With the end of World War II dawned what
Time magazine called the American Century.
Europe and Japan a bombed-out shambles, the
United States emerged from the war a strapping
giant of a power, and quickly maneuvered itself
and its dollar to the center of a radically altered
world power structure.
This new position brought new responsibili-
ties. The United States became the protector of
the capitalist order and the imposer of a new sta-
bility. The chief threat was seen as the anti-
capitalist Soviet Union, with its new sphere of
influence in Europe and the growing potential to
challenge U.S. global power militarily.
Another threat was the stirring in the col-
onies, as they strove to take advantage of the
power shift to press for greater self-determina-
tion. The United States encouraged decoloniza-
tion to facilitate its own access to these markets,
but was determined to control the process.
At the beginning of this century, President
Theodore Roosevelt, in his blunt style, had
defined the already existing relationship bet-
ween the United States and its hemispheric third
world neighbors: the United States had the right
to exercise “international police power” to pre-
vent “chronic wrongdoing or impotence.”*
With its new postwar responsibilities, the
United States’ role as hemispheric policeman
extended to the entire world.
The countries of Latin America, though not
in an institutional sense colonies of the United
States, shared the anti-imperialist sentiment
that accompanied the independence movements
in Asia and Africa. To cloak its domination of
supposedly independent countries (Puerto
Rico, Panama Canal, etc. excepted), the United
States had assisted the elites in these countries to
politically and militarily consolidate their own
internal class rule. “Stability” was assured less
through direct military intervention and more
through the use of U.S. trained and supplied
domestic standing armies. Economic
dependence was nurtured through unequal
terms of trade, investment and lending policies
and the control of modern technology.**Suffer-
*By the time of Roosevelt’s corollary to the Monroe Doc-
trine, the United States had intervened militarily in Latin
America and the Caribbean more than 50 times. By the in-
vasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, that number
had nearly doubled.
**U.S. investments in Latin America in 1965-$10 billion
-were higher than in any other region of the world.
(Lieuwen, U S. Policy in Latin America)
b4~
2 NACLA ReportJulylAugust
3
ing an almost total political and economic de-
pendence on the northern giant, their skewed
distribution of wealth, distorted economies and
appalling rates of illiteracy and infant mortality
made such distinctions between Latin America
and the colonies of Africa and Asia virtually
semantic.
I helped make Mexico and especially Tam-
pico safe for American oil interests in
1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a de-
cent place for the National City Bank boys
to collect revenue in…. I helped purify
Nicaragua for the international banking
house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I
brought light to the Dominican Republic for
American sugar interests in 1916 [occu-
pied officially until 1924, unoffically until
1934]. I helped make Honduras ‘right’ for
American fruit companies in 1903….
-Major General Smedley D. Butler, United
States Marine Corps.
Intervention with a Touch of Subtlety
To institutionalize U.S presence in the
region, multi-country mechanisms of coordina-
tion and control were set up, ranging from the
Organization of American States (OAS),
founded in 1948, to regional common markets
and joint military pacts. All functioned in the
shadow of U.S. influence.
This institutionalization has produced a pre-
dictable dialectic. It has reduced the frequency
with which the United States must resort to “Big
Stick” or “Gunboat” diplomacy, by providing
more elaborate options for political maneuver.
Conversely, the uses made of that presence have
contributed mightily to the growth of nationalist
and revolutionary movements which threaten
the continued potency of those very institutions.
Though the Latin American revolutionary
movements in the early postwar decades were
often nationalist or populist in character
(Arbenz in Guatemala, Goulart in Brazil, Peron
in Argentina), they were refracted in the United
States through the prism of cold war anti-
communism. To U.S. policy makers, the world
appeared as a bipolar clash of forces with the
United States and its allies on one side and the
communist world on the other. This world view
produced the conclusion that if a country was
not securely bound to one camp it must be in
cahoots with the other. Such a vision permitted
no subtle complexities. It also, ironically, forced
precisely that choice on the struggling nations,
by sabotaging the possibility of genuine non-
alignment.
The Sino-Soviet split in 1961 and the resur-
gence of European and Japanese capital made
the bi-polar analysis less and less useful. It was
inadequate to explain the inexorable growth of
third world nationalism (over 100 newly inde-
pendent nations have joined the United Nations
since its founding in 1945), much less the con-
comitant rise of the Non-Aligned Movement.
But the loss of ideological justification in no
way lessened the objective of the United States
to preserve its hegemony in the unruly third
world, particularly Latin America. Hence the
seeming contradiction of opening trade rela-
tions with China and the Soviet Union while
undermining Allende’s Chile.
To contain or eliminate opposition to imperi-
alist rule in these countries, any of the prevailing
means of intervention may be brought to bear.
The assessed demands of the situation, political
acceptability at home and abroad, and the stra-
tegic leanings of a given administration all play a
part in determining the scope and nature of the
response. The particular mix of these factors led
in their turn to the use of puppet invaders in
Guatemala (1954) and Cuba (1961), Marines in
the Dominican Republic (1965), economic
destabilization and the CIA in Chile (1973),
IMF “stabilization” in Jamaica (1977-80), fail-
ed back room bargaining and appeals to the
OAS in Nicaragua (1979) and, thus far, military
advisers and a flood of aid in El Salvador (1981).
The Short-lived Century
Today, the American Century is in trouble.
The world no longer resembles that of the 1950s,
for which the instruments of U.S. dominance
were designed. As Ronald Reagan himself has
acknowledged, the United States is in crisis.
The toll has been high at the locus of U.S.
government power. Each year recently elected
members of Congress retire, overwhelmed by
their powerlessness, and longstanding members
are defeated. No president since 1960 has served
two full terms of office.
The crudity of Reagan’s rhetoric and, in part,
JulylAugust 34
NACLA Report
the very fact of his election, are measures of the
crisis. There is, in the current view, little time for
subtle intervention. The empire is at stake, not
only in Latin America but throughout the
world.
The American people and their political
system have destroyed every president but
one since Dwight Eisenhower because U.S.
leaders failed to discover a foreign policy
that reconciled national ambition and re-
sponsibility with the constraints of an
evolving international system. Only assas-
sination saved President Kennedy from a
similar fate.
-Michael Harrison, Associate Professor of
European Studies, Johns Hopkins University
The Vietnam war is the touchstone of the
crisis. It produced massive protests against the
U.S. role of international policeman and shat-
tered the bipartisan elite consensus about its
foreign policy. Financed by public debt, the war
fueled the inflation and recession from which
there is still no respite.
To control the crisis, Richard Nixon and his
Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, had to
come to terms with a changing world. A new
rapprochement with the Soviet Union was
achieved and deals were renegotiated to guar-
antee U.S. spheres of influence. China was rec-
ognized. In an effort to put the economic crisis
on the shoulders of its allies, the U.S. Govern-
ment unilaterally suspended the Bretton Woods
Agreements which had governed international
currency and trade.
Nixon acknowledged Vietnam was unwin-
nable and withdrew U.S. troops, relying instead
on the local army and continuing U.S. military
supplies. While that decision failed to “save”
Vietnam, similar action brought Uruguay,
Chile, and, later, Argentina back under control.
With the stakes so high and events running
well ahead of control, abuses of power reached
visible new proportions: burglaries inspired by
government officials, repression of dissidents,
the systematic subversion of opposition
movements, Watergate, political trials, Cointel-
pro (the FBI’s counter-intelligence program).
The general crisis only deepened with the oil
embargo of 1973 and Nixon’s fall from power in
1974. Trade rivalry among the western powers
grew more fierce, ignited by Nixon’s unex-
pected suspension of the Bretton Woods Agree-
ments.
David Rockefeller, then chairman of Chase
Manhattan Bank, responding to the economic
repercussions of the Bretton Woods suspen-
sions, brought together a group of “influentials
and intellectuals” in 1973 to discuss the crisis.
They would develop a more comprehensive
plan while Henry Kissinger, providing con-
tinuity for the caretaker government of Gerald
Ford, struggled with the new realities on a day to
day basis.
Under Rockefeller’s tutelage, a super-elite
and supra-national organization called the Tri-
lateral Commission was formed, composed of
business leaders, professionals, academics and
politicians from the United States, Canada,
Japan and Western Europe (Britain, France,
West Germany and Italy). There was little dis-
agreement that the political and economic crisis
was the worst since the Great Depression. Over
the course of several years, the Commission’s
scholars-directed initially by Zbigniew
Brzezinski, later to be Jimmy Carter’s national
security adviser-addressed the major problems
facing the capitalist world.’ They tried desper-
ately to find a way to solve the mystery of stagfla-
tion and restabilize the international monetary
system. They also were concerned that the de-
clining U.S. economy was threatening the
mechanisms of control of the working class
which had averted serious conflict for thirty
years-a concern shared as well by other coun-
tries. They tackled the increasingly destructive
rivalry among the major capitalist nations, the
new oil cartel and the economic and political
challenge from the socialist bloc and third world
movements.
Who’s Making Policy?
Elite planning through private commissions,
research institutes and special governmental
committees was not initiated with the Trilateral
Commission. It has become the principal mode
through which the distinct interest groups, or
factions, of the U.S. ruling class present and
debate various positions and proposals, with the
prospect of molding sufficient coherence and
consensus to be able to unify behind candidates,
provide blueprints for developing policy and in-
4 NACLAReportJulylAugust
5
fluence legislation and diplomacy. 3
The complexity and pressure of both foreign
and domestic issues have encouraged the growth
of institutes, or “think tanks,” and strengthened
their role as forums in which new ideas can be
“dispassionately” studied and analyzed. Ulti-
mately, they are an early link in the chain of in-
stitutions whose role is to legitimize ruling class
strategy. The think tanks prepare studies,
generally paid for by foundations representing
the wealthiest and most powerful people in the
country. They hold seminars to which they in-
vite “opinion leaders” like journalists,
academics, professionals. They publish their
findings in journals, permitting a wider
dissemination of their ideas and encouraging
public debate.
Some critics of both the left and right view
these institutions as conspiracies and cabals.
They are not. Disagreements exist, often quite
heated. Most operate in a quasi-public manner
and superficially are as sinister as a tea party.
Their task, by definition, is a difficult one. The
debate among special interests and the shaping
of a coherent ruling class strategy out of this
debate all must be articulated within a political
system which resolutely hides the existence of
that ruling class under the cloak of
“democracy” and “national interest.'”4
But a ruling class there is. It is composed of’
the major stockholders, corporate managers and
bankers who control the means of creating the
wealth of the society (and, in some cases, of
numerous other societies as well). Allied with
them are those at the top of the professional and
political structures who shape the rules and con-
sciousness by which the system is run. Their dif-
ferent special interests-at bottom economic,
but often taking a political, social or even re-
gional form-are not necessarily competitive.
On occasion, however, they are profoundly so.
What is good for the apparel industry in New
York (say, cheap immigrant labor) may not be of
interest to a politician representing the defense
establishment in southern California. Or what’s
acceptable to the international oil industry (ris-
ing consumer fuel prices, for example) can be
anathema to the National Retailers’ Associa-
tion. Thus, these interests become coalesced in-
to temporary or permanent blocs which argue
and negotiate among themselves. Ultimately,
the agreements that result must unite enough of
them to guarantee the rule of the entire class.
Since World War II, this process has increas-
ingly been presided over by those representing
the interests of the giant transnational banks and
corporations. Their most important planning
center for foreign policy has been the prestigious
Council on Foreign Relations, which publishes
the journal, Foreign Affairs. Other key centers in-
clude Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, with its journal, Foreign Policy; the Atlan-
tic Council, which publishes Atlantic Community
Quarterly, and, in more recent years, George-
town University’s Center for Strategic and
International Studies, whose publication is the
Washington Quarterly.
Dealing with contradictions and con-
flicts is a tricky business, and if foreign
policy objectives are to succeed, there has
to be a global view of the world and an un-
derlying steadiness and coherence to
foreign policy.
-Thomas Hughes, President of the Carnegie En-
dowment for International Peace, 1978
When the Trilateral Commission was formed
in 1973, its U.S. con.ponent drew heavily from
the membership of the Council on Foreign
Relations (CFR), although other institutes were
represented as well. CFR trilateralists included
Kissinger, Brzezinski, George Bush, Lane Kirk-
land and Cyrus Vance.* 5
Trilateral Solutions
Recognizing that the “world of separate na-
tions” was becoming an anachronistic concept,
the Trilateral Commission’s aims were “to nur-
ture habits and practices of working together”
among the political and economic elites and
governments of the United States, Western
Europe, Japan and Canada. Hoping that
detente would curb what they saw as Soviet ag-
gression, the Commission emphasized the new-
er and touchier north-south issues over tra-
ditional east-west ones, brought home by the
*Another international body, the Bilderberg Group,
formed in the early postwar period, is also very important.
It is an annual private meeting of some of the world’s poli-
tical and business leaders, many of them now in the
Trilateral Commission. Members deny its existence.
Memos and papers prepared for meetings are marked per-
sonal and confidential.
JulylAugust 56
NACLA Report
struggle over OPEC oil. Over them all it cast the
net of a single global economy. The concept put
forward by these enlightened prophets of the
brave new universe was that the Commission’s
member nations “remain the vital center of
management, finance and technology…for a
world economy which [in Brzezinski’s words]
would ’embrace’ and ‘coopt’ the third world
and gradually reintegrate the Soviet Union,
Eastern Europe and China.”6 In this new collec-
tive management scheme, the United States
would be first among equals.
The public and leaders of most countries
continue to live in a mental universe which
no longer existe-a world of separate na-
tions-and have great difficulties thinking
in terms of global perspectives and in-
terdependence.
-Trilateral Commission Task Force Report,
“Toward a Renovated International System,”
January, 1977
The policy suggestions and programs that the
Commission evolved became a kind of creed for
those “whose locus of power is the multinational
corporation,” and became the master plan of
the Carter Administration. 7
Carter and Trilateralism
Jimmy Carter was offered as a candidate to
clean up the mess Nixon had left behind. His
pietistic honesty was to wipe away the corrup-
tion of Watergate and, after Vietnam, Chile and
Angola, to refurbish the U.S. image abroad. In
an era of great doubt and uncertainty, he had to
define and implement new strategies that would
protect and extend U.S. capitalist interests.
Twenty-six members of the Trilateral Com-
mission served in the Carter Administration, in-
cluding President Carter himself. 8 Their ideas
affected domestic, economic, social and foreign
policy. As regards the latter, there were unusual
constraints. In the revulsion against Vietnam
and Chile, Congress had already limited the use
of many of the weapons that had maintained
U.S. predominance since World War II. The
Central Intelligence Agency-that sower of in-
stability and toppler of governments-now had
to abide by a charter; many of its senior agents
were purged. A law was passed cutting off assis-
tance to guerrillas opposing the revolutionary
government in Angola. Congressionally ap-
proved foreign aid required guarantees of
respect for human rights by recipient nations.
To win back lost prestige, Carter tried to con-
duct policy with more carrots and fewer sticks.
How many carrots, how many sticks and when
to use which-that became the running battle of
the Carter Administration. Trilateralism of-
fered, if not a complete formula, then at least a
general conception-what it modestly called a
“broad global strategy for the management of
interdependence.”‘ (We must not forget that
Vance favored more carrots and Brzezinski
more sticks; both were Trilateralists.)
Recasting the initiatives of Nixon and Kiss-
inger to alter the bipolar view of the world,
President Carter sounded the new trilateralist
call in a major speech at Notre Dame University
in May 1977, four months after taking office, an-
nouncing an end to America’s fear of
communism.
To restore harmony with the nations of the
south, the Carter Administration sought to fur-
ther integrate their fledgling economies into the
world economy through such mechanisms as the
International Monetary Fund, while paying lip
service to their demands for a “new interna-
tional economic order.” It avoided confronta-
tion, looking first for ways to accommodate.
Recognizing that hunger and poverty created
discontent and repression bred rebellion, it urg-
ed reforms on client governments and backed
reformist alternatives (Dominican Republic). It
urged that the more affluent countries of the
third world be given a greater stake in managing
the affairs of their poorer cousins (Saudi
Arabia). It raised the banner of human rights to
force governments to end practices that fed rev-
olutionary unrest (Guatemala), although it
allowed some governments greater leeway
where “important” security interests had to be
protected (South Korea).
About Latin America in particular, the
Carter Administration relied heavily on the Lin-
owitz Report, prepared in 1974 by a special
commission funded by the Ford Foundation and
chaired by superlawyer Sol Linowitz. 1 0 The re-
port was further elaborated in 1976, in prepara-
tion for the incoming president. Of the 20 com-
mission members, six were Trilateralists.”1
Those six and most of the rest were also
6 NACLA ReportJuly/August
7
members of the Council on Foreign Relations. 1 2
The Linowitz Report urged that a policy be
adopted toward the Americas that was “respect-
ful of the sovereignty of the countries of the
region and tolerant of a wide range of political
and economic forms.” It recommended a com-
mitment “not to undertake unilateral military
intervention or covert intervention” in their in-
ternal affairs. To avoid unnecessary confronta-
tion, stalemated renegotiations should be con-
cluded on that “most vexing symbol of U.S. col-
onialism,” the treaty governing the Panama
Canal. Linowitz himself undertook the job.
“Latin America is suffering from a plague of
repression,” said the report. 1 3 It was a plague
fed by the unrestricted flow of weapons and
money to the new protectors of the empire, the
armies of Latin America. Its cure was to condi-
tion arms shipments on an ending of human
rights violations, to disassociate the United
States from repressive regimes and to support
moves to strengthen the Inter-American Com-
mission on Human Rights of the Organization
of American States and the United Nations
Human Rights Commission as well as non-gov-
ernmental organizations like Amnesty Interna-
tional.
On Cuba, the report urged the establishment
of friendly relations, emphasizing economic
ties: Cuban sugar for U.S. medical supplies to
wean Castro from the Soviet Union. 1 4
Throughout the region, economic assistance
was to be emphasized over military aid as the
best long-run solution to regional and U.S.
security. Trade and tariff policies would offer
hemispheric friends preferential treatment. And
aid would go through multilateral lending insti-
tutions like the Inter-American Development
Bank, where the countries would also have a
voice, albeit not an equal one, in how it would be
spent. 1 ” (As an added benefit, this latter ar-
rangement, in which the United States has veto
power, would sidestep possible conflicts with
Congress over the application of human rights
criteria to bilateral aid.)
Carter Stumbles over the Obstacles
But Trilateralism was not without its own
contradictions. The most obvious was the con-
flict between the dictates of “global capitalism”
and those of a given country. For example, the
countries of western Europe, much more depen-
dent on OPEC oil than the United States,
resolved to pressure OPEC in unison; Carter
did not commit the United States to the bloc.
Despite such contradictions and Carter’s own
ambivalence, the trilateralist approach was
tried. But pressure within the Democratic Party
from unrepentant cold warriors, and poorly
managed public battles over the Panama Canal,
Rhodesia and SALT II weakened the Adminis-
tration’s political base both among the elites and
at the mass level. Worsening inflation further
debilitated Carter’s support and made generous
foreign aid harder to defend. His inept handling
of Congress and troubled relations with key
Trilateralist ally Helmut Schmidt of West Ger-
many gave his Administration more problems
than it could handle.
By mid-term, Cold War II was underway. 1 6
The initial willingness of the elites to test accom-
modation and detente began to shred with the
pressure of daily crises in Iran and Nicaragua
and with the growing perception of Soviet ad-
vances. Afghanistan provided the golden oppor-
tunity to justify resurgent militarism. Key
accommodationists Andrew Young and Cyrus
Vance left the Administration, prompted by
controversy and conflict about Middle East af-
fairs. Falling monthly in the opinion polls,
Carter yielded more frequently to pressure from
the right. But the economy continued to falter,
the hostages stayed captive and Carter headed
for early retirement.
In Latin America, human rights gave way to
counterinsurgency as the prospects of Carter’s
defeat and a Salvadorean revolutionary victory
seemed more and more certain. One revolution
during a term of office might be forgivable, par-
ticularly if it’s seen as potentially
“manageable,” like Nicaragua. But not Iran,
the strategic lynchpin of the Middle East oil-
fields. And El Salvador followed by Guatemala
would be too much. The president-makers with-
drew their support.
An unusually high number of candidates of-
fered their services; none could offer a new con-
sensus. With the populace decidedly uninter-
ested in any of the candidates and preoccupied
with the economic pinch above all, Ronald
Reagan convinced 25% of the electorate that he
would save their declining prosperity and in
some way “make America great again.” Exit
Jimmy Carter, accommodation and cooptation.
references
FROM HEMISPHERIC POLICE TO GLOBAL MANAGERS
1. Holly Sklar, Trilateralism, the Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management (Boston: South End Press, 1980), p. 1. 2. “Overview,” Ibid. 3. G. William Domhoff, The Powers That Be: Processes of Ruling Class Domination in America (New York: Vintage Books, 1978), pp. 61-128. 4. Sklar, Trilateralism, especially Chapter 3. 5. Ibid., pp. 90-131. 6. Ibid., p. 8 .
7. Ibid., p. 199.
8. Ibid., p. 91.
9. Ibid., p. 8.
10. The Commission on United States–Latin American
Relations, the United States and Latin America: Next Steps (New
York: Center for Inter-American Relations, 1976), p. 7.
11. Sklar, Trilateralism, pp. 90-131.
12. Ibid.
13. The Commission on United States-Latin Americans
Relations, The United States and Latin America, p. 7.
14. Ibid., p. 10.
15. Ibid., p. 14 ff.
16. Draft speech by Holly Sklar for presentation at “Sur-
vival Conference,” Santa Rosa, California, July 14, 1981
and University of California, Berkeley, July 23, 1981. A
revised version will appear in Appeal to Reason.
