Trilateral Commission - History

History

Sensing a profound discord among 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... 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)
• Tadashi Yamamoto (Japan Center for International Exchange)

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 effected 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.