Helga media coverage or interview

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Briefs China Radio on EU-China Investment Accord

January 2, 2021by madeleine in General, Helga media coverage or interview, Helga statement, article, transcript

Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche gave an interview on Dec. 31 to China Radio International’s “World Today” broadcast coverage of the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI). The interview can be found here: http://chinaplus.cri.cn/podcast/detail/1/2689962, it starts at 29.47, and includes Dr. Qiao Hai [ph] of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

What follows is the exchange between CRI’s moderator and Helga Zepp-LaRouche:

CRI: Let’s begin this second half with the big investment deal between China and the European Union. The negotiations for a Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) was first launched in 2014, just before another new year. Both sides say the negotiations are complete. The announcement was made via a video link following a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping, his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron, Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel, and heads of the European Council [Charles Michel] and European Commission [Ursula von der Leyen]. President Xi Jinping said the agreement show China’s determination and confidence in further opening up its economy to the rest of the world. He said, it would help the world’s two major economies make a significant contribution to the world economic recovery in the post-pandemic era.

To talk more about this, we’re joined by Helga Zepp-LaRouche from Germany. She’s the founder of the Schiller Institute, an political and economic think tank; and Dr. Qiao Hai from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Thanks for joining us.

HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Hello.

CRI: Speaking of the importance, Helga, how do you understand the significance of this agreement for both sides?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think it’s extremely beneficial. But if favors so far the larger firms and I think it needs to be more extended, also, for the smaller and medium enterprises. But I think the fact that President Macron from France participated in the signing ceremony is extremely important, because he has no title in that leadership of the EU, but it signals that both Germany and France are in total agreement.

Also I think it is very important that not one ambassador was against it: This is very important, because this agreement still has to be signed by all the national parliaments and EU, so the prospect that it will go through smoothly is actually looking very good. I think this is a major breakthrough for the whole world.

CRI: Helga, according to a transcript of an online meeting between the EU leaders and Chinese President Xi Jinping, French President Emmanuel Macron offered to visit China in the coming months, along with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, to discuss other areas of cooperation, such as healthcare and the environment. Are we going to see a stronger tie between China and the EU and stronger ties between China and European nations?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I definitely hope so. We are definitely in a world of great challenges, the pandemic is not over, international cooperation, and therefore my hope would be that European leaders would turn to Leibniz, who already in the 17th century said that is so happens that the most advanced cultures are situated at each end of the European continent, and they should join hands and develop the region in between. Now, I would hope that with China having made major concessions in this China-EU Investment, that Europe, in the other side would also be more open to cooperation with the Belt and Road Initiative. Because that would really give the framework to address all the many challenges, such as the underdevelopment of the developing sector. In order to overcome the pandemic, it is not enough to throw cash at the crisis when it is there, but I think that China and the EU should work together to industrialize Africa, Southwest Asia, and other regions, because otherwise, the danger of new pandemics will always exist.

I would hope European leaders would turn to Leibniz in their approach, because Leibniz, was an absolute admirer of Chinese culture. And I think Europeans have so much to discover if they study Chinese history and culture and philosophy, poetry, painting—there are so many things to be discovered, and I would hope that this agreement opens the way for a new renaissance in relations between the two.

CRI: Helga, what’s your take? Are those concerns from the U.S. society legitimate?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think The “concerns,” so-called, are purely ideological and motivated by geopolitical thinking. In the recent period there has been an unprecedented anti-China campaign in the United States, which is blaming China for every problem on the planet, which is completely hysterical. But there is no way how the rise of China—which is really the motive for this—can be stopped! China is a country of 1.4 billion people, with a policy based on innovation. And China has been the leader of technological development for many centuries. So if China is now coming back as one of the most important four nations in the world, people should be happy about it, because, from everything I have studied and seen, China is a benign factor and does not do what the U.S. is accusing it of.

So I think it will be beneficial for U.S. firms, as Mr. Qiao just said. The anti-China sentiment, by the way, is not shared by many U.S. firms, by many of the governors, by many of the elected officials. So hopefully the example which is set now by China and the EU will also influence the situation in the United States.

CRI: Helga, many believe the conclusion of the agreement also shows the EU respects its relationship with the United States, but will not wait for the United States any longer. Do you detect a change of the EU-U.S. relations, when it comes to trade?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, it’s a mixed situation, because despite the fact that this ceremony was signed, Michel, from EU Council, still called China a “strategic rival.” But I think there is a general tendency in Europe to assert more sovereignty. Also within the different nations in Europe, there is a growing sense that national sovereignty is important. I hope this will lead to a new paradigm, because I think we need a completely new paradigm in in international relations, where geopolitics must be overcome. Geopolitics led two times to a world war in the 20th century, and the proposal by President Xi Jinping for a “shared future of mankind,” is, I think, a very important expression of this new paradigm. And if people start to study that and realize that in the post-pandemic world, either we find new ways of relating to each other or we will be doomed together. This is a branching point in history, where hopefully people will be open with new visions about the future of humanity.

CRI: Helga, do you think this deal will be a stepping stone to an EU-China free trade agreement?

ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think it will be a stepping stone, hopefully, for an even larger conception, because we need, really, a new world economic order. I think that the most challenging question is the development of the developing countries. We have a famine, which, according to the World Food Program threatens 270 million people’s dying by starvation in 2021. And I think there needs to be a crash program to overcome that. And I think the most important economic powers have to work together, and I really think the combination of pandemic and danger of world famine should be a motivation to really go for a completely different design, where the common good of the people is being put first and not the maximization of profit. This is a very important challenge to humanity that we take this step, and go away from what has been the financial system, where only the maximizing the profit of the speculators was what counted. This is a challenge to the sovereign governments of the world to respond to the need for the common good of their people. That is what people should think about.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Jacques Cheminade Interviewed on China’s CCTV-13

March 18, 2019by Alicia Cerretani in Helga media coverage or interview, Media coverage of our activity, New financial order updates, New Silk Road / BRI updates

Interviews with Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Jacques Cheminade appeared on a newscast by CCTV-13 reporting on U.S. reactions to the just-concluded National People’s Congress. CCTV journalist Wang Guang reported on the reaction of U.S. think tanks to the ideas presented during the Two Sessions with regard to U.S.-China trade and the Belt and Road Initiative.

The broadcast then shifted to an interview done with Helga at the Morristown Schiller Institute conference. Zepp-LaRouche said:

“I personally think it is the most important strategic initiative, because it is a concept with which you can overcome geopolitics. Geopolitics has been the cause of two wars in the 20th Century, and the idea that you can not have blocs of countries or nations against nations, but that you have what Xi Jinping always calls the ‘community of the shared future of humanity,’ that you put the one humanity first, is a strategic concept which allows you to overcome the divisions which existed in previous centuries.”

This was followed by Cheminade, who said,

“The Chinese way is to a world integration through common development, what President Xi Jinping calls a ‘win-win’ system. So that is a future. The Chinese want a world development. They don’t want to impose their model, but they don’t want the other models to impose upon them.”

Helga’s clip was also aired on CCTV Plus, an English-language CCTV site, on a program entitled “Foreign Experts Applaud Development Concepts.”

Sputnik Interviews Helga Zepp-LaRouche on INF Crisis

February 22, 2019by Alicia Cerretani in General, Helga media coverage or interview, Media coverage of our activity, World war danger updates

Sputnik International published an interview with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, identified as head of the Germany’s Civil Rights Movement Solidarity (BüSo) party, warning that if Europe hosts new U.S. missiles it will sign a “suicide pact,” and that the solution to strategic tensions is to expose the real authors of Russiagate. The interview was published in the English (International) and Portuguese-Brazilian editions of Sputnik and picked up by a newswire in Indonesia. The dispatch was headlined: “Europe to Sign Own ‘Suicide Pact’ If Hosts New U.S. Missiles — German Politician.”

“Europe’s possible agreement to host U.S. intermediate and shorter-range ballistic missiles will be tantamount to signing a ‘suicide pact’ in light of Russia’s declared resolve to target these potential security threats, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the leader of Germany’s Civil Rights Movement Solidarity party, told Sputnik.

“`If Europe were to accept the installation of new U.S. missiles on its territory in this strategic environment, it would sign a suicide pact,’ Zepp-LaRouche said.

“According to the politician, amid somewhat war-mongering rhetoric in the West, Putin `just reintroduced a reality principle and clarity’ with his warnings.

“‘Despite President [Donald] Trump’s stated intention to improve relations between the U.S. and Russia, including that he may have one idea of replacing the INF treaty with a new agreement, Putin has to take into account the contrary intention of the neocons in the Trump administration and the British ‘minister of war,’ Gavin Williamson, who threatens to use ‘hard power’ and also claims that the ‘boundaries between peace and war are becoming blurred,’ she clarified, making a reference to Williamson’s 2019 Munich Security Conference speech. [sic—Williamson’s speech was on Feb. 11 at the Royal United Services Institute—ed.]

“Meanwhile, Europe’s ‘fundamental self-interest,’ Zepp-LaRouche believed, lay in removing sanctions on Russia and re-establishing good relations with Moscow by creating ‘an economic zone from the Atlantic to the Pacific on the basis of integrating the Belt and Road Initiative, the Eurasian Economic Union and the EU.’

“She went on to note that such cooperation would create ‘a new security architecture’ that should become the basis on which Europe builds its cooperation with the United States.

“When asked to suggest ways to overcome the rifts in the global security environment between Russia and the West, Zepp-LaRouche opined that once the ‘real authors’ of ‘Russiagate’ — the scandal around Moscow’s alleged interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, which Russia strongly denies — were revealed, ‘most of the strategic tensions would evaporate.'”

BRICS Group & Russian National Committee on BRICS Research Publish Article on Possible US/BRICS Cooperation

December 16, 2018by Alicia Cerretani in BRICS updates, Helga media coverage or interview

As part of the continuing impact of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s October, 2018 address in Moscow at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, a lengthy article, based on her address, was published this week on the official websites of both the BRICS organization and of the Russian National Committee on BRICS Research. The article by Richard A. Black of The Schiller Institute is entitled, “The Trump Presidency: A New Opportunity for the BRICS?”

The Russian National Committee on BRICS Research was set up in coordination with the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It conducts on-going scientific research on strategic policy for Russia, in her role as initiator, in 2006, and as a leading member of the BRICS. The article discusses the surprising potential for US collaboration with the BRICS, beginning, first, with space exploration joint work, and it features Lyndon and Helga LaRouche’s “new ordering principle” for world affairs as proposed by Helga LaRouche at the Institute, in October.

Zepp-LaRouche Covered in Russian Press: The BRITISH Meddled in the US Elections

November 28, 2018by Benjamin Deniston in Geopolitics updates, Helga media coverage or interview

On November 27, Sputnik News published an article covering Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s insights into the British interference in the 2016 US elections. The article starts,

“Washington has accused Russia on multiple occasions of allegedly meddling in the 2016 presidential elections, leading to a special investigation into the matter. Moscow has firmly denied the accusations, pointing out that no evidence has been presented so far to prove them. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute, headquartered in Washington, DC, told Sputnik that British intelligence agencies сould have been behind the alleged meddling in the 2016 US presidential elections…”

Read the full article here here: Pundit Suggests UK Could Have Meddled in 2016 US Elections

Zepp-LaRouche: U.K. Integrity Initiative Aims To Preserve British Control

November 28, 2018by Benjamin Deniston in Geopolitics updates, Helga media coverage or interview

On November 27 the United News of India and Pakistan’s UrduPoint news republished a Sputnik wire featuring Helga Zepp-LaRouche (speaking on behalf of her position as the head of the German Civil Rights Movement Solidarity party (BusSo). The article begins,

“The main goal of the United Kingdom’s Integrity Initiative project is to keep the UK influence in global affairs, including by countering Russia as a key player in the international arena and deterring China’s geopolitical ambitions, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the leader of the German Civil Rights Movement Solidarity party, told Sputnik…”

Read the full article here here: UK Integrity Initiative Aimed At Keeping UK Influence In Global Affairs- German Politician

Image credit: Jim Bowen (Hope Mills NC, US)

Sputnik France Covers Schiller Institute Nov 6 Paris conference

November 25, 2018by Benjamin Deniston in Helga media coverage or interview, Media coverage of our activity, Our conferences, World Land-Bridge updates

Paris, Nov. 24—Maxime Perrotin from Sputnik France, authored two in-depth articles covering the ideas presented at the Schiller Institute’s November 6 conference in Paris. Our conference was held to announce the publication of the French edition of the Institute’s report The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge Vol. 2.

The first article was entitled, “The Chinese economic miracle, a defeat of the West’s neo-liberal model” and published on November 2. The second article was published on November 23, entitled, “The new Chinese silk roads also go through … Africa,” and starts with the provocative question: what’s the connection between a canal in the African Rift, the Port of Gwadar in Pakistan and the idea of the coincidence of opposites of Nicolas of Cusa, a German thinker of the middle ages? Answer? The BRI initiative of president Xi Jinping. The article said, Helga Zepp-LaRouche started the conference with the provocative statement, “This dossier contains the solutions to all the major problems that we are undergoing in this planet.”

Zepp-LaRouche outlined the enormous scale of the project, in terms of countries which have joined and overall investments, noting however that it is not a one way road: president Xi Jinping in his opening statements to the China international import export fair in Shanghai early November stated that China would “import” the equivalent of 40,000 billion dollars in the course of the following 15 years! She qualified the project as “the most important at a strategic level on the planet today,” because of its win/win cooperation, the idea that no country is to dominate another one, and because of its adoption of the peaceful coexistence principles laid down by the Bandung conference of the non aligned movement, of 1955, such as respect of sovereignty and peaceful coexistence.

The BRI is not Chinese, reports Perrotin citing Schiller Institute Africa advisor, Sebastien Périmony, who said it has sparked up the desire everywhere to “develop Africa.” After outlining the achievements of the last FOCAC conference in Beijing, Périmony presented ongoing projects promoted carried out by Europeans in Africa such as the Lake Chad Bonifica/Power China studies of feasibility, but also the Inga 3 hydroelectric plant in DRC with participation of a Spanish firm, ACS. But also projects that France could take up: such as the Togo, Niger, Burkina, Ivory Coast loop, which can be coupled to the trans-sahelien Nouakchott-N’Djamena railway.

Perrotin reports also that the Schiller Institute rejects the West’s accusations that China is leading countries into a debt trap, reporting that Zepp-LaRouche turns those attacks around against the IMF and its conditionalities. The author also picked up on the fact that in the 1990’s Lyndon and Helga LaRouche campained, at the end of the cold war, for a Eurasian landbridge. This was their response to the collapse of the Soviet Union, a peace project for the 21st century which would have used the COMECON industrial capacities to relaunch the economy of the former East bloc; a project that was killed by Bush, Mitterrand and Thatcher whose shock-therapy lead to a rapid deindustrialization of the former communist countries.

For Helga LaRouche, Xi Jinping’s concept of “a shared community of principle for all humanity,” is a conception coincident with the thinking of Nicolas of Cuse, and his coincidence of the opposites.

RIA Novosti Covers Helga Zepp-LaRouche on British Meddling in US Elections

November 9, 2018by Benjamin Deniston in Geopolitics updates, Helga media coverage or interview

Following Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s recent trip to Moscow, RIA Novosti (the Russian language state news agency) published two short reports covering Helga’s analysis of the world situation (translated below).

The first wire is headlined “American expert suspects Britain of interfering in the US elections:”

“MOSCOW, October 24 – RIA News. British intelligence agencies may have interfered in the US elections in 2016, said Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the US-based Schiller Institute, a research NGO.

“According to her, employees of the team of then-President Barack Obama and of British MI6 could have interfered in the US presidential election.

“’The reason is that (Donald) Trump during the 2016 election campaign promised to improve relations with Russia. But the British did not want this, because they saw a threat to their position, in that they would not be able to manipulate the situation if the United States and Russia joined forces. The Skripal case and the Syrian chemical dossier emerged in this connection,’ she told reporters.

“According to Zepp-LaRouche, if the intervention of the British in the elections is proven, this scandal will be the biggest in US history.

“This scandal will be bigger than Watergate, the greatest in US history. The midterm elections will show this,” she said.

“An investigation of alleged Russian interference in the US elections, as well as Trump’s supposed ties with the Russian Federation, which are denied by the White House and the Kremlin, is being conducted by independent special prosecutor Robert Mueller, as well as in both houses of the US Congress. A spokesman for the Russian president, Dmitry Peskov, called the accusations of interfering in the elections ‘absolutely unfounded.’”

RIA News, https://ria.ru/world/20181024/1531406869

The Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s charges against British intelligence created such a stir in Russia, that journalist Vladimir Solovyov brought it up during his popular evening talk show, citing at length the above-mentioned RIA Novosti quotes on the British role. His guest, American neoconservative Ariel Cohen of the Atlantic Council, quickly offered an explanation, in which he attempted to dismiss Lyndon LaRouche and his Helga Zepp-LaRouche as unreliable “conspiracy theorists.” Cohen’s intervention, in turn, was forcefully countered by Natalia Vitrenko, the chairwoman of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, in a video rebuttal she released.

The second wire ran under the headline “Trump could improve relations with Russia, expert believes:”

“MOSCOW, October 24 – RIA Novosti. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, a non-governmental organization in the United States, believes that, thanks to a meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin in Paris and the G-20 summit in Argentina, U.S. President Donald Trump could improve relations with Moscow….

“’In the near future there will be a meeting between President Putin and President Trump in November in Paris, followed by the G20 summit in Argentina. If President Trump can, shall we say, ‘free himself’ from the conspiracy taking shape around him, then he will be able to return to those election promises he made in 2016 (on the development of relations with the Russian Federation – ed.),’ she told reporters.

“According to her, if Trump does this and thereby improves relations with Russia, and also tries to improve relations with China, then this ‘will bear fruit, and we can talk about the beginning of a new era, there will be a cardinal jump’ in the global conjuncture.

“As Speaker of the Federation Council Valentina Matvienko noted earlier, Russia has a positive assessment of the prospects for the upcoming November 11 talks in Paris between Russian and US leaders Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, and expects new prospects for Russian-American cooperation to be outlined there.”

RIA News, https://ria.ru/politics/20181024/1531406506.html

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Addresses Gathering in Moscow on Building the New Paradigm

October 28, 2018by Alicia Cerretani in Helga media coverage or interview, Russia SI activity

The Chairwoman of the international Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche presented an overview of the current strategic situation and the perspectives for the future in a speech given in Moscow on Oct. 24 at the 23rd International Academic Conference: “China, Chinese Civilization and the World: Past, Present, and Future”. The event was organized by the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Posing the question as to whether human society is capable of an efficient of self-government, Helga Zepp-LaRouche listed the “multiple crises” plaguing the world today: the imminent crash of the trans-Atlantic financial system, unprecedented polarization inside the United States, false flag operations in Syria, drug epidemics, the global migration crisis, terrorism and Nazism, and the increasing disunity in the EU.

While these challenges may seem unrelated, Zepp-LaRouche said, they must be understood as products of the “old paradigm” of thinking. To solve them, one must be aware of the principles defining the new epoch taking form.

She went to identify two “game changing” topics which create “totally opposite pathways for the future”. First, is the “monumental battle” in the United States to determine whether the coup attempt against President Trump will succeed and he will be driven out of office, or whether the perpetrators of that coup, which aims to prevent him from establishing good relations between the U.S. and Russia, will instead be prosecuted. “If Trump can consolidate his position, despite the many hawkish tones coming from the U.S. now, there does exist the potential that he will be able in the second half of his first term to improve relations with Russia and return to his initial positive attitude towards China.”

The second related issue, Helga Zepp-LaRouche went on, is the need to overcome the “Thucydides Trap,” i.e., the apparent conflict “between the power dominating the world up to now, the U.S., and the rising power, China,” by defining a solution over and beyond the specifics of either of them to address the fundamental interests of all nations and “thus shift the level of thinking to a higher plateau.” To avoid such a “Thucydides trap”, she stressed, the U.S. needs to be integrated into the organization of the new world order.

Such a higher plateau of thinking was defined by Zepp-LaRouche’s husband, Lyndon LaRouche, several years ago, when he proposed that the U.S., Russia, China and India, with the support of others, set up a New Bretton Woods system, that is, an international credit system to finance economic development, emphatically including that of developing nations. “The basic conception for such a new credit and economic system already exists in principle in the Belt and Road policy of President Xi Jinping,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche said. Today, it must be expanded and consolidated to respond to the needs of all mankind as a species, such as becomes evident in the field of space exploration.

Indian Scholar: The Belt and Road Came from Lyndon and Helga LaRouche

August 29, 2018by Alicia Cerretani in Helga media coverage or interview, New Silk Road / BRI updates

Aug. 28 -Mahmud Ali, an Indian scholar currently at the Institute of China Studies at the University of Malaya in Kuala Lumpur, posted an article on LinkedIn titled “America’s Foundational Contributions to China’s Belt & Road Initiative (BRI)” on Aug. 27. He ridicules the “disdain” from Western officials and media towards the Belt and Road Initiative, and stating that the slanders are “repeated {ad nauseam},” especially in the U.S. But, he continues, the concept “originated in America, with U.S. visionaries envisaging, promoting and advancing the cause of a united Euro-Asian economic space, as early as the late 1980s, before politicians and their assorted advisors had begun considering the possibility of the collapse of the Soviet Union, or the end of the Cold War. It was that American intellectual spark, nurtured by a few farsighted men and women, which illuminated the new world of possibilities. Without it, and direct intervention by governments and multilateral agencies based in America and its allies, there would probably be no BRI today.”

Then, under the subhead “American Prophets Imagine a New Silk Road,” he writes that despite the geopolitical thinking of most people in the West, based on the concepts of Halford Mackinder, “Western thinkers operating outside state-funded national security establishments envisioned a non-competitive, indeed collaborative, vision of the future. One of them, the U.S. politician and co-founder, with his wife Helga LaRouche, of the Washington-based Schiller Institute, Lyndon LaRouche, promoted such a vision, with some success in influencing segments of trans-Atlantic opinion. In October 1988, LaRouche briefed the media in West Berlin on ‘U.S. Policy Toward the Reunification of Germany,’ prophesying the collapse of COMECON economies, and urging food-support to Poland so that a majority of Germans on both sides desired reunification. In December, he assigned a group of Schiller Institute specialists to examine prospects for establishing a Paris-Berlin-Vienna productive triangle. In January 1990, Schiller Institute published LaRouche’s book on a proposed 320,000 sq.km. European economic area comprising a population of 92 million concentrated in 10 large industrial areas, from which he envisaged infrastructural corridors, linked with high-speed railways, radiating in all directions, providing a basis for upgrading living standards across Eurasia.”

Ali goes on to describe Schiller Institute conferences and {EIR} articles between 1991 and 1996 (noting that LaRouche was then in prison), when Helga Zepp-LaRouche presented her speech at the May 7-9, 1996 “Symposium on Economic Development along the New Euro-Asia Continental Bridge” in Beijing on May 8, 1996, titled “Building the Silk Road Land-Bridge: The Basis for Mutual Security Interests of Asia and Europe.”

Then, he writes: “In January 1997, Lyndon LaRouche addressed a Washington conference, urging the Clinton Administration to sponsor a New Bretton Woods system, reorganizing the world economy to prevent disruptive boom-bust cycles, and recognize the global merit of the Eurasian Land-Bridge program. Reinforcing and explaining her husband’s persistent thematic refrain, Helga LaRouche published a commentary titled, `Eurasian Land-Bridge: A New Era for Mankind,’ which was widely circulated across the Atlantic by the Schiller Foundation [sic].” He adds that Helga LaRouche addressed a second conference in Beijing in November 1997. “By then,” he continues, “railway connectivity between coastal China, Central Asia and Russia was a reality; Europe beckoned.”

He next reports on a conference in India organized by Schiller representative Ramtanu Maitra, with leading figures from Russia, China and India, where they “established a Triangular Association with the goal of promoting Indo-Russian-Chinese cooperation in forging a shared vision of Eurasia’s post-Cold War future of peace, progress and prosperity. The effort failed for a combination of distractions and difficulties: fallout from the Asian Economic Crisis, the September 2001 al-Qaeda attacks on New York and Washington and America’s subsequent Global War on Terrorism, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and then, the Great Recession. Nonetheless, seeds had been sown in the febrile post-Cold War intellectual hotbeds. Ideas analysed at Schiller’s many conferences and events began gelling into policy-frameworks in early 21st century.”

Ali then reviews other Western interventions into Central Asia, including a number of “bilateral investment treaties” the U.S. signed with coutries in Central Asia and the South Caucasus, aimed at capturing the energy resources and breaking them away from Russia and China, and the so-called “New Silk Road Initiative” sponsored by Hillary Clinton (based on keeping Central Asia out of Russia and China influence), and the Lower Mekong Initiative, also by the U.S. State Department.

However, Ali makes a point that the U.S. initiatives were both “much more modest” than the LaRouche plans, or of Xi Jinping’s plan announced in September 2013, and that the U.S. “more candidly advertised their geopolitical drivers.” On the other hand, he concludes, “Beijing emphasized its economic, indeed geoeconomic focus.”

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