Since the beginning of civilization, someone, somewhere has fantasized about ruling the world.  Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, the various leaders of the Holy Roman Empire, are but a few of the would-be rulers of the world.  The fantasy faded during the dark ages, but flourished again during the renaissance and was actively pursued by proponents of a British empire on which the sun never set.

The current quest for global rule is traced by Carroll Quigley to a wintry, February, 1891 afternoon in London,  when Cecil Rhodes, William T. Stead, and Reginald Baliol Brett (later known as Lord Esher)  met to form "The Secret Society of the Elect," and a public organization called "The Association of Helpers."  Quigley (1910-1977) is the Georgetown University Professor to whom President Clinton referred as his mentor.  Quigley also taught at Harvard and Princeton.  He also served as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense, the U.S. Navy, and to the House Committee on Astronautics and Space Exploration.  In addition to The Anglo-American Establishment, his other major works include: Evolution of Civilization, and Tragedy and Hope-A History of the World in Our Time.

Shortly after that wintry afternoon, Alfred Milner was added to the Secret Society and served as its leader from 1902 to 1925.   During this period, Milner saw the decay of the once-glorious British Empire and the emergence of the Social Democratic Labor Party (Bolsheviks) in Russia.  His secret society conceived and orchestrated the creation of the League of Nations as the instrument of governance to replace the crumbling British Empire, and to prevent the spread of Lenin's brand of Russian governance.

America was far from a world power at the time, but a growing force that had to be incorporated into the League of Nations, if it was to have any chance of success. The precise connections between Milner's Secret Society and Colonel Edward Mandell House remain obscure.  It was House, however, who first presented the idea of the League to the world in a novel entitled Philip Dru: Administrator.   The story is a recitation of socialist thinking enacted by Dru, whose purpose was "to pursue Socalism as dreamed of by Karl Marx," and who, in the story, replaced Constitutional government with "omnicompetent" government in which "the property and lives of all were now in the keeping of one man, the Administrator." Dru created a "League of Nations," in the novel, that closely resembled the real League of Nations a few years later.

House became Woodrow Wilson's alter ego.  It was House who drafted Wilson's famous "Fourteen Points," and it was House who actually created the League of Nations.  As Wilson's chief advisor, House had occasion and purpose to be in London frequently, and to count among his closest friends, which he referred to as the "Inquiry," presumably because this circle of friends served as his advisors, the likes of Paul Warburg, J.P. Morgan, John D. Rockefeller, John W. Davis, and others who had direct interest in the creation of the Federal Reserve System, and great interest in The League of Nations.  The Rockefellers donated the Library at the League's headquarters in Geneva, and later, the land on which the United Nations was built in New York.

The great hope for global governance which launched the League of Nations crashed when the U.S. Senate refused to ratify Wilson's (House's) dream.  The dream of global governance, however, did not die.  House, shuttling to Europe on post-war  peace negotiations, was instrumental in the development of the next phase of the fantasy: educating the world to accept global governance.  Two new organizations were created: the Institute of International Affairs which had two branches.  In Europe, it was called the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA), and in America, it was called the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). The first president of the CFR was John W. Davis, personal attorney to J.P.  Morgan.  The new organization, officially organized July 29, 1921, began its education campaign through its publication called Foreign Affairs.

Aside from its educational efforts through its publications, the CFR provided many appointees to the White House.  Roosevelt's White House was dominated by members of the CFR.  The disaster of the second World War set the stage for the emergence of another effort to achieve global  governance. The process began two weeks after Pearl Harbor was bombed and continued throughout the war.  Roosevelt created a Presidential Advisory Committee on Post-War Foreign Policy.

Within months,  the first step was taken with the creation of an  Atlantic Charter (August 14, 1941), which committed the United States and Great Britain to a "permanent system of general security."  The Moscow Declaration (October 30, 1943) declared the necessity of establishing an international organization to maintain peace and security.  The Dumbarton Oaks Conversations (August, 1944) created the World Bank, and the Yalta Summit (February, 1945) gave the Soviets three votes in exchange for other organizational demands made by the U.S.  The United States also agreed that the UN official in charge of military affairs would always be designated by the Russians.

The U.S. delegation to the San Francisco Conference at which the United Nations was created included 47 members of  the CFR, among whom were Adlai Stevenson, John Foster Dulles, Nelson Rockefeller, Jr., and Alger Hiss, later convicted of perjury for lying about his affiliation with, and transfer of information to the Communist Party.

Before the ink was dry on the UN Charter, Julian Huxley created UNESCO - the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.  Huxley was the first Director-General of the new organization, which virtually swallowed up the International Institute for Intellectual Cooperation, a hold-over from the old League of Nations.  Previously, Huxley had served on Britain's Population Investigation Comission, and had been the President of the Eugenics Society from 1937 to 1944.

For the next forty years, the UN languished in the shadow of the world's super powers.  The veto power of the U.S. and the Soviets prevented any real initiative of power moves by the other UN members. Although very important activity was taking place through the expanding UN organization, it attracted very little attention in the American press.  The United Nations Environment Program was created in 1973 as the result of the first Earth Summit conducted in Stockholm in 1972.  The UN Conference on Human Settlements adopted the UN's policy on land use control at HABITAT I, in 1976 in a world conference in British Columbia.  Three major UN World Commissions met during the 1980s, one of which, the Brundtland Commission, produced the concept of "sustainable development."   But it was not until the Berlin wall fell, and the Soviet Union collapsed that the UN emerged, full-tilt, toward global governance.

Beginning in 1990 with the World Summit for Children in New York, where the Convention on the Rights of the Child  was adopted, to the 1992 Earth Summit II in Rio de Janeiro, which produced Agenda 21, the Convention on Biological Diversity, and the Framework Convention on Climate Change, the UN gathered steam toward its goal of global governance.

In fact, a Commission on Global Governance was formed in 1993, funded largely by the United Nations Development Program.  The UN Conference on Human Rights was held in Vienna in 1993.  In 1994, Uruguay was the site for negotiating the World Trade Organization Charter and Cairo was the location  for the UN Conference on Population and Development.  The UN's World Summit on Social Development was held in Copenhagen in 1995, while in New York, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development held its third World Meeting, and in Beijing, the fourth World Women's Congress was held.

The UN had a banner year in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the UN Charter.  Aside from all the World Conferences, the first meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity met.  And, perhaps, most significantly, the UN-funded Commission on Global Governance produced their report, entitled Our Global Neighborhood.

Among the hundreds of specific recomendations  contained in the report's 410 pages, is this:

"Our recommendation is that the General Assembly should agree to hold a World Conference on Governance in 1998, with its decisions to be ratified and put into effect by 2000" (Page 351).

History demonstrates that global governance is not an event that will occur by force at some point in the future.  Global governance is a process that has been underway for many years, gaining new definition and momentum since the collapse of the Soviet Union.  The publication of Our Global Neighborhood is a signal of confidence that the international community is secure enough in its establishment of global governance that the movement cannot be reversed.

© Copyright 1998, Henry Lamb

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