Trilateral Commission

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Trilateral Commission

The Trilateral Commission is a non-governmental, non-partisan discussion group founded by David Rockefeller in July 1973 to foster closer cooperation among the United States, Europe and Japan.

History

Sensing a profound discord between the nations of North America, Europe and Japan, the Trilateral Commission was founded to foster substantive political and economic dialogue across the world. To quote its founding declaration:

• "Growing interdependence is a fact of life of the contemporary world. It transcends and influences national systems...While it is important to develop greater cooperation among all the countries of the world, Japan, Western Europe, and North America, in view of their great weight in the world economy and their massive relations with one another, bear a special responsibility for developing effective cooperation, both in their own interests and in those of the rest of the world."
• "To be effective in meeting common problems, Japan, Western Europe, and North America will have to consult and cooperate more closely, on the basis of equality, to develop and carry out coordinated policies on matters affecting their common interests...refrain from unilateral actions incompatible with their interdependence and from actions detrimental to other regions... [and] take advantage of existing international and regional organizations and further enhance their role."
• "The Commission hopes to play a creative role as a channel of free exchange of opinions with other countries and regions. Further progress of the developing countries and greater improvement of East-West relations will be a major concern."

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a professor at Columbia University and a Rockefeller advisor who was a specialist on international affairs, left his post to organize the group along with:

• Henry D. Owen (a Foreign Policy Studies Director with the Brookings Institution)
• George S. Franklin
• Robert R. Bowie (of the Foreign Policy Association and Director of the Harvard Center for International Affairs)
• Gerard C. Smith (Salt I negotiator, Rockefeller in-law, and its first North American Chairman)
• Marshall Hornblower (former partner at Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering)
• William Scranton (former Governor of Pennsylvania)
• Edwin Reischauer (a professor at Harvard)
• Max Kohnstamm (European Policy Centre)

Other founding members included Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker, both later heads of the Federal Reserve system.

The Trilateral Commission initiated its biannual meetings schedule in October 1973 in Tokyo. In May 1976, the first plenary meeting of all of the Commission's regional groups took place in Kyoto. It was through these early meetings that the group affected its most profound influence, the integration of Japan into the global political conversation. Before these exchanges, the country was much more isolated on the international stage. Since its founding, the discussion group has produced an official journal called Trialogue.

Membership

Membership is divided into numbers proportionate to each of the think tank's three regional areas. The North American continent is represented by 107 members (15 Canadian, seven Mexican and 85 U.S. citizens). The European group has reached its limit of 150 members from almost every country on the continent. At first, Asia and Oceania were represented only by Japan. However, in 2000 the Japanese group of 85 members expanded itself, becoming the Pacific Asia group, composed of 117 members: 75 Japanese, 11 South Koreans, seven Australian and New Zealand citizens, and 15 members from the ASEAN nations (Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand). The Pacific Asia group also includes nine members from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

While Trilateral Commission bylaws exclude persons holding public office from membership [2], the think tank draws its participants from political, business, and academic worlds. The group is chaired by three individuals, one from each of the regions represented. The current chairman are former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Joseph S. Nye, Jr., former Attorney General of Ireland and current chairman of Goldman Sachs International Peter Sutherland, and Chief Corporate Adviser, Fuji Xerox Company, Ltd. Yotaro Kobayashi.

Criticisms

Sensing its ability to foster international cooperation, a number of prominent thinkers and politicians on the far left and far right have criticized the Trilateral Commission. In his book With No Apologies, former conservative Republican Senator Barry Goldwater lambasted the discussion group by suggesting it was "a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power: political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical...[in] the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved." On the far left, controversial academic Noam Chomsky criticized a report issued by the Commission called The Crisis of Democracy for suggesting that there was an "excess of democracy" in the 1960s and defending "the ideology of the liberal wing of the state capitalist ruling elite". Chomsky also argues that the group had an undue influence in the administration of Jimmy Carter.

Conspiracy Theories

While the Trilateral Commission is only one of many similar think tanks on the right and left, many notable conspiracy theorists believe the organization to be a central plotter of a world government. As documented by journalist Jonathan Kay, 9/11 conspiracy theorist Luke Rudkowski gained notoriety in April 2007 by interrupting a lecture by former Trilateral Commission director Zbigniew Brzezinski and accusing the organization and a few others of having orchestrated the attacks of September 11th to initiate a new world order. Organizations like the John Birch Society and conspiracy theorists such as American paleoconservative Alex Jones also regularly tout this idea. These fringe opinions have reached mainstream conservative thought through voices such as Mike Thompson, Chairman of the Florida Conservative Union, who said: "[The Trilateral Commission] puts emphasis on interdependence, which is a nice euphemism for one-world government."

See also

• Internationalism (politics)
• Rockefeller family

Further reading

• Brzezinski, Zbigniew (1970). "America and Europe". Foreign Affairs. 49 (1): 11–30. doi:10.2307/20037815. {{cite journal}}: Unknown parameter |month= ignored (help) (Includes Brzezinski's proposal for the establishment of a body like the Trilateral Commission.)
• Brzezinski, Zbigniew (1970). Between two ages; America's role in the technetronic era. New York: Viking Press. OCLC 88066.
• Crozier, Michel; Huntington, Samuel; Watanuki, Joji (1975). The Crisis of Democracy: Report on the Governability of Democracies to the Trilateral Commission. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0814713653.
• Gill, Stephen (1991). American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission. Cambridge Studies in International Relations. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-42433-X. OCLC 246854587.
• Kay, Jonathan (17 May 2011). Among the Truthers: A Journey Through America's Growing Conspiracist Underground. New York: Harpers. ISBN 0062004816.
• Rockefeller, David (2002). Memoirs. New York: Random House. (Contains a brief history of the Commission's founding, composition of members and overall influence.)

External links

• Official website
• Current Membership
• Is the Trilateral Commission the secret organization that runs the world? (Fact check against conspiracy theories from The Straight Dope, 1987)