ABSTRACT ON THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION 
 
Thesis:  The Trilateral Commission has historically and continues 
to advocate, advise on, and author structures and policies of, 
international cooperation and economic interdependence; this interdependence 
and cooperation is managed by the Commission to protect and expand 
the regional and global interests of Transnational capital. 
 
I.  The Trilateral Commission occupies a unique niche in the 
web of international organizations, by virtue of its membership 
and its mission.  
 
Sklar, Holly, ed. Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission 
and Elite Planning for World Management. Boston: South End 
Press, 1980. 
 
Trilateral Commission. Trilateral Commission Task Force 
Reports 1-7: the Triangle Papers.  New York: New York University 
Press, 1977. 
 
Trilateral Commission. Trilateral Commission Task Force 
Reports 9-14: the Triangle Papers.  New York: New York University 
Press, 1978. 
 
II.  The Trilateral Commission, as an association of the 'elites' 
of Western Europe, the United States and Canada, and Japan,  functions 
in an unofficial advisory role to the IBRD (World Bank), the International 
Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation 
and Development (OECD), and the European Union (EU). 
 
Gill, Stephen. American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission. 
 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 
 
Sklar. 
 
Trilateral Commission. (Both) 
 
III.  The goals and the role of the Trilateral Commission 
are changing in light of the decline of the Communist Bloc, and 
the growth of international cooperation, integration, and interdependence. 
 
Gill. 
 
Sklar. 
 
Stubbs, Richard and Underhill, Geoffrey R.D. Political 
Economy and the Changing Global Order. London: Macmillan, 
1994. 
 
Trilateral Commission (Both) 
 
IV. The transition of the Trilateral Commission from an interest 
group representing economic, governmental, and academic 'elites' 
from the trilateral regions, to a model for the management of 
regional and global cooperation through IGOs and INGOs in a post-national 
framework can be extrapolated given the stated objectives of the 
Trilateral Commission, within the context of an emergent new transnational, 
regionally based arrangement. 
 
 The Trilateral Commission officially coalesced in July 1973, 
as an international organization comprised of the 'elites' of 
Western European, American and Canadian, and Japanese international 
business and banking, government, academia, media, and conservative 
labor, with a preponderance of members drawn from the interlocking 
directorates of large transnational corporations.  The brainchild 
of Carter Administration National Security Advisor and former 
Columbia University Professor Zbignew Brzezinski and strenuously 
promoted by David Rockefeller,  the Trilateral Commission was 
an outgrowth of previous associations of 'elite'-oriented international 
organizations such as the New York based Council on Foreign Relations 
and the European Bilderberg group; however, the Trilateral Commission 
differs significantly from these earlier organizations in that 
Atlanticism was supplanted by Trilateralism 
with the introductory inclusion of Japanese interests into the 
so-called 'club of advanced nations.'  Trilateralism 
began as a response of American hegemonic elites, to the increasing 
economic clout of both Japan and western Europe, and the developing 
nations, vis-a-vis American hegemony in the context of 
the economic crises of the early 1970s, combined with the inherited 
Atlanticist perception of the threat of Communism in general; 
and specifically as a response to the economic emergency originating 
with the abandonment of the Bretton Woods system, President Nixon's 
protectionist New Economic Program, and the OPEC oil embargo of 
1973.  
 
However, The Trilateral Commission has not limited itself 
to the circumscribed role indicated by its origins; on the contrary, 
the mission of the Trilateral Commission has remained evolutionary 
and amorphous, but consistently centered around the goals of promoting 
 an economic and political reality- growing interpenetration 
and interdependence, among the major industrialized countries, 
and indeed on a global scale.  The Trilateral Commission 
has historically and continues to advocate, advise on, and author 
structures and policies of, international cooperation and economic 
interdependence; this interdependence and cooperation is managed 
by the Commission to protect and expand the regional and global 
interests of Transnational capital. 
 
 The Trilateral Commission occupies a unique niche in the 
web of international organizations, by virtue of its membership 
and its mission.  The Trilateral Commission is unlike most INGOs, 
in that it brings together the 'elite' leaders of various and 
diverse industries, corporations, governments,  and other influential 
ventures in the developed Western capitalist states; and rather 
than operating as an organization of one specific interest group, 
industry, or cause, instead concerns itself with broad issues 
of import in the spheres of economic and political security for 
the 'Western Industrialized Democracies'.  In fact, the Trilateral 
Commissioners make up  
 
[A]n 'international establishment'.  Such an establishment 
which has grown in importance since 1945, consists of the intersecting 
domestic establishments of a range of capitalist countries.  This 
can be said to be the ultimate source of the strength of the Commission, 
in that the parts interact synergistically to produce a greater 
whole.  This whole has been enlarged since the foundation of the 
Commission.  The membership partly reflects the twin processes, 
transnationalization of economy and state, since many members 
are associated with transnational fractions of capital and corresponding 
elements of the state...   
 
Furthermore, this approach has led to some criticism, from 
both the right and the left, of the Trilateral Commission in that 
an organization of influential individuals representing interests 
of the ruling classes of the developed capitalist nations necessarily 
reflects a conspiratorial style.  However,  
 
Is the Trilateral Commission a conspiracy?  No more than the 
laws of capitalism conspire to assert themselves.  The Trilateral 
Commission is the executive advisory committee to transnational 
finance capital.  As Richard Falk has pointed out: The vistas 
of the Trilateral Commission can be understood as the ideological 
perspective representing the transnational outlook of the multinational 
corporation, which seeks to subordinate territorial 
politics to non-territorial economic goals.   
 
 Therefore, the mission of the Trilateral Commission, in its 
own estimation, at its most basic level, is to promote policies 
worldwide which limit nationalism, protectionism, and national 
sovereignty in favor of a structure allowing fluid mobility of 
transnational capital.    
 
The ideology of the Trilateral Commission concentrates on 
preserving the dominant position of the 'Western Industrialized 
Democracies' in the global economy through the advocacy of policies, 
coordinated between the industrialized trilateral nations, which 
advance capitalist interdependence and enrich the transnational 
and multinational corporations involved in international finance. 
   
 The Trilateral Commission, as an association of the 'elites' 
of Western Europe, the United States and Canada, and Japan,  functions 
in an unofficial advisory role to the IBRD (World Bank), the International 
Monetary Fund (IMF), the Organization for Economic Cooperation 
and Development (OECD), and the European Union (EU).  The Trilateral 
Commission empirically exerted influence on the World Bank and 
the IMF in order to advance the Trilateralist ideology of capitalist 
managed interdependence and cooperation.  In fact, the first Triangle 
Paper(The reports of the Trilateral Commission), entitled 
Towards a Renovated World Monetary System was dedicated 
to the revision of the IMF as it was chartered in the 1944 Bretton 
Woods Agreement, after the post-war monetary system formally 
broke down in August 1971, when the United States declared that 
the U.S. dollar was no longer convertible into gold or indeed 
any other reserve asset. In fact though,  
 
[i]t was no mere coincidence that the Commission was first 
and foremost concerned with the international monetary system. 
 The formation of the Commission was a direct response to the 
threat which the trilateralists saw in Nixon's approach to the 
monetary crisis of the early 1970s.  And the trilateralists immediately 
utilized the IMF, the center of the monetary system's operation, 
as a vehicle for implementing trilateralist policy toward Third 
World nations such as Jamaica.  The Commission makes it quite 
clear that they are talking about reform and change within the 
IMF itself. 
 
Furthermore, the actual influence of the Trilateral Commission 
on the IMF was demonstrated, not by policy and structural recommendations, 
but through the application of those recommendations.  The chairmen 
of the Trilateral Commission, in the foreword to the collection 
of Triangle Papers, expressed both the philosophy underpinning 
Trilateral management 
 
of the IMF and the actual steps taken to realize the concrete 
goals contained within the Trilateral proposals. 
 
[I]t has often been possible to achieve a broad consensus 
among members... This consensus was possible because of some convictions 
shared by all members -- particularly the conviction that the cooperation 
of all three regions is essential to assure the smooth management 
of interdependence; cooperation based not on coercion and arm-twisting 
but on mutuality of interest, and indeed on the longer-term interests 
of mankind.  The trilateral countries bear a particular responsibility 
in this context. Their resources and power give them a special 
role in global politics...  It is with this philosophy that the 
reports and recommendations reprinted in this volume should be 
read.  Some of the suggestions contained in these reports have 
meanwhile become reality. The seventh report... recommended that 
a 'Third Window' be established by the World Bank which would 
annually provide $3 billion in additional concessional lending 
to developing countries... and it appears the trilateral report 
played a role in gaining acceptance for this idea... The first 
report... recommended the coordinated and joint sale of official 
gold holdings into private markets, with 'capital gains' to be 
used for development assistance... the proposal was regarded as 
'quixotic' at the time, but it is being partially realized in 
the current IMF sale of a portion of its gold... That governments 
and international organizations have reacted positively to suggestions 
by the Trilateral Commission conveyed to them through our members 
is one indication of the value which our work has had so far. 
 
 The policies of the OECD conform to Trilateral Commission 
dictated strategies.  The Trilateral Commission exists, to a certain 
degree, in order to fuse the potentially divergent policy alternatives 
faced by an international organization into a coherent, mutually 
acceptable position;  this is usually accomplished through back-channel 
networking and informal negotiation prior to official proceedings 
in order to circumvent the frequently difficult consensus-building 
procedures of international organizations like the OECD: 
 
[A]s an international organisation expands in size and the 
scope of its agenda widens, agreement among the parties involved 
becomes increasingly difficult.  In the case of the Trilateral 
cooperation and coordination of positions in order to maintain 
the international public goods of open trade and a stable international 
monetary system, moving from the 'big seven' of the summits to 
the OECD (more than twenty nations) adds successively diminishing 
amounts to the benefits (utility) received by each member, and 
leads to progressively less cooperation.  This argument is based 
on the application of game theory, where it is assumed that the 
numbers of votes a country holds in an international organization 
determines its power to affect outcomes (decisions).  What this 
argument fails to take account of however, is the effect of coordination 
of positions, and the importance of agenda-setting procedures 
which may occur informally, outside of the public decision-making 
forums.  This may have the effect of creating a power bloc of 
countries with relatively congruent interests and concepts of 
a particular issue, thus enlarging their collective potential. 
 If this latter point is acknowledged, there is a strong incentive 
for the 'Trilateral' countries to cooperate if they are able to 
identify a collective interest in doing so.  From this viewpoint, 
informal organisations such as the Trilateral Commission may be 
necessary for coordination of positions vis-a-vis other 
groupings...  Thus the interests of states, expressed in terms 
of their policy preferences, may only rarely coincide. However, 
transnational coalitions of interest can influence states to adopt 
coordinated positions.  
 
Therefore, the Trilateral Commission functions to set the 
agenda and coordinate interests within the OECD, in order to avoid 
the otherwise inevitable clashes of states and special interests. 
  
 
 The evolution of the European Union reflects the Trilateral 
Commission influenced ideology of the ruling elites of Western 
Europe.  As an introduction, the genesis of both the Trilateral 
Commission and the European Community are attributed to the Atlantic 
ideology of the Bilderberg group: 
 
At the governmental level, the OEEC, formed under the United 
States Economic Cooperation Act of 2 April 1948, and its successor, 
the OECD, became official counterparts, these, of course, are 
only elite bodies in a vast series of international governmental, 
political, culture and economic interactions and exchanges which 
have formed the substance of relations between the Atlantic countries. 
 Nonetheless, Bilderberg is credited in Alden Hatch's biography 
of Bernhard as the birthplace of the European Community, as well 
as generally serving to maintain alliance cohesion during the 
difficult years of the 1950s and 1960s when the Atlantic Alliance 
was in the process of formation, considerable achievements by 
any standards.   
 
 Furthermore, since European membership in the Trilateral 
Commission is restricted to nationals of countries either already 
participating, or soon to join, in the European Union both Trilateral 
interest and influence in the EU can be inferred. Therefore, the 
forerunners of the Trilateral Commission, as well as the Commission 
itself, served to forward the formation of the European Union 
because an open regional market is favorable to transnational 
capital.   
 
 The goals and the role of the Trilateral Commission changed 
in light of the decline of the Communist Bloc, and the growth 
of international cooperation, integration, and interdependence. 
 The Trilateral Commission constantly redefines its goals and 
missions to the changing realities of global economics and politics. 
 The Trilateral Commission's adaptability in the application of 
its overall principles for transnational capitalist development 
is demonstrated in the Commission's response to the decline of 
the Communist Bloc, in that the Commission perceptively recommended 
increased cooperation between the East and West, for the sake 
of integrating the Communist countries into the framework of trilateral 
Capitalism.    
 
 The collapse of the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union demanded 
a redefinition of objectives and function of the Trilateral Commission. 
 The Trilateral Commission had, from its inception until the late 
1970s, concentrated on security relative to the Communist bloc 
through increasing the economic cooperation and interdependence 
among the trilateral nations in order to outpace the eastern bloc 
in the context of the Cold War.  In the 1977 Triangle Paper, 
Collaboration with Communist Countries in Managing Global Problems: 
An examination of the Options, confrontation was eschewed 
in favor of a desire to exploit any opportunities in relations with the 
Communist countries for cooperative management of certain international 
problems.  Our concern has not been with security matters... The 
purpose has been to see whether there are prospects for easing 
the tasks of global management, in an increasingly crowded world, 
by drawing a Soviet and/or Chinese partner in the process... our 
main goal in seeking East-West cooperation is to manage the world's 
problems more effectively.  Communist cooperation could be important 
in dealing with some of the problems.  
 
The Trilateral Commission was, at first tentatively, in favor 
of cooperation with the Communist bloc as a preliminary step towards 
incorporating Communist countries into the transnational capitalist 
system of interdependency.  In the decade of the 1980s, this policy 
of exploring cooperative options with the Communist bloc meant 
that the Commission continues to review prospects for East-West relations 
after the Brezhnev era and appeared to conclude that the future 
Soviet leadership would be more outward looking, less conservative, 
more cosmopolitan, and more aware of the benefits of global economic 
interdependence.  In this light it was significant that David 
Rockefeller led a business delegation to the Soviet Union in 1986 
and thereafter the Soviet Union announced that it was to permit 
49 percent foreign ownership in Soviet enterprises and joint ventures... 
These developments led one astute observer of the Soviet scene 
to suggest certain policies of the new leadership of the Soviet 
Union, when compared with those of their predecessors, appeared 
to harmonize with a number of characteristic Trilateral Commission 
preferences.    
 
The transition of Trilateral Commission policy towards the 
Communist Bloc, from one of opposition to one of cooperation, 
presaged the dissolution of Communist regimes, and represented 
the beginning of integration into the Trilateralist framework 
of international and transnational capitalist interdependence 
for the formerly Communist states of Eastern Europe and the Soviet 
Union.   
 
 The tremendous growth of international organizations and 
its attendant increased international cooperation and decreased 
national sovereignty called for a reevaluation of the Trilateral 
Commission's goals and mission.  Since one of the primary goals 
of the Trilateral Commission is the decrease of international 
trade barriers, in the context of regional market structures, 
 the European Union, the Uruguay Round of GATT , as well as the 
implementation of the NAFTA arrangement all fit within the Trilateral 
ideology, which aims to revitalize and maximize profit for transnational 
corporations.  For instance, the 17-19 April 1983 Rome plenary 
session of the Trilateral Commission evaluated the progress on 
GATT in a speech by Paul Volcker (soon reappointed Chairman 
of the Federal Reserve), the Commission [also] had reports on 
progress of the GATT.  Edmund Wellenstein argued that the GATT 
Ministerial Meeting of 29 November 1982 'contributed to pushing 
national policies in the right direction, away from short-term, 
short-sighted, beggar-thy-neighbor actions'.  Therefore, 
the Trilateral Commission has largely succeeded in passing international 
agreements and strengthening the international organizations which 
administer them, in order to coordinate national policies to concentrate 
on pursuing the long-term goals of increased economic interdependence, 
and the commensurate decline in nationalist, protectionist measures 
which arise out of national sovereignty, economic self-interest, 
and political self-determination, to the detriment of transnational 
corporations.  Therefore, with many of the original Trilateral 
Commission objectives either completed or rapidly coming to completion, 
the Trilateral Commission will redefine its role further to advance 
the hegemonic interests of the concentrated capital inherently 
represented in Trilateral Commissioners, in a global, regionally-based 
system much of their own devising.    
 
 The transition of the Trilateral Commission from an interest 
group representing economic, governmental, and academic 'elites' 
from the trilateral regions, to a model for the management of 
regional and global cooperation through IGOs and INGOs in a post-national 
framework can be extrapolated given the stated objectives of the 
Trilateral Commission, within the context of an emergent new transnational, 
regionally based arrangement. The success of the Trilateral Commission 
in promoting its international agenda depended on the alliance 
of common interlocking interests of advanced capitalist states, 
in an informal, but still weighty policy planning group.  The 
evolution of supra-national regional groupings of states fits 
within the Trilateral Commission doctrine of reducing national 
barriers, and furthermore would increase the manageability 
of political and economic affairs; in that regional representation 
to international organizations through 'elites' would foster a 
stable transfer of resources and capital for the transnational 
corporations, as well as mitigating (in the perspective of Trilateral 
Commissioners), through elite consensus-building, the democratic 
pitfalls of organizations dominated by developing countries, such 
as the General Assembly of the United Nations. Therefore, with 
the Trilateralist-aided boom in international coordination is 
supplemented by the inclusion of representatives of many important 
international organizations within the Commission, which could 
only increase as international coordination becomes the rule and 
international organizations increase their mandates further.  
 
 In conclusion, the Trilateral Commission has exerted and 
continues to exercise a considerable measure of influence over 
the emergence of a global system based on the expansion of economic 
possibilities for transnational capital.  The Commission's expansive 
mission has evolved on the vanguard of international coordination, 
cooperation, and interdependence, with a long-term view of planning 
perspective on the potentialities of regional organization.   
 
Bibliography 
 
Gill, Stephen. American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission. 
 Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990. 
 
Sklar, Holly, ed. Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission 
and Elite Planning for World Management. Boston: South End 
Press, 1980. 
 
Stubbs, Richard and Underhill, Geoffrey R.D. Political 
Economy and the Changing Global Order. London: Macmillan, 
1994. 
 
Trilateral Commission. Trilateral Commission Task Force 
Reports 1-7: the Triangle Papers.  New York: New York University 
Press, 1977. 
 
Trilateral Commission. Trilateral Commission Task Force 
Reports 9-14: the Triangle Papers.  New York: New York University 
Press, 1978. 
