U.S. "Grand Area" Planning [video=youtube_share;3DP2dDuuMV8]http://youtu.be/3DP2dDuuMV8[/video] Council on Foreign Relations: Studies of American interests in the war and the peace During World War II, U.S. planners understood that the United States was going to emerge as a world-dominant power and they organized and met in order to deal with this situation. The 'War and Peace Studies' group of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the U.S. State Department declared that in the postwar world the United States would seek "to hold unquestioned power:" Council President Norman Davis observed in May 1942 that: General George V. Strong expressed the view that: Memorandum E-B19 concluded with a declaration on the essentials of United States foreign policy, summarizing: The blueprint that they developed is what they called "Grand Area" planning. The Grand Area was a region that was to be: At a minimum, the Grand Area was to include the Middle East, the Western Hemisphere and the Far East. The purpose of the Council's recomendation was:
The CFR's Economic and Financial group outlined the "Main Lines of Approach" for "US Economic War Aims" within the Grand Area. They defined the "National Interest" as: On Latin America and the Caribbean in particular, they observed that: A major element was: The group also stressed "The role of war aims statements", explaining that: The CFR had proposed that economic means would play a key role in integrating the Grand Area into a U.S.-dominated "mercantilist" world system. The Economic and Financial group decided that international economic and financial institutions were needed to assure the proper functioning of the proposed "world economic order." Recomendation B-23 (July 1941) stated that worldwide financial institutions were necessary for the purpose of: The Council's preferred model was as even more grandiose-one world economy dominated by the United States: The Grand Area was considered a core region, which would be extended to include more countries. As one of the planners said in May 1941: The planners and analysts warned that substantive democracy, populism, and independant development within the Grand Area would threaten the "stability" of the "world economic order" and concluded that:
