Rockefeller – Controlling the Game (12 page)

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The Stockholm conference resulted in
The Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment
(
The Stockholm Declaration).
¹⁹⁴
and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), with Maurice Strong as chairman.

A System-wide Earthwatch “to monitor major global disturbance in the environment and to give early warning of problems requiring international action” was also initiated, as well as data collection projects through collaboration between the UN organisations UNEP, WMO, and ICSU. The plan had worked out perfectly.

Some
radicals, however, protested that the agreement was not as stringent as it could have been and suspected that the environmental crisis was much worse than politicians assumed or revealed. Their enemies were, ironically, the same super-capitalists than had both funded them and crafted the ideals they were now fighting for. They became, in effect, what we today would call controlled opposition and pawns in an illusory dichotomy.

The strategy of inviting environmentalists would become even more professionalised in the decades to come, with activists becoming a staple of every major conference.
¹⁹⁵
Not until the end of the 1980s, however, would climate change be added to the list of concerns inspiring radical action.

Despite the many genuine activist groups, the Stockholm Conference was an elite project from the start, with countless connections to the Rockefeller family and affiliated organisations.

1. Funding for the conference secretariat and one of its advisory committees came from Rockefeller Foundation).
   ¹⁹⁶
   

1. Maurice Strong, who had been an oil man for most of his career and would become president of
   Petro-Canada, was a friend of David Rockefeller’s and
   had been a board member of Rockefeller Foundation 1971–76, with later skeptic Frederick Seitz).
   ¹⁹⁷
   Strong’s conference advisor was Nelson Rockefellers’s friend Carroll L. Wilson.
   

1. The chairman of the American delegation, Russell Train (chairman of Conservation Foundation), was a close friend and mentor of Laurance Rockefeller.
   ¹⁹⁸
   

1. Laurance Rockefeller was also part of the U.S. delegation, leading the group Human Settlements.
   

1. Barbara Ward
   and René Dubos (Rockefeller University) wrote the framework for the conference titled,
   Only One Earth: The Care and Maintenance of a Small Planet
   (through IIEA, funded by the Ford Foundation and the World Bank).
   ¹⁹⁹
   

1. Ward was also a personal friend of Nelson Rockefeller. In 1967 she was appointed Albert Schweizer Professor of International Economic Development at Columbia University, established by Nelson when he was governor of New York.
   ²⁰⁰
   

Survival of Spaceship Earth

Just before the conference, the film
Survival of Spaceship Earth
premiered, featuring John D. Rockefeller III and Rockefeller-associated Maurice Strong, Barbara Ward, René Dubos, Dr. Margaret Mead, Walter O. Roberts, and nuclear chemist Dr. Harrison Brown of the Manhattan Project.
²⁰¹

Just like
Future Shock
, this film flashed a series of frightening images, including of “dead” dummies in polluted water and children without limbs (portrayed as victims of pollution when in fact they were known victims of the drug Thalidomide, offered to pregnant women in the late 1950s and banned from 1961). The primary message of the film was that we were destroying the environment (“we” as in us ordinary people, not the corporations that had created urban sprawl, motor dependency, overconsumption, deforestation, and environmental pollution).

Developing nations were also a problem. Barbara Ward urged them not to repeat the mistakes of the industrialised countries. Instead, she explained, their development would need careful planning and guidance in order to manage their urbanisation and industrialisation in a more controlled way.

Lastly, there were too many people on the planet. In the film, John D. Rockefeller III (‘Mr Population’) was interviewed, reiterating how President Nixon in 1969 had taken the population issue very seriously and initiated the Rockefeller Commission on Population (led by John D. III himself).

***

The Report of The Commission on Population Growth and the American Future
contained 50 proactive measures to halt population growth in the U.S.:

1. offering family planning services and voluntary sterilisations;
   

1. providing public and private child care;
   

1. mandating sex education in schools;
   

1. legalising contraceptives and abortion (even for teenagers);
   

1. facilitating adoptions;
   

1. affording equal rights for women and for children born out of wedlock;
   

1. supporting better integration of minorities and the poor; and
   

1. creating Government departments, agencies, committees, and councils for tracking and managing population growth.
   ²⁰²
   

On March 27, 1972, the report was presented
to President Nixon by the Rockefeller Commission. Nixon – who had earlier been open to such ideas – realised, however, the strong opposition he would face from churches and conservative groups and, being well aware that fertility rate was already declining, he rejected the report. He emphasised that abortion was unacceptable as a means of population control and that contraceptives for teens would weaken the family structure.
²⁰³

***

Immediately after the interview with John D. Rockefeller III in
Survival of Spaceship Earth,
clips of poor and pregnant African or African American women, newborn babies and starving children of different ethnicities were flashed at the viewer, while some of the Rockefeller Commission’s above proposals were being read out by the narrator.

Despite just having cited the Commission’s recommendation that laws prohibiting abortion be liberalised, that Government funds be made available to cover abortion services, and that abortion be covered in health insurance, the narrator specifically points out – seemingly as a
direct address
to President Nixon – that the Commission “
never
advocated abortion as a means to control population.” The sequence ends with the narrator staging an ominous voice, as if this was the end of the world:

The Commission’s proposal has now been
rejected
.

Immediately thereafter, a gun is fired point blanc at the viewer, followed by a clip of new-born brown baby with blood on it. New shot, new clip of the baby. This shocking imagery is repeated 6 times in rapid succesison.
²⁰⁴

***

On June 17, 1972, the day after the Stockholm Conference, the first Watergate arrests were made, which two years later would lead to President Nixon’s resignation.

5. CRISIS AND OPPORTUNITY

Population growth, energy shortages, environmental pollution, food scarcities, and the possibility of climate change now raise basic questions about the capacity of the planet to sustain a qualitative life for its inhabitants. How these issues, which are fuelling the competition for natural resources and also are posing new trade and balance of payment problems, are handled will have a decisive influence on the future of world order.
(Rockefeller Foundation, Annual Report 1974)

POLITICAL BREAKTHROUGH

S
oon opportunities would arise to realise the Rockefeller brothers' ambitions for the world. Nelson was getting closer to the ultimate political power, while youngest brother David worked diligently in the background. During the next few years, world events would take a dramatic turn. This was also true for the family itself, with a power struggle on the horizon.

European Management Forum

In 1971, Professor Klaus Schwab (1938–) founded the
European Management Forum (EMF), which in 1987 was renamed World Economic Forum. Focus areas from the start were “
future challenges" and “corporate strategy and structure.”

In January 1973, the third annual European Management Forum symposium was held in Davos, Switzerland, sponsored by Prins Bernhard of the Netherlands and the European Commission and gathering participants from European transnational corporations such as Shell Oil, Unilever, and
Philips to discuss closer cooperation between leading corporations in Europe and the rest of the world. At this meeting, p
articipants agreed on ethical guidelines for how to solve problems at a global level, resulting in
The Davos Manifesto
.
²⁰⁵
Club of Rome chairman Aurelio Peccei held a speech summarising the conclusions from
Limits to Growth
(1972). The world was in need of an effective management in order to handle its environment and resources (the crisis described by Peccei would soon
arrive)
.
²⁰⁶

Within a few decades, European Management Forum/
World Economic Forum
would evolve into one of the world’s leading global fora, with the power to influence political agendas and reshape the world
(see Chapter 11).

In 1980,
European Management Forum instituted a prize to mark the Forum’s first decade. Henry Kissinger – who had been Schwab’s
supervisor when
studying
for his Master of Public Administration at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University – was the natural choice for the prize,
“
for his achievements in strengthening international cooperation.”
²⁰⁷

World Trade Center

Meanwhile, on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, the efforts to strengthen international cooperation intensified.

In April 1973, the World Trade Center on South Manhattan was inaugurated. It was a symbol to the emerging globalisation and the growing dominance of the United States on the world arena.

In 1960 David Rockefeller had proposed that a world trade and financial center be built in New York. He managed to persuade the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to build the iconic twin towers World Trade Center 1 and 2.

The building project was initiated in 1968, after David’s brother Nelson, Governor of New York, had secured the necessary permits.

The whole complex would take nearly three decades to finish and the twin towers (dubbed ‘David & Nelson’ by the press) became the highest skyscrapers in the world at that time. They included offices for over 50,000 people and used as much electricity as a city of 400,000 inhabitants, with air conditioning alone equating to the energy consumption of all fridges in a city of one million, David bragged in his autobiography.
²⁰⁸

The Trilateral Commission

A few months later, in July 1973, David Rockefeller and Harvard professorn Zbigniew Brzezinski founded the Trilateral Commission (TriCom), with Carroll L. Wilson (MIT and Atomic Energy Commission), and Gianni Agnelli (Fiat and Club of Rome).
²⁰⁹
Henry Kissinger was also a founding member and became a member of the Executive Committee after leaving his position as Secretary of State in early 1977.

TriCom was created from David Rockefeller's vision of expanding the transatlantic cooperation of another private elite club, the Bilderberg Group, to regions beyond Europe and North America.
The Pacific–Asian became the third region, represented initially only by Japan but later other Eastern nations were also invited.
²¹⁰
David Rockefeller became president of the North American division, while the European division was led by Club of Rome member Max Kohnstamm.

Initial funding came from David Rockefeller personally, Ford Foundation, Lilly Endowment, and from Kettering Foundation.
²¹¹
The Trilateral Commission would later be funded by RBF, Rockefeller Foundation, and other philanthropies and corporations such as William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Exxon Corporation, Mobil, IBM, and Cargill.

The goal of the Trilateral Commission was to create consensus around the solutions to the problems identified in its analyses, in areas such as international trade, the environment, law enforcement, population control, and foreign aid. Inspiration came from Henry Kissinger’s and Nelson Rockefeller’s Special Studies Project.

The philosophy was influenced by Brzezinski's book
Between Two Ages
(1970), which described the emergence of a society undergoing a transformation towards a unified global community ruled by an “enlightened” technocratic elite.

The international equivalents of our domestic needs are similar: the gradual shaping of a community of the developed nations would be a realistic expression of our emerging global consciousness; concentration on disseminating scientific and technological knowledge would reflect a more functional approach to man’s problems, emphasizing ecology rather than ideology; both the foregoing would help to encourage the spreading of a more personalized rational humanist world outlook that would gradually replace the institutionalized religious, ideological, and intensely national perspectives that have dominated  modern history. (Zbigniew
Brzezinski)
²¹²

This ideology was clearly linked to the ideals of the Club of Rome, and to those of Brzezinski’s inspiration, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
²¹³

According to David Rockefeller, the sharpest minds in the world should be given the authority to manage its future problems. TriCom members were handpicked by David from top political and financial circles of the U.S., Europe, and Japan.
²¹⁴
TriCom was offered as a private forum to meet, exchange ideas – and be influenced.
²¹⁵
Soon, TriCom members would occupy leading positions both in the U.S. Presidential Administration and in the European Community, including Presidents of the European Commission such as Roy Jenkins and Jacques Delors.
²¹⁶

In the coming decades, both the Trilateral Commission and the Club of Rome would play key roles in establishing Rockefeller’s transnational climate agenda and TriCom's reports would successfully come to affect the direction of world politics.

Origins of the Chinese Wonder

Meanwhile, the foundation was laid for China’s emergence as an economic super-power. The Trilateral Commission and David Rockefeller played a substantial part in this, too. David had a special gift for making valuable contacts all over the world and, according to friends and collegues, for persuading almost anyone to cooperate with his plans.

D. R. made you feel important. He would listen to your stories, and what is more important is that he would remember your stories. (John M. Foregach, Yale University)

David can put anyone at ease and work his way into their kind of sphere of confidence and comfort and he uses that ability to sort of then bring people together under kind of his flag or umbrella of safety. (Richard Parsons, Chairman and CEO, Time Warner Inc.)
²¹⁷

In 1970, at a press conference in Singapore for Chase Manhattan Bank, David Rockefeller mentioned that it would be a logical next step to establish some form of contact with the People’s Republic of China. In his memoirs, he later wrote that he had a feeling that the Chinese leaders took note of this remark. The following year, Henry Kissinger went to Beijing for secret negotiations with the regime. This opened for a state visit by Nixon to Beijing in 1972.

The meeting resulted in a gradual thawing of the frosty relations between the two countries.
²¹⁸
In June 1973, David Rockefeller himself, with his wife Peggy and representatives of Chase Manhattan Bank, also visited China.

He got to meet Prime Minister Zhou Enlai and secured an agreement making Chase Manhattan the first American correspondent bank of the Bank of China after the Communist takeover. In an article in
New York Times
, August 1973, David described his impressions of China. He was impressed by “the sense of national harmony”. Despite the oppression and the bloody cultural revolution (1966–79) he praised Chairman Mao’s leadership and social experiment as “one of the most important and successful in human history.”

Whatever the price of the Chinese Revolution, it has obviously succeeded not only in producing more efficient and dedicated administration, but also in fostering high morale and community of purpose.
²¹⁹

However, 30 years later he wrote that it was a shock to learn about the crimes agains humanity that were subsequently revealed.

David would return another five times for meetings with the Chinese leaders. This included meetings where he represented as chairman of the Council on Foreign Relations and which were hosted by the Chinese People’s Institute for International Affairs (PIFA). The People’s Republic of China was now ready for dramatic changes.

The Bank of China opened an account in the Chase HQ in New York, while Chase arranged a China Forum to which more than two hundred American corporations were invited. Chinese businessman Rong Yiren, chairman of China International Trust and Investment Corporation (CITIC) became David Rockefeller’s most important ally in opening China up to foreign investments.

A meeting was also set up in 1982 between the Trilateral Commission and China’s new leadership (Deng Xiaoping) to consolidate the economic collaboration (later, Chinese members would be included in the organisation).

David Rockefeller and Chase Manhattan Bank thus became China’s gateway into the United States – and vice versa.

The Door to China had swung open, and Chase was waiting on the other side to walk through it.
²²⁰
(David Rockefeller,
Memoirs
, 2002)

In 1979, the U.S. established full diplomatic relations with China. That same year, Rockefeller Foundation also established its presence in China. Soon thereafter, the one-child policy was adopted.

David had opened the door to a China which, during the coming decades, would evolve into a technocratic model state for the rest of the world – a fusion between socialist central planning and capitalist efficiency and a center for the world’s manufacturing industry.

Triggering Event: The 1973 Oil Crisis

The Trilateral Commission appeared just as the first oil crisis ground the world to a halt. The concerns raised in previous years now seemed to come true and the world got a taste of the untenability of relying so heavily on oil. The public was alarmed, even if the crisis was political and had nothing to do with a real shortage.

While President Nixon was preoccupied with the Watergate scandal, the diplomat, Trilateral, National Security Advisor, and newly appointed Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, was deeply involved in the events leading up to the Yom Kippur War (October 6–23, 1973) between Israel and a coalition of Arab countries. This resulted in an oil embargo towards the West from the Arab world, causing an immediate oil shortage at the consumer end and crippling world economy. The price of oil went up by a staggering 400 per cent.

Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Oil Minister of Saudi Arabia at the time, and officially in charge of coordinating the oil embargo of the Arab nations, revealed in an astonishing interview in
The Guardian
, nearly three decades later, that
the Americans,
with Kissinger as its master architect, was behind the price hike.

‘I am 100 per cent sure that the Americans were behind the increase in the price of oil. The oil companies were in real trouble at that time, they had borrowed a lot of money and they needed a high oil price to save them.’ (…) ‘King Faisal sent me to the Shah of Iran, who said: “Why are you against the increase in the price of oil? That is what they want? Ask Henry Kissinger – he is the one who wants a higher price”.' (Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, January 2001)
²²¹

The question of world energy resources had previously been discussed at Aspen's second international environmental workshop The Environment, Energy, and Institutional Structures, organised with IIED in 1972. The idea came from oil magnate Robert O. Anderson, and was funded by the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.
²²²
Representatives from the Conservation Foundation were also involved. The outcome of the workshop was that an overview of global energy-related problems was developed. It also produced a report,
World Energy, the Environment, and Political Action
(1973).
²²³