The Dulles Brothers - a System of Global Governance

Influential in American Foreign Policy and the global political economy for over four decades, the Dulles Brothers, Allen and Foster, reached the pinnacles of their power in the 1950s as Director of the CIA and Secretary of State respectively.

They arguably played a critical role in not just fighting the Cold War, but starting and escalating the Cold War in a way that likely would not have happened without them. They very directly deposed foreign leaders from Guatemala to Iran and were instrumental in leading the US into the Vietnam War. A fundamental principal of their approach to US foreign policy was a belief that the world is and should be run by a cadre of international elites.

As Foster told the International Chamber of Commerce in Berlin in 1937, "It is a well ordered domestic economy which provides the greatest assurance of peace, and the problem of international peace is but an extension of the problem of internal peace." They were founding members of the Council on Foreign Relations whose one-word Latin motto "ubique," meaning "everywhere," spoke volumes of their belief that it was only through international capitalism tied into all workings of society in all corners of the globe that international peace and stability would be achieved.

None of the above is necessarily flawed reasoning. But regardless one's worldview, a governing system left unchecked in the hands of humans will become corrupt. It is only by a set of values that transcend the governors and the governed that a system will be just. As James Madison, America's fourth president said, "You must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself."

In the name of effective (probably even "just" in their eyes) global governance, the Dulles brothers perpetrated fraud and supported cronyism of epic proportions. They made policy that directly benefited their business clients and their friends or made it in retribution for slights of their clients and their friends. Those on the right side became incredibly wealthy and powerful in the process. Those on the wrong side were deposed and bankrupted or on a grander scale died in unjust wars or suffered poverty through a flawed system.

Then is the right answer to work to remodel global political economic systems around universal truths? A topic for another discussion, but this I believe is the definition of a society and the reason societies have been birthed and the way they have been governed from time in memorial. Yet we still are where we are today, so there must be something more to the answer that we have yet to fully grasp..

Much of the thinking above is derived from Stephen Kinzer's "The Brothers: John Foster Dulles, Allen Dulles, and Their Secret World War"