Trilateral Commission


The Trilateral Commission is a non-governmental, nonpartisan discussion group founded by David Rockefeller in July 1973 to foster closer cooperation between Japan, Western Europe and North America.

History

Founding

The Trilateral Commission was formed in 1973 by private citizens of Japan, North American nations, and Western European nations to foster substantive political and economic dialogue across the world. The idea of the Commission was developed in the early 1970s, a time of considerable discord among the United States and its allies in Western Europe, Japan, and Canada.
To quote its founding declaration:
Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Rockefeller advisor who was a specialist on international affairs, left Columbia University to organize the group, along with:
Other founding members included Alan Greenspan and Paul Volcker, both later heads of the Federal Reserve System.
The organization's records are stored at the Rockefeller Archive Center in North Tarrytown, NY.

Meetings

The Trilateral Commission initiated its biannual meetings in October 1973 in Tokyo, Japan. In May 1976 the first plenary meeting of all of the Commission's regional groups took place in Kyoto, Japan. Since the ninth meeting in 1978, plenary meetings have taken place annually. Besides annual plenary meetings, regional meetings have also taken place in each of the Asia Pacific Group, the European Group and the North American Group. Since its founding, the discussion group has produced an official journal, Trialogue.

Membership

Membership is divided into numbers proportionate to each of the think tank's three regional areas. North America is represented by 120 members. The European group has reached its limit of 170 members from almost every country on the continent; the ceilings for individual countries are 20 for Germany, 18 for France, Italy and the United Kingdom, 12 for Spain and 1–6 for the rest. At first Asia and Oceania were represented only by Japan, but in 2000 the Japanese group of 85 members became the Pacific Asia group, comprising 117 members: 75 Japanese, 11 South Koreans, 7 Australian and New Zealand citizens, and 15 members from the ASEAN nations. The Pacific Asia group also included 9 members from China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. The commission now claims "more than 100" Pacific Asian members.
The Trilateral Commission's bylaws deny membership to public officials. It draws its members from politics, business, and academia, and has three chairpersons, one from each region. The current chairs are former U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs Joseph S. Nye, Jr., former head of the European Central Bank Jean-Claude Trichet, and Yasuchika Hasegawa, chair of Takeda Pharmaceutical Company.

Leadership

As of June 2020
NamePosition
Jean-Claude TrichetEuropean Chairman
Meghan O'SullivanNorth American Chairman
Akihiko TanakaAsia Pacific Chairman
Alexandra PapalexopoulouEuropean Deputy Chairman
Herminio Blanco MendozaNorth American Deputy Chairman
Barry DeskerAsia Pacific Deputy Chairman
Carl BildtEuropean Deputy Chairman
Carole TaylorNorth American Deputy Chairman
Jin Roy RyuAsia Pacific Deputy Chairman
David Rockefeller Founder
Peter Sutherland Honorary European Chairman
Georges BerthoinEuropean Honorary Chairman
Paul Volcker North American Honorary Chairman
Yasuchika HasegawaAsia Pacific Honorary Chairman
Paolo MagriEuropean Director
Richard FontaineNorth American Director
Hideko KatsumataAsia Pacific Director

Notable members

Social critic and academic Noam Chomsky has criticized the commission as undemocratic, pointing to its publication The Crisis of Democracy, which describes the strong popular interest in politics during the 1970s as an "excess of democracy". He described it as one of the most interesting and insightful books showing the modern democratic system not to really be a democracy at all, but controlled by elites. Chomsky says that as it was an internal discussion, they "let their hair down" and talked about how the public needs to be reduced to its proper state of apathy and obedience.
Critics accuse the Commission of promoting a global consensus among the international ruling classes in order to manage international affairs in the interest of the financial and industrial elites under the Trilateral umbrella.
In his 1980 book With No Apologies, Republican Senator Barry Goldwater suggested that the discussion group was "a skillful, coordinated effort to seize control and consolidate the four centers of power: political, monetary, intellectual, and ecclesiastical... the creation of a worldwide economic power superior to the political governments of the nation-states involved." Right-wing groups such as the John Birch Society and conspiracy theorists such as Alex Jones have also promulgated this idea.
Conspiracy theories
Some conspiracy theorists believe the organization to be a central plotter of a world government or synarchy. As documented by journalist Jonathan Kay, Luke Rudkowski interrupted a lecture by former Trilateral Commission director Zbigniew Brzezinski in April 2007 and accused the organization and a few others of having orchestrated the 9/11 attacks to initiate a new world order.
Neo-conservative pundit Charles Krauthammer sardonically alluded to the conspiracy theories when he was asked in 2012 who makes up the "Republican establishment", saying, "Karl Rove is the president. We meet every month on the full moon... the Masonic Temple. We have the ritual: Karl brings the incense, I bring the live lamb and the long knife, and we began... with a pledge of allegiance to the Trilateral Commission."

Publications

Books
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