ABSTRACT

The debate on and clarification of the first version of the concept of the Grand Area and the possible interaction with a Nazi Europe contributed to narrowing the divergences in outlook among the main study groups of the Council on Foreign Relations. The prolonged debate over the Grand Area as a working concept was proof of the groups' concerted interests. A series of documents was drawn up and discussed in full by the Economic and Financial Group, based on the notes on the "Economic Trading Blocs." The debate on the Grand Area took on new meaning.19 By that time, certain opinions had begun to emerge that presaged the philosophy of the "New World Order," a new economic, political, and institutional order, at the heart of which would be the United States itself. William Diebold's supplement showed the first signs of the declining importance of self-sufficiency, the ideological mainstay of the protectionist politics of the 1930s, from the Smoot-Hawley Act on.