Chapter 67 "Dangerous" European newcomers

In April 1975, a private internal meeting organized by Chase Manhattan Bank chairman David Rockefeller and Bilderberg Group founder George Ball was held in Tokyo, at which carefully selected policy speakers discussed an a special program.Lord Lowe, chairman of Wahlberg Bank, and a director of the Bank of England were present; David Ormsby Gore, Lord Harlech, who was at the crucial 60 In the Kennedy era, he served as the British ambassador to Washington.Mr. Anthony Tucker, chairman of Barclays Bank, also participated in the secret discussions in Tokyo in April of that year; the Earl of Cromer and George Baring also participated in the meeting. (Bahrain was ambassador to Washington at the time of Kissinger's oil shock, when the U.S. secretary of state recognized his unusually close coordination with British Foreign Office policy).Also present at the key talk in Tokyo was Royal Dutch Shell chairman John Lawton, who was also on the advisory board of Rockefeller's Chase Manhattan Bank.

At an April meeting of Rockefeller's newly formed Trilateral Commission, more than a hundred influential policymakers expressed concern that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and the Republican administration continued to pursue an aggressive foreign policy toward the rest of the world, arguing that the position is very dangerous.Whether it is Europe, developing countries or OPEC countries, Kissinger isolates them one by one in order to "break them one by one", and portrays OPEC as a villain who destroys the economic growth of developing countries, making it for Bill The oil policy of the De Berg Group in 1973 was blamed.

By 1975, Kissinger's naked "thug-style" international diplomacy was very dangerous and was arousing strong opposition from the international community.It is necessary to create a new "image" to convince the world that US hegemony still needs to be maintained.So at the Trilateral Commission meeting in Tokyo in April, almost a year and a half before the 1976 U.S. presidential election, Rockefeller introduced to his influential international friends a man who would become the next president of the United States .The small-town Georgia peanut grower who likes to be called Jimmy Carter is unknown even in America, let alone abroad.For background on the establishment of the Trilateral Commission, see Notes to Chapter 9 of this book.The establishment of this institution was influenced by many parties of the Bilderberg Group, which was an instrument of Anglo-Saxon policy in Western Europe.The Trilateral Commission is trying to adapt to the changed geopolitical landscape that Japan has become an international economic giant.North America, Europe and Japan are three pillars.In Europe, it was a mixed group of factions, including Count Ramsdorf in Germany.Many of the European members of the Trilateral Commission were longtime Rockefeller friends, all old members of his wartime European business network.The absence of fundamental policy differences between Henry Kissinger and Carter, a protégé of Democratic candidate David Rockefeller, is evidenced in several ways.After Kissinger left the administration, Rockefeller nominated him to serve on the Chase Manhattan Bank Advisory Council, and when Brzezinski headed Carter's U.S. foreign policy, he nominated Kissinger to succeed Brzezinski as executive director of the Trilateral Commission. director.

After his appearance at the Tokyo Conference in 1975, liberal media groups such as the New York Times created an unusual public relations image for Carter, who was touted as a vibrant representative of America's "new South." In November 1976, Carter became president of the United States despite suspected election irregularities. Carter had so many members of the Trilateral Commission as his advisors that he was dubbed the "Trilateral President."Not only his vice president, Walter Mondale, but he himself is also a secret backbone member of the Trilateral Organization.And his National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Secretary of State Cyrus Vance, Treasury Secretary Michael Blumenthal, Defense Secretary Harold Brown, Ambassador to the United Nations Andrew Young, along with senior State Department officials Richard Cooper and Warren Christopher, are members of the three-sided club.

President Carter's governing image is to "advocate consultation and abandon confrontation" for the "human rights" of third world countries.He cast himself as an "outsider" of the Washington establishment, but the US government under Carter, along with his electoral committee advisers, pursued a policy of preserving the "American Century" at all costs.Under the guise of "reforming American foreign policy," the Carter administration continued to pursue the basic strategy of "Neo-Malthusism," formulated by Kissinger at the National Security Council under National Security Studies Memorandum 200.Its purpose is to hinder the development of the third world and promote the post-industrial policy of "growth limit theory" to maintain the hegemony of the dollar.In order to justify interference in the internal affairs of third world target countries, "human rights" became a powerful weapon of the Carter administration.

After the oil shock, a serious problem arose that threatened the new Anglo-American "petrodollar monetary system". In 1974, the Commission of the European Community had proposed to the central banks of its member states to use gold to settle the trade settlement balance within the member states of the European Community. The market price standard was about US$150 for an ounce of pure gold.This proposal put forward by Europe will greatly reduce the burden of buying oil for many European countries and will also reduce the impact of the US dollar.For political reasons of maintaining the hegemony of the dollar, the U.S. Treasury strongly insisted that the central bank artificially maintain the exchange rate between the dollar and gold at an artificially low level of $42.22 per ounce of pure gold.The high gold price could have opened the door to large trade relations between the European Community and the two major gold producing countries, South Africa and the Soviet Union.U.S. Assistant Secretary of the Treasury Paul Volcker visited London in the autumn of 1974 and sternly warned those European countries that wanted to pull gold back into the monetary system during the oil crisis not to act rashly.

However, European ideas do not die naturally, but rather the opposite.South Africa's government under John Foster, which relies heavily on imports for its oil, was struggling to keep the country's economy stable at the onset of the oil price boom.At the same time, despite the strict apartheid system at home, South Africa tentatively reached out to African countries to strengthen economic cooperation. Angola is rich in oil, but South Africa has the industrial technology and infrastructure that Angola and other African countries need.The region needs economic investment and foreign trade exports. In late 1974, South African Finance Minister Nicholas Diederichs responded to the debate in Europe by publicly asking central banks to reset the price of gold to market levels.

I have been pressuring the monetary authorities that central banks should be allowed to buy and sell gold at market prices among themselves... Gold in central bank vaults should be repriced; and there will be more money paid to Arab countries; depreciation. At the same time, Germany and Italy initiated a bilateral agreement under which gold would serve as collateral for German loans worth 80% of the current market price ($150/oz).It is clear that there is growing momentum in European countries to discuss how to effectively use gold as an alternative to the dominant dollar standard. But these possibilities for stronger trade and economic ties between continental Europe and South Africa were dealt a devastating blow.Backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba, the Marxist People's Liberation Movement of Angola (MPLA) brought Angola under a regime hostile to Pretoria.In addition, the continuous private sales of official U.S. gold reserves poured into the market in large quantities, which greatly suppressed the world gold price and plunged South Africa's vital mining industry into ever-increasing economic difficulties.Then, in May 1976, riots broke out in the South African town of Soweto.Coincidentally, this riot happened to coincide with the visit of US Secretary of State Kissinger to South Africa.The brutal police crackdown on mobs in Soweto has sparked international political repercussions and made it more difficult for South Africa to forge effective economic ties with European countries.However, after the situation became relatively stable in the ensuing months, the talks continued; the involvement of the world's largest gold producer would be crucial in any effort to stabilize world monetary relations.

In July 1977, the South African business monthly "International Perspective" published an interview report with Jürgen Ponto, an important banker in the Federal Republic of Germany and chairman of Dresdner Bank.In the interview, Ponto laid out his approach to solving the economic and ethnic crisis across southern Africa.Ponto stressed that Europe must play an important role in resolving the African crisis.To do this, Europe must first restore her own economic order after the oil-related economic crisis.In order to do this, Ponto said: the establishment of a stable monetary system must be given priority; as long as a small but economically important region such as the European Community takes the lead in eliminating its own currency chaos, we will Will soon be on the right path to achieve the above goals.

Ponto further elaborated on the significance of European economic development for the whole of southern Africa, including allowing rich African countries such as South Africa, Ivory Coast and Algeria to help the poorest countries develop, "If certain development constraints are removed, they can produce enough for the entire continent. food, jobs and education."Ponto was a personal confidant of South African Finance Minister Nicholas Diederich and his designated successor, Robert Smit.Higher-level discussions have apparently continued between influential European banks and industry and the resource-rich South African government.A potential coalition is emerging that would alter the geopolitical configuration of the entire Anglo-American world, putting New York and London at a distinct disadvantage.

However, on July 31 of this year, in Frankfurt, Jurgen Ponto was assassinated by terrorists who claimed to belong to the Bader-Meinhof gang.Weeks later, in Cologne, Hahns-Martin Schleyer, president of the German Employers' Federation, was kidnapped and killed by the same group.Although the assassins' tracks point east, there is good reason to believe that some powerful Western intelligence system played some role in both assassinations.In this event, the Federal Republic of Germany was plunged into political chaos and fear, unprecedented in the postwar period.The possibility of developing relations with South Africa also disappeared with the killing of Ponto and Schleyer.The attempt to break the dominance of the US dollar has come to an end for now.