World government, take three: those who wish to empower a global institution with the authority to govern all people and countries have suffered repeated setbacks, but they are forging ahead.

Government is the only human enterprise that profits from its own failure. The fundamental purpose of government is to protect the rights and liberties of the governed from the abuse and violence of the lawless. When governments fail to fulfill that duty, those in charge typically insist that the task will require more power and greater resources. This process of government growth through failure proceeds until the government itself is absorbing most of society's wealth and exercising power over practically every area of the life of the governed--thereby becoming the most lethal menace to the rights and property of those it supposedly exists to protect.

As is pointed out elsewhere in this issue, the United Nations was created to provide the foundation and framework for a world government. In recent years, the UN has descended into a mire of multiple scandals--not just the oil-for-food bribery affair, but also the body's complicity in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, in which approximately one million people were killed in roughly 100 days. "What does it say about the United Nations," commented British human rights agitator Alex de Waal in Rwanda's aftermath, "that not a single official thought fit to resign over the first indisputable genocide since the UN Charter was signed?"

According to those presiding over the UN, as well as the institution's advocates and allies, the lesson of the Rwandan genocide and other large-scale tragedies and scandals is that the UN requires more power and money to provide "human security" on a global scale. In other words, the UN, a would-be world government, like most other governments in history, should capitalize on its failures as a means of growing larger and stronger.

In fact, this approach to world government has been underway for the better part of a century. The ongoing attempt to "reform" and "strengthen" the UN represents, in the words of globalist heavyweight Harlan Cleveland, the "third try at world order." The previous efforts--the League of Nations and the initial attempt to launch world government through the UN after World War II--perished as a result of determined opposition from the American public.

The ongoing effort, however, may be the most dangerous because it is being carried out with the active involvement of a "conservative" Republican administration that is perceived as hostile to the UN and globalism generally. Behind the rhetorical veneer of anti-UN hostility, the Bush administration is actually doing a great deal to promote the "third try at world order"--and it enjoys the support of an American public that is genuinely hostile to the world body and all it represents.

Take One

The first modern effort to unite the world under a single government occurred at the end of World War I. The Treaty of Versailles provided for the creation of a League of Nations supposedly devoted to preserving international peace and deterring aggression. Article X of the League Covenant specified that member states would be required to provide manpower and materiel for an international army that would be used in the event of international conflict.

President Wilson and other supporters of the league besieged our nation with propaganda on behalf of the institution. Newspapers, academics, paid orators, and even influential religious figures extolled the proposed global body as a means of establishing peace on Earth. But the American public at large refused to embrace the league.

Within the U.S. Senate, the body that would have to ratify the League Covenant, a faction called the "Irreconcilables" worked to defeat the measure. Bipartisan and representative of a variety of viewpoints, the Irreconcilables were a passionate, principled minority large enough to prevent Senate approval by the constitutionally required two-thirds vote.

Presidential adviser "Colonel" Edward Mandell House, seeking to peel off a sufficient number of "Irreconcilables" to win Senate approval for the league, urged President Wilson to modify the covenant by attaching provisions supposedly intended to preserve U.S. independence of action. The important thing, House insisted, was to win approval for the organization in principle, and then expand the organization's powers as opportunities presented themselves. House took a decidedly different approach for public consumption, warning in a September 1919 address in Omaha that "I can predict with absolute certainty there will be another war" if the Senate rejects the league.

But Wilson proved too proud to allow the suggested modifications, and the Irreconcilables--to their credit--weren't deceived by House's subterfuge. "You can't amend treason!" bellowed Irreconcilable Senator William Borah (R-Idaho) when he was urged to support an amended League of Nations Covenant.

Take Two

The resilient patriotism of the American public, and its continued love for national independence, created critical roadblocks impeding the first drive for world government. Another important obstacle was the lack of effective prewar preparation behind the League of Nations. Thus, as described elsewhere in these pages, preparations for the second attempt began years before the U.S. became involved in World War II, and every effort was made during the war to embed our nation in elements of what eventually became the United Nations system.

For the Roosevelt administration, wrote historian Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. in the CFR's journal Foreign Affairs, "the critical task in 1943-45, beyond winning the war, was to commit the United States to postwar international structures before peace could return the nation to its old habits. So [FDR] moved methodically to prepare the American people to a continuing world role" by putting in place critical elements of what would become the UN system. This included the creation in 1944 of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund, the financial nucleus of the UN-dominated international system, which were in operation even prior to the formal creation of the United Nations Organization in 1945.

Those conducting this drive for global order wanted to have the critical pieces in place for the formation of a world government before the war ended because they foresaw that public support for such machinations would dramatically decline. In 1939, prior to U.S. entry in WWII, less than half of the surveyed public supported creation of a global "peace force." That figure climbed to 73% in July 1942, before peaking at 80% the following year. As FDR and his allies predicted, interest in the proposition subsided following the war's end--from 62% in 1948, to 58% the following year, and consistently declining thereafter.

But by that time, our nation had already been snared in the Lilliputian cords of UN-directed globalism.

Take Three

But the UN's creators weren't able to carry out their entire program in one fell swoop. In 1946, after the "internationalist mood" dissipated, Congress balked at U.S. entry into the proposed Global Trade Organization (GTO), a UN-aligned international body that would have had the power to regulate the world economy. After American troops were dispatched to Korea to fight and die in--but not to win--a war conducted under the UN flag, public enthusiasm for a global "police force" quickly evaporated.

In addition, the UN's reputation suffered dramatically following public disclosure of the Communist background and affiliations of the body's most important architect, traitor and Soviet spy Alger Hiss, and scores of other U.S. figures involved in framing and staffing the body. By the early 1960s, the public's opinion of the UN made it difficult at best for globalists to make significant progress in enacting the ambitious program they patiently and persistently pursued.

One telling sketch of that program was provided in A World Effectively Controlled by the United Nations, a classified study conducted in 1962 for the Department of State by CFR member Lincoln P. Bloomfield. The world body controlling the world, in the model proposed by Bloomfield, "would not necessarily be the organization as it now exists," he wrote, but rather one equipped with a revised charter so as "to erect such an organization equal to the task envisaged."

The "reformed" and empowered UN, Bloomfield predicted, would exercise "powers sufficient to monitor and enforce disarmament, settle disputes, and keep the peace"; this would include "taxing powers"; an "international force ... including ground, sea, air, and space elements ... and controlling a nuclear force"; "compulsory jurisdiction of the International Court"; and "unrestricted international inspection of all states against violation of the disarmament agreement."

In other words, the UN was to acquire all of the attributes of a global sovereign, and exercise powers sufficient to compel obedience to its commands.

The chief impediment to achieving this objective was the resistance of the American public to the surrender of national sovereignty. That crisis could be overcome, Bloomfield observed, through a "grave crisis or war [that would] ... bring about a sudden transformation in national attitudes sufficient for the purpose." Alternatively, he continued, "the order we examine may be brought into existence as a result of a series of sudden, nasty, and traumatic shocks."

However this is accomplished, Bloomfield wrote, for "the United States, as well as for the other countries, a threshold will [have to be] crossed from one historical condition to another, drastically different one" if the world is to be "effectively controlled" by the UN. "However many stages it takes, however tacit or explicit the labels, however gradual or violent the process, there is a Rubicon that divides ... basically untrammeled national sovereignty from ... meaningful supranational authority."

Behind the Confusion

For those lusting to control the world, the challenge was to find the most effective way to usher our nation across that Rubicon--without the public realizing where they were being led. Bloomfield, writing in 1962, projected that "A World Effectively Controlled by the United Nations" could be brought about in "a time period of five to fifteen years from now"--which is to say, no later than 1977.

Owing in no small measure to the principled activism and educational outreach of the John Birch Society (see page 21), globalists never succeeded in cultivating public acceptance for that scheme. Thus the grand design outlined by Bloomfield wasn't consummated within the time frame he projected.

Undeterred, those pursuing world government adopted a different strategy, as outlined in a notable essay published by Richard Gardner in the April 1974 issue of Foreign Affairs.

"If instant world government ... [does] not provide the answers, what hope for progress is there?" wrote Gardner, as a prelude to his prescription. The "'house of world order' will have to be built from the bottom up rather than the top down," he explained. "It will look like a great 'booming, buzzing confusion' ... but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.... [F]or political as well as administrative reasons, some of these specialized arrangements should be brought into an appropriate relationship with the central institutions of the UN system."

By keeping Gardner's strategic vision in mind, those opposed to a UN-dominated world can discern the true import of many otherwise perplexing developments and initiatives. These include not only the puzzling welter of UN initiatives dealing with every conceivable human undertaking, but also the ever-expanding network of multilateral, regional, and inter-governmental bodies.

Furthermore, the Bush administration's treatment of the UN and its affiliates exemplifies the approach described by Gardner. While condemning the world body as corrupt and flawed, the administration commits our military to aggressive war to enforce Security Council disarmament decrees in Iraq. Despite objections to the UN's International Criminal Court, the administration endorses the prosecution of accused Sudanese war criminals by the ICC. While posturing as unilateralists, the administration defers to the WTO (the successor to the rejected GTO), eagerly promotes creation of the FTAA, CAFTA, and applauds the EU, and other "specialized arrangements" through which the UN would exercise dominion over the globe. Perhaps most importantly, the administration is fully supportive of "reforming" the UN and making it the focal point of its "Global Democratic Revolution," rather than withdrawing from the body and restoring our independence.

But an institution built on fatally flawed--and, to be blunt, unabashedly evil--premises cannot be "reformed." The only effective remedy for the confusion cultivated by advocates of world government is to understand that the UN--however it is packaged--is the enemy and antithesis of everything our nation stands for, and we should withdraw from it immediately.