The upcoming British referendum on whether to stay in the European Union (EU) represents the culmination of a long term project by the United States to destroy the concept of national sovereignty in the Old World and replace it with a supranational entity with ironclad links to Washington.. Whether that longstanding ambition has succeeded will be decided on June 23 – which is why President Barack Obama made a special trip to the Mother Country to give them a little lecture on the alleged evils of nationalism and the goodness of the EU.

Some were shocked at the brazenness of such an aggressive intervention into a purely British affair by a sitting US President, but to anyone who knows the real history of the “European idea,” Obama’s pushiness is hardly surprising.

The European Union was born in the bosom of the Central Intelligence Agency: that’s what declassified documents tell us about the origins of the European project and its progress since the Truman administration.

In the midst of the cold war, the United States and its European allies conceived the EU as the political concomitant of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). The basic idea was to counterpose a European identity against the “internationalist” ideology of the Soviets and their increasingly powerful fifth columns in the West. The “European Movement,” which was and still is the “grassroots” organization that relentlessly pushed for the creation of a European super-state, was financed to the tune of $1 million a year by the “American Committee for a United Europe” (ACUE), which was founded by Allen Dulles, who was at that point chairing a committee tasked with looking at how to organize the nascent CIA, and William “Wild Bill” Donovan, who had been head of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), forerunner of the CIA. Allen Dulles, who would become a CIA’s director, was the Vice President. On the board was Walter Bedell Smith, the CIA’s first director, as well as number of spook-ish figures who played various roles in the American intelligence community at one time or another. Prominent politicians such as Herbert Lehman and businessmen, such as Conrad Hilton, were involved, as well as left-leaning labor leaders, such as David Dubinsky and the ex-Communist Jay Lovestone. CIA agent Tom Braden served as Executive Director.

Covert US financial support to the European federalist movement never amounted to “less than half” of the various groups’ budgets. The money was funneled through the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and other private conduits. The head of the Ford Foundation was Paul Hoffman, a former OSS official who played a major leadership role in the ACUE.

The ACUE was organized at the behest of Winston Churchill, although support for European federalism in Britain was limited to a small minority. European unity was seen by Washington and Churchill as the indispensable glue that would hold NATO together and provide resistance to what they saw as an imminent threat of a Soviet takeover. Yet the British contingent, centered in the Conservative Party, began to pull back when they felt the project was moving too far, too fast, and this almost led to a public split that was, however, eventually papered over by the Americans.

The bulk of support came from the non-Communist left on the Continent, and was closely linked to the CIA’s support for noncommunist left elements in an effort to battle the Kremlin’s allies in France and Italy. The Social Democrats and other leftists were enthralled with the idea of the Schuman Plan, a scheme cooked up by French foreign minister Robert Schuman, that would put the production and sale of French and German steel and coal under the direction of a central authority: the arrangement would then be opened up to other European countries. This was the precursor to the vast apparatus of economic planners and regulatory agencies that today make up the EU’s notorious bureaucracy, which controls every aspect of economic life in the member states.

The ACUE agitated for the Marshall Plan – a giant serving of globaloney that funneled billions of American taxpayer dollars to postwar Europe – sponsoring speaking tours by pro-unity European politicians and cultural figures, and putting direct pressure on Congress to release the funds. Radio programs, print media, and all forms of mass communication were utilized – at taxpayers’ expense – to push the “European idea.” An academic section was established, which promoted all sorts of “research” projects pushing not only Euro-federalism but also “world federalism,” i.e. the concept of a world government.

The secrecy and authoritarianism that characterizes the ruling style of the Eurocrats was prefigured in the memos sent back and forth between US government officials, the ACUE, and their European sock puppets. As the Telegraph reports:

“A memo from the European section, dated June 11, 1965, advises the vice-president of the European Economic Community, Robert Marjolin, to pursue monetary union by stealth. It recommends suppressing debate until the point at which ‘adoption of such proposals would become virtually inescapable.’”

Indeed, the American sponsors of this “European” project directed every aspect of the pro-unity Astro-turf “movement.” As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard points out, “Papers show that it treated some of the EU’s ‘founding fathers’ as hired hands, and actively prevented them finding alternative funding that would have broken reliance on Washington.”

All of this ancient history should give us a new perspective on current events. When thousands of demonstrators showed up in the streets of Kiev waving EU flags, and demanding the ouster of President Viktor Yanukovych, there was nothing spontaneous about it. The “deep state” covert agencies of the Western powers were in it up to their necks, of that we can be sure. Even though the Soviet Union is long gone and the Russian “threat” to Europe is largely a figment of the neoconservative imagination, the function of the EU as the political complement to NATO is today clearer than ever.

The fact of the matter is that it is far easier for Washington to control Europe with one central authority at the reins than it is dealing with dozens of separate sovereignties. Indeed, the very idea of national sovereignty as the foundation of international relations is something the empire-builders of the Beltway, and their bag-men in the capitals of Europe, would like to do away with. For this time-honored idea stands in the way of the “democracy”-promotion crusades we have been engaged in since the end of the cold war, and contradicts the left-internationalist doctrine of the “responsibility to protect” that has sparked wars from the Balkans to Libya and Syria.

Globalism is the name of the game for our deracinated elites, and nationalism – of any kind, including the American variety – is the enemy. That’s why we’re seeing both the Obama administration and the ostensibly “Conservative” Party leadership of the British state undertake a combined assault against Euro-skepticism and the threat of “xenophobia.” If you don’t want to see your country absorbed into the Euro-Borg, then you’re a “racist,” a right-wing extremist, and a hate-criminal to boot.

Yet the EU never had popular support in the countries it now lords over: that’s why they had to stage multiple elections until they got the “right” result in France, Ireland and Denmark. Which brings to mind that State Department memo about creating an aura of the inescapable around the EU project.

Britain, which has been the most resistant to European “integration,” has never had a referendum, and this upcoming test is crucial to the survival of the EU. If the Brits vote to exit, the CIA’s longest-running campaign, begun under the administration of Harry Truman, will have ended in failure.

The globalist idea is a central canon of the War Party. For if national borders are to be erased – and the very concept of national sovereignty relegated to the dust heap of history – then the job of justifying Washington’s wars is made much easier. The claim that there is a “higher” principle operative in international affairs than the inviolability of national borders – “humanitarianism,” “democracy”-promotion, women’s rights, gay rights, etc. – gives the War Party a green light to rampage over the earth to its heart’s content.

What they want is a world empire with no borders – and June 23 is a day when they could very well be turned back.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.