Семинар "Трехсторонней комиссии"

THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION
A private North American-European-East Asian
initiative on matters of common concern
www.trilateral.org

Paris, Washington, Tokyo in January 2006


The Trilateral Commission was launched in the early 1970s by a number of eminent persons from the United States and Canada (and now Mexico), Japan – since enlarged into a Pacific Asia regional group -- and the European Community (now the EU member countries). They included in the U.S. David Rockefeller, who served as North American Chairman in 1977-1991 and is currently the Commission’s Honorary Chairman, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was the founding Director of the Commission and subsequently President Carter’s National Security Adviser.

One of the primary ideas underlying the creation of the Commission was that the United States was no longer in such a unique position of leadership and that a more shared form of leadership would be needed to steer the international system through the challenges that lay ahead. Japan’s key role in the new Commission was a measure of that country’s growing world importance. The need for issues of interdependence to be tackled in a novel form led the Commission to advocate the kind of cooperation amongst leading industrial democracies which later took shape in the annual G-8 Economic Summits.

The rise of Japan and East Asia and the progress of the European Community (now European Union) over the past twenty years have validated the vision of the Commission’s founders. At the same time, the end of the Cold War called for fresh vision of what this outward-looking partnership could accomplish.

In this spirit, the Commission is embarking on a new report devoted to relations between the Trilateral Countries and Russia, at a time when Russia for the first time chairs the G8.

Several earlier Commission reports have dealt with aspects of relations with the Soviet Union. Val'ery Giscard d’Estaing, Yasuhiro Nakasone, and Henry Kissinger – the authors of a 1989 report entitled “East-West Relations” -- travelled with the Commission’s Chairmen to Moscow in January of that year for discussions with Mikhail Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders.

The last report devoted to relations with Russia was published in 1995. The European author of report was Sir Rodric Braithwaite, the former British Ambassador to the USSR/Russia (1988-92) and Foreign Policy Adviser to the Prime Minister (1992-93). The North American author was Ambassador Robert Blackwill, then at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and, after a distinguished foreign service career, Special Assistant to President Bush for European and Soviet Affairs (1989-90). The Japanese author was Akihiko Tanaka, Professor of International Politics at the Institute of Oriental Culture of the University of Tokyo.

Today’s Trilateral Commission co-authors on Russia are Sir Roderic Lyne (UK/EU), Strobe Talbott (U.S.) and Koji Watanabe (Japan). Their biographies are attached.

This substantial report on relations with Russia is being prepared for the annual meeting of the Commission to be held in Tokyo in April 2006 and will contain, after a review on current domestic and foreign developments, recommendations on policy towards Russia for the Trilateral countries in advance of the forthcoming July 2006 St. Petersburg G8 Summit.

In order to ensure that the report and its recommendations are soundly based, the authors consider it very important that they also consult policy-makers in Russia. This explains their visit to Moscow on 13-16 February 2006. The task force is also consulting actively with policy-makers in and around the Trilateral countries.

The Commission is co-chaired by Peter Sutherland (for Europe), Thomas S. Foley (for North America) and Yotaro Kobayashi (for Pacific Asia). Attached is a list of Commission members.

Biographies of the Authors

European Author: Roderic Lyne

Sir Roderic Lyne is currently a Special Adviser to the BP Group and HSBC Bank. He served as British Ambassador to Russia from January 2000 until August 2004, when he retired from HM Diplomatic Service after 34 years. Prior to that, he was the UK’s Permanent Representative to the WTO and the UN and other international organisations in Geneva from 1997 to 2000; and the Private Secretary to the Prime Minister, responsible for Foreign and European Affairs, Defence and Security, and Northern Ireland, from 1993 to 1996. In his earlier career, Roderic Lyne served in the USSR in the early 1970s and again from 1987 to 1990; and was Head of the Soviet (subsequently Eastern) department of the FCO from 1990 to 1993. His other assignments included service at the UK Mission to the UN in New York and at the British Embassy in Senegal; as an Assistant Private Secretary to the Foreign Secretary; and on secondment to British gas plc and to the Royal Institute of International Affairs at Chatham House. He is a history graduate of Leeds University, and has been awarded honorary doctorates by Leeds, Kingston and Heriot Watt Universities.

North American Author: Strobe Talbott

Strobe Talbott assumed the presidency of the Brookings Institution in July 2002 after a career in journalism, government and academe. His immediate previous post was founding director of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization. He served in the U.S. State Department from 1993 to 2001, first as Ambassador-at-large and special adviser to the Secretary of State for the New Independent States of the former Soviet Union, then as Deputy Secretary of State for seven years. Mr. Talbott entered government after 21 years with Time magazine. As a reporter, he covered Eastern Europe, the State Department and the White House, then was Washington bureau chief, editor-at-large and foreign affairs columnist. His books include: Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb (2004); The Russia Hand; At the Highest Levels (with Michael Beschloss); The Master of the Game; Reagan and Gorbachev (with Michael Mandelbaum); Deadly Gambits; The Russians and Reagan; Endgame; The Last Testament (with Edward Crankshaw); and Khrushchev Remembers. He has also written for Foreign Affairs, The New Yorker, Foreign Policy, International Security, The Economist, The Financial Times, The New York Times, The Washington Post and Slate. Mr. Talbott has been a fellow of the Yale Corporation, a trustee of the Hotchkiss School, and a director of the Council on Foreign Relations, the North American Executive Committee of the Trilateral Commission, the Aspen Strategy Group and the American Association of Rhodes Scholars. He is currently a trustee of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a member of the participating faculty of the World Economic Forum. Born in Dayton, Ohio, in 1946, he was educated at Hotchkiss, Yale (B.A., ’68, M.A.Hon., ’76) and Oxford (M.Litt., ’71). Strobe Talbott moderated the session devoted to Russia held at the May 2004 plenary meeting of the Trilateral Commission in Warsaw.

Pacific Asian Author: Koji Watanabe

Koji Watanabe is a Senior Fellow at Japan Center for International Exchange, and was Japanese Ambassador to Russia from 1993–96 and Ambassador to Italy from 1992–93. He was also Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs, Sherpa for the G-7 Houston and London summits of 1991 and 1990, and Japanese co-chairman of the U.S.-Japan Structural Impediments Initiative Talks. Ambassador Watanabe joined the Foreign Ministry upon graduating from the University of Tokyo in 1956 and served as Director-General of the Information Analysis, Research and Planning Bureau and of the Economic Affairs Bureau. He was a Visiting Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson School of Princeton University (1957–58) and at the Center for International Affairs of Harvard University in (1973–74). His other overseas posts include Counsellor at the Japanese Embassy in Saigon (1974–76), Minister at the Japanese Embassy in Beijing (1981–84), and Ambassador to Saudi Arabia (1988–89). Ambassador Watanabe is President of The Japan Forum and was formerly a member of the National Public Safety Commission, member of the Board of Governors of the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF), and Executive Advisor to the Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren). Ambassador Watanabe was the Japanese author of the Trilateral Task Force report on The New Central Asia: In Search of Stability (2000, with Sherman W. Garnett and Alexander Rahr)