#67 The Creation of New Global Infrastructure to Rule the World
Preface: The USA decides
America did not need to enter the war in the manner she did in 1941. American development had by 1939 been predominantly internal. By 1940 her growth was overwhelmingly domestic. The move into the war was not inevitable, according to historians like John Thompson. Well before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbour, US war planners were envisaging the defeat of Germany and Japan and the break-up of Europe's various Empires. They imagined the creation of small independent nations, umbilically tied into the US dollar and planners drafted blueprints for the United Nations. The ideologies of Pax Americana, Providential Exceptionalism and Universalism led a large group. The move of America to rule the world was rampant ambition over any specific political or economic need. This blog outlines the new global infrastructure the US set up post-1945 to rule the world.
New Multilateral Organisation
A map of United Nations member states at the end of 1945. Light blue are member states, Dark blue are colonies of member states, grey are non-member states.
After 1944, the US set about creating a range of multilateral organisations. This would become the global architecture for their global dominance. These are the main institutions they created:
The Gold Standard resuscitated, 1944
The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, 1944
The United Nations (UN) including the Security Council and the International Court of Justice, 1945
The World Trade Organisation (WTO), 1945
The Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), 1945
International Labour Organisation (ILO), 1919
North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), 1949
The CIA, 1947
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), 1948
United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO), 1946
United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR), 1950
World Health Organisation (WHO), 1948
United Nations organization sketch by Franklin Roosevelt from November 30, 1943. From left to right, the sketch shows the three branches of the United Nations as originally envisioned by Roosevelt: an international assembly of 40 UN member states, an executive branch dominated by the Big Four, and an enforcement branch called the Four Policemen comprising the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, and Republican China.
In each organisation, the aim was to be multilateral and to include every individual nation-state: primarily but not solely financed by the USA. Many of these UN-type organisations developed subsidiaries; for instance:
The World Bank created an Asian and African Bank
NATO was the combined military wing of western Europe: allies of the USA, always led by an American General, so following US military policies.
The IMF and World Bank have always followed American economic policies.
Each multilateral organisation became an arm of US foreign policy:
The Gold Standard, The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were discussed and set up at Bretton Woods in 1944.
The Security Council and United Nations, the advanced form of the League of Nations, was set up at Dumbarton Woods in San Francisco in 1945. It was Franklin Roosevelt's baby. It began life as the permanent organisation of the allies that had fought in the war. Representatives of 50 countries met at the United Nations Conference on International Organisation to draw up the United Nations Charter. Those delegates deliberated on proposals worked out by the representatives of China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom and the United States in August-October 1944.
The CIA
The CIA should be included in the architecture of the post-1945 world although it was a solely US armed and financed secret service. The CIA has always been a peculiar US organization. It was set up intentionally to discipline nations that seemed determined to create socialist societies. According to Philip Agee, it was the largest secret service organisation the world has ever seen. In the 1970s, the organisation had 16,500 employees, and an annual budget of $750,000,000 excluding mercenary armies and commercial subsidiaries. Its official budget was of course secret; its activities were accountable only to the President, and these included overthrowing governments unsuitable to USA norms, supporting new governments, and arranging assassinations.
New World Order
The list of multilateral organisations, all initiated by the USA and set up within 5 years after the end of hostilities, gives readers an idea of substantial planning and intent. The USA was serious in its intentions to rule the world; they had learnt from their experiences in the 1920s and 1930s. This was the infrastructure of world power useful so long the world’s nations were in line with US thinking. The US defined 'suitable politics' in positive and negative terms. The nations of the world had to be for capital; that meant accepting private property. Certain matters in practice were as follows.
At the time:
The world would be organised according to principles established by the government in Washington.
The two defeated nations needed to be resurrected if they were not to choose socialism.
And their own people in the USA needed to be disciplined: ideas of socialism had to be defeated.
Finally - and this was no small item on the global agenda - the new nations (those created out of previously colonised societies) had to be taught, by whatever means available, to follow American axioms: controlling the world against socialism. This was the work of the CIA.
The choice that the USA made in the 1940s, that their own companies had to have access to the world markets, was a major decision that would have ramifications rippling through to the present.
Freeing the world’s countries of colonies led to the whole world being run by domestic elites. Politically, every society had control of its own power. From the end of hostilities in 1945 to this day, peoples across the world have tried to assert their right to be independent. In the period from 1945 to 1989, Washington set about making sure that socialism, and particularly communist parties, would be destroyed. This goal appeared to be against the axioms and principles of 'freedoms', stated so proudly by US propaganda. As a consequence, the US set up secret political organisations, primarily but not solely the CIA, to counter socialist parties and individuals across the world. The costs of running these vast complex secret organisations have never been available for public view. There is now a huge literature about this, despite the secrecy that surrounded every clandestine act of public deception. The CIA’s role in all of this was the development of globally organised assassinations, covert overthrowing of foreign governments, and control of Nation States in line with US policies.
The resuscitation of the defeated powers of Germany and Japan and the defeat of socialism domestically within the USA followed.
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The peoples of Western Europe had risen from one world of relative poverty and had learnt how to take the wealth from the Americas and transfer it to their own countries. This was slavery and latterly until 1920, indentureship. A whole set up of banks, shipping companies, and insurance companies had arisen to make these transfers possible. From the 1750s the European invaders turned their attention to Asia and systematically began the colonisation process anew. At the same time, as they attempted to colonise and extract the wealth of Asia, the colonising countries began the process we now recognise as industrialisation alongside the rapid growth of cities. The surplus resources extracted through colonisation were used to finance the growth of new industries.