Helga statement, article, transcript

July 31, 2025 (EIRNS)—On July 24 , 2025, some 40 scholars, business leaders, diplomats, and journalists gathered at the Chinese Embassy in Berlin to commemorate the 80th anniversary of the Potsdam Conference. Chinese Ambassador Deng Hongbo, the host of the event titled “Upholding a Correct Historical Perspective on World War II and the Post-War International Order,” gave a keynote address and welcomed the panelists and guests. Among the nine high-level speakers was Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and president of the Schiller Institute. Other speakers included a former ambassador, the CEO of a major business association, and academic heads of German universities. Below is the full text of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s remarks.

It seems incredible: 80 short years after the end of World War II, a great number of experts agree that the world is closer to the brink of World War III than it was even during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And while many people in the rubblefields of Germany in 1945 certainly meant it when they said “Never again fascism! Never again war!” it is extremely shocking to see how many of our contemporaries have forgotten history, as if a general amnesia has set in regarding the horrors of the civilian catastrophe that both world wars caused in large parts of the planet.

The Potsdam Conference established the political and geographical reorganization of Germany, the so-called five “Ds”: demilitarization, denazification, democratization, decentralization, and decartelization, and in a separate declaration concerning Japan, the return of all occupied territories to China and thus the one-China policy. Recent historical research, however, has shed light on deficits in the implementation of denazification, among other things.

A closer look at the background to the Potsdam Communiqué, during which the political and geographical reorganization of Germany was discussed, makes clear that it was not about establishing a lasting peace, but rather about the prelude to the Cold War and a continuation of geopolitics. While the negotiations in Potsdam were still ongoing, President Truman gave the order on July 25, 1945 for the atomic bomb to be dropped on Hiroshima at some date “after August 3,” as soon as “weather conditions permitted.” Historical research has since shown beyond a doubt that it was no longer necessary militarily, since Japanese Emperor Hirohito had already initiated negotiations on a surrender with Pope Pius XII’s secretary for diplomatic affairs Giovanni Montini, who later became Pope Paul VI. Nevertheless, the official narrative is repeated, that the lives of “1 million American soldiers” were saved by the atomic bombs.

The purpose of this first-ever use of the atomic bomb was in fact to make the experience so horrible, that the Soviets would agree to submit to the dictates of the United States, an illusion that was shattered at the latest by the Sputnik shock. Even before that, in May 1945, Churchill had instructed his staff to draw up a plan for a pre-emptive war against the Soviet Union, which was delivered to him by this staff on May 22, under the codename “Operation Unthinkable.”

After the subsequent Cold War came to an end with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, which, according to then-U.S. ambassador in Moscow Jack Matlock, had ceased to be considered a threat to the West for some time, and after the Iron Curtain had disappeared, the conditions would in fact have been met for the reaffirmation of the UN Charter as the basis for the world order and for the establishment of a peace order for the 21st Century.

But instead of seizing this historic opportunity, the neocons in the U.S. and the U.K. were overcome by a triumphalism that went together with the illusion that the “West” had won the Cold War. Francis Fukuyama went so far as to make the shortest-lived forecast ever concerning the “end of history,” by which he meant the spread of neoliberal democracy around the world.

What followed was the attempt to establish an Anglo-American-dominated unipolar world, which led to a massive undermining of the world order as defined by the Yalta process, Potsdam, and the UN Charter. In the meantime, this order has de facto ceased to exist. Countless examples of that could be cited, such as the recent statement by U.S. General Christopher Donahue, commander of the U.S. Army for Europe and Africa, who recently stated that NATO is able to cut off the enclave of Kaliningrad, which had been assigned to Russia at Potsdam, from Russia in an “unheard of” timeframe.

Time is too short here to even begin to describe the disintegration of the world order, from the apparent inability of the world community to prevent the genocide (as characterized by the ICJ) in Gaza, to the recent unprovoked military strikes against Iran, etc., etc., which has led in sum to the de facto non-existence of international law.

So, what needs to be done to prevent an escalation into a third, this time final, world war?

There was already in European history an example of the successful overcoming of geopolitics: the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, which ended 150 years of religious war in Europe. This gave birth to the idea that any peace order must always take into account the “interests of the other,” in fact of all “others.” We must therefore urgently put on the agenda the establishment of a new global security and development architecture which, in the tradition of the Peace of Westphalia, establishes a new paradigm in international relations that actually does take into account the interests of all countries of the planet.

President Xi Jinping’s idea of the common future of humanity represents this new paradigm, in that the concept of the one humanity takes precedence over the multiplicity of nations, i.e., the one is a higher order than the many. If the interests of individual nations are brought into affinity with the interests of humanity as a whole, then the supposed contradiction is eliminated. The Confucian idea of the harmonious development of all into a great whole and Nicholas of Cusa’s idea of the development of all microcosms as a prerequisite for concordance in the macrocosm correspond to the same lawfulness and to the principle of Pope Paul VI that the new name for peace is development. That same idea can be found in President Xi’s three initiatives, the GSI, GDI, and GCI [the Global Security Initiative, Global Development Initiative, and the Global Civilization Initiative].

Humanity is the only known creative species in the universe to date, and our creative reason always enables us to discover a solution to all problems that are on a higher level than the one on which the problems arose. It is this state of mind that we need today!

See Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Ten Principles of a New International Security and Development Architecture

June 30, 2025 (EIRNS)—Here are the remarks of Helga Zepp-LaRouche to the China-EU Human Rights Symposium in Madrid, Spain on June 29:

Topic: “The Development of Artificial Intelligence and the Value of Human Subjectivity”

Title: “What Constitutes a Beautiful Soul”

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Because of breaking developments, I had to change my text.

The extraordinary dangers coming from careless or malicious application of AI has just been demonstrated in the most dramatic way possible. The International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA, published a resolution on June 12, that it could not trust Iran’s renewed claim that it pursues nuclear enrichment only for peaceful purposes. The former British diplomat and analyst Alastair Crooke reported on “Conflict Forum” on Substack on June 20th that this IAEA resolution was not based on human intelligence, but was drawn from IAEA software, namely Palantir’s “Mosaic” platform, an AI system that predicts nuclear threats. The model repeated, based on its algorithms, allegations which had been made and debunked over and over again for years, flagging “anomalies” at Fordow and Lavizan-Shian. The algorithm looks at metadata, patterns of behavior and signal traffic, and on that basis postulates what suspects may be thinking or planning, not facts. That report was then cited by media and politicians in the U.S. and Europe as the justification for Israel’s all-out attack on Iran two days later.

IAEA Director General Rafael Grossi corrected the assessment on CNN on June 17, but too late: The tragic events had occurred, including President Trump’s dismissal of DNI Tulsi Gabbard’s findings that Iran was not pursuing nuclear weapons, and his subsequent order to U.S. forces to bomb nuclear sites in Iran. So we may be on the short road to World War III as a result of careless or malicious use of AI.

Artificial Intelligence has opened, in one sense, the window to an entirely new chapter in the universal history of man: It is a disruptive technology, that increases the effectiveness of man’s action in the universe by orders of magnitude. On the other hand, it poses moral questions, that are not so entirely new, namely, what is the relationship between man, and the objects he creates. In literature and art, there are several examples portraying the dream of human beings to create something which has the features of his own creativity, for example, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, or the Jewish “Golem,” a figure made of clay, made alive through magic, and naturally the “Frankenstein’s Monster,” of Mary Shelley.

Human beings are distinguished from all other living creatures by their creative reason, which enables them to again and again discover axiomatic-revolutionary improvements in the knowledge about the physical principles which govern our universe. The human mind is the faculty in which the creative hypothesis formation occurs.

AI is not the discovery of such a revolutionary new physical principle, but an appended instrument, which can gather data at a quasi-speed of light by the method of either deduction based on past experiences to arrive at a new concept, or by the method of “generative intelligence” arriving at a new conception, but within the setting of previously established rules. So the often-asked question, if AI will ever surpass human creativity, can be clearly answered negatively.

The usefulness of AI lies in the fact that it is freeing man increasingly from all repetitive forms of labor, it increases our extended sensorium to operate in domains presently inaccessible to man, such as tasks related to space travel, for example, thus it will enable man to have the free energy for axiomatic new discoveries, but it will not inspire them itself. As all other technologies, if it will be used for the benefit of mankind, or the contrary, entirely depends on the moral and aesthetic quality of the human being who is applying it.

The above-mentioned misuse of AI, which has brought mankind to the verge of potential self-annihilation, underlines the urgency that we, as a species, must invest much more care into the aesthetic education of the beauty of the human character. We should make the concept of the “Beautiful Soul,” which Friedrich Schiller established as the highest ideal of man, the subject of a dialogue among civilizations, for which President Xi’s Global Civilizational Initiative would give a perfect setting.

A beautiful soul, according to Friedrich Schiller, is a person, for whom freedom and necessity, duty and passion have become one, and who has educated his emotions so much to the level of reason, that he can blindly trust them, because they would never request anything from him, which would be different than what reason commands. The beautiful soul is obviously also a person who has fully developed what Schiller names as the most important requirement of his time, his Empfindungsvermögen, his all-encompassing empathy. And how much more are we today in need for a passionate, or maybe tender love for humanity. And this love, ren, according to both Confucius and Schiller, can be actualized by will. 

The following article by Helga Zepp-LaRouche will appear in the upcoming issue of the German weekly newspaper, Neues Solidarität. It is translated by EIR.

By Helga Zepp-LaRouche

By unilaterally imposing tariffs on the entire world, then “pausing” them, then raising the tariffs on China to 145%, United States President Donald Trump did not cause, but he did trigger, a process that could lead in the relatively short term to the disintegration of the global financial system, which is already on the verge of collapse. This escalation is moving toward “uncharted waters” and risks leading to an “outright financial war,” according to the global head of foreign exchange research at Deutsche Bank, George Saravelos. As a result, a systemic crisis of the global financial system threatens, with the acute danger that the existing flash points of war could escalate up to a Third World War!

But even before this latest aggravation of the strategic situation, we here in Germany were preparing for war. We are told that because of the “unprovoked Russian war of aggression,” we must become “ready for war,” that Russia will attack Germany and other European nations militarily by 2029 at the latest, so we have to invest hundreds of billions of euros in armament, the German Army is going into schools to recruit, and the Interior Ministry says school children should be trained in war preparedness. A certain Lieutenant General Andre Bodemann explains, in respect to “Operation Plan Germany,” that people will soon have to get used to seeing the transport of many dead and injured in the streets again, Volkswagen is once again producing armaments which are to be used against Russia again. The whole world is looking at Germany in horror, wondering how this is possible, given our country’s history. How on earth did we get to this point just 35 years after the peaceful revolution in East Germany and German reunification?

The great historic opportunity of Germany and the world to use the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the subsequent end of the Cold War to establish a peace order for the 21st Century was missed. While the Russian leadership agreed to the reunification of Germany and its membership of NATO, very generously so in the light of German history, the neocons in Washington and London were already scheming to establish a unipolar world.

Declassified U.S, Russian, German, British and French documents, now available in the U.S. National Archives, State Department, Pentagon, presidential libraries and various national archives and university libraries, prove that a deluge of promises against NATO expansion eastward was made to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze, by Baker, Bush, Genscher, Kohl, Gates, Mitterrand, Thatcher, Hurd, Major, and Woerner. These documents show clearly that the Russian complaints about having been deceived are absolutely justified. Former CIA Director Robert Gates admits unequivocally that Gorbachev and others were deliberately led to believe that NATO would not expand to the East.

Was the sixfold eastward expansion of NATO and the deployment of offensive weapons systems on Russia’s border, which means a de facto reverse Cuban Missile Crisis for Russia, not a provocation? And now, on March 31, the New York Times published a 13,000-word article on the results of a year-long investigation based on 300 interviews, that documents that the U.S. was commanding the Ukraine war out of the Clay Barracks in Wiesbaden since mid-April 2022 at the latest. Does this not fully confirm that this is a classic proxy war between the U.S. and Russia? Military experts from many countries have convincingly demonstrated that Russia has neither the intention nor the personnel and military capacity for a war of aggression against Europe.

If Trump, regardless of his tariff policy, is now attempting to end this war and thereby the deaths in Ukraine, shouldn’t Germany and Europe support this 100% instead of wanting to continue the war in a “Coalition of the Willing”?

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants an EU military budget of €800 billion. Incoming German Chancellor Friedrich Merz broke his campaign promise immediately after his election, pushed through an amendment to the Basic Law and will implement a military budget of €400 billion to begin with, but potentially with no upper limit. This gigantic militarization will also result in enormous cuts in social expenses. For that, German depositors are to be persuaded to invest their savings in armament bonds—a form of modern Mefo bills. Given Trump’s tariff policy which threatens to involuntarily “unwind” the entire financial system with its bubble of $2 quadrillion of outstanding derivative contracts, even such plunder would be like leaves swept away in the wind. If there is one thing we can learn from history, it is the certainty that at the end of such rearmament frenzies comes war, always along the motto: First they want your money, then they want your children.

In the short term, if Trump sticks to his tariff war, there will be a wave of bankruptcies in the countries of the Global South, and among U.S. companies and farmers, as well as a rise in inflation and the ensuing private bankruptcies, while owners of U.S. Treasuries could be forced to convert them into hundred-year bonds, as Trump economic adviser Steve Miran suggests. It could also be called expropriation.

So what can be done? In such a dual existential crisis—the threat of financial collapse and the danger of war—band-aids will not help. We need a completely new paradigm in international relations, a return to diplomacy as a means of conflict resolution, and the overcoming of geopolitics by focusing on the common interests of mankind.

1. Germany and the other European nations must organize for an international conference to be put on the agenda immediately to resolve to create a new global security and development architecture. This conference must first agree on common principles as laid out in the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and the UN Charter. In this spirit, a new Bretton Woods system must then be created, which above all overcomes the underdevelopment of the countries of the Global South through a fair credit system.

2. A banking system in the tradition of the Glass-Steagall Act, as introduced by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933, must guarantee the continuous service of industry, agriculture and trade. Credit creation must be brought under the control of sovereign governments through the creation of national banks. In Germany, the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau after the Second World War can be a reference point.

3. This conference must then put an end to all wars in the world, in the spirit of the principles of the Peace of Westphalia, and launch the reconstruction of the former war zones through a just post-war order.

4. New arms control treaties must be negotiated immediately, and an extensive conversion of the industrial capacities of the military-industrial complex into useful industrial production must begin.

5. The common challenges for mankind, such as overcoming hunger and poverty, creating a modern health system for all nations, universal education for all people and other existential issues must be solved in cooperation with the BRICS states and nations of the Global South.

6. This conference takes on the goal of promoting a dialogue among cultures based on the fact that mankind’s identity is our common ability to reason, which enables us to always find a solution to all problems on a higher level than the one on which they originated.

Therefore, take these calls to action:

Join the International Peace Coalition, which has been holding a Zoom conference every Friday at 17:00 hours (CET) / 11am Eastern for 97 weeks!

Take part in all Easter marches and peace demonstrations!

Don’t leave our future in the hands of the warmongers!

The following statement was issued March 8 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, for immediate and widespread international circulation and endorsement. It is being issued at a time when Europe is at an historic crossroads, where a different alternative must be urgently put on the table if a catastrophe is to be avoided. We encourage signatures of endorsement from all walks of life to force this issue out into the public debate as quickly as possible.

The European Union (EU) and most European governments are in the grips of a war hysteria that can only be compared to the warmongering madness that broke out before World War One. Astronomical sums are slated to be spent on rearmament: European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wants to invest €800 billion(!) in the “Rearm Europe” plan, but by invoking Article 122 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty to bypass the European Parliament. The likely next German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, who had promised before the [Feb. 23] election that the CDU would not touch the debt brake, now says the exact opposite after the election: he proposes, to begin with, €400 billion(!) for arms buildup, and €500 billion for “infrastructure,” which will largely serve military purposes, but without setting an upper limit (!) for military spending—“Whatever it takes!” as Merz put it. Those are the infamous words Mario Draghi used during the euro crisis to signify that all the money floodgates should be opened. And this at a time when the German physical economy is in free fall, when some European countries are being crushed by gigantic mountains of debt and Europe has already been largely left behind economically.

And why such a sudden fantastic increase in money, as if there were no tomorrow? U.S. President Donald Trump is talking to Russian President Vladimir Putin and wants to bring the Ukraine war, which has long been lost militarily, to an end through negotiation, and thus end the horrific dying of Ukrainians and Russians. At the same time, Trump is pulling the world back from the brink of a thermonuclear world war, from which we were only a hair’s breadth away due to the escalation of the previous U.S. administration.

But rather than congratulating Trump and supporting him, the European Union—which was, after all, the winner of the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize—as well as UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, French President Emmanuel Macron and Merz are attempting to continue the war in Ukraine “to the last Ukrainian,” even though experts estimate that it has already taken the lives of over one million Ukrainians and around 300,000 Russians.

The Europeans are thus attempting a repeat of the sabotage with which UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson torpedoed the Istanbul agreement between Putin and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in March 2022, which could have ended the war after a few weeks, and so is responsible for all the deaths since then.

At the same time, different secret services in Sweden, Denmark, Germany, etc. are producing forecasts that say Russia will allegedly have built up its military capabilities to such a point by 2029-30 that it will then be able to attack one or more other EU states. This is a purely geopolitically motivated assertion for which there is no evidence whatsoever, but which could turn out to happen if Europe continues to focus on confrontation, on the motto: “What I shout into the forest, will come back as an echo.”

Various institutes, such as the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, point out that neither the German Bundeswehr, nor the British or French armed forces are even remotely capable of engaging in a direct confrontation with the world’s strongest nuclear power—Russia. The Kiel Institute warned, for example, that at current procurement rates, it would take the Bundeswehr up to 100 years to reach the level of its 2004 stocks. The British Army has just 219 tanks, while Russia produces over 1000 per year. The British Royal Air Force has just 173 combat aircraft! Italy has an impressive 150 main battle tanks! Macron’s offer to use French nuclear weapons as a nuclear umbrella for the whole of Europe should be seen as a provocation of Russia more than as actual protection.

Tom Harrington, Professor Emeritus at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, aptly summed up the reaction of Europeans: “If you are a chihuahua and you play a Doberman for many years on TV, you can forget that you’re actually a chihuahua. That can lead to much delusion when the director calls off the production.”

If the EU and the individual European member states now sabotage Trump’s intention to end, together with Russia, the Ukraine war which was a proxy war between the U.S. and Russia from the beginning, then they are making a catastrophic historical mistake. If they then also attempt to finance the enormous lack of military capabilities by creating money outside the regular budgets, they are repeating German Reichsbank President Hjalmar Schacht’s policy of Mefo bills from the 1930s. At that point, the great war with Russia and with all the countries with which Russia is in a strategic partnership would become a self-fulfilling prophecy!

The European establishments have so far failed to reflect on their own strategic mistakes of recent decades, which have led to the current situation so unpleasant for them. Instead of seizing the great historic opportunity presented by the fall of the Berlin Wall and German reunification to establish a peace order that was absolutely possible at the time, all of Europe ended up following the policies of the Anglo-American neocons. Instead of dissolving NATO together with the Warsaw Pact in 1991, the West broke all the promises it had made to Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and expanded NATO no less than six times—by a total of 1000 kilometers—up to the borders of Russia, thus creating the conditions for a reverse Cuban missile crisis. In addition, the policy of sanctions, regime change and interventionist wars, especially in Southwest Asia, created an enormous backlash throughout the Global South.

But the European establishments have so far been incapable of reflecting on their mistakes out of the obvious fear that it will profit their critics. Faced with the choice of joining Trump’s new U.S. peace policy, they are aligning behind the British policy—and thus the country leading the war policy!

Clearly, the European pro-Atlantic establishments have still not realized that the historical momentum has already shifted massively to Asia. Several nations there have growth rates that the European economy can only dream of. The economic success of China is due to its economic policy, which gives the priority to investment in infrastructure, the real economy, innovation, excellence in education and increased productivity through investment in cutting-edge technologies.

China’s trading partners benefit from this policy, which is based on win-win cooperation, as it is also economically beneficial for China. Organizations such as the BRICS, which now has 19 members and partners and many more hoping to join, as well as ASEAN, SCO, EAEU and others, now represent an attractive alternative to the unipolar “rules-based” order based purely on military alliances and geopolitical interests. Above all, it is by now well known that the application of these “rules” is a highly arbitrary matter.

Europe has reacted to Trump’s sudden signals for an end to the Ukraine war and a resumption of diplomacy with Russia with great panic—and cries for war. But there is still time to correct this potentially fatal course. If Europe wants to overcome its current economic misery, the way out lies in cooperation with the nations of the Global South, which has long since become the Global Majority.

Humanity has reached the point where it must overcome the old patterns of thought steeped in geopolitics and the Cold War and replace them with a new global security and development architecture that takes into account the interests of all nations on this planet. A positive example for this is provided by the Peace of Westphalia, which came about because the warring parties came to the conclusion that if the war continued, no one would be able to enjoy victory, since there would be no survivors. How much more convincing this argument is in times of thermonuclear weapons which, if used, would lead to the extinction of all mankind!

• We call on European politicians to come to their senses!

• Do not repeat the mistakes of the 1930s!

• Humanity is at the most important crossroads in its history!

• For a new paradigm: cooperation instead of confrontation!

• For immediate negotiations on a new Peace of Westphalia!

• For an end to the war in Ukraine through negotiations and diplomacy!

• For an end to the war in Gaza through diplomacy, the recognition of the two-state solution and the economic development of the entire region!

• No stationing of American medium-range missiles in Germany!

Feb. 14, 2025 (EIRNS)—The following statement by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, President of the Schiller Institute, will be circulated at the Munich Security Council. EIR’s translation is by Daniel Platt

Leading military experts—especially from the U.S.A.—agree that the world has never been as close to the brink of global nuclear war as it is today. Even if the immediate danger of escalation to nuclear war over the Ukraine crisis is hopefully averted after the telephone conversation between President Trump and President Putin, this danger could erupt in Southwest Asia in the short term if President Trump does not abandon his proposal, which violates international law, to relocate all Palestinians from Gaza and even from the West Bank—or in the medium term if a “Global NATO” participates in a confrontation with China in the Pacific.

The reason for the danger of war is that after the end of the Cold War, the transatlantic establishment felt called upon to form a unipolar world government and has since then tried to eliminate governments they dislike, those that challenge the dominance of the collective West. The scandal surrounding the manipulations by USAID in over 100 countries is currently causing a stir. It turns out that the “rules-based order” works with color revolutions, regime changes, coups, corruption, etc. The cuts in the U.S.A.’s so-called “soft power” now offer the opportunity to strengthen the independence of the states previously affected and, for example, to strengthen cooperation between the states of the Global South for mutual benefit.

When the Munich Security Conference was still called the Wehrkundetagung [Defense Science Conference] and was led by real security experts such as Ewald von Kleist and Horst Teltschik, this conference was still a place for dialogue between representatives of different worldviews, as should actually be a matter of course for representatives of around 200 nations on this planet. At that time, the participants bore their own costs, apart from those for the conference venue. Since then, the Munich Security Conference has become a PR event for the military-industrial complex, where the lobby of the arms manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic and their favorite politicians reinforce each other’s shared narratives about how the world should be interpreted and which nations are the “good guys,” the democracies, or the “bad guys,” the autocracies. Also welcome are the artificially built-up stars of color revolutions, or particularly prominent “war-ready people,” who are supposed to be the beneficiaries of a special media glamor, so that they can better prepare the population for the coming great war.

It would actually be more appropriate for those gathered here under the banner of NATO to finally subject themselves to critical self-reflection and recognize that their entire policy has failed, because it is based on false axiomatics.

• The “end of history” claimed by Francis Fukuyama after the collapse of the Soviet Union did not happen, because the rest of the world refused to adopt the model of Western liberal democracy, and instead preferred to revive its own cultures, some of which are thousands of years old.

• NATO fought a war in Afghanistan for 20 (!) years, in which the U.S.A. alone spent $2 trillion. When NATO drew the conclusion of having lost the war against 65,000 Taliban fighters, and shamefully withdrew from Kabul airport in August 2021, they left behind a country in what was then the worst humanitarian crisis. The image of “local forces” desperately clinging to the planes remains a synonym for NATO’s “success.”

• As then-NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg admitted, the war in Ukraine began in 2014 and not in February 2022. The goal was to “weaken Russia” (Lloyd Austin), “ruin Russia” (Annalena Baerbock), and: “Russia must not win the war” (Olaf Scholz). Since then, NATO states have spent immense sums on armaments and training and have “put together” ever new packages of sanctions against Russia. And the result? Russia has a growth rate of around 4%—and the German economy is in free fall.

• The true character of the trans-Atlantic “elite” is nowhere more evident than in their reaction to President Trump’s initiative to start a direct dialogue with President Putin in order to finally end the lost war in Ukraine. Trump says what every reasonable person understands, namely that Russia’s security interests must be taken into account and that the war in Ukraine was the result of NATO’s Eastward expansion. The loud indignation of the war hawks on both sides of the Atlantic exposes their geopolitical intentions, which are so obviously failing miserably. This list of failed policies could go on and on.

After the “turning point” announced by Chancellor Scholz, and the associated increased military spending led to rising inflation and budget cuts in the social system, infrastructure, education, etc., Friedrich Merz’s demands for 3% and President Trump’s demands for 5% of gross domestic product for military spending now threaten that this will come entirely at the expense of pensions, health care, daycare centers, the renovation of the dilapidated infrastructure, etc. Hjalmar Schacht sends his regards: The costs of war are simply being passed on to the population through austerity measures!

We are currently experiencing total deindustrialization in Germany in favor of the profit maximation of the trans-Atlantic financial oligarchy, while over 20% of the population is threatened by poverty. If the massive militarization and rearmament now demanded is added to this, the middle class will also collapse, the welfare state will be dismantled, and Germany will become a formerly industrialized country. Germany, which was once respected and admired throughout the world, is now pitied or laughed at because it obviously does not have a government that knows how to represent its interests.

The old neoliberal order, in which Germany and the whole of Europe only had vassal status in the unipolar world order dominated by the Anglo-Americans, has failed. This represents an excellent opportunity for a new orientation that corresponds to the true interests of Germany and the other European nations. The rapid growth of the BRICS states—which already represent 22 nations and thus 46% of the world’s population, with numerous new applications for membership—shows the determination of the nations of the Global South to leave the era of 500 years of colonialism behind them, and to take their economic development into their own hands. Instead of expanding the geopolitical confrontation to the Indo-Pacific with “Global NATO,” Germany and the other European nations must seize the opportunity for our own future that lies in constructive cooperation with the BRICS states and the Global South, which makes up 85% of the world’s population.

NATO lost its raison d’être in 1991 when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved. The premise that there must always be an enemy, and that relations between nations must always be a zero-sum game, in which one wins and the other loses, is a barbaric concept that does not correspond to human nature, but only serves the profit interests of the military-industrial complex. The losers are always the poor suckers who have to lose their lives on the battlefield.

The tectonic changes in the strategic situation offer a fantastic opportunity for the European nations to work together on a new international security and development architecture that takes into account the interests of every single nation on this planet. For Germany, cooperation with the global majority offers the opportunity to get the economy back on track for growth, to help secure world peace, and to open up a positive future perspective for citizens.

What we can contribute to the further development of the human species is neither Taurus missiles nor Leopard 2 tanks, but a renaissance of classical German culture, philosophy and science by Leibniz, Bach, Beethoven, Schiller, Einstein, and Krafft Ehricke, to name just a few. The failure of the neoliberal unipolar world order presents a great opportunity to shed the imposed corset of the associated counterculture that has been imposed on Germany since the days of the CIA-funded “Congress for Cultural Freedom.”

If Germany has anything to contribute to the new emerging world order, then it is the optimistic view of humanity that is expressed in the poetry and compositions of German classical music.

No, there is a limit to the power of a tyrant. When the oppressed cannot find justice anywhere, When the burden becomes unbearable —he reaches up to heaven with courage, And brings down his eternal rights, Which hang up there, inalienable And unbreakable like the stars themselves—

Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell, Rütli Oath scene.

(zepp-larouche@eir.de)