Different paths, same destination: the architects of world order are simultaneously moving on multiple fronts toward their long-sought-after goal of world government.

While most Americans are involved in their daily affairs, or content to skim the surface of current events, "internationalists are always hard at work in quiet places making plans for a more perfect union," observed Newsweek senior editor Michael Hirsh. Writing in a special December 2001--February 2002 international edition of the magazine, Hirsh continued: "in the end the internationalists have always dominated national policy. Even so, they haven't bragged about their globe-building for fear of reawakening the other half of the American psyche, our berserker nationalism. And so they have always done it in the most out-of-the-way places and with little ado."

Hirsh, a respected member of the major media, is hardly a right-wing paranoid. Yet what he is describing can only be called a conspiracy--a secretive effort by a small group of powerful people to create a world order under their control. And Hirsh is hardly the only prominent figure to give us a peek behind the curtain of that covert campaign.

In a 1995 book written for corporate leaders, Harvard Business School professor George C. Lodge noted that "energetic and creative individuals in government, interest groups, and corporations are quietly assembling global arrangements." For the most part, he continued, these globalist architects "work outside of legislatures and parliaments and are screened from the glare of the media"--meaning that they are unaccountable to the people whose destinies they seek to shape.

Professor Lodge, in fact, belongs to the most influential of the secretive groups of "energetic and creative" globalists the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Founded in 1921, the CFR is "the nearest thing we have to a ruling establishment in the United States," wrote Washington Post ombudsman Richard Harwood in 1993. This semi secret organization of 4,000 people, Harwood continued, constitutes the most important outpost of the Power Elite "the people who, for more than half a century, have managed our international affairs and our military-industrial complex."

In 1953, the congressional Reece Committee's investigation of the CFR and its allied tax-exempt foundations determined that the group's efforts are "directed overwhelmingly at promoting the globalist concept" of government, at potentially lethal expense to our national independence. Admiral Chester Ward, a former Judge Advocate General of the U.S. Navy and one-time CFR member, describes the CFR's objectives in more detailed terms.

The CFR, Ward explains, was created for the "purpose of promoting disarmament and submergence of U.S. sovereignty and national independence into an all-powerful one-world government." He noted that "this lust to surrender the sovereignty and independence of the United States is pervasive throughout most of the membership.... The majority visualize the utopian submergence of the United States as a subsidiary administrative unit of a global government...."

CFR members in key positions of government, finance, the media, and academia have pursued that objective relentlessly for more than eight decades.

Practical Gradualism 

Discussion of a conspiracy for global control often summons thoughts of cinematic villains: James Bond's nemesis Ernst Blofeld plotting world domination while stroking a white cat within his lair in a hollow volcano; or the "Cigarette-smoking Man" from the X-Files controlling every detail of contemporary life, including the outcome of the next Super Bowl.

In reality, those seeking to create a global government while certainly powerful and ambitious--are neither omnipotent nor all-knowing. Controlling the entire world is, to say no more, a daunting challenge. And the single largest obstacle to such ambitions is found in the fact that the population of the United States--with limited exceptions is resolutely opposed to surrendering our national independence.

Unless those seeking global dominion can exploit our nation's wealth and power to their own ends, their ambitions will remain unfulfilled. This is what happened when the U.S. Senate refused to approve U.S. involvement in the post-World War I League of Nations, which was in tended to be a vehicle for world government.

Analyzing that predicament for the benefit of his fellow globalists in a 1974 Foreign Affairs article, academic and State Department official Richard N. Gardner described "an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece" as a superior tactic to a frontal assault. Rather than trying to leap into outright world government, Gardner explained, that objective could be achieved through a "decentralized, disorderly and pragmatic process of inventing or adapting institutions of limited jurisdiction and selected membership to deal with specific problems on a case-by-case basis."

The specific plan suggested by Gardner 30 years ago could have been a checklist followed by every succeeding presidential administration which is exactly what it was, given the continuing CFR chokehold on the executive branch. Gardner urged an enhanced global trade regime, which is the purpose of both the World Trade Organization and regional trade blocs such as the proposed FTAA. He also called for global environmental controls much like those under consideration through the UN's Kyoto Protocol and Agenda 21 (a massive blueprint for regulating all human interactions with the environment). He also envisioned the gradual strengthening of international judicial bodies and multilateral organizations.

The building of vast economic and political regional blocs like the European Union and the envisioned FTAA is a major campaign on the part of the globalist Insiders--but it is hardly the only one. It is worthwhile briefly to examine the globalists' progress on other fronts recommend ed by Gardner.

The Environment

Since the first "Earth Day" in 1970, the American public has been tirelessly bombarded with propaganda regarding the supposed impending collapse of the global environment, and the need to surrender power to a central global government in order to prevent such a catastrophe. Tens of millions of dollars are spent each year by CFR-allied tax exempt foundations (Rockefeller, Ford, Carnegie, Pew, and the like) funding eco-radical groups such as the Worldwatch Institute, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and so on. And those investments have paid off handsomely. Thanks in large measure to the ceo-radical movement, taxpayers are soaked to the tune of billions of dollars each year to maintain a huge, and growing, environmental regulatory system.

Despite being utterly unsupported by sound science, the "global warming" scare continues to have an impact on public opinion, and--more importantly--on public policy. The UN's Kyoto Protocol, intended to bring regulation of "greenhouse gases" (and, of course, industrial production) under the world body's jurisdiction, is yet to be ratified by the U.S. Senate. However, the Bush administration accepts the Kyoto agreement's premises and objectives in principle. Once those premises are accepted, globalists are prepared to build on them.

Writing in the July/August 2004 issue of the CFR journal Foreign Affairs, British Petroleum executive John Brown observed that "Kyoto was simply the starting point of a very long endeavor." At present, the status of global management of the environment is "comparable, perhaps, to the meetings in 1946 at which a group of 23 countries agreed to reduce tariffs. Those meetings set in motion a process that led to the establishment of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade in 1948, which, in tam led to the creation of the World Trade Organization in the mid-1990s."

International Criminal Court

Any government worthy of the name needs a judicial branch with the ability to compel its jurisdiction. This is precisely the purpose of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which claims universal jurisdiction over cases involving genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity.

The UN's World Court was established to rule in disputes between governments, and its jurisdiction was limited to those governments agreeing to be bound by that body's decisions. By way of contrast, the ICC claims jurisdiction over individuals--including those, such as U.S. citizens, whose governments have not ratified the ICC treaty.

The ICC began operations on July 1, 2003. The body is already investigating two governments: Uganda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Those arraigned before the ICC would not enjoy the rights protected by our Constitution, such as a trial by jury, the right to confront their accusers, the habeas corpus guarantee (which prohibits prolonged imprisonment without trial), or counsel of the defendant's choice.

Although Bill Clinton signed the ICC treaty before he left office, the Bush administration and Congress have been less eager to embrace it. However, the Bush administration has indicated that it would accede to the agreement if U.S. military personnel I and political leaders--were granted immunity from prosecution.

International Peacekeeping

As with a judiciary, every government requires an executive of some sort--an arm with the power to carry out the government's policies, particularly military ventures. In the case of the UN, it could be said that "legislative" power resides in the Security Council, which includes five permanent members (the U.S., Russia, China, Great Britain and France) and ten rotating members.

The ICC, as noted above, is emerging as the UN's judicial branch. Incredible as it may seem, the U.S. presidency is emerging as the executive branch of a UN-dominated global order.

In the first Gulf War, President George Bush (the elder) claimed "authorization" for war from the UN Security Council, rather than Congress. Since one gets "authorization" from a superior, not a subordinate, this was a frank--if largely ignored--admission that Mr. Bush considered his office an instrument of the UN's will.

Despite his reputation as a flinty-eyed defender of our national sovereignty, George W. Bush, in this regard, has followed in his father's footsteps. "Under [UN Security Council] Resolutions 678 and 687--both still in effect--the United States and our allies are authorized to use force in ridding Iraq of weapons of mass destruction," declared Mr. Bush in a March 17, 2003 televised address. "On November 8th, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations, and vowing serious consequences if Iraq did not fully and immediately disarm.... This is not a question of authority, it is a question of will."

Democratic presidential contender John Kerry embraces exactly the same view regarding the relationship between the U.S. and the UN. An official Kerry campaign position paper insisted that "we need to go to the UN and make them a full partner on the political side, while we run the military side." And Kerry, like George W. Bush, would use the United Nations to fight the war on terrorism: "The threat of terrorism demands alliances on a global scale to utilize every available resource to get the terrorists before they can strike at us."

The Goal: World Government

On each of the fronts suggested in Gardner's 1974 Foreign Affairs blueprint, the groundwork for the one world government is being prepared on a piece-by-piece basis. That incremental approach to world government is the only practical one, since Americans are reluctant to give up their constitutionally-protected rights and national independence.

World government advocates are entranced by the vision of a global body powerful enough to end all war, which has admittedly been a plague on mankind throughout all of recorded history. But a real world government with enough power to end all war would also be powerful enough to end all freedom.

And human history--particularly that of the last 100 years--has proven that tyranny has been a more prolific killer than war. This is why Americans must oppose all of the campaigns underway to build a global government--including the FTAA.