Wall Street’s Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976-2014

Wall Street’s Think Tank: The Council on Foreign Relations and the Empire of Neoliberal Geopolitics, 1976-2014
by Laurence H. Shoup

The Council on Foreign Relations is the most influential foreign-policy think tank in the United States, claiming among its members a high percentage of government officials, media figures, and establishment elite. For decades it kept a low profile even while it shaped policy, advised presidents, and helped shore up U.S. hegemony following the Second World War. In 1977, Laurence H. Shoup and William Minter published the first in-depth study of the CFR, Imperial Brain Trust, an explosive work that traced the activities and influence of the CFR from its origins in the 1920s through the Cold War.

Now, Laurence H. Shoup returns with this long-awaited sequel, which brings the story up to date. Wall Street’s Think Tank follows the CFR from the 1970s through the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union to the present. It explains how members responded to rapid changes in the world scene: globalization, the rise of China, wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the launch of a “War on Terror,” among other major developments. Shoup argues that the CFR now operates in an era of “Neoliberal Geopolitics,” a worldwide paradigm that its members helped to establish and that reflects the interests of the U.S. ruling class, but is not without challengers. Wall Street’s Think Tank is an essential guide to understanding the Council on Foreign Relations and the shadow it casts over recent history and current events.

Wall Street’s Think Tank is a very important book, and its information is essential for an understanding of how our politics, and the world’s, has come to its sorry state.

—Joan Roelofs, Counterpunch

Forty years ago, Laurence Shoup and William Minter published their book Imperial Brain Trust, a careful and highly informative analysis of World War II planning for the postwar world by the Council of Foreign Relations and the State Department, plans that were then implemented, establishing much of the framework of postwar history. In this new study, Shoup carries their inquiry forward with a very revealing account of how a small group of planners drawn from sectors of concentrated private and state power, closely linked, along with ‘experts’ whose commitments are congenial to their ends, have set the contours for much of recent history, not least the neoliberal assault that has had a generally destructive impact on populations while serving as an effective instrument of class war. A welcome and very valuable contribution.

—Noam Chomsky, Professor Emeritus, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Laurence Shoup reveals, as nobody has before, the actual workings of the Council on Foreign Relations. He names the names, explores the connections, and details the penetration of this beast as it shapes and expresses the will of the United States ruling class in the period of its global hegemony. As this approaches its end, we may expect the Council to continue to play a decisive role. In any event, no one can claim to understand U.S. imperialism without reference to Shoup’s masterful work.

—Joel Kovel, author, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World?

Lucidly written and deeply informed, this book reveals how the super-rich class organizes itself into a consciously directed, ruling plutocracy. Shoup offers a treasure of insights into a subject that seldom gets the attention it very much needs.

—Michael Parenti, author, The Face of Imperialism and Profit Pathology and Other Indecencies

This book will be a formidable resource for those looking for the ‘American’ fraction of the transnational capitalist class in an era when the hegemony of the U.S. state is being seriously challenged.

—Leslie Sklair, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics

Wall Street’s Think Tank is an invaluable supplement to Laurence Shoup’s earlier book, Imperial Brain Trust, as it chronicles the subsequent history and composition of the Council on Foreign Relations over the last five decades. It thus records how the CFR’s early advocacy of the Vietnam War led to a reversal in 1968 of both Council and U.S. policy, followed by a restructuring of the CFR itself. Did this mean that the CFR avoided the widespread campaign before 2003 to press America into another disastrous war in Iraq? Not at all: The CFR, as Shoup documents, played a leading role in this largely dishonest effort. Underlying both campaigns Shoup shows the on-going presence in the CFR of the international oil majors, as well as of related financial interests, such as the Rockefellers and their spokesmen. Shoup persuasively demonstrates how U.S. foreign policies are still (as in the 1950s) formulated at the CFR before they are adopted in Washington. While it may be more challenged than before by other think tanks, none can begin to match its international outreach. This is a must read for those wishing to understand the dynamics of U.S. hegemony.

—Peter Dale Scott, Professor Emeritus of English, University of California, Berkeley; author, The American Deep State

Praise for Imperial Brain Trust:
The first in-depth analysis of the activities and influence of the most important private institution in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy. Shoup and Minter’s work is based on detailed research, including examination of material hitherto unavailable to the public. This work will stand as a milestone.

—Library Journal

[A] masterpiece of documented analysis of one of the most successful influences on American national policy…. As informed and informative as it is thoughtful and thought-provoking, Wall Street’s Think Tank is an essential and strongly recommended addition to both community and academic library collections.

—Paul T. Vogel, The Midwest Book Review

Laurence H. Shoup received his Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University in 1974. He is the author of several books, including Imperial Brain Trust (with William Minter) and Rulers and Rebels: A People’s History of Early California, 1769-1901, as well as many articles in scholarly and popular publications. He has taught U.S. history at the University of Illinois, San Francisco State University, Sonoma State University, and has been active in the anti-war and social justice movements since the 1960s.

Source: Monthly Review
http://monthlyreview.org/product/wall_streets_think_tank/

Willis Carto, influential figure of the far right, dies at 89

Willis Carto, influential figure of the far right, dies at 89
By Staff Reports October 31

Willis Carto, who spent decades leading an influential network of far-right organizations, including the Washington-based Liberty Lobby and a California institute dedicated to denying the Holocaust, and whose extremist views resonated with generations of neo-Nazis, conspiracy theorists and other fringe elements, died Oct. 26. He was 89.

His death was announced by the American Free Press, a publication he founded. No further details were available. After spending much of his adult life in California, Mr. Carto apparently lived near Jacksonville, Fla., in recent years, according to public records.

Mr. Carto founded the Liberty Lobby in the 1950s, and the organization maintained a presence on Capitol Hill for decades. He had a publishing company, Noontide Press, that distributed extremist literature and launched several publications, including the Washington Observer newsletter and a weekly newspaper, the Spotlight, which had a national circulation of 300,000 in the early 1980s.

In letters and other statements, Mr. Carto voiced admiration for Nazi Germany and recommended that black Americans be deported to Africa. In 1981, the Anti-Defamation League, an organization that monitors anti-Jewish slurs and threats, called Mr. Carto “a professional anti-Semite and Nazi sympathizer and the mastermind” of a “propaganda empire.”

The reclusive Mr. Carto “does not speak in public,” a 1971 Washington Post investigation found. “He refuses to be interviewed. He shies away from cameras. He keeps an unlisted telephone number. He shields his residence address in suburban Los Angeles from public scrutiny.”

Yet he controlled or maintained connections with a variety of far-right groups that opposed taxes, gun control, foreign aid and school busing to achieve racial integration. One of his groups supported the minority white rule of defiant segregationist Ian Smith in the African country of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe).

The Liberty Lobby’s political committee was led by former Texas congressman Bruce Alger, a right-wing zealot who once incited a riot in Dallas against then-Sen. Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 1978, Mr. Carto founded the Institute for Historical Review, which promulgated anti-Jewish conspiracy theories and denounced the Holocaust as a hoax. Mr. Carto reportedly kept busts of Adolf Hitler in his office at the California-based institute.

Through his publications and interconnected organizations, Mr. Carto exerted outsize influence on a variety of political issues and campaigns. He organized Youth for Wallace to support the 1968 presidential bid of Alabama segregationist Gov. George C. Wallace. The group was later renamed the National Youth Alliance, which, under its next leader, William L. Pierce, became the National Alliance, one of the country’s most prominent white separatist groups.

In the 1980s, Mr. Carto helped found the Populist Party, whose 1988 presidential candidate was David Duke, a onetime leader of the Ku Klux Klan.

Mr. Carto was treasurer of the Liberty Lobby, which took in about $1 million a year by 1970, and also controlled the purse strings of other allied organizations. Over the years, employees accused him of financial improprieties and having an imperious style of leadership.

“Several former Liberty Lobby executives say Carto makes all major decisions, delegates little authority and trusts hardly anyone,” The Post noted in 1971. Behind his back, his employees called him “Little Hitler.”

Source: Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/obituaries/willis-carto-influential-figure-of-the-far-right-dies-at-89/2015/10/31/80eb8aee-7f36-11e5-afce-2afd1d3eb896_story.html

See more:
Willis Carto, Far-Right Figure and Holocaust Denier, Dies at 89 (NY Times)
Willis Carto has been a major figure on the American radical right since the 1950s, when he set up his anti-Semitic Liberty Lobby with offices not far from the White House (SPLC)