Meet Robert Pastor: Father of the North American Union

Robert Pastor intends to give away U.S. sovereignty to a newly forming North American Union exactly as he gave away the Panama Canal to Panama during Jimmy Carter’s presidency.

As we are taught in grade school, George Washington is the Father of our nation. If the North American Union comes into existence as the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) asserts, then we all better get prepared for a new hero. Robert Pastor is the person most likely to be proclaimed the father of the North American Union, a designation consistent with his decades-long history of viewing U.S. national interests through the lens of an extreme leftist almost anti-American political philosophy.

Dr. Pastor’s early professional career involved a working association with the Institute for Policy Studies (IPS). Here he participated on the Ad Hoc Working Group on Latin America, which produced a 1977 report, “The Southern Connection: Recommendations for a New Approach to Inter-American Relations,” arguing for the U.S. to abandon our anti-communist allies in Latin America in favor of supporting “ideological pluralism,” a code word for the revolutionary socialist forces taking hold in Latin America, including the communist Sandanistas and other revolutionary terrorist groups that were developing in countries such as El Salvador. Author David Horowitz’s discoverTheNetworks.org identifies the IPS as “America’s oldest leftwing think tank” that “has long supported Communist and Anti-American causes around the world,” with a place for KGB agents from the Soviet embassy in Washington “to convene and strategize.”

From February 1975 to January 1977, Dr. Pastor was executive director of the Linowitz Commission on U.S./Latin American Relations. The Linowitz Commission supported President Carter’s decision to negotiate a treaty to turn over the Panama Canal to Panama. Pastor left the Linowitz Commission to join become director of the Office of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs in the National Security Council in the Carter White House. There Pastor served as Carter’s “point man” in getting the Senate to narrowly vote for the Carter-Torrijos Treaty on April 18, 1978, despite staunch objections from conservative politicians including Ronald Reagan.

In December 1993, President Bill Clinton nominated Pastor to be U.S. ambassador to Panama. Pastor’s nomination was approved by a 16-3 vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and his confirmation looked virtually certain. The nomination failed, however, and was withdrawn by the administration in February 1995, after then-Sen. Jesse Helms (R.-N.C.) swore to prevent a Senate vote on Pastor’s nomination. Helms, who had vehemently opposed the turn-over of the Panama Canal, placed much of the blame squarely on Pastor, declaring when he opposed Pastor’s nomination that Pastor “presided over one of the most disastrous and humiliating periods in the history of U.S. involvement in Latin America.” Helms also claimed that Pastor bore responsibility for what Helms saw as “a Carter administration cover-up of alleged involvement by Nicaragua’s Sandinista government in arms shipments to leftist rebels in El Salvador.”

Dr. Pastor has also co-authored a 1989 book with his long-time friend, Jorge G. Castañeda, who began his career as a member of the Mexican Communist Party. Castañeda, a life-long admirer of the radical left, published in 1998 an admiring biography of the revolutionary “hero” Che Guevara. Castañeda, like Pastor, has sought to work in government positions to implement his theories, not satisfied to be a political scientist who writes books and teaches at universities. Castañeda too has mixed his career as a government employee by alternating time spent as an author of more than a dozen books and a university professor at various times on the faculties of the University of California at Berkeley, Princeton University, and the New York University.

Castañeda was an aggressively pro-illegal immigration foreign minister when he accompanied President Vincente Fox in the U.S. in 2001. Those were the days when Vincente Fox was declaring himself to be the president of 100 million Mexicans at home and 23 million Mexicans in the United States. Castañeda also attended with President Fox on a three-day state visit to pre-9/11 Washington. There in a joint statement on Sept. 6, 2001, the two leaders announced a bilateral “Partnership for Prosperity,” which after 9/11 evolved into the trilateral summit statement of a “Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America,” announced in Waco, Tex., on March 23, 2005. Castañeda is probably best remembered for telling in 2001 a group of mostly Latino union workers that Mexico was going to press for “the whole enchilada,” intending to legalize all illegal Mexicans aliens in the U.S.

In his pressing enthusiasm for realizing the NAU, Robert Pastor argued in a 2004 article in CFR’s Foreign Affairs, entitled “North America’s Second Decade,” that the United States would benefit by giving up U.S. national Sovereignty. “Countries are benefited,” he wrote, “when they changed these [national sovereignty] policies, and evidence suggests that North Americans are ready for a new relationship that renders this old definition of sovereignty obsolete.”

Characteristically, Dr. Pastor has seen the U.S. as a North American bully that needs to be restrained, for the good of the region and possibly even for the good of the world. On Oct. 21, 2003, he testified to the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere affairs along these lines:

A new approach to the Americas needs to begin with some humility and a willingness to bridge the post-Iraq gap. The United States needs to realize that its power has limits and obligations. U.S. power can compel other governments to take our agenda seriously, but if we brandish it or ignore other views, we unintentionally invite resistance or simply no cooperation. To achieve our goals in the region (and elsewhere), we need to listen more and lecture less.

In 2004, Dr. Pastor declared his support for the presidential campaign of John Kerry. Dr. Pastor’s 19-page curriculum vitae (c.v.) on the website of American University where he is currently a faculty member documents that Dr. Pastor has served as an adviser to every Democratic Party presidential candidate for three decades, since he first supported Jimmy Carter in 1976.

Dr. Pastor was the co-chair of the May 2005 CFR report, “Building a North American Community,” argued that the Security and Prosperity Partnership signed by President Bush with Mexico and Canada on March 23, 2005 should become by 2010 a “North American economic and security community, the boundaries of which would be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter.” According to his published c.v., Dr. Pastor was the “principal editor” of this CFR report as well as the vice chair of the task force that produced it.

The May 2005 CFR task force report made clear that the borders between the U.S. and Mexico and between the U.S. and Canada would be erased, with the only border to be protected to be around North America. As the report stated on page 3, the boundaries of the North American Union “will be defined by a common external tariff and an outer security perimeter within which the movement of people, products, and capital will be legal, orderly, and safe.” The “outer security perimeter” referred specifically to the border around Canada, the U.S., and Mexico -- such that the borders between these countries would be virtually erased. Dr. Pastor left no doubt about his view of U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada in his June 2005 testimony to the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee:

Instead of stopping North Americans on the borders, we ought to provide them with a secure, biometric Border Pass that would ease transit across the border like an E-Z pass permits our cars to speed through toll booths.

Note that Dr. Pastor’s reference was to “North Americans,” a term he meant to replace the current designations of “Mexicans,” “Americans,” and “Canadians,” much as he also was arguing for the NAU to replace the USA.

Dr. Pastor himself proclaims that the May 2005 CFR task force report on which he was vice chair and principal editor was a “blueprint” for the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America (SPP.gov). In his June 2005 testimony to the U.S. Senate, Dr. Pastor informed the Foreign Relations Committee of this link:

Entitled “Building a North American Community,” the report offered a blueprint of the goals that the three countries of North America should pursue and the steps needed to achieve these goals.

The CFR report, under Robert Pastor’s direction, recommended expanding the North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) into a North American military command, creating a North American Development Fund to help pay for Mexico’s economic development, establishing a North American Union Court to resolve disputes, establishing a North American Advisory Council to serve as the NAU executive branch, and creating a North American Inter-Parliamentary Group to act as NAU lawmaker. These recommendations derive directly from Robert Pastor’s many published books and papers, as well as his extensive professional testimony to Congress and groups such as the Tri-Lateral Commission. His most comprehensive statement of his views on creating the NAU by transforming NAFTA into a political entity were expressed in his 2001 book, "Toward a North American Community", where he also advocated the creation of a common NAU currency, the Amero, as first proposed by Canadian economist Herbert Grubel.

Critics who argue that the NAU is a “conspiracy theory” are well advised to take a hard look at Robert Pastor. With U.S. policy toward Latin America, Dr. Pastor first approached the issue in writing (for the radical IPS, as we have noted), next as a university professor, and finally as a government official. Had John Kerry won the 2004 presidential election, Robert Pastor most likely would have emerged with a government position from which he could have pursued his NAU agenda. Given the re-election of George Bush, Dr. Pastor has surfaced within the CFR, an influential “think-tank” NGO whose history of impacting U.S. policy would suggest the CFR impact on SPP.gov could easily be more than academic.

After years of helping to bring Jimmy Carter's vision into reality, Bob Pastor leaves the Carter Center Beginning a new life
Don Melvin. The Atlanta Constitution. Atlanta, Ga.: Apr 23, 1998. pg. A.16.16
Subjects: Social services, Resignations, Personal profiles
People: Pastor, Robert A
Companies: Jimmy Carter Presidential Center
In photographs of Jimmy Carter --- conferring in the Oval Office with National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, discussing election monitoring with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega or negotiating in Haiti to avert a U.S. invasion --- there often appears in the background the image of a small, dark-haired, bespectacled aide. Bob Pastor's face may not be instantly recognizable. But behind some of Jimmy Carter's most famous successes lies a lot of Bob Pastor's work.
When Carter was president, Pastor helped negotiate the Panama Canal treaties. When, as ex-president, Carter wanted to observe Panamanian elections, Pastor went to secure permission. (In a rage, Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega leapt onto a table and began throwing things at Pastor but eventually allowed Carter and his team to come.) And when Carter persuaded Daniel Ortega to accept election results and yield power peacefully, launching a new era in Nicaraguan politics, the moment was one for which Pastor had worked, in one capacity or another, for many years.
Pastor commands wide respect in foreign policy circles. In 1994, President Clinton nominated him to be ambassador to Panama, but the nomination was blocked by Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, who said he would prevent a vote. Denied and disappointed, Pastor soldiered on at the Carter Center. When Carter, former Sen. Sam Nunn and Colin Powell, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, negotiated an agreement under which Haiti's military regime left the country without a fight, Pastor was the man who stayed behind to make sure the deal stuck, even as U.S. troops flew toward the Haitian coast. More recently, Pastor traveled to villages in China, working to bring a few sparks of democracy to that vast Communist tinderbox. But the era of appearing in the background of Jimmy Carter photographs is coming to an end.
Now 51 and restless, Pastor announced last week that he will leave the Carter Center this fall to write and . . . well, begin the rest of his life. "Not only will I miss Bob in a professional capacity," Carter said, "but as a personal friend."
There are two questions only time will answer: How effective will Carter continue to be, particularly in Latin American affairs, without Pastor? And what will become of Pastor's career without the Carter name behind him?
Giving in to wanderlust
Pastor grew up in New Jersey, the son of a bricklayer, but heard the siren song of international affairs early on. He spent his junior year of college in England; that summer, the summer of '68, he traveled all over Europe. He was in Czechoslovakia in August trying to stop Soviet tanks from rolling in; he got out, fortunately for him, before they did.
"There's just a personal excitement from living abroad," he said. "I mean, the amount of knowledge one can consume in living in a completely alien environment was so high, so large, that there was almost something intoxicating about it."
He returned to Lafayette College, in Easton, Penn. But at Christmastime of his senior year, he hitchhiked to Tampa and got a job clearing snakes out of the hold of a banana boat --- "the worst job of my entire life," he said. Then, in a move that is pure Bob Pastor, he jumped ship in Bluefields, Nicaragua, hitchhiked north to Guatemala --- and worked on his senior honors thesis on the Guatemalan revolution. That combination of intellectualism and adventurism, of writing and hands-on experience, would mark the rest of his life.
After college, he served in the Peace Corps in Borneo, where his contact with the outside world consisted of the New York Times Week in Review delivered four or five months late --- "which wasn't bad," he said, "because it still put me about 20 years ahead of the people I was living with." The year was 1972; Pastor hitchhiked through Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, right in the middle of the Vietnam War. His parents, of course, thought he was nuts. "They were not very supportive, let alone enthusiastic," he said. "But they were glad I came back."
Adventurous path to Washington
Armed with a Ph.D. from Harvard, Pastor moved quickly into the councils of power. In his 20s, he was executive director of the Commission on U.S.-Latin American Relations. In 1977, at the age of 29, he was working in the White House, having been picked by Brzezinski to be director of Latin American and Caribbean Affairs on the National Security Council. "He was a real beaver," Brzezinski recalled. "He worked late hours. Sometimes I would call him at 3 a.m. and say, 'Get your (expletive) over here.' And he would."
Pastor proved he could not only develop ideas but put them into practice. When he was with the Commission on U.S. Latin-American Relations, it offered 28 recommendations for Latin American policy; in the White House, Pastor helped implement 27 of them. But there were failures, too. In 1979 and '80, Carter and Pastor tried without success to mediate a democratic transition of power in Nicaragua. Ten years later, they would get a second chance. Still in all, it was an exciting time for a young man. Pastor served every day of the Carter administration. "My greatest fear, when I finished those four years, was that I might never find a job as interesting as that again," he said. "And that was almost true."
Advocate of fair elections
Pastor joined the Carter Center as a fellow in 1986 and racked up an impressive list of achievements. The Council of Freely Elected Heads of Government, a group of 30 current and former heads of state from the Americas that has lent weight to Carter's efforts to monitor elections and encourage democracy, began as a memo from Pastor to Carter. Pastor secured permission from Noriega for Carter's team to monitor elections in Panama in 1989 --- elections Carter criticized as fraudulent. His work was important in heading off a U.S. invasion of Haiti in 1994.
Perhaps his proudest achievement came in Nicaragua in 1990. Invited in 1989 to a celebration of the 10th anniversary of the Sandinista rise to power, Pastor had a message for President Ortega: " 'If you want to convince the world that you're serious about a free election, there's an easy way to do it.' "He said, 'How?' "I said, 'Why don't you invite the person who denounced Noriega's election as a fraud --- Jimmy Carter?' "
Ortega accepted. But Pastor had learned from the experience in Panama, when Noriega had refused to meet Carter as the election results came in. The Panamanian election had been exposed as dishonest, but a peaceful transfer of power had not been achieved. So Pastor had a message for Carter: " 'If you're serious about trying to influence and mediate this electoral process, you're going to have to invest a lot of time. We can't come down here on the day of the election, or a week before. You're going to have to come down here at least six or eight times. You're going to have to actively engage in mediating every single problem.' And he agreed to do that. 'You have to,' I said to him, 'get to know Ortega so well that on election night you can tell him, if he loses, that he's got to respect the results.' "
When the results showed the Sandinistas losing, Ortega --- in contrast to Noriega --- met with Carter. "I have won a presidential election and lost one," Carter told Ortega, "and losing wasn't the end of the world." Ortega yielded. It was the first time in Nicaraguan history that power had been transferred peacefully. And it brought to fruition the effort Pastor and Carter had launched from the White House 10 years before.
Toward a better world
Pastor is an academic, a teacher, the author of 11 books --- but he has never been content with only that. He has always wanted not merely to theorize, but to effect change in people's lives. "He has this ability to believe you can change the world," said Bill Foege, former executive director of the Carter Center. "So he seems undaunted by any size problem. He wades right into it."
"He's very idealistic," said Pastor's wife, Margy, whom he met in the office of Rep. Bella Abzug and who is the daughter of former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. "He really is one of those old types that still has, despite the fact that we read so much negative stuff about the world today, idealism."
People familiar with the operations of the Carter Center say Pastor's work has been indispensable. He and Carter have had a mutually beneficial relationship. Pastor's influence has been increased because he was able to use Carter's name. Carter benefited from Pastor's savvy, energy and deep knowledge of Latin America.
"When he came to the Carter Center, it took on a whole new aura," said Douglas Brinkley, who has just finished writing a book on Carter's work as ex-president. "I don't think President Carter's post-presidency would be anywhere near what it has been without Bob." Carter himself said Pastor's "encyclopedic knowledge of this hemisphere" has been "of crucial value." But it would be wrong, Brinkley said, to think that "Bob Pastor steers the bicycle that is Jimmy Carter."
And Marion Creekmore, former director of programs at the Carter Center, said the center will continue to do good work, because, "What President Carter does, and his successes, depend first and foremost on himself and his wife."
No one doubts that Pastor will do well, also. At 51, he knows he can no longer wait for an ambassador's post, especially as long as Jesse Helms, who opposed the Panama Canal treaties, remains in the Senate. His days of typing late into the night so that Carter can hold a morning press conference, or running down the hall with an agreement Carter is waiting to sign, are drawing to a close.
Brinkley has no doubt that one day, whether four years from now or 10 or 12, Bob Pastor will be an ambassador. Pastor says he might like to head a non-governmental organization --- which is to say a development, trade or policy organization like CARE or Amnesty International or the Carter Center --- but he is not sure exactly what he'll do.
"I just think there are points in life where people have to change, they have to go on, they have to do something different," says Margy Pastor. "Now it's time for him, having hit the age he's hit, to say, 'hey.' He just needs to find new places to roost."

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