Friday January 7, 2000 11:48am
chapter 27
Proud Internationalist

Chapter 27
(Chap27)
January 7, 2000
 edits began 9/6/99)

Proud Internationalist

My lifetime pursuits as an internationalist might best be
summarized by one rather extraordinary day in 1995.

*****

October 23, 1995, was a busy day at the Council on Foreign
Relations. The 50th Anniversary of the United Nations had drawn
almost 200 heads of government to New York for the festivities,
and many had asked to speak at the Council. But, even then, the
day was unusual for the diversity of the speakers: Jiang Zemin,
president of the People's Republic of China and heir apparent to
Deng Xiao Peng; Islam Karimov, president of Uzbekistan, a new
Central Asian republic wrestling with the transition to the free
market; Vaclav Havel, the former political prisoner who had
eloquently guided his country through the "Velvet Revolution;"
Yasser Arafat, leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization,
considered by many a terrorist and by others as the key to an
enduring Middle Eastern peace settlement; and, finally, Fidel
Castro Ruz, charismatic leader of the Cuban revolution, Marxist-
Leninist, and implacable opponent of the United States for almost
40 years.

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The ironies abounded. With the exception of Havel, these men
had been lifelong Communists or Socialists, and had vowed to
fight to the death against "imperialist" America. Now, in the
wake of the Soviet Union's demise, they had all flocked to the
center of world capitalism, eager to meet and close deals with
international bankers and corporate executives, or at least to be
seen with them -- even Castro. "El Presidente" had wanted
especially to meet me, but a convenient time had not yet been
found. Failing this, at the formal reception hosted by Secretary
General Boutros Ghali at the UN, Castro spotted me and charged
across the delegates lounge, grabbing my hand and shaking it
warmly. I was chagrined, sensing the photo frenzy that was about
to erupt. But, I smiled as the papparazzi snapped away.
Predictably, the photo of "the Capitalist and the Communist"
appeared on the front page of newspapers from Ankara to Zanzibar;
and just as predictably, I was criticized for appearing with a
man considered one of our nation's bitterest enemies. {Footnote:
My daughter Peggy has visited Cuba a number of times since 1985,
and has developed a good rapport with President Castro. She has
facilitated exchanges with the Cuban Ministry of Higher Education
and other government agencies on technical aspects of management
and training. This may partially explain Castro's exuberant
behavior. I did eventually meet privately with Castro the
following day at the Council on Foreign Relations building on
Park Avenue.}

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## Populist Paranoia

For more than a century, extremists at both ends of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents like my inadvertent meeting with Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some have even claimed that we are part of a secret cabal selfishly working against the interests of the United States. Curiously enough, these individuals have agreed on little else besides that. They have characterized my family and me as "internationalists;" of working with individuals from both the United States and other countries to build a more integrated global political and economic structure - "one world," if you will. If that's the charge, I stand guilty and I am proud of it.

The rabid anti-Rockefeller bias of these otherwise incompatible political positions owes much to Populism, which in the United States traditionally has been nativistic, isolationist, and suspicious about international involvements of any kind. Populists believe in conspiracies, and one of the most enduring is that a small secretive group of international bankers, capitalists and their minions control the world's economy. One finds the same chimerical fears and preposterous solutions in the writings of populists from Ignatius Donnelly in the 1890s through Father Charles Coughlin and the historian

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Charles Beard in the 1930s to Pat Robertson, Ross Perot and Pat Buchanan in the 1990s. Because of my name and prominence as the head of the Chase for many years, I have earned the distinction of "conspirator in chief" from some of these people.

Even now at the close of the twentieth century, the "paranoid interpretation" of American history, to borrow Professor Richard Hofstadter's felicitous phrase, is alive and well. For example, Pat Buchanan, erstwhile journalist and political commentator, staked his presidential ambitions on a populist appeal attacking the corporate elite and the dangers of free trade and global economic interdependence. "America's elites," he wrote in *The Great Betrayal* (1998), are slaves to the ideas of nineteenth-century European scribblers, none of whom ever built a nation. Our industrial base is shrinking and Middle America's standard of living is no longer rising, because we forgot how America became a mighty industrial power and we embraced the myth that it was free trade that made us great.... Our politics are being corrupted, our dependency on unstable foreign regimes is growing and our survival as a self-reliant and independent republic is at risk.... By increasing our dependence on foreign trade...by shifting power to the institutions of global government, they hope to usher in a day when that chapter in history known as the Age of Nations is ended forever.

Buchanan's strength as a candidate emphasized populism's continuing hold on large segments of the American population. But, populists and isolationists, committed to protecting narrow domestic interests, ignore the tangible benefits that have resulted from our active international role during the past half century. Not only was the very real threat posed by Soviet

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Communism overcome, but the material basis of life in the United
States and in many other countries has been transformed through
global trade, improved communications and the heightened
interaction of people from different cultures. Buchanan and his
ilk rarely mention these positive consequences nor can they
cogently explain how they would have sustained American economic
growth and the expansion of our political power without them.

Instead, they want to wall off the United States by
rejecting participation in such constructive international
activities as the World Trade Organization and the North American
Free Trade Agreement, eviscerating the World Bank and the
International Monetary Fund, and assaulting the United Nations.
In staking out these positions, the new Populists misunderstand
history, misconstrue the effectiveness of the international
effort that the United States organized and led after World War
II, and misjudge the importance of internationalism to our
nation's future. Global interdependence is not a poetic fantasy
but a concrete reality that this century's revolutions in
technology, communications and geopolitics have made
irreversible. The free flow of investment capital, goods and
people across borders will remain the fundamental factor in world
economic growth and in the strengthening of democratic
institutions everywhere. The United States can not escape from
its global responsibilities. Today's world cries out for
leadership and our nation must provide it. In the twenty-first

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century there can be no place for isolationists, we must all be
internationalists.

## The Council on Foreign Relations

It was my parents who first impressed on me the importance
of the world beyond the United States. Father was a staunch
supporter of the League of Nations, an active participant in the
worldwide Protestant ecumenical movement and through the
Rockefeller Foundation and other family foundations, one of the
principal funders of health, education and cultural endeavors
around the world. Mother, of course, was deeply engaged by art
from all parts of the world, and it was her influence that opened
my eyes to other cultures and ideas. This early exposure was
strengthened by my own travels through Europe in the 1930s.

Like many in my generation I returned from World War II
believing that a new architecture of international cooperation
had to be erected and that the United States had a moral
obligation to provide leadership in that effort. I was
determined to play a role in that process, and I found the
Council on Foreign Relations in New York to be a stimulating
place to pursue my interest in global affairs.

*****

It has always surprised and amused me that critics portray
the Council as a dangerous and pernicious organization. For
instance, in *The New World Order* (1991), Pat Robertson, the

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televangelist and powerful Republican Party figure insisted that

"...there is a behind-the-scenes Establishment in this nation, as in every other. It has controlled the foreign policy objectives of the United States for the past seventy years, whether the man sitting in the White House is a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or a conservative, a moderate or an extremist."

The Council's detractors believe it is one of a small group of elite institutions that has controlled American foreign policy since World War II, inappropriately entangling the United States in a web of international obligations detrimental to the average citizen.

To these doubters, the Council embodies all they fear about the contemporary international order. Because the Council's membership includes influential people in business, government and the academic world, its critics claim that it dominates American foreign policy no matter which party holds the White House. They cite as proof the fact that almost every secretary of state from Dean Acheson in the late 1940s to Madeleine Albright in the late 1990s had been a member of the Council before being appointed. This is certainly true, but there is nothing "conspiratorial" about it. The Council is, after all, the nation's leading international forum, and so it is perfectly logical that individuals interested in and knowledgeable about international affairs who have joined the Council might later become ambassadors, assistant secretaries or even secretary of state. This fact is no more surprising than qualified economists

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who are members of the American Economics Association being
appointed to the Council of Economic Advisors, or a distinguished
physician who belongs to the American Medical Association being
named Surgeon General of the United States. What really matters
is competence and ability, and the Council has always attracted
capable individuals. That many of them have later held senior
governmental posts and acquitted themselves with great
distinction should be a cause for celebration, not recrimination.

*****

The Council was formed in 1921 in the aftermath of World War
I and the US Senate's rejection of the Treaty of Versailles.
Despite the timing, the Council was not established to promote
American membership in the League of Nations, but "to afford a
continuous conference on international questions affecting the
United States." The distinction is an important one, because
from the outset, the Council has eschewed taking a position on
any issue that it discusses save one -- that American citizens
need to be informed about foreign affairs because events in other
parts of the world will have a direct influence on their lives.

For example, in the 1930s, the foreign policy debate
centered upon America's response to the rise of dictators in
Europe and the Far East and the outbreak of war. Many Council
members, John Foster Dulles among them, favored a strict American
neutrality, while others, including my Uncle Winthrop Aldrich,
urged an active intervention short of war on the side of Britain

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and France in their struggle against Nazi Germany. The Council
provided both sides with a forum.

After World War II, the Council played an important role in
alerting Americans to the new threat posed by the Soviet Union
and crafting a bi-partisan consensus on how to deal with the
worldwide expansion of Communism. In 1947, *Foreign Affairs*, the
Council's distinguished quarterly journal, published George
Kennan's famous "X" article, "The Sources of Soviet Conduct,"
which outlined the doctrine of "containment." George wanted to
alert the foreign policy establishment to the dangers of Soviet
Imperialism and knew that the most effective way to do this was
through the pages of *Foreign Affairs*. The article would become
the defining document of U.S. Cold War policy.

A decade later, Henry Kissinger, then a professor of
political science at Harvard, chaired a Council study group of
which I was a member, to examine the impact of nuclear weapons on
international relations. Henry's seminal work, published by the
Council in 1957, unexpectedly became a best seller and required
reading in both Washington and Moscow. The deployment and
control of nuclear weaponry would become the critical negotiating
point between the United States and the Soviet Union for the next
four decades.

From the early 1950s on, the Council's program of speakers,
study groups and publications has provided a forum where critical
issues are examined and discussed. Vietnam, the opening to

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