Trilateral Commission

From Nano World Order - Wiki

The Trilateral Commission is a non-governmental, non-partisan international policy forum founded in 1973 by David Rockefeller and Zbigniew Brzezinski, bringing together influential figures from North America, Western Europe, and Japan — later expanded to include the broader Asia-Pacific region. Its stated mission is to foster greater cooperation and mutual understanding among the world's leading industrialised democracies. Critics and independent researchers, however, argue that the Commission functions as a key node in a coordinated network of elite institutions — alongside the Bilderberg Group and the Council on Foreign Relations — working to advance a supranational governance agenda that operates largely outside democratic accountability.


Founding and Context

The Trilateral Commission was established during a period of significant geopolitical realignment. The collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system, the Vietnam War's erosion of US credibility, and growing economic competition from Europe and Japan created pressure on the postwar US-led order. David Rockefeller, then chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank and a leading figure in the Council on Foreign Relations, conceived the Commission as a mechanism to coordinate elite policy responses across the three major centres of capitalist power.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, a Columbia University professor and prominent foreign policy strategist, provided the intellectual architecture. His 1970 book Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era outlined a vision of a new international order managed by technocratic elites — a vision that the Trilateral Commission was, in many respects, designed to implement.

The Commission held its inaugural meeting in Tokyo in 1973. Approximately 300 members were recruited from the private sector, government, academia, and media — carefully selected from each of the three regional blocs.

Relationship to the Bilderberg Group and CFR

The Trilateral Commission did not emerge in a vacuum. It is widely understood by researchers to be an institutional evolution of, or companion to, older elite coordination bodies:

  • The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), founded in 1921, operates primarily within the US establishment to shape foreign and domestic policy.
  • The Bilderberg Group, founded in 1954, facilitates off-the-record dialogue between European and North American elites.
  • The Trilateral Commission extended this network to include Japan and Asia-Pacific elites, completing a global triangle of coordinated influence.

David Rockefeller was a central figure in all three organisations. Patrick Wood, author of Technocracy Rising and co-author of Trilaterals Over Washington, describes the Trilateral Commission as the most operationally focused of these bodies — the one most directly responsible for placing its members into key government positions.

Membership and Structure

The Commission is divided into three regional groups:

  • North American Group — approximately 120 members from the US, Canada, and Mexico
  • European Group — approximately 170 members from EU and associated nations
  • Pacific Asian Group — approximately 100 members from Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, and other Asia-Pacific nations

Membership is by invitation only and rotates on a fixed term basis, though many members go on to hold lifetime honorary status. Members are drawn from the upper echelons of:

  • Banking and finance
  • Multinational corporations
  • Mainstream media and publishing
  • Academia and think tanks
  • Political parties and government ministries
  • International institutions (IMF, World Bank, WTO)

Notable Members (Past and Present)

The Commission has an extraordinary track record of placing its members at the highest levels of government and international institutions:

  • Jimmy Carter — US President 1977–1981; recruited to the Commission by Brzezinski before his presidential campaign
  • Walter Mondale — US Vice President under Carter
  • George H.W. Bush — US President 1989–1993; CIA Director, Vice President
  • Henry Kissinger — former US Secretary of State; longtime member and foreign policy architect
  • Zbigniew Brzezinski — US National Security Advisor under Carter; co-founder
  • Bill Clinton — US President 1993–2001
  • Dick Cheney — US Vice President and Secretary of Defense
  • Tony Blair — UK Prime Minister
  • Mario Draghi — former head of the European Central Bank; Italian Prime Minister
  • Timothy Geithner — US Treasury Secretary
  • Paul Volcker — Chairman of the Federal Reserve

Patrick Wood has documented that when Jimmy Carter entered the White House in 1977, he appointed no fewer than 19 Trilateral Commission members to senior cabinet and advisory positions — effectively installing a Commission-aligned administration into the executive branch of the US government.

David Rockefeller, co-founder of the Trilateral Commission

Criticism and Research

Trilaterals Over Washington

The most detailed critical analysis of the Commission came from Patrick Wood and historian Antony C. Sutton, whose two-volume work Trilaterals Over Washington (1978–1980) documented how Commission members systematically occupied key positions in the Carter administration and across US policy-making institutions.

Sutton — previously known for his meticulous research into Western technology transfers to the Soviet Union — brought the same documentary rigour to the Trilateral Commission. His and Wood's core findings included:

  • The Commission functioned as a recruitment and placement agency for globalised technocratic governance
  • Its policy papers directly preceded and shaped legislation, trade agreements, and regulatory frameworks
  • Its membership deliberately spanned partisan lines, making conventional left-right political opposition largely ineffective as a check on its influence
  • The Council on Foreign Relations and Trilateral Commission together constituted what Sutton termed a "revolution from above" — the capture of democratic institutions by a coordinated private network

Technocracy Connection

Patrick Wood later expanded his research to argue that the Trilateral Commission was not merely a lobbying group for corporate interests, but an instrument for implementing Technocracy — a political-economic system in which credentialed technical experts, rather than elected officials, manage the allocation of energy, resources, and population. Wood traces this lineage directly to the Technocracy movement of the 1930s and argues that the Commission's globalisation agenda is best understood as Technocracy 2.0.

This framing connects the Commission directly to the Technocratic Agenda and to institutions like the World Economic Forum, the Club of Rome, and Agenda 2030.

Mainstream Dismissal

Mainstream academic and media commentary typically characterises criticism of the Trilateral Commission as conspiracy theorising, noting that the Commission publishes its membership lists and meeting reports publicly. Defenders argue it is simply a high-level dialogue forum with no binding authority.

Critics counter that transparency about membership does not equal transparency about influence, and that the consistent pattern of members occupying top government posts — regardless of which party wins elections — cannot be explained by coincidence.

Role in Globalisation and Supranational Governance

The Trilateral Commission has been associated with the following policy developments:

  • Free trade architecture — NAFTA, the WTO, and regional trade agreements that transferred regulatory authority away from national governments
  • Financial deregulation — the removal of capital controls and the integration of global financial markets
  • Multilateral institutions — strengthening the IMF, World Bank, and UN as governance bodies above the nation-state
  • Intellectual property regimes — extending corporate control over technology, seeds, and pharmaceuticals globally
  • Internet governance — early frameworks for the management of global digital infrastructure

Each of these policy areas corresponds to a consistent directional shift: away from national sovereignty and democratic accountability, toward governance by international institutions and expert bodies — consistent with what researchers describe as the New World Order agenda.

Connection to the Broader Agenda

Researchers situate the Trilateral Commission within a layered architecture of elite coordination:

Institution Founded Primary Focus
Council on Foreign Relations 1921 US domestic and foreign policy
Bilderberg Group 1954 Transatlantic elite dialogue
Club of Rome 1968 Global resource management, population
Trilateral Commission 1973 Trilateral economic governance
World Economic Forum 1971 Global corporate-government integration

The Commission is also linked to the Rockefeller Foundation network, which has funded public health, agricultural, and educational reforms globally — often in directions that critics argue serve depopulation and social control objectives rather than genuine humanitarian goals.

Some researchers in the Transhumanist Agenda space note that many Trilateral Commission alumni have been central to the governance frameworks surrounding biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and digital identity — suggesting continuity between the Commission's 1970s globalisation agenda and today's techno-managerial governance push.


Publications and Outreach

The Commission publishes Task Force Reports on key policy issues. These reports are circulated to members and policymakers and have historically anticipated legislative and regulatory changes by months or years. Topics have included:

  • International monetary reform
  • Energy policy
  • Trade liberalisation
  • Democracy and governance
  • Cybersecurity and digital governance

The Commission maintains a website and holds annual plenary meetings. Its current activities, while less prominently covered than in the 1970s, continue to intersect with global governance initiatives under the banner of multilateralism and "rules-based order."

See Also

References and Further Reading

  • Antony C. Sutton and Patrick Wood, Trilaterals Over Washington (1978–1980)
  • Zbigniew Brzezinski, Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era (1970)
  • Patrick Wood, Technocracy Rising: The Trojan Horse of Global Transformation (2015)
  • Holly Sklar (ed.), Trilateralism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management (1980)
  • Council on Foreign Relations — annual reports and membership rolls
  • Trilateral Commission official task force reports (trilateral.org)
Retrieved from "https://nanoworldorder.com/wiki/index.php?title=Trilateral_Commission&oldid=1515"