David Dobrodt

It all goes back to November 20, when CIA chief, Avril Haines, briefed NATO ambassadors in Brussels on intelligence reports that Russia had massed 10,000 troops at the border with Ukraine and was planning an invasion.

The following is an edited transcription of an interview with Justin Yifu Lin conducted December 20, 2021 by EIR Editor Michael Billington. Dr. Lin was the Chief Economist and Senior Vice President at the World Bank from 2008 to 2012, and is now the dean at several institutes at Peking University: the Dean of the Institute for New Structural Economics; the Dean at the Institute for South-South Cooperation and Development; as well as a Professor and Honorary Dean at the National School of Development. Subheads, footnotes, and embedded links have been added.

EIR: This is Mike Billington, I’m with the Executive Intelligence Review, the Schiller Institute, and The LaRouche Organization. I’m speaking here with Dr. Justin Yifu Lin.

Dr. Lin: Thank you very much for the opportunity to have this conversation with you.

What Prevents China-U.S. Cooperation for Development?

EIR: As you probably know—I sent you some of this—there are several senior diplomats and intelligence professionals in the United States—including Ambassador Chas Freeman, who has great experience in China, and former CIA official Graham Fuller—both of whom have warned that the U.S. foreign policy has been “weaponized,” that diplomacy has been lost, and that this is driving the danger of war between the U.S. and China, as well as with Russia.

You have argued in the past for what could be called “economic deterrence,” that as China’s economy becomes significantly larger than that of the U.S., that “the United States’ own development could then not ignore the opportunities brought by the Chinese market,” and that this would bring about a “peaceful and common development between China and the United States.” What in your mind is preventing that peaceful and common development now?

Dr. Lin: Thank you very much for this very important question for our world today. First, we need to understand that cooperation between the U.S. and China is crucial for many global challenges, because the U.S. is the largest and the strongest country in the world, and China is the second largest economy in terms of economic size. Their cooperation will be the foundation for combating climate change, containing the pandemic, and to help the other countries to get rid of their poverty in order to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. So, the cooperation is important, and our cooperation certainly is good for the U.S., for China, and for the whole world.

But we did not see the cooperation come along. We see a lot of tensions in the recent years. I think it is because the U.S. has lost confidence in itself. The U.S. was the largest economy in the world throughout the 20th century. In terms of purchasing power parity (PPP), China overtook the U.S. in 2014, but the U.S., for her own interests, tried to maintain its dominance, economically, politically and so on.

And so now there are some involved in the strategy of the U.S. who try to contain China. And certainly, that kind of strategy reflects in the U.S. diplomatic and foreign relations policy with China. Certainly, that will threaten the stability of the world, because, first, we need to have cooperation to address global issues, but also because that kind of tension is a threat to the foundation for cooperation; that will add to the uncertainty of the world. That’s very bad.

How To Resolve the Difficulty

How can we improve that? Well, one way is that China could reduce its economic size. If China cut its GDP by half, then the U.S. would not feel threatened. But it’s not possible, because development is a human right. That is in the UN constitution, and that is a constitution has been advocated by the U.S. and many other countries for decades. So, there’s no reason why China would need to cut our income by half or more to please the U.S.

The other way is to continue to have development, to have growth. I wrote an article arguing that if China can reach half the per capita GDP of the U.S.—I think that’s very moderate, only half of the U.S.—I think the U.S. will accept China by that time, for three reasons:

First, [even] if China’s per capita GDP is half that of the U.S.—and certainly we would still have some internal differences—our more developed regions, like the major cities, Beijing and Shanghai, and the more developed areas, our coastal provinces, like Shandong, Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Fujian and Guangdong, have a combined population of a little bit more than four hundred million. Currently, the U.S. population is around three hundred and forty million, but certainly the U.S. population will continue to grow.

In those more developed regions in China, per capita GDP will be about the same as in the U.S. Both per capita GDP and the economic size will be about the same as the U.S. We know that per capita GDP reflects the average labor productivity of that part of the economy, and the average labor productivity reflects the industrial achievement, the technological achievement. So, by that time the U.S. will not have the technological superiority that they could use to choke off Chinese development. Currently, you see, the U.S. has put a lot of high-tech companies in China on its so-called Entity List,¹The Entity List is a trade restriction list published by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security, consisting of certain foreign persons, entities, or governments that are subject to U.S. license requirements for the export or transfer of specified U.S. technologies, including entities that engaged in “activities sanctioned by the State Department and activities contrary to U.S. national security and/or foreign policy interests.” without actually having any concrete evidence for their accusations. That is only because the U.S. wants to use their technological superiority to choke off China’s development.

But if at that later time, if the more advanced regions in China had the same income level, the same technological level, then the U.S. would not be able to do that. 

Second, our population size is about four times that of the U.S. If our GDP is half the U.S., then in fact China’s economic size will be twice as large as the U.S. No matter how unhappy the U.S. is, the U.S. cannot change that fact. It’s a fact. 

And third, China will be the largest economy by that time, and China will continue to grow. For the U.S., for example, if those companies on the Fortune 500 list, want to stay on that 500 companies list, they cannot lose the Chinese market. And also in trade, certainly it’s a win-win. But we know that in trade, the smaller economy gets more than the larger economy. By that time, China’s economy will be twice as large as the U.S., so in trade with China, the U.S. will gain more. So, for that reason, certainly, if U.S. politicians really care about their own people, then, to have friendly relations with China will be necessary. It would be necessary for the U.S. to improve the well-being of their own people and to maintain their companies’ leadership in the world.

Countering Economic Suppression by the U.S.

EIR: You argued once before that the U.S. intentionally suppressed the Japanese economy in the 1980s and 1990s to, as you said, “prevent them from threatening the U.S. economic status.” And, as you’ve just said, they’re doing pretty much the same thing now towards China, having suppressed these Chinese companies with accusations and so forth. How has China countered this today? You’ve already said what you propose will come in the future, but how can China counter this attack on Huawei and other companies today?

Dr. Lin: I think the first thing we need is to remain calm and open. We need to move our economy to further improve its market efficiency. The U.S. today has some superiority, an upper hand in certain technologies, but the U.S. is not the only country which has those kinds of technologies. The advanced countries in Europe—Germany, France, and Italy—and Japan and Korea—also have many advanced technologies. China should remain open, to have access to the technology from other advanced countries, as long as it’s not technologies in which the U.S. has the monopoly.

Advanced technologies require their own heavy R&D—it’s a bit expensive, and once they get those kinds of technological breakthroughs, the profitability of these companies depends on how large the market is. Measured by purchasing power parity, China is already the largest market in the world. Every year since 2008, China has contributed about 30% to global market expansion. So as long as China can open the Chinese market, I figure that other high-tech companies will be ready to fill in the gap that is due to the U.S. restricting its companies from exporting those kinds of technologies to China. China only needs to focus on a few technologies, for which the U.S. is the only supplier in the world. By that we will not be choked off.

Second, we need to continue to develop our economies. Currently, if you measure by purchasing power parity, our GDP is about 25% that of the U.S., and by market exchange rate our GDP is about one sixth of the U.S. As I said, if we can maintain the growth momentum, I think the dilemma will be addressed.

‘Industrial Policy’ vs. ‘Free Trade’

EIR: You’ve written for years about the fact that the advanced industrial nations reached the point they are at today by using government directed credit, and what you call “industrial policy,” to protect and support emerging industries and the research that’s necessary for that kind of development. But now these advanced sector countries are denying the same measures to today’s emerging economies, under the demand of “free trade.”

The Korean economist Chang Ha-joon called this “Kicking Away the Ladder.” Lyndon LaRouche has pointed to this as the primary difference between the British System of “free trade” and the original American System of protection and directed credit. I have also written that the Chinese economic model today that you promote is closer to the American System—people like Alexander Hamilton, Friedrich List and Henry Carey—than is now practiced in the U.S. itself. How do you see this?

Dr. Lin: I fully agree with it, no question. Actually, not only did the U.S. protect her own industries during the “catching up” stage, but Britain practiced the same. Before the 17th Century, Britain was in a process of trying to catch up with the Netherlands, because at that time the Netherlands’ wool textile sector was more advanced than Britain. The GDP in the Netherlands was about 30% higher than the GDP in Britain. So, Britain adopted similar strategies to protect its own wool textile industries, and created all kinds of incentives to smuggle the equipment from Netherlands to Britain and provide incentives to attract the craftsmen in the textile sector in the Netherlands to come to Britain.

Exactly the same process, like what Hamilton argues, and List argues. Britain only turned to free trade after the industrial revolution. Britain was then the most advanced country in the whole world, and their industry was the most advanced in the world. They wanted to export their products to other countries, so they started to advocate free trade.

At that time, the U.S. wanted to catch up, so the U.S. used exactly the same policy as Britain had used in the 17th century, when Britain wanted to catch up with the Netherlands.

If you look at history, only a few countries were able to industrialize and catch up. You can see in the catching-up process, they all used the government’s active facilitation to support their industrial upgrading. Britain and the U.S., after they became the most advanced countries, on the one hand, they argued free trade for their electorates, but at the same time, they also actively supported research and development to further improve their technology.

And that’s how they can continue to upgrade their technology, and also develop new higher-value industries. Because at that time, their technologies were on the global frontiers, so if they wanted to have new technologies, they would have to invent the technologies by themselves.

The invention of technologies has two parts. One is basic research, the other is the development of new products based on the breakthroughs in basic research. Private firms, certainly, have the incentive to develop new technologies and new products, because if they’re successful, they can get patents, and then they can have a monopoly for up to 17 or 20 years in the global market. But at the same time, if they do not have breakthroughs in basic research, then it would be very difficult or even impossible for them to have the development of new products and new technologies.

But you know, basic research, you’ll find, is a public good, and so the private sectors do not have the incentive to do basic research. If you look into the high-income countries, their governments all support basic research. That is a necessity for them, to continue to have a new stream of technology, a new stream of products and so on. They are still using the industrial policy. But the difference is that they are on a global frontier [of new technologies], and that’s how an industrial policy in the advanced countries, to address market failures, will be different from the type of industrial policy to address market failures in a developing country.

In nature it is the same, but actually the areas that the government is required to contribute its efforts will be different. Recently, there’s a famous book called The Entrepreneurial State, by Mariana Mazzucato. Her theme is: In all of the major and competitive industries in the U.S. today, they are the result of the government’s active support in basic research in the previous period. So, the area in which a country requires the government to put its efforts will be different, depending on the stage of development.

Hamilton vs. Jefferson

In the U.S., there are two traditions: One tradition is the Hamilton tradition, to argue that the government should provide support to overcome the barriers for further development. The other tradition is the Jefferson tradition, to say the government should do nothing, should leave the market to function—the government should be minimal.

In fact, in practice, the U.S., since the founding of the nation, has been following Hamilton. But in rhetoric, it is totally dominated by the Jefferson tradition. I think you have a split between the reality and your rhetoric, but unfortunately your rhetoric has been so powerful, and it’s all over the developing countries—they are advised not to do anything by their government, and as a result—except for a few countries whose governments followed the Hamilton tradition and were able to industrialize and catch up—but other countries were misguided by the Jefferson tradition to not do anything, and so they were unable to narrow the gap with the advanced countries. 

Money Accounting’ vs. ‘Wealth Accounting’

EIR: You and other Chinese officials, including Premier Li Keqiang, have called for a new means of accounting the strength of nations, arguing that looking only at the GDP and the debt—which are the money side—is what you call “severely flawed,” for considering only monetary data and leaving out the underlying national assets, including human capital, natural capital and produced capital. You call this alternative method “wealth accounting.” How far has this idea been developed and put in use in China or anywhere else?

Dr. Lin: First, I’m delighted to see an increasing recognition for change in some nations. GDP is a flow concept—how much you produce every year. But the production every year depends on the stock of the wealth, including human capital, natural resources, biodiversity, as well as the produced capital: the equipment, the machinery, and also the infrastructure. All those are the wealth of that nation and the foundation for producing goods and services to generate the GDP.

In the past, we only looked at the flow concept, the GDP, without paying attention to the condition of the foundation to generate the flow. The foundation should be based on the wealth—the assets we just described. I’m delighted to see now, increasingly, there is a recognition of the necessity to change the concept, including in the IMF recently, which has produced a paper saying that if the government can use debt to finance an investment in infrastructure, it generates assets; and it is different from the government using that debt to finance consumption—those are pure debts.

So, if we calculate debt according to whether the government used the debt to support infrastructure or other improvements in human capital, then it will contribute to the ability for the nation to generate new streams of income and thereby enhance the ability to pay back its debt. In the past, when we talked about the debt-sustainability framework, that framework only calculated the gross debt, without paying attention to the asset side. The IMF today called for a revision in its debt sustainability framework. So, we are delighted to see now this more inclusive concept has been increasingly recognized and put into the policy consideration.

EIR: Were you and other Chinese economists involved in that change at the IMF?

Dr. Lin: When I was at the World Bank, I started to advocate that. I wrote policy notes to advocate that. To change peoples’ beliefs, people’s ways of behaving, certainly takes time. I was the Chief Economist of the World Bank from 2008 to 2012. The proposal to change to the new framework came only after about four years after I left! So, I think that if we want to change the world, conversations like this one with you and me, and people with a better concept, a better idea, should not stop advocating for that. And the more people understand, then I think that gradually, in the end, I’m sure the world will change for the better.

EIR: You are attacking neoliberal orthodoxy. But while you were at the World Bank between 2008 and 2012, you were face-to-face with that as the dominant ideology at the World Bank and the IMF. I guess you are explaining now how you dealt with it then, and how it’s having a longer-term effect from your arguments. Does that sound right?

Dr. Lin: Yes, that’s very true. For example, when I first arrived at the World Bank, I started to say, okay, structural transformation is the foundation for inclusive and sustainable development in any country. But if you look into the structural transformations, you not only need to rely on the entrepreneur in order to have innovations, but entrepreneurs, if they are to be successful, need to be provided with adequate infrastructure. You need to provide adequate financial support. You need to have an improvement in infrastructure, improvement in the financial structure, institutions, and so on. Also legal institutions. All those things that individual enterprises will not be able to deal with. You need to require the state to do it. 

But the state’s capacity and resources are limited. You need to use your limited capacity and resources strategically. That means you need to pick certain areas that you want to do. And those certainly require so-called industrial policy. At the beginning, industrial policy was a taboo in international development organizations, including World Bank. But I started to advocate for it. I’m delighted to see, increasingly now, people accept that it is necessary to have industrial policy, including the U.S. government, which now openly says we embrace industrial policy for our future development. Right? For example, infrastructure. In 2008, I started to advocate investing in infrastructure, on the one hand, to cope with the necessity for counter-cyclical intervention, but at the same time to lay the foundation for long-term development in the developing world.

So, it’s one stone killing two birds. At the beginning, people were also very reluctant. At that time, the counter-cyclical intervention was mostly providing rescue packages to laid-off workers and so on. I see, certainly, that to stabilize the economy would be essential. But if you only provided, let’s say, unemployment benefits—it’s about the consumption, yes, but you do not contribute to enhancing the growth potential in the future. If you invested in infrastructure, you [not only] create jobs, but you reduce the need for unemployment benefits, and at the same time you lay the foundation for long-term growth. 

At the beginning, people were very reluctant. But I’m delighted to see now, the World Bank, the IMF and the European Union, and to some extent also the U.S., accept the idea, and have started to advocate the need for infrastructure. Recently, the Biden administration proposed to the Congress for funds to support infrastructure investment. Those kinds of ideas. When I was at the World Bank, when I started to argue for that, it was so foreign to many people. They thought, well, infrastructure is an investment, so the market will take care of that. But as we see, the market could not do it, and so we need to have an active government participation. Gradually, people started to embrace many ideas I had started to advocate at the World Bank, and put them into their programs.

EIR: On the other hand, the U.S. and Europe are continuing to deal with their huge debt crisis by simply printing money—Quantitative Easing [QE] and other programs. So, while they’re acknowledging the huge deficit in infrastructure, and they’re making some small efforts in that direction, they’re continuing with the QE, which is threatening hyperinflation today, which I think even the inside gurus of Wall Street and the City of London are acknowledging, that there’s a grave, grave danger of a hyperinflation. What is your view on that?

The Power of Great Ideas

Dr. Lin: Yes, I think that in order to change their policies it will be essential to change their ideas, their policy orientations. For this, I agree with Keynes. In the last sentence of his General Theory, he said: “But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.” In the past, the world was influenced by those kinds of inappropriate neoliberal ideas, so the government policy was shaped by those kinds of misguided ideas.

And so, it’s very important for your Institute and for scholars like me to advocate and present alternative ideas which can address the issues, and also improve our way of doing things in individual countries, and also in the world. In the end, people will see the benefit and they will start to make some changes. At the beginning, maybe a very small step. But once they see the power of the right interventions, the power of the right policy, I’m hopeful. I think that the world will move for the better. I do wish the right idea will win the debate in the end.

EIR: When I looked at your idea of “wealth accounting,” going beyond the monetary figures of GDP and debt, I thought about Lyndon LaRouche’s idea of a non-monetary measure of economic progress, which he called “relative potential population-density.” His view was that these measures were ratios determined by the transformation of the physical economies through the rates of development of new physical principles, discovered in nature, and then applied to the productive process through new machine tools using those new principles. Do you see that as similar to your idea of “wealth accounting”?

Dr. Lin: Yes, I think that that idea is very close to the idea that we just discussed, what I have been advocating for a long time. And we do see, you know, we share the same wisdom and our ideas, our proposals, converge on the same directions. And so, we need to join hands to propose the right ideas, through your Institute and my Institute, and to convey it to more people.

EIR: You recently wrote an article, “Development Begins at Home,” with your associate, Dr. Wang Yan, who has also spoken at one of our Schiller Institute conferences, comparing the approach of the IMF and the World Bank to the development of Africa, to that of the Chinese approach, using your “wealth accounting” idea. In that article, you said that despite many decades of aid from the West, the infrastructure bottlenecks were not addressed, and that this was the primary reason that the African countries very much appreciate Chinese investment, which emphasizes infrastructure as the means to lift the productivity of the entire nation and escape from poverty

The Belt and Road Initiative

As you know, the Schiller Institute and EIR have strongly promoted the idea of the New Silk Road, since the 1990s—actually, following the fall of the Soviet Union—as a means of achieving peace through development. Of course, the Belt and Road Initiative, launched by President Xi Jinping [in 2013], is very much in that light. How would you evaluate, so far, the progress of the Belt and Road Initiative in Africa and elsewhere?

Dr. Lin: I’m delighted to see that these new ideas have been welcomed and also joined hands in practice. For example, the Belt and Road Initiative—there are already 145 countries and more than 30 international organizations which have signed the Strategic Cooperation Agreement with China. I am delighted to see this idea has been widely accepted in the world.

China also has continued to support infrastructure and infrastructural improvements in the world in spite of the pandemic situation, and those kinds of investments certainly provide the foundations for the future, but at the same time, improve jobs and economic developments, even during these pandemic times. I am also delighted to see the European countries now proposing a similar strategy, like the European Gateway, as a way to improve the infrastructure, to link to other countries. I think the world is moving towards the same direction.

The infrastructural gap is so huge, that no one country can accomplish all of this. So it is desirable to join hands, with all the initiatives, by China, by European countries, by Japan, by the U.S., because fundamentally we care about humanity, we care about the future of the Earth, the future of human beings. As long as we contribute to that, we should join hands. We should not, in each individual country and for our political purposes, put up barriers to our cooperation.

A Modern Global Health Care System

EIR: In that same article about African development, you directly blame the IMF and the World Bank for what you called “neoliberal orthodoxy,” and that the result of that was that many low- and middle-income countries continue to suffer from fundamental deficiencies, such as the lack of health care personnel and resources. You noted that even after 70 years of development aid, still “there is the inability to deliver clean water, electricity and sanitation.”

As you know, Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche has formed what she calls the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites—based on an idea of the 15^th-century genius Nicholas of Cusa—calling for a global mobilization to address the health crisis that you’ve identified, to provide a modern health system in every country, if the pandemic and future pandemics are going to be defeated. I know that part of what China has launched is a Health Silk Road. So, what are your thoughts on global cooperation to achieve this kind of health system in every country?

Dr. Lin: I think that there is a need, and a huge need, as this pandemic shows up, and China certainly contributes to what you mentioned about health care overall. China already provided two billion doses of vaccine to Africa and other parts of the world—one third of the doses of vaccine in the world excluding China. But that’s not sufficient. So, we need to work harder, to work together. Otherwise, the COVID-19 pandemic may linger, and the longer the pandemic is there, the harder it is to deal with, because there are going to be other new mutations coming out all the time, making the vaccines become less effective. So, we need to join hands to contain it, and the sooner, the better.

We also need to set the foundation to cope with similar challenges in the future. When this kind of threatening virus appears, at the beginning, we should cope with it. We should repress it immediately. And with that, we need to have global cooperation. So, I think the call [for a modern health system in every country] is very important, and we should join hands to promote that.

Operation Ibn Sina

EIR: Let me bring up the horrible situation in Afghanistan, where, as you know, 40 years of war, and now the freezing of that nation’s very scarce reserves by the U.S. Federal Reserve and several European banks, and the imposition of sanctions and even cutting off the aid from the IMF and the World Bank, which has created a threat of what has to be recognized as genocide through starvation and disease in that country.

In particular, the World Bank was supporting the nation’s health care system for the last 20 years of the U.S./NATO warfare and occupation there, but that’s been completely cut off, leaving the country with virtually no public health system at all. In this case, Helga Zepp-LaRouche has launched another project—she calls it Project Ibn Sina, named after the 11th century Persian medical genius, who came from that region, of Afghanistan. Our proposal is demanding not just emergency aid, and the release of these funds—but also to build the nation’s infrastructure, as you have been emphasizing. By integrating Afghanistan into the Belt and Road, and in particular, extending the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, the CPEC, into Afghanistan. Do you think this is possible?

Dr. Lin: I think it’s possible, if we really care about humanity. I think that the support in the health care, in the medical situation, should be unconditional. Conditions in Africa and in Afghanistan and other developing countries will be improved once they have improvement in their health, and improvement in their economic development. Then the socio-political stability there can be maintained. I’m sure that it’s not only good for the individual country, but also good for the global communities, because then we will be in a better situation to work together and to have more collaboration, and it will also reduce the refugees, legally and illegally, to the high-income countries.

And you know, that will also be a big challenge for the high-income countries. So, in some areas, the support should be unconditional, because only that will get you humanity. If we really care about human beings, then no matter under what consideration, we should support those basic needs.

Prospects of a ‘Greater Harmony’ and Peace

EIR: Right. As you know, the U.S. and China signed a “Phase One” trade agreement in January of 2020 between the U.S. and China. [Vice Premier] Liu He was in attendance at the White House and President Xi Jinping was on the telephone with President Donald Trump. At that time Trump announced that he would soon make a second visit to China, and said he looked forward to what he called, in his words, “continuing to forge a future of greater harmony, prosperity and commerce,” which would lead to an “even stronger world peace.”

Now, clearly, that never happened. As the U.S. failed to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump eventually fell into adopting the antagonistic approach to China expressed by his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, blaming China for virtually every failure in the United States. And although the current Secretary of State, Tony Blinken, has the same hostile attitude toward China, President Biden has had several long calls with President Xi. Do you see some chance of restoring that “greater harmony” coming out of this cooperation between Presidents Biden and Xi?

Dr. Lin: I think that China’s door is always open, and, as we said at the beginning, cooperation between China and the U.S. will lay the foundation to address many of the global challenges that we encounter today. So, it will be essential.

As to why it did not occur: I think it is because there are some problems in the U.S. If you look into the past, the U.S. always liked to use other countries as the scapegoat for its own domestic problems. That may gain some kind of political interest for the politician in the short run, but it will make the issue become worse for the long term.

So, I hope the politicians and the intellectual communities in the U.S. will have the wisdom to understand the roots of its own problems, and it should not use other countries as the excuse or scapegoat for its own problems. Short-term political gain is for a few politicians, but at the cost of the well-being of the whole nation. I hope that this kind of situation will be improved. If those kinds of using other countries as a scapegoat for its own domestic problems, is removed, then certainly U.S. and China cooperation will be good for the U.S., for China, and for the world.

Creating a Culture of Science and Art

EIR: In his own work, Lyndon LaRouche very much focused on the quality of creativity, which distinguishes Man from the Beast, as the same in scientific investigations as it is in artistic discoveries, especially that of classical music. In that light, he insisted that scientific education and aesthetic education must go hand in hand in order to allow for the full development of the creative powers of our youth and our population.

I personally have very much taken note of the fact that there is a new appreciation in China, following the dark days of the Cultural Revolution, to honor the classical traditions in China, of Confucius and Mencius and the great minds of the Song Dynasty Renaissance, people like Zhu Xi and Shen Guo, and that this is going on simultaneously with the incredible economic and scientific developments taking place in China, as well as China’s increased acknowledgment of the great cultural developments in Western culture and Western classical music, and so forth. How do you see the relationship between economics and science, and the aesthetic side of cultural development?

Dr. Lin: I see that science and art—they are complementary to each other, they are both [areas] in which all human beings unleash all of our potentials. So, we should not just focus on one thing and neglect others, if we want to have a better society. We also want to allow the people to develop themselves with greater potentials. And, as you described and you noticed, China now has tried to bring in our traditional culture—appreciation of art, music, classics, not only from China, but from other civilizations—into our programs, educational programs. That’s a good sign. I’m sure that will further the rejuvenation of China to a higher stage, not only materially, but culturally, spiritually.

EIR: Thank you. Are there any other thoughts you would like to convey to the readers and supporters of The LaRouche Organization?

Dr. Lin: I am delighted to have this opportunity, and I hope our voice will be heard in more corners of the world, because fundamentally, we all care about human beings, and we all want to have a better society for every country in the world. And so I hope that our message will get momentum, traction in the world.

EIR: Thank you very much. I hope that we can in fact build on this cooperation. Helga Zepp-LaRouche has always insisted that if we are going to bring about a new paradigm for mankind, it’s going to mean that each culture reaches back to its greatest moments, and that we work together to bring about a truly human renaissance, rather than just a European Renaissance or a Chinese Renaissance or an Islamic Renaissance, but that we bring mankind together to address our common humanity. That is the one basis on which we can end this descent into conflict and war and depression.

Dr. Lin: Very good. Thank you very much.

Dec. 19 (EIRNS)–On Sunday, the Council of Ministers of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) met in extraordinary session in Pakistan, and agreed upon resolutions for coordinated humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, and measures for economic functioning. Follow-up mechanisms were specified to implement the decisions of the OIC. Attending the meeting were 70 delegates, representing member countries, guest nations, international financial and UN aid agencies. The OIC, with 57 member nations, is the largest such world body after the United Nations. But even so, what determines what will happen for the Afghanistan people and nation, the greater region, and world situation, requires a shift in approach to abandon deadly geopolitics, and launch concerted positive action among major powers.

This was stressed on Friday, the opening day of the three-day OIC meetings in Islamabad, by Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche, appearing in a discussion on Pakistan’s national television PTV, which covered the OIC proceedings intensively. She said, “In a certain sense, to get all the forces internationally together to help Afghanistan is, in my view, one of the absolute, important historical missions. In a certain, I think the whole destiny of mankind is in a laser, concentrated on what happens in Afghanistan. So, I would really hope that all the participating and affected countries would double and multiply their efforts to make saving Afghanistan an issue of the whole world, because right now it is. And I think all channels must be used: media, United Nations, conferences. There must be a drumbeat, a drumbeat of awakening the conscience of the world, because I think this is sort of a judgment of our ability as a human species: Are we morally fit to survive or not?”

What is happening this evening is that pledges are starting from OIC nations, on what donations they will commit, for purposes of urgent relief operations. From preliminary reports, the framework that is to administer ongoing aid includes several features. A resolution was adopted unanimously that the OIC will set up a Humanitarian Trust Fund and a Food Security Program. The OIC meeting requested that the existing Islamic Organization for Food Security (IOFS) work with this new Food Security Program for Afghanistan, including using IOFS reserves, when warranted. The Humanitarian Trust Fund is to come into operation during the First Quarter of 2022, under the auspices of the Islamic Development Bank.

In Kabul, the existing OIC Mission is to be reinforced with more logistical, financial and staff resources to enable it to coordinate operations with global agencies and partnerships. These include the obvious UN agencies, from UNICEF, to the World Food Program, and other organizations. A priority will be working with the World Health Organization for vaccines and medical supplies.

There will be support for the Afghan refugees who have fled to neighboring countries, and for the internally displaced within Afghanistan. An estimated 665,000 people have been displaced just between January and September 2021, over and above the 2.9 million already dislocated within their nation. In brief, 60% of the population of 38 million people face crisis levels of hunger, and lack of necessities for life.

The conference welcomed the offer by Uzbekistan to create, with UN efforts, a regional logistics hub in Termez city, to handle the shipment of humanitarian material into Afghanistan. The OIC meeting approved the designation of Ambassador Tarig Ali Bakhit Salah, Assistant Secretary General for Humanitarian, Cultural and Family Affairs at the OIC Secretariat, to be OIC Special Envoy to Afghanistan for the OIC Secretary General, to coordinate efforts, and provide reports to the OIC. The Humanitarian Trust Fund is to be up and running within the first quarter of 2022.

It is reported by APP (AP Pakistan,) that there was an urgent appeal made for large-scale projects in the multi-nation region, to serve reconstruction and development. In general, this should include energy, transportation and communication projects. Two mentioned were the TAPI Pipeline, and the TAP (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan) electricity transmission line. Participants in the deliberation drew attention to the importance of the 15th Summit of the Economic Cooperation Organization, which met on Nov. 28, 2021, in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan.

The second area of OIC action, alongside the humanitarian, food-aid and anti-pandemic work, concerns creating the banking, credit and related conditions to serve a re-established functioning economy, and for reconstruction. The Council of Foreign Ministers decided, according to the report by APP, that exploratory talks “to unlock the financial and banking channels to resume liquidity and flow of financial and humanitarian assistance” should commence under the direction of the OIC General Secretariat, and the Islamic Development Bank. APP added that, participants discussed “exploring realistic pathways towards unfreezing Afghanistan’s financial assets.”

Here is where the outright clash comes in with the networks in London, Washington D.C., and co-conspirators, which insist on wrongfully withholding $9.5 billion in Afghanistan state assets, sorely needed for government and economic functions. An especially ugly, duplicitous public relations campaign is going on in the United States, where two open statements were issued this past week, crying crocodile tears, asserting that some of the $9.5 billion should be unfrozen, and used to “directly help the Afghan people,” but only if allocated directly through non-Kabul government, non-Taliban, UN or other agencies. One letter was from former military figures, in connection with the infamous Atlantic Council, and the other letter was from a group of 39 Congressmen, either ignorant, gullible, corrupt, or all three.

No nation exists without functioning institutions. There is no independence without economic sovereignty. Withholding the funds, or arrogating decision-making over their use means destroying a nation. This will do the job by genocide, that 20 years of military presence and non-development didn’t do in Afghanistan. This is a moral test for the West.

What needs to be done with the funds, and in general in Afghanistan is presented in the newly-released EIR interview with Dr. Shah Mehrabi, for 20 years on the Board of Governors of the Da Afghanistan Bank, the central bank of Afghanistan.

Our role is indispensable in getting out such policy interventions, along with getting out the truth on the scale of the emergency in Afghanistan, which is being blacked out severely in the Trans-Atlantic media. The Zepp-LaRouche call for Operation Ibn Sina to bring a modern healthcare platform to the country is a call for world action. Shining the light on Afghanistan and mobilizing for what must be done, spreads understanding of the necessity to end the grip of the imperialist foreign policy and globalist financial system everywhere, now in breakdown, and threatening nuclear war.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche ended her remarks on PTV Dec. 17 by summarizing, “So in one sense, I think the fate of Afghanistan and the fate of humanity are much more closely connected than most people can imagine.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche made an impassioned appeal to viewers of her weekly webcast to use this Christmas period to join with us to mobilize for a New Paradigm. She compared “the commitment to brinksmanship” of Trans-Atlantic war hawks to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, describing this as”extremely worrisome,” as it comes from a belief that Russia and China will back down in the face of threats from the U.S. and NATO. The Russians continue to deny an intent to invade Ukraine, and have submitted draft proposals, which they insist cover their minimum national security interests. That western leaders instead repeat their demand for Russian submission to planned NATO expansion which puts us on a course towards war. Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche then turned her attention to what she described as the “heart-breaking, upsetting” story of the refusal of western nations to address the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, which is the result of the geopolitical wars fought in that country. While the OIC has made a proposal to set up a fund and coordinate international aid, western nations are continuing sanctions and refusing to release funds, even though it is clear this threatens millions of lives. The role of the U.S. and NATO in continuing this travesty is destroying “the credibility of the West.” She spoke of her commitment to Project Ibn Sina for Afghanistan, as part of a broader battle to provide a world health system for every country. She ended the dialogue with an appeal to viewers to use the next days of Christmas to reflect on the moral responsibility of citizens to act at this moment of deepening crisis.

As 60 Years Ago, the Threat of Nuclear War Is Steadily Growing

Dec. 20 (EIRNS)—The pace of intensifying U.S.-Russia tension over Ukraine increased over this past weekend, so that what seemed within hope of stabilization two weeks ago when Presidents Biden and Putin video-conferenced, now looks more and more like a countdown toward war in Europe involving the nuclear superpowers.

A senior White House official, quite possibly National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, told CNN on Dec. 19, Sunday, that there is only a “four-week window” to prevent Russia from invading Ukraine. “What we have been doing is very calculated,” the official said. “But we only have about a four-week window from now.” The official said U.S. planned sanctions “would be overwhelming, immediate and inflict significant costs on the Russian economy and their financial system.”

The next day, Dec. 20, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov told journalists that the Biden Administration had not responded to President Putin’s on Dec. 15 proposed treaties on arms control, according to the EurAsian Times news site. They included the assurance that Ukraine would not join NATO and that further forward deployments of U.S. and NATO forces and missile systems toward Russia’s borders would stop. “‘No, they [the Americans] have not responded yet,” said Ryabkov; “we are waiting, we will see what they answer. So far, we have seen only all sorts of public statements.” (https://eurasiantimes.com/russia-ukraine-conflict-moscow-says-us-has-not-responded-to-russias-security-guarantees/) Among those public statements was a NATO general’s plan for U.S. troops’ forward deployment to Bulgaria and Romania, to NATO bases at the Black Sea.

And both Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko and Arms Control Negotiator Konstantin Gavrilov ominously referred to “Russia’s military-technical and military means” as the only alternative to a negotiation on Russia’s treaty proposals. Ukraine’s own government continued, in the person of Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba talking to the Washington Post Dec. 19, to demand more “military means” and troops from the United States and the U.K., and to demand that the United States spell out publicly the “overwhelming and immediate” damage that the U.S. Treasury is preparing to do to the Russian economy and financial system, and do it with London whether the continental European allies agree or not.

In October 1962 it was the U.S. southern border that was being approached, closely, by Soviet soldiers and missiles in Cuba, which threatened a devastating first strike. Today, it is the relentless march of NATO closer and closer to Russia’s borders. Sixty years ago President John F. Kennedy said, “Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island.” And, he said, that this, “in an area well-known to have a special and historical relationship to the U.S., is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country.” [emphasis added]

Moreover, in 1962 U.S. military chiefs were demanding an invasion of Cuba to destroy missile and other forces, and President Kennedy was holding them back, with difficulty.

Had Kennedy and Khrushchev not reached a negotiated resolution to the Cuban Missiles Crisis, what was likely to have happened? Hundreds of millions of people around the world were terrified of an imminent nuclear war.

How were President Kennedy’s demands—that the Soviet Union remove, and never again try to place nuclear-capable missiles and aircraft virtually on the U.S. border, and “in an area [with] a special and historical relationship to the U.S.”—different from President Putin’s agreement proposed on Dec. 7 to President Biden, that the United States ensure that Ukraine would not join NATO and thereby have U.S. and NATO forces and missiles of various types placed right on Russia’s border? And “in an area with a special and historical relationship” to Russia, in fact for centuries part of it.

Here is the difference: Kennedy and Khrushchev both wanted a solution, and not one in which the other President and nation were humiliated, or crushed by “overwhelming, immediate” national damage!

That is what must be negotiated between Presidents Biden and Putin now, putting to the side the war-hawks—some of whom are clinically insane, to publicly propose a nuclear first strike on Russia as Sen. Roger Wicker did on Dec. 7. But it must and can happen if citizens now stand up to demand it, and remain optimistic that these two nations can block the ominous path of escalation and superpower war. Let them spend their efforts instead in providing food, healthcare and reconstruction to Afghanistan.

The following is an edited transcript of the interview with Dr. Shah Mohammad Mehrabi conducted December 15, 2021 by EIR’s Gerald Belsky and Michael Billington. Since 2002, Dr. Mehrabi has been a member of the Board of Governors of the Da Afghanistan Bank, the Afghan central bank. Since 1992 he has been a professor in the Business and Economics Department at Montgomery College in Maryland and chairman of the department since 2003. 

[UPDATE, 12/22/2021 ― The Letter to President Biden referenced by Dr. Mehrabi below, calling for the release of the Afghanistan funds being held by the Federal Reserve, has subsequently been released with the signatures of 46 members of the House of Representatives. It can be read here.]

Gerald Belsky: Dr. Mehrabi, could you tell us something about your background and your relationship to the current Taliban government?

Dr. Mehrabi: Thank you, Gerry, and I want to thank also the Schiller Institute for all their efforts to be able to make a difference in releasing the Afghan reserves, and to be able to get a positive result in eradicating the poverty that has ensued and will continue unless concrete measures are taken by the United States and European countries who at this stage, hold the Afghanistan Foreign Reserves overall.

Now, I’m an economist, and as an economist I have spent close to 20 years on what is called the Supreme Council, the governing board of the Central Bank of Afghanistan. I also served on the fiscal side as a senior economic advisor for two Ministers of Finance, and worked on generating revenue, and also dealt with government spending when I was at the Ministry of Finance. While in the Ministry of Finance, I continued my role as a member of the Supreme Council of the Central Bank, which is again a board very similar to that of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States. It consists of seven board members, and I am also chairman of the Audit Committee of the Central Bank of Afghanistan.

I have been extremely active in trying to bring reform, as we did when I went back, when I was first invited to Afghanistan, and tried to reform the financial institution, and more specifically, to at least make certain that we have a functioning and effective Central Bank. Prior to 2003 and 2004, the Central Bank had a dual function. It was both a commercial bank and also a government bank. The commercial bank function was given to the newly created commercial banks, and the Central Bank of Afghanistan, as an independent entity, was re-structured and started its function in early 2000, 2003, 2004 and 2005.

Effects of Freezing Foreign Exchange Reserves

Billington: The main subject that you have been dealing with, as have we, is that the U.S. Federal Reserve and several European banks have $9.5 billion in reserves which belong to the Afghan Central Bank. This money does not belong to the banks that are holding it, but it’s being frozen for political reasons and disagreements with the new government in Kabul, which makes it essentially a form of illegal economic warfare. Could you describe the impact of this on the people of Afghanistan and what actions you have taken to attempt to free these funds?

Dr. Mehrabi: Here is an important point about freezing Afghan foreign exchange reserves. It has contributed to economic instability which I predicted back in September. I predicted a number of things would occur, and they have all come into being, because now there is data to substantiate what I had already predicted in September. At that time, I predicted the currency would depreciate—it has depreciated by more than 14% since August. I also predicted that food prices would increase to double digits—and double digit has occurred. The Price of wheat has gone up by more than 20%, flour has gone up by over 30%, cooking oil has gone up by 60%, and gasoline has gone up by 74%. 

In the banking sector, I also said at that time that it needs liquidity, and to bring liquidity, it is very important that the reserves must be released, I said, to stabilize prices and to prevent a further collapse of the afghani, which is the national currency. 

The 14% currency depreciation hits mostly consumer purchasing power. It puts people in a position where they cannot buy the basic necessities of life. Also, the asset prices of all these goods have gone up.

 Also, I said that imports would decline, and that has occurred. There was a reduction in demand for these imported goods, and consumption has declined significantly because people have no access to their own money in the bank. On the top of that, they don’t have jobs. Many lost their jobs; they did not earn any income and then higher prices further suppressed the demand for buying goods and services.

So that’s what you see: hunger and starvation has come into being.

I also said that trade clearly is not taking place. As a matter of fact, imports from Pakistan were 46% lower than during the same period last year. Exports are very meager—dried fruit, carpets, and so on. That has remained somewhat stable but has not been generating adequate foreign exchange reserves. Wages have declined.

Getting back to the impact of this freezing of Afghanistan’s reserves, we already see that has created immense poverty.

What I propose is that we should allow the Central Bank of Afghanistan a limited, monitored, and conditional access to their own reserve. This is Afghanistan’s reserve, it does not belong to anybody else, but to Afghan people. They should be allowed to have access to their reserve, and this foreign exchange reserve should be used for the purpose of auctioning. Why? Because auctioning is designed to prevent the depreciation of the afghani against the dollar and other foreign currencies, and also to increase the purchasing power of afghanis and prevent it further from declining day in and day out. The Central Bank of Afghanistan will not be able to maintain domestic price stability without auctioning.

Price stability will not come into being unless these reserves are released. One of the main functions of the Central Bank of Afghanistan is to maintain price stability, and that they cannot do. What I suggested at that time and still suggest, is that access [be given] to $150 million—now I’m saying $200 million, because Afghanistan’s reserves have dwindled significantly—per month out of the $7.1 billion [held in the U.S. Federal Reserve], which is roughly half of the reserve that is required monthly to stabilize the economy. I also said that the United States will be able to verify that these funds are used exclusively for the purpose of stabilizing the currency.

The auctions are conducted electronically and the transactions between the Central Bank and commercial banks are automatically recorded. But in addition to this, I suggested that the use of funds could be audited by an international auditing firm that is currently operating in Afghanistan. If there’s any misappropriation, then they could cut off the funds.

An important point here is that we want to be able to try to use the funds to prop up the value of the afghani, to allow people to buy essential goods and services. People are calling me constantly who say they cannot afford to buy bread, which is the mean staple for everyone. My own brother is dean at the university. He’s being paid, but even he cannot afford to function without our help through remittances—he is not able to purchase the basic necessities. There are many other Afghans who are constantly talking about the fact that they cannot buy ordinary goods. So, we need to be able to help meet the needs of ordinary Afghans, because, again, higher prices of food. And that can be handled without any difficulty by allowing this reserve to be released. The important point is that we know, based on empirical evidence, what we have done in the past with regard to the release of the funds.

Every time that we wanted to engage in an auction, we were able to stabilize the currency and move to price stability. As a matter of fact, the record of the Central Bank is very clear. The Central Bank was able to maintain a single-digit increase in prices for most of the two [past] decades. Further, look at empirical evidence: the Taliban just about three weeks ago auctioned off $2.5 million out of the $10 million they had proposed to auction, and that auctioning off during the same day resulted in the appreciation of the currency. The value of the afghani went up and then it stayed there for two days. But $2.5 million is not adequate.

The Central Bank has to intervene continuously to be able to maintain this price stability. If they don’t do it, you’ve got the crisis that you see right now. Higher prices, people are going to be starved to death, and then, famine is going to come as a result of drought as well. People are going to move out of Afghanistan, and there will be banging on the European doors trying to be admitted.

Proposed Modification of the Sanctions Policy

Belsky: You have called for the release of $150 million a month from the frozen reserves, to engage in dollar auctions to stabilize the value of the currency. We think that would allow these western countries to justify their continued holding of Afghan funds, which they have no legal nor moral right to do. Wouldn’t you agree that they must release all the funds as a matter of principle and moral obligation?

Dr. Mehrabi: I have said that the United States Treasury needs to clarify and modify their sanctions law. Whether the U.S. Treasury can legally withhold another country’s reserve is not clear in my mind. So that needs to be clarified. They have shown some degree of flexibility in the area of humanitarian aid, but it has to be broader than humanitarian exemptions. There are concerns from the Treasury Department about terrorism financing, and others have raised the issue regarding the competency of government and its leaders. I think all of those issues can be discussed.

We have a lot of models that the United States has used in the past. Iran was allowed a release of funds to be used for the purpose of trade. The U.S. Office of Foreign Asset Control will have to allow some degree of flexibility, to be able to make certain that exceptions are made, not only for humanitarian related issues, but also for allowing the Central Bank to get access to their reserves. I think you cannot punish Afghans.

We talk about the issue of women and so on—women and children are the first people suffering from this. They are not able to buy goods and services. On the one hand, if we argue, that we want to provide humanitarian aid, but we are going to choke off the economy as well—those are two opposite arguments. The arguments do not really make sense. On the one hand, you say, I want to help with humanitarian aid, but I’m going to choke off the economy so that the ordinary Afghans will not be able to have access to food and basic necessities.

Humanitarian Aid Is Good, but Not a Solution

Belsky: You’ve answered my next question implicitly, but I’m going to ask it anyway. The World Bank, as you know, is now planning to restore about $230 million in aid. But even this small amount, they’re saying, has to go through UNICEF and the World Health Organization instead of going through the Afghan banking system. What is your view of this?

Dr. Mehrabi: I don’t know where UNICEF is going to use it, for what purposes. I said that before. Or WHO, and even the World Food Program. If they are for the purpose of purchasing grains and other basic necessities, that is good. But humanitarian aid is not a solution to rekindling the activities of the economy. Humanitarian aid, as I have said all along, while it is necessary, it’s a stop gap measure, it’s not a complete measure to get the economy overall to move to a point where they could get an increase in aggregate demand, which is very essential if the economy is going to function and generate enough revenue for daily economic activity.

Billington: One of the sanctions, or some of the sanctions, have, as I understand it, denied Afghanistan access to the SWIFT money transaction system. What is the impact of this on the country?

Dr. Mehrabi: This is what commercial banks have been complaining about. The commercial banks had a window where they could engage with corresponding banks. And that has been stopped. That has been blocked by Treasury. The Treasury Department would not allow it. And the correspondent banks are hesitant and reluctant to engage in any activity, unless they get a clearance from Treasury.

Unless the Treasury relaxes, to ensure some degree of flexibility, allow some exemptions from sanctions, and allow this SWIFT entity to allow the transactions to take place, we’re again going back to the same situation. Liquidity is not going to be there. We’re going to be choking off the economy overall.

Do Not Bypass the Central Bank!

Belsky: Dr. Mehrabi, there’s been a recognition by many individuals and organizations of the point you’re making, that humanitarian aid will not work if there’s no banking system. However, one individual has floated a proposal. In 2019 Alex Yerden, the former financial attaché for the Treasury Department in Kabul, put forward a proposal that may be being discussed behind the scenes.

His proposal is to bypass the Central Bank in order to avoid giving money to the current government, and to set up a private central bank, or to use a commercial bank like the Afghanistan International Bank or some other bank, to which some of these funds can be channeled which are being illegally held. The proposal is to set up a private bank that would carry out some of the functions you’ve described, such as the auctioning of money to prop up the currency. What is your view of this idea of setting up a private central bank to bypass the current Central Bank?

Dr. Mehrabi: We have invested about 20 years in modernizing, in establishing a Central Bank that is able to administratively, based on the law, perform all the functions that a central bank is to perform. That includes supervision of the Central Bank, issuing of banknotes, being able to be the lender of last resort, and to provide liquidity to the commercial banks. Those functions cannot be taken over by a commercial bank. A commercial bank is there to be able to earn profit, while a central bank’s main function is not profitability. Also, a commercial bank cannot be relegated with the responsibility of a central bank. A central bank has personnel that are well trained, who have the education and experience that they could perform all their particular duties based on the law. That is still not revised, it still is in practice.

To allow another entity, or a parallel institution, to a great extent is going to result in a situation where it will create a lot of confusion, and in one way or another, it will result in the credibility in the Central Bank being eroded in the mind of the public at large.

The issuing of currency is the domain of the Central Bank. A commercial bank does not have the authority, legally or otherwise, to be able to engage in issuing currency or injecting liquidity, or afghani, into the system. It cannot issue currency as a medium of exchange. The currency issued by the Central Bank, however, is accepted because the people trust that particular currency to use as a medium of exchange or store of value and use it as a unit of account 

Remember here, it’s not only U.S. dollars, it is also Afghanistan’s currency that is an important element in bringing about liquidity into the economy. So, establishing a parallel institution, if it’s designed for dismantling the Central Bank, as some of these people have advocated, is not a move that will rescue the poor people, ordinary Afghans, from the misery that, out of no fault of their own, they are experiencing.

The Prospect of a Banking Collapse

Billington: The UN has addressed the crisis in the banking system. The U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan, Deborah Lyons, gave a report to the UN Security Council Nov. 17, saying: “The dire humanitarian situation in the country is preventable as it is largely due to financial sanctions that have paralyzed the economy.” Also, in November, the UN Development Program said that “the commercial banking system is critical to continue even the humanitarian and other basic programs that are supported by the UN and some of the NGOs and other partners. So, the economic cost of a banking system collapse, with the concomitant negative social consequences, would be colossal.” That’s what the UN Development Program said. Has the UN taken any significant steps to stop this disaster, which they are describing?

Dr. Mehrabi: That’s a good question. Let’s look at what we know. I want to mention also that UNAMA, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, was able to bring in $16 million in cash, as a part of the humanitarian aid for Afghanistan. So, they have taken that measure.

Even UNAMA, however, does not have a very good record in the mind of many Afghans—their record of performance in the past, as far as efficiency, credibility and accountability is concerned. But anyway, $16 million has been brought in twice. So, there’s been about $32 million in cash, almost all of it directed toward humanitarian aid to Afghanistan. It was not brought in through the Central Bank. While the UN clearly talks about the collapse of the system—and I think in talking about a financial sector and the constraints that the financial sector is faced with—they realize that the liquidity of both commercial banks and the Central Bank have been eroded.

But still they have not taken enough measures to be able to address the channeling of these funds to the Central Bank for the purpose of auctioning. So, you know, we say, talk the talk, but walk the walk. I think it is an issue that needs to be brought up on this UN position. But the statement by the UN Special Representative, they clearly realize that, and understand that a banking system collapse could come into being. But you have to take concrete measures to prevent the banking system from collapsing. And what do you do in this case? It is not going to happen by only addressing humanitarian aid. Firms and households will be unable to access bank deposits. To begin with, right now they are not able to get access to their bank deposits. The Central Bank has put strict limits on withdrawals because they don’t have enough liquidity in the system.

So, when you look at these international transactions that were mentioned before, SWIFT and all that—that has been blocked to a great extent. Firms are unable to transfer funds overseas to pay for imports. Bottlenecks are created in every direction that you can think of. The outlook, obviously, is very bleak unless measures are taken by the United States—in this case to release these particular funds and to allow them to be channeled to the Central Bank.

At this stage, the depletion of international reserves has created a quagmire here. I would hope that the UN Special Representative would look clearly at what we have suggested in this case. Look at a very simple thing—economists usually look at the costs and benefits. What is the cost of a collapse of the banking system, and what are the benefits of making certain that it is rescued?

How much would we—that is, Europe and the United States—gain by making certain that the economy functions in a normal way by allowing them to have access to their reserve, and then also inject other liquidity in terms of cash to the people who were funded by ERDF [European Regional Development Fund]. ERDF has a lot of funds, and that could be used for the salaries of these people who are not being paid, so that when they have their salary, they could spend it in order to buy goods and services. That will help. The aggregate demand, or the total demand, would be activated and the economy will be able to use the multiplier effect to generate economic growth.

A Direct Appeal to President Biden

Belsky: Dr. Mehrabi, you have been meeting with members of the Congress to urge them to call on President Biden to release the Afghan assets. I know that a letter is being circulated. In fact, I received an email from the Maryland Peace Action Group, and I know peace action groups all over the United States are circulating an appeal to people to call on their congressmen to sign on to this letter. The letter is being circulated by representatives Pramila Jayapal, Sarah Jacobs and Jesús García, to urge President Biden to release the $9.5 billion in frozen Afghan reserves. What can you say about your efforts in the Congress and with the news media to promote this policy?

Dr. Mehrabi: This letter is an effort we jointly wrote back, I think, in October, but then the Congress was very busy. Our meetings have continued with congressmen and senators. Through those meetings and efforts, we have been able to get a number of sponsors for this particular letter. So far, we have 23 people who have signed it. Initially, Jayapal, Jacobs, and García signed. But now we have other Congress members who have joined the bandwagon and have signed. 

I had a meeting today with the staff of the Congress and the Senate, where I made a presentation and pitched the notion of this letter, and got signatures by more people. We were hoping to get more signatures, and then present this two-page letter to President Biden. 

We are highlighting what needs to be done and why it should be done, and how important it is to make certain that people in Afghanistan are not going to suffer from starvation, and to make certain that we do not have famine and universal poverty. This is in the national interest of the United States.

The argument has been made that the United States has lost a lot of sweat and financial resources in making certain that these institutions were established. And now we should not be dismantling this particular institution. The Afghans deserve to have access to their foreign reserves. They deserve to have a life that is lived in peace and prosperity, in a country that has suffered from 40 years of war. So, all those arguments are clearly spelled out in the letter to President Biden. It will be submitted to President Biden soon, most likely on Monday or Tuesday of next week.

Operation Ibn Sina

Billington: Helga Zepp-LaRouche, as you know, the founder of the international Schiller Institutes, stands very strongly against this policy of genocide that is being waged against Afghanistan by the U.S. and the allied NATO nations. What is needed beyond the immediate aid, she insists, is the launching of a modern health care system with all that that entails, meaning clean water, electricity, transportation as well as the medical facilities. Zepp-LaRouche has called this project for international cooperation Operation Ibn Sina, after the famous 11th century medical genius, poet, astronomer, and philosopher, who was in fact born in the region of today’s Afghanistan and is much beloved across the entire Islamic world. What do you think about this effort, and what can you say about Ibn Sina?

Dr. Mehrabi: I thank you for the question again. Here it is that we are looking at the current Afghanistan, a collapse of a government that is coming into being, and Afghanistan is faced with economic and development challenges, and daunting economic and political challenges. Any effort to bring about development and to be able to bring economic growth is welcome.

I think the effort by Mrs. LaRouche in terms of making certain that the health issues [are met]—Afghanistan, has a very high mortality rate—is a move that will at least expand the life of many of those people who are suffering shortened lives because of the ailments that they suffer from, and because of not having access to health care. And also, obviously, access to clean water and electricity. Right now, Afghanistan cannot import a lot of electricity and cannot pay for it because of, again, the shortage of currency. I think these are all moves that we should all support, and we should all be able to at least in one form or another, be very appreciative of.

In the health area, Afghanistan is experiencing a third COVID-19 wave that started back in April. Infection rates have reached a very high level. Coupled with a drop in foreign aid, the government is not able to generate enough money to address the health issues. At the top of it is the World Bank, which was paying the employees of the health sector—they stopped the payments. All of this combined has really brought about a catastrophic situation for the economy of Afghanistan.

So, a move like this, brought about by Mrs. LaRouche, is a welcome move. And I think Ibn Sina obviously, as you mentioned clearly, is well known in that part of the region as well as in Afghanistan. [There is an] Ibn Sina Hospital right in the heart of Kabul that many patients visit. Modernizing that particular institution, with the help of Mrs. LaRouche and others would be highly valued and appreciated.

Large-Scale Infrastructure for Economic Development

Billington: The other major issue, which we at the Schiller Institute and EIR have promoted is large-scale infrastructure development, especially with the help of the Belt and Road Initiative. We’ve just learned that Pakistan has now begun constructing a rail connection from Quetta to Kandahar, and we know that starting last February, there was a plan approved between Pakistan, Afghanistan and Uzbekistan to develop a rail link from CPEC, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, from Islamabad through the Khyber Pass into Kabul and then on to Tashkent, as part of the Belt and Road, which would give all of the Central Asian countries access to the Arabian Sea for the first time, and also transform Afghanistan.

What is your vision for Afghanistan’s development, and do you think it’s possible that these projects can continue without fixing the banking crisis first, getting cooperation from China and other neighboring countries?

Dr. Mehrabi: I think we should. Besides humanitarian aid, this Belt and Road Initiative from China could provide Afghanistan with long-term economic viability. I think that is an important point to keep in mind.

One possibility is obviously Afghanistan joining the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which is a central part of that Belt and Road Initiative. I think Beijing has pledged over $60 billion for infrastructure in Pakistan. Initially, Afghanistan was not allowed to be a part of it, but now I think it has been invited. This initiative, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, is a good option for the development of Afghanistan. 

It is also important to keep in mind that we talk about the Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India natural gas pipeline. TAPI could generate quite a bit of money for Afghanistan—transit fees I think have been projected at over $400 million. This pipeline clearly is also an important work.

But we also have other areas for development purposes that have been addressed or talked about, but have not been fully explored and materialized, such as minerals. When I was in Afghanistan in 2008 at the Ministry of Finance, a contract was signed with the Metallurgical Corporation of China to develop the Mes Aynak Copper Mine, but because of the security situation, it has not really been able to produce much. Then we had the Hajigak iron ore mine as an important one to explore. 

We have oil basins that China is trying to explore as well. So, there are many other opportunities. Also, Afghanistan has a large reserve of lithium besides other minerals that could be generating quite a bit of foreign exchange reserve, if these were active.

Belsky: Are there any other thoughts you would like to convey?

Sanctions Only Hurt the Ordinary People

Mr. Mehrabi: Well, I am a firm believer, as I have said all along, that the reserve has to be released and we should be able to make certain that ordinary Afghans are not put in a position where they could be forced to not have adequate food.

As an economist, as an Afghan-American, I am deeply concerned about the fate of the 35 million people in Afghanistan who have known little more than war and suffering their whole life. And now for another country to suffocate those particular people—you know, the result will only be a new refugee crisis, a new refugee crisis of the kind that we saw in 2014 in Syria, or even worse. Afghans will flee on foot. They will carry their babies in one hand and whatever belongings they have in the other, and they will go to the west, to Iran, in hopes of making it into Turkey and then into Europe. I think it is a failure—not only shortsighted—for the United States, but also the final abandonment of the Afghan people.

I think it’s very important that the United States, which negotiated the evacuation with the Taliban, which was negotiating how they could attack IS [Islamic State terrorists], could engage fully in those activities, but does not want to get fully engaged in releasing these particular funds.

You see these policies, the kind that are now in force. They never hurt the people who they are intended to. It will not hurt the current government. We know that, by the evidence in many other areas. It hurts the ordinary Afghans who deserve to have access to their particular money. They deserve to not have their life savings become worthless, worthless because inflation is going to eat them, the value of their money, in a blink of an eye. They deserve to be able to feed their families. So again, that failure to provide access, as I said before, I think it’s shortsighted.

Let’s try to act in a way where indeed we help these people. The United States invested a lot of money. Try to avoid the spiral of price increases and food shortages and currency depreciation and bank closures. Let’s try to avoid the complete collapse of the economy.

Billington: Well, thank you very, very much, Dr. Mehrabi. We appreciate it. We will do everything we can to get your message out with our effort and others who are joining with you and trying to prevent this atrocity, and to at least make up for the destruction that has been waged against your country over all these years. 

Dr. Mehrabi: Thank you very much. Thank you, Gerry, and thank you, Mike, for all your help and efforts in this area. I’m very appreciative of your dedication to this area. I’m an optimist. It took a while to get this letter out, but we finally did it, with meetings almost twice, three times a week, or sometimes four times, for different groups. We have got to a level where at least we have 23 co-signers today. Hopefully, the number will increase. I would like to get this letter out before Christmas and before the congressmen disappear, rather than bringing it out in the new year. We’ll try to do that. We will keep you apprised of what is going on, and we’ll keep in touch. And thanks again very much.

Belsky: And thank you for your efforts, Dr. Mehrabi.

The following interview with Graham Fuller, a former U.S. diplomat, CIA official, and Islamic scholar, was conducted by Mike Billington, EIR’s Asia Intelligence Director, on Dec. 9, 2021.

EIR: This is Mike Billington with the EIR, Executive Intelligence Review, and the Schiller Institute. I’m here with Graham Fuller, and if you can, perhaps you can give a bit of your various hats in your career.

Fuller: Well, in terms of public service, I was 25 years an operations officer in CIA, serving in Germany, Turkey, Lebanon, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong. So a good bit of international background. I graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in Russian language, literature, and history; M.A. in Middle East studies; and had a long interest at the same time in China. After retiring from CIA, I was four years as the vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which is the long-range forecasting institution within CIA, and then went to Rand Corporation to do more geopolitical writings and things. And since then I have been kind of freelancing, written two novels, both somewhat political, and a lot of different books about the Middle East, Islam, political Islam, et cetera.

Danger of War With China

EIR: Okay, thanks. So, we sort of came about having this interview because you watched the interview I did with Ambassador Chas Freeman a couple of weeks ago. He warned that the U.S. has already crossed the red line in China by essentially promoting Taiwan independence and breaking all of the U.S.-China agreements in the ’70s that led to the one-China policy and the recognition of Beijing. How do you appraise the danger of a potential war between U.S. and China, even a potential nuclear war?

Fuller: Of course it is serious. I’m not sure that the U.S.—and I’m a huge admirer of Charles Freeman—but I’m not sure the U.S. has actually crossed the red line. But I think we are in the vicinity of doing that. And meanwhile, I think the United States is learning a lot about what it means to have a true peer competitor like China, as opposed to, say, the Soviet Union, which was militarily formidable, but in terms of societal and soft power, not at all. I think the U.S. has actually avoided specifically saying they will support Taiwanese independence, but certainly American policy wants to make it as difficult as possible for China to entertain any military views of re-conquering, re-joining Taiwan to China. It’s going to be a tight game, and I think the main goal really should be for both sides to tamp down the pressure, the level of rhetoric, that is underway now, which makes it very hard for more rational and thoughtful discourse.

Danger of War With Russia

EIR: On the same issue really, on the Russian side, President Putin has also indicated that the accepting of Ukraine into NATO or moving advanced weapons systems into Ukraine or on Russia’s border would be a red line. And Biden, when asked about that, said, “We don’t recognize any red lines.” On the summit Tuesday, Blinken and Sullivan both came out immediately and gave read-outs, which would make it appear that the whole thing was Biden ‘dressing down’ Putin (and Russia) for its aggression and its threats and so forth. But then Biden himself said that he would be announcing tomorrow, Dec. 10, a meeting with four European countries and Russia to address Putin’s request for guarantees that NATO would not move any further east or deploy weapon systems on their border. What, in general, do you think about the summit, and the potential for avoiding the conflict on the Russian side?

Fuller: Well, this is, of course, a long-standing issue. I think in, very broad terms—and this applies to China policy as well as to Russia policy—the United States has been so long in the habit of dominating, not always in a negative sense, but dominating the world since 1945, where other countries would defer to the United States. We, the United States, had the money, the weaponry, the technology, and everything else to be the number one player, really, in the world through that time. So, I think this has been a gradual policy of the rest of the world, much of the rest of the world slowly trying to catch up. Certainly, Europe has, but much of the rest of the world as well. But in the meantime, during the whole Cold War period, the United States was in the position of—the rhetoric was—defender of the Free World, quote unquote. So I think the United States has felt itself really the dominant power, the hegemon of the world, the leader of the free world, whatever terms you choose to use. But the reality in the modern world, and especially since 9-11, has been that the American hegemony, predominance, is a fading quality, and that much of the rest of the world is now rising. This, I think, American mentality, strategic mentality, maybe even cultural mentality finds it nearly impossible, intolerable, to accept the idea that any other country could become a peer competitor with the United States. I remember a couple of years ago, attending some military conferences, wherever, and in Washington, that the term used by the Pentagon in those days was America’s search, or maintenance, for all-horizon dominance. That’s not quite the word. It wasn’t horizon, but all- spectrum dominance, full-spectrum dominance. That says a lot right there. And I think this is a slow, very painful, hopefully learning process, by which the U.S. is going to have to back away ever more carefully, from overt assumption that it’s going to be able to call all the shots anymore. I mean, I think we even saw this with the very unfortunate Blinken, and maybe Sullivan as well, in the Anchorage meeting, when Sullivan, or Blinken, prior to the meeting, announced that he was very confident the meeting would go well and the United States would be dealing with China from a position of strength. Well, you may recall he was dressed down for that quite sharply by the Chinese, who basically said, how dare you say that? You have no right to say that you are dealing with us from a position of strength. We are going to deal, we want to be treated, we WILL be treated as equals by you on an equal footing. I think that pushed back, maybe shocked even, the foreign policy blob in Washington, which has never quite been addressed in those terms, by a country that is pretty demonstrably becoming a peer competitor in almost all respects.

EIR: It reminds me of the Clean Break doctrine in the Nineties. This was [David] Wurmser and [Douglas] Feith and [Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld. They basically said, we need a clean break to defend our friends in Israel. And then literally said—I think this was called the Wolfowitz Doctrine—that we must prevent any country or any combination of countries to reach a position of challenging our dominance, our superiority. I mean, that was literally the thinking.

Fuller: And even challenging Israeli dominance, I think was a good bit part of that. But yes, I mean, times are changing, the world is changing, and it’s going to be a painful lesson. But I think maybe even Biden in his late years, may be beginning to realize that the old rhetoric just doesn’t work quite as well anymore. And Russia is not quite the old Soviet Union, and Russia now working with China certainly represents a very different global force, not just militarily, but I think, you know, strategically, culturally, diplomatically in all senses.

EIR: You know, it’s interesting, several of the Russian readouts on the summit included saying what you just said—one of them called Biden “an old-fashioned politician” who understands the danger of war, and one of them called on Biden to calm down the people around him.

Fuller: Yeah, well put.

U.S.: Revenge On the Afghan and Syrian People

EIR: Yeah, right. Okay, so you were the CIA station chief in Kabul in the 1970s, and I know you’ve remained very active in Afghan policy debates right up until today. Clearly, that country is now in an economic and humanitarian catastrophe. Both the World Food Program and the World Health Organization are screaming as loudly as they can, that many millions of Afghan citizens face death by starvation and lack of medical care as the winter sets in. And yet, the U.S. is maintaining sanctions, and freezing billions of dollars that belong to the Afghan people. How do you explain this, what I consider depraved indifference, and how can we resolve that in your view?

Fuller: Well, as you know, Mike, the Afghan people have been victim of great power rivalry for many, many decades, going back to the initial Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to protect the new communist regime that came into power there in 1978. So Americans, and many Muslim states and others, have been participating in war within Afghanistan that has killed hundreds of thousands, probably millions of Afghans over the many years, leading to civil war, after the Soviet departure, the civil war among the mujahideen, and then utter anarchy within Afghanistan for a number of years. And then the Taliban came in to restore order, a rough sort of frontier justice, peace order, within the country. And then the whole bin Laden business, and then the American invasion. So this has been a nonstop, brutal thing. What I fear is, how gracefully the United States is capable of accepting the fact, that this is yet one more war, which we did not win, and that it is not going to have blood in its eye for the victors of the country, the Taliban. I’m no great admirer of the Taliban, but they are the de facto winners, and I think nearly everybody in the region acknowledges it, for better or for worse. It is the reality. So I think if this is some kind of vengeful policy towards the Taliban, to make them suffer, and who knows, maybe even there are those who hope that civil war might break out, or whatever, and give the U.S. a chance to win a new foothold. I don’t know, but it is a very ugly policy if it goes beyond mere tactical, temporary pressure points to try to get the Taliban to make a few political domestic changes in outlook.

If it goes much beyond that, into a broader vengeance, or a desire to restore the status quo, it will be tragic. And it’s part of such a long tragedy. 

We see this elsewhere as well, I think, in the case of Syria. The United States has been unhappy with Syria as far back as I can remember. When I first went into government in the Seventies, Sixties even, the Assad regime, father and son, have long been hostile to America, and what they perceive as American hegemony in the Middle East, and Israel’s ability to absolutely dominate militarily the entire region, without giving any particular justice to the Palestinians. So I think the United States has had it in for Syria for 40, 50, 60 years of trying to overthrow, not with major force, but with constant undermining of Syria in one way or another. Again, I’m no great admirer of the Syrian regime. It’s never been a democracy, it’s a minority government, but it’s been the reality of the Middle East for a very long time. But even down to today, we can see U.S. involvement in civil wars in Syria, in which much of the goal, still, is to punish Syria, bring down the regime, change it all, and it again has failed. And again, the victims, sadly, are the Syrian people. We just cannot seem to accept the reality that we have been bested again in that kind of a struggle.

Islamist Political Movements Must Be Acknowledged

EIR: You argued at one point that there will be no resolution to the Middle East crisis, unless the Hezbollah and Hamas, and Iran, are recognized, that they have to be a part of this. And yet, the Israelis and many people here in the U.S. consider all three of those institutions terrorists, evil people, and so forth. How is that going to be achieved? I mean, what can be done, especially with the Hezbollah and Hamas issues? And in Syria, how can you resolve that today?

Fuller: Well, as you know, the United States in particular has been ready to slap the label of “terrorist” on any Muslim group that it does not like. I find it frankly almost grotesque, that we have now come to persuade our American countrymen that Iran is the number one terrorist threat in the world. I mean, this is alongside Saudi Arabia, which has been pumping out extraordinarily damaging interpretations of Islam, which really leaves little room for generous accommodation, even among Muslims. So I think the term terrorist—you’re familiar with many countries that are slapped with this label, on groups that are seeking better rights, or even seeking separation. And that applies as well today. Hezbollah is the spokesman, basically, for most Shi’ites in Lebanon. The Shi’ites are the biggest single group in a very multicultural, multi-religious country. They have formidable spirit and drive. Many Lebanese who don’t like them, believe that Hezbollah is the one thing that maybe keeps Israel at bay from interfering or invading Lebanon at will. Indeed, Israel is very nervous about Hezbollah’s strength, and it’s not just purely military, it’s this kind of a drive, a will, not to permit Israel to invade the country. Similarly, with Hamas, I mean, Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood has not been a terrorist organization, fundamentally, in 50 years. It is a relatively middle-of-the-road Islamist organization. I’m not arguing for Islamist movements, but they are a major force within the Middle East, and there’s a huge spectrum of them, from radical terrorists, genuine terrorists like Bin Laden, or other groups in that region, to rather very moderate Islamic-oriented groups, such as in Turkey.

So you can’t smear them all with one label. The Muslim Brotherhood continues to be concerned with Palestinian rights there. It’s an Arab organization, largely. So, I think if we don’t acknowledge full Palestinian rights, and begin to solve that problem, this is going to continue to be a festering issue, that plays right into the hands of more radical organizations, whether we like them or not. They’re there, and there is a call, an issue, to which they can play. 

Let me just mention one other term which has always been very important to me over the years, from the Egyptian ruler Abdel Nasser, if anybody still remembers him back in the Fifties and Sixties. He was the charismatic leader who sort of put Egypt on the Third World map for the first time, and he became the darling, really, of much of the Arab world. He stood up for Arab rights, and spoke about them. Somebody asked him once, why do you think Egypt has such a major role in the Arab world at that point? And he said, the Arab world is in search of an “actor,” and Egypt is now that actor.

I think that applies to many situations around the world, where there’s a strong need for some political voice to speak up on behalf of one or another injustice of the world, and whatever country takes up that challenge, automatically moves into a position of greater respect, and even support, by much of the world. And sadly, all these three organizations—the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and Iran itself—are formidable, political, ideological forces in the region. Iran is probably the oldest civilization in the entire Middle East. It has managed to survive decades and decades of American sanctions, and Israeli punishment, and assassinations by Israelis, et cetera, and they’re still holding their own. It’s a strong country, whether again, we may not like it all, but I think we have contributed to pushing Iran into a corner in which it is reacting, perhaps in a much more aggressive, reactive manner than might otherwise be the case. 

And we might talk about this before the interview is over. But just let me say here, we are not thinking enough in this world about why conflicts are coming about. Are they inevitable and can they be avoided? Sadly, I think in American thinking or much of the thinking of the world, these conflicts, wars, are inevitable, but they’re not. They just aren’t. And the trick is deciding how and why to avoid them, because it is doable.

The Military-Industrial Complex

EIR: Well, that obviously brings up the issue of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about a long, long time ago, that they need wars to be going on. They’re required by the military industrial crowd and their Wall Street backers, thinking that this cannot be allowed to diminish or they’re going to lose their power. I don’t know what you think about that.

Fuller: Well, it’s very impressive when you look back at what Eisenhower said way back in the day and look at today’s reality. I think he was spot-on in his observation. I try to avoid an entirely conspiratorial view that it’s all Wall Street and military-industrial complex, because there are many huge capitalist organizations, corporations that do not profit from war and seek to avoid war, because it’s not good for business. Many businessmen and capitalists feel, if you’re not producing arms—it may not be necessarily good [to have] war at all. But that said, yes, there is a war lobby and it is linked with the idea that we must preserve American power and hegemony and dominance at all costs. And that plays, of course, into the hands of those who want to support America’s overwhelming military dominance in the world today.

EIR: And yet we lose everywhere we fight.

Fuller: Well, somebody once commented to me, a correspondent who worked at the Pentagon. He said, you know, Graham, you don’t get it (or some somebody in the Pentagon said to him), you don’t get it. It’s not about winning wars. It’s about maintaining the organization, maintaining the infrastructure. As long as the funds keep coming in, as long as we can maintain the structure and the training and the weaponry and all of this, you don’t have to win the wars. That’s secondary. It’s nice to win, but that’s secondary.

EIR: What kind of an image of man is that? Which thinks that secondary issues which murder millions of people and drive millions out of their homes are secondary issues?

Fuller: I agree. I agree. It’s shocking, but I fear it’s the human condition.

Project Ibn Sina To Save Afghanistan

EIR: Well, let’s hope that’s not the case. Actually I’ll bring up this issue of Ibn Sina that I mentioned to you before the interview. Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s idea of this Project Ibn Sina for Afghanistan, is based on that tradition of a great Islamic leader who represented the kind of leader you talked about with Nasser, but at an even higher level, a great philosopher, a great poet. And of course, also a medical genius. So I wondered if you might want to comment. You know the history of Islam quite well. If you want to comment on the role of Ibn Sina, and Helga’s idea of so-called Project Ibn Sina as a way of bringing the world together around the reconstruction of Afghanistan, but also applying that to these issues of festering wars in the Middle East.

Fuller: Yeah, that’s a very interesting question, Mike. Absolutely. I think by now, most Westerners are aware that there was a golden age of Islam. There was a time when intellectual life in the Muslim world, Arab world, Persian world, and beyond in India and even further east, intellectual life was very rich. There were very interesting, open theological discussions about religion, about science, philosophy. There was no shutting down of the mind at that point. Many Muslims have written since then, about, “Has there been a closing down of the Muslim mind?” I think probably you can demonstrate that there has been. The more important question is, why? One simple answer—it’s not the only answer, but it’s an important answer—is, of course, the long centuries of Western imperialism; British, French, German, Italian, Dutch, and American in another sense, that really helped keep these countries infantilized, is the word I would use most readily. They came to rely on outside—they came to fatalistically yield to the power of outside forces that would prevent them from taking charge of their own lives, thinking about these issues more deeply. So, I think many people trace some of the decline of Arab and Persian, and Muslim in general, Muslim intellectual and intellectualism, its sciences, its arts, and this gradual suppression of intellectual tradition within the Muslim world, largely by the ulema, the clerical class that found itself entrenched in positions of power as long as they supported the regime in power.

They could have their voice over religious policy absolutely; that contributed to it. Certainly even the shift of the great trade routes from overland across the Silk Route, to new sea routes around the Indian Ocean to East Asia, that also was a factor in the decline of the Muslim world. But it’s undeniable that this has taken place. I think in this sense, Ibn Sina is a reflection, is an aspiration to go back to what made the Muslim world so rich, so strong, so thoughtful, so productive intellectually in its time. I think it can happen again. There’s no reason why it should not. But the Middle East has been caught in this terrible mess now—you can you can go back many, many, many decades, if not one hundred years of colonialism and foreign control and dominance by dictators supported readily by the West, et cetera. It’s a long, sad story, but Ibn Sina is one great symbol. He’s not the only one; there are many great symbols of a broader vision of Islam, a more open thinking, exploratory Islam.

Turkey and the Arab Spring

EIR: Good. You have something of a specialty on Turkey within the Islamic world, and you wrote a book which was called Turkey and the Arab Spring. I take it this is your reflection on the Muslim Brotherhood, which was sort of the dominant force in the Arab Spring. As I understand it, Erdogan is part of that. Do you want to comment on that now in retrospect, with the downfall of the Arab Spring?

Fuller: Yeah, well, this brings up the very important question that I alluded to briefly earlier about Islamism, Islamic movements, Islamist, whatever, there are many different terms. But basically the idea of Islamists is, to put it in very simple terms, it’s a spectrum of views, as I said, from bin Laden to peace activists from an Islamic perspective. But it essentially is Muslims saying, Look, Islam has something to say about the future of governance and society in the Muslim world. What it has to say, what we choose out of it, just as some of the early European movements, Christian Democrats, et cetera, felt that Christianity had something to say intellectually or religiously or theologically, to say about good governance in Europe. So I think the Muslim movements – some are horrible, brutal, violent, as bin Laden is the major case in point. The Taliban have been quite brutal in their own way. Saudi Arabia has been a very brutal state, supporting many brutal movements and ideas outside the country, indeed fomenting these ideas of intolerance—it’s not only Islam, but there’s only one form of Islam, and that’s the Saudi form of Islam, which is Wahhabi, which is utterly uncompromising and very retrogressive. So anyway, the Muslim Brotherhood in all the spectrum is rather centrist. It has accepted the idea of democracy. It has political parties. These are not secret organizations and terrorist organizations. It hasn’t been that for half a century. It has accepted the idea of elections at the student level, the national level, participating in elections, accepting the idea of some kind of democratic practice.

These ideas are utterly anathema to countries like Saudi Arabia or other Arab dictators, or Muslim dictators anywhere, who see this as subversive. So, they have moved all out—that’s why Saudi Arabia has been quick to condemn the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists, even though it’s very, very difficult to make that case over the last 50 years. Fifty years ago, yes, they dallied in it, but not since. So I think, Turkey doesn’t officially call itself Muslim Brotherhood, but certainly the ruling party has good ties with it. And again, Turkey, it’s become an abusive democracy, but it’s still a democracy. I mean, there are real elections. It’s an unfair, or illiberal democracy, is the term I think we use. But nonetheless, it still has elections. And I believe that when the day comes that President Erdogan in Turkey is voted out of power, if there aren’t manipulations, I believe fairly surely he will step down. So the question of the compatibility of Islam and democracy that the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, I think has accepted, is far from over. And the debate is far from over. I mean, we’re even arguing in the United States about religious ideas, in social belief, abortion, among other things. So you cannot totally separate moral views from policy views, and moral views are importantly founded often on religious ideas. It doesn’t have to be, but that tends to be their source.

NED: Surrogate of the CIA

EIR: To what extent do you see the NED [National Endowment for Democracy], Open Society, regime-change crowd influence in the Arab Spring? And to what extent would you think that caused a backlash against it?

Fuller: At one time when I was still working in Washington, I was a big believer in the National Endowment for Democracy, and I believed that democracy had a lot to offer to much of the world. I still believe democracy—it’s like Winston Churchill said, it’s the worst form of governance, except for all those that have been tried before it. But somehow, over the years, the National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, really became almost a surrogate for the CIA. The U.S. largely got out of the business of having the CIA overthrow countries—and this wasn’t, by the way, the CIA choosing to overthrow these places; this was by Presidential Order or Kissinger order or whatever. The National Endowment for Democracy became a much nicer face for regime change. Not by violence, but certainly through using all kinds of financial and ideological and training, and other kinds of things, to bring about change. I believed that democracy was a great goal for the United States, but as I began to watch it over the years, I began to see how much of this was cherry picking. That democracy was, as I often said, democracy was a punishment to deliver upon our enemies, to overthrow them. Democracy is never a gift for our allies. You know, we’re not deciding that we’re going to bestow democracy upon Saudi Arabia or any other number of authoritarian regimes around the world. We have all kinds of things to say about the rights of Uyghurs in China, and I care very deeply about the Uyghurs in China. I’ve been there. I’ve written about it. But, I think the fact that they’re in China seems to be the more important point for the U.S. policy than what the state of the Uyghurs is at this particular time. So it’s highly selective, which undermines the credibility, the ideological credibility of the United States in pushing for democracy. We’ll do it when we want to overthrow somebody, but we don’t have much to say about it otherwise. We don’t have much, even in human rights, I mean, this tends to be a weapon used to overthrow or seriously weaken countries. But if it’s a friendly country, we don’t do it. We never talk about the Kashmiris and Indian policy against Kashmir, or Indian policies against Muslims in general, or other religious groups in India, because India—they’re the good guys, so we don’t talk about it. But if it’s Palestinians rights being crushed in Israel, we don’t talk about it. But if it’s Chechens in Russia, or other groups in China, then we’re all over it. So, I just feel we ideologically corrode the very validity of pushing for democracy.

The Uyghurs and China’s Nation Building

EIR: I certainly agree with you on that. Let me take you up on the Uygher, Xinjiang issue. I read the study you and Frederick Starr did in 2004, called “The Xinjiang Problem,” which involved scholars…

Fuller: But it was mainly Jonathan Lipman, who is an outstanding scholar of Muslims in China, who was my partner in writing that essay. Fred Starr very capably brought the book all together, many different disciplines, but it was myself and Jonathan Lipman, who has a wonderful book about Muslims in China. Very readable, delightful book. [see Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China ] 

EIR: I’ll look that up. Since that time, of course, you had the ISIS-linked Uyghurs who carried out terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, and the Chinese response to that was to launch what they call a mass education or mass re-education campaign for the young people being influenced by the jihadis. But at the same time doing massive economic development in the region; they created new industrial and agricultural projects across Xinjiang. And certainly, that is quite the opposite of the so-called anti-terrorist campaigns in the West, which were largely bombing countries back to the Stone Age. So nonetheless, what China is doing is now, since Pompeo and his ilk, is labeled genocide, and in fact, they’re imposing sanctions on China, and even the so-called diplomatic boycott of the Olympics is because of genocide in Xinjiang. I find this to be not only absurd, but really disgusting, but you certainly know a great deal about the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. How do you look at that now in light of this crisis?

Fuller: You know, it’s a complicated issue, Mike. For starters, I would not accept the term genocide, which I think is being extremely loosely applied by Washington again, not so much on the facts of the issue, because if you looked at Palestinian treatment, the numbers are vastly less. But treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel, there might be very comparable things. But anyway, this is not genocide, but I think it is—some people have used the term cultural oppression. Some have even called it culturacide. China is known to be—and I’m a huge admirer of China, I’ve studied Chinese history and literature and things. I have great admiration for China’s past and indeed even present extraordinary accomplishments. But China is also a tough country in which to be a minority. The Han Chinese massively dominate, just numerically, the country, overwhelmingly, so that it’s difficult to be a minority in China anywhere and not get “Han-ized”, if you will, turned into Han Chinese linguistically, culturally, and otherwise. This is not unique to China; other countries have pushed for cultural integration in the past. I don’t know the years exactly, but I think in the 18th Century, France had an extraordinary policy of imposing, with some force, imposing the language of Paris on the entire country and wiping out regional dialects and languages such as Celtic languages or Basque and other such.

So in the process of nation building, whether you like it or not, governments, whether good or bad, or harsh or not, tend to try to push towards homogenization of their population to make it easier to rule, to maybe make it easier for people to get along socially. I don’t know. So the Chinese are part of this long tradition. And it’s easy when you got one-point-four [billion] people — and I don’t know what the statistics are of non-Han minorities, but they’re probably pretty small in comparison. So yes, I do feel that the Chinese have been rather harsh in Xinjiang in the effort to Han-ize, or turn into “good Chinese”, Han Chinese, the Uyghur population. And the Uyghurs, of course, are the furthest away from Beijing of any group in the country, way off to the West. I mean, the capital of Xinjiang province in China is closer to Islamabad than it is to Beijing. So you’re talking about a very distant, culturally long-time Turkic Islamic Muslim society. I deplore the re-education camps. It smacks a bit too much to me of kind of more fascist organizations in the past. But I think, I do not believe that calling this genocide is a legitimate term.

And we also have to come to the deeper question of, who is it that deserves an independent state? The Chechens in Russia and the Soviet Union have been a totally distinct ethnic group. They’re Muslims, not Christians, but they have been pushing, including using violence for years, for over a hundred years, to gain independence from the Soviet Union, or from Russia. So this is an ongoing problem. And I certainly don’t support violence on either side of this. But I do acknowledge that in any process of industrializing China, including its distant western regions, factories are going to be built, and even more to the point, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Han Chinese have come into areas that have long been occupied, long inhabited by Muslim Uyghur people, Turkic Muslim Uygur peoples. And they naturally are deeply disturbed at this huge influx of industrial Chinese workers, who are changing the real estate, they’re tearing down their old towns, they’re weakening Islam, closing mosques, you know, imposing Chinese language requirements. Obviously, if you’re going to live in China, you damn well better learn Mandarin. So you can’t say that it’s all brutal, but it’s a complex issue of how do you try to integrate this country without using brutal techniques? And I think China in recent years has moved in the direction of unnecessary harshness in that issue.

The Visionary Belt and Road Initiative

EIR: Well, let me say that they’ve built more mosques in Xinjiang than any area in the world. So you have to take that into consideration, too. What you’re saying about Xinjiang is also true of Tibet, and our organization from the beginning—LaRouche’s idea and the ideas of the Schiller Institute—was always predicated on the idea of peace through development, that you can’t try to bring about peace and then development. You have to actually bring development as a way of addressing the common needs of all people, all religious movements, all ethnic differences, and so forth. And certainly, that’s the way the Chinese have approached both Tibet and Xinjiang, and in the process have dramatically increased the populations of Xinjiang, the Uyghur population, increased their standard of living enormously. And their argument, of course, is that when people complain about human rights, that the most fundamental human right is the right to life and to a decent standard of living. And they’re very proud of having brought the entire country, including all the people of Xinjiang, out of abject poverty. There’s still poverty, but [abject poverty] has been eliminated. A lot of this is also what they launched to take internationally, the process of development, through the Belt and Road. And of course, Xinjiang is a crossroad for the Belt and Road. So let me ask you to say what you think about the whole Belt and Road process, which of course, is also roundly denounced by the anti-China people in the West with all kinds of nasty terms. But it is a basis on which, if you believe in the idea that peace comes through development, that you can resolve these issues not only in China, but in Afghanistan and in the Middle East. In particular, I wonder what you think about the efforts by China to bring the Belt and Road into the Middle East.

Fuller: I think the Chinese idea of the Belt and Road is an extremely imaginative and exciting idea. It is visionary in the sense of uniting and bringing together diverse societies across Central Asia that have not been united since the days of Genghis Khan, who was a brutal conqueror, but for a hundred years thereafter proceeded to run a pretty enlightened and peaceful administration all across Central Asia, as a Chinese dynasty—later, as a Chinese dynasty. So I think it’s inspired. Central Asia has been the backwater of the world for a long, long time. Even though in medieval periods it was a rich center of commerce and trade and ideas and science, et cetera, along the lines of Ibn Sina, who lived in that area himself. This includes Iran, of course. So, I think it’s an extraordinary idea that the Chinese have been developing here, in context with Russia as well. It’s a complicated area. There are many ethnic sensitivities in the area. Muslims traditionally do not like to feel that they’re under the thumb—however, you choose to interpret it—under the dominance, under the overwhelming power of non-Muslim power, and they would view China in that regard.

They would view Russia in that regard, but it doesn’t mean that they will reject it. It just means there are going to be certain sensitivities about Islamic culture, Islamic history and tradition, that will play an important role, I think, in the future of that Belt and Road. And China will need to—and Russia, of course—will need to move very cautiously with full regard for the cultural and religious traditions of that area. But I think, yes, it can do a great deal for the welfare, the livelihood, standard of living, cultural development, and everything else to have this area opened up from an area that will go from, well, you know, you can say Beijing, but in many senses, even from Korea, all the way across land and sea to now Italy, I think, which is the westernmost point at this stage of the Belt and Road concept. It’s very positive, it’s a very highly constructive, imaginative idea.

EIR: Have you looked into the efforts between China and, let’s say, Iraq, for instance, to bring in some of these Belt and Road projects? The last government had agreements of oil for development, which got crushed, unfortunately.

Fuller: Yeah, I’m not terribly familiar with where Iraq stands on the Belt and Road. I mean, inevitably, it will be part, it would be a natural part. I mean, going way back when it ran from Beijing to Beirut in effect, back in the day. I don’t know where it stands now with Iraq, but certainly Iran. And in Iran, already, China is playing a very significant role in helping relieve some of the more oppressive aspects of American sanctions. Iran has been historically a major country, a major culture that was part of that whole Belt and Road civilization. It was a Muslim, Arab, Persian society, Turkic as well. Very important. All those three cultural groups. China does not always have the best reputation, going way back, as fully honoring societies that resist homogenization, and Muslim societies tend to resist, a bit, homogenization into non-Muslim cultures. You could have a long discussion about why. So I think the idea is brilliant, but as I said before, China and Russia need to step cautiously and sensitively with this huge new cultural region, that will benefit that region, I believe, hugely.

Afghan War Targeted China and Russia

EIR: Good. I’d like to ask two other things on Afghanistan before we leave that. One is that I read an article you wrote recently called “Time to Smash the Urge of Imperial Strategic Groupthink”.

Fuller: That wasn’t my title.

EIR: Oh, it wasn’t, Okay. It’s quite a title. Well, anyway, what I noted in there was that you said that the entire Afghan misadventure was less about fighting terrorism and more about establishing a base near the Russian and Chinese borders, sort of as part of the Great Game. There are indications that the pullout of Afghanistan was less about ending regime-change wars and more about repositioning for confrontations with China and Russia. And you may have heard that Tony Blinken just yesterday basically acknowledged that. He said (I wrote it down): “In ending America’s longest war and making sure that we’re not sending a third generation of Americans back to fight and die in Afghanistan, that frees up a tremendous amount of resources and focus for other challenges.” And the reporter even asked, “Do you think the American people have an appetite for other challenges?” And he said, “Oh, I think the appetite is significant.” I wonder what you think about this in terms of going forward.

Fuller: I think it was fairly clear back in 9/11, 2001, that the invasion of Afghanistan was about far more than bin Laden. Bin Laden certainly was the perfect poster-boy enemy for that invasion. And it wasn’t outrageous—9/11 was an outrage, an outrage against the United States and generally, through the use of terrorism and murder. But yes, I think it was not by accident that the U.S. was well aware that Afghanistan sits athwart China, Russia, Central Asia. They understood that all you have to do is read about the British Great Game back in the day, 19th Century, and America supporting the Afghans against the Soviet invasion in 1978. So the idea of the geopolitical significance of Afghanistan is well known. We just didn’t talk about it very much, because it was a much better sell, to talk about terrorism and Afghanistan. I am not sure that the U.S. is quite ready to throw in, give up its spurs in Afghanistan, for the very same reason that it borders on Russia, borders on China, and might in the U.S. eyes be a check, possibly to elements of the Belt and Road. If the U.S. has a better idea than the Belt and Road or could contribute to it or work simultaneously with it, that would be great. But I think now anyway, it seems to be a zero-sum game in American eyes, and it doesn’t want to participate in any way that would facilitate this Chinese venture. I don’t think we’ve really let go quite there, and it won’t be until we start generously helping rebuild that country that we helped to destroy, that we become credible in our willingness to look for better days for the Afghan people and get out of the region.

Drugs and the U.S. Cultural Decay

EIR: So, I want to ask as, I think, a last question, the issue of the cultural decay in the United States and in the western world generally. I read some reviews of your memoir, I didn’t read the memoir, but the book you wrote about the death of your son to drug addiction. And, as you probably know, it was just recently announced that there have been 100,000 overdose drug deaths this last year. That’s by far the highest ever. And the economic and cultural decay in the country has really left a whole generation of children who have no sense of a positive future. They don’t have a sense of a mission in the world. And this, of course, has resulted in some horrible atrocities like the child killers. We had one just the other day in Michigan, and record-high teen suicides. Since you did have that experience, how do you read this yourself, in terms of what we’re going to have to do to revive the culture in the United States?

Fuller: Well, drugs in many ways are the bane of the modern world, everywhere, in some sense. In the United States, as you know, we’ve not had a great deal of luck even with the banning of all kinds of drugs over the years, have not had great success with it. And the so-called war against drugs that’s been going on, what, 20, 30 years, as part of many administrations punishing various Latin American countries for helping produce this stuff, in which we are the main market. This goes back a long way, and with all the problems that you talk about; yes, it’s been, it’s really sad. It’s been exacerbated by COVID. It’s got to be exacerbated by just existential angst from global warming, the future of the world. What I now feel is an excessive sense of individualism within the United States culture. Individualism has been a wonderful feature of American culture, and produced amazing artistic accomplishments and scientific and technical accomplishments, all kinds of things. But it does have a downside. This extreme, extreme individualism of the United States, which means that there’s not so coherent a society, as you might find in, say, slightly more traditional European cultures, but even they are suffering from drugs. So, I’m not sure what the answer to all of this is, but certainly the conditions of American life, the discrepancy between rich and poor, and the negativism that emerges from this, that you can see in the music and the arts and other things, certainly is exacerbating it hugely. But it’s in some senses, it’s a global problem. It’s a human problem.

Addiction to Never Ending Wars

EIR: Let me close by asking if you have anything else you’d like to like to say to our audience.

Fuller: No, just to express my concern about where the U.S. is headed now, the viability of American democratic practice at this point. I think the future of the world is going to be ever more demanding. Obviously, for starters, because of global warming, and pandemics. Also, the negative impacts of technology. Apart from the many wonderful aspects of technology, there are many, many socially negative impacts of technology. My fear is that countries are going to find themselves increasingly unmanageable, in which the power of the state is going to be perceived as more and more necessary. Just in COVID alone, to try to control the spread of COVID and manage the treatment of COVID, has required a great empowerment of the state, not just in the U.S. but globally. So, I think in a country that’s as intensely individualistic as the United States is, where people can say, well, you know, I want to do what I want to do and it’s my freedom, it’s my body. There are all kinds of very good reasons for pushing back against this. But I think in the modern world and the modern world of delicate technology and countries existing on delicate balances of how technologies interact, you can’t really survive in a country that is verging on the anarchistic in many regards, that cannot provide good government and good governance.

So I fear very much for where the future of the U.S. is headed right now. It may not just be the United States. It may be the West, and the West may be ahead of much of the rest of the world. But the problem of control of populations getting ever bigger, and the crises, global warming, disease, technology, et cetera, et cetera, I fear are going to hugely empower states. And China is basically arguing that they are the vanguard of the future in this regard.

I think the thing that I find most deeply depressing about the United States is its still addiction to never ending war. We talked about that briefly before, but I think I am appalled that even with very progressive thinkers like Bernie Sanders, even Bernie Sanders has not dared to grasp the nettle of the Pentagon budget and the ongoing wars, or only very slightly. Its still, you know, we can’t afford medical care, we can’t afford infrastructure, we can’t afford COVID, or one thing or another. But boy, we can afford those damn wars. I’m appalled that even today, nobody, just about nobody is suggesting that maybe, one-third of the Pentagon budget might go a long way to beginning to solve a few of these domestic problems. It’s beyond the pale, that discussion, right now.

EIR: Yeah, either party.

Fuller: Either party.

EIR: Okay, well, thank you very much. This will be most interesting.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche presented a sobering assessment of the global strategic situation following the Dec. 7 video summit between Presidents Biden and Putin, warning that what preceded the summit — a war-time like propaganda campaign accusing Russia of preparing to invade Ukraine — is continuing, with potentially disastrous consequences. The push for further eastward expansion of NATO, with membership for Ukraine, was identified by Putin as crossing a “red line”. This ws rejected by Biden, despite promises given by the U.S. in 1990 that there would not be expansion eastward. The threat of nuclear war is being raised by others besides us, including Tucker Carlson, while unhinged war hawks, such as Sen Wicker of Mississippi, are calling for consideration by the U.S. of a nuclear first strike option.

Mrs. LaRouche reiterated how her initiative for addressing the horrific crisis in Afghanistan, Operation Ibn Sina, is a pathway to cooperation between the U.S., Russia and China. The other choice, ramping up geopolitical confrontation, through the phony division of the world into “democracies versus autocrats” — which is the idea behind Biden’s upcoming Summit for Democracy — leaves humanity “sitting on a powder keg.”

International Schiller Institute Conference
December 4, 2021 — 1pm EST

Will the Omicron COVID variant be the warning bell we heed?

Eight months ago, in March 2021, epidemiologists, virologists and infectious disease specialists from twenty-eight nations warned of the dangers to come without a full international vaccination roll-out. Most believed that we had a year or less before truly dangerous mutations proliferated widely. Gregg Gonsalves, Associate Professor of Epidemiology at Yale University eight months ago put it this way: “With millions of people around the world infected with this virus, new mutations arise every day. Sometimes they find a niche that makes them more fit than their predecessors. These lucky variants could transmit more efficiently and potentially evade immune responses to previous strains. Unless we vaccinate the world, we leave the playing field open to more and more mutations, which could churn out variants that could evade our current vaccines …The virus doesn’t respect borders and new variants somewhere on the planet mean none of us are safe.”

But vaccinations alone will not stop COVID. Only full modern health systems everywhere, which require the simultaneous rapid build-out of electricity production and delivery, the provision of clean water–new water systems, and all other required infrastructure, to support the hospitals, the clinics and the ongoing health concerns of people can do the job. 

Only if we develop a full international, in-depth response to the escalation warnings from epidemiologists, virologists and infection disease specialists as advocated by the Schiller Institute beginning in March 2020, and repeated by former U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Joycelyn Elders just a few days ago, can we stop the growing death, economic despair and that has wrecked so many human lives.

Join us in this conference, and recruit others to join the mission. WHEN December 4, 2021; Time 1pm EST-4pm EST

More details forthcoming…

The following interview with Ambassador Chas Freeman was conducted by EIR’s Mike Billington on Nov. 29, 2021. Ambassador Freeman’s extensive career in U.S. foreign policy includes his role as interpreter for President Richard Nixon in his famous 1972 visit to China. He did the legal analysis that inspired the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 and was Country Director for China, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, and Assistant Secretary of Defense. He served abroad in India and Taiwan, and as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassies in China and Thailand. He was U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the 1990-1991 war to liberate Kuwait. He edited the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Diplomacy, and is the author of several books on statecraft as well as on Middle East and Asian policy.

Chas Freeman: I’m Chas Freeman and it’s a pleasure to be with you, Mike.

EIR: Do you want to say a bit about your history, your many hats?

Freeman: Well, not particularly. I was a public servant for 30 years, emerged penniless from that experience and have since devoted myself to remedying that condition with modest success. I am currently a visiting scholar at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and a frequent speaker on a number of subjects which are controversial in U.S. foreign policy, including relations with China, with the Middle East and so forth. So that’s about it.

Will the U.S. Start Nuclear War?

EIR: Ok, so I prepared some topics. I’ll just go through them and let you expound. I wanted to start with the worst-case scenario, which is, as you noted in your Watson Institute presentation last week, that China launched its nuclear weapon development after the U.S. had threatened to use nuclear weapons against China during the 1958 crisis, over the islands in the Taiwan Strait. Admiral Charles A. Richard, the current commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, said this summer, that while nuclear war used to be considered unlikely, due to the rise of China it was now likely.

Do you suspect that the U.S. would rather use nuclear weapons than lose a military conflict over Taiwan?

Freeman: Well, that has always been the strategic nuclear doctrine espoused by the United States: The assumption that if conventional warfare fails, there is a nuclear option, and indeed that was the case with the use of nuclear weapons by the United States in World War Two. It was only when it was determined that conventional warfare would be problematic, casualties would be enormous, that it was decided to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

This is consistent with American reasoning over the years. I find it very unnerving, frankly, in the current context. There are now nine countries known to have nuclear weapons. The United States risks the use of nuclear weapons against our own territory if we threaten or use such weapons against others. We have seen, for example, that a policy of maximum pressure on North Korea has driven the North Koreans to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile and a nuclear warhead, for it, precisely to strike the United States and to deter American attack, or regime change efforts against Pyongyang. 

We now have a different situation than we did in World War Two, when we had a monopoly on nuclear weapons. And it seems to me a very serious misjudgment to imagine that nuclear weapons remain the ace in the hole that Adm. Richard believes them to be. Now, in the case of China, it is not simply the nuclear modernization program that the United States has undertaken, to which we’ve committed some $1.4 trillion dollars, much of it aimed at China, in order to achieve battlefield supremacy over the Chinese, but it is also the breakdown of all of the understandings that enable peaceful coexistence in the Taiwan Strait.

In the finessing of the issue of Taiwan in U.S.-China relation, essentially, the United States agreed to three conditions: one, that we would end official relations with Taipei; two, that, we would withdraw all military personnel and installations from the island; and three, we would void our defense commitment to the island. We have now gone back on each of these commitments.

It’s very hard to tell the difference between the way we conduct relations with Taipei now, and an official relationship or diplomatic relationship. We know that there are now American troops on Taiwan training Taiwanese forces, and we hear loud calls in Congress and elsewhere for the U.S. defense of Taiwan, on the grounds that it is a democracy resisting an authoritarian government. Somehow lost in all this is the history.

You mentioned the 1958 offshore islands crisis, involving Quemoy and Matsu, as the precipitator of the Chinese nuclear program. But the U.S. threatened the use of nuclear weapons on China during the Korean War, and on three occasions that I know of. The Chinese claim there are six occasions on which they were threatened with nuclear attack, on precisely the grounds that Adm. Richard appears to espouse. And this did indeed lead Mao Zedong to demand help from the Soviet Union, in developing a Chinese nuclear deterrent. Soviet refusal to oblige played a large role in generating the breakdown of Sino-Soviet relations.

So, this is a history that is very tangled, very long, very complex, and which we appear to approach rather in the mode of people with Alzheimer’s—you know, where we remember nothing, and everything is new every time.

China’s Nuclear Deterrent

EIR: You also noted in your presentation with Lyle Goldstein at the Watson Institute last week, that China had given fair warning of their military interventions before Korea in 1950, India in 1962, and Vietnam, when they crossed the border in 1979. But nonetheless, Washington is ignoring similar warnings that are coming today over Taiwan. Why do you think, and what is your expectation if China does in fact use force?

Freeman: A great deal of the denial that one sees in Washington on subjects like this, reflects hubris on the part of the so-called blob—the foreign policy establishment and its military component. But it represents a failure to understand the extent to which the global order and geopolitics have rearranged themselves, as others rise to match American power, at least at the regional level.

When we did the normalization agreement with China and finessed the Taiwan issue, China did not have the military means to mount an invasion or an attack on Taiwan with any credibility. It now does. It has been developing a wide range of options for taking action to resolve the Chinese Civil War, which is how the Taiwan issue came about, and to bring Taiwan into an agreed relationship with the rest of China. It prefers a negotiated means of doing this. But it’s become apparent that it is developing alternatives, including a wide range of possibilities for the use of force, and it is in that context that one must see the recent Chinese heavying-up of nuclear forces.

If China is engaged in a calibrated escalation of pressure on Taiwan to bring it to the negotiating table, which is what it is currently doing, that’s one thing. But if it is put in the position where it sees no peaceful prospect of resolving the Taiwan question, then it is forced to consider the use of force. And the conquest of Taiwan would have to be conducted with speed and with a knockout blow. It would have to present a fait accompli to Americans who wish to intervene in that conflict. And it is in this case that the nuclear deterrent becomes invaluable, because China will be in a position to say to the United States, “if you intervene, all options are on the table,” to use the phrase that we have so often used with regard to others. In other words, are you really prepared to give up Chicago in order to preserve Taiwan’s democracy and autonomy? Since, if there is a war over Taiwan, the first things to perish will be Taiwan’s democracy and its prosperity. Are you really prepared to make this trade off?

This is a replay of Cold War-style Cuban Missile Crisis confrontation that we should be doing everything possible to avoid. But it is looking more likely every day.

Resolving the Taiwan Issue Peacefully

EIR: Do you think there’s any potential within Taiwan for the Guomindang [Kuomintang, KMT] or any other forces within Taiwan, who would prefer having normal relations leading towards a long-term peaceful reunification, to regain any kind of political influence, or win an election in Taiwan? And on the other hand, what would it take for Washington to convince the DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] and President Tsai Ing-wen to negotiate with Beijing?

Freeman: I think the KMT’s electoral prospects are limited, and if it is elected, it will not be on the basis of a vision of cross-Strait relations, but on the basis of local issues. Tip O’Neill was right, all politics is local, and people in Taiwan are much more concerned, for the most part, about issues closer to home, than the prospect of conflict with their Chinese motherland.

The DPP contains quite a variety of opinions. There are those who are firmly committed to the idea of independence and advocate risking it now. There are those who, like Tsai Ing-wen, now say that Taiwan is already independent, and has no need to declare independence. This is an answer to the extremists in her own party who advocate immediate declaration of independence. Unfortunately, it is heard very differently across the Strait. Beijing hears it as meeting the conditions it has set for having to use force, namely that Taiwan achieves independence, where there is no prospect of a peaceful reintegration of the two sides of the Strait. 

So, what could we do to influence the DPP? We would have to back off from our support of our denial of the One-China principle. As you recall, Taiwan and the mainland in 1972, during the negotiation of the Shanghai Communique, both Taipei and Beijing were firmly in agreement that there was only one China, and Taiwan was part of it. Taiwan’s democracy has changed the view of many in Taiwan on that question, and so it is not easy now to have a discussion. In the previous government in Taipei, lip service was paid to the One-China principle, and this permitted very productive dialogue across the Strait; that dialogue has now dried up. If there is no dialogue, if there are no talks, there is no apparent path to a peaceful resolution of the issues. So, I think the United States ought to be advocating dialogue. We should be saying firmly that we do not agree with the DPP that Taiwan is an independent state. But this is politically very difficult, given the anti-China hysteria in the United States at present.

Belt and Road—An Opportunity, Not a Threat

EIR: In regard to that general anti-China hysteria, as you know, EIR and the Schiller Institute have long promoted the Belt and Road Initiative. To a certain extent, we initiated this idea back in the 1990s with the Chinese. But the idea of bringing major infrastructure development to nations which have been denied major infrastructure and development by the colonial and neocolonial forces—this is not aimed at taking over the West, as many Western leaders like to argue, but rather to liberate these nations from poverty, as they did their own population in relatively record time, 30 to 40 years, eliminating abject poverty from seven or eight hundred million people. So why, in your view, do the U.S. and the EU oppose this process of the Belt and Road?

Freeman: Well, I think unfortunately, the natural American response to any international development at present is to view it through military eyes. Therefore, there is a suspicion that the Belt and Road has a geopolitical military purpose. I don’t think it does. I think it is a geo-economic outreach, which takes advantage of the fact that China now has the best infrastructure construction technology and equipment on the planet. That it has surpluses of materials for construction, like concrete, aluminum, steel and so forth. And it has experience in solving very difficult engineering problems, and it is applying this to create a potential economic community that will span the entire Eurasian landmass from Lisbon to Vladivostok, and North, from Arkhangelsk to Colombo, as well as parts of East Africa.

This will be an open economic architecture based on connectivity, whether it’s roads, railroads, fiber optic cable, ports, airports, industrial estates or whatever. And I think the Chinese bet, is that in such an open environment, China’s size and dynamism would give it a natural leadership role. But this is very different from imagining the sort of military positioning that we characteristically try to impose on such developments.

I think the proper response by the United States to the Belt and Road Initiative would be to take advantage of it. Somebody builds a road, let’s drive an American car down it. Someone connects Tokyo and London with fiber optic cable, let’s use that to improve the speed of trading on the stock market. If someone builds an airport, there’s no reason that only Chinese aircraft can use that, and so forth and so on. I’m very impressed actually, by the extent to which the Belt and Road Initiative is not just physical connectivity, but a series of agreements on the management of the transit of goods, openness to services, improvement of customs and immigration procedures, bonded transit between China and Europe and a third country or region. I think this is a great opportunity, if it’s approached in that way, for American business, for the American economy.

We need to leverage the prosperity of China and the increasing prosperity of Central Asian and European countries, as well as these African countries, and South Asian countries, to the benefit of our economy, not regard it as a threat.

There Is no Debt Trap from China

EIR: You say that the opposition to this is primarily because it’s viewed militarily, but on the other hand, the western financial institutions have made very clear over the last few years, and emphatically at the Glasgow COP26 conference, that their primary interest, the financial interests, people like Mark Carney and the Bank of England, and Wall Street interests, is to stop investments into fossil fuels, into any industry or agriculture they deem to have too much carbon, because of their argument that carbon is going to burn up the world and so forth.

This would appear to be an economic policy not so different from the colonial policy of intentionally wanting to keep these countries in a state of dependence and backwardness. What would you think?

Freeman: Well, I don’t agree with the theory that climate change and carbon emissions should not be tackled, but I think that’s really almost irrelevant here.

It’s almost laughable that the very institutions which pioneered debt trap diplomacy—a phrase invented by an Indian polemicist to describe a mythical reality involving Chinese lending—the very countries and institutions that pioneered this, for example, in loans to Latin America and so forth, now object to the Chinese competing with them for lending. I don’t see anything very profound in all this. It is just a case of banks trying to screw other banks.

If JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs and Citibank, or Wells Fargo or whoever, whichever criminal enterprise you wish to refer to, if they cannot beat the terms that the Chinese offer for various reasons, including political factors, and Western insistence on human rights and other norms that the Chinese leave to the decision of local people, then it’s natural that they would try to prevent China from making loans.

As a general proposition, competition with China is mainly economic and technological. It doesn’t fit easily into a military prism, and it doesn’t fit easily into a financial prism. So, the odd thing is, if you want to compete, the best way to do it is to improve your own performance and offer better terms. It’s not to try to hamstring or tear down your competitor. If you are a rival of China, that could potentially be very beneficial to both you and to the Chinese, because that is a competition to improve performance on both sides.

If you are engaged in adversarial antagonism, which is clearly what is happening here, then your means of competition is trying to trip up your competitor. And that does nothing for yourself, your own people, your own country, or your ultimate competitiveness. There are many issues involved in this, but at root, it is just a tradition of underhanded, rather amoral competition by Western banks.

The U.S. Needs Trust Busting

EIR: I agree with you. I’ll just mention as a side note here, when we first published in 2014, the 370 page report called The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge, promoting this, it was our hope—I guess you would say, even an expectation—that we would take this report to American entrepreneurs and investors, and they would say, “Yes, wonderful, a great opportunity for profitable investment and development.” But as we now know, nothing like that happened.

Freeman: Well, I think part of the problem is, there is a sense of malaise in the United States at present, for good reason. And part of the reason for poor performance and slipping competitiveness is the emergence of an economy dominated by corporate oligopolies, rather than engaged in open market competition. This is true, people have noticed it, particularly in the area of media and social media, communications, telecommunications. But it’s true more generally. Any mall in the United States that you visit is likely to have the same outlets, the same franchises. The role of small business, whether it’s booksellers or independent restaurants or whatever it is, has been largely superseded by national level monopolies and oligopolies.

So I think part of the problem, if we wish to compete with China, which despite its label as communist or socialist, has a fiercely competitive domestic market with a very fractured structure that generates cutthroat competition between enterprises, whether they’re owned by the state or by the province or city, or by individuals, or by the shareholders, doesn’t really matter.

If we wish to compete with China, one of the things we’ve got to do is rediscover antitrust policy. Interestingly, the Chinese are currently applying antitrust policy to the very media oligopolies, the analogs of the ones here—the Facebooks and Instagrams and Twitters and whatever—on their own soil. And in many ways, China seems to me to be recapitulating the American response to the Gilded Age. It has had its Gilded Age, like Teddy Roosevelt and company; it is now discovering the merits of antitrust policy. And I suspect that John D. Rockefeller was not very pleased when Standard Oil was broken up, and that there are moans and groans on Wall Street about this being the end of capitalism. Actually, it saved capitalism from itself.

We are looking at the Chinese through glasses that are either military, or that ignore our own history, our own past, our own experience with financial capitalism, which the Chinese appear to be determined not to develop. I wish them luck. It may be an inevitability.

The Foolishness of the ‘Leaders’ Summit for Democracy’

EIR: On the historical side of all this, you were engaged in the opening up to China. You were with Nixon on his first visit, as his interpreter. ou mentioned in your presentation last week that the opening up was largely based on the idea of the “China card” against the Soviet Union. Now China and Russia are increasingly coordinating both their strategic and economic relations. The NATO provocations against Russia over Ukraine are as intense as those over Taiwan.

In your view, is this administration, or the previous one, or Congress, or the media, or Wall Street—are any of them taking into consideration that a military operation in Taiwan, or in Ukraine, could easily become a war with both Russia and China?

Freeman: I suppose there are people at the Pentagon who understand that. It’s pretty clear the American political elite does not make that connection.

Just a minor correction on the opening to China: it was Richard Nixon’s idea to open to China after he contemplated the consequences of a possible Soviet attack on China, removing China as a factor in global geopolitics. And that caused him to see China as the useful counter to Soviet expansionism that it was, and it led to the United States, essentially in the 1970s, treating China as a protected state. We had no real expectations that the Chinese would do anything, but we really wanted them to survive, and to remain a part of the global chessboard. So that was the origin of it. It then turned out that this set up a healthy competition in Moscow for our favor. So, the famous strategic triangle worked to our advantage.

Generally speaking, in diplomacy, or military strategy for that matter, it is considered wise to divide your enemies, not unite them. But we have been doing everything possible to push Moscow and Beijing into an entente, meaning a limited partnership for limited purposes. It’s not an alliance. There is no broad mutual commitment to aid. But there are clearly understandings emerging about precisely the sort of issue that you just mentioned. If the Russians feel sufficiently provoked to take the Donbass, which is Russian-speaking, from Ukraine, it will probably time that to coincide with Chinese military operations against Taiwan, and perhaps vice versa. So, we have done ourselves no favor by simultaneously designating China and Russia as adversaries. 

I make one further point. We’re about to have a Summit on Democracy, which is ironic, because our own democracy is clearly in bad shape, and we are evaluated internationally as having a partially failed democracy. So, this is an odd moment to be attempting to trumpet the virtues of the system we ourselves are abandoning. But by trying to reorganize the world along ideological lines—democracies versus authoritarian regimes or non-democracies—the whole conceit was ridiculous! Because authoritarians—I know lots of autocrats, I’ve dealt with many of them over the years, I’ve never met one who was the least concerned about others—don’t think they have anything in common. They’re concerned to stay in power, not to keep other autocrats in power.

So, there’s no international league of autocrats, but we are creating one. Because by excluding countries that don’t meet or aspire to sycophancy in the democratic sphere, by assembling them as a sort of broad coalition aimed at Russia and China, we have stimulated Russia and China to issue a joint declaration against this, and then try to organize their own coalition. We are trying to replicate the Cold War. I don’t think we’ll succeed, because basically the underlying proposition that somehow the United States is currently in a condition to appeal on a democratic basis to the world is problematic. And I don’t think countries want to choose between the United States and its designated adversaries, whether they are China or Russia or Iran. We are in effect, creating the very phenomenon we invented and imagined. And it’s not to our advantage.

EIR: And not only did they exclude Russia and China from invitations for this Summit of Democracy, but they left out Hungary, Singapore, all of Central Asia. But they did invite Taiwan as if it were….

Freeman: They also invited the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is not a famous democracy in any one’s eyes, and Angola was invited, I believe. This smacks of geopolitics rather than ideology. And it will be interesting to see how it goes. Here we are in a country where it’s very uncertain that we will make it through our next general election without violence, or that there will be a peaceful transition in 2024 or 2025 when we have our next Presidential election. This is an odd moment to be insisting that others democratize. Perhaps we should focus on practicing democracy at home. I’m all in favor of democracy. I’d like to see more of it here.

The U.S. Is Already Over China’s Red Line

EIR: We had [Secretary of State] Tony Blinken not only inviting Taiwan to the Summit, but also going to the U.N. and calling on the U.N. to welcome Taiwan in a robust way into all the institutions of the U.N. How close would you call that to the red line?

Freeman: I think it’s over the red line. This is a resurrection of something I did as a very young diplomat—namely, manipulate Chinese representation in the UN. Taipei sat in the Security Council representing China, and all of us in the U.S. Foreign Service were engaged in keeping it that way, while keeping Beijing out, and we were pretty good at it. It lasted for, I think, 21 years or so. And then finally, reality caught up with us in 1971, when the rest of the world repudiated our approach.

But now we’re going back to it. We just had an election yesterday, in Honduras, in which a candidate committed to switch relations from Taipei to Beijing, has apparently been elected. It’ll be interesting to see how that develops. The last time this happened, in El Salvador, we undertook punitive action—this was under the Trump administration—to punish San Salvador for switching its allegiances.

Mrs. Castro, the president-elect apparently, in Honduras, will have to make some hard choices. Among other things, one of the reasons for Taiwan’s strong foothold in the Central American region, is that it supplies the surveillance equipment and technology to keep dictatorships in power. I don’t know whether Mrs. Castro, as president-elect Castro, has aspirations to do away with dictatorship sincerely, or whether she will be tempted, as Mr. Ortega was, in Nicaragua. She will also face a backlash from Americans of a certain political persuasion, so it’s not going to be easy for her to keep her campaign promise. You spoke of crossing red lines. That is an effort on our part to delegitimize the government in China and legitimize that in Taipei. This is not a way to exist, coexist peacefully with Beijing, whatever it may or may not do for Taipei.

U.S. on Afghanistan: Reprehensible

EIR: One approach which Helga Zepp-LaRouche has initiated, in order to try to bring these so-called adversaries together, is the situation in Afghanistan, where one would think that it’s in the self-interest of all parties, to not allow that country to descend back into a terrorist conclave and opium producer. Helga has promoted what she calls Operation Ibn Sina, to try to bring all the nations together, both in the region and internationally, including the U.S. and Russia and China, to develop Afghanistan with a modern health system and other urgently needed infrastructure, to make it again a great crossroad, as it was when Bactria was the “land of a thousand cities.”

There is a functioning so-called extended troika on Afghanistan, which is the U.S., Russia and China, together with Pakistan, focused on the development of Afghanistan, hopefully. And just recently, Pakistan has agreed to allow India to transport wheat across its territory, which it had forbidden before, to meet the huge humanitarian disaster that’s taking place in Afghanistan.

Do you think, as Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche does, that if you can bring these nations together around the Afghan situation, this would have implications for other hotspots, including Taiwan?

Freeman: I think there’s a very strong case to be made that the effort that the Russians made, and then we made, to modernize Afghanistan, to promote the rights of women, to improve education and health care, can only be effectively carried out on a multilateral basis. It cannot be carried out, as Moscow and Washington attempted to do, with an occupation force engaged in pacification over resistance.

The idea of a multilateral approach to Afghan development is an excellent one, and probably the vehicle for this, given, what I’m sorry to say, is a degree of petulance and vindictiveness in Washington that is, in my view, unconscionable, by which we are withholding the Afghan national reserves from the de facto government in Kabul, and thereby pushing Afghanistan into a state of famine and anarchy, which I think is intended to punish the Taliban, but which will probably provide fertile ground for the growth of Daesh, the ISIS, Islamic State elements, who regard the Taliban as milquetoast.

The most likely vehicle, unfortunately, does not involve the United States, but it’s probably the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes most of the countries which would be needed for such an approach. We are creating a terrible humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as we speak. Europeans may be more willing than Americans seem to be, to step forward to cooperate with others in the region to address this. So far, the Biden administration has shown a degree of cold-hearted disdain for the suffering of Afghans, that I find really reprehensible. 

Now you ask, does this have implications for Taiwan? I don’t think so. I think Afghanistan has to be approached in its own right, and the Taiwan issue is one that involves factors that are quite different from those in Afghanistan.

China Does Not Want To Occupy Taiwan

EIR: I found something you said in your Watson Institute presentation very interesting—and you said you’d written a book about this—that nations which occupy countries tend to cause total demoralization in general, and deterioration, of the military forces themselves. I think your argument there was aimed at saying that the Chinese really do not want to have to occupy Taiwan. Do you want to say anything about that? I assumed you were looking at the deterioration of the U.S. forces and their occupation of Vietnam, and now Afghanistan, and so forth.

Freeman: Well, I thought my model was actually before the U.S. misadventures in either Afghanistan or Iraq. My model was the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which I think has led to a degree of cynicism and callous disregard for human life, that is quite contrary to the universal values of Judaism, which inspired the original creation of Israel. I think this is actually something that is documented in many contexts.

It was interesting to me that the PLA [Peoples Liberation Army] General Staff Department, when they read the book in English, seized on this particular small section of it as a justification for producing a translation into Chinese. This is the book [holding it up], Arts of Power. It’s very clear that the Chinese have absolutely no desire to replicate the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. I think I mentioned, the first 25 years of that were characterized by violent resistance and really brutal repression. I don’t think in the modern world, this sort of thing would be without major effects on China’s foreign relations in general. I don’t doubt that they have the capability to occupy Taiwan. I think the last thing on Earth they want to do is to occupy Taiwan. They would much prefer, as I said, a negotiated solution which leaves Taiwan essentially self-governing, but within the context of One China. That’s something Taipei and Beijing have to work out; the United States and other countries can’t speak for either one of them, and can’t resolve the Chinese Civil War, it has to be resolved among Chinese. But, I think it’s reassuring that the PLA understands it would be a mess if it were forced to occupy Taiwan.

Biden Administration Failure of Foreign Policy 

EIR: You said at the Watson address,, “Don’t get me going on this crew in Washington today.” I’m not sure I want to “get you going” on that, but if you look back, Biden has had long talks—a three-and-a half hour talk with Xi Jinping. He’s had a couple of meetings with [President Vladimir] Putin; he plans on another meeting before the end of the year with Putin.

But if you look back at [former President Donald] Trump, he was elected, I think to a great extent, because he said we should be friends with Russia, we should be friends with China, although he wanted to solve the trade thing. He said we should end the endless wars. And of course, none of that happened, but quite the opposite. In the current circumstance, Biden appears to want to maintain a personal friendly relationship with Xi Jinping and Putin. But the question is, is that the way policy is made in Washington? And what’s your sense in that?

Freeman: Well, the Trump administration essentially destroyed the organized policy process in Washington. Biden has tried to resurrect it, but the National Security Council staff, which is charged with coordinating policy, has now grown to such a bloated size, that it replicates the expertise of different government departments, and therefore it’s incapable of synthesizing a strategy. What I mean by that is best exemplified by the Chinese expression describing a frog in a well. There’s a frog at the bottom of the well, the frog looks up, and he or she sees a circle of sky, and imagines that’s the universe. Well, now there are 100 frogs or more at the NSC, each imagining that the little patch of sky that they see is the universe, and there’s nobody tying those multiple views into a coherent whole.

It has not helped that Biden’s staff, meaning his National Security Advisor, who is essentially a campaign operative, and his Secretary of State, who is a congressional staffer, are both people who built careers focused on the manipulation of domestic American opinion rather than on diplomacy, or foreign policy in general. I don’t see any new ideas or vision coming out of this administration. Part of the reason for that—and I’m sure Mr. Biden, in fact, I know, he’s a very decent, warm individual, and I’m sure he does wish to retain good personal relationships with other foreign leaders, including Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi.  But the fact is, that he’s in a box. He has no convincing majority in the House, and he has a 50-50 split in the Senate, which is not even that, because on major issues, there are differences with some members of his own party.

So, Biden is trying to get through legislation on a variety of issues, and having a hard time doing it. In these circumstances, there’s nothing in it for him, to raise new approaches to either China or Russia. Essentially, to do so would be to open himself up to additional fractious denigration by politicians within the Beltway. So, he’s essentially immobilized. I used to think that perhaps if the political constellations were changed in 2022 in the midterm election, that Mr. Biden would have some flexibility, some ability to abandon the Trump policies and those of the so-called deep state. But it’s now not looking very good for him in that election, which means it just adds to the paralysis.

We’ve had a series of meetings with both the Chinese and Russians, with the Iranians indirectly. We approached these meetings—the first two meetings in Anchorage, then in Tianjin—with an opening blast of insults directed at the Chinese. We sent Victoria Nuland, of all people, to Moscow to talk about securing the Ukraine. These are not the actions of a mature diplomatic establishment. These are the actions of an administration that comes out of a demagogic environment in Congress, and has not transcended that. So, I don’t think it’s a case of the individuals involved being stupid or ill-intentioned, but their experience does not suit them for dealing with these issues. 

And finally, there’s nobody in this administration who really knows China, other than one or two hard-liners. I think a Rush Doshi, [Director for China at the National Security Council], is the epitome of that—a very serious scholar, wrote a good book, but it’s infected with the Washington playbook on military matters. Kurt Campbell, [Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs], is a re-engineered Soviet specialist.

Anybody who has dealt with the Chinese directly, as opposed to from an academic perch, or through occasional visits on the diplomatic level, knows that “face” is all important. If you want to drive a Chinese berserk, deprive him or her of the self-esteem that comes from the respect of those he or she respects. That is what “face” is. You get an irrational reaction, you get a sharp reaction—that is exactly what happened at Anchorage, and again, at Tianjin.

And it’s not that the Chinese are not pragmatic, or that you can’t talk to them, but you can’t open the discussion with anyone, as I said in the Watson meeting, by saying, “You’re a moral reprobate, I despise you. Your values stink. And I’m going to do everything possible to keep you down, and maybe push you down. But by the way, I have a problem or two, I’d like you to help me on.” What do you think you’re going to get when you try that approach? And that is essentially the approach that the Trump administration pioneered, and which the Biden administration has perpetuated.

U.S. Diplomacy Must Restore Diplomacy Over Military 

EIR: Another thing that I found very interesting when you were speaking at the Watson Institute, was that you said that deterrence is simply bottling up the problem, which will certainly fester and become worse. I think you know that Lyndon LaRouche had actively promoted in the late 70s and early 80s, an end to deterrence, an end to the Mutual Assured Destruction [MAD] idea, promoting the idea of the U.S. and the Russian scientific and military communities actually collaborating on building a space-based anti-missile system, which he introduced to President Reagan. Reagan adopted it, and it became the SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative]. In Reagan’s words, the intent was to “render nuclear weapons obsolete.”

 This never took off. The Soviets initially rejected the proposal that Lyndon LaRouche had made to them, and eventually in the U.S., the military-industrial people were more interested in building a lot of anti-missile missiles for their industries’ production, than any new technology based on the frontiers of knowledge, new physical principles. So that did not work. What are your thoughts on how to end deterrence?

Freeman: Well, I’m not sure that I would advocate ending deterrence, I think I would advocate using it. Deterrence makes sense under one obvious circumstance—and I’m not speaking here of Mutually Assured Destruction, which is simply a form of deterrence—but deterrence in general. If circumstances are likely to evolve in a way that resolves the underlying problem that leads to potential conflict, maybe deter that conflict, then time works on your side and the problem is likely to be ameliorated or mitigated, and maybe even go away.

But that is not the case with many, many situations. A case in point, is the standoff in Korea. When the armistice was signed in Korea, the United States, wearing a U.N. uniform, agreed to pursue a peace treaty. Well, we never did. Instead, we focused purely on military deterrence, and threats of regime change. And the result, as I said earlier, is that North Korea now has the ability to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon.

In the Taiwan case, we had 70 years to promote a resolution of the differences between Taipei and Beijing, we did nothing. Instead, with a brief exception in the 1980s, we focused purely on military deterrence. The situation festered and it got worse. So, we now have, in the cases of a divided Korea and a divided China, we have situations that appear to be unfolding in the direction of a conflict which could be nuclear.

What we should have done, is use deterrence to enable diplomacy, to resolve the underlying issues. We did not do that. Now, in the case of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, Mutually Assured Destruction—in effect, arms control talks, efforts to provide a basis for strategic stability—mitigated the problem. That was a diplomatic effort undertaken within the framework of deterrence. That’s an imperfect solution.

There have been no similar efforts with the Chinese. And it may now be that with the Chinese heavying-up their nuclear forces, there will be a basis for some kind of effort to produce a stable situation.

But here, I want to register again, a severe doubt about the concept of so-called “guardrails.” When proposed to the Chinese, what these appear to mean is, “We’ll keep doing what we’re doing, but you don’t challenge us. We’ll keep running patrols along your shores. We’ll keep modernizing our nuclear forces. We’ll keep salami-slicing on Taiwan, and the guardrails that you’ve agreed to will prevent you from responding.” I don’t think it’s any surprise that that argument gets us nowhere.

We have to deal with countries like China and Russia, on the basis of equality, and in accordance with the Westphalian order. We should do the same with North Korea. To deal with them in a condescending and insulting manner is directly counterproductive. To fail to deal with them because we rely on military deterrence, is to create a ticking bomb that may go off in the future.

Stop Condescension Toward Africa

EIR: I’d like you to comment on the Africa situation. The FOCAC, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, began this morning in Beijing. Xi Jinping gave an introductory speech, in which he agreed to send a billion doses of vaccine, some of which would be produced jointly in Africa. He also has offered expanded Belt and Road and related kinds of development programs. I know you were at one point the Africa coordinator, I think, in the State Department, earlier on in your career.

And now, of course, we have this competition, where Blinken actually toured Africa right before this FOCAC meeting was to take place, where he seemed to complain about “democracy” rather than actually proposing any kind of alternative to the Belt and Road.

In any case, how do you see this very crucial issue of Africa being faced with both the pandemic, the starvation, the breakdown, the imposition of these restraints on their fossil fuels, and so forth? And how do you see that in regard to China’s role?

Freeman: I think the West and the United States in particular need to stop treating Africa and Africans with condescension. The continent is not a humanitarian theme park. It has plenty of disasters and challenges. Africans are serious people, and they have, in many cases, risen to the challenges before them. I think they must be dealt with as equals. The question is, what help do they need, not how do they stand in some mythical contest between Beijing and Washington, which they want nothing to do with. It’s nice if African countries, like Botswana, are democracies. One hopes that democracy in South Africa, which is in difficulty, will reverse course and grow. But this is the business of Botswanans and South Africans, and the role of outside powers should be to be helpful.

Africa is the continent which is going to have the largest labor supply in the future. Countries like Nigeria are huge already; they are going to become even larger. Nigerians are very clever people. Africa in many respects is the continent of the future, and it needs to be treated as such. The most constructive thing any country outside Africa can do, is help it build the institutions it needs to cope with its challenges.

If the African Union creates a CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] of its own, or an FDA [Food and Drug Administration] analogue, that deserves the strong support, not just of the Chinese who are supporting them, but of the United States. So, I think there’s every reason for the United States and China to cooperate in support of African development, and no reason to see it as a zero-sum game.