What comes ‘after America’?

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D.C. insid­ers drop hints of eras­ing bor­ders, uni­fy­ing with Mexico

Gen. David Petraeus

NEW YORK – In recent weeks, both Gen­er­al David Petraeus and House Minor­i­ty Leader Nan­cy Pelosi, D‑Calif., have woven into pub­lic speech­es the theme of com­bin­ing the Unit­ed States, Cana­da and Mex­i­co into a sin­gle, North Amer­i­can Union.

After Amer­i­ca, there is North Amer­i­ca,” explained Petraeus, the for­mer U.S. mil­i­tary com­man­der and for­mer head of the CIA, to a pan­el enti­tled “After Amer­i­ca, What?” held at the Mar­garet Thatch­er Con­fer­ence on Lib­er­ty on June 18, 2014, host­ed by the Cen­ter for Pol­i­cy Stud­ies in Great Britain.

In his pre­sen­ta­tion to the con­fer­ence, Petraeus pro­claimed the com­ing of the “North Amer­i­can decade,” a vision he explained was found­ed on the idea of putting togeth­er the economies of the Unit­ed States, Cana­da and Mex­i­co, some 20 years after the cre­ation of North Amer­i­can Free Trade Agree­ment, or NAFTA.

In each of these economies there are four rev­o­lu­tions going on,” Petraeus con­tin­ued, nam­ing the fol­low­ing: an ener­gy rev­o­lu­tion, in which the Unit­ed States is lead­ing the world in the pro­duc­tion of nat­ur­al gas and shale oil, com­bined with Canada’s enor­mous resources in the Alber­ta tar sands and Mex­i­co open­ing up the state-owned Pemex to inter­na­tion­al oil com­pa­nies; an infor­ma­tion and tech­nol­o­gy rev­o­lu­tion led by Sil­i­con Val­ley; a man­u­fac­tur­ing rev­o­lu­tion; and a life sci­ences revolution.

The forces unleashed by these four rev­o­lu­tions with all three coun­tries being as high­ly inte­grat­ed as they are, with Cana­da and Mex­i­co being our two top trad­ing part­ners, I believe we can argue that after Amer­i­ca comes North Amer­i­ca,” Petraeus explained.

The syl­labus for a sim­i­lar­ly themed class Petraeus teach­es at the City Uni­ver­si­ty of New York enti­tled “The Com­ing (North) Amer­i­can Decade(s)” includes the fol­low­ing course descrip­tion: “This sem­i­nar will seek to answer the ques­tion, ‘Are we on the thresh­old of the new (North) Amer­i­can decade(s)?’ To do so, we will: sur­vey the glob­al eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion; exam­ine the ongo­ing ener­gy, man­u­fac­tur­ing, life sci­ences, and infor­ma­tion tech­nol­o­gy ‘rev­o­lu­tions’ in the Unit­ed Sates; assess the impli­ca­tions each rev­o­lu­tion has for the U.S. and the glob­al econ­o­my; and deter­mine the poli­cies, prac­tices, reg­u­la­tions, and laws need­ed to enable the U.S. to cap­i­tal­ize on the oppor­tu­ni­ties pre­sent­ed by the rev­o­lu­tions and there­by to con­tribute to the glob­al eco­nom­ic recov­ery from the Great Recession.”

An exam­i­na­tion of the assigned read­ing spec­i­fied in the course syl­labus shows Petraeus has derived much of his think­ing from glob­al eco­nom­ic sources in try­ing to project the future of North Amer­i­ca in com­pe­ti­tion with major region­al forces includ­ing Chi­na, the EU, as well as Rus­sia, India and Brazil.

Nancy Pelosi

Pelosi sees U.S. and Mex­i­co as “one nation”

Speak­ing at the U.S. bor­der with Mex­i­co on June 28, Pelosi addressed the cri­sis of thou­sands of unac­com­pa­nied chil­dren and teenagers from Cen­tral Amer­i­ca ille­gal­ly cross­ing into the Unit­ed States.

Refer­ring to the Unit­ed States and Mex­i­co, Pelosi said, “This is a com­mu­ni­ty with a bor­der going through it. And this cri­sis – that some call a ‘cri­sis’ – we have to view as an opportunity.

What we just saw was so stun­ning. If you believe as we do that every child, that every per­son, has a spark of divin­i­ty in them and is there­fore wor­thy of respect, what we saw in those rooms was [a] daz­zling, sparkling array of God’s chil­dren, wor­thy of respect. So … we have to use the cri­sis – that some view as a cri­sis, and it does have cri­sis qual­i­ties – as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to show who we are as Amer­i­cans, that we do respect peo­ple for their divin­i­ty and worth,” she said.

Cham­pi­on of North Amer­i­can Union dies

In Jan­u­ary, WND report­ed that Robert Pas­tor, a long-time pro­fes­sor of inter­na­tion­al rela­tions and direc­tor of the Cen­ter for North Amer­i­can Stud­ies, died at the age of 66 after a three-year bat­tle with cancer.

On Oct. 31, 2013, just more than two months before he passed away, Pas­tor chaired a con­fer­ence at the Cen­ter for Amer­i­can Stud­ies at Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty enti­tled “The NAFTA Promise and the North Amer­i­can Real­i­ty: The Gap and How to Nar­row It,” a con­fer­ence Pas­tor orga­nized to ful­fill a request made by Vice Pres­i­dent Joe Biden a month earlier.

At the U.S.-Mexico high-lev­el eco­nom­ic dia­logue held on Sept. 20, 2013, at the Mex­i­can Min­istry of For­eign Affairs in Mex­i­co City, Mex­i­co, Biden gave a speech in which he com­ment­ed, “You take a look at the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co and Cana­da, you’d sit there and say, ‘Why? Why isn’t there even more coop­er­a­tion? It’s just so nat­ur­al geo­graph­i­cal­ly, polit­i­cal­ly, economically.”

Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty post­ed on its web­site on Oct. 30, the day before his last inter­na­tion­al con­fer­ence start­ed, Pastor’s last remarks pre­pared for pub­li­ca­tion, includ­ing his vision of NAFTA at a cross­roads near­ly 20 years after being implemented.

As WND report­ed, Pastor’s 2001 book, “Toward a North Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty,” pre­sent­ed an argu­ment that North Amer­i­can inte­gra­tion should advance through devel­op­ing a “North Amer­i­can con­scious­ness” by cre­at­ing var­i­ous insti­tu­tions, includ­ing a North Amer­i­can cus­toms union and a North Amer­i­can Devel­op­ment Fund for the eco­nom­ic devel­op­ment of Mexico.

Pas­tor also was vice chair­man of the May 2005 Coun­cil on For­eign Rela­tions task force report, “Build­ing a North Amer­i­can Com­mu­ni­ty,” which presents itself as a blue­print for using bureau­crat­ic action though tri­lat­er­al “work­ing groups” con­sti­tut­ed with­in the exec­u­tive branch­es of the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co and Cana­da to advance the North Amer­i­can inte­gra­tion agenda.