Direction of history

There is a direction in history towards closer integration. Humanity has been integrating via ideas, trade and politics for thousands of years. Religions and ideologies unify different tribes under the same ideas. Trade and money enable cooperation between strangers. Empires govern several peoples with varying beliefs.¹ We all benefit. New ideas, like better treatments for diseases, can help us all. States succeeded in dramatically reducing violent deaths within their borders. And without trade, you wouldn’t have most of the items you have now. Still, these developments have principal beneficiaries:

• Priests and intellectuals benefit the most from religions and ideologies.
• Merchants and bankers benefit the most from trade and money.
• Rulers and bureaucrats benefit the most from government.

Today, a global elite of business people, politicians, career bureaucrats, engineers, journalists, scientists, opinion makers, writers and artists runs the world. They often have more in common with each other than their compatriots.¹ Doing business has become a global affair, even for small businesses, as supply chains cover several countries. The same applies to governments. Issues like trade, global warming, disease control, organised crime and economic management require international cooperation.

In the old world order, states were sovereign, but if there will ever be a new world order, there will be no sovereign states. The New World Order conspiracy theory alleges that the elites conspire to make that happen. The elite’s actions are often responses to situations. England instituted a central bank to promote confidence in the currency and financial markets. Not much later, the Industrial Revolution took off. After nationalism had levelled Europe in World War II, the elite’s response was to promote European cooperation. Those who made these decisions believe they were doing something good.

It is better to say that things are the way they are for a reason. Elites are often the experts in their fields. Bankers may have conspired to establish a central bank in the United States, as alleged in the book The Creature from Jekyll Island, but in a competition between societies, those based on uncompetitive ideas get left behind. Had there been a competitive benefit to not having a central bank, we wouldn’t have had them. More likely, the opposite is the case. That is why conspiracy theories tend to be poor guides for decision-makers. The world has grown complex, so we depend on experts and elites.

Globalisation

Globalisation has a long history. Around 3,000 BC, there was already trade between Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley. This trade involved spices, metals, and cloth. An even longer-distance trade, the silk trade, between China and Rome commenced 2,000 years ago. Later on, Arab traders brought spices from the Indies to Europe. Trade transcends borders and religions. In the Middle Ages, Muslim traders accepted gold coins from Christian states, invoking Christ and his virgin mother. Christian leaders would even mint coins with the Arab inscription, ‘There is no god except Allah, and Muhammad is Allah’s messenger.¹ Needless to say, Christian traders gladly accepted them also.

Traders judge coins by gold content, not by their religious message. It is why Jesus said that you cannot serve both God and money. Money is more powerful than religion. It is hard to build an order, but it is easy to corrupt it. It is not a coincidence that Judas betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver. About 500 years ago, Portuguese explorers set sail for Africa to find new trade routes to the Indies. It was the beginning of a new phase of European colonisation and trade, integrating the world. With the Industrial Revolution, globalisation went into a higher gear. Today, we have become the servants of a system driven by money and trade. In 1848, Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto,

Because the bourgeoisie needs a constantly expanding market, it settles and establishes connections all over the globe. Production and consumption have taken on a cosmopolitan character in every country. That is true for materials and for intellectual production, as national sovereignty and isolationism become less and less possible to sustain. The bourgeoisie draws even the most barbaric nations into civilisation and compels all nations to adopt its mode of production. It creates a world after its own image.

Money has become the god of our time. In the 20^th century, the European nations fought two devastating world wars, allowing the United States to become the dominant power in the West. At the same time, the Soviet Union, the utopian alternative of state planning, imposed communism on the countries it occupied. It was the beginning of the Cold War, where both sides supported armed groups and governments in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The United States also supported European integration and military cooperation in the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO). The United Nations (UN) were another American initiative. Some of the most well-known subdivisions of the UN are the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the World Bank. These institutions were part of the US-dominated world order. There was a plan behind this.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) played a crucial role in these developments. The CFR is a think tank of prominent figures in business, science and politics in the United States. The CFR started in 1921 when the US was isolationist and European colonial powers dominated the world. In the 1930s, the CFR received funds from the Rockefeller Foundation and Ford Foundation. During World War II, the CFR, in cooperation with the US government, devised plans for a new world order after the war, which became an order run by the US financial and political elites.

The planners of the CFR believed that protectionism had worsened the Great Depression and caused World War II. Prosperity was the key to political and economic stability in Europe. They believed open markets would promote democracy and the United States would benefit from prosperity elsewhere. After the war, European countries received loans to rebuild their economies. By helping other countries, the United States hoped to gain economic and political influence.

Under the guise of fighting communism, the CIA organised coups in Iran, Guatemala, Cuba and Chile, among others, and fought wars in Korea and Vietnam. The Cold War led to the build-up of the so-called Military Industrial Complex, comprising the armed forces, military contractors, intelligence services, think tanks, and university research projects.

The US dollar reserve status, established at the Bretton Woods conference, underpinned the American-dominated post-war world order. The US planners believed stable exchange rates would promote trade and implemented fixed exchange rates. The gold-backed US dollar became the international reserve currency. This system remained in place until 1971, when the gold backing of the US dollar ended.

Market forces determined exchange rates from then on, but the US dollar remained the primary reserve currency. The absence of the gold backing allowed the United States elites to harvest the productivity of other nations. That began in earnest when the US started running deficits and kept the US dollar attractive with high interest rates, a tactic known as Reaganomics. It allowed Americans to live a good life while their industries lost competitiveness due to the demand for the US dollar, raising its value. The US empire gradually became a financial empire, propped up by the US dollar reserve status.

Take-off

The post-war world envisioned in Washington became a reality. It was a remarkable feat of geopolitical planning and another step in globalisation. Globalisation switched into a higher gear in recent decades. The outcome was not primarily a deliberate plan by the elites, even though they drove the process by promoting neo-liberal reforms. The recent globalisation is the outcome of economic, political and technological developments:

• the rise of neoliberalism around 1980;
• the fall of communism around 1990;
• personal computers and digital data storage;
• optical fibre and the Internet, making it possible to connect people around the globe;
• global standards for data exchange, making it possible for every computer to exchange data with every other computer;
• new software enabling cooperation between people and businesses around the globe.

Neoliberalism began to take shape in the 1970s and has dominated Western politics from the 1980s onwards. In the 1970s, Western economies were stagnating. Unions had a lot of power. Foreign competition increased and undermined the competitiveness of corporations. The welfare state became a burden on state finances. As a result, many businesses faltered. Meanwhile, the left dominated the intellectual climate. Business-sponsored think tanks began pressing for deregulation, lower taxes, and less welfare.

The 1971 Lewis Powell Memo was a watershed moment. It spoke of an attack by the left on the American system of free enterprise. It argued that businesses bring wealth and employment and pay taxes.² From then on, businesses organised themselves for political influence via think tanks, which changed the political climate. Governments left more to markets, curtailed labour rights, reduced welfare, and lowered taxes for corporations and wealthy people. Income inequality increased while jobs moved to low-wage countries.

The end of communism further spurred globalisation. The Berlin Wall fell in 1989. A few years later, the Soviet Union dissolved, and the European Union enlarged. From then on, there seemed to be no alternative to capitalism.³ Countries like China, India and Russia realised they had to compete in the global markets and transformed their economies accordingly. India now specialises in services and information technology. China became the global industrial powerhouse. Russia specialised in energy exports.

In the 1980s, the personal computer entered many homes. Businesses also used computers, but exchanging data between computers was still arduous. Computers weren’t interconnected, and software suppliers used different data formats.³ The Internet changed that. Using a personal computer and an Internet connection, you could view any web page anywhere. Investors realised the Internet would change the world, and they could make enormous profits. It resulted in a massive over-investment in everything related to the Internet during the 2000 Internet bubble. One area of over-investment was in optical fibre, so the price of data transport dropped dramatically.³

Standards for data exchange emerged. Software suppliers began to focus on facilitating the interaction, competition and cooperation of people around the globe, effectively enabling the world to turn into a global village where people everywhere can participate. It transformed the way people cooperate. The traditional way of organising is top-down via command and control. The new way of organising is via teams of people sharing responsibility for a task or a product, making more complex cooperation possible. China and India developed and integrated into the global economy.

As businesses used cheaper overseas labour, workers in developed nations faced job insecurity and lagging wages. On the other hand, hundreds of millions of people in China and India saw their living standards improve. Globalisation may have been the best development aid ever. But the real winners are the oligarchs all around the world. A 2019 Oxfam report points out that the world’s 26 wealthiest people own as much as the poorest 50%.⁴ A 2022 Credit Suisse Wealth Report states that 1.2% of adults own 47.8% of the world’s wealth, while 53.2% must do with 1.1%.

Global cooperation

Since World War II, Western elites have promoted international cooperation and globalisation. Most elite members believe they act for the benefit of humankind and that we need more international cooperation or even a global government. A single world government can end war forever. The main problem is who will control that order? You can’t trust the elites to act in our interest. Conspiracy theorists claim that they operate behind the scenes in secret gatherings like the Bilderberg Conferences. The British politician Denis Healey, who attended these Bilderberg Conferences, told The Guardian,

To say we were striving for a one-world government is exaggerated, but not wholly unfair. Those of us in Bilderberg felt we couldn’t go on forever fighting one another for nothing, killing people and rendering millions homeless. So, we felt that a single community throughout the world would be a good thing.⁵

The elite is, first and foremost, a social network, and these gatherings are not the place where they make the decisions. The elites gathered at the Bilderberg Conferences have discussed the European Union in advance. It helped the elites agree on European cooperation and integration. After two devastating world wars, most Europeans felt that it was a good plan. The American banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller also found himself in the crosshairs of conspiracy theorists. Rockefeller worked for the Trilateral Commission, which promoted cooperation between Western Europe, the United States, and Japan. In response to the accusations, Rockefeller wrote in his memoirs,

Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterising my family and me as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world 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.⁶

The internationalist liberal Western elites have cooperated to create a global world order, believing that a single world order is preferable to national self-determination. Nationalism is the primary cause of warfare. Few of us aspire to be at the mercy of the elites, who benefit the most from a more integrated global political and economic structure, glued together by trade, finance and government. Due to the pressure of competition, it is hard to change the world order, because it is the outcome of competition. You can step out and live in a self-sufficient community, but that doesn’t change the system.

Latest revision: 22 August 2025

1. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. Yuval Noah Harari (2014). Harvil Secker.
2. Powell Memorandum. Lewis F. Powell Jr. (1971).
3. The World Is Flat 3.0. Thomas Friedman (2007). Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
4. World’s 26 richest people own as much as poorest 50%, says Oxfam. The Guardian (2019).
5. Who pulls the strings? (part 3). The Guardian (2001).
6. Memoirs. David Rockefeller (2003).