The United Nations

(1925 - 1950)

While Stalin reigned over "The Great Terror,” in which an estimated 20 million Russians were executed, and instituted the first of a series of "five-year plans,"10 America struggled through some of its hardest years. Prohibition brought organized crime, Federal Reserve policies brought a stock market crash, drought brought a dust bowl to the bread basket, and a nation-wide depression brought crushing poverty to most Americans. Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected to the White House in 1932. The CFR was to Roosevelt what Edward House was to Woodrow Wilson. The organization [CFR] essentially ran FDR's State Department.11 Henry Wallace, a committed Marxist, was FDR's Secretary of Agriculture.12 The "New Deal” delivered by Roosevelt resembled the performance of Philip Dru in Edward House's novel. By 1941, Hitler had invaded Russia and Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor. For the next five years the world tried to commit suicide. Those not caught up in the war, the CFR, realized that the war provided an excellent reason for the nations of the world to try once again to create a global institution that could prevent war. Two weeks after Pearl Harbor, Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, recommended the creation of a Presidential Advisory Committee on Post War Foreign Policy. The committee was the planning commission for the United Nations. Ten of the committee's 14 members were members of the CFR.13 The process of creating the United Nations lasted throughout the war. The first public step was the Atlantic Charter (August 14, 1941), signed by Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, which committed the two nations to a "permanent system of general security.” Because Stalin was under attack by Germany, Russia was forced to join the allies in the Moscow Declaration (October 30, 1943) which declared the necessity of establishing an international organization to maintain peace and security. The Dumbarton Oaks Conversations (August, 1944) which produced the World Bank, also settled political and legal issues that were drafted into the UN Charter. The Yalta Summit (February, 1945) produced a compromise which gave the Soviets three votes (USSR, Byelorussia, and the Ukraine) in exchange for voting procedures demanded by the U.S.14 Edward Stettinius made another extremely significant concession. He agreed that the UN official in charge of military affairs would be designated by the Russians. Fourteen individuals have held the position since the UN was created; all were Russians.15 The committee designed and FDR sold the United Nations to the 50 nations that came to the San Francisco conference in 1945. Among the 47 CFR members in the official U.S. delegation were: Edward Stettinius, the new Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, Adlai Stevenson, Nelson Rockefeller, and Alger Hiss. To ensure that the new organization would be located in America, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., donated the land for the UN headquarters.16 In his 1962 book, Why Not Victory, former Senator Barry Goldwater recalls that the UN was approved by the Senate largely because of the representations of the State Department which assured the Senate that: "...it [UN] in no sense constituted a form of World Government and that neither the Senate nor the American people need be concerned that the United Nations or any of its agencies would interfere with the sovereignty of the United States or with the domestic affairs of the American People."17 Five years later, in testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, CFR member James Warburg said: "We shall have world government whether or not you like it - by conquest or consent.”18 The ink on the UN Charter had not yet dried when the Charter for UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) was presented in London, November, 1945. UNESCO swallowed and expanded the Paris-based International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation which was a holdover from the League of Nations. Julian Huxley was the prime mover of UNESCO and served as its first Director-General. Huxley had served on Britain's Population Investigation Commission before World War II and was vice president of the Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944. In a 1947 document entitled UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy, Huxley wrote: "Thus even though it is quite true that any radical eugenic policy will be for many years politically and psychologically impossible, it will be important for UNESCO to see that the eugenic problem is examined with the greatest care, and that the public mind is informed of the issues at stake so that much that now is unthinkable may at least become thinkable.”19 UNESCO's primary function is set forth in its Charter: "Since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed.” UNESCO was created to construct a world-wide education program to prepare the world for global governance. UNESCO advisor, Bertrand Russell, writing for the UNESCO Journal, The Impact of Science on Society, said: "Every government that has been in control of education for a generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen ....”20 The National Education Association was a major advocate for UNESCO. In a 1942 article in the NEA Journal, written by Joy Elmer Morgan, the NEA called for " ...certain world agencies of administration such as: a police force; a board of education ....” A year later in London, the Conference of Allied Ministers of Education called for a United Nations Bureau of Education. UNESCO became the Board of Education for the world. Huxley believed the world needed a single, global government. He saw UNESCO as an instrument to "help in the speedy and satisfactory realization of the process.” He described UNESCO's philosophy as global, scientific humanism. He said: "Political unification in some sort of world government will be required for the definitive attainment” of the next stage of social development.21 From the beginning, UNESCO has designed programs to capture children at the earliest possible age to begin the educational process. William Benton, Assistant U.S. Secretary of State, told a UNESCO meeting in 1946: We are at the beginning of a long process of breaking down the walls of national sovereignty. UNESCO must be the pioneer.”22 UNESCO's views about national sovereignty were no secret: "As long as the child breathes the poisoned air of nationalism, education in world-mindedness can produce only precarious results. As we have pointed out, it is frequently the family that infects the child with extreme nationalism. The school should therefore use the means described earlier to combat family attitudes that favor jingoism.... We shall presently recognize in nationalism the major obstacle to development of world-mindedness.22a The UN and UNESCO were created in the wake of the worst war carnage the world had ever witnessed. Conditioned by a constant stream of propaganda produced by the CFR in America, and by the Royal Institute of International Affairs in Europe, the move toward global governance was accepted and allowed to go forward. Julian Huxley realized, however, that to be successful over the long haul, a world-wide constituency would have to be developed. In 1948, Huxley and his long-time friend and colleague, Max Nicholson, both of whom were involved with the Royal Institute of International Affairs, created the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The IUCN drew heavily from the 50-year-old British Fauna and Flora Preservation Society (FFPS) for its leadership, funding and its members. Sir Peter Scott, FFPS Chairman, drafted the IUCN Charter and headed one of its important Commissions. This important non-governmental organization (NGO) was instrumental in the formation of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) in 1961 and the World Resources Institute (WRI) in 1982. These three NGOs are to the United Nations System what the CFR was to Franklin Roosevelt, or what Edward House was to Woodrow Wilson. These three NGOs have become the driving force behind the rise of global governance.