The report explores a more extensive commitment and sophisticated process beyond normal diplomatic practice, which can enable the Trilateral countries to deal with contemporary problems, notably in the international economic area. Consultations are a principal device for renewing the basic consensus among Trilateral countries, which would make easier the modification of domestic policies to minimize adverse effects on foreign interests, the reconciliation of direct conflicts of interest, and common action on international problems.
Consultation can lessen the shock of sudden action and minimize embarrassment to a friendly state.
The educational value of consultation is substantial, and it can sometimes produce new ideas or approaches through collective consideration. Consultation can serve as a means of influencing the domestic decisionmaking process, through international input or by requiring an internal concentration of effort and coordination among various departments. Some of these derive from internal politics, such as vulnerability to charges of undue foreign influence in national decision-making or structural complications from a constitutional system like that of the United States. Others are external political ones, such as the problem of excluding certain governments, and the multiplicity of multilateral commitments and agreements. There are other difficulties of a procedural or psychological nature.