JFK & the CFR: The Fight for a Pax Americana

Why Administration Insiders Killed Kennedy’s Plans for Peace

In 1960, John Kennedy ran for president as a hardline Cold Warrior and at that time he was. In fact he used the briefings he received from the intelligence community to outmaneuver his rival Richard Nixon in the areas of foreign policy and military affairs. Knowing the United States was already involved in clandestine operations in Cuba, Kennedy stated that we needed to take a hard stance on Fidel Castro because the Soviet satellite posed an immediate threat to the U.S. Nixon felt reluctant to speak on Cuba since it would have amounted to a violation of his security clearance, especially since he was personally involved in anti-Castro efforts such as Operation 40.

It was not until he became president that Kennedy fully grasped the gravity of the situation. Nuclear war — an exchange of missiles that would cause an end to civilization as we know it — was possible (and at some times probable) at any moment. Not only that, but what he grew to understand was that there were a number of men in his administration that seem to be actively working to make that happen. From Cuba to Vietnam, his administration proved to be more than willing to take actions that could inevitably lead to a nuclear exchange.

To fill the ranks of his administration, Kennedy was advised to and gladly sought out members of the Council on Foreign Relations as they had supposedly been “the best and brightest” on matters of domestic and foreign affairs. Some of them would even come to be known as “The Wise Men.” Some of the administration’s most vital positions would be filled by CFR members: Adlai Stevenson as UN Ambassador, Dean Rusk as Secretary of State, Henry Cabot Lodge as Ambassador to Vietnam, Allen Dulles as Director of Central Intelligence, McGeorge Bundy as National Security Advisor, Nicholas Katzenbach as Deputy Attorney General, C. Douglas Dillon as Treasury Secretary. Kennedy would also seek counsel from CFR giants Dean Acheson and John J. McCloy.

Unfortunately, there was one basic principle on which Kennedy and these members of his administration disagreed: the concept of peace. Specifically, the idea of a Pax Americana where peace would be enforced throughout the world by the United States, made possible by the military-industrial complex about which Eisenhower warned the country in 1960. JFK made clear his thoughts on the matter in one of the finest speeches ever given by a president at American University in June, 1963, only months before his murder:

What kind of a peace do I mean? What kind of a peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and build a better life for their children — not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women — not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.

The aims of John Kennedy were in complete opposition to those of the Council on Foreign Relations. John McCloy had joined the CFR prior the U.S. entering WWII. Even before the war the CFR had a grand plan for the world as stated in McCloy’s biography The Chairman:

The Council was not particularly interested in propaganda, or publicity campaigns to counter widespread isolationist sentiment. That was a function for less elite organizations, some of which Council members would soon help to fund. The Council wanted to influence the War Department, not the American people. They wanted to engage in war-planning, and planning for a postwar Pax Americana.

It should be noted that this was in 1940, sometime before the “surprise attack” at Pearl Harbor. After the war, as George Kennan was developing the idea of “containment” that would lead to wars both in Korea and Vietnam (that would cost over 58,000 American lives and countless Vietnamese), McCloy was actively working on his plan for a Pax Americana.

He did not envision war with the Russians. But he believed that by forcibly exercising American power, by imposing a “Pax Americana,” Washington would help the postwar world become more receptive to American values of democracy and free-market economic principles.

Kennedy was not only strongly opposed to a Pax Americana, he was working closely with Soviet Premier Nikita Kruschev to end the Cold War by the end of his second term in office. Ending the Cold War however was not in the very least a priority of those working directly for the president.

At the very beginning of the Cold War, in 1946, John J. McCloy unabashedly wrote his earliest mentor, Philadelphia lawyer George Wharton Pepper, “In the light of what has happened, I would take a chance on this country using its strength tyrannously….We need, if you will, a Pax Americana, and in the course of it the world will become more perceptive to the Bill of Rights viewpoint than if we do no more than devoutly wish for peace and freedom.” This imperial vision of a beneficent America attempting to impose its values on a hostile world became the rationale for a prolonged Cold Warm fought not only in Europe, but throughout the developing world.

Not only did this vision lead to disastrous nuclear brinksmanship, it also led to the juggernaut known as the military-industrial complex, as the book goes on to state.

It also required an enormous investment of American resources in building a military establishment the likes of which the world has never seen. As Henry Stimson’s lieutenant during World War II, McCloy was instrumental in mobilizing the American economy to wage total war. This may have been his greatest service to the country. But when the war ended, he and his peers in the American foreign policy establishment provided the rationale for continuing this mobilization, this time to build a peacetime national security state.

Just as his own biography states, “The costs of building this military and intelligence apparatus have been staggering,” and Dwight Eisenhower gravely warned the nation of this in his exit speech.

Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry. American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well. But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment. We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every State house, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

Yet Eisenhower’s advice to “guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought of unsought, by the military-industrial complex” would go unheeded, and after Kennedy’s assassination on 11/22/63, the Council on Foreign Relations was finally able to achieve a Pax Americana “enforced on the world by American weapons of war.”

“In your hands, fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our cause.” — JFK. Do you think the military-industrial complex was involved in the plot to kill JFK? What is your opinion of a Pax Americana? Please leave me a comment and let me hear your thoughts. If you enjoyed this article, please click the share button and give it a clap or two.