The Trilateral Commission is a nongovernmental international organization aimed at fostering closer cooperation between Japan, Western Europe and North America. It was founded in July 1973, principally by American banker and philanthropist David Rockefeller, an internationalist who sought to address the challenges posed by the growing economic and political interdependence between the U.S. and its allies in North America, Western Europe, and Japan. The leadership of the organization has since focused on returning to "our roots as a group of countries sharing common values and a commitment to the rule of law, open economies and societies, and democratic principles".
Deterrence theory refers to the scholarship and practice of how threats of using force by one party can convince another party to refrain from initiating some other course of action. The topic gained increased prominence as a military strategy during the Cold War with regard to the use of nuclear weapons and is related to but distinct from the concept of mutual assured destruction, according to which a full-scale nuclear attack on a power with second-strike capability would devastate both parties. The central problem of deterrence revolves around how to credibly threaten military action or nuclear punishment on the adversary despite its costs to the deterrer. Deterrence in an international relations context is the application of deterrence theory to avoid conflict.
The Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), also known simply as The Washington Institute (TWI), is a pro-Israel American think tank based in Washington, D.C., focused on the foreign policy of the United States in the Near East.
Jessica Tuchman Mathews is an American international affairs expert with a focus on climate and energy, defense and security, nuclear weapons, and conflict and governance. She was president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, an international affairs think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C., with offices in five other countries, from 1997 to 2015. She has also held jobs in the Executive and Legislative branches of government, management and research in nonprofits, and journalism.
Karen Kornbluh served as U.S. Ambassador to the OECD under President Barack Obama and as a senior official at the U.S. Department of the Treasury and Federal Communications Commission under President Bill Clinton. She is an expert on communications policy, international trade and issues affecting working families. Her profile in The New York Times focused on her efforts “Fighting for Economic Equality.” She is now Director of the Digital Innovation and Democracy Initiative at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank dedicated to promoting transatlantic cooperation, where she is also a Senior Fellow. She also currently serves as the Chairperson of the board of the Open Technology Fund. She was previously Executive Vice President of External Affairs at Nielsen, Senior Fellow for Digital Policy at the Council on Foreign Relations, and a presidentially-appointed member of the Broadcasting Board of Governors. She was a senior adviser to Barack Obama from the beginning of his Senate tenure throughout his 2008 presidential campaign.
Victor D. Cha is an American political scientist currently serving as president of the Geopolitics and Foreign Policy Department and Korea Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).
Sir Lawrence David Freedman, is a British academic, historian and author specialising in foreign policy, international relations and strategy. He has been described as the "dean of British strategic studies" and was a member of the Iraq Inquiry. He is an Emeritus Professor of War Studies at King's College London.
The Center for a New American Security (CNAS) is a think tank in Washington, D.C. specializing in United States national security issues, including terrorism, irregular warfare, the future of the U.S. military, the emergence of Asia as a global power center, war games pitting the U.S. against the People's Republic of China, and the national security implications of natural resource consumption, among others.
Robin B. Wright, is an American foreign affairs analyst, author and journalist who has covered wars, revolutions and uprisings around the world. She writes for The New Yorker and is a fellow of the U.S. Institute of Peace and the Woodrow Wilson Center. Wright has authored five books and coauthored or edited three others.
Michelle Shephard is an independent investigative reporter, author and filmmaker. She has been awarded the Michener Award for public service journalism and won Canada's top newspaper prize, the National Newspaper Award, three times. In 2011, she was an associate producer on a documentary called Under Fire: Journalists in Combat. She produced the National Film Board documentary, Prisoners of the Absurd, which premiered at Amsterdam's film festival in 2014. Shephard also co-directed a film based on her book about Omar Khadr, Guantanamo's Child, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in September 2015.
Markos Kounalakis is an American syndicated journalist and scholar who is the second gentleman of California as the husband of lieutenant governor Eleni Kounalakis. He writes a syndicated weekly foreign affairs column for The Miami Herald and McClatchy-Tribune News and is a frequent foreign affairs analyst for CBS News and CNN International.
Kori N. Schake is an American international relations scholar currently serving as Director of Foreign and Defense Policy at the American Enterprise Institute. She has held several high-level positions in the U.S. Defense and State Departments and on the National Security Council. She was a foreign policy adviser to the McCain-Palin 2008 presidential campaign. Schake is a contributing writer at The Atlantic. She serves on the board of advisors of Foreign Policy Research Institute and the Alexander Hamilton Society. Schake is a member of the Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee.
Gayle Tzemach Lemmon is an author who has written on the role of women and girls in foreign policy. She has held private sector roles in emerging technology for national security as well as financial services. She serves as an adjunct senior fellow at the Women and Foreign Policy Program with the Council on Foreign Relations and has written the New York Times bestsellers The Dressmaker of Khair Khana (2011), Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield (2015) and The Daughters of Kobani: A Story of Rebellion, Courage, and Justice (2021). A graduate of the University of Missouri and the Harvard Business School, Lemmon has covered a variety of topics such as women's entrepreneurship, women in the military, forced and child marriage, Syria and Afghanistan. She has also served as a board member of the Mercy Corps and the International Center for Research on Women, and as a member of the Bretton Woods Committee. She speaks Spanish, German, French and is conversant in Dari and basic Kurmanji.
Professor Alexander Mirtchev, LL.M., Ph.D. is an American academic, executive, author and philanthropist, working in the areas of geopolitics, geoeconomics, global economic security, and political risk analysis and mitigation. He is a vice chair of the Atlantic Council of the United States, where he is also a member of the executive and strategy committees and the advisory council of the Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security. Dr. Mirtchev is a distinguished visiting professor at George Mason University's Schar School of Government and Policy. Dr. Mirtchev is a founding council member of the Kissinger Institute on China and the United States at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, where he served as a senior fellow and member of the Wilson National Cabinet. He served as vice president of the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI), UK, as well as executive chairman of RUSI International. Dr. Mirtchev is also the president and founder of Krull Corp., a macro-economic geopolitical consultancy.His new book, "The Prologue: The Alternative Energy Megatrend in the Age of Great Power Competition," is published in English, German, Spanish, and Russian.
Ward Hayes Wilson is an American researcher who is the executive director of RealistRevolt, a grassroots advocacy organization in the Chicago area. He lives and works in Glenview, Illinois.
Rachel Briggs OBE was Founding Executive Director of Hostage US, the first Director of Hostage UK and was awarded an OBE in the 2014 Honours List for services to hostages and the families of victims kidnapped overseas. She is the Chair of the Board of Directors of the Global Center on Cooperative Security, an expert on foreign and security policy and an Associate Fellow of Chatham House.
Lee Hsi-min, also known as Lee Hsi-ming, is a retired admiral of the Republic of China (Taiwan) armed forces, and currently serves as the senior research fellow of the Project 2049 Institute in Washington, D.C.
Mira Rapp-Hooper is an American political scientist currently serving as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for East Asia and Oceania at the White House National Security Council (NSC) in the Biden administration. She is the White House's top advisor for and responsible for coordinating US government policy towards the region. From 2021–2023 she served as Director for Indo-Pacific Strategy at the NSC where she was responsible for the White House's Indo-Pacific Strategy, the management of the Quad partnership among Australia, India, Japan, and the United States, and US-Japan-ROK trilateral relations, among other initiatives. In 2021 she briefly served at the State Department on the Secretary's Policy Planning Staff.
Stockholm Free World Forum is a security and foreign policy think tank in Stockholm, Sweden.
Aaron Wess Mitchell is an American foreign policy expert and former diplomat who was the Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs from October 2017 until February 2019. Prior to assuming the role at State Department, he was president and CEO of the Center for European Policy Analysis. On July 19, 2017, President Donald Trump nominated Mitchell as Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs.
