David Dobrodt

This is the edited transcript of an interview with U.S.-China diplomat and scholar Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (USFS, ret.) conducted Oct. 9, 2023, by Mike Billington. Freeman is a visiting scholar at the Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University. Subheads and embedded links to sources have been added.

Mike Billington: This is Mike Billington with the Schiller Institute and Executive Intelligence Review. Joining with me today is Chas Freeman, well-known for his role as the interpreter for President Richard Nixon during his groundbreaking visit to China in 1972. He then served in several positions in both the Defense Department and the State Department and then as the U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the first war with Iraq. He was also appointed Director of the National Intelligence Council in 2009, but the appointment was undermined. 

%%The Israeli War on Hamas

Billington: I have two areas of questions that I want to bring up. One, on the war danger between Russia and the U.S. and NATO; and the other on the situation in Asia.  I’ll begin, however, with a question regarding the situation in Southwest Asia. The Schiller Institute is sponsoring a rally at the U.S. Congress Oct. 11, to demand: “No Funding for Ukraine! No War on Russia! We have learned that the neocons are sponsoring a counter rally demanding funding for two wars! So let’s begin by asking your view on the new Israeli war on Hamas, and perhaps also with Iran.

Amb. Freeman: We are seeing a disturbing tendency in our press to invent Iranian direction of this war; that somehow Iran put Hamas up to the attacks it has carried out. I think that is completely wrong and is very dangerous because it could be used to justify an Israeli or an American attack on Iran, as indeed we have threatened for years.

Palestinians have come to the point where many of them feel they have nothing to lose. This attack was an act of desperation and it came out of the blue. I analogize it to the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, which achieved objectives that no one had imagined. Namely, it convinced the public at large that the existing policies toward Vietnam were doomed to fail. And it ultimately produced a withdrawal from Vietnam by the United States. 

I think Hamas will lose decisively on the battlefield, but it may win the war, especially if Israel carries out its threat to reduce Gaza to the dimensions of the German city of Dresden in World War Two. I think that genocidal act would mobilize a lot of people against Israel who’ve been sitting on the fence.

So this is a very important moment in the history of the Middle East and in U.S. policy toward it. It’s quite clear that neither Israel nor the United States have any answer to the resistance by the Palestinians to their humiliation, eviction from their homes, and the attempted erasure of their presence from their homeland.

I might add that, unfortunately, this war in the Middle East probably greatly increases the risk of Donald Trump winning the 2024 election because it is yet another evidence of the ineptitude of the Biden administration in foreign affairs. It will also probably increase the prospects for an end to U.S. support for Ukraine. And while you may applaud the notion that that war would then end, it will end in a way that parallels the end of the war in Vietnam, where we basically encouraged a fight to the death and then walked away from it, leaving the Vietnamese to their fate. Not an act of great responsibility on our part. No accountability whatsoever for our withdrawal, as more recently, there has been none for our actions in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The difference in the third decade of the 21st Century is that during the Cold War, countries, allies, friends, faced a choice between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the Soviet system with all its brutality was so unattractive that that really was no choice at all. And now the world is not organized that way. It’s not bipolar. Countries do have the option of distancing themselves from Washington and they may well do so. In fact, they’re already doing it.

But it may be that this accelerates the process. So many political implications yet unexamined. I think it will play into the partisan divisions in the United States in such a way as to increase the prospect that aid to Ukraine will end, which of course is a very real prospect given the turmoil in the Congress and Republican opposition to that aid, which will probably strengthen now.

%%How to Assure Peace in Europe

Billington: In your presentation at Brown University last month, you noted that NATO no longer has any purpose based on its original creation as a buffer against the military threat from the Soviets. What do you think it will take for NATO to disband as the Warsaw Pact did? And for that matter, is there any reason for the European Union to continue existing?

Amb. Freeman: Your question gets to the question that we should all be discussing, but we aren’t, and that is: How to assure peace in Europe? The EU, in part, had its origins in an effort to reconcile historic enemies in Europe, that is, to reconcile the French-German divide, among other things, and produce a management system for Europe in the economic realm, ultimately in the political realm, that would ensure peace, stability, and prosperity.

NATO, after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union could have become what the Partnership for Peace promised: a management device for a cooperative security system in Europe, including a relationship with Russia, which was part of that program, that would replicate the Concert of Europe, which the Congress of Vienna created at the end of the Napoleonic Wars, and manage relationships, security issues in the European area in a way that would prevent a great power war. That was an option before NATO. It did not choose it, and it chose instead to renew, in effect, a kind of Cold War with a resurgent Russia.

Russia has not sought to reassert a sphere of influence in Eastern Europe, which it gave up at the end of the Cold War with the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, as you mentioned. It has instead sought to block the expansion of an American sphere of influence to its borders in the form of Ukraine’s membership in NATO, as membership in NATO is invariably followed by the forward deployment of U.S. troops and weaponry, which would simply be unacceptable to the Russians, as they have made clear.

I don’t think that NATO is going to disband. The best solution for it, frankly, would be for it to be Europeanized. Europeans should be in command of their own security. United States should backstop that but not lead it. I suspect that the unity of NATO, which the war in Ukraine has appeared to produce, is more superficial than long lasting. One can already see some NATO members, most recently Hungary and Slovakia, but others as well, who are deeply opposed to the inclusion of Ukraine in NATO and understand the Russian security perspective and are restive within the confines of NATO as it currently exists.

I suspect that when this war ends, however it ends, NATO will change, and the U.S. role in it is likely to diminish rather than increase. That is emphatically the case if Mr. Trump wins the 2024 elections, since he has no affection for NATO and no understanding of its collective security mechanisms at all.

%%The Contradictory Objectives of NATO and Russia in Ukraine

Billington: You have described NATO’s move out of area as a search for a “reason to exist,” to maintain the U.S. military superiority and sustain the military industrial complex. This included the wars in Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and more. This now includes Asia. The main issue now is the danger of a full scale war with Russia, with the failure of the counteroffensive in Ukraine. It is increasingly being recognized that the Ukraine war with Russia is lost. Even the U.S. Congress is finally recognizing that the American people will not support a continuation of the massive funding of this meat grinder war in Ukraine. Your thoughts?

Amb. Freeman: Indeed, Russia is winning this war. Russia has had two objectives: One: to ensure that NATO never incorporated Ukraine. That is now very much impossible. As the Vilnius NATO summit demonstrated and as Jake Sullivan, the National Security Adviser, said, “To incorporate Ukraine in NATO would mean to have a direct war with Russia.” That’s not on the table yet. Jens Stoltenberg, the NATO Secretary General, has said that for Ukraine to join NATO would require a peace treaty between Ukraine and Russia, and there’s no such thing in prospect. So Russia has essentially accomplished that objective, the effective sidelining of Ukraine as a future member of NATO.

Russia’s second declared objective was the protection of Russian speakers in Ukraine. They have accomplished this by annexing portions of the Donbas and the Ukrainian southeast.

The war has produced a lot of dead Ukrainians and fewer dead Russians, but a lot of dead people. It has accomplished nothing beyond that, from the Western point of view.

Billington: In your presentation, at Brown University, you quoted President Joe Biden, saying that Biden’s open admission that the purpose for the Ukraine war was to “sap Russia’s economic strength and weaken its military for years to come.” So there’s no hiding the fact that this is a surrogate war against Russia. You also quoted Boris Johnson’s intervention to prevent Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky from carrying out the agreement which had been made between Kiev and Russia back in March of 2022, which would have ended the war based on autonomy for the Donbas. You didn’t mention in that speech the threat of an escalation to a nuclear war. Why not?

Amb. Freeman: Because Russia is winning. The only circumstance in which Russia would initiate a nuclear exchange would be if it were losing decisively and this threatened the integrity of the Russian Federation. President Vladimir Putin has been very explicit on this subject. The only danger of a nuclear war, therefore, is a Russian loss, which is not what is happening. 

The pattern this war has taken is that Russia has counter escalated in response to Western escalation. We keep saying to the Ukrainians, you can’t have this weapon system or that one. And then we provide it, and the Russians announce that they will counter that with an escalation of their own. So there’s no record of Russia initiating escalations. I just don’t think this is a very realistic possibility. Of course, it’s conceivable that as we lose, we will find some way to use nuclear weapons. But I think that would be insane and would be even beyond anything I can imagine in terms of American politics or policy.

%%Most Important: How To Restore Peace

Billington: You think popular support against such a thing would prevent it from happening?

Amb. Freeman: The military, among others, would regard that as madness. Popular support would not be there either. Of course, whichever side initiates a nuclear exchange will receive nuclear attacks from the other, so nothing is gained. The notion attributed to President Ronald Reagan, that “a nuclear war can never be won and should never be fought,” is very much in evidence here.

The question for me, as I said at the outset, is not the danger of a nuclear exchange. It is how to restore peace to Europe. This is the question the Russians raised repeatedly between 1994 and 2021, 20th December, when they proposed the negotiation of a security architecture for Europe that would reassure all concerned, including themselves. We rebuffed that offer of negotiations, and the consequence was the Russian attack on Ukraine. They felt seriously enough about this issue and the threat to themselves that they were prepared to go to war. We knew that. So the basic question that they posed, how to construct a security architecture for Europe that preserves the peace, and prevents the outbreak of war, remains the operative question. And it’s not being discussed at all in the West.

Billington: Four prominent Germans, including Gen. Harold Kujat (ret.) and Prof. Dr. Horst Teltschik, have proposed a negotiated peace [[plan]] [[https://larouchepub.com/eiw/public/2023/eirv50n39-20231006/eirv50n39-20231006_012-ending_the_war_by_a_negotiated_p.pdf]] for the war with Russia, arguing that it’s either that the parties involved begin negotiations now or it’s going to escalate.  Should the war escalate, the Germans point out, we are dealing with the dangerous possibility of global nuclear war. Their proposal is being broadly considered around the world. The Schiller Institute is helping to circulate it. Your thoughts on that?

Amb. Freeman: President Biden at the UN General Assembly repudiated any negotiation on the grounds that it would “reward Russia.” But wars are not decided at the negotiating table. They’re decided on the battlefield. There will be a negotiation sooner or later. And the terms that Ukraine will have to accept are not improving; they are deteriorating. Russia may well take additional territory, if only to trade it for a peace in a negotiation. Ukraine could lose its access to the Black Sea. That is not an impossibility, although it is militarily very difficult for the Russians to achieve. Ukraine’s bargaining position has been progressively weakened by this war, not strengthened.

Almost nobody in the West is talking about how to protect Ukrainians or give them peace or bring them to prosperity and clean government and democracy. All these issues are set aside in favor of punitive actions against Russia. But there will be a negotiation, and the outlines of what could be done if the Russians were wise, which they’re not incapable of being, or that the areas that Russia has illegally annexed in Ukraine might be recognized as independent of Ukraine for a period of a couple of decades, let’s say, following which there would be an OSCE [Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe] supervised referendum in each of these territories, asking them whether they wished to retain their independence, rejoin Ukraine, or rejoin Russia.

That would be a democratic process that respected the will of the people on the ground. Nobody ever asks what the people of Crimea want. Nobody ever asks what the people of the Donbas wanted. Why not ask? That would provide an interim buffer between Ukraine and Russia in the form of independent polities and set up a competition between Ukraine and Russia to attract them.

Now, this may be, in the case of Ukraine, impossible. It may be impossible to attract Russian speakers given the fact that the Ukrainian government now is committed to preventing the use of any minority language, even one as extensively spoken as Russian, for official purposes or for education. That was the first thing that the Ukrainian government we helped install in 2014 did: ban the use of minority languages. This is something that is guaranteed in the OSCE charter to people in Europe. It was guaranteed in the previous Ukrainian constitution. If it can’t be reinstated, then I don’t think Ukraine’s ever going to see peace with its Russian speakers.

%%The Relevance of Referenda in Crimea and Donbas

Billington: It sounds like you’re dismissing the status referenda in Donbas (May 11, 2014, and again Sept. 23-27, 2022] and in Crimea [March 16, 2014] as illegitimate or something. What’s your thought on that? Why don’t you recognize those as a voice of the people?

Amb. Freeman: I think they were probably an accurate reflection of popular opinion, but procedurally, they were illegal. Putting these under international auspices would give them a legitimacy they currently lack. There is an interesting contrast, of course, between the referendum that the Russians organized in Crimea—which I think accurately reflected the opinion of most people in Crimea, and accomplished a peaceful, bloodless integration of Crimea into the Russian Federation—and the NATO detachment of Kosovo from Serbia, which required a long bombing campaign and a lot of bloodshed. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say on the one hand that conducting a referendum in Crimea is improper when you’ve basically done exactly the same thing, but more violently, in Kosovo.

We need to return to some sort of sense of due process, legitimate process. The way for that to happen is for Europeans to ensure that they supervise and guarantee the fairness of whatever referendum ensues. Of course, at this point, the Russians hold those areas and they’re not going to give them up. I don’t think they’re going to go back to Ukraine. Nobody’s talking—I shouldn’t say “nobody,” of course, some people are talking—about the need for peace negotiations, but officially, both Moscow and Washington seem to be committed to the further destruction of Ukraine.

%%War Damage Assessment

Billington: You’ve also argued that Russia has been significantly damaged by the launching of the special military operation as seen in its economic and human costs. But you acknowledge that they were forced by NATO expansion to take action, or at least it’s legitimate to argue that. Looking at global results, you have noted a totally changed global geometry, with the BRICS nations now unified against the war policies and against the sanctions policies of the Anglo-Americans and NATO, while essentially the entire Global South is openly joining or at least cooperating with the BRICS and with the Belt and Road, and breaking from the U.S. dollar hegemony over world trade. In that light, aren’t Russia and the world generally heading in a potentially far better direction as a result?

Amb. Freeman: In many ways, Russia has been strengthened by this war. Its military production has increased dramatically. It has learned how to counter NATO’s weaponry and develop tactics for doing so. It has seen a reorientation of its economy toward China, India, the Middle East, and Africa that has actually enabled it to outpace Germany in terms of economic growth. Germany, of course, is being de-industrialized due to the absence of competitive pricing for energy, having lost Russian gas supplies. There’s now quite an argument between the French and Germans over energy. The French are heavily nuclear and their power generation is therefore much better, giving France a much more competitive industrial base. So the Russians have certainly gained a fair amount from this.

It’s clear that the United States has been weakened, as you suggest. We have set in motion antagonisms to our hegemony that are growing. So far, there’s more talk than action, but this is the writing on the wall. We haven’t gained any great credibility anywhere. And now, of course, the war in Ukraine appears to be going in favor of the Russians rather than in favor of us.

But Russia did lose a lot. It lost its connections to Europe, which are going to be very difficult to restore. It lost a good deal of its intelligentsia who fled the draft. This is something that happens periodically whenever Russia goes to war. Many, many Americans of Russian descent are here because they fled the draft in World War One. The Russians have seen their relationships with Japan and others deteriorate. And so they clearly paid a price. The regime in Moscow is more repressive than it was. It’s an elected autocracy, but more autocratic now than it was, and many Russians don’t like that. So there have been gains for Russia, there have been losses. But I think from the point of view of the United States, the losses far outweigh the gains.

%%A New Global Geometry of Nations

Billington: As to the coming together of the rest of the world, most of the rest of the world is against this. Do you think it’s too late to try to convince the Europeans and the Americans to get into the new geometry? Will the U.S. and Europe even survive if they fail to do so?

Amb. Freeman: Look at the division of the world that the United States is engineering, not just through sanctions on Russia and Iran and North Korea or China, but through active decoupling—somewhat euphemistically described as “de-risking.” Internationally, you can look at this as isolating Russia or China or whatever, or you can look at it as self isolation by the United States.

In many respects the G7 group of nations which the U.S. leads, and which is the club of former imperialist powers, does appear to be retreating into its own stockade. And as it does so, it appears to be abandoning much of the democratic system that made it admirable in previous days.

I suspect that Europe, one way or the other after the war, especially if it is able to compose some sort of peace with Russia and Ukraine, will indeed remain integrated, straddling both the American sphere and the Chinese sphere that is emerging.

I’m not so sure about the United States. We have terrible domestic problems now, which we’re not addressing. And we’re behaving internationally as though we were omnipotent, when clearly we’re not. We’re taking many risks. I note in particular that we’ve launched a technology war with China, which happens to have over a fourth of the world’s scientists, technologists, engineers and mathematicians, and is increasingly innovative and creative, at a time when our innovation is slowing down. Our economy is dominated by oligopolies that cooperate with the government—almost fascist, corporatist, if you will, in the way things work. Try to put in an unpopular opinion on the internet and you will be blocked by corporate media in collusion with the U.S. government. This is not what the First Amendment was intended to guarantee.

The net effect of changes in the world, our reactions to them are causing our own values to be deeply eroded in ways that I think are gravely damaging to our republic.

%%U.S.-China Relations, and Narcotics

Billington: I certainly agree with you on that. So let’s switch to Asia. You mentioned that the isolation, the decoupling, or whatever from China is continuing. The U.S. is also continuing its military buildup around China with the AUKUS agreement with the British and Australia; and then the Japan-South Korea-U.S. military deal; expanding military cooperation with the Philippines, and so forth. And yet the Biden administration has recently deployed three cabinet members to China who are talking about, “improving relations.” What’s the real story?

Amb. Freeman: We want to improve relations so we can continue to isolate China. It’s hardly a surprise that the Chinese don’t find this a very attractive proposition. We have a tendency to ask the Chinese to cooperate on things that we think are important while refusing to cooperate with them on things that they want us to cooperate on. You can’t have a relationship that works this way.

Sen. Chuck Schumer is in China at the moment. It’s a bit ironic, given China’s experience of two Opium Wars, which occurred a while back, for Schumer to be talking about American addictions and imploring the Chinese to stop the supply of fentanyl, which they don’t actually sell to the U.S. — they provide the precursors to the Mexican drug cartels. It’s not the Chinese government anyway. It’s Chinese business people. The Mexicans then make a pile of money off the world’s largest drug market, which is the United States.

There’s a lot of historical evidence that the only way to deal effectively with a narcotics problem is to address it at the demand level. We managed to get people to find smoking unacceptable, but we don’t seem to be able to apply that knowledge to marijuana, cocaine, crack cocaine, fentanyl, amphetamines, and whatnot. We’re not doing anything on the demand side. It’s all about suppressing supply.

I can tell you from my experience dealing with the narcotics issue in Southeast Asia, where I was the coordinator for our effort in the region based in Bangkok, that the markup from the farm head for a piece of opium to the streets of New York City is 300 fold. That is, you will make 30,000 times as much money selling that in New York, as you can if you’re a farmer in Burma [Myanmar].

With that kind of markup, there is no way on God’s Earth that you’re going to stop the market economy from meeting the demand. So you have to reduce the demand. There is no effort being made to do that. Now we have Republicans talking about bombing Mexico to stop fentanyl production, as if that’s going to solve the problem. It’s not. We have a tendency to blame the Chinese for all sorts of problems that are frankly caused by ourselves, for ourselves. And then we wonder why they don’t find this an attractive proposition.

Billington: Not only are there no efforts being made to stop demand, but in fact, there’s a massive move to legalize and expand the use of drugs quite openly. Sen. Schumer is in fact a leading advocate of legalizing drug use, a major target of LaRouche candidate Diane Sare in her campaign against Schumer in the 2002 election. 

Amb. Freeman: Of course. As I say, this is ironic, given the Opium Wars, where we insisted to the Chinese government at the time that we and the British and others had the absolute right to sell narcotics to the Chinese people, and that it was improper for their government to interfere. We actually went to war on that proposition, the Opium Wars in the 19^th Century.

In 1949, when the Communist Party of China took over, they addressed this problem by, among other things, detaining ten million drug addicts, and arresting and either condemning to death or imprisoning the pushers. This solved the problem.

There’s a parallel experience in American history after the Civil War. A great number of soldiers were addicted to morphine. To feed their habit they engaged in criminal activity: burglaries and the like, and robbery. The federal government rounded them all up and made them go “cold turkey,” which was pretty nasty. Many died. But it solved the problem. Maybe there are answers to this that are less draconian than those used by the Chinese in 1949 or the United States in the 1870s. But no effort is being made to find those.

%%The Transformational Effect of the Belt and Road Initiative

Billington: On the positive side, we have the 10th anniversary of the Belt and Road Initiative coming up. There’ll be a big conference Oct. 17–18 in Beijing, with people from all over the world joining in. And, of course, this goes along with the expansion of the BRICS after their Leaders’ Summit Aug. 22–24 in Johannesburg, South Africa, which, assuming this goes through in January, with six new member nations joining, will hold most or at least much of the world’s, oil reserves, helping to make BRICS the central development process worldwide. What are your expectations for this process?

Amb. Freeman: The Belt and Road Initiative has grown and changed as it went along. The Chinese began this program [in March 2013], essentially as an extension of China’s industrial policies domestically to the global level, initially directed at Central Asia, but now global. The Chinese authorized their policy banks to conduct due diligence and lend money to projects that are originated by their business people, whether they’re from state owned enterprises or the private sector, and foreign counterparts. No project is proposed except in cooperation with the foreign partner. No lending takes place without due diligence. The Chinese have learned a great deal about how to conduct due diligence, and their loan policies are now much more prudent than they were initially.

The transformational effect of this program has been immense in terms of increasing the efficiency of trade, not just physically through the construction of infrastructure, but procedurally as well, because a great part of the Belt and Road Initiative involves the conclusion of agreements for expedited customs clearance, bonded storage, transit without fees, and so forth, as well as industrial parks, and of course, fiber optic cable, airports, port improvements, all of which greatly increase the efficiency of trade and enable its expansion. I think the program has been a great success, although at the moment less money is flowing into it than before, for several reasons: global trade is down, the Chinese economy is not growing as fast as it once did, and money is a little short.

U.S. efforts to obstruct the Belt and Road Initiative have had some effect, but not a great deal, because the United States essentially offers only rhetoric and no money for competing projects. It is actually a fallacy to assume that if the United States builds a road or railroad, that somehow detracts from a Chinese road or a railroad. Anybody can drive down the road. Anybody can ship goods on the railroad, increasing connectivity that benefits everyone. It doesn’t hurt anyone. Arguably, doing that increases American or Chinese influence with the governments that benefit from the increased development. But I don’t see any governments anywhere kowtowing either to the Chinese or increasingly to the United States.

Going back to the original question you asked about Israel’s war on Gaza and Hamas’s attack on Israel, you can forget the American proposed trade route from Mumbai in India across Saudi Arabia to the port of Haifa in Israel. Not going to happen. Never was going to happen, very likely because of two factors: First, the political obstacles. Second, the absence of any American money or European money in this. But now it is certainly not going to happen, given the flaring up again, of the immiseration of the Palestinians, and the political reactions to that in the Arab Gulf.

%%Why the U.S. Won’t Join the BRI

Billington: Professor Jeffrey Sachs has been in China for the last few weeks. He gave a speech at the Temple of Confucius in Shandong. He spoke to diplomats at the UN office in Beijing. He describes the Belt and Road pretty much the way you just did, as really the greatest development program in the world, and emphasizes that this is the proper model for the development of Africa and the rest of the developing sector, but especially Africa. He encourages the U.S. and the Europeans to join it, to build the road as you just said, that the U.S. doesn’t seem to want to build. Why don’t they? Why won’t the U.S. and Europe join in this in this development process?

Amb. Freeman: Well, this is part of the basic antagonism the United States has developed with China as a result of China’s overtaking the United States in purchasing power parity terms, at least, as now the largest economy on the planet. Chinese industrial production is now twice that of the United States, and China is the world’s largest trader. What China is not is a power projector. It does not have the hundreds of military bases scattered around the world that the United States does. It doesn’t have any particular desire to pursue an American style hegemonic role of the sort we began after World War Two. And in fact, China explicitly denies any intention to do that. But, to Chinese development, the United States feels a rivalry which has become essentially enmity. We are trying to hold back Chinese development retard it, inhibit it, prevent China’s scientific and technological advance, and deny China foreign markets for its goods and services. This really began earlier in the Obama administration with the failure to join the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank [AIDB] and the effort to prevent others from doing so—an effort which I would note has entirely failed. That’s the first reason we won’t join this.

The second reason the U.S. won’t join is that we don’t have any money. We have to borrow $1.5 trillion just to keep our government going at the current level of operations. We won’t tax ourselves to pay for things we need: domestic and foreign aid, foreign assistance, which means lending for purposes of foreign development, which is a sound thing to do because it increases overseas markets, it raises prosperity and generates prosperity for Americans. We won’t do this, in part because we don’t have the money, we don’t have the revenue. We just saw a near shutdown of the U.S. government over this issue of whether we would pay as we go or not. So in a sense, we just don’t have the money. I would say, recalling Willie Sutton’s reason for robbing banks: that’s where the money is. Now, that today is in China and the Arab Gulf countries. These are the two great sources of capital today for two different reasons: In the case of the Chinese, a very high domestic savings rate; in the case of the Gulf Arabs, profits from hydrocarbon sales.

%%The Saudi-Iranian Reconciliation Agreement

Billington: President Xi Jinping co-sponsored a China-Africa Forum as part of the BRICS summit in Johannesburg, co-sponsored with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, with at least many, if not most of the African leaders attending. The BRI was a major focus of that discussion. China had already organized the historic reconciliation between the Saudi Arabia and Iran. As a former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, what is your view of that agreement and its impact on the Middle East, and on history generally?

Amb. Freeman: The agreement began with mediation by Iraq and Oman, which led to the opportunity that the Chinese seized to achieve closure in the negotiations between Riyadh and Tehran. It was a very positive development demanded by the countries of the region as the role of Iraq and Oman illustrates. And it was an alternative to the American policy of unremitting hostility to Iran and maximum pressure on Iran. It was also an alternative to the effort by the United States and Israel to organize an anti-Iranian coalition in the region.

The agreement is of enormous benefit to the parties, that is to say, normal relations with Iran reduce the threat to Saudi Arabia from Iran, normal relations with Saudi Arabia, bypass the American embargoes, and provide Iran with a significant source of trade and capital. It also represents a weakening of the American position in the Middle East and a repudiation of the U.S. policy to which the United States has not reacted in any particular way. In fact, as tensions in the Persian Gulf diminished, we increased our deployments to the region. Now, of course, we’ve increased deployments again, this time in response to the Palestinian uprising.

It is a very significant agreement. China’s diplomacy proved to be adroit, and it is an illustration of the merits of maintaining dialogue, diplomatic dialogue, with all parties, whether you agree with them or not. It is in that sense, a direct counter to our behavior at the outset of the Ukraine war when we refused to conduct a dialogue with the Russians on the issues that they said concerned them so much that they might go to war. There is a parallel, I’m sorry to say, in the case of the Taiwan issue, where we will not talk about the issues of concern to the Chinese, but merely double down on military deterrence. Military deterrence depends on increasing the threat to China. Increasing the threat to China leads to an arms race with it. Far from reducing the danger of war, it increases it because it leaves the Chinese with no path to achieving their objectives other than the use of force.

But we don’t seem to understand how to do diplomacy these days. And we don’t have a lot of situational awareness, as shown in the idiotic remark of Jake Sullivan a week ago that things had never been quite so calm in the Middle East, which was a tribute to the magnificent policies of the Biden administration. I think events have caught him out. Sadly, this isn’t the only instance. We’re totally ignoring the fact that maximum pressure on North Korea, has succeeded only in producing nuclear armed ICBMs that can hit anywhere in the United States. We have created a nuclear threat that didn’t exist. We may be doing the same with Iran.

%%Taiwan and Mainland China Relations

Billington: Presidential elections are scheduled to be held in Taiwan Jan. 13, 2004. I’m very interested in seeing what you think that might lead to. Is there any possibility, in your view, that this could lead to a change in the policy toward the mainland to bring about some sort of reconciliation, if not reunification?

Amb. Freeman: Well, the leading candidate for President is Lai Ching-te, who is the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) candidate. He is a staunch advocate of independence.

National Day in Taiwan, which is tomorrow, October 10th, “Double Ten Day” as it’s called, has always celebrated in The Republic of China, the official name of the state in Taiwan, that is not recognized anymore internationally. That has been replaced with a celebration of Taiwan, to the extent that the Guomindang former president, Ma Ying-jeou, has declined to join the National Day festivities.

The trends are toward confrontation. No accommodation. This is extremely dangerous because China now has the capability to take Taiwan by force, even over U.S. opposition. Of course, at a huge cost. But as we’ve just seen with the Hamas attack on Israel, sometimes the fact that huge costs will be incurred is not an effective deterrent to military action. The question of how to end the civil war in a way that reaffirms some form of one-China, is a matter of passionate concern to Chinese nationalists, and China is very nationalistic at the moment. So I don’t see the prospect as promising at all. The other three candidates in the race don’t have much of an answer either, on how to restore cross-Strait dialogue and rapprochement.

Billington: Is there a chance for one of them winning?

Amb. Freeman: At the moment, the chances are poor, and there being too many candidates in the field is very much to the benefit of Mr. Lai, and the cause of the independence-minded secessionists in Taiwan.

%%Normalization of Saudi-Israel Relations

Billington: Back to the Saudi issue. There’s now a lot of discussion about the idea that Saudi Arabia either has or at least is considering canceling its very large $70 billion nuclear energy deal with the U.S. and signing a similar deal with China. I don’t know if this is accurate, but it’s at least being discussed. On the U.S. side, the U.S. has as usual conditionalities. They’re saying that we’ll help you with nuclear energy, but you have to agree not to process any enriched uranium because we don’t trust you not to build a bomb, and therefore you can’t do it at all; and they are also demanding that the Saudis must trade with China in dollars rather than the current effort to move toward trading in local currencies or in yuan. There are other conditionalities that the U.S. intends to add to this deal as well.  So it looks like that’s falling apart.

At least up until this Israel-Hamas war broke out, the U.S. was trying to arrange a deal between the Saudis and Israel, but that’s probably on hold with what’s happening now. One of the Saudi demands was that the Israelis do something significant with the Palestinians. Quite the opposite of what they’re doing now. China, of course, in their proposal, has no conditionalities. They don’t use conditionalities. So where does this nuclear discussion stand?

Amb. Freeman: There has been no deal. Talking about a $70 billion deal is interesting, but there are several factors that have to be borne in mind. The conditionality on reprocessing nuclear fuel is one of them, because it is counter to the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Under the Non-Proliferation Treaty, Saudi Arabia would have the right to reprocess. Saudi Arabia said that if Iran gets a nuclear weapon, they will too. So a nuclear fuel cycle agreement that forecloses their matching Iran under circumstances where the U.S. is doing everything conceivable, as is Israel, to give Iran an excuse to develop a nuclear weapon, just isn’t very attractive.

Saudi Arabia has been trying to get whatever it can from Mr. Biden’s passion for normalization with Israel, which of course is not a foreign policy objective; it’s a domestic political objective, aimed at generating campaign donations. 50% of the donations the Democratic Party receives are from Jewish Americans. Although Jews in the United States are only 2.4% of the population, and many of that 2.4% don’t give a fig about Israel, you do have donors for whom Israel and support for Zionism are transcendent issues. Mr. Biden is appealing to them. I never thought this nuclear deal was likely to go anywhere.

It’s not just China that is prepared to provide nuclear reactors to the Saudis. So are the French. So are the South Koreans. So are the Russians. So, the U.S., if it wants to be the nuclear provider to Saudi Arabia it has very limited bargaining leverage. More broadly, I would say that the way the Saudis have treated this issue of normalization with Israel has been to play it for all they could get, just to see what they could get out of it.

In recent years, Saudi Arabia has been quite prepared to engage in transactions with Israel. For example, the Saudis would like to have Israeli tourists bring their money to Saudi Arabia, to the new resorts being built on the Red Sea. That makes a lot of sense. Hence, the Israeli Ministry of Tourism was permitted to travel to Riyadh recently. So the Saudis will do what they see is in their interest, and they won’t do anything they don’t see as in their interest, and provoking internal dissent and uprising, possibly over the Palestinian issue in the kingdom is not in the interest of Mohammed bin Salman’s father, the King.

I never thought that normalization across the board was feasible. As you said, given the Israeli savagery against Gaza in retaliation for the Hamas attack, normalization is even less feasible now than it was.

%%‘Trade Without Currency’ Deals

Mike Billington: There’s another Middle East deal that’s in the works that has been signed: that between China and Iran, in which the Chinese are going to be adding a second terminal to Tehran’s Imam Khomeini International Airport, in exchange for $2.7 billion (equivalent) in oil imports. This is not actually a barter deal, but it’s something like what Lyndon LaRouche promoted in his 2000 [[article]] [[https://larouchepub.com/lar/2000/lar_commodities_2730.html]] called “Trade Without Currency,” where trade is based on some sort of a basket of commodities, which would include gold and oil and things of that sort. This is something that Russian economist Sergey Glazyev and other Russians, and now all the BRICS, are very seriously working on. This China-Iran deal tends is in that direction. What are your thoughts on that?

Amb. Freeman: There are many precedents for this kind of thing in the region. The one that comes to mind immediately is the so-called Al-Yamamah deal between Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom, which, of course, led to a great deal of corruption and embarrassment eventually. 

Billington: And wars! 

Amb. Freeman: That deal was, however, the commitment of a supply of oil [by Saudi Arabia] to Royal Dutch Shell and British Petroleum. The proceeds from the sale of that oil were then banked at the Bank of England to fund in an account managed by British Aerospace. This is an arrangement very similar to what seems to have been done between China and Iran. That is, the participating Chinese construction company would get paid from the proceeds of sales of Iranian oil, which presumably will then be banked in a Chinese bank. Which one? I don’t know. Maybe just the People’s Bank of China, which is the central bank. So this is an interesting development, but it is hardly unprecedented. It is perhaps a model for other transactions involving commodities.

%%De-Dollarization: Liberating From U.S. Policy Hegemony.

Billington: Do you have thoughts on this financial deal that I just referenced, the fact that the Russians and the Chinese and now really the whole BRICS and much of the Global South are actively negotiating ways of setting up alternative systems that are independent of the dollar, and that partially include local currencies. But it also is a discussion of a new system altogether. Do you have any thoughts on that?

Amb. Freeman: About 20 years ago, I remember having a conversation with a noted American pundit who writes for The Washington Post in which I said that the abuse of the dollar as American currency, but also the universal medium of trade settlement, would lead eventually to a search for ways to dethrone the dollar from that trade settlement role. And that is exactly what is happening because of the widespread use of American financial sanctions, the denial of access to the SWIFT clearing house in Brussels for dollar-based and euro-based transactions, the use of the dollar to interfere with trade between third parties, which has no connection to the United States, except that the trade settlement goes through the Federal Reserve in New York. 

Such practices are widely seen internationally as abuses of American hegemonic power, and they’re unacceptable. It’s hardly surprising that there’s quite an effort being made to find ways around U.S. use of the dollar to control other countries’ foreign policies and economic interactions.

At the moment, with a few exceptions, one of which is Sino-Russian trade, this hasn’t gone very far, but it is increasing. Oddly enough, the euro has been diminishing as an instrument of trade settlement as the yuan and other currencies increase. I don’t understand why that is the case, except perhaps that the European economies have been gravely damaged by the war in Ukraine, or more accurately, by the sanctions imposed on Russian energy exports as a result of the war in Ukraine. We keep saying, well, the war in Ukraine caused this. Well, we had choices about how we responded and we chose to respond in several ways, including probably blowing up the Nord Stream Two pipeline, which is an act of war against an ally, Germany. I think the European economies are paying the price for this in terms of future expectations of their viability. Maybe that explains why the euro is going down rather than up in terms of usage for trade settlement.

Billington: Is there anything you’d like to say as concluding remarks?

Amb. Freeman: No, I’ve incriminated myself enough, I think.

%%The End of Centuries of Colonialism

Billington: Thanks, then. I appreciate your taking the time for this interview. It’s a busy time in the world; that’s for sure. This is an incredible moment of crisis in civilization. Helga Zepp-LaRouche characterizes this as the end of the era of colonialism—the 600 years of colonialism as the structure of the organization of the world, which is coming to an end. What direction it’s going to go, it could go either well or ill, but it’s going to change. There’s no keeping this system any longer.

Amb. Freeman: I agree with her about that. Five centuries of EuroAtlantic hegemony have come to an end. The United States is the heir of European colonialism, and Japanese colonialism is also seeing its empire fray at the edges. And the events in the Holy Land are one indication of that—a violent indication. The war in Ukraine is another.

You have discussed the emergence of alternative institutions like the BRICS. One could also mention the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the New Development Bank under the BRICS, and the wide expansion of freedom of maneuver for middle power, middle ranked powers like the Saudis, who now have choices before them that are no longer constrained by fealty to the United States. We see this with Turkey as well. So I think she’s correct. This is a Zeitenwende as somebody said—a turning point in history, a pivotal moment.

Billington: Okay. Well, thank you very much. I hope we can repeat this. It would be very useful if we could have regular discussions of this sort. They’re very much appreciated by our audience around the world.

Amb. Freeman: Give my regards to Helga!

Join us LIVE on Wednesday, October 11 at 11am EDT for a discussion with Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

We encourage viewers to submit questions ahead of time at questions@schillerinstitute.org

Please read and distribute the Schiller Institute Statement for International Distribution: No More Money for Arms in Ukraine! No World War with Russia or China!!

Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche said in dialogue with associates on Monday, Oct. 9, “You cannot look at any one of these situations individually. You have to look at Ukraine in respect to NATO expansion and the danger of that leading to World War III in the short term. Now, we have the situation in Southwest Asia. Other conflicts are looming, like the Taiwan issue with China and Global NATO. And then you have a lot of smaller conflicts, which nevertheless are very severe for the people it attacks, like Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh. And not even to start to talk about Haiti and Afghanistan, and all of these other terrible situations.

“So our approach must be, we absolutely have to catalyze this whole thing into a new paradigm, because only if you establish a new security and development architecture which takes into account the security interests and development interests of every country, can there be a peaceful resolution. And that has been our policy since the beginning of the Ukraine war, and I think that that just goes for the Southwest Asia situation as well.”

The Schiller Institute has posted an international statement as a call to action. In Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, October 11, midday outside Congress, the LaRouche Organization will hold a rally, on the theme of, “No Money to Ukraine, No World War III with Russia, China.”

A Schiller Institute spokesman reported tonight, “In the next hours and days, the Congress of the United States, the parliaments of Canada and Europe, the presidencies of Central and South America, and the governments of Asia and Africa must hear and see the people of the world stand up for humanity against world war with Russia/China, and the ‘theater population wars’ that are part of that world war. We need to get on the phones and into the offices of public officials, we need to go into the streets and in front of governmental institutions, to say that war is not the answer; that imposing war upon the dispossessed and poor is a crime against humanity; that not one more dollar should be spent on weapons for Ukraine.

Legitimate self-defense and the quest for a just and lasting peace are not contradictory

Negotiation proposal by Professor Dr. Peter Brandt, Professor Dr. Hajo Funke, General (ret.) Harald Kujat and Professor Dr. h. c. Horst Teltschik

Since the beginning of the Russian war of aggression on 24 February 2022, Ukraine has been waging a legitimate war of defense in which its survival as a state, its national independence and security are at stake. This statement is true regardless of the democratic and rule of law situation and constitutional reality and also regardless of the war’s much more complicated antecedents and its equally complicated global political backdrop.

However, the legitimacy of armed self-defense on the basis of Article 51 of the UN Charter does not release the government in Kyiv, and the states supporting it, from the obligation – not least vis-à-vis its own people – to exercise restraint, not to overreact by increasing violence and destruction and to promote a political settlement on the basis of a just and lasting peace. Even during the war – and especially during it – constant efforts to achieve a diplomatic solution must not let up.

This applies just as much to those states indirectly involved, including the Federal Republic of Germany, which is particularly obliged by the peace imperative of its Constitution. Moreover, on 2 March 2022, a few days after the start of the Russian attack, the Federal Government agreed to a resolution¹ tabled by Ukraine and adopted by the United Nations General Assembly, calling for a “peaceful settlement of the conflict between the Russian Federation and Ukraine through political dialogue, negotiations, mediation and other peaceful means”. On 23 February 2023, another UN resolution² called on member states and international organisations to “redouble their support for diplomatic efforts to achieve a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in Ukraine”. This commitment also applies to the Ukrainian government, which continues to reject negotiations with Russia.³

Ukraine has so far resisted the Russian war of aggression thanks to comprehensive Western support. However, far-reaching decisions on the expenditures necessary to continue the war, contrary to all reason and despite the unachievable nature of the political goals, must not be left to the Ukrainian government alone. The constant ramping up of the war has already led to large numbers of Ukrainian casualties, both military and civilian, as well as to substantial destruction of infrastructure. The longer the war goes on, the more Ukraine’s casualties and destruction will increase and the more difficult it will be to achieve a just and lasting negotiated peace that also provides security for the states supporting Ukraine. There is already the potential for further escalation through foreseeable offensives by Russian forces, in the battle for Odesa and through the conflict that has broken out again over Ukrainian grain exports.

Since 4 June 2023, Ukrainian forces have been trying to break through the deeply layered Russian defensive positions and sever the land bridge between Russia and Crimea in order to cut off Russian forces from the logistics hub of Crimea. Ukrainian forces are losing large numbers of soldiers and (Western) armor in the fighting, without having achieved any sweeping success so far.

If the counteroffensive fails, it is to be expected that Ukraine will demand that Western soldiers follow Western weapons, as even the planned Western arms deliveries cannot compensate for the enormous losses of Ukrainian military personnel. Russia, on the other hand, has not yet deployed the mass of its active combat troops. It can therefore be assumed that after further Ukrainian losses in the counteroffensive, Russia will move to secure the annexed territories and thus achieve the goal of the “special military operation”.

Neither side can win the war

It has been clear for some time that neither Russia nor Ukraine can win this war, as neither will achieve the political goals for which they are fighting. Ukraine cannot defeat Russia militarily, even with Western support in the form of arms and ammunition and the training of Ukrainian soldiers. Even the delivery of “miracle weapons”⁴, which has been demanded by laymen time and again, will not be the hoped for “game changer” that could shift the strategic situation in Ukraine’s favour. At the same time, however, there is an increasing risk of even greater escalation, leading to a military conflict between NATO and Russia and the real danger of a nuclear war limited to the European continent, although the USA and Russia want to avoid it.⁵

This eventuality should be averted, as it would be most of all in Ukraine’s interest to seek a ceasefire as soon as possible, opening the door to peace negotiations. It is equally in the interest of the European states which unconditionally support Ukraine but lack a discernible strategy. And due to the increasing attrition of the Ukrainian armed forces, the risk is growing that the war in Ukraine will escalate into a European war over Ukraine.

Ukraine is increasing this risk by launching an increasing number of attacks against Russia’s strategic infrastructure with Western support, like the one against the Engels nuclear strategic base near Saratov on 26 December 2022 or the Kerch Bridge.⁶ Moreover, the West might feel compelled to intervene actively to prevent a crushing Ukrainian defeat. There is a growing realisation that this is a real danger. (Daily Telegraph: “Ukraine and the West are facing a devastating defeat.”)⁷

Is it possible to negotiate with Putin?

So far there is no evidence that the political goal of the “special military operation” is to conquer and occupy the whole of Ukraine and that subsequently Russia is planning to attack NATO states. Nor is there any evidence that Russia and the USA are making preparations for this eventuality. From a military point of view, however, one cannot completely rule out the possibility that Russian forces intend to conquer areas west of the Dnieper, as they have not yet destroyed the bridges over the river, although this would be to their advantage in the current configuration. Putin vigorously refutes that he is pursuing – as is often claimed – the imperialist goal of restoring the Soviet Union: “Whoever does not miss the Soviet Union has no heart, whoever wants it back has no brain.”⁸

Putin was willing to negotiate with Ukraine and certainly still is – but always on the condition that the other side – the American, Ukrainian and Western sides – also want to negotiate. Putin has made several positive statements in this respect. For example, on the occasion of the declaration of partial mobilization on 21 September 2022: “This is what I would like to declare publicly for the first time. After the start of the special military operation, in particular after the Istanbul talks, Kyiv representatives voiced quite a positive response to our proposals. […] But a peaceful settlement obviously did not suit the West, which is why, after certain compromises were coordinated, Kyiv was in effect ordered to wreck all these agreements.”⁹

Also on 30 September 2022, in the declaration on the annexation of the four regions: “We call on the Kyiv regime to immediately cease fire and all hostilities; to end the war it unleashed back in 2014 and return to the negotiating table. We are ready for this, as we have said more than once.”¹⁰

On 17 June 2023, Putin told the African peace delegation: “We are open to a constructive dialogue with all those who want peace, based on the principles of justice and taking into account the legitimate interests of the different sides. “^11/12 On this occasion, Putin demonstratively showed an initialled copy of the draft treaty from the Istanbul negotiations.

The “Welt” wrote in a detailed editorial on 23 June 2023 that the Russian media also spoke of negotiations; one can assume that this was done with the approval of the Kremlin. The African initiative had been widely picked up and favorably commented on in Russian news coverage on the occasion of the Russia-Africa summit. The state news agency, RIA, published a commentary deploring the failure of the previous peace initiatives. Editor-in-chief Margarita Simonjan, who had previously called for tougher action by the Russian army, advocated a ceasefire and a demilitarised zone secured by UN peacekeepers. It was right to stop the bloodshed now, she said. Ukrainians should then vote in referendums to which country they want to belong. “Do we need territories that do not want to live with us? I am not sure about that. For some reason it seems to me that the president doesn’t need them either,” Simonjan said.¹³

The war could have been prevented,¹⁴ had the West accepted a neutral status for Ukraine – which Zelensky was initially quite willing to do – renounced NATO membership and enforced the Minsk II agreement on minority rights for the Russian-speaking population. The war could have ended in early April 2022 if the West had allowed the Istanbul negotiations to be concluded. It is now once again, and possibly for the last time, the responsibility of the “collective West” and especially the USA to set a course towards a ceasefire and peace negotiations.

It is imperative to ward off danger

Imperial rivalries, national arrogance and ignorance triggered the First World War, which has been called the seminal catastrophe of the 20th century. The Ukraine war must not become the seminal catastrophe of the 21st century! The increasing Europeanisation of the conflict threatens to slide into a major war between Russia and NATO, which neither side wants and, in view of the acute threat of nuclear catastrophe in such a case, cannot possibly want. Therefore, it is urgent to stop the escalation before it develops a momentum of its own that escapes political control.

Now it is up to the European states and the European Union, whose global political weight is constantly being reduced in the war and by the war, to direct all their efforts towards the restoration of a stable peace on the continent and thus prevent a major European war. Averting this requires the commitment of leading European politicians, namely the French President and the German Chancellor¹⁵ in a joint effort and in coordination with the US and Turkish Presidents, while there is still time and the “point of no return”, to which Jürgen Habermas has specifically referred, has not yet been passed.

Peace is possible – a way out of danger

Positions of the warring parties:

Ukraine:

– Negotiations only after the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukrainian territory or after the liberation of all Russian occupied territories.

– Obligation on Russia to bear the costs of reconstruction.

– Condemnation of the Russian leadership responsible for the attack.

– NATO membership after the end of the war.

– Security guarantees by states designated by Ukraine.

Russia:

– Consolidated neutrality of Ukraine – no NATO membership.

– No stationing of American and other NATO troops on Ukrainian territory.

– Recognition of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions as Russian territory.

– Ceilings on Ukrainian armed forces in general and for each armed force in particular.

– Arms control negotiations with the USA/NATO, in particular on verification mechanisms for NATO’s Ballistic Missile Defence System/BMDS in Poland and Romania.

Both warring parties have set preconditions for the start of negotiations after Ukraine’s withdrawal from the Istanbul agreements, and the Ukrainian president has even issued a decree forbidding negotiations. Both sides have also made demands for the outcome of negotiations that are impossible to fulfill in this way. Therefore, it is essential that all preconditions for the start of negotiations are dropped. The Chinese position paper offers a reasonable approach. It calls on the parties to “resume peace talks […] resumption of negotiations”.

The USA has an important role to play in bringing about negotiations and would have to pressure the Ukrainian president to negotiate. In addition, the USA (and NATO) must be prepared to engage in arms control negotiations, including confidence-building military measures.

Phase I – Ceasefire

To start the peace process, the UN Security Council should consider a draft resolution along the following lines and mandate further measure as outlined below:

1. The UN Security Council:

• shall adopt, in accordance with Article 24(1) of the UN Charter, a timetable and schedule for a ceasefire and for negotiations to end the Ukrainian war and restore peace, consistent with the primary responsibility assigned to it by its members for the maintenance of international peace and security,
• shall decide on a general and comprehensive ceasefire between the warring parties, Russia and Ukraine, with effect from “Day X”. The ceasefire shall be without exception and without limitation or special arrangements, irrespective of the deployment of the opposing armed forces and weapons systems. It shall be binding and implemented in a general and comprehensive manner,
• shall entrust a High Commissioner for Peace and Security in Ukraine with the political responsibility for the implementation of the timetable and schedule as well as all measures decided by the UN Security Council in this context,
• shall decide on the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force¹⁶ in accordance with Chapter VII of the UN Charter, tasked with observing and enforcing the ceasefire and the security and military measures agreed between the parties to the conflict.

2. The parties to the conflict shall cease all hostilities on the date determined by the UN Security Council (“Day X”).
3. No more weapons and ammunition shall be supplied to Ukraine from that date. Russia shall also cease supplying arms and ammunition to its forces in the territories occupied since 24 February 2022 and Crimea.
4. All irregular foreign forces, military advisors and intelligence personnel of both warring parties shall be withdrawn from Ukrainian territory by Day X +10.

Phase II – Peace Negotiations

1. Peace negotiations shall begin on Day X +15 under the chairmanship of the UN Secretary-General and/or the UN High Commissioner for Peace and Security in Ukraine at UN Headquarters in Geneva.
2. Both parties to the conflict shall reaffirm their determination to conduct the negotiations with the firm intention of ending the war and seeking a peaceful and lasting settlement of all issues in dispute. They shall take account of Russia’s letters to the United States and NATO of 17 December 2021, insofar as they are relevant to the bilateral negotiations, and Ukraine’s position paper for the negotiations of 29 March 2022, and build on the results of the Istanbul negotiations.
3. Elements of a negotiated settlement:
4. a) The parties to the conflict

– would not consider each other as adversaries in the future and would undertake to return to the principles of equal and indivisible security,

– would undertake to renounce the threat and use of force,

– would undertake not to take any preparatory measures to wage war against the other party,

– would undertake to show transparency in their military planning and exercises and greater predictability in their military and political actions,

– would accept the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force on Ukrainian territory in a 50 km wide zone from the Russian border, including the regions of Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson within their administrative boundaries,

– would undertake to resolve all disputes without the use of force through the mediation of the United Nations High Comissioner or if necessary, by the guarantor states. The right of Ukraine to individual and collective self-defense under article 51 of the UN Charter would not be affected.

1. b) Russia

– would withdraw its armed forces from the territory of Ukraine to the borders of 23 February 2022,

– would withdraw its armed forces on its own territory to no less than 50 km from the Ukrainian border, if they have been deployed to this zone since 24 February 2022.

1. c) Ukraine

– would withdraw its armed forces from a zone no less than 50 km from the Russian border, including the regions of Luhansk Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson,

– would declare as permanent its status as a neutral state and would not join any military alliance, including the North Atlantic Alliance. Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and state independence would be guaranteed by corresponding pledges of guarantor powers.¹⁷ The guarantees would not apply to Crimea, and the regions of Luhansk Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson within their former administrative borders,

– would renounce the development, possession, and deployment of nuclear weapons on its territory,

– would not allow the permanent or temporary deployment of the armed forces of a foreign power or its military infrastructure on its territory,

– would not permit exercises and manoeuvres by foreign armed forces on its territory,

– would implement the agreed ceilings¹⁸ on Ukrainian armed forces within two years.

1. d) The problems related to Crimea and Sevastopol would be negotiated bilaterally through diplomatic channels within 15 years and resolved by renouncing military force.
2. e) The future status of the Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhia and Kherson regions would be mutually agreed in the negotiations. Russia would allow refugees to return. If the negotiating partners failed to reach an agreement on this issue, the United Nations High Commissioner for Peace and Security in Ukraine would hold a referendum within two years of the peace treaty coming into force, in which the population would decide on the future status. Ukrainian citizens who were permanent residents of these regions on 31.12.2021 would be eligible to participate. Russia and Ukraine would undertake to recognize the results of the referendum and implement them in their respective national legislations by the end of the year in which the referendum took place. For the population of regions that decided to remain within Ukraine, the Ukrainian government would incorporate into its constitution minority rights according to European standards and implement them by the end of the year in which the referendum took place (in accordance with the Minsk II Agreement).
3. f) Guarantor states, which are members of the European Union, would promote Ukraine’s membership by supporting rule of law and democratic reforms.
4. g) The reconstruction of the Ukrainian economy and infrastructure would be promoted through an international donor conference.
5. h) Both Parties would participate in and constructively support a Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe in the CSCE format with the aim of establishing a European security and peace order. The conference would take place within one year of the entry into force of the Peace Treaty.
6. i) The Treaty would enter into force as soon as both Parties and five guarantor states had signed the Treaty and, to the extent necessary, the parliaments of these states had approved it, and Ukraine had enshrined its status as a neutral, independent and non-aligned state (without the goal of NATO membership) by amending its constitution.¹⁹
7. k) Any delays would not justify either breaking the ceasefire or withdrawing from the agreements reached so far.

Phase III – A European Security and Peace Order

In the long term, only a European security and peace order can guarantee Ukraine’s security and freedom, in which Ukraine and Russia have their place. This European security architecture would ensure that Ukraine’s geostrategic position would no longer play a key role in the geopolitical rivalry between the United States and Russia. The way to achieve this is through a conference in the CSCE format that builds on the great progress made in the “Charter of Paris” and develops it further, taking into account the current security and strategic framework.

Published: 28/8/2023

¹ www.un.org/depts/german/gv-notsondert/a-es11-1.pdf
² www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27-4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/a_res_es_11_6.pdf
³ According to FAZ, Ukraine still sees no chance for a negotiated peace with Russia. “This peace must be fought for. And Russia must be defeated. Otherwise, there will be no peace,” the Ukrainian ambassador in Berlin, Oleksii Makeiev, told the newspapers “Rheinische Post” and “General-Anzeiger”.
⁴ German politicians, who do not understand the strategic principle of end-means relationships, are again demanding the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles. https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ukraine-liveticker-deutsche-politiker-fordern-lieferung-von-marschflugkoerpern-faz-19030454.html
⁵ And then there’s the whole question of, if Ukraine is really losing, let’s assume that the Ukrainian military cracks […] and the Ukrainians are on the run. Again, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, but it is a possibility. What is NATO going to do? Are we going to accept the situation where Ukraine is being defeated on the battlefield in a serious way by the Russians? I’m not so sure. And it may be possible in those circumstances that NATO will come into the fight. It may be possible that the Poles decide that they alone have to come into the fight, and once the Poles come into the fight in a very important way, that may bring us into the fight, and then you have a great power war involving the United States on one side and the Russians on the other. https://mate.substack.com/p/john-mearsheimer-ukraine-war-is-a?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
⁶ seymourhersh.substack.com/p/opera-buffa-in-ukraine
⁷ www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/07/18/ukraine-and-the-west-are-facing-a-devastating-defeat/
⁸ https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/why-john-mearsheimer-blames-the-us-for-the-crisis-in-ukraine
⁹ http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69390
¹⁰ http://www.en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/69465
¹¹ www.mdr.de/nachrichten/welt/osteuropa/politik/ukraine-krieg-russland-putin-afrika-friedensmission-100.html
¹² Azali Assoumani, President of Comoros and Chair of the African Union, after meeting President Putin: “President Putin has shown that he is ready for dialogue and to find a solution, and now we have to convince the other side. I hope we will succeed.” https://augenauf.blog/2023/07/28/afrikanische-union-waffenstillstand-in-ukraine-ruckt-naher-wenn-selenski-will/
¹³ The editorialist of the “Welt” writes: “Putin currently considers negotiations and a ceasefire to be the most advantageous option. At any rate, a better one than having to decide for himself how many of the conquered territories he can hold. For Ukraine’s counteroffensive is advancing. The costs of the war are also growing with each passing day and are detrimental to developments in the country. The population feels this, and Putin, who does not want any social tensions around next year’s presidential election, knows it.” The author concludes: “Should the negotiations between Ukraine and Russia be taken up seriously at some point – for example, because Ukraine’s counteroffensive has not produced the desired results – nothing will have changed in the conflict: Ukraine will need credible security guarantees from the West so that Russia does not invade Ukraine again after the ceasefire.

At the very least, it is a sign that the Kremlin is testing the waters, but it should be heeded because it takes up what the Chinese initiative has always emphasized, namely that the Istanbul negotiations, that were not finalized, should be “resumed”. (Compare Harald Kujat’s ceasefire and peace plan, printed in Funke: “Ukraine. Negotiation is the only way to peace”. Berlin 2023: S. 100-104).
¹⁴ Jeffrey D. Sachs: “In fact, the war was provoked by the U.S. in ways that leading U.S. diplomats anticipated for decades in the lead-up to the war, meaning that the war could have been avoided and should now be stopped through negotiations.” consortiumnews.com/2023/05/24/the-war-in-ukraine-was-provoked/
¹⁵ President Biden on 31.05 2022 in NYT: “As President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has said, ultimately this war will only definitively end through diplomacy.” www.nytimes.com/2022/05/31/opinion/biden-ukraine-strategy.html
¹⁶ The selection and composition should not follow the usual force generation procedure of the UN, but the troop contributors should be coordinated by the negotiating partners. Military contingents of the following states could be acceptable to both sides: Austria, Brazil, Egypt, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, Pakistan, Switzerland, Turkey.
¹⁷ In its position paper on the negotiations in Istanbul on 29 March 2022, Ukraine named the following states as its favored guarantors: Russia, Great Britain, China, USA, France, Turkey, Germany, Canada, Italy, Poland, Israel.
¹⁸ On the basis of the text of the treaty as annexed to the initialed Istanbul text and its listed ceilings.
¹⁹ Ukraine could make the entry into force of the treaty dependent on a nationwide referendum.

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute

Who can deny that the protection of World Peace is the most important obligation of governments? Two World Wars in the 20th century, and the dropping of two nuclear bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, brought death and suffering to those affected countries, clearly unimaginable by many leaders and politicians today.

But never has the entire existence of mankind been in greater danger than today. The strategic war between the entire West and Russia over Ukraine has come close to a military stalemate, and that leaves only two options: either an escalation which threatens the use of nuclear weapons, or the immediate end of the war through diplomatic negotiations!

If new levels of lethal weapons, such as Taurus cruise missiles and nuclear capable F-35 stealth bombers are deployed, as now planned, it threatens to lead to a Europeanization of the war, and beyond. If it comes to a global nuclear war, mankind will end in the ensuing 10-years of nuclear winter, as will virtually all life on the planet end with it.

Where other than the UN General Assembly should this be raised? The heads of state participating in this session of this unique institution represent all nations in the world, and must address this existential danger. When the present organization of the world has led to the danger of the extinction of civilization, then that organization must be changed! The world needs a new international security and development architecture, which takes into account the security and development needs of every single country on earth. Such a new architecture must create conditions that protect and nourish the lives of all people, and protect the potential of every person as a creative individual. This means not only people living today, but also the lives of future generations!

The world is presently experiencing an epochal change. The period of approximately 600 years of colonialism is coming to an end and is being replaced with a new world economic system that will allow life with dignity for all. The realization of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), the largest infrastructure and development program in the history of mankind, has created the conditions in which more and more countries can overcome poverty and underdevelopment. The recent expansion of the BRICS, in Johannesburg, South Africa, to which now around 40 additional countries are in the process of applying for membership, and subsequent conferences in St. Petersburg, Jakarta, New Delhi and Vladivostok have demonstrated the breathtaking speed, with which a new system is emerging. In addition, the efforts to create new credit mechanisms for development, such as the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB) now becoming the “great bank of the Global South,” are welcomed and necessary.

But as of now the danger of the world separating into two blocs has not yet been overcome, and such a separation would continue the danger of the same kind of geopolitical division that was the cause of the world wars in the 20th Century. Therefore, there is this urgent appeal to the countries of the Global North, that they must support the aspiration of the Global Majority to establish a just new world economic order for all!

This moment in history represents a greater challenge and chance than the end of the Cold War, to create a better world. Let us not miss that unique chance!

In South America, we see that Argentina has been destroyed, especially since 1982. We see that Bolivia is now in danger of going back under a drug dictatorship. We see related crises on the borders with Brazil and Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay. We see the loss of sovereignty of Peru, by a coup organized under the direction of President Clinton recently….

At the present time, Brazil faces an impossible burden. There’s no possible way that Brazil could carry the debt which is now being imposed upon it. This debt was not really self-incurred. The debt was imposed by international institutions under strong pressure from the United States, including the dollarization of Brazil’s debt in 1989, which was a tragedy for them. There’s no way they can pay this debt under these terms. The IMF demands that concessions be made by Brazil to all of the requirements of the markets; markets which are essentially corrupt. J.P. Morgan, Chase, and Citibank are implicitly bankrupt, and but for the power of the United States, as a physical power, they would be bankrupt. They have no hope for the future, under their present conditions. This is true of the banking system of the United States in general. The Federal Reserve System of the United States today is bankrupt in fact, and is sustained only by the political power of the United States. The banking systems of Europe are bankrupt. The central banking systems are bankrupt, and this is the condition throughout much of the world.

Now, the IMF — which has been the organizer, together with the World Bank, of this bankruptcy, which has developed over the years —now comes to Brazil and says, “Brazil, you are bad. You’re bad. You have to accept our tutelage. We, who ruined you, have come to help you by ruining you some more.” What would happen if Brazil capitulated to the IMF, and accepted anything in any way resembling the demands which have been made upon it by the IMF? Brazil would die! It would disintegrate, rapidly. Not over several years, but over months! Look at the figures. Take the ratios. Take the debt service charges. Take the effect of these conditions in the collapse of the economy of Brazil. Look at what’s happened to Argentina, and see that what happened to Argentina is now in the process of unfolding with full force in Brazil….

If Brazil resists, and does not submit, it could survive. If the average interest rate could kept below 10% in Brazil, and suitable conditions of refinancing the debt were instituted, Brazil could survive, and could be part of a recovery prospect for the hemisphere. But if Brazil were to survive under those conditions, the IMF would go bankrupt. It could not, under present circumstances, absorb that kind of financial reorganization.

Either way, the IMF is dead, in its present form. If it succeeds, it dies. If it fails, it dies. This gives you an indication of what we’ve described as a systemic crisis, as opposed to people who study the statistical phenomenon called boom-bust cycles. This is not a cyclical phenomenon….

Now obviously, there are solutions. I’ve been pushing such solutions. We had a vote most recently in the Italian Chamber of Deputies, a majority vote for a proposal which I had made; the Italian government is implicitly, by this vote, committed to working with other governments, to reorganize the world monetary system, to return to a Bretton Woods formula of the type we had in 1945-1964. To use that model: fixed exchange rates, protectionist system, to promote production, and similar kinds of programs, to ensure that we get back on a growth pattern again. This means that we have to put the world through bankruptcy reorganization, the same way you’d do any bankruptcy….

… We, as states, will create the credit; the credit needed for large-scale infrastructure programs and for promotion of private investment. This credit will be used over a long-term basis, that is, 25 years or so, in general at 1-2% simple interest rates, as state credit, to be used largely for infrastructure; to build up the level of employment; to build the railroads, the water systems, the power systems, and so forth, which are needed for society. This will stimulate private employment. We will also put credit into creditable areas of private investment, to build up agriculture, to build up manufacturing, to build up other necessary things, and we will build our way out of this mess….

What I propose is, that we look at the world in terms of certain countries which are, technologically, fountains of technology. Within other countries, including China and India—which are not prosperous countries, relatively, there are also fountains of technological progress: certain industries, certain techniques they have, but not enough to meet the total needs of their population.

Our proposal was, you take these areas of Eurasia, build up the fountains of technological progress, for long-term transmission of capital, technologically necessary capital, into areas which have low technology potential. And thus, take areas like the interior of China (as opposed to the coastal areas), and of other countries, and begin to build these up, in terms of their productivity over a generation or so. And on this basis, by long-term credit on a 25-year basis, or in that order, we can create and extend credit to fund the flow of high-technology exports from those areas which are fountains of technology, into countries which are in desperate need of these technological infusions. We could organize it in such a way that, when comes 25 years from now, they will be able to buy their way out of what we advanced as credit to them.

I proposed in 1992 and so forth, and these countries came to accept, what I call the Eurasian Land-Bridge….

But today, we have new technologies. And what I propose is the creation of development corridors, from areas such as Rotterdam in Europe, to places like Pusan in the tip of Korea, on the other side of Asia. These development corridors would run across the northern part of Russia and Kazakhstan, to the central part into China and Central Asia, and the southern part along the coast of the Indian Ocean, India and so forth, into Indochina, and so forth by those routes.

These development corridors would be 50-100 kilometers in width, that is, they would incorporate mainline transportation, water management routes, power generation and distribution centers, and thus, create industrial centers and agricultural centers along areas which today are largely underdeveloped or wasteland. And by crisscrossing an area which is largely wasteland, which contains the greatest concentration of mineral resources on this planet of any part of the world, North and Central Asia, we would transform this into an area of growth for all Asia.

This program is now being put into effect, step-wise, gradually. The efforts of China and Russia, among others, to force the building of the railroad connections between North and South Korea, which is actually a railway connection from Pusan to Rotterdam, through China and through Russia. And this is already in place.

The problem is, getting people to accept, and governments in particular, the fact that this is a bankrupt system; that it’s hopeless under this system. Don’t try to adapt to the system, replace the system. How do you do it? The authority of government, of sovereign government; a group of sovereign governments. Groups of sovereign governments must put their banking systems into a bankruptcy reorganization, create a new system of, effectively, national banking, under national government; mobilize credit; reorganize to protect the general welfare to maintain stability; to promote full employment; to find areas of growth in which credit can be concentrated, both in the public sector, in infrastructure, and in the private sector.

Only governments can do that. That is the sovereign power of government as a true sovereign….

… Therefore, you must build up the base of the economy. And, 50% of any modern economy, that’s competently devised, is investment in infrastructure, not in production: Transportation, power generation and distribution, water distribution and management, sanitation, health-care systems, educational systems, these are the gut of an economy. Libraries, access to this kind of thing, are an essential part of the productive power of labor. The ability to transmit goods efficiently and quickly, on a large scale in any area, to go from one place to the other, these are the essentials. We’ve lost that sight.

My specialty in this area, of course, is what I’ve concentrated on all these years, is physical economy. Financial economy? That’s nothing. Accounting? That’s nothing. That’s connect the dots; that doesn’t require any scientific skill whatsoever. What’s required is to understand how we invest, in a combination of infrastructure, and other things, to get the effect of this multi-generational progress, increasing the productive powers of labor….

So, my concern is, that if you can get a grounding among students, where they can understand what an idea is, in Plato’s sense of idea— discovery, hypothesis, experimental proof, the method of Kepler—once you know what an idea is, stick with a physical scientific idea, because that’s an easy one to demonstrate. Then say, “How is culture developed?” It develops on the basis of transmission of ideas, which correspond to such discoveries, from one generation, to the next generation. That is history!  Archimedes and Eratosthenes and Plato and Archytas; the sources of ancient scientific method.  These live in our society today because those who are scientists have replicated those discoveries and have applied that to understanding modern science today.  And there, the transmission of culture across thousands of years to the present is the result of understanding what an idea is, and the importance through educational and related processes of transmitting that idea from one generation to the next; with the result that you have a generation which emerges which has more power per capita in respect to the universe than the previous generation. That is culture! Ideas of Classical drama, which give you insight into how human beings behave and misbehave, and how you manage that. This is what we need.

Accounting is simple. Playing with mathematics, adding and subtracting and so forth, that’s simple. That is not economics. Economics is based on human beings, which are not monkeys, which have the power to generate, assimilate, replicate ideas; whose purpose with ideas is, knowing they’re all going to die — we all die—so, what is our expenditure of our talent in life? What does our life mean after we’ve left it? What have we embedded in the coming generations, which gives us a permanent place in the space-time spectrum? That’s human. And to try to get the knowledge, in every possible area that your appetite can reach, to be able to relive and discover the wonderful discoveries of the people before you, and transmit them to others, to have a society in which this is the standard of practice —that is economics.

Economics is what one generation is capable of doing, for the benefit of two generations hence.  Thank you very much.

Sept. 5, 2023 (EIRNS)–This is Mike Billington with the Executive Intelligence Review and the Schiller Institute. I’m pleased to be here today with Professor Richard Falk, who has agreed to an interview about current affairs and world developments in this crucial moment in history. Professor Falk, would you like to say a few words about your own history and your role in history?

Prof. Richard Falk: I’m not sure I have a role in history. I’ve taught at universities all of my adult life, starting with Ohio State in Columbus, Ohio, in 1955, moving to Princeton University, where I stayed for 40 years, retiring in 2001, and since then I have been connected both with the University of California, Santa Barbara, and the Queen Mary University in London. I’ve done a fair amount of writing over the decades, including a memoir called Public Intellectual—The Life of a Citizen Pilgrim—along with a stream of commentary on global issues. I have led at times a confusing life, which accounts for the bewildering title, I suppose. I have been active through the UN in supporting the Palestinian struggle for human rights and self-determination, and served as UN Special Rapporteur for the Human Rights Council on Occupied Palestine between 2008 and 2014. During this period I was frequently defamed as an anti-Semite and self-hating Jew and otherwise targeted and discredited. Recently, I’ve continued more quietly to write for publication, including a book of poems, Waiting for Rainbows, splitting my time between Turkey and the US. 

I suppose this is enough by way of introduction, maybe more than enough. I would just add that I’m glad to do this interview with Mike Billington, although I’ve had severe differences with the Lyndon LaRouche movement in the past. I’ve also been a target of what I consider their defamatory attacks connected with my support for the pro-democracy, anti-Marcos movement in the Philippines and the insurgent campaign for the protection of human rights in Iran. Such disagreements persist. Despite this I feel that those who seek a safer, more secure, more peaceful and just world have to let these bygones-be-bygones and collaborate in the present for the good of humanity and future generations.

Mike Billington: Well, that’s quite interesting. You and I have discussed privately those differences, which we maintain as differences, both in regard to the history and other aspects of things. But they don’t necessarily have to come up today unless you wish to bring them up further.

Let me start by referencing the fact that you were a speaker at an event sponsored by my friend Chandra Muzaffar in Malaysia, the head of Just International, organized by an organization called SHAPE, Save Humanity And Planet Earth—along with other speakers from the US, from China, from Korea, and from Australia. You referred to what you called the “unstable tension between geopolitics and self-determination,” which I found to be the most profound point of that conference. Could you comment on that and explain what you mean by that?

Prof. Falk: I will try. I’ve been preoccupied with geopolitics in the context of the Ukraine War, which started as a Russian attack on Ukraine, transformed itself, due to the intrusive role that US NATO forces played, into what I call a “geopolitical war” between Russia and the United States, in which the outcome in Ukraine was subordinated by stages to the strategic goal of inflicting a geopolitically significant defeat on Russia, and at the same time to send a warning signal to China not to attempt, with respect to Taiwan, to do the same thing that Russia has tried to do, at least that it was alleged to be trying to do.

My specific connection of self-determination with these issues arose from my sense of the Vietnam War and its outcome, how the US, so predominant militarily, managed, despite a huge investment over a long period of time, to lose the war. That, I think, has been responsible in part for the decline of the US, in part the result of many years of overinvestment and overreliance on military solutions and military approaches to international problems, coupled with an underestimation of the forces of national self-determination, which in Vietnam showed they prepared more patiently to pay the costs and devise effective tactics of resisting efforts of an imperial intervenor to suppress the basic rights of a people in a historical period of decolonization. What I fear in the present context is a similar exaggerated reliance on militarism as a solvent for international problems and an activation of a variety of nationalist responses dangerously intensifying geopolitical warfare, and posing unacceptable risks of a nuclear confrontation..

Of course, the situation is superficially different in Ukraine because, purportedly, the nationalist forces are supported by the US and NATO. But I think the broader reality is that the Ukrainian people are being sacrificed on the altar of this post-Cold War recalibration of the geopolitical status quo.

Mike Billington: Let me mention that geopolitics, of course, originated with people like Mackinder and Haushofer and other theoreticians for the British Empire. It’s always been the political view of the Empire that the world is a zero sum game—that to benefit ourselves we have to defeat the others. And that certainly is what you just described in terms of the current proxy war with Russia and the threat to China, and really to the whole developing sector.

Prof. Falk: I distinguish between a proxy war of the sort that has continued in Syria for more than a decade, in which the objective of outside political actors is to exert control over the internal politics of the country that is the scene of violent combat. This is not my view of what the Ukraine War is really about. In other words, it’s not primarily about the internal effects of the conflict, which I believe all three geopolitical actors have come to view as secondary to the impact the Ukrainian political outcome will have on the geopolitical alignments governing relations among the US, Russia and China. I see this realignment agenda as providing my justification for treating this as a geopolitical war rather than a proxy war.

Mike Billington: Well, generally, the term proxy war is meant to be a way of saying that this is really a war against Russia. It’s being fought with Ukrainian bodies. But the aim, as you are pointing out, is to weaken and undermine, or even destroy Russia and potentially China in the same manner.

Prof. Falk: And to reinforce the unipolar prerogatives that the US has claimed and exercised since  the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Mike Billington: Yes, exactly. You said, in the SHAPE event that I mentioned just now, that the greatest danger facing the world is the West’s “insistence on keeping the unipolar world in place using military methods,” which is what you’ve just reiterated, and that this was aimed at obscuring the decline in power of the US and of the G7 generally. China and the BRICS nations, as we saw last week (at the BRICS Summit) and the Global South, are generally no longer submitting to the colonial division of the world, and they are renewing the Spirit of Bandung. What is your view of the BRICS and the August 22-24 BRICS summit in South Africa?

Prof. Falk: Basically, I have a very positive view of the BRICS role. I think it goes beyond the Bandung Spirit because it’s more about global engagement by the non-West than seeking diplomatic distance from and “non-involvement in the struggles of the North” I think a posture of geopolitical neutralism was the main motivation of Bandung, to avoid getting caught up in the competing ideologically antagonistic alliances between the global powers—a framework that the US and Soviet Union were developing, which posed threats of a Third World War. The Bandung countries wanted to focus on their own development and to stay uninvolved in this post-colonial struggle for global ascendancy.

I regard the BRICS as responding to a different configuration of concerns. As such it is a more creative form of involvement that has its own defensive and offensive geopolitical ambitions. A primary example of this engagement sensibility of the BRICS is their campaign aimed at the de-dollarization of international trade, which if even partially successful, will have a huge impact on the global north, and also by giving shape and direction to a new type of multipolarity that is very different than what the North and the G-7 want. It’s very instructive to compare the documents emanating from the main meeting of the G-7 at Hiroshima, both in their tone and rhetoric and substance, from those emanating from the BRICS Summit, most notably the Johannesburg Declaration that was issued just last week. On almost all counts I would rather live in the world envisioned by the Johannesburg Declaration than the one depicted at Hiroshima.

Mike Billington: As you mentioned just a minute ago, the decline of the US began with the Vietnam War. And you said during your presentation earlier that the US became depoliticized by the impact of the war and then further depoliticized by the events of 9/11. Do you want to explain that?

Prof. Falk: Your question raises a big set of issues. I think what the so-called “deep state” in the US, and the sort of thing Washington think tanks and foreign policy advisers learned from Vietnam, were several lessons. One of them was to make a major effort to co-opt the mainstream media, including independent journalists, making the media more akin to an instrument of state propaganda when it came to public discourse on foreign policy, especially in controlling the range of policy debate. This was one lesson.

Another lesson was to rely on a volunteer armed force, rather than to conscript individuals on the basis of age via the draft, whose conscripts and families became the core of the antiwar movement in the Vietnam War. The middle class, parents of children that were either conscripted or suffered casualties and disabilities in the course of their exposure to war in Vietnam raised influential voices of dissent in a war that made little sense from the perspectives of national security and national interests. An expression widely used by pro-war people was that “the Vietnam War was lost in American living rooms,” which was a part of this attempt to make sure that the media didn’t in the future show body bags and coffins coming back from foreign war zones.

Perhaps the most important of all lessons learned pertained to tactics and weapons. Future war tactics relied on ‘shock and awe’ air attacks, coercive sanctions and an array of weapons that shifted casualties to those entrapped in the war zones, most spectacularly, the use of drones of an ever more advanced character. With media control, professionalized armed forces, and minimized American casualties, the result was a depoliticized citizenry, but actually was a failure in practice if measured by political outcomes, with the Afghan and Iraqi state-building efforts resulting in great economic cost, while damaging to the U.S. claims of diplomatic leadership, with benefits going to the arms merchants and militarists.    

These kinds of lessons were accentuated by 9/11, which included the whole apparatus of Homeland Security, which was a way of insulating the society from radical protest. Another aspect of these various developments was the degree to which the militarized sectors of government and private society joined forces to depoliticize the citizenry to the extent possible, to, in fact, mobilize the citizenry for a much more active role that involved exaggerating security threats from abroad, even inventing them, as in Iraq 20 years ago. So it was a combination of these various lessons learned, which unfortunately, corresponding lessons were not learned by the peace movement.

So you had a rebalancing of society after the Vietnam War, in which the peace minded and justice inclined parts of society were less affected, less active, less effective, distracted in various ways. Even by the kind of populist movements that emerged in America, the kind of Woodstock generation. All of that, I think, was part of the pacification of American protest activity, the modern equivalent of Roman bread and circuses, although somewhat short on the bread dimension.

Mike Billington: The fact that the vast majority, or a good portion—a much too large portion—of the population today seems to concur, both here and in Europe, to go along with this war, together with the demonization of Russia and China, would indicate that they’ve been quite successful in that effort.

Prof. Falk: Yes, I think they have been. And oddly enough, it’s the extreme right that has begun to mount the most coherent opposition to the Ukraine involvement, mainly on economistic terms, and accompanied by. the regressive suggestion that the U.S. international focus should be on the rivalry with China, not bothering with Ukraine, because the Chinese are out-competing the U.S.in a number of key strategic sectors, endangering its primacy. From this perspective, the Ukraine engagement by the West is geopolitically wasteful, and risks driving Russia into China’s waiting arms.

Mike Billington: The Schiller Institute has initiated and led an effort to create an International Peace Coalition, which now has more than 30 sponsoring international organizations that are committed to peace, often coming from very different and opposing political outlooks. But they have joined forces in order to stop what is increasingly apparent as the danger of a possible full scale NATO war on Russia, very likely a nuclear war, coming out of the apparently failed NATO efforts in Ukraine. Do you agree with this sentiment?

Prof. Falk: Well, I agree with the collaboration, because I think there is what one might call a planetary emergency that is being largely ignored by civil society. We are living with the danger of an intensified second Cold War without the kind of constraints that prevented World War III from occurring during the first Cold War. And secondly, in this earlier period, the severity of global challenges such as global warming did not complicate the nature of the conflict. The failure to give the attention that global warming should be receiving is a threat to all of humanity and especially the security of future generations. This attention along with adequate resources are needed, as is equity is the distribution of bearing the. adaptive burdens that must be borne if the human interest is to be served. There are also present the war dangers as dramatized by the nuclear danger, that you pointed out, very real aspects of the current global setting. There is also the failure to address other serious global challenges of an ecological character. All this attention and investment in a new arms race which is taking place throughout much of the world. It is emblematic of this alarming developments that Japan recently announced the highest increase in its military budget since World War II. A general heightening of the worst features of the state-centric world order, at a time when global cooperation for pragmatic reasons would seem to be the rational priority of political leaders summarizes the overall picture.

There is also a leadership gap, which seems unable to comprehend the national interests being globalized in these menacing ways. The persistence of overinvestment in the military, underinvestment in coping with climate change, migration and biodiversity, a series of social protection challenges.

Mike Billington: Regarding the war in Ukraine. You said—again, this was in the SHAPE event where you spoke, which I monitored—you said that both the US and NATO, on the one hand, and Russia on the other, that both miscalculated in starting this war. I would ask, this appears to leave out the fact that the Russians had agreed to the Minsk agreements, which would have prevented the war, but which were intentionally ignored and sabotaged by the NATO nations. And also that they had negotiated directly between Russia and Ukraine through Turkey in the first months of the military operation, which resulted in a signed agreement to stop the war in May of 2022, even before the referendums which were held in the Donbass regions to become part of Russia. But again, this agreement was just completely ignored and sabotaged by NATO. So that makes me question whether you can really say that Russia miscalculated, or were they left with no option. So what’s your view on that?

Prof. Falk: Well, I plead guilty somewhat for misleadingly using the word miscalculation. What I had in mind was that I think the Russians underestimated the NATO response, and therefore didn’t calculate in a persuasive way how their military operation would succeed at an acceptable cost to themselves, as assessed by the level of casualties and economic costs. When it comes to context, the provocations as you enumerated them were very great. And whether there was any alternative for Russia other than this recourse to a military solution, is a difficult question, because I think it was a part of Putin’s mindset to reestablish, as he had in Crimea, the Russians’ traditional sphere of influence in their so-called near abroad or borderland territories. And in the course of doing this, to challenge U.S. “Unipolarity,” which is best comprehended as, in effect, an un-proclaimed “Monroe doctrine for the world.” Its geopolitical claim amounted to an enforced declaration that only the US could use military force outside its own territory for security or other purposes, and if any country dared challenge this purported red line it would be met with retaliatory force. It was a unilateral denial of  geopolitical status to Russia and China, the signature global policy agenda of US foreign policy after the Cold War, reinforced by a new set of alliances. Overall, the U.S. response to the Russian attack was an illuminating disclosure of what was meant by Washington’s insistence of ‘a rules-governed world.’

From the outlook of Moscow and Beijing this must have seemed a new double standard inserted at the base of this post-Cold War geopolitics. Putin, I think, wanted to act in defiance of this challenge. But he didn’t estimate the depth of the commitment by the Biden presidency, and its capacity to mobilize NATO countries and their publics around a defense of Ukraine.

There is also the racial factor, being that Ukraine is a white Christian country, at least Western Ukraine, which is what is being defended. The U.S. shared an affinity with popular sentiments—a large number of European countries, including Poland, that were particularly militant in their spontaneous opposition to the Russian attack. In such an atmosphere further inflamed by the complete erasure of the background provocations by a geopolitically compliant Western media, reporting only the way that Biden and Blinken presented the case for a military response to a supposedly pure instance of international crime of ‘aggression.’ Such absolutism was further manifested by the absence of any indication of a readiness to allow a political compromise to go forward, especially after they came to the belief that Ukraine had the capabilities, including the political will, to mount an effective resistance. The miscalculation on Washington’s side, which became more evident in the second year of escalating combat, is that the NATO West was failing despite massive investments in assistance to produce a Soviet defeat. It also became clear that pressing that course of action raised to intolerable levels the risk of nuclear war. These developments amounted to a serious miscalculation, actually a repetition of past misjudgments going back to Vietnam.

I think another explanation of the Russian miscalculation resulted from their experience in Crimea, which succeeded without generating much pushback. Putin likely interpreted Ukraine through the lens of the Crimea experience and probably believed that the comparable justification in Donbass would be accepted. And as you suggested, given the violation and repudiation of the Minsk Agreements Puttin felt he had a strong justification for acting as did, and could accomplish Russia’s goals in Ukraine in an acceptable time period and acceptable cost.

Mike Billington: Do you see that as still a possibility, that they will succeed in essentially consolidating the results of the votes of the several oblasts to join Russia?

Prof. Falk: Yes, I think to some extent that it is likely that will be elements of an eventual political compromise in the course of a much overdue peace diplomacy. And I think that political compromise, as you previously suggested—even Zelensky seemed to endorse such an approach early on—I probably would have included, at least in part, such an element.

Mike Billington: Some sort of sovereignty or autonomy, at least.

Prof. Falk: Autonomy at least. And maybe given some added assurance of stability by deploying peacekeeping forces in Ukraine and near to the Russian border.

Mike Billington: You’ve already answered this, but I wanted to bring up the fact that in your earlier presentation you ridiculed Tony Blinken, who had claimed that “the concept of spheres of influence has been delegated to the dustbin of history.” I found that to be quite interesting. It’s clearly not true for the US position and its treatment of other nations. And this is certainly one of the reasons that the Global South is now looking to the BRICS and not to London and Washington for their choice of friends and collaborators. Helga Zepp-LaRouche has described this as a “once in a thousand years” shift. One of the top BRICS people called this a “tectonic shift,” basically the end of the 600 years of colonialism and neo colonialism dominating mankind. What do you think of that?

Prof. Falk: Well, I still think that projecting a geopolitical alignment in such dramatic language remains at this time aspirational rather than descriptive. I have the sense that the US-led NATO countries will react in coercive ways to the BRICS challenge, which is undoubtedly being perceived as a bigger challenge to unipolarity than is being acknowledged. What this interaction will eventually lead to is difficult to anticipate. In other words, I don’t think the BRICS can mount a really formidable challenge of the sort implied by that language without encountering significant Western resistance of a major character. For these reasons, the future management of the world economy and global security will exist under storm clouds of uncertainty for some time to come.

The BRICS, despite what I feel is an overall positive development, have incorporated some new members. And even the original five are not fully on board with a scenario of challenging the West, that is, of creating a new world order in effect. India, for instance, is very aligned in several contexts with the West and plays a regressive role in Israel with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict. What one can say about Saudi Arabia being part of BRICS—it’s important, of course, for the energy dimension of soft power, but it’s a horrible example of repressive theocratic governance. And what’s going on in the West African countries, the former French colonies, Niger, being the most recent military coups with an anti-foreign agenda, suggests that there is still a lot of potency to what I call “colonialism after colonialism”—in other words, post-independence colonialism, which I find a more graphic term than neo-colonialism.

Mike Billington: Yes, this is a description of the unipolar world, basically—under IMF, World Bank domination of the economy.

Prof. Falk: And the former colonial power—I’ve studied a bit the situation in Niger. The French colonialists made it impossible for the Nigerien elites to govern their country in a competent way, because they forbade education above a high school level, and made sure that an independent West Africa would be completely dependent on French assistance in order to survive as a viable independent political entity. The resource agreements pertaining to uranium and gold together with the French management of the financial system in Niger are extreme examples of colonialism in operation, even after political independence and national sovereignty have been achieved. 

Mike Billington: But it would appear also that this series of revolts by the francophone countries is an expression of the general sentiment throughout the entire Global South, that this is it — we’re not going to tolerate colonial policies any longer. It’s liable to lead to war, and that’s the problem — as you’re saying, the colonial powers are not going to stand back and give up easily. And they could very well start another war in Africa of the sort that we’ve seen already in Europe, the Mideast, and are threatening to do in Asia.

Prof. Falk: Yes, And of course, in Africa, as you know, there’s also the so-called Wagner Group and a growing Russian factor. Russia has increased its influence. Its earlier influence was somewhat anti-colonial, but mainly competitive with the West, and its interactions with China in Africa are ambiguous. It may be seen as another form in the geopolitical war, whose main arena is Ukraine.

What Russia seeks to do other than to counter the West, the French, European,  and American influence and presence remains uncertain, and yet to be determined. Since these coups, Russia has still maintained a kind of political distance from the new leaderships in West Africa. The African Union and ECOWAS [Economic Community of West African States], both supported, initially, a military intervention in Niger, as did Nigeria, to restore what was called civilian rule, which is more realistically viewed as a puppet government serving French interests in Niger. There is obviously a good deal of complexity underneath the superficial reporting of these events. And that’s partly why I feel that we should view this larger vision of the global future as still at an aspirational stage, not yet a determined outcome, much less a consummated reality.

Mike Billington: It’s not over. But the impulse is unmistakable. Let me approach the Asia issue on that. The conference that I monitored, where you spoke with Chandra Muzaffar and Jeffrey Sachs and others, was actually called to discuss the issue of NATO moving into Asia, the AUKUS agreement [Australia, UK and US] and the Global NATO, Global Britain spreading the anti-Russia military operations into an anti-China operation in Asia. What is your view of why the leaders in the West are so hysterically trying to demonize and perhaps go to war with China? What is China’s actual role in the world today, in your view?

Prof. Falk: First, let me clarify my presence on that webinar. I’m one of the three co-conveners of SHAPE, and SHAPE, as its Call makes clear, has largely similar goals to the Schiller Institute initiative, as I understand them. I’ve worked with Chandra Muzaffar and Joe Camilleri for maybe the past 8 or 9 months to put  SHAPE together as an organization. In this spirit, we’ve had this series of webinars of which the last one was devoted to Asia, and was, I think, one of our most important. I think that what is at stake really is the control of a post-colonial era of world history, which is entailing regressive moves by military means, and a sense of inability to really compete with China except through military means. Wars in the past have often occurred when a rising power has much greater potential than the dominant power. And I think China is seen as a rising power. overtaking the U.S. at least in the important domains of trade and technological innovation, and maybe even global influence…

Mike Billington: The Thucydides Trap, it was called.

Prof. Falk: Yes. The so-called Thucydides Trap, which Graham Allison wrote an important book about. There is a good deal of evidence that having nurtured this image of being number one in the world, and having that image threatened, is a source of provocation for the militarists in the West. And, through NATO, in trying to turn back the clock of history, so to speak, they seem prepared to pay this heavy price.

It is worth taking account of the underreported diplomatic success of Russia, at its July Saint Petersburg Russia-African Conference. Russia seems to have been learning from China about how to force win/win relationships with countries of the Global South, which seems more sensible than trying, as the West is doing in devising ways to fight China. I think if left on their own, Putin’s Russia would not orient its foreign policy around the military sources of power, as much as creatively develop diplomatic and economic sources of power. The West is in systemic decline. It has no alternative to its military dominance if intent on sustaining the post-Cold War status quo. This is a costly, risky path as shown by the Ukraine Crisis. The West hopes may fail for intimidating China by confining its boundaries as well as continuing to accept the kind of economic warfare that has been waged against it, without retaliation. Chinese retaliation would be treated as aggression, triggering a Western response. It would be treated as a casus belli, or a justifiable cause of war. So that it’s. It’s a very dangerous situation, more so than the international situation after World War II.

No precautions have been taken, no geopolitical fault lines have been agreed upon. Compare this with the Yalta and Potsdam conferences at which the divisions of Europe and even Berlin were agreed upon in the course of creating geopolitical fault lines. It is instructive that these arrangements were respected by both sides throughout the Cold War. If they had not existed, for instance, the 1956 intervention in Hungary by the Soviet Union might have served as a pretext for World War III, regardless of the foreseeable catastrophic results for both sides. Or at the very least an intensified confrontation with the Soviet Union. Since 1989 when the Berlin Wall fell, we have been living in a world without those geopolitical fault lines, and risk stumbling into a mutually destructive war as happened in World War I. And that’s one of the reasons I think the aggressive posturing of the NATO West is so extremely dangerous. One line of interpretation is to consider that these geopolitical challengers are trying to establish new fault lines fit for an emergent multipolar cooperative world order. One way of looking at the Ukraine war and at the BRICS’ muted reaction to that war is to put limits on what the NATO powers can hope to get away with in the future. Just as NATO seeks to deliver a geopolitical message to China and Russia, the BRICSS have decided to send their own cautionary message to the West.

NATO, of course, is an anachronism. It was supposedly established in 1949 as a defensive alliance against Soviet expansion. But it’s been converted into a political instrument of global scope far beyond the language of the treaty and the motivations behind it. When the Soviets dissolved the Warsaw Pact, it should have been the occasion for dissolving NATO instead of trying to revive and expand its role, first in Kosovo and then in Afghanistan, now even in the Asia-Pacific region. And of course, Ukraine. The identity of the alliance has morphed from its origins as a defensive shield for Europe into an offensive sword for the world.

Mike Billington: You mentioned the Russia Africa Summit in St. Petersburg, a phenomenal event in which literally hundreds of agreements were signed between Russia and the African countries, including the building of a nuclear power industry and several other industries. And of course, China’s Belt and Road Initiative has been doing exactly the same thing for many years across Africa, to bring the Chinese miracle, which lifted 800 million Chinese people out of poverty, to the developing sector, to the former colonized nations of the Global South, through a focus on infrastructure development to create modern industrial nations where once there was only vast poverty. It’s clear from the BRICS meeting that the Global South has made the determination that it’s not going to accept the western denunciation of China, or that they must “decouple” from China, that they must join in sanctions against Russia—they’re simply rejecting that. I’m wondering if you have other comments on that, and how do you interpret the demonization of Russia and China across the West?

Prof. Falk: Well, I interpret this dynamic of demonization as a reaction against the perceived threat they pose to this geopolitical primacy that the US has exercised since the collapse of the Soviet Union and as a way to build domestic support for a renewal of geopolitical rivalry on a. global scale. I think we’re in a transitional moment in international affairs which will be characterized either by the end of the post-Cold War era and the beginning of something new—I suppose that’s part of your comment on the magnitude of the change we can anticipate—or we’re experiencing the moment where unfortunately unipolarity is being reinforced, at least temporarily. In this kind of transition—accepting the Gramsci idea that in moments of societal transition, morbid things happen. We’re living through this sort of interval. It’s our historic moment. We have very poor leadership with which to navigate these turbulent waters even from a self-interested point of view. And one suspects that the belligerent stance being supported in Washington is as motivated by Biden’s calculations about the 2024 presidential election as by the dynamics of what’s going on in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world.

Mike Billington: The irony of this election situation is that the leading candidates in both parties, if you consider Trump and if you think of Robert Kennedy Jr as the leading candidate (even though they’re trying to ignore that he’s even a candidate, and refusing to even have any debates, treating him as a kook rather than as a serious person) but both of those candidates, Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr., are openly and quite strongly opposed to the Ukraine war, to any further war in Ukraine, which certainly is a measure of the general mood of the population, despite the fact that the media and the parties are completely ignoring any kind of opposition to this war, as if it’s unanimously supported, which it’s not.

Let me make one point and see what your response is. Helga Zepp-LaRouche has made the point that the move from a unipolar world to a multipolar world, which is on everybody’s lips who are involved in this process, but if there’s a multi-polar world which does not end the division into two separate blocs, then you’re still going to have a war. In other words, if you don’t break down the division where the U.S. and the Europeans see themselves as part of a bloc that has to unilaterally oppose the rise of the Global South, then it’s going to lead to war. And therefore, you have to have a way of getting people in the West to stand up against this division, against the threat of war, which was the idea behind forming this International Peace Coalition, which was to get people to come together from different political views, but to recognize that you have to sit down and talk with Russia and China and the Global South rather than going to war with them, or it will lead to nuclear war. Your thoughts.

Prof. Falk: Essentially, I find the language of Helga LaRouche too causally determined. I think there are constraints on going to war at least on the scale of  World War III, nuclear war. These constraints are too weak to feel reassured, but at the same time the view that unless drastic change occurs soon war is inevitable is in my view an overstated interpretation. I think that major war avoidance remains something that even these inferior or limited leaders seek to ensure. I think what a failure of geopolitical clarification will do, though, is to produce a dangerous, militarized competition that the world can’t afford, and such a course would aggravate these other global problems, and not just the problems associated with the environment and with other forms of public dissatisfaction. I see this challenge of. unipolarity as basically a positive move to encourage a reorientation of the outlook of the West in the direction of the Schiller initiative proposals, as well as the SHAPE proposals. But I think it will require a very deeply motivated and mobilized effort, because the entrenched, private sector forces and governmentally embedded forces have lots at stake, including the career and monetary benefits of militarization, media inflated threats, exaggeration of security requirements, confrontation, even limited wars. All these things help arms sales, promote the military and governmental sides of the elite structures in the West.

So. I’m not hopeful. I do think there’s one factor that you haven’t mentioned, and I keep trying to bring up in various ways. That is, the pressure from these new kinds of challenges: global warming, causing severe heat, extreme weather, deterioration of ocean quality, all phenomena that adversely affect human wellbeing, thereby creating a pragmatic basis for a cooperative multipolarity. What would benefit the people of the world is a non-adversarial form of multipolarity. Or at least a subdued, competitive multipolarity that makes political space for cooperative solutions to common problems in the global interest. These problems seem bound to grow more severe in the near future. And failure to practice a solutions-oriented geopolitics affects society in ever more detrimental ways. Even Canada burning for the whole summer of 2023 in unprecedented fires produced pollution and a very health-destroying character for much of the population. I think that such occurrences are of planetary relevance and should be woven into any kind of constructive vision of the future.

Mike Billington: Okay. Do you have any last thoughts?

Prof. Falk: Not now. We have had a rather comprehensive conversation because you have posed truly important questions. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate this opportunity to express my views on this range of topics.

Saturday, September 9, 2023 · 9am EST, 3pm CET

Panel 1: The Strategic Situation After the Historic BRICS Summit
Saturday, September 9, 9:00 am EDT; 15:00 hrs. CET

Please send questions to questions@schillerinstitute.org

Moderator: Dennis Speed, The Schiller Institute (U.S.)

1. Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany), Founder, The Schiller Institute: “BRICS: A Transformation Greater than that of the End of the Cold War”
2. H.E. Donald Ramotar (Guyana), Former President of Guyana: “Prospects and Challenges post BRICS Summit”
3. Prof. Georgy Toloraya (Russia), Retired Senior Diplomat; Deputy Chairman, Russian National Committee on BRICS Research: “BRICS: A War Prevention Medicine”
4. Robert Cushing (U.S.), Association of U.S. Catholic Priests, and others: “A Policy for Peace”
5. Raymond McGovern (U.S.), former Senior Analyst, U.S. Central intelligence Agency (CIA); Founding Member, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS): “JFK and Russia, Making a Shift Towards Sanity on the Brink of Annihilation”
6. Diane Sare (U.S.), LaRouche independent candidate for U.S. Senate from New York
7. Scott Ritter (U.S.), former UN Weapons Inspector in Iraq: “The NATO Worldview Is Colliding with Reality”

Discussion Period

Panel 2: A New Paradigm in the History of Mankind Is Taking Shape
Saturday, September 9, 1:00 pm EDT; 19:00 hrs. CET

Please send questions to questions@schillerinstitute.org

Moderator: Stephan Ossenkopp, The Schiller Institute (Germany)

1. Lyndon LaRouche (U.S), Scientist and Economist (1922-2019), Video presentation: TBA
2. Dennis Small (U.S.), Schiller Institute, U.S.: “An Emergency Program to Save Argentina, the Newest Member of the BRICS”
3. Kiran Karnik (India), former President of the National Association of Software and Service Companies (NASSCOM); 20 years at the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO): “India and Chandrayaan-3: The Global South as Protagonist”
4. Jacques Cheminade (France), Chairman of the Solidarity and Progress party; former French Presidential Candidate: “The Win-Win Policy of the BRICS and the Role Of Argentina”
5. Prof. David Monyae (South Africa), Director of the Center of Africa-China Studies (CACS),  University of Johannesburg, South Africa: “The Future of Africa, China and the BRICS”
6. Rubén Guzzetti (Argentina), Foreign policy analyst, Argentine Institute of Geopolitical Studies (IADEG): “Argentina in the BRICS, a Historic Opportunity”
7. Prof. Franco Battaglia (Italy), Professor of Chemical Physics, University of Modena, Italy: “A Solution (the Energy Transition) in Search of a Problem (Climate Emergency)”

Discussion Period

Discussion Participants:

Dr. Akiko Mikamo (Japan), Author, “8:15 – A Story of Survival and Forgiveness from Hiroshima”
Alejandro Yaya (Argentina), Vice-President, Civil Institute of Space Technology; leader of the Technology and Innovation Relations Unit, National Defense University

Dennis Small delivers a presentation to a Cadre School, July 16, 2023.

Sept. 4, 2023—There are certain battles that cannot be avoided and must be won. One such is the battle to get the United States and Western Europe to change their current geopolitical confrontation course with Russia and China, a course meant to enforce the bankrupt trans-Atlantic financial system and its unipolar world order. The alternative to winning that fight is probable thermonuclear war.

Another is the upcoming presidential election in Argentina on Oct. 22, which is shaping up as the immediate, first battleground between the newly-expanded BRICS-11 process, and that same bankrupt trans-Atlantic system – a system that is terrified that it will be swept away by the tidal wave of nations joining the BRICS, the emerging Global Majority. The outcome of that showdown will surely determine the future of Argentina for decades to come; but it may also decide the fate of the BRICS as well. 

Argentina is one of six nations that joined the BRICS at the Aug. 22-24 summit in Johannesburg, South Africa, despite threats and pressure to not do so. Now there are another 20-30 countries that want to follow suit, and join the Global Majority in building a new development and security architecture for their nations and the world. The City of London and Wall Street urgently need to make a bloody example of Argentina and prevent it from ever joining the BRICS on Jan. 1, 2024, by beating that nation’s economy to a bloody pulp through debt collection and capital flight, and in that way fully discredit the current Alberto Fernández government and its candidate, Economics Minister Sergio Massa, and hand victory to the psychologically unstable Javier Milei. 

Bankers’ favorite Milei, who some call “Argentina’s Zelensky,” has already sworn that, if he wins, he will pull Argentina out of the BRICS even before it joins; eliminate Argentina’s currency (and thus its sovereignty) and replace it with the speculators’ dollar; break ties with China, Russia, and most of Argentina’s Ibero-American neighbors; and otherwise implement extreme neo-liberal policies that will deliver a coup de grace to the nation’s physical economy.

The economic crisis is already so grave in Argentina that Massa, who is currently in charge of negotiations with the IMF hit-men, was slammed in last month’s presidential primaries, with the three leading candidates (Massa, Milei and neoliberal Patricia Bullrich) each getting about a third of the votes – a shocking setback for Massa, who had expected a much stronger showing. 

Argentina is today in the death choke of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the trans-Atlantic banks it represents. Those banks forcibly indebted the country under the previous Macri government, the way an aggressive drug dealer shoves fentanyl down a victim’s throat. As a result, Argentina today is by far the largest debtor of the IMF, at $46 billion. Massive capital flight, orchestrated by the same banks, has bled the country white; the parallel-market peso has plunged from 200 to 600 to the dollar in a year’s time; interest rates today stand at 118%; and inflation for the year is forecast by the IMF to come in at 108%, which has played a major role in driving about half the population into poverty.

If Argentina can be picked off by the bankers, its neighbor and ally Brazil – one of the five founding members of the BRICS – will be next. And the message will have been delivered to the world: “Try to break with our system, and we will financially `waterboard’ you and wipe you off the map.”   

This message is the same one pronounced in 1969 by the arrogant Henry Kissinger, then National Security Adviser to President Nixon, to visiting Chilean Foreign Minister Gabriel Valdés: “Nothing important can come from the South. History has never been produced in the South. The axis of history starts in Moscow, goes to Bonn, crosses over to Washington, and then goes to Tokyo. What happens in the South is of no importance. You’re wasting your time.”

The BRICS are now proving him wrong.

The following is the Schiller Institute’s proposed emergency program for Argentina and the BRICS to win that fight, which specifies the immediate steps to be taken by the Alberto Fernández government and candidate Sergio Massa of the Unión por la Patria governing coalition, well before the Oct. 22 presidential election so that it’s impact will already be felt by election day. Based on Lyndon LaRouche’s work in the science of physical economy, we propose nine specific measures, which fall under three broad policy headings, to be adopted for Argentina and as an example for the world. 

Stop the bloodletting: People First!

1) Declare an immediate debt moratorium on the servicing of the $275 billion foreign debt, including the $46 billion owed to the IMF – the largest amount owed that institution by any country in the world. Unilaterally break off all negotiations with the IMF – whose initials in Portuguese (FMI), according to Brazilian patriots, in fact stand for “Fome, Miséria, e Inflação” (Hunger, Poverty and Inflation).

2) Impose full capital and exchange controls, including the obligatory conversion of all export earning into pesos for deposit in Argentine banks. These measures will end the free convertibility of pesos into dollars, and stop the speculation and capital flight that it promotes. 

3) Establish a fixed parity between the peso and the dollar, as sovereignly determined by the Argentine government, for approved categories of international trade, travel, and other productive uses of foreign exchange. Speculative international banking transactions are not in the approved category, and illegal efforts to carry them out should be severely penalized by confiscation and legal proceedings. Franklin D. Roosevelt demonstrated that bankers tend to respond with remarkable rationality when facing the prospect of losing both their speculative assets and their freedom. 

The international floating exchange rate system which was ushered in with the Aug. 15, 1971 measures announced by U.S. President Nixon, was the catastrophic turning point which opened the doors to the $2 quadrillion speculative bubble which has today taken over the entire trans-Atlantic financial system. A return to a fixed-rate system of productive (non-speculative) national currencies, long advocated by Lyndon LaRouche, is now on the agenda, far sooner than most expected.

Provide an urgent transfusion of productive credit

4) Issue emergency government funds and subsidies to the poorest Argentines (half now live in poverty) and to businesses otherwise heading towards bankruptcy. Debt service payments on the government’s large domestic bonded debt (which in March 2023 totaled almost $400 billion) must be frozen, until such time as the urgent needs of the population have been met. Economics Minister Massa announced measures in late August to provide some emergency relief, but what the government hands out on a Monday is stolen from Argentines on Tuesday by the bankers’ imposition of over 100% hyper-inflation and rampant capital flight. That will change with the implementation of measures 2 and 3 above.

5) Nationalize the “autonomous” central bank (BCRA), which is in fact controlled by the City of London and Wall Street, and reestablish a national bank which issues peso-denominated productive credit, at 1-2% interest rates. Argentina has such precedents in its history, as does the United States with Alexander Hamilton’s First Bank of the United States of 1791.

6) End runaway inflation by establishing strict price controls for market baskets of essential consumer and producer goods. Inflation-generating high interest rates, banker-imposed devaluations, and the international speculative “carry-trade” will all have been banished and will no longer be factors creating skyrocketing domestic prices.

7) Expand trade in national currencies with BRICS members and other friendly nations, taking full advantage of Argentina’s new membership in the BRICS and its access to the New Development Bank (NDB). This will also help Argentina gain access to non-dollar credit lines for investment purposes from those countries and the NDB. The BRICS nations must respond to Argentina’s battle for survival as if their own existence depended on it – because it does.

Launch great infrastructure projects

8) The bi-oceanic high-speed rail corridors linking the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of South America must be built, as part of a reestablished sense of long-term mission for Argentina – and the whole region. Convoke an international conference to be held in Buenos Aires in mid-October 2023 to get the projects quickly approved and launched, with the participation of high-level government representatives from at least Brazil, Peru, Bolivia and China (the country that has the required rail technology and has for years offered to build such projects, under its Belt and Road Initiative proposal). In China, such infrastructure projects have raised the technological platform of entire regions and have been essential to that country’s spectacular achievement of lifting some 850 million Chinese out of extreme poverty in the last four decades. The growing sense in Argentina and across the Global Majority is: If China can do it, why not we?

9) Argentina must also join the world’s space-faring nations, as India just succeeded in doing with its Chandrayaan-3 moon landing. Argentina already has an active space program, and Brazil’s Alcântara space launch facility near the Equator is the perfect center for a cooperative South American effort, along with international allies from among BRICS nations and others. The Alcântara base (and the European Union’s space facility in Kourou, French Guiana – should they choose to join the effort) can serve as the hub for the rapid training of a highly productive, skilled labor force for the entire region.  This can be taken up at the same mid-October international conference, with the critical addition of India as a participating nation. After all: If India can do it, why not we?

Such a set of measures will save Argentina from becoming a failed state, allow it to proudly join the BRICS on Jan. 1, 2024, and strengthen the BRICS’s role strategically for the battles that lie ahead. Argentina won’t survive without the BRICS; but also, the BRICS may not survive without Argentina.

As President Lula of Brazil recently stated: “I can’t accept that it’s normal for a citizen to be born poor and die poor, for their child to be born poor and die poor, for their grandchild to be born poor and die poor…. We don’t have the right to remain poor… We don’t have the right to continue being called the Third World.”

Sept. 4, 2023
Dennis Small
DennisSmall@Verizon.net

Submit your questions to questions@schillerinstitute.org 
Or write them in the YouTube chat

Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in a live dialogue on August 23 to discuss how to overcome the increasingly obvious fact that the Global North is isolating itself. 

The BRICS Summit being held Aug. 22-24, 2023 in Johannesburg, South Africa is a strategic turning point, even if you don’t hear it from Western mainstream media. With representatives from more than 40 countries and the leaders of the group’s five members (Vladimir Putin via video link for security reasons), it will consolidate the rapidly advancing shift away from the “unipolar world” and its “rules-based order.”

On the eve of the BRICS summit, Schiller Institute Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche called on Global North citizens on Aug.19 to “support the building of a new just world economic order.” Please support the appeal by adding your name and circulate among friends and institutions.

The appeal was published by the Schiller Institute as part of a package entitled, “Colonialism is over! Appeal to the U.S. and Europe: Support a new, just world economic order, not war!” and is being distributed in the context of the BRICS Summit.

Furthermore, the Schiller Institute is organizing an internet conference on September 9 with the title: “Let us Join Hands with the Global Majority To Create a New Chapter in World History!” to discuss, among other things, the results of the BRICS summit and the linking of the movement of the global South (the global majority) with the new peace movement.