Pan-American Community Part of "Greater America" Vision?

Old-thinker news | Oct. 16, 2007

By Daniel Taylor

L. Ronald Scheman, founder of the Pan American Development foundation and Senior Advisor to Henry Kissinger's Kissinger McLarty Associates has a vision of a Greater America modeled around the European Union. Writing in The Globalist, an online publication, Scheman proposes a Pan American Energy Community. Scheman writes,

"In thinking about the emergence of an American energy community, the lessons from the European Coal and Steel Community in the 1950s offer useful insights into the importance of small steps to realize greater goals."

Scheman hopes to learn from the architects of the European Union, Jean Monnet and Robert Schuman.

"To him, the strategy was clear. 'This proposal [for a coal and steel community] has an essential political objective: to make a breach in the ramparts of national sovereignty, which will be narrow enough to secure consent — but deep enough to open the way toward the unity that is essential to peace [and we might add, for our purposes in the Americas, for development].'"

Ultimately, by using trade agreements and energy policy as a means to an end, a "Greater America", presumably a system of regional rule, would emerge. Scheman elaborates,

"Just as the European Coal and Steel Community was a catalyst for the European Union, so a new American energy community joining public and private sectors can fuel the building of Greater America.

It would also become the anchor of the proposed free-trade agreement of the Americas."

As reported by Aaron Dykes of Jonesreport.com, Condoleezza Rice recently spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations hosted Organization of American States event on October 9th. The subject was that of the Pan-American Community.

Rice stated at the conference,

"The founding ideal of our Pan-American Community, borne across many centuries and carried by us still, is the hope that life in the hemisphere would signify a break with the Old World, and a new beginning for all mankind... and the creation of a new system of international politics, based on mutual respect and cooperation among independent nations."

Is the Pan-American Community spoken of by Rice the first "Baby steps" toward Scheman's "Greater America"?