Trilateral Commission

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Trilateral Commission
logo
legal form private policy advice
founding 1973
founder David Rockefeller (deceased 2017 as Honorary Chairman)
Seat Washington DC, Paris, Tokyo
people Jean-Claude Trichet (European chairman)
Meghan L. O'Sullivan (North American chairwoman)
Yasuchika Hasegawa (Pacific Asian chairman)
Members about 400
Website www.trilateral.org

The Trilateral Commission is a private, policy advisory think tank founded in July 1973 on the initiative of Zbigniew Brzeziński and David Rockefeller . The commission is a society with around 400 highly influential members from the three major international economic blocs Europe , North America and Asia-Pacific as well as a few selected representatives outside of these regions. In this way, the Trilateral Commission connects experienced policy makers with the private sector. The aim is to improve cooperation between the three regions.

It is financed through funds from foundations, companies and private donations. The members meet for the three-day annual conference and the three-day regional meeting of the respective region each year.

The European chairman of the European Group has been the former ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet since April 2012 , who is also Honorary Chairman of the Group of Thirty , which was also founded by David Rockefeller . Trichet's predecessor as European chairman was Mario Monti , who in turn took over the chairmanship from European chairman Peter Sutherland until his appointment as Italian Prime Minister .

founding

The American political scientist Zbigniew Brzeziński , after spending around six months in Japan in 1971, had the idea of founding a commission to promote dialogue between American, European and Japanese elites. In the spring of 1972 he proposed the formation of the David Rockefeller Commission. He argued that the United States, Europe and Japan would face the same challenges in the areas of post-industrial society , environmental and security policy, would be the only actors who could make a significant contribution to the solution and would therefore also have a special responsibility. Rockefeller had been trying for a number of years to convince the Bilderberg group to invite Japanese participants as well. When this was rejected during the Bilderberg Conference in April 1972, this led to the establishment of the Trilateral Commission in July 1973. David Rockefeller took over the financing.

membership

The Trilateral Commission generates its sphere of influence from the functions and activities of its 410 members, 180 of them from Europe, 110 from North America, and 120 from the Asia Pacific region.

The German Group

Within the European parliamentary group there is the German Group , which is very well represented and with 22 members the largest group in the European Group.

The "German Group of the Trilateral Commission e. V.", founded by Otto Graf Lambsdorff and Otto Wolff von Amerongen and registered as a non-profit organization since 1989 . V., Berlin ” has its office in the Allianz-Forum of Allianz SE at Pariser Platz in Berlin-Mitte. The chairman of the German Group is Michael Fuchs, a longstanding member of the Bundestag and deputy chairman of the CDU / CSU parliamentary group. The deputy is Kurt Lauk, former chairman of the CDU Economic Council and former member of the European Parliament.

The following leaders are currently members of the German Group of the Trilateral Commission :

Other members (current and former, selection)

Josef Ackermann , Kurt Biedenkopf , Zbigniew Brzeziński , Eckhard Cordes , Horst Ehmke , Jeffrey Epstein , Dianne Feinstein , Richard Holbrooke , Karl Kaiser, Walther Leisler Kiep , Henry Kissinger , Norbert Kloten , Horst Köhler , Erwin Kristoffersen , Otto Graf Lambsdorff , Hanns W. Maull , John McCain , Robert McNamara , Mario Monti , Joseph Nye , Loukas Papadimos , David Rockefeller , John D. Rockefeller III , Edmund Rothschild, Volker Rühe , Theo Sommer , Peter Sutherland , Cyrus Vance , Heinz Oskar Vetter , Norbert Wieczorek , Otto Wolff by Amerongen , Paul Wolfowitz , Joachim Zahn , Robert Zoellick ;

criticism

Scientific analysis

Critic Hans-Jürgen Krysmanski

Due to the secrecy and the more than meager reports on meetings, seminars and conferences, there is speculation about the Trilateral Commission. Essentially, the close proximity of politics to the economy and the lack of transparency are reasons for conjecture. Hans-Jürgen Krysmanski , emeritus professor of sociology at the University of Münster, also doubts the private nature of conferences such as Bilderberg or Davos and associations such as the Atlantik-Brücke , the Council on Foreign Relations , the European Council on Foreign Relations or the Trilateral Commission.

According to the sociologist and economist Rudolf Stumberger , all barriers between economics and politics have disappeared, which can also be determined by people. Tendencies towards refeudalization could be recognized, i. H. In addition to the official democratic structures, the unofficial structures of self-proclaimed elites are becoming increasingly important again.

The political scientist Stephen Gill of York University defines the concern of the Trilateral Commission as follows: “Trilateralism can be defined as a project to develop an organic (or relatively permanent) alliance between the largest capitalist states with the aim of promoting a stable form of world order (or obtain) that matches their dominant interests. This includes a commitment to a more or less liberal international economic order. "

For Gill, the Trilateral Commission is at the center of the analysis in the discussion about the decline of US hegemony in international politics (cf. e.g. Keohane 1984, Kennedy 1987, Calleo 1987). Many researchers diagnosed a relative decline in US hegemony in the 1970s and 1980s due to the strengthening of the economic powers of the European Community (or EU) and Japan. Gill argues that while there was a crisis in US hegemony, hegemony has shifted. He criticizes the state-centered view of the debate and emphasizes the long-term potential of institutions such as the Trilateral Commission, which serve to develop common cultural and strategic concepts and to generate specific forms of interaction and identification among the elites.

conspiracy theories

Various conspiracy theories have grown up around the Trilateral Commission since it was founded . In the 1970s, for example, she was accused of having ensured that huge loans were given to third world countries and then called in the International Monetary Fund during the oil crisis to ensure the repayment of these bonds. There were also suspicions that the commission had taken control of the US government and was striving for world domination: Jimmy Carter and George HW Bush were members, as were their close associates Brzeziński, Caspar Weinberger and Cyrus Vance . Since the 1990s, the Trilateral Commission has been accused of working on the establishment of a “New World Order” , as painted on the wall by the evangelical preacher Pat Robertson , the John Birch Society , which specializes in conspiracy theories, or the right-wing extremist militia movement : Freedom and sovereignty of Nation states would be abolished by a tyrannical, supranational world government . In these conspiracy theories, the Trilateral Commission is often a cover word for world Jewry , which in truth would be behind the "New World Order".

literature

  • Dino Knudsen: The Trilateral Commission and Global Governance. Informal Elite Diplomacy, 1972-82. (= Cold War History). London / New York: Routledge 2016. ISBN 978-1-138-93311-8 ; review
  • David P. Calleo: Beyond American Hegemony. The Future of Western Alliance . Brighton, 1987
  • Stephen Gill: American Hegemony and the Trilateral Commission . Cambridge, 2nd edition, 1991
  • Paul Kennedy : Rise and Decline of the Great Powers. Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 . London, 1987; German: "Rise and fall of the great powers"
  • Robert O. Keohane: After Hegemony. Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy . Princeton, 1984

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ http://trilateral.org/page/3/about-trilateral
  2. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau ( FR-online , June 5, 2008): Bilderberg Conference. Secret world elite , article by Marcus Klöckner (accessed June 5, 2008).
  3. ^ Justin Vaïsse: Zbigniew Brzezinski. America's Grand Strategist. Harvard University Press, Cambridge (Massachusetts) 2018, ISBN 978-0-674-97563-7 , pp. 165–169 (English, French: Zbigniew Brzezinski. Stratège de l'empire. 2016.).
  4. ↑ Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery. October 28, 2002, accessed August 25, 2019 .
  5. ↑ a b Detlef Grumbach: Re-feudalization and privatization of power? To the Bilderberg Conference 2010. In: Deutschlandfunk . June 2, 2010.
  6. ↑ Gill ²1991, p. 1.
  7. ↑ Gill 1991, p. 75
  8. ^ R. Volney Riser: Trilateral Commission. In: Peter Knight (Ed.): Conspiracy Theories in American History. To Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, Santa Barbara / Denver / London 2003, Vol. 2, pp. 691 f.
  9. ^ Daniel Pipes : Conspiracy. The fascination and power of the secret . Gerling Akademie Verlag, Munich 1998, pp. 29 and 223; Marlon Kuzmick: Bilderbergers . In: Peter Knight (Ed.): Conspiracy Theories in American History. To Encyclopedia . ABC Clio, Santa Barbara, Denver and London 2003, Vol. 1, p. 124; Charles J. Stewart: The Master Conspiracy of the John Birch Society: From Communism to the New World Order . In: Western Journal of Communication 66, Issue 4 (2002), p. 433 f. and 438.