Bilderberg and the West
by Peter Thompson
excerpted from the book
Trilateralism
edited Holly Sklar
South End Press, 1980
Introduction
Western Europe, the United States and Canada have experienced
a considerable degree of coherence in policy and outlook since
World War II. Foreign policies, particularly, have been coordinated
vis-a-vis both socialist countries and the colonies and the neo-colonies
of the Third World. Such cooperation, whatever its limitations,
had never before been achieved although these same countries had
long been the dominant world powers.
The U. S.-led Western empire of the last four decades has
worked through a number of international economic, political,
and strategic institutions, some of which claim to be universal:
the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the
World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development
(OCED), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). But it
is the secret gatherings of powerful West Europeans and North
Americans known as the Bilderberg meetings which have filled,
to some degree, the need to coordinate the transnational system
of the West.
Bilderberg's name comes from the group's first meeting place,
the Hotel de Bilderberg of Oosterbeek, Holland, in May 1954. Participants
in the meetings over the last twenty-five years have included
most of the top ruling class actors in the postwar history of
Western Europe and North America (unlike the Trilateral Commission,
Japanese participants are excluded...
There is certainly room for disagreement about the role of
the Bilderberg meetings in the flow of events since its founding
in 1954. In my view, Bilderberg is neither a world super-government;
nor is it merely a club where incidental shoptalk takes place,
as some portray it. Top executives from the world's leading multinational
corporations meet with top national political figures at Bilderberg
meetings to consider jointly the immediate and long-term problems
facing the West. Bilderberg itself is not an executive agency.
However, when Bilderberg participants reach a form of consensus
about what is to be done, they have at their disposal powerful
transnational and national instruments for bringing about what
it is they want to come to pass. That their consensus design is
not always achieved is a reflection of the strength of competing
resisting forces-outside the ruling capitalist class and within
it.
Bilderberg is not the only means of Western collective management
of the world order; it is part of an increasingly dense system
of transnational coordination. The foreign policies of nation-states,
particularly economic and monetary policies, have always been
a highly elitist matter. Policy options are proposed, reviewed,
and executed within the context of a broad bipartisan consensus
that is painstakingly managed by very small circles of public
and private elites.
Democratic interference in foreign policy is avoided, in so
far as possible, throughout the Western capitalist democracies.
Where necessary, a consensus is engineered on issues which must
get congressional/parliamentary approval, but wherever possible
executive agreements between governments are used to avoid the
democratic process altogether. Nonetheless, in the long run, orchestration
of affirmative public opinion on foreign policy matters is often
necessary for the effective pursuit of foreign policy objectives.
Failure to cultivate public support can lead to trouble for the
policy makers when-as in the case of the Vietnam War-broad sectors
of the public democratically challenge ruling class policy. More
commonly, though, policies are pursued with impunity.
Bodies like the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations (CFR); the
British Royal Institute for International Affairs, commonly known
as "Chatham House"; and transnational counterparts like
Bilderberg and the Trilateral Commission play a crucial role in
formulating policy directions, molding establishment consensus,
and even testing for likely opposition. These institutions propagate
the resulting policy positions throughout their network of authoritative
channels (university publications, public officials, forums, etc.)
setting the limits of respectable foreign policy debate. How well
or poorly this elite apparatus works can be evaluated by considering
postwar U.S. policy toward Europe and by assessing the role of
Bilderberg in pushing Western Europe toward closer regional unification
and toward deeper alliance with the United States and Canada...
The 1960s: Atlantic Economic and Political Problems on the
Rise
... Throughout the late sixties and seventies, Bilderbergers
discussed internal as well as external security and stability.
In 1968, Bilderberg was scheduled to take up the issue of "internationalization
of business," but other issues were bearing more heavily
on the participants. President Johnson had announced his retirement
to coincide with the initiation of Peace Talks on Vietnam (with
Harriman as chief U.S. negotiator). The student revolt in France
was o bring that country to a halt within a fortnight with worker
support...
Having missed the boat in its programming for 1968, Bilderberg
attempted to catch up in 1969 by addressing "elements of
instability in Western society." At that meeting participants
also worked through disagreements in the West over the handling
of the 1968 Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia. In 1970, just
before the Nixon/Kissinger invasion of Cambodia which toppled
neutralist Prince Sihanouk and produced a storm of antiwar protest
on and off university campuses, Bilderbergers set themselves to
strategically considering the "future function of the university
in our society." Numerous Bilderbergers were (and are) involved
in education. From the U.S., participants included Paul Samuelson,
MIT professor, noted author and government consultant in economics
and resource planning; Graham T. Allison, now dean of the Kennedy
School at Harvard University; and Andrew Cordier, dean of the
School of International Affairs at Columbia University 1962-68,
and acting president during the student occupation of 1968 among
others.
In April 1971 Bilderbergers extended their preoccupation with
"current problems of social instability" into the more
creative realm of "the contribution of business in dealing
with" these problems. "The possibility of a change of
the American role in the world and its consequences" was
another issue of importance. In August 1971 Nixon formally broke
with central agreements of the postwar economic system so carefully
architected by the Bilderbergers and other elite planners...
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