welcome welcome very much to conversations where it's a pleasure to welcome to the program charles heck and i'm mr heck is the north american director of the trilateral commission and we're going to be talking about the state of the world and that institution with this track and charles welcomed very much conversation thank your hero for having me here while we had we talked again it was some years back we had a conversation about the state of the world that time and so forth but i wonder maybe you could to try lateral commission is a major institution and i wonder maybe you could say  the historical development of it what is charging rezoned after is and then we could talk from that perspective somewhat about world affairs and some of the developments as seen from a trilateral perspective but could you share the beginning of the institution and it suppose they're worth several main ideas that were that were in the in the heads of the founders perhaps the most immediate idea was that this was a time of of some friction among the among the governments of europe north america and japan so the organizers were trying to put together the highest level discussion group they could of people who were not in the governments of the day but in many cases close to the governments of the day to think about the big issues that all these three democratic industrialized regions face you know to try to move the dialogue in a you know more cooperative direction you know people that were not in the government but perhaps had been or are likely to be in the government or that institutions are both the aligned with those responsible for the for the governments of the usa and that's right we we're very much a official non governmental organization and it was when you when you step into your national cabinet you you don't speak for yourself anymore you write for you speak for a government and and so what this or what this organization tries to do is is levon thinking eleven debate from a step or two outside outside government but but aside from that immediate idea there were several other ideas certainly on the on the on the minds of of the founders i suppose the most unusual wanted the time was that was the prominence given to japan in the construction of this organization there were there were networks like this across the atlantic between europeans and north americans but there had not been an organization like this that that included from the beginning the japanese as a as one of three equal parts and certainly that was one of the large political purposes of the of the organization to to help bring japan and i'm wrong so yeah i mean japan was  run yes and had become quite a big fish in the international pond and needed to think about the leadership responsibilities that came from becoming a bigger fish in the international pond yeah that's right and the time in such a singular position as we had been in the decades right after the nd world war right absolutely sort of manage the system right that's right so up more collective form of leadership was going to be needed to make the broader system function reasonably well and so the notion was that that europe north america and japan constituted the core areas for seventy three the year that we started that was the year that britain came into the european community finally along with along with denmark and ireland so the so the european community by that time included  the all the great powers if you will in in western europe and so that in the prado commission on the european side has been based on the notion along the way of a of an integrating europe playing a larger role on the global stage rise and with britain in the european community at that time some of those notions the surge the head so it was a it was a very interesting historical moment and i suppose the the the other idea that was very much on the minds of the founders was that interdependence was growing by leaps and bounds in the game of diplomacy was no longer quite so classical character yes there were there were issues of of interdependence of managing the international economy of the of the oil shock soon after we got started we were in the middle of a fireman if we're that we're going to have to move up on the all the international agenda and  was perhaps a particularly interesting moment in the early one thousand nine hundred and seventy s and that it was it was a time of detente with the old soviet union right and so there was a sense that the but the system might be changing in some important time and we were in that bipolar fick view of the world with mr cannon and containment and so forth as just a t v fleet was involved in our thinking and i wonder that we would talk to this in the thing as you said that there had been traditionally certain ties between europe  d united states in terms of an organization that gave advice to governments and that sort of thing what would some of those prep predecessor agencies have been we hear a builder berger yeah and others or what were the ones that had the kind of charge the trilateral has has began with and has taken on in terms of you know taking a large scale view of you know global development or some of the predecessor agencies that would be a lying to trying to bring japan more into the middle of the international debate david rockefeller actually proposed and delivered that there were burdick built builder burge itself b this was before trial that era was created yes build a bird be expanded to include to pay that's of of creating this separate organization could you could you tell us why or what do you think it is that the vendor is an organisation didn't see the wisdom of that do you think or does it tell us anything about the thinking regionally or otherwise well i suppose are those say something about the thinking at that time yeah and certainly some of the europeans were were not yet at that stage  embracing japan and quite the way that many americans were as a core area of the international system that had been an access nation and what had been heavy and we came out of the nd war and through you know the ma his as usual producing lots of good well i said i brought in a book i just read of his he's got a new one out the grand chessboard he's written a new book recently which is well worth reading and so forth but is there and so ok i didn't mean to interrupt you the flow other a it's three thousand or so members are and are based here are are are americans i suppose another organization that had a related purpose was something called the atlantic institute that doesn't exist anymore now it was a it was a research institute based in paris somewhat paired with something called the atlantic council of the united states and it's based in washington and it still it still is quite very very much alive but both of those organizations again if you wanted to think about the world at that stage right you couldn't just do that from and in my attic framework yeah you needed to to to draw in japan at that stage and if you if you were serious about the thinking of management of the system more broadly and one of the interesting things that has now happened and try to roll and i'm sure we'll get into that later is good is that our japan side has had that's all that we're going to bring that in says nafta so that's north america but then europe had many nations many countries that were involved with the european union and then it had been japan but now it's going out to get some of the other countries as well including looking at  national group of members we have a we have an australia new zealand group and then from the you know there is the association of southeast asian nations off the on right now and the the five original members the on which began in the late sixty's actually are our thailand malaysia singapore indonesia and the philippines yeah and in and in this new pacific asia group with and for a lot of real we have fifteen individual members that are drawn from those basic five countries original five aussie and countries who have made tremendous progress over the last three decades or so to work toward becoming  industrialized democracies themselves even though they things have got very complicated for them a just the last few years he has tried to have been a lot of complicated industrialized democracy is a thing i want to get back at some of the ideas of the result that thinking and certainly that some of the process called globalization which is absolute transforming everything yes and if it ever it called for a realization of the world that trilateral if we're trying to facilitate is getting communication with a whole systems understanding of the world but we  or business community understanding things that way but you have davos and what i'm trying to get at in a certain sense are the citizens of might be viewing the assemblages of not governments but the assemblages of people that are concerned or maybe some that would involve wonder what are some of the sub institutions sister institutions and maybe distinctions between them in terms of what differentiates them from each other and what unites them right well you know if we if we looked at this on a very big canvas and thought of sister organizations and you know in wider terms yes i mean one of the very interesting things in the world over the last twenty five years has been the virtual explosion of non governmental organizations right ok including non governmental organizations that you know that cross national borders in in one way or another  the the the field is is just absolutely more vigorously populated now than it was then with with all kinds of organizations that worry about may worry about environmental issues or may worry about human rights that mean there are fascinating human rights organizations or that may worry about some other particular issue or maybe draw together a particular types of people it's been striking i mean after tried under a was created there were other organizations that were somewhat tried out of the one character that might draw together journalists or or might draw together traditional thinking of geo strategic thinking the relationship between the nations you know large governmental and the membership we could talk about the membership and how it's established how do we determine how many members there are from each country reach region and who are they they they read they tend to represent a certain group and they tend to represent in a certain sense the leadership of the business and intellectual strategic thinking community and that sort of thing is what i was getting at really and which i think to try to attack track that at davos and other kinds of things where the the non governmental organizations get very very diverse in terms of their in specialized in their writers but really this question of the leadership of the of the world system we're quite small in comparison i mean our annual meeting will have perhaps two hundred members present and the and the overall membership is around three hundred and fifty draw drawn from from these three areas there are there are eighty five u s places in that in that membership and bang and we do indeed try to to draw people who are in leadership positions and in  different aspects of society so there there will be many people from business and finance but though i mean there are also some labor leaders involved there are there are lawyer yours are for media people of all there are a number of people from research institutes or universities there are there are a number of parliamentarians involved who are who are not in their national executive branch is that the time president things i was trying to get at in a certain sense is what are the criteria by which you decide who to try to lateral members are within these regional groups what is it i mean is it intellectual understanding definitive seventy works that they've done in an intellectual sense is it a position of of of business or financial power over major institutions or you know what i'm what i sense i'm getting at and then maybe how does that compare with other institutions which will try to bring together the leadership of the understanding the system and what about the differences that could exist between the members of the the leadership elements that are involved in these organizations there's differences between them just as there are between political ok in the north american plan a group gets together and we we have a rotation system in the u s group so there are usually five dollars to ten dollars openings each year and and we'll go to that meeting with a list of potential candidates that's a good bit longer than the number of openings we have right and when we talk when i mean we we try to be balance between republicans and democrats and that is interesting that in itself that we we try to  have some regional balance though we oftentimes don't do as well as we should in that regard i mean there is of the biggest concentrations by far for us members are in new york and washington and that reflects the  are you're saying that just sort of over dictum like you say there might be better if you could expand out right i mean there is a there we believe if someone is in another part of the country that's a that's a that's a positive positive factor just thinking oh i  although that's certainly a challenge for people from from research institutes or university right that you're you're looking for people who are among the best  don't the mix in davos would obviously be much bigger where more people are all learning that have a wider criteria that they would draw up on and they're and they're not quite they're not they're there what they're up to is not quite so much what we're up to in terms of on all kinds of of topics the builder burb group would be what i suppose have a have a similar mix to two hours also and one is trying one is trying in these organizations to to span some divides that means to consciously have some people who have who wouldn't have the same perspective because it's so there would be some diversity right it's not you want to find some overriding issues you can find agreement in that right but like we don't try to press i mean for instance we don't try to we're not like a you know like the washington office of the national association of manufacturers ok sense to try to focus discussion on on super detailed right recommendations about what the british government or the japanese government or ready the american government should should do next  you so we're we're trying to to widen the the horizons widen the perspectives of the people that are involved and get them to understand more about how the other guys thinking than they than they might have that within their own ready one of the canadians who's involved in our activity has been involved with with the canadian parliament for right here right and he's talked about how important it is for canadian parliamentarian's from different parties  sitting back in ottawa are just arguing about legislation if you know i mean yeah actually one of the purposes of an organization like this can serve the mostly purposes of have sense yeah as well as international purposes i know several points at times along the way some japanese have also said too that if you brought in someone from the united states or europe you could draw together a group of japanese to talk with this person who might not otherwise japanese who might not i don't know systems understanding of the major challenges that confront the governments and then the business leadership of the world did say labor yes and also we've had a transformation in our economy with his old and new economy that's where he would try and reach out to some of the i wonder if you would reach out to some of the traditional i mean reach out some the new economy do you rotty mr gates there are some of the right well that are becoming so important now because these new technologies are becoming and reaching out to some of these new ones is part of it you mentioned labor been reaching out to some of the new information technology people is something that these we his organization is cognizant of we have not done terribly we have not done as well at that as we should have but that's that very important that's a very important thing to do i have the impression that some of the davos meetings have done have done well in that in that in that regard but but now that's a that's a very  those are industries where that are that are transforming the world and they are their way and the people that lead those industries need to need to be thinking about some of these  some of these broader issues yeah there was an incredibly interesting article in the land of the other day where they had that it was called the new old economy they're talking about what some of the new technologies meant to the oil industry and i mean it is absolutely fundamentally transformed the old hard rock mining concept and all the way it's done in some of the policy because they can just go with these new technologies and have pictures right inside the earth at a fraction of the cost that used to be oh we have people like george gilder who's coming along and saying writings about you know we now have  we have his new book telecom saying we're coming up with unlimited bandwidth and there are a lot of transformations that are taking place that would want to be i suppose included within the thinking of people that are concerned with the you know with the store chip that's writer of the political and economic systems of the of the planet you know you're you're right and it is interesting how the how there is tremendous technological progress you're right and some of the older industries to say and the oil example you mentioned it's it's on the employment necessary i mean things are changing i guess that's a lot of that over work term but it really is and you want to keep up with the change but at the same time you want to keep tied to the old moorings of that have served well and so what and you want to provide a pattern that there can be commonality of agreement be agreement that a democratization process on the planet is something that is to be encouraged in the long run interests of the people of the planet is trying to get at some of the universals right that would find that if if we had a sampling of members sitting with us that those values are very important to people i think there would be considerable differences about how actively you you promote of those values are or how you go about promoting them i suppose if there were one element that drew people together it would it would be some sense of it being very important to think about to think about the international system and their country in this international system in the in a in a broad way that th thinking of geopolitics and national interest being this so criteria by which you know the decision makers are to be made is is not practicable increasingly in the way they did traditionally has been perhaps in terms of some of the think i think that's right it's a much more complex world in that sense so you so and i'm sure that a broad characterised position of the of the membership of trotter a would it would include a rather strong sense that intellectual charge that is there in the body part in the in the in far as humanity is concerned is to get some of these systems understanding in order to try and understand and move things in appropriate direction we do we're going to just to add one point there which which i think is an important one sometimes when my fellow american citizens think about these things they think that somehow or other one is discarding the national interest in favor of some big worley brod international interest but i wrote i think if we had a semblance of tried out a row members here and and clues them about this they would argue as has a certainly i would argue too that it is in the best interest of the best national interests of the united states or of the netherlands or of japan  to think about what we're doing in the world in broad terms and to try to look around the corner a little bit rather than just thinking about what is national that you might as well mean what are the realities that industry in the world is bringing to you right and that's that is part of a realistic kind of reading because sometimes the idealism of thinking systems and thinking in terms of other principles is derided by me that as the globalisation happens and economy becomes more and more important the trade representative for the united states becomes a very important position more so than it did issue and has been but they were all there and one of them made a comment and they said that they recognise that there is a float growing and and sort of what they called a free floating and growing anxiety among the people of this country and of the world and it's something that people in positions of leadership had to be aware of their den a fight and said they were saying that some people who object let's say globalization or trade let's say in the fact that they're going to lose their position their job to an factory that's going to locate in low income and low labor low you know environmental standards place overseas or something but that this is them and they all represent they all grew they they all agreed that there is a like a free floating  widespread is something that has to be that has to be to be addressed it was interesting me that they did that they did say that most of that difficult to say from somebody in the united states it wasn't that they were shipped overseas so much as it was technological displacement of labor in the production process and then there was that but they all recognize this is something that is this is existing as part of the charge of of the trade representatives and of they the people who are s the broad agenda do you think that's an accurate reading of that there is free floating anx and it's growing among the citizens united states and of the the world and if so where does that come from and what are the implications to the world's  decision you know leadership decision makers oh i think those are those are profoundly important questions i want to try to deal with i think there is that high end of of banks and i think it's almost inevitable that there would be in this kind of world when you have a sense that you're you know you're interacting with with a much bigger set of folks out there you're your own the the parameters in which i mean on the one hand it provides tremendous opportunity yes yes and and allows for economic growth but could not happen if if you were an  situation and that say that adjusting our societies even adjusting ourselves as individuals to do that kind of a world is a is a complicated  mean most people now in comparison to the little town in ohio where i grew up most people now will well change their careers several times in the course of their wife the the skills that they learned early in their life may not be the skills that they need fifteen or twenty years later right so we're all needing to to education is becoming a lifelong lifelong exercise the safety nets  society become become more important in some ways and they also become eroded in many ways in as well you know thinking in the name of certain kinds of economic principles which you would get around to to an understanding of the view of the leadership  questions of economics and even of economics there izing and so forth and what the trends are and what the trends are delighted to be are we if we if we stay the course and keep the way we're going now  within the traditional thinking let's just say for instance the trilateral people have a moring in terms of traditional thinking they don't want to get you know it's like of the ocean liner going through you can't move on a dime you have to have a responsibility for the moorings but also that there there might be something new that is required in order to in a certain way be able to see some sort of a transformation maybe had a traditional theoretical level or something like that one would be the idea that the relationship of labor because these trade represent is that it's not trade within low income low low wage labor places it's technological displacement and the right logical place that could be coming in our economic policy for instance is the employment act of one thousand nine hundred forty six dollars and we're going to distribute all income according to labor criteria that is employment and yet the technology would read george gilder all others we read the technology was super cyber nation and displacement and super automation and nano technology and so we can become increasingly systems way displacing of labor in a way that there's not going to be an opening for the new labor to come along  automobile workers were able to find after they left the farms if you understand what i mean there may be a an anxiety is so there's fundamentally in economic a question of how people are going to be able of economic security and do we need a change of thing in terms of economic to try to come to a general view of some of these matters and all of technological change in employment i mean this is been a this is certainly been an issue that we've argued about in this country for a long time i can remember when i was a graduate student  yes it was there were many people at that stage who argued that technological change would precede unemployment would grow or we would necessarily become a sort of leisure society because there wouldn't be enough work to spread also creates jobs and creates settings in which new kinds of activities of all so we're in this remarkable situation in the united states now where we where we have credible growth instead of having the higher unemployment rates than we did for i've got unemployment rates that are you know among the lowest yeah right that we've had so it's it's it's not obvious that that technological change destroys the total lowers the total amount of employment in society though it certainly does displace particular kinds of jobs you know well as a tradition that last is as long as they would have been in earlier i grew up in a town that was  father had his career in a steel company right and to see how the acceleration of technological change and how steel was made from the time i was a boy is just amazing that it means that steel companies now don't need  many employees as they did put i was a when i was a boy but there are lots of other kinds of employment that of that have grown up since that time and that and that will serve us in terms of as we move into the future that will service and that's on and on an international scale that the distribution of income to the mass of the population by labor criteria will serve well the macro economic needs of the nation in the world and we don't have to address the issue of who owns the technology or ownership issue which is you know that you do have a world where mr carter who's a tri world population has never made a phone call and then also that that half the population have popular he lives on an income of one dollar a day right so we have great problems in terms of those questions of  and it's only a problem he cannot mix in politics in terms of getting the system to be able to do what it's capable of doing we're not selling yourself short in terms of what we would be able to do because they're holding two ideas that aren't as workable as those would a new a new a new vision might be introducing us to or something that's what i'm trying to get at the avenues towards a new thinking beyond the traditional paradigm and perhaps is not needed perhaps the traditional way we'll see a through all the circle back to a to  an early part of what you just said we do have to worry about ownership and we do have to worry about distribution i mean those are those are somewhat separate issues than the related to the to the employment issue i mean we we have  that in terms i mean our unemployment rate has gone down but but that doesn't mean that our that our distribution of income is getting more and more even i mean it over the last few decades although there has been some improvement in the last few years i mean the distribution of income in our own society has has worsened darkie the disparities have widened so so those that that issue isn't going to take care of itself necessarily and and and there are a tremendous number of very hurt he had big issues here and and i i guess perhaps the the lesson from the technology issue that we were talking about is that we things are not necessarily going to work out badly i mean there are there are there are opportunities there are some positive developments that have emerged out of these tremendous changes oh no doubt so we but we but we need to we need to keep working at them and at least in my own from my own personal perspective we can expect an impersonal market in some sense to take care of everything in constructive directions right including some of the directions that you were that you were talking about so i mean that that's one of the things i think that we that we americans sometimes don't don't realize about our own society that part of the strength of the society is the other institutions are the rule of law that good exists in this in this country on no doubt and that provide a framework then for for that we are in that position now and able to have a tremendous import in terms of impression upon the way the earth is going to be organizing itself in these various political demands that is certainly the perception but i think it's really greatly overblown you do ok in all of the if you look at the economic side for instance i mean we it is true that the american economy has performed remarkably well in the last decade relative to europe relative presented a model to the world to my mother the plan was incredibly enlightened yeah the world economy is a is a much more diverse them and multipolar place these days yeah than it than it was back then so to say that where that where the we somehow rule the world economy or our own hyper power in economic terms i think is is is not terms that is certainly the case that we're way out ahead of everybody else but we can wait but rather with virtually in kosovo or in the gulf we can wage war with virtually we can extend power virtually no loss of life with these extended capabilities that we have with the missiles and the sort of thing that's that's pretty interesting new territory that we're in it is but but in other ways it does but in other ways it doesn't mean as much as it did earlier i mean when we when we were in the cold war era and we were in competition with the soviet union has the europeans and the japanese to talk of other folks involved in the trot out of making us indeed mean need of the war than they do now you have to to face this this fundamental challenge in the cold war now we don't have that kind of centralized challenge we we need to worry about the kosovo's of the world or the saddam hussein's of the world but it but in a way europe and japan don't we i worry that we exaggerate our our own singularity sometimes too much exaggerate the mup and that some of this talk of hyper power you know feeds that and i would i would hope that we  yeah i would think that i was just thinking that there are certain things that the united states has in many ways it's a it's an amalgam of the world where you come to new yes you've got virtually everyone here in a you almost in a unique sort of way it seems to me the united states is  an amalgam state and united states is advanced in many many ways in terms of the leading edge technology and so forth so the model that and the cultural reach of the united states some people are concerned about that is very strong and it may be that while we don't want we want to be modest but we at the same time in the name of universal principles or something do want to say well certain principles do apply democracy we do want to have democracy and we do not particularly want to  within it if it's going to be setting in some sort of a way it or it's trilateral part some sort of a model that really is comprehensively appropriate to the way the world's going to work there may be some problems yet that we should we shouldn't be complacent in terms of how well we've worked out our own system and way of relating politically or economically with one another than maybe we're overly complacent in terms of not looking for some alternatives within our own way of operating a towards humility and it's also the case that that the way we do things here i mean it will not necessarily apply in an in another society right now right now but so that's it that's another part of move i couldn't agree with our board on justice and but we have got it but we have to make sure we we grasp the universals rather than grasp a particular american way of doing things that arise but isn't the only way of expressing the universal when was you know an inappropriate way for them to try and view that there were needs in terms of the financing of the world that had to be addressed in universal principles when i got a couple minutes that was an important issue ages i think you're directing at but is that one of the examples of where they just there were example there were you had that's one of those yeah that's the one of the most interesting parts of the world to look at in this sense because there has been this fascinating debate in east asia over the last decade or two about asian values and asian value in contrast to western values and western values and reporting certain universal principles in terms of the way the financial range of the world is going to be done yes so i'm sure in some ways the development of age of the notion of asian values was a reaction to two folks that one of the projects so called western values and some in somewhat insensitive ways but but but you would find many asians that would also but with but the but would themselves think also that we do indeed all need to reach for universal values and you'll see through some of the things the americans over or particular might want to throw out us but but to to look at what's happening in east asia in  connection to this whole debate is is absolutely fascinating and the and the financial crisis and how it related to that really so that yeah well that's one subject and we could go into for about forty five we don't have much time you know it's just interim we just got the genome the genome is that it gives the whole the one hundred trillion cells in the human organ one hundred trillions of each one is semi permeable in the overall system constitutes they're all in communication through the d n a with every other all kinds of zones and so you know i don't know if that's a metaphor too and or semi permeable to each of the self i don't as a sort of metaphor but we do live with the hindus have been telling us for a long time that there are no academic disciplines that we live in a seamless web and the world is a seamless web of which we are a part and the trilateral commission is one of those who has tried to bring those things together seems to me with great responsibility and i congratulate you both you know i thought i would run out and we've run out of time but it's been your pleasure to have the perceptions your child heck of a north american director we only just got a chance to scratch the surface but there's three directors on a trilateral crisis in europe and in asia now right was japan and it's a very interesting organization one that we encourage you to go to their website will give you  at the end you can go to the website and investigate some of their some of their work and what they're doing we are in conversations invite you to tune in and it's been you know we invite you to welcome back same time next week that's it for this particular program child check once again thank you very much for coming in for all you were my because that was a that was a piece of technology made it possible for an individual to make the program otherwise it always been institutional you know big institutional things so we were able to do that that was good then no track or off into a different vineyard or something like that is i've been very taken with this fella louis kelso i have a thing i'll give you i don't know if he'd want to do or not because it's it's a small thing but he's the one