In the 1970s and 1980s, enormous advances in technology, travel, and telecommunications transformed the world into a global marketplace, raising hope for a completely new system of global cooperation. By the same token, the threat of nuclear war and regional conflict loomed even larger, as did the threat to world stability posed by the breakdown of social order in impoverished areas around the world.

This report compiled for the Trilateral Commission (for which the Japan Center for International Exchange acts as Japanese Secretariat) meeting in Washington in April 1984 offers concrete advice to the member states in Western Europe and North America and to Japan regarding issues in their own societies and elsewhere in the world that, if left untended, could destroy democracy as a way of life. The issues addressed include unemployment, financing social services in ageing societies, the need for sustained economic growth, and the Third World debt crisis.

The report recommends specific action for individual states to take (such as lowering the U.S. debt), as well as coordinated efforts to improve the international monetary and trade systems, share defense costs, and improve living standards and human rights around the world as a way of curbing Soviet influence. It also calls for expanding the annual economic summit meetings to include issues involving democracy, political stability, and military security.

Chapters

• Dilemmas of the Decade
• Employment and Equity: The Social Response
• Cooperation or Fragmentation: The Political Response
• Tasks and Trade-Offs: The Trilateral Response

Authors:

David Owen, Member of the British Parliament and Leader of the Social Democratic Party

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Professor of Government, Columbia University and Former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs

Saburo Okita, Chairman, Institute for Domestic and International Policy Studies and Former Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs