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ROCKEFELLER INTERNATIONALISM ROCKEFELLER INTERNATIONALISM Influenced by Zbigniew Brzezinski's concept, David Rockefeller pushed to set up the Trilateral Commission to win the advanced capitalist nations over to his liberal internationalist vision. Part 5 ne of David Rockefeller's more infamous and enduring achievements in service of the New World Order is his creation of the Trilateral Commission. According to David's somewhat sparse account in Memoirs, he embraced the trilateral idea in the early 1970s when he realised "that power relationships in the world had fundamentally changed". Although the USA was still the dominant superpower, its economic leadership was being eroded by a newly resurgent Japan and Western Europe. More worryingly, the previously friendly post-war relationship between the three regions had "deteriorated alarmingly", therefore, David observed, "something had to be done". His solution was, of course, to set up a "trilateral organization"—the Trilateral Commission— that would "bridge national differences and bring Japan into the international community"! There is, of course, far more to David's support for trilateralism and the foundation of the Trilateral Commission than his tale of intellectual self-discovery acknowledges. Besides downplaying his heavy reliance on Zbigniew Brzezinski's original trilateral concept, David fails to mention his key goals in forming the Commission. These included: establishing a new elite policy-planning organisation to supplement if not replace a Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), which David considered too fractured by the Vietnam War to be effective; reining in the Nixon Administration, which had taken advantage of Establishment divisions to reject the liberal internationalist program; and finally, encouraging unity among the industrialised powers as a temporary alternative to a United Nations (UN) increasingly dom- inated by radicalised Third World states, so that together they could achieve his goal of a "more integrated global political and economic structure". Brzezinski's Trilateral Solution It was Brzezinski, then a young upcoming professor at Columbia University, who had conceived the trilateral idea—first in the pages of the CIA-funded journal, Encounter, and subsequently in his book, Between Two Ages: America in the Technetronic Era (1970). Brzezinski had warned of a looming "serious crisis", as rapid technological change in the First World—which was creating a global "technetronic society'—widened the economic gap between it and the Third World. To prevent this inevitable "global fragmentation" from causing chaos, Brzezinski had called for the formation of a "community of developed nations" comprising "the Atlantic states, the more advanced European communist states and Japan". Arranged as a "council for global cooperation", this "community" would develop a "long-range strategy for international development based on the emerging global consciousness".” This approach was necessary, according to Brzezinski, because of the obvious decline in Ameri uperpower status. The United States "cannot shape the world single-handed", he argued; instead, America had to collaborate with other advanced countries in a "joint response” to ensure global stability. He advocated a two-stage program, with the US, Western Europe and Japan linking up in the first phase and the "advanced communist states" being included in the second. Displaying his liberal internationalist credentials, Brzezinski presented his envisaged "community of developed nations" as a "step toward greater unity" and a "realistic expression of our emerging global consciousness". Although "more ambitious than the concept of an Atlantic community..." it would be "less ambitious than the goal of world government, [but] more attainable".* Between Two Ages proved influential from the outset. It received numerous positive reviews, and the Brookings Institution funded a program of "Tripartite Studies" to explore by Will Banyan © September 2003 Email: banyan007@rediffmail.com NEXUS = 33 TRILATERALISM AND THE LEGACY OF DAVID ROCKEFELLER DECEMBER 2003 — JANUARY 2004 www.nexusmagazine.com