Iran’s rationality, in question by the US since the 1979 Iranian revolution. According to Perthes, if policymakers continue to think of Iran as merely a state ruled by evil forces who have no other aim but to acquire nuclear arms to threaten and destroy others or at least enforce their hegemony on the Middle East, the range of policy options is limited.201 In recent years, in contrast to the George W. Bush administration, the Europeans have generally believed Iran to be rationally seeking its national interests. Perthes restates that this 200 The head of JCIE is the long standing Pacific Asia Chairman of the Trilateral Commission, Tadashi Yamamoto. 201 Volker Perthes, Hitoshi Tanaka and Ray Takeyh, Engaging Iran and Building Peace in the Persion Gulf Region (Washington: The Trilateral Commission, 2008) 40. 92 position was particularly solidified after the 2006 NIE stated that Iran had suspended its weapons program in 2003. He thus fully agrees with the view that Iran is a rational actor, even stating the rare admission that Iranian President Mamoud Ahmadinejhad’s famous uttering in 2005 that Israel should be “wiped of the map” is less apocalyptically translated as “vanish from the stage of history.”202 From herein, for clarity’s sake, in discussing action recommendations, we shall adopt the same subheadings Perthes chose for his report, beginning with ‘Sanctions.’ SANCTIONS As a signatory of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Iran has the right to develop nuclear power for civilian use. At present however, due to well-confirmed suspicions that Iran has in the past sought the development of nuclear weapons, the US has applied various punitive sanctions against Iran. However, at least as of 2008, the US had stated that it would lift the commercial aspects of these sanctions if Iran agreed to halt its processes of enriching uranium.203 Perthes believes this quid pro quo offer should stand. In accordance with the strategy of building a more legitimate international bloc of pressure against Iran, rather then simply unilateral actions by the US, a most unpopular nation in the region, if more sanctions of any sort are to be applied, they should be executed through the UN Security Council “demonstrating to the Iranian public that Iran indeed has a conflict with the international community, not with individual Western states.”204 In congruence with seeking this unified approach, US policymakers should discontinue asking for the EU to create bilateral sanctions that mirror its own. Sanctions also “should come in context of a perspective, an offer than Iran finds attractive enough and will not refuse in the end.”205 That is, sanctions should construe a desire to reach a mutually beneficially solution, rather than as sabre-rattling. One measure Iran could do to foster confidence building in this regard is to declare with absolute transparency its past nuclear weapons research activities, a gesture that would then be rewarded by the UN Security Council and the International Atomic 202 Perthes et al. 58. Tanaka however does invoke the former more bellicose interpretation. 203 Enrichment is the highly technical process of refining raw mined uranium to create fissile material. 204 Perthes et al.99. 205 Perthes et al. 98. 93 Energy Agency (IAEA) by officially recognizing Iran’s technological achievements, a distinction of some value to the nation. In general, as confidence building is of a high priority, Perthes believes that both sides should be as transparent as possible in the pursuit of their objectives. There is also an initial confidence building measure that the West could undertake. In order to punish Iran, in the past the US has tried to persuade other regional states to abandon economic projects with the Islamic Republic, but Perthes believes this interference should end. In general, sanctions should not “undermine the prospects for regional cooperation in the Middle East.”206 However, it may be that the UN Security Council will have to incentivize Iran with sanctions on goods it dearly covets. Perthes believes that an arms embargo might be the incentive to “make a difference in the Iranian calculation.”207 CENTRAL ROLE OF THE UNITED STATES Although an international consensus seeking that Iran should not proceed its pursuit of nuclear technology is desirable, the EU should cede leadership on negotiations to the US because only the US has the power to address Iran’s security concerns. Again, Perthes mentions that the US could “lift unilateral sanctions it has imposed on Iran in exchange for goodwill gestures and measures from the Iranian side”208 and that it should give up opposition to “regional integration projects such as the planned Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline or links between Iran’s gas fields and Turkey’s pipeline system.”209 In general however, the US must significantly alter its policy from that of George W. Bush’s. The former president’s policy of anti-Iranian Arab alliance building is “exactly the wrong thing to do.”210 Similarly, the US must avoid hostile rhetoric and do what it can to “continue and intensify its intermittent, limited dialogue with Iran.”211 In accordance with an attitudinal change, Americans should abandon the notion that a normalization of relations is somehow a 206 Perthes et al. 99. 207 Perthes et al. 100. 208 Perthes et al. 103. 209 Perthes et al. 103. 210 Perthes et al. 103. 211 Perthes et al. 102. Currently the US meets with Iranian representatives among others regarding Iraq at events such as the Iraq Neighbours conferences, a forum for states contiguous to Iraq (and other involved states) to discuss concerns about Iraqi affairs. 94 “concession to the mullahs”212 and consider instead that such a restoration is also in their interests. Should diplomatic relations take this positive path, “[a]t some point Washington will have to make ‘an offer than Iran cannot refuse’”,213 what could be the basis for a ‘grand bargain’. From the US, this means full diplomatic relations, unfreezing Iranian assets, encouragement of investment in Iran, and a guarantee of security for the Iranian regime. In exchange, Iran would be required to accept “the Israel-Palestine two state solution, the cessation of support for Palestinian militants, and full transparency” 214 about its nuclear programs. An initial step towards this could be a limited navy-to-navy agreement to “defuse tension”215 and relax concerns about the security of energy supplies. However, although war would lead to great region wide destabilization and should be avoided at all costs, the option of a military strike is an important and effective US deterrent and should be kept “on the table.”216 EUROPE: THE TASKS OF PRACTICAL COOPERATION Perthes reiterates that the US must take over the negotiation process at some point, because the EU “simply does not have the same influence.”217 There are a number of other things the EU is in a unique position to do however. Its good relations with Iran should be used to encourage dialogue between Tehran and Washington, as well as between Tehran and Tel Aviv. Another common task the EU and Iran could undertake to build productive confidence between them is to cooperate on thwarting the illegal drug trade from Afghanistan, a problem that greatly affects both regions. In addition, soft power approaches such as inter-parliamentary, think tank and university exchanges would be helpful. During these exchanges, problems such as human rights and Arab-Israeli conflict could be discussed. 212 Perthes et al.102. 213 Perthes et al.103. 214 Perthes et al. 104. 215 Perthes et al. 102. 216 Perthes et al. 101. 217 Perthes et al. 104. 95 COMMON TASKS Especially essential to building an international consensus against Iran pursuing nuclear technologies is coordinating with Russia and China. Another state that could be particularly helpful is South Africa. Like Iran, South Africa is a regional power and, more importantly, South Africa was once persuaded to abandon its nuclear ambitions. It thus could be very helpful in assuring Iran that its regional preeminence can be preserved without nuclear technologies. This means that the negotiation format would be a so-called 3 (England, France, Germany) + 3 (US, China, Russia) plus South Africa. Alternatively, it could be named a 5 (the 5 UN Security Council members) + 2 (South Africa and Germany). 218 NEGOTIATING URANIUM ENRICHMENT Ideally, the West would acknowledge Iran’s hitherto technical achievements, Iran would give up its current uranium enrichment program, and a new international model would be declared “whereby states that forego such activities would be guaranteed the provision of nuclear fuel at attractive conditions.”219 However, it is unlikely that Iran will give up this right, simply because it does not presently appear in their interests. Perthes believes this is partly because Iran enjoys regional popular support for defying the US. The issue therefore needs to be reframed. The West should try to depoliticize the issue so that the non-pursuit of all nuclear technologies is viewed as an objective legitimate standard rather than being conceived as created with the express intent of the West containing Iran. In the likely case of failure of the above-mentioned ideal scenario, the 3 plus 3 (and South Africa) should “try to determine what guarantees, safeguards, controls, and disclosures would be required from Iran, short of regime change, to make the international community accept independent Iranian research and development on the nuclear fuel cycle.” 220 At minimum, this would include ratification of the Additional Protocol221 as well as disclosing activities “that most probably have served military purposes.”222 218 International multi-party negotiations are often named in this fashion. 219 Perthes et al. 107. 220 Perthes et al. 108. 221 “The Additional Protocol requires States to provide an expanded declaration of their nuclear activities and grants the Agency broader rights of access to sites in the country.” “Iran Signs Additional Protocol on Nuclear 96 Among this second best tier of options, Iran could join Urenco the British-Dutch- German joint venture that produces fuels for these countries. More generally, the international community and regional actors should encourage the “idea of a multilateral consortium or joint venture for research and industrial-scale production”223 that would have Iran (as a founding member. If this were to take a “truly multinational format” that creates “collective interdependence” while simultaneously increasing safeguards against misuse, “partners to such a consortium should consider breaking up the fuel cycle into its phases-- conversion, enrichment, fuel-rod production, reprocessing—and implementing these different phases in different countries with scientists from all participating states.”224 The whole project would be overseen and/or managed and/or owned by the IAEA. The IAEA should thus commission a feasibility study on this strategy and “start talks with countries prepared to host such a facility, preferably neutral countries such as Switzerland, Finland, or Australia.”225 MIDDLE EAST AND REGIONAL SECURITY IN THE PERSIAN GULF A major step towards stabilizing the Middle East and Persian Gulf is the establishment of a multilateral security arrangement for the Persian Gulf region. Therefore, “[t]he international community should actively support any regional initiative that aims in that direction.”226 One immediate move towards this is to support the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC)227 initiative to establish a nuclear free zone in the Persian Gulf. Upcoming Iraq Neighbours conferences could be used to move in this direction. Other confidence building measures include protecting fisheries, oil spills, maritime security, social issues, and migration. As many actors as possible should be involved to increase legitimate pressure on Iran to cooperate. Safeguards.” IAEA.org 18 Dec 2003. 5 Feb 2011. 97 WHAT IRAN SHOULD CONSIDER None of the above policies will work if Iran refuses to negotiate, of course. Yet, as Iran also stands to gain from improving its international relationships, Perthes believes Iranian policymakers should also try to present their own ideas of how to resolve the nuclear and other security issues. In accordance with the call for transparency, Iran should publish its twenty-year development plan, and publicly “lay out its own strategic vision for the region.”228 Another document to publish is the Supreme leader’s Khamenei’s fatwa against nuclear weapons. Iranian leaders have often dismissed the nuclear weapons issue by claiming the question moot; they could never pursue them because Khamenei has declared them un-Islamic. However, as such as document has never been publicly seen, suspicions remain that it is simply a political tactic. Another great setback to negotiations is hostile rhetoric from official Iranian voices, especially against Israel. Iranians must realize that it is especially difficult for American leaders to risk even meeting Iranian leaders if they must face criticism of pandering to anti-Semites. While Iran need not officially recognize Israel even as part of a grand bargain, such a deal absolutely requires an end of support to Hezbollah, Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Regarding the nuclear issue, Perthes recommends that if Iran is serious about resolving the issue, it should switch from the language of ‘inalienable rights’ regarding uranium enrichment and start considering pragmatic solutions. On this and all issues, Iran would also do well to try to work effectively with the region’s other large power, Saudi Arabia. Perthes offers one last warning to the Trilateral Commission and western diplomats: Iran should not become another Cuba, a hostile stagnant but resilient nation that retards international cooperation. TANAKA’S CONTRIBUTION Hitoshi Tanaka’s contribution is much smaller and less comprehensive than that of Perthes, though it echoes many of the German’s concerns. For example, Tanaka agrees that the US must take a leadership role but with the unified voice of the international community, and that the US should stop labeling Iran as a pariah. As would befit his experience, Tanaka 228 Perthes et al. 113. 98 specifically compares the nuclear issue of Iran with that of North Korea. He notes that North Korea’s success in developing a nuclear weapon brought it almost immediate concessions from the US and other states including regime security, gains that will surely serve as an incentive for Iran to follow a similar defiant path. To keep Iran abiding by the NPT any approach of the international community must address the interests of every side. The nuclear issue must be part of a “comprehensive settlement” 229 and “placed in the context of a larger dialogue on transforming the Middle East into a more stable and secure region.” 230 Tanaka only offers one solution unique from Perthes. The international community must engage Iran in quid pro quo talks similar to the six party talks that took place with North Korea. Japan must be included in these talks because of its good relations with the Middle East, and with Iran in particular. He thus suggests 8 party talks including Iran, the US, the UK, France, Germany, Russia, China and Japan. Specifically, this group should address such issues as Iran’s nuclear program (uranium enrichment, fuel cycle, ratification of the NPT’s Additional Protocol, civilian nuclear technology, oversight, and verification, for example), normalization of relations between Iran and the United States, counterterrorism, stability in Iraq, and region wide economic and security cooperation. 231 All decisions reached at these 8 party talks should also be overseen to fruition by the same parties. THE WASHINGTON POST EDITORIALS METHODOLOGY The action recommendations of the Trilateral Commission Triangle Paper Engaging Iran will now be compared to the editorials of The Washington Post for the year 2008. The methodology chosen to best allow us to make this comparison is as follows: First, the 256 editorials from 2008 that contained the word ‘Iran’ were recorded from The Washington Post online database (powered by ProQuest Archiver). Next, all articles in which the authors advocated an opinion on policy towards Iran were selected. Article that did not advocate opinions were discarded. Articles in which the author merely reports what others have said were 229 Perthes et al. 35 230 Perthes et al. 34. 231 Perthes et al. 34. 99 not considered advocacy. It could certainly be argued that selective reporting of opinions, effectively eliminating certain viewpoints, is a form of advocacy, whether deliberate or unconscious. Indeed this manner of analysis of the general news section has been used, for example, in many of Herman & Chomsky’s supporting studies. However, this study does not take such an approach, but focuses on advocated positions, either by authors stating them as their own using normative statements or by expressing an opinion on what others have advocated. This reduced the number of articles to 37. Next, the articles were sorted into three rather self-explanatory categories. There are editorials ‘About Policy towards Iran’ that deal specifically with the subject as the primary focus. Articles deemed ‘Partially about Policy towards Iran’ denote articles dealing with policy towards Iran in some detail but also concern other topics. An example of this would be an article about the Israel-Palestine conflict, where the author allocates some space advocating what should be done about Iran’s involvement in these issues. Lastly, there are articles that ‘Mention Policy Towards Iran.’ In these articles policy towards Iran is of minor significance, usually no more than one or two relevant sentences, to the primary issue of the editorial. An example of this would be an article about the Obama-McCain presidential race in which the author advocates or criticizes a candidate’s position on Iran, though this is mentioned among many other positions and not discussed in any depth. All articles are presented with the following format: Date – Title – Author – Explanation. Each article’s position of advocacy is explained and compared with the Trilateral Commission action recommendations. Following this article-by-article treatment will be a section analyzing the data and summarizing findings. ARTICLES ‘ABOUT POLICY TOWARDS IRAN’ Jan 26 - Another Iran Resolution; A weak Security Council draft is better than none at all. Anonymous232 - This editorial points to Iran as a rational actor specifically referencing the 2006 NIE that characterized the nation thus. As mentioned, that report stated Iran is guided by a 232 In all cases ‘Anonymous’ is explicitly stated as the official position of the Post. It is likely therefore that such articles were written by one or more of the following publishers and senior editors: Boisfeuillet Jones, Jr., Rhodes scholar publisher and chief executive officer from 2000 to 2008; Philip Bennett, Leonard Downie, Jr. (retired on Sept 8), or Marcus W. Brauchli (replaced Downie). 100 “cost-benefit approach” vis-à-vis its nuclear policy and that it is likely to seek cooperation if sanctions designed to punish the Iranian economy for continuing to enrich uranium are applied. The article also generally endorses the approach of multilateral sanctions by the UN Security Council with the intent to pressure Iran to negotiate. Though this is largely in agreement with Trilateral goals and beliefs, as this article appeared before Engaging Iran, this points rather towards the Trilateral Commission position being reflective of the wide consensus that has formed within the policy establishment on this issue, originating from that very 2003 NIE report, as Perthes indicated. Jan 27 (repeat of Jan 26 article) March 14 – A Failing Campaign; swearing off military action, a U.S. commander weakens the diplomatic offensive against Iran - Anonymous - This again is a position at one with the general Trilateral Commission position in that it calls for international co-operation to pressure Iran and that a military attack should not occur, but that the threat of attack is nonetheless a useful pressure tactic. The article specifically suggests that pressure via sanctions may be successful if they are directed at the Iranian central bank and the financial system in general. Perthes, while suggesting sanctions in the form of an increased arms embargo, also advocated any type of sanction that may lead to a diplomatic breakthrough: The general principle here should be that if costs rise through sanctions or the threat of sanctions, opportunities and gains for Iran would also have to increase if it takes a different course.233 The article mentions the US and the EU applying sanctions separately however (that is, not through the UN Security Council, but bilaterally), which is a departure of the Trilateral action recommendation, but then again, this article too appeared before Engaging Iran was discussed. The article is also an endorsement of the Democratic Party, whose prospective plan towards Iran is more acceptable to the Trilateral Commission than that of the Republican Party. A more detailed explanation why this is so will be explored in the following ‘Data Analysis’ section. Apr 11 - The Holocaust Declaration - Charles Krauthammer - In this article, Krauthammer, the CFR member and neoconservative Post columnist who coined the term ‘Bush Doctrine’, believes 233 Perthes et al. 100. 101 sanctions have failed and reached the “end of the road.” He furthermore does not believe Iran to be a rational actor. For Krauthammer, a deterrence strategy that Iran cannot ignore is necessary. Specifically he calls for Bush, before the end of his term, to pronounce a “Holocaust Declaration”, stating that any nation that attacks Israel with a nuclear weapon or supplies terrorists with the means to do so will face severe consequences. Future presidents would then have to repudiate or affirm this declaration. This hard-liner rhetoric234 and the denigration of multilateralism are directly against the mitigation of such rhetoric as suggested by Perthes. Apr 18 - Deterring the Undeterrable - Charles Krauthammer – Krauthammer is again very skeptical of the efficacy of the internationalist soft power approach, which he fears could end very tragically. The ‘international community’ is prepared to do nothing of consequence to halt nuclear proliferation. No one wants to admit that. Nor does anyone want to contemplate the prospect of nuclear weapons in the hands of one, two, many rogue states. We must. The day is coming, and quickly. We must face reality and begin thinking how we live with the unthinkable. He then offers what he believes are the effective methods to “deal with rogue states going nuclear: preemption, deterrence, missile defense and regime change.” In short, as Krauthammer thinks that multi-lateral negotiations are a “head in the sand” approach and that a more hawkish stance is required, he is in disagreement with the Trilateral Commission approach. May 18 - Shaping a Nuclear Iran; The West's Diplomatic Goal Needs to Move From 'Suspension' to 'Transparency' - Ray Takeyh – The appearance of Takeyh, the North American contributor to Engaging Iran is one of the interesting finds of the study. In this editorial, Takeyh expands on the virtues of negotiation, writing mostly about what is possible with Iran and under what conditions the West can coax that party to the bargaining table. The West should not dwell on the past, should forego impotent hostile rhetoric and “negotiate an arrangement that would meet at least some of [Iran’s] demands.” Takeyh puts forth that Western powers could “concede to Iranian indigenous enrichment capability of considerable size in exchange for an intrusive inspection regime that would ensure nuclear material is not being diverted for military purposes.” Although this is in line with Perthes’ general idea of transparent quid pro quo 234 In a slightly softer version, this was actually Hillary Clinton’s position during the Democratic primaries. Undoubtedly, it was her attempt to temporarily shift to the right to gain support from that demographic, in preparation for being elected the Democratic candidate. 102 confidence building, it is an action recommendation not specifically stated in Engaging Iran. It is likely that Takeyh and Perthes occupy similar positions though this suggestion shows that Takeyh’s solutions may be slightly different than Perthes’ or that his ideas have evolved since his contribution. In general of course, the ethos of his stance is mostly in agreement with the Trilateral Commission Triangle Paper he helped to write. May 24 - The Wisdom In Talking - John F Kerry – Skull & Bones and CFR member Senator Kerry contributed an article to support Obama’s campaign position that Iran should be engaged (possibly without preconditions), as opposed to John McCain’s campaign position that meeting Ahmadinejad is both pointless and amateurish. This is almost certainly merely a falsely indignant attack meant to rally Democrats around Obama since, as a one time Democratic candidate, Kerry is surely aware that beyond the surface rhetoric, a consensus has been achieved on the issue in both parties’ real political agenda, and that McCain too is only posturing. Beyond this general support for negotiations, there are no specific recommendations. As such, this stance should be taken as only bare agreement with that of the Trilateral Commission. May 27 - A Sensible Path on Iran - Zbigniew Brzezinski; William Odom. The Trilateral Commission intellectual founder and Odom, military assistant to Brzezinski when the former was the National Security Advisor (and later himself the director of the NSA 1981-185), and who actually died a few days after this article was published, believe that not negotiating with Iran will result in Iran successfully building the bomb. In their opinion, Iran must be engaged, regardless of the issue of whether this is done without preconditions or on a quid pro quo basis (as Tanaka had suggested). Iran is also depicted as a rational actor: The widely propagated notion of a suicidal Iran detonating its very first nuclear weapon against Israel is more the product of paranoia or demagogy than of serious strategic calculus. It cannot be the basis for U.S. policy, and it should not be for Israel's, either. In general, though the editorial is mostly an argument about why Iran should be engaged rather than specifically how, this position is generally in congruence with that of the Trilateral Commission. Jun 26 - Coalition Of the Ineffectual - Richard Perle – Perle, the neoconservative former assistant Secretary of Defense, former Trilateral Commissioner, and now American Enterprise 103 Institute scholar does not accept the widely held notion that Iran has stopped its nuclear weapons program. Quite the contrary, Perle believes they are “relentlessly building a nuclear weapons program” and that this alone is proof (despite the lack of officially recognized proof) that the multilateralism of Condoleezza Rice and what many others are currently advocating is an abject failure. This is in considerable disagreement with the Trilateral Commission Triangle Paper, which may explain either why Perle is no longer a member of the group, or again may be representative of the breadth of spectrum tolerable by that organization. June 29 - Talking to Iran Is Our Best Option - Ivo Daalder & Philip Gordon - The writers, both CFR members and Senior Fellows at The Brookings Institution, agree with the Trilateral Commission that a united international front including the EU, Russia and China, must agree to meet Iran. However the authors insist this should be done without preconditions if that is the only option. The multilateralist position working towards reconciliation is congruent with Engaging Iran, though the Triangle Paper does not offer an explicit position on conditions to be met before negotiations begin. Aug 26 - Biden's Blink On Iran - Michael Rubin – The American Enterprise Institute scholar believes Iran is not to be trusted; that they will say one thing and do another, and that therefore the negotiation process is only a game to the Iranians who have far more dangerous aims. He specifically denigrates Senator Biden for being naïve in this respect. These suspicions are not congruent with the Trilateral Commission’s belief that Iran is rational and should be diplomatically engaged. Sept 8 - What's Missing From the Iran Debate; Building a Security Framework for a Nuclear Tehran - David Kay – Kay led the U.N. inspections after the Persian Gulf War that uncovered the Iraqi nuclear program, and the later the CIA Iraq Survey Group which determined there were no weapons of mass destruction at the time of the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Kay believes Iran is not far from producing a nuclear weapon, however. He agrees with a strategy of multilateral negotiation and that if Iran is pressured economically, it is more likely to sit at the bargaining table. “While Iran's economy suffers, engagement is more feasible.” This assessment is in general agreement with the Trilateral Commission although it is direr in its assessment about the state of the weapons programs. 104 Oct 23 - Stopping A Nuclear Tehran - Daniel R Coats; Charles S Robb (CFR) – The two co- chairmen of the Bipartisan Policy Center's national security task force on Iran published their 5 principles for engaging Iran. 1 - Iran must not acquire or develop a nuclear weapon (agreement with Trilateral Commission) 2 – Iran must stop enriching uranium in Iran (agreement with Trilateral Commission report, though not with Takeyh’s May 18 article.) 3 – the group promotes international co-operation and the idea that “[n]egotiations with Iran would probably be ineffective unless our European allies sever commercial relations with Tehran.” (The Trilateral Commission agrees with the need for co-operation with the EU but the suggestion of severing of all commercial relations is much stronger than the Trilateral Commission, which would seem to be unlikely to jeopardize European (and Japanese) commercial interests, and would on the contrary be much more receptive to attempts to increase them.) 4 - The US must convince Israel not to unilaterally act, but also that the US is absolutely committed to stopping nuclear proliferation in Iran. (Though likely to be in agreement with the Trilateral proposal, Engaging Iran, does not regard this specific scenario.) 5- Military action is a last resort (agreement with the Trilateral Commission). In general, we should consider that this task force report is in competition with the Trilateral Commission’s report. Its action recommendations have many principles in common with the Triangle Paper but it is not identical. Not surprisingly, it concentrates more on US interests, whereas the Trilateral Commission is concerned with the interests of the three main capitalist poles. Dennis Ross, a Trilateral Commission member, is also a member of this task force. Nov 30 - An F for Bush's Iran Policy. - David Ignatius – Ignatius is a CFR member and author of the 2008 book American and the World: Conversations on the Future of American Foreign Policy with Trilateral Commission members Brzezinski and Brent Scowcroft. He is associate editor and Post columnist frequently reporting on affairs of the Middle East, and his father was Secretary of the Navy before becoming president of The Washington Post Company. In this article, the writer recounts the failures of Bush and suggests that Obama’s pledge to negotiate is a “worthy aspiration.” On the other hand, considering the history of failed negotiation attempts 105 between the two countries, Ignatius does not have high hopes for success, a sentiment that rather mirrors Perthes’ fears that Iran may have little incentive to negotiate. “Dialogue is worth a try, but Obama and his advisers should start thinking about what they will do if negotiations fail.” Ignatius is in agreement with the Trilateral Commission on a basic of level, though slightly more pessimistic in tone. Dec 29 - What Iran Wants - Ray Takeyh – In this article, Takeyh reiterates what a rational Iran wants and that with Obama elected, “the United States may finally be on the verge of launching a direct dialogue with its perennial Middle Eastern adversary.” Again, he mentions that Trilateral- congruent quid pro quo confidence building measures are possible, positive steps. He does not expand on any specific negotiation tactics or goals other than the rather obvious point that “the United States must seriously consider how it can leverage talks to its advantage.” However, much of his commentary is naturally in agreement with the Trilateral Commission report ethos. ARTICLES ‘ PARTIALLY ABOUT POLICY TOWARDS IRAN’ Mar 5 – Obama's First 100 Days - Michael Gerson – Gerson, a conservative leaning Senior Fellow at the CFR, and the originator of the ‘mushroom cloud’ meme used famously by then White House press secretary Condoleezza Rice, 235 disagrees about meeting without preconditions since, “as Henry Kissinger once said, ‘When talks become their own objective, they are at the mercy of the party most prepared to break them off’”, that advantaged party being Iran in this case. Gerson then runs through a fictional series of disastrous events that could happen in the wake of such a meeting. The New York Post runs a front-page picture of the Obama-Ahmadinejad handshake under the headline ‘Surrender Summit!’ The story notes another of Obama's historic firsts: the first American president to meet with a Holocaust denier. The Israeli prime minister publicly asks, ‘Why is the American president meeting with a leader who calls us 'filthy bacteria' and threatens to wipe us 'off the map?'’ Tens of thousands protest in Tel Aviv, carrying signs reading ‘Chamberlain Lives!’ America's moderate Arab allies in the region also feel betrayed, assuming that America is cutting a bilateral deal with Iran that accepts its nuclear ambitions, while leaving the Sunni powers out in the cold. 235 Michael Isikof and David Corn, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (New York: Crown, 2006) 35. 106 Generally speaking, the tone of the article is not congruent with the Trilateral Commission report, although Gerson has not stated whether he would advise meeting with Iran with preconditions. Outside of Tanaka’s suggestions of quid pro quo talks, the Trilateral Commission document is after all unclear on any conditions it would impose before meeting Iranian leaders. Apr 9 - The Iran Problem - David Ignatius – Ignatius points out the effective Iranian presence in Iraq, and states that “[f]ighting a war against Iran is a bad idea. But fighting a proxy war against it in Iraq, where many of our key allies are manipulated by Iranian networks of influence, may be even worse.” As a solution to this problem he makes a general statement advocating negotiation and the employment of smart power, congruent with the Trilateral Commission, but adds no specific detail other than it is sure to be a difficult process with potentially great consequences. Somehow, the next president will have to fuse U.S. military and diplomatic power to both engage Iran and set limits on its activities. A U.S.-Iranian dialogue is a necessary condition for future stability in the Middle East. But the wrong deal, negotiated by a weak America with a cocky Iran that thinks it's on a roll, would be a disaster. Apr 18 – Heat -- and a Little Light - Eugene Robinson - Associate Editor and twice-weekly Post columnist Robinson criticizes candidate Clinton for pledging to declare, if elected President, that the US would “nuke” Iran for an attack on Israel, (similar to what Krauthammer advocated). He believes that engagement is the path the US should aspire to, and that in order to facilitate that goal, such bellicose rhetoric is tantamount to “deepening the fault lines in the Middle East” created by Bush “rather than trying to bridge them.” This is specifically congruent with the Trilateral Commission recommendation of avoiding hostile rhetoric as well generally in agreement with the aim to negotiate. May 15 - The Squeeze on the Middle East's Moderates - David Ignatius – In this article Ignatius laments the failures of Bush to either negotiate with skill or deter with effectiveness, while giving the edge to Iran in recent maneuvering, particularly within Iraq. He again advocates negotiation for the next president, a very basic agreement with the Trilateral Commission position. May 23 – Obama's Metastatic Gaffe - Charles Krauthammer – Krauthammer is against the 107 position espoused by candidate Obama that negotiating without preconditions is the best way to approach Iran: A meeting with Ahmadinejad would not just strengthen and vindicate him at home, it would instantly and powerfully ease the mullahs' isolation, inviting other world leaders to follow. And with that would come a flood of commercial contracts, oil deals, diplomatic agreements -- undermining the very sanctions and isolation that Obama says he would employ against Iran. Again he iterates that Iran is not rational but “dangerously apocalyptic.” This is all quite contrary to the Trilateral Commission report. Jun 19 - Iran on Its Heels; In Tehran's Setbacks, an Opportunity in Iraq - Vali Nasr – In this editorial about Iran in Iraq, the Adjunct Senior Fellow for Middle Eastern Studies at the CFR recounts that recent setbacks in Iraq have put Iran in a vulnerable position where it should negotiate, and that the US should seize this opportunity. This can only be considered the vaguest of agreements with the Trilateral Commission position. Nov 19 – Overtures Best Left To Obama - Jim Hoagland – CFR member, Post Associate Editor and Chief Foreign Correspondent Hoagland agrees with President Bush’s decision to quash Secretary of State Rice’s attempt to open up a diplomatic ‘listening post’ in the United Arab Emirates to reach out to Iranians. He thinks Bush cannot do such a dovish thing after spending “96%’ of his time in office taking a bellicose attitude towards the Iranians.” He does however think that President elect Obama, with a “fresh start,” should reach out to Iranians as part of a multilateral effort to coax Iran into ceasing uranium enrichment. Engagement has long been a no-brainer. But that move also needs to be part of a broader understanding with Washington's European Union, Russian and Chinese partners on developing tougher sanctions and richer incentives to get Iran to halt work on its nuclear program. Bush simply does not have the time to obtain all that before Jan. 20. Negotiation as part of an international effort including the specific states mentioned is in agreement with the general Trilateral Commission position. 108 ARTICLES THAT ‘MENTION POLICY TOWARDS IRAN’ Feb 15 - The Audacity of Selling Hope – Charles Krauthammer. The author criticizes Obama’s over-the-top campaign rhetoric, including what he believes to be the Illinois senator’s foolish “[p]romises to heal the world with negotiations with the likes of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.” The position that negotiations with Iran are bound to fail is inconsistent with the Trilateral position. Feb 26 – A War We Must End - John Podesta, Ray Takeyh & Lawrence J Korb - Podesta is also a Trilateral Commission member, though both Podesta and Korb are (corporate) progressives from the Center for American Progress (founded by Podesta). Though this article is primarily about Iraq, the authors state that “the Bush presidency should be a lesson on what not to do”, a statement closely mirrored in Engaging Iran. Peace and an end to the Iraq War is the way for the US to reach its goals, including that of thwarting Iran’s growing defiance and confidence. Again, as Takeyh was an author of Engaging Iran, congruency can be assumed though here his opinions are primarily applied to Iraq. Feb 29 - Words Aren't Cheap - Michael Gerson - Gerson criticizes Obama for being “too liberal” and again worries about the Illinois senator’s willingness to engage in a “surrender summit” by meeting Iran (amongst other adversaries) without preconditions. Again, his pessimistic tone is not consistent with the Trilateral view. March 16 - Waiting Games in the Middle East – David Ignatius – Ignatius agrees “in principle” that “Obama's promise to meet with any and all adversaries…is right” though he does not hold much hope for the process as Iran has much more “staying power” compared to “America's waning attention span” concerning Middle East engagement. The desire to meet is a basic agreement, though again, Ignatius’s pessimism is more pronounced than that of the Trilateral Commission. March 30 - Mideast Openings; Get to Know Hamas and Moqtada al-Sadr – David Ignatius – Describing the complexities of the various low-intensity conflicts of the Middle East, Ignatius believes that “at some point, through some channel, America will need to talk with Sadr and the 109 forces he represents”, meaning Iran. This is a basic agreement with the Trilateral position that negotiations are the way forward, that such conflicts require a mix of fighting and talking and that “[r]ight now, we do too much of the former and not enough of the latter.” Apr 10 – Obama's Iraq Weakness - Michael Gerson – Gerson again states his opinion that to meet Ahmadinejad without preconditions is a dangerous good idea. “What might seem a bold strategic maneuver from a Nixon or Kissinger smacks of dangerous naiveté from a fourth-year senator.” In general, he is more supportive of McCain than Obama. The non-congruency of this view with the Trilateral position is the same as his March 5 editorial. Apr 15 – Rogue Democrat; South Africa's Thabo Mbeki sides with Robert Mugabe against the people of Zimbabwe – Anonymous - The Post wonders whether the governance of South African President Thabo Mbeki is not a bit roguish, chastising the leader, among other things, for having “defended Iran's nuclear program and resisted sanctions against it.” This is consistent with Engaging Iran, which specifically suggested enlisting South Africa to aid in pressuring Iran to give up its nuclear program for other concessions, as Pretoria itself once did. Apr 22 - Not Quite Like Ike – Eugene Robinson – Robinson is clearly on the left end of the mainstream political spectrum, highly critical of McCain. Vis-à-vis Iran, Robinson believes his “non-negotiable goal…an Iran without nuclear weapons” is unachievable with McCain’s strategy of simply applying more sanctions without a desire to negotiate. The writer thus believes Iran must be brought to the negotiation table somehow, and that sanctions must be used constructively, not as threats, consistent with the Trilateral position. Apr 25 – A Seasoned Command: President Bush wisely promotes his two most successful generals in Iraq - Anonymous - The Post endorses General Petraeus who they believe has the ability to effectively employ a smart power approach towards Iran. Iran’s bid for hegemony over the Middle East must be countered by a sophisticated strategy -- one in which diplomacy should play a major role but in which military action cannot be ruled out. This can be considered a general agreement with the Trilateral Commission, though that organization does not mention Petraeus within the Triangle Paper. 110 Jun 1 - Going Their Own Way in The Mideast – David Ignatius - Ignatius here agrees that Bush’s aggressive tactics have failed, and that the US must understand that it must resort itself to creating a compromised “stable security architecture” with countries such as Iran and others, rather then impose solutions. This is the same general ethos as both Perthes and Tanaka who explicitly state that other interests must be taken into account if any solution is to come about. Aug 7 – Gates's Next Mission - David Ignatius - Ignatius endorses Bilderberger, CFR member and Secretary of Defense Gates (who chaired the CFR Iraq Study Group with Brzezinksi), because of his smart power advocacy and criticism of the “’creeping militarization’” within US foreign policy circles. This can be considered a general agreement with the Trilateral Commission position. Sept 21 - The Plain Vanilla Revolutionary – David Ignatius - The writer again speaks well of Gates, and specifically of his being “a leading skeptic of war with Iran” among other foreign policy stances. Again, this is in general agreement with the Trilateral position. Oct 17 – Barack Obama for President - Anonymous – In this article The Washington Post officially endorses Barack Obama for president. While the Post believes that Obama’s position on Iran will ultimately be similar to Bush’s outgoing position and also to what McCain’s would be, the Post believes Obama’s diplomacy will be “defter” and since his campaign rhetoric was more closely affiliated with the Trilateral position of restoring America’s reputation, this endorsement can be considered generally supportive of it. Oct 24 - McCain for President. - Charles Krauthammer - Despite his lack of faith that McCain can win, Krauthammer endorses McCain. He once again characterizes Iran as “apocalyptic” and denigrates Obama’s “vaporous multilateralism” both of which are inconsistent with the Trilateral position. Nov 10 - Obama's New World; The Realities That GOP Post-Mortems Ignore – Fareed Zakaria - - Trilateral Commission and CFR member Zakaria denigrates Bush’s unilateral attempt to 111 transform the world through “magic or military power” and generally advocates multilateralism and smart power, an approach consistent with Engaging Iran. DATA ANALYSIS The following section will extrapolate on two general findings derived from a comparative analysis of the Trilateral Commission Triangle Report Engaging Iran and the 2008 Washington Post editorials. 1) Though the opinions on Iran featured in The Washington Post included an inordinately high number of people affiliated with the Trilateral Commission, analysis of the editorials shows little evidence of a conspiratorial attempt to propagandize the action recommendations of Engaging Iran. 2) The analysis lends considerable support to the notion that the Trilateral Commission and The Washington Post are institutions operating within an ideological apparatus very similar to Dye’s depiction of the policy making process and/or the ‘free market analysis’ of Herman & Chomsky. A CONVENIENT DEBATE The editorials were marked by a consistent question: ‘Should the next President meet directly with the Iranians without conditions?’ This question came to the fore on the campaign trail after Obama attacked John McCain’s similarity to the Bush administration’s hardliner Middle East policy. Contrary to McCain and Bush’s constant bellicose rhetoric towards Iran, Obama attempted to appeal to the population’s war-weariness by declaring that he would meet Ahmadinejad without preconditions. McCain and the media, including The Washington Post, quickly exploited the point. The latter divided into partisan camps debating the dangers and merits of how to engage Iran. However, this preoccupation of Post editorials had little to do with the concerns of Engaging Iran, a document primarily advocating what and how to negotiate, a level of discussion The Washington Post editorials rarely advanced to. That conditions of meeting might be highly 112 contentious was never discussed in the Triangle Paper. Perhaps the only mention concerning this point within Engaging Iran came from Tanaka who suggested that 8 party talks should take place on a quid pro quo basis. In all likelihood this refers merely to characterizing how progress is to be made, though it is possible that it also indicates under what conditions talks are to begin. In any case, this was a statement of minor importance leading to a more substantive argument on how to satisfy all parties. Yet Perthes, who was clearly responsible for the bulk of action recommendations, did not at all specify under which conditions negotiations should be undertaken. On the other hand, it is relatively clear that if the writers of Engaging Iran were to answer this, as they depicted Iran as a rational actor that must be engaged, they certainly would be much more sympathetic the opinions of the Democrat supporting, liberal leaning Post writers. In fact some of the editorialists that entered this debate on that side, such as Zbigniew Brzezinksi, were Trilateral Commission members themselves. What is most interesting however is that this question was seriously discussed at all. While the candidates and editorialists publicly battled about whether or not to engage Iran, to its credit, the Post or its writers, on more than one occasion correctly stated that beyond the rhetoric, it was clear from the candidates respective foreign policy teams that the tack each intended to take was essentially not only the same, but also merely a continuation of the more conciliatory approach Bush took at the end of his presidency, a reflection of the wide bipartisan consensus that had developed on the issue of Iran. It seems rather that Obama’s statement, in the end generally more dovish than that of the consensus was merely pandering to the standard anti-war opinion of the Democratic Party base. Thus when Obama said “I believe that there is no separation between John McCain and George Bush when it comes to our Middle East policy, and I think their policy has failed”,236 he surely knew that that policy had not only changed but that what it had changed to was also essentially his own position.237 John McCain also seems to have been guilty of the same posturing. His rendition of the Beach Boys’ Barbara Ann by substituting ‘Bomb Iran’ for the name was perhaps intended as a meme to appeal to the more hawkish Republican voter base. 236 Barack Obama, Campaign Speech. Watertown, South Dakota. 16 May 2008. 237 In fact a similar event occurred when Obama claimed he would force Canada and Mexico to renegotiate NAFTA, then quietly assured Canadian officials that this was just campaign rhetoric “Both Clinton and Obama reassured Canada on trade: reports,” Associated Free Press 6 Mar 2008. 3 Mar 2008. 113 Not only was this consensus position behind the scenes quite different than the ‘dog and pony show’ given by candidates but, as we have previously mentioned, we find the Trilateral Commission in key campaign advisory positions of both parties. As Obama was a foreign policy (and general political) neophyte—(though he claimed at various times for this to be so and at other times that it was one of his strengths and that he was more qualified than either McCain or Clinton in this regard)--he had a huge foreign policy advisory team numbering around 300, divided into 20 world regions. This was headed by Trilateral Commission member Susan Rice, with Zbigniew Brzezinski a general specialist on foreign policy and Dennis Ross being a Middle East and Iran specialist who “is frequently asked by Ms. Rice…for help on framing Mr. Obama’s comments on Iran’s nuclear program and its potential threat to Israel.”238 Some of McCain’s top foreign policy aides were Trilateral Commission members Henry Kissinger, Richard Armitage and Robert Kagan.239 In other words, the Trilateral Commission positions were sure to have influence either way, while the media fed the public a convenient but largely irrelevant debate. More precisely, though the question of whether to engage Iran without preconditions is a valid question, it is curious that the Post would concentrate almost exclusively on the façade when they surely knew a consensus had been formed (and never once mentioning the Trilateral Commission’s dual positioning on both campaign teams). I would suggest that it should be seriously considered that this is a case of editorialists collectively and fortuitously finding a comfortable niche appropriate for the mass media’s role an adjunct of power, a case where experts can appear to be seriously discussing foreign policy while simultaneously upholding the façade of partisan politics, all without drawing unwanted attention to the more uniform, elitist and methods of policy making that occurs behind the scenes. Yet, again this phenomenon of convenience is not purposeful deception of the Post, who did mention it on more than one occasion, but rather a spontaneous, though likely patterned, result of the constrained environment created by power relations (such as those mentioned by Herman & Chomsky) pervading this entire industry. 238 Elisabeth Bumiller, “A Cast of 300 Advises Obama on Foreign Policy,” The New York Times 18 July 2008.100 239 Council on Foreign Relations, The, “McCain's Brain Trust,” Newsweek 3 June 2008. 5 Feb 2011. Note that the CFR is writing in Newsweek, then a Washington Post Company property. 114 SPECTRUM OF OPINIONS On the question of whether and under what conditions to meet with Iran and about that nation more generally speaking, the editorials exhibited a range of corporate liberal and moderate/ultra conservative opinions. This spectrum was bound by the unanimous opinion that Iran should not have nuclear weapons, that it should stop uranium enrichment and that, although the regime is dangerous, a military strike should be avoided if possible. The only exception to these common assumptions in all pieces that appeared in The Washington Post in 2008 was an interview conducted by Donald Graham’s sister Lally Weymouth with Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki who expressed the Iranian point of view. 240 Interestingly, when asked what he thought about candidate Obama’s eagerness to meet with Iran, Mottaki simply stated that all campaign rhetoric couldn’t be taken seriously, a refreshing frankness that accords with the analysis in the section immediately above this. Beyond Mottaki’s interview, the only time the fact that Iran’s legal right to pursue peaceful nuclear power was even mentioned was by former Trilateral Commission member Madeleine Albright and even then obliquely.241 On the conservative side of the spectrum, beyond advocating that the next president should not meet Iran without conditions, editorialists generally claimed that Iran was an untrustworthy or irrational actor, that multilateralism was failing, and that much stronger realist strategies of deterrence were needed to counter the threat posed by the Islamic Republic. On the liberal side, editorialists defended multilateralism and advocated that the West needed to be realistic (in the common sense), that demanding Iran cease uranium enrichment before they could meet the US at the bargaining table was a failed strategy that would allow Iran the time necessary to develop a nuclear weapon. They frequently protested that more deterrence and hardliner rhetoric was likely only to drive the wedge deeper between the West and Iran, and that in some capacity, Iran needed to be met at the bargaining table, though to do so without conditions was not equivocal. Figure 11, created from the findings of this study, shows a pictorial representation of this range of opinions. Despite the narrowness of the spectrum it is clear that 240 Oct 6. It was not included in the above editorial-by-editorial analysis because it did not advocate policy recommendations. 241 Albright’s actual quote was “No nukes, we say, while possessing the world's largest arsenal” appearing Jan 7. This editorial was also not included in the editorial-by-editorial analysis because it did not give policy recommendations vis-à-vis Iran. In addition, Brzezinksi also frequently publicly mentions that Iran has the right to pursue nuclear energy for civilian purposes, though this opinion did not appear in any Post articles. Brzezinksi was Albright’s thesis advisor. 115 The Washington Post editorials did not simply reflect the Trilateral position but rather a range of (non-Iranian) positions. Moreover, as is clear in the previous section, this range of positions hardly touched on the substance of action recommendations actually presented in the Triangle Paper. Figure 11. A spectrum of opinions regarding how the US should engage Iran as they appeared in 2008 Washington Post editorials. As we can see, many opinions fall between 3 and 4, representing thee position that then current approach required more conciliatory gestures to coax Iran to the bargaining table. Beyond The Washington Post official position, it also denotes the position taken by Obama during his campaign,242 the Trilateral Commission, and corporate liberals generally. The Bush approach, near the end of his term was operating between 3 and 5. Though Bush was willing to meet with Ahmadinejad if Iran ceased uranium enrichment while applied sanctions remained unchanged (4), Rice was formulating a plan to bring the sides closer to 3. At the time, the 242 Obama began at 3 and then moved slightly right. In office he actually attempted this final position but was rebuffed by Iran. 116 administration was then meeting with Iran over issues on Iraq in the Iraq neighbours conferences (5). McCain’s campaign position as well as that of Post conservative writers and experts centered around 6, though in reality McCain’s position was also between 3 and 4. TRILATERALS ON THE MAINSTREAM LEFT Though we have mentioned that the Trilateral Commission had tremendous influence with both candidates and parties, concerning the liberal/conservative spectrum seen in the Post, if belligerence is to the right, then the opinion of Engaging Iran is to the left of the espoused spectrum. This is not surprising if we consider the calculus of international(ist) voices included in arriving at Trilateral Commission consensus. In short, Japan and Western Europe have little incentive to take a hawkish position. The former has no legal capacity beyond (unpopular) monetary support for military engagement, while Europe, with a population still weary from the World Wars, the Cold War, Kosovo etc., and who were bitterly divided on Bush’s anti-terror wars, has equally little appetite for antagonizing Iran. In addition, a reasonable realist case can be made that living under the US led security umbrella, European and Japanese governments and populaces have been ‘free riding’ while diplomatically undermining US security efforts by trying to reap what benefits they can from trading with enemies, such as Iran, that identify the US as the primary adversary. A critic would add that since the world does not look toward these secondary powers to provide security, Europe and Japan are essentially merely hoping that Iran’s aggressive tendencies, which affect them little as it is today, simply do not culminate in mass destruction or dissipate of their own accord. As the only superpower that actually has the capacity to mediate however, it is much more difficult for the US to ignore these problems, particularly as it involves Israel, the nation that has been the victim of unrelenting Iranian aggression for decades. The US politico-economic market is thus much more fiercely contested, not least from lobbies representing the national interests of foreign nations, such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). Considering responsibilities thrust upon America, Israeli insecurity, European and Japanese expedient nonchalance, discrepancy between opinions vying for presidential execution is expected. A clear indication of this discrepancy can be seen in Brzezinski’s public criticism of Israeli influence in American political matters as an obstacle to international co-operation, even going so far as to suggest that the US should consider shooting 117 down Israeli warplanes if Tel Aviv decided to unilaterally attack Iran.243 Obama himself was heavily criticized by hardliner pro-Israeli voices for involving Brzezinski in his campaign advisory team.244 For precisely such reasons, the US position is not naturally the same as the Trilateral position, though making it so is the difficult task the Trilateral Commission consistently lays out for itself. This discrepancy between US and internationalist interests was also seen in the article discussing the findings of the US Bipartisan Policy Center. (In addition, giving a voice to such a study is in itself something of a refutation that the Post is exclusively devoted to proliferating Trilateral views.) It may also be mentioned here that once elected, Obama chose Dennis Ross to be his diplomat for Iran. Ross is perhaps the diplomatic choice for diplomat as he is a member of the Trilateral Commission, the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Middle East Policy think tank as well as the Bipartisan Policy Center Task Force for Iran. Ross thus satisfies every major constituency for a Democrat. A veteran of Middle Eastern diplomatic efforts, Ross himself is unabashedly pro-Israel, stating within his recent book Statecraft (2009) that it is too much to expect an American diplomat not to be pro-Israeli since the foundations and goals of that society are so much closer to those of America compared to that of the Arab or Iranian world. It is his belief however that this bias, somewhat paradoxically, should not prevent a diplomat from being a fair and able negotiator. Ross also explicitly stated within that text that the US, in the event of an impasse, should consider covertly sabotaging Iranian facilities and then denying it, because in the end, a state must use everything at its disposal to achieve its goals. He also stated that the US should use the threat of an Israeli attack on Iran to persuade the Europeans to co-operate more effectively. (It is very probable that the US and Israel did in fact sabotage Iranian facilities with the Stuxnet computer worm, 245 while the same nation’s intelligence services are also convincingly accused by Iran in the murder of two of their top nuclear scientists in 2010,246247 measures that certainly will do no favours bringing Iran to the table, but do stave off the worst 243 Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu, “Zbig Brzezinski: Shoot Down Israeli Planes if They Attack Iran,” The Israel National News 21 Sept 2009. 05 Feb 2011. 244 Ben Smith, “Obama adviser worries Israel supporters,” Politico.com 12 Sept 2007. 5 Feb 2011. 245 William J Broad, John Markoff and David E. Sanger, “Israeli Test on Worm Called Crucial in Iran Nuclear Delay,” The New York Times 15 Jan 2011. 05 Feb 2011. 118 possible scenario). Though all of this glib talk, however politically incorrect, does makes sense from an expedient point of view, in the end, Perthes’ fears of Iranian disengagement were realized. Not surprisingly Ross’ appointment was not received well by Iran, whose state radio described his appointment as ‘an apparent contradiction’ with Obama's ‘announced policy to bring change in United States foreign policy.’ Kazem Jalali, a hardline member of the Iranian parliament's national security committee, joked that it ‘would have been so much better to pick [Israeli Prime Ministers] Ariel Sharon or Ehud Olmert as special envoy to Iran.248 Obama himself then went on to make what Brzezinski lauded as a ‘historic overture,’ inviting the Iranians to a dialogue—though not lifting the present sanctions. Iran responded coldly, stating that it first wanted sanctions to be lifted, to be treated respectfully as an internationally law abiding nation like any other, before considering any direct dialogue. Brzezinski, speaking in a manner that betrayed himself as a key factor in making this overture possible, responded that the American gesture of good will, a confidence building measure, needed to be reciprocated in some positive way to signal that Iran really wanted to find a solution.249 That signal never came. Iran undoubtedly is comfortable with the status quo, believing the US to be in precipitous decline. Obama responded by initiating new rounds of sanctions through the UN Security Council, including the arms embargo, just as Perthes suggested in Engaging Iran.. The acts of the Obama administration illustrate two main points. One, that Dennis Ross may have been Obama’s diplomatic choice but that it still could not satisfy all parties--namely Iran--underlining both the difficulty of a superpower finding common ground on this issue, and also perhaps that Obama, like many of his predecessors, is prepared to sacrifice reconciliation with Iran in favour of domestic support, a move that doubles by a continuance of the profitable portrayal of Iran as an enemy in focus (i.e. a bogeyman).250 But perhaps more importantly, though we have not seen The Washington Post simply parroting the Trilateral position, the actual influence of the Trilateral Commission on US policy in this case has been formidable. 248 Robert Dreyfuss, “Dennis Ross's Iran Plan,” The Nation 8 Apr 2009. 119 IDEOLOGICAL CONSONANCE The Trilateral position, though on the left of the mainstream spectrum and up against contrary competition from more conservative and Israeli points of view, was nevertheless in basic agreement with the official position taken by the Post. In addition, Trilateral Commission members or those associated with the group also contributed pieces in a startling proportion considering their few numbers. What are we to make of this official congruence and the high frequency of Trilateral Commission member penned pieces? As far as confirming the strong connection of propagandizing for covert goals that once existed between the Post and the Round Table group, these findings are potentially significant but certainly do not point to the paper being a clear instrument of propaganda. It is clear that these ideologically consonant writers mostly propounded only a general neoliberal viewpoint, which of course includes the position and that more hardliner strategies were not only failing but fundamentally flawed. These writers did not elaborate in detail about what should be negotiated and how. Even the 2 1/3 contributions from Ray Takeyh, the North American contributor to Engaging Iran were only sparsely detailed. Only if we had seen stronger uniformity between the respective discourse published by both organizations could we suggest a stronger connection. As this evidence stands, one can only conjecture that perhaps Donald Graham and his editorial staff are paying specific attention to what the Trilateral Commission publishes or discusses at the meetings and then seriously considering this as their editorial position in some sort of commitment to far reaching goals of a New World Order—-as former Post editor Felix Morley and others surely did several decades ago. We might also imagine that Graham specifically invited Takeyh and other Trilateral Commission intellectuals to contribute articles. Those are possibilities, yet, despite this and the high frequency of these writers, we have to remember that The Washington Post does occupy a rather centre-left, corporate liberal internationalist niche and that this basic position is common within the mainstream. We recall that a consensus formed over most of the political spectrum after the 2006 NIE reported that military action against Iran was increasingly unviable, that Iran should be seen as rational, that it should be engaged, and that the American international reputation had to be repaired by such diplomatic measures—all of which is found in the basic neoliberal position. Moreover, Iran was an issue tackled by many policy discussion groups in 2008, many of which reached very similar conclusions independently of the Trilateral Commission’s Task Force. We furthermore have no 120 way of knowing how familiar Post writers were with any of these reports. In general, the Trilateral Commission cannot be claimed as the author of this position but only as a significant participant and contributor to a consensus built by a growing chorus of voices in the mainstream policy networks. Similarly, requesting that a Senior Fellow on Middle Eastern Relations from the CFR, such as Ray Takeyh, contribute his opinions on Iran to the Post cannot be taken as unequivocal evidence of a coordinated effort to publish Trilateral views but seems rather to be the standard practice for mainstream. The fact that the CFR was set up as “a front for J.P. Morgan and Company”251 and that it undoubtedly serves corporate elite interests notwithstanding, the CFR remains the nation’s most respected source on foreign affairs and for this reason alone countless publications will seek the expertise of its staff. On the other hand, the fact that the overwhelming majority of voices within the Post on the subject of Iran came from the top elite policy discussion groups strongly supports Dye’s analysis that such structural relationships with the ‘National News Media’ are playing a systematic role in proliferating ideas established in institutions conducive to the interests of the corporate elite. In table 10, only Republican Senator Daniel R. Coats252and former CIA weapons inspector David Kay do not belong to either the Trilateral Commission, the Council on Foreign Relations,253 Brookings Institution, American Enterprise Institute, meaning that only 1.5 of 37 articles did not originate from one of these consummate corporate elite intellectual sources. We may also recall that the president of the CFR, three former foreign policy directors of Brookings as well as that organization’s founding and current director of Global Economy and Development Center, and the founder and CEO of the Center for American Progress are all Trilateral Commission members. Table 10. Editorial Contributors and their Institutional Affiliations.254 About Partially Mention Anonymous 3 3 CFR Charles Krauthammer 2 1 2 CFR Charles S Robb 0.5 CFR Daniel R Coats 0.5 Senator (R–Ind.) 251 Quigley, Tragedy 952. 252 Coats can easily be affiliated with corporate elite interests nonetheless, as he has been a registered lobbyist for Bank of America, defense giant Lockheed Martin and other corporate powerhouses. 253 In addition the CFR’s main publication Foreign Affairs, with which many Trilateral Commission journalists are affiliated, is now owned by The Washington Post Company. 254 Affiliations compiled from SourceWatch. 121 David Ignatius 1 2 5 CFR David Kay 1 Former CIA Eugene Robinson 1 1 CFR Fareed Zakaria 1 TC, CFR Ivo Daalder 0.5 BI Jim Hoagland 1 CFR John F Kerry 1 CFR John Podesta 0.33 TC, CAP Lawrence J Korb 0.33 CFR, CAP Michael Gerson 1 2 CFR Senior Fellow Michael Rubin 1 AEI Philip Gordon 0.5 CFR, BI Senior Fellow Ray Takeyh 2 0.33 TC writer, CFR Senior Fellow Richard Perle 1 AEI, former TC Vali Nasr 1 CFR Senior Fellow William Odom 0.5 CFR Zbigniew Brzezinski 0.5 TC, CFR TOTALS 15 7 15 TC = Trilateral Commission corporate liberal CFR = Council on Foreign Relations corporate liberal AEI = American Enterprise Institute moderate conservative BI = Brookings Institute corporate liberal CAP = Center for American Progress corporate progressive Such results are also remarkably close to Chomsky’s opinion: What [mass media outlets] interact with and relate to is other major power centers—the government, other corporations, or the universities. Because the media are a doctrinal system, they interact closely with the universities. Say you are a reporter writing a story on Southeast Asia or Africa, or something like that. You’re supposed to go over to the big university and find an expert who will tell you what to write, or else go to one of the foundations, like Brookings Institute or American Enterprise Institute and they will give you the words to say. These outside institutions are very similar to the media.255 255 Noam Chomsky, “What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream” Chomsky.Info 10 Jan 2011. 122 FREE MARKET MASS MEDIA PRACTICES The above data indicating the institutions with which Post editorialists are affiliated situates The Washington Post as a bastion of corporate liberal (perhaps leaning towards centrism) in the constellation of discourse producing corporate elite institutions, but its voice is not equivocal. The spectrum of opinions produced on the subject of Iran in 2008 in the Post would attest to the fact that if a media outlet does not want to appear clearly biased on one side or the other (and there are certainly market niches for such a slant such as Fox News or MSNBC), a publisher is likely to permit, to a certain extent, the publishing of all ‘legitimate’ opinions. Such a media outlet operates rather as Phil Graham, a Post publisher with a definite personal liberal agenda, once answered to questions of just such bias to his readers. Now I will let you in on a terrifying secret. Occasionally things get into our paper with which I don’t agree. And frankly I haven’t found out how to keep bright and creative people around and happy if one exercises plenary control. Nor have I found how to be in two places at once so that I can always see all copy pre-publication.256 Perhaps there is even more to be gleaned from Katharine Graham’s statement regarding the Post’s triumph over Nixon and Agnew: Despite all the snarling official din, the free press is alive, well—and kicking like mad. For one thing, there exists incontrovertible proof--from the time of the first loud criticisms of the Vietnam war to the clamor of this moment–- that America’s dissenters can dissent more effectively than their suppressors can suppress…Our political leaders may regard us as pernicious enemies but the radical left no less passionately regards us as sycophants and tools of our political leaders.257 Graham can certainly argue that in the case of the Vietnam War and Watergate, the paper admirably held those in power accountable, rather than merely act as an adjunct of power. However, aside from the fact that Nixon was the enemy of even greater forces pushing for a New World Order which certainly would not have objected to his downfall, what is missing is any trace of awareness (or admission) that the publication may have, according to market forces, become insinuated into an ideological apparatus serving corporate elite interests, a critical observation 256 Roberts 264. 257 Roberts 412. 123 that has nothing to do with being ‘radically left.’258 Graham’s statement thus demonstrates that while the media may in general, honestly be trying to fulfill the responsibilities of journalism in a liberal democratic society, it may also be largely unaware that its ranks are typically filled by Chomsky’s ‘pre-selection of right-thinking people’ produced by the corporate elite serving material basis and corresponding ideological apparatus. Corporate elite journalists are indeed ‘bright and creative’ but for the most part have been accepted into the corporate-compliant ivory towers because of the reason given by Kissinger: by writing—for the most part honest opinions-- in accordance with the views of the corporate elite constituency that not only determines their illustrious position but whose concentrated wealth and organization also produces the very mainstream milieu they occupy. Katharine Graham’s myopic view points to a gulf between insiders like herself and outsiders who characterize the systemic organization of capitalist societies. Powerful people seldom publicly acknowledge their own power. They do not intend to mislead. Rather, they see their environment as pluralistic, competitive, and constantly changing. They do not see themselves as ‘elites’; they are acutely aware of their defeats, frustrations and limitations. They view ‘ruling class’ theorists as hopelessly naïve, unschooled, and inexperienced. From an insider’s perspective, the policy ‘process’ appears highly competitive, constantly changing, and occasionally chaotic, in the way pluralists describe it. Winning in the power ‘game’ is the goal. Players in the game strive to influence policy in order to win prestige, celebrity, and a reputation for power. The competition is fierce. No one wins every battle; defeat, frustrations, and standoffs are experienced by even the most powerful players. Winners today are losers tomorrow. Insiders describe the Washington policy process from this individualistic viewpoint. There is no central direction to the process. Issues change almost daily; no one regularly controls the agenda. To outsiders however, the policy process appears highly structured. If there are hundreds who have acquired the status of Washington insiders, there are tens of thousands who have not. Students of the policy network who are themselves outside of the network tend to see a highly structured set of relationships among corporations, foundations, think tanks, and government. They attribute little importance to the petty jostling for prestige, status, and influence among individuals –politicians, bureaucrats, businessmen, or intellectuals. They perceive this competition to be narrow in scope and bounded by institutional constraints. They perceive a consensus on behalf of economic growth, a stable business cycle, incentives for investment, economy and efficiency in government, a stable two-party system, and maintaining popular support for political institutions. Disagreement occurs over the means 258 While it is arguable—though not terribly defensible in my opinion—that Chomsky can be labeled part of the ‘radical left’, Dye is a conservative that has been affiliated with the Brookings Institution. 124 to achieve these ends, not over the ends themselves. Outsiders describe the policy network from an organizational and societal perspective, rather than from an individual perspective.259 CONCLUSION The specific claim put forth in the quote at the beginning of the paper is that the directors of mass media organizations such as The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time attend meetings of the 'intellectual elite and world bankers,' but do not report on the plan of this cabal to 'march towards world government.' As mentioned in the opening of the study, though it is extremely doubtful whether David Rockefeller is actually the author of that quote, it was not the authenticity of the quote that was our concern. Our concern was the fact that such a quote is representative of claims by some sectors of the Radical Right that the mass media is controlled by the New World Order, itself often defined by the Radical Right as a shadow government whose members belong to organizations such as the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group and the Council on Foreign Relations. This study has provided evidence that the truth of the quote and the assertion behind it is not exactly wrong but is itself a shadow of the truth. Specifically, it is true that many directors, CEOs, chairpersons and journalists of the mass media, including the three outlets specifically mentioned, do or have attended meetings of the world’s power elite. These meetings do take place under secretive Chatham House rules, and these media representatives respect such rules by refraining from reporting on sensitive opinions discussed in those meetings, or even the fact that the meeting took place. The organizations in question are composed of internationalists seeking to manage the interdependence of globalization through the development of transnational cooperation. It could generally be said that these power elite would like to see a New World Order, which in their view is a unified, prosperous, peaceful and co-operative world operating according to universal Western values under optimal politico-economic conditions of complex interdependence. It is also true that these efforts have resulted in several influential regimes of (especially economic) global governance and that this impact is often achieved through the direct influence of national governments. This certainly may be viewed as the undermining of national sovereignty and interests for a perceived greater good. World 259 Dye, Who’s 212. 125 government however is, at least explicitly, seen as neither desirable nor feasible. (Though it might be admitted that the possibility exists that persons with more ambitious designs of power could usurp and transform this framework of governance into a global super-state with sovereign power). Currently, it is also true that aims of the regimes of the New World Order created by organizations such as the Trilateral Commission do tend to reflect the self-interest of their members’ power base, which are generally speaking the interests of transnational capital. Moreover, by tracing the chain of power involved in these global regimes, from the enaction of policy to what happens ‘on the street’ and in the fields of distant lands, it is clear that unintended strategic relationships often create results quite contrary to the intellectual underpinnings and theoretical aims of this ‘big idea’ of a New World Order. Yet, because of the rewards enjoyed from these strategic relationships from various parties, not least from Trilateral Commission member organizations, incentives exist to obscure this corruption, a process that is undoubtedly aided by a mass media supportive of and meshed together with existing power relations. Furthermore, the roots of the Trilateral Commission and similar organizations can easily be traced to an actual conspiratorial secret society--the Round Table groups--which did have as a goal the federation of the world, centred in London, and beginning with English-speaking nations. During the epoch of the pre-eminence of the Round Table Groups, the specific media organizations named in the quote at the beginning of the study--The New York Times, The Washington Post and Time--were directly and covertly involved in propagandizing for this effort. It must be understood however that beyond the higher levels of the Round Table Groups, the level of cooperation between the overlapping circles of power of the leading class fractions has been directed by a good deal more self-interest than the tightly coordinated conspiracy the Radical Right often alleges. Moreover, the same reason we know of this past conspiracy of the Round Table groups is also the reason why we cannot say with certainty whether anything similar continues to exist today. Since Carroll Quigley, the man invited to study the records of the Milner Group for two years, has passed, such a high level of proof is no longer possible, and yet the Radical Right often continues to allege that Quigley’s past exposure proves the present existence. In truth, all we have at our disposal is the tracing of possible vestigial links. On the other hand, since such highly influential conspiratorial strategizing did exist and presumably was extremely useful, and since contemporary organizations can be genealogically traced to those 126 previous networks, it is possible that such coordination does continue to exist in some capacity. It remains therefore a subject of inquiry of great potential value. On the whole however, this possible level of co-ordination notwithstanding, it might be said that the power of organizations of the New World Order have not only been exaggerated by the Radical Right but downplayed by scholars such as Gill and representatives of the Trilateral Commission and similar organizations that make efforts to explaining their allegedly innocuous significance. The power of organizations such as the Trilateral Commission is perhaps more accurately described as crowning expressions of the entire capitalist world, operating not according to autocratic control but within rather diffuse, complex and reflexive power configurations produced by general market constraints and human agency. Yet, contrary to the estimations of defenders, such a configuration of power does contain occluded institutionalized interests of corporate power and the leading class fractions in all of the important nodes of the US ideological apparatus as characterized by Dye. The effects of these institutionalized interests must be said to go beyond policy making, extending to even to the most general narratives of modern society. This systematically occluded phenomenon is therefore a basis to question the defense of the general power structure as unequivocally legitimate. It is likewise a basis to question arguments defending the influence of elite policy discussion groups as unequivocally legitimate, as well as the glib dismissals by the mass media of allegations that the mass media functions as an adjunct of corporate power. Within the modern market economy, established mass media outlets are tightly integrated into established power structures and ideological apparatuses, presenting views systematically biased towards the material and ideological interests of the corporate elite. Directors of corporations, media or otherwise, and members other institutions interlock into a complex web, obviously consolidating relationships among the corporate community. Prominent and relatively ideologically consonant elites may belong to several institutions. On issues within a liberal democratic spectrum tolerable to general corporate elite interests, many of these institutions and individuals will naturally generate relatively ideologically consonant opinions. In this specific case, we examined the membership of CEO and Chairman of The Washington Post Company Donald E. Graham in the Trilateral Commission. This link also had a historical aspect as Graham’s powerful grandfather Eugene Meyer was undoubtedly linked to the aforementioned conspiratorial Round Table groups, while the Trilateral Commission’s origins themselves derive primarily from Rockefeller preeminence in the Council on Foreign Relations, the most 127 influential foreign policy making body in the US since its origins in 1919 when it was controlled by JP Morgan & Co., an important component of the Round Table groups. If the comparative analysis of the Trilateral Commission Triangle Paper Engaging Iran and The Washington Post editorials of 2008 are an indication of general patterns, then the effective (and certainly not necessarily conscious) function of the media is primarily not to influence policy by covertly parroting the discourse of the Trilateral Commission, as the Radical Right suggests, but rather to indirectly present and ‘legitimize’ a spectrum of scenarios amenable to the corporate elite. In this case, the official position of the Post and the Trilateral Commission on the issue of US policy towards Iran were similar but the media outlet never examined the subject in any depth comparable to that of the Triangle Paper. Moreover, the official opinion of the Post appeared among other consistently represented viewpoints of the legitimized spectrum, which it surely would not have done if its purpose was to propagandize for the Trilateral Commission. Moreover, the views of both the Trilateral Commission and official voice of The Washington Post are likely to be very similar to the advocated policies of other institutions within the diffuse capitalist system that occupy a similar corporate liberal-leaning, internationalist niche in the legitimized liberal democratic spectrum. In the case of policy discussion groups, Iran was an issue of interest to several prominent institutions, some of which do not have strong relationships to the Trilateral Commission, and yet similar positions were reached, suggesting that the parameters and historicity of the issue itself overshadows the efforts of any single group to redefine it. Similarly, like a representative of any market-based industry, a mass media outlet is likely to seek (either consciously or ad hoc) and occupy a relatively constant niche within the dominant corporate liberal-moderate/ultra conservative spectrum, and the political discourse produced by such outlets will tend to reflect the interests of those aligned with that niche. The ideology of editorialists is therefore likely to reflect the institution they work for, although publishers seeking legitimacy and a broader audience have incentives and constraints to represent, albeit unequally, voices from all over the 'legitimate' spectrum. Charles Krauthammer is for example, apparently a resident neo-conservative in the corporate liberal-leaning Washington Post. It is also likely that the opinions of experts from a constellation of think tanks, foundations and universities constrained by the same market forces will frequently contribute editorials to mass media outlets. A corollary of these constraints of course, is that mass media 128 outlets will rarely produce discourse outside the spectrum naturally legitimized by the corporate elite in the politico-economic marketplace. In answering the question ‘Why do certain media personnel belong to these New World Order organizations?” it might be said that those persons who are invited to join have demonstrated a commitment to internationalism, and presumably have something to offer the group achieve not only a more effective consensus, but the implementation of that consensus. Beyond expertise, certainly one thing media representatives can offer is publicity. However, it is evident that the discourse of policy papers and their action recommendations are much too specialized to garner much appeal in mass media outlets, and therefore do not generally appear in detail. A Trilateral Commission journalist, if he or she so chooses, can surely propagate this view in his or her media outlet, but even if he or she did so, such viewpoint would unlikely be much different from others occupying a similar position on the spectrum of legitimized opinions. The Trilateral Commission can therefore be seen as augmenting and supporting one side (or more) of a debate but it is not, neither does it have the power, to dictate it outright. Rather than the odd supporting editorial--which surely helps in some incremental way—the Trilateral Commission is much more likely to have influence through other channels, such as direct lobbying of those in office, as it certainly did in the formation of US policy vis-à-vis Iran after Obama was elected. Indeed, the Trilateral Commission may have even been influential in legitimizing Obama as a candidate, as it famously did with Jimmy Carter. But here as well, the Trilateral Commission’s formidable influence is in competition with other groups and may not always be successful, as it surely was not in the George W. Bush administration. In answering the question “Why don’t Trilateral Commission journalists report what happens at these meetings or even the fact that they take place?” it might be said that a journalist is similarly unlikely to report his or her bosses’ off-the-cuff remarks, which that superior would never want to publicly utter for obvious reasons, but which may nevertheless perform a valuable role in communication between colleagues. Chatham House rules are designed to allow these power elites to dispense with mitigating excessive formality and interpretation, so that thoughts and intentions are more clearly understood. If a journalist were to report such utterances directly, he or she would be betraying a readily understandable trust to those that have accepted him or her. Moreover, surely the vetting process for choosing journalists must be quite strict precisely because of the potential damage they could do to the reputations of these power elite. Certainly, one could argue that a journalist that refuses to report on these events is not much of a watchdog, 129 and yet this is surely a personal decision of the journalist who undoubtedly is a respected firm believer in the efforts of the group, rather than merely a lackey. We could surely relate this choice of the journalist to an answer of the second part of the question, the reason such meetings are not reported. The bare truth is that the power wielded by the Trilateral Commission and its members is unpalatable to large portions of the public, especially the very politically active Radical Right. To their credit, after its inception, the Trilateral Commission did hold regular press conferences and made extensive efforts to attempt to explain their view of themselves as legitimate to the public but they have always found popular opposition to be too incendiary to overcome. Quite simply, the Trilateral Commission gave up this outreach tactic and now consciously seeks a low profile. In short, it might be said that the social narratives of democracy are incommensurable to the real structures power. Similarly we might conclude that no journalist is in a position to bridge that gap by simultaneously being privy to the frank discussions of the power elite and being able to continually report them. Considering our exploration of Chomsky ‘s ‘pre-selection of right-thinking persons’, the same journalist would be unlikely to even want to do both.260 This incommensurability of worldviews provides a convenient segue to a more general discussion on the significance of this study. In the end, considering the larger picture, in a political economy where actors are ‘free’, and power is diffuse but weighted towards wealth, it should surprise no one that the very issuers and greatest possessors of wealth—international banks and multinational corporations--should also possess the greatest political influence; that they should be the very reflection of an ‘Establishment’ of which they and their direct predecessors have had the greatest influence in establishing. It should also surprise no one that the most influential press organs, as important components of the market, are associated with this power. They are in effect, and somewhat paradoxically, organizations freely espousing views that do not just happen to be congruent with established hegemony. I believe that what is really at the heart of this investigative study is the inherent contradictions between capitalism and democracy. It is always acceptable political discourse for the mass media or politicians to appeal to democratic principles as the foundation of liberal democracy; that at bottom, society is determined by the opinions and votes of individual citizens. It is less innocuous to point out that in reality, the attrition of the politico-economic marketplace 260 One who did so would in fact more likely be in the ethical position of a spy. 130 ensures that the ideology of wealthy and connected actors systematically determines policy and legitimacy to a large degree. Though this is a natural result of economic freedom, because the result is contradictory to the hallowed idea of universal political enfranchisement, the existence of ideological apparatuses serving corporate elite interests are also systematically obscured behind a mythical narrative that the system is actually a reflection of the aggregate of the population’s opinions. In other words, this phenomenon of obscuring the ideological apparatus is itself an expression of the ideological apparatus. To be sure, a formidable question is whether or not it is possible in a capitalist society to shield political power from the freedom of wealth to dominate policy, what would seem to be a necessary condition for representing as equals the vast majority of people who do not possess significant wealth. Certainly, it is currently not the case. To this characterization of ideological apparatuses we must take account of the significance of the claims of the Radical Right. Some ultra-nationalists who believe themselves victims of treasonous governments controlled by powerful internationalist interests have looked behind the curtain, so to speak, and have found credible evidence of an international conspiracy of bankers, industrialists and affiliated intellectuals to form a New World Order that operates in their interest. As befits an agenda of the powerless however, the Radical Right often does not distinguish between autocratic, hegemonic and legitimate power. As victims both real and self- styled, they prefer to see top-down control while pointing to selected evidence, whereas in reality, power in liberal democracies is a great deal more reflexive than they often admit. Yet, the ideology most firmly opposed to this conspiratorial view—that of the larger part of society and often that presented by mass media itself--is likely only to reply that the Radical Right are merely paranoid while themselves upholding the fairy tale facade of ‘one man one vote’, that elected officials hold supreme power, that the press is completely free of constraints, etc., without recognizing that these are all ideas that do not just happen to obscure the manifest contradictions of capitalism and democracy, but instead are an effect of the aggregated power of corporate elite interests. The unbearability of this criticism is precisely why impunity is required for a Post ombudsman to write an article such as ‘Ruling Class Journalists’ pointing out the domination of the CFR, or why Katharine Graham and her editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee apparently saw no conflict in claiming to be heroes of the free press but then successfully suppressed Deborah Davis’ unauthorized biography of Katharine Graham that claimed Bradlee and Phil Graham had CIA connections when there is A) excellent though not definitive evidence of this and B) that to suppress books is to quash the very freedom of speech they supposedly 131 champion. In other words, their actions are perfect examples of how the ideological apparatus serves corporate interests by providing a worldview that permits persons to blind themselves to inconvenient contradictions. On a macro level, the overall effect of the power structure of modern democracy is that it believes itself a legitimate force serving the general interest of society when in fact these self-flattering principles are simply buried when the general interest compromises too greatly the self-interest of those in power. What are the more general consequences of a polarized society, each with half true views of the world, one paranoid and one in denial? Systematically selecting a point of view amenable to corporate elite interests, that of ignorance and denial, also means that certain truths—and the people that adhere to them--are vulnerable to suppression. At the beginning of the study, it was mentioned that the growing Patriot movement and especially its more radical elements were problematic adherents to the more extreme interpretations of the New World Order. However, in light of understanding that their claims are not merely fantastical illusions created by a collective paranoid imagination, as is often suggested in the mainstream media, we might seriously consider if elements of the dangers posed by this group are not exasperated precisely by this kind of systematic marginalization and denial of their viewpoint—and that ultimately Timothy McVeighs are not further radicalized in some way because their claims, which do have a modicum of truth, not only fall on deaf ears and are ridiculed but have little opportunity to be tempered by a more reasonable and subtle understanding of power, since any acknowledgement of conspiracy or even that the government might not be seeking national interests is intolerable. The well-armed Patriots, who are almost by definition losers of sovereignty-dismantling, strategic-relationship-ridden globalization, are thus beset by an alternative of a mythical narrative of democracy—which they know to be false—and a flood of forbidden disordered knowledge that is alluring precisely to the degree that it is forbidden, iconoclastic and provides a perpetrator. Should economic conditions exasperate—and they currently are very rapidly--this is a recipe for insurrection. Yet, we must also not forget that marginalized groups are also too often the scapegoat of society, a locus for the rest of the classes to conveniently unify against---and exploit. There is no question, for example, that hyped-up fears of domestic terrorism from the Patriots have contributed to a wave of surveillance measures and other rights-infringing measures. What is hardly mentioned is that these ‘domestic terrorists’ are often people simply and understandably outraged at government failures and corruption. But such invasive policy also tends to gain 132 traction precisely because it consolidates control for those in power. What is not mentioned or systematically obscured is that this is also a slippery slope, especially under deteriorating economic conditions, creating circumstances for opportunists to usurp the heightened levels of social control, in which the class in power, hitherto the beneficiaries of heightened control, may themselves become the victims of opportunists. Quigley for example, notes that the rise of Hitler was partly due to the monetary support of Anglo-American financiers, political support of the Round Tables and the convenient myth floated by the benefiting German industrialists and other power elite that Jews were responsible for the tragedy of World War I, some of which were prevalent because of the efforts of people like Ford and JP Morgan to spread anti-Semitic literature. In other words, there is a direct parallel to the general phenomenon of today, even involving the same powers, to this strategy of deception for an increasingly distant possibility of some greater good, in which the recognition of real power was intolerable and abetted by propaganda. In this historical case, these powers turned a blind eye to the Nazi Party’s (funded by the power elite through the Black Reichswehr)261 exploitation of circumstances, which included of course, severely abrogating civil rights, because these measures were temporarily preserving the power of the leading German class fractions. The power elite fatally believed until it was too late that the Nazis could easily be disposed of after their financial support was withdrawn (and after the Nazis had ‘stabilized’ the political environment for the power elite by removing socialists and blame for Germany’s failure on the same power elite). Today we might ask who the War on Terror really serves, and be alarmed at the rapidly expanding security apparatus, the specter of hyperinflation and rapidly growing nationalism and mass discontent seen in the Tea Party for example. To be sure, a parallel with the Nazi regime is an extreme and overused example, but as the modern power structure is actually genealogically linked to the former, it is not outside of the realm of possibility to think that in the event of an economic collapse, elements of American paramilitary groups262could be funded and misled by corporate interests desperate to save themselves, as is the pattern of fascism.263 261 The black army budget meant to circumvent restrictions imposed by the Treaty of Versailles, often used by power elite to fund paramilitary organizations. 262 To be fair, many Patriots are simply constitutionalists with legitimate concerns, but even they might surely admit that certain elements of their movement lack a firm understanding of the problems, and thus themselves are only too willing to choose convenient fabled enemies. 263 For the patterns of fascism see Robert O. Paxton, “The Five Stages of Fascism,” The Journal of Modern History, (1998) 1:1-23, and The Anatomy of Fascism, Knopf: New York, 2004. For evidence of the warning signs in the US see Naomi Wolf, The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot, New York Chelsea: Green Publishing:, 2007. 133 On a more subtle level, the polarizing effects of an ideological apparatus beholden to one relatively small sector of the population in America have already been clear enough at one time, as Quigley also notes regarding the McCarthy episode: These misdirected attacks by the Radical Right did much to confuse the American people in the period 1948-1955, and left consequences which were still significant a decade later.264 But surely this confusion did not end in the 1960’s as Quigley suggests. Indeed, there is perhaps little difference between McCarthy and an influential media figure today like Glen Beck.265 McCarthy imagined “wild-eyed and bushy-haired theoreticians of Socialist Harvard”266 behind the American contingent of a communist conspiracy his co-investigator J. Edgar Hoover claimed “handicapped [the individual] by coming face-to-face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.”267 Beck informs his audience of millions of a New World Order. Yet his version of this nebulous concept is nothing short of a conspiratorial socialist takeover of the world puppeteered by one man---financier George Soros---with lesser minions in his service including President Obama, his leftist intellectual administrators like Van Jones, Cass Sunstein, and John Holdren, media organizations such as Media Matters, and far-flung co-operative mass movements such as the Muslim Brotherhood, recently active in the overthrow of Mubarak’s Egypt. In fact, though grossly overstated and contorted almost beyond recognition, Beck’s story is not wholly wrong. Moreover, in truth it is difficult to decide if Beck and his millions of listeners are any more wrong that the masses of people who thought Obama was the man with a goat herder father268 that would finally bring ‘Change’, a political slogan used innumerable times that panders to ignorance and the naive view of policy making propagated by the ideological apparatus. It is difficult to see how a healthy democracy is possible when Glen Beck Republicans and ‘Obamatron’ Democrats glued to MSNBC are perhaps only too exemplary of the citizenry’s views. 264 Quigley, Tragedy 956. 265 We could also ask if he is not in fact closer to Phil Graham. That is, as being purposefully deceptive in cooperation with a continuation of some form of Operation Mockingbird, as some have speculated. 266 Phil Graham fit this description as well, having been President of the Harvard Law Review during which time his best friend Edward Prichard, another Supreme Court clerk, described the two of them as “half-assed apologists” for the “Soviet Union.” Felsenthal 98. 267 The Elks Magazine, August 1956. (http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._Edgar_Hoover) 268Investigative reporter Wayne Madsen puts forth interesting claims that Obama his mother, father, step-father and grandmother are all connected to the CIA in fact. For example, Obama’s father was a Kenyan elite brought to Hawaii as part of a CIA program preparing and positioning future African leaders sympathetic to American interests. See Wayne Madsen, “Wayne Madsen: Obama’s CIA Connections, Part I and II,” Veterans Today. 18 Aug 2010. 134 In the end, perhaps we should seriously consider that if society is to be capable of democracy, it would do well to neither deny ideological apparatuses that operate in the midst of freedom nor impute more control to shadowy elites than what can stand scrutiny. Society would do well to know for example that for much of the history of liberal democratic societies, international bankers have held formidable power. As Quigley states [t]he history of the last century shows…that the advice given to governments by bankers, like the advice they gave to industrialists, was consistently good for bankers, but was often disastrous for governments, businessmen, and the people generally.269 Shall we continue to live under what is popularly thought to be democracy but is in fact hegemony weighted towards the interests of corporate elites and transnational capital, embodied in groups such as the Trilateral Commission, and presented to us by media outlets such as The Washington Post? We should at least for example heed Richard Falk’s claims that the mode management of the Trilateral Commission cannot cope with either the social question (the alleviation of misery), the political question (the elimination of repression), or the ecological question (the defense of the planet and its re-sources)… [and that it] is therefore even unlikely to keep its promise to deal with the military question (the avoidance of large- scale warfare).270 It is not a matter of class warfare or of destroying elite rule. As Dye states, avoidance of elitism may not even be possible: In all societies—primitive, advanced, totalitarian, and democratic, capitalist and socialist—only a few people exercise great power. This is true whether or not such power is exercised in the name of ‘the people.’271 But this is not to say that recognizing and accepting this while discarding our mythical debilitating narratives, however initially unbearable, could not greatly contribute to our capacity to make better decisions as a whole. Certainly some would always prefer to remain in the shadows if they found themselves the beneficiaries of lucrative occluded strategic relationships, but this may perhaps be kept to a manageable minority. After all, if the declarations of power elite insiders are to be taken at face value, they too would like nothing more than to create a better, more just and equitable world. In the intellectual vision of the New World Order, from 269 Quigley, Tragedy 62. 270 Richard Falk, “A New Paradigm for International Legal Studies: Prospects and Proposals,” The Yale Law Journal 84.5 (1975): 969. 271 Dye, Who’s 1. 135 Milner to Brzezinksi, the life it envisions for the ordinary citizen is a laudable, worthy goal for humanity. But, as these consummate insiders are unable to see what is happening on the ground they are trying to transform—as well as their own occluded power--it may be in large part their very obstructed view that condemns their often-magnanimous goals to failure. Quigley, though he felt the power of the Round Table was at one point truly “terrifying”,272agreed with the goals of the Milner Group, but his chief “difference of opinion is that it wishes to remain unknown.”273 As a historian, Quigley strongly felt society required disclosure of the Milner Group’s activities so that a fuller knowledge of the past and present can aid the betterment of society hereafter. But that attitude was unfortunately not held by Alfred Milner who felt it too risky for the ignorant citizenry to know of his altruistic plan–and thereby ended up facilitating Hitler’s rise to power among other tragic unintended consequences. Phillip Graham was an ardent liberal who went into deep depressions because of his inability to change the world. When he did try to do so, he protected society’s secret guardians (including perhaps himself) and guiding hands—the CIA and the Eastern Establishment that bequeathed it. These funks led ‘the most outstanding man of his generation’ to an ignominious suicide. The Trilateral Commission as well, with its at best mixed results, has given up trying to explain itself, preferring to operate in semi-secrecy. The point is that whether one is at the pinnacle of the power structure or the bottom it may be unlikely to hope to contribute to or live in a better system for all—which does appear as a largely universal goal--if the ideological apparatuses that guide our beliefs and actions remain systematically hidden. One last parable illustrates this possibility: As a student, Donald Graham was editor of The Harvard Crimson. He had been so hawkish on the Vietnam War raging at that time that he was actually once presented with a live hawk. But his very Western principles of equality, which are after all very near the heart of Western thought for elites and non-elites alike, disagreed with the selective service that protected the children of the elite from being sent to South East Asia, so he enlisted. After one week in Vietnam, he believed that the war was an egregious, tragic mistake.274 In short, if the disconnect between the elite and what is happening ‘on the street,’ can be greatly ameliorated, if the street is somehow more involved in the decision making, if the street is somehow more visible to the decision makers and if what the elite is doing is more 272 Quigley, Anglo-American 176. 273 Quigley, Tragedy 950. 274 Felsenthal 255. 136 transparent to all, perhaps better collective results—including the avoidance of catastrophe—may be possible. It is furthermore a role the mass media could play a decisive role in. 137 Works Cited Beehner, Lionel. “U.S. Soft Diplomacy in Iran.” CFR.org 17 Feb 2006. 3 Feb 2011. 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