Bilderberg

Bilderberg

The US-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 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (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 co-ordinate 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 post-war history of Western Europe and North America (unlike the Trilateral Commission, Japanese participants are excluded).  Prince Bernard of the Netherlands remained Bilderberg chairman until he was implicated in the Lockheed bribery scandal.  The handling of the embarrassing Bernard revelations was a private affair, like all of Bilderberg’s operations.  The 1976 meeting scheduled for April 22-25 in Hot Springs, Virginia was cancelled to avoid undo publicity and Bernard resigned his position in August 1976.  In April 1977 the annual gatherings resumed, continuing through to the present.

Top executives from the world’s leading top 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 is it they want to come to pass.  Bilderberg is not the only means of Western collective management of the world order; it is part of an increasingly dense system of transnational co-ordination.

 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 bi-partisan consensus that is painstakingly managed by very small circles of public and private elites.  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.  As in the case of the Vietnam War, broad sectors of the public democratically challenged the ruling class policy. 

Bodies like the US 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.  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.