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Zepp-LaRouche: ‘Trade War, Rearmament, World War? Or a New Security Architecture?’

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!


Zepp-LaRouche’s CGTN Article Presents Alternative to Trump’s Tariffs

China’s CGTN today published an article by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, “What Could U.S. Tariff Policy Lead To?” in which she described what an alternative should be to Donald Trump’s import tariffs.

Quoting from the White House statement on tariffs, Zepp-LaRouche wrote that it “lumps together very different cases. While China has lifted nearly 850 million of its own citizens out of poverty, eradicated absolute poverty, created a middle-income group of 400 million people with an enormous purchasing power, and beyond that, become the engine of development for the Global South, the situation for Germany is quite different.

“The introduction of the eurozone in 1999 was criticized heavily at the time because it integrated very differently developed economies into one currency zone, which was not an ‘optimal currency zone.’ When Gerhard Schröder implemented ‘Agenda 2010,’ a series of reforms, as the German chancellor in the early 2000s, it did suppress domestic wages, and in that way increased the competitiveness of the German economy relative to the less industrialized countries of the eurozone. It increased the weight of the German economy at the expense of the other European countries, since they could not devalue their currencies anymore.

“As a result, Germany became the ‘export world champion’ for a while, but many domestic investments, such as renewal of basic infrastructure, were neglected, and the buying power of the domestic market was relatively weakened. Naturally all of this was overshadowed by subsequent developments, such as the loss of access to cheap Russian gas, and the loss of the Russian market for geopolitical reasons. Theoretically, the Trump tariffs could be a wake-up call for Germany to put its own house in order.”

Globalization and outsourcing had a similar impact in the U.S., and Trump wants to reverse this, but instead of listening to his free-market ideologues, he should “return to sound physical economy principles: investment in scientific and technological progress, international space cooperation and innovation in general. That means the education systems of the U.S. and European nations have to be reorganized to serve this orientation, and incentives have to be given to train a highly skilled labor force for this purpose.”

The alternative to unilateral actions to destroy the old order “is a cooperative approach, where real development perspectives for Africa, Asia, the Americas and Europe are put on the agenda for joint ventures and cooperative investments in infrastructure, industry, agriculture, science, health and education systems, financed through productive credits.

“The trade imbalances will be removed by making the pie bigger, taking into account the different characteristics and levels of development of the individual economies in a fair division of labor. ‘Humanity first’ will lead to a win-win outcome for everyone.”


Instead of Rearming for the Great War, We Need to Create a Global Security Architecture! – by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

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!


Zepp-LaRouche: ‘Germany’s Positive Contribution to the New World Order’

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) 


Zepp-LaRouche Keynoted ‘International Think Tank Forum for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road 2024’ in Guangzhou

On Nov. 22, Helga Zepp-LaRouche delivered a keynote address to the “International Think Tank Forum for the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road 2024” in Guangzhou, China, organized among others by the Guangdong Institute for International Strategies, which is based in Guangzhou. Her 10-minute speech described the leading role that China is playing in the world economy and as a leader in advanced technology, and how some in the West see this as a reason to have confrontation against China. Instead, she appealed to the G20 nations and others to work together to solve the migrant crisis, not by building walls, but by launching massive economic development in the Global South. She ended by saying that it was even more crucial now, given the recent escalation in the war in Ukraine, which threatens nuclear war.

The Institute is connected to the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (GDUFS), and is an advisor to the Guangdong Provincial Government.

On Nov. 23, Helga Zepp-LaRouche was appointed Special Advisor to the Guangdong Institute of International Strategies. In connection with her appointment, she spoke for one-hour about Lyndon LaRouche’s ideas at the Institute’s Yunshan Academic Salon, followed by a Q&A discussion. An audio file of her speech about Lyndon LaRouche at the Yunshan Academic Salon is available on the Schiller Institute in Denmark website, along with an audio file of the introduction to her address by Prof. Li Xing. He recently became the leading academic at the Guangdong Institute. He is also a professor at Denmark’s Aalborg University Department of Politics and Society. Prof. Li Xing addressed the Schiller Institute in Denmark’s May 25, 2022 online conference on the need for the new security and development architecture.

In September 2024, a delegation from the Guangdong Institute for International Strategies travelled to Denmark and participated in a seminar with the Schiller Institute in Denmark in order to learn more about each other and to discuss cooperation.

Here is an article in Executive Intelligence Review about the trip:

Maritime Silk Road Conference in Guangzhou: Advancing ‘New Quality Productive Forces’


Zepp-LaRouche Endorses and Calls for International support for UNGA Resolution 377 ‘Uniting for Peace’

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Dr. Chandra Muzaffar Letter to UN Leaders Insists, UNGA Must Act To Stop Gaza Genocide

July 29, 2024 (EIRNS)—Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and initiator of the International Peace Coalition, declares her endorsement of Dr. Chandra Muzaffar’s initiative and calls for international support for it.

Dr. Muzaffar, the President of the International Movement for a Just World (JUST), has posted his letter to the heads of all member states of the United Nations calling for taking emergency action to stop the continuing genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza and the occupied territories. It is worth reporting at length:

“I am writing on behalf of an international NGO committed to human dignity and social justice based in Malaysia. Like many other citizens groups, the International Movement for a Just World (JUST) is deeply concerned about the continuing catastrophe in Gaza and Palestine. In spite of numerous calls made by people everywhere to Israel to implement an immediate ceasefire and to facilitate the unhindered flow of essentials—water, electricity, food, fuel and medicines—to Gaza, the Israeli government is impervious to any suggestion that it should end immediately the wanton massacre of civilians, especially children and women who constitute the majority of those killed, and ensure that famine does not claim any more lives in that narrow, congested strip of land.

“Since it does not seem to be possible to restrain the Israeli government, we are now hoping that the UN General Assembly and Resolution 377 can be harnessed to curb Israel. The UNGA as you know can be asked to act if the UN Security Council has failed to overcome a prolonged conflict. A special session of the GA can be convened and it can take a vote on the catastrophe in Gaza and Palestine in general.

“It is our hope and the hope of many other citizens groups all over the world, especially the NGO World Beyond War, the initiator of this global campaign, that your government will give wholehearted support to the proposal to adopt [Resolution] 377, or the ‘Uniting for Peace’ Resolution. It will give a pivotal role to the UNGA in bringing to an end the genocide in Gaza. Uniting for Peace can not only impose an embargo upon the flow of arms to both Israel and Hamas, the Palestinian resistance group. It can also disarm both parties to the conflict and send a huge number of unarmed peacekeepers to Gaza, the West Bank, and East Jerusalem. They will ensure that there is no armed clash in all parts of Palestine and even in Israel until a conference of all parties involved directly or indirectly in the conflict reach an agreement on restoring the full rights of the Palestinians, establishing a state where there is equality for all its citizens regardless of religion or ethnicity and the right of return of all Palestinian refugees is recognised and implemented.

“JUST is confident given your commitment to peace that you will bring [Resolution] 377 to fruition in the coming session of the GA and help the land of the three faiths to enjoy tranquility and harmony once again.”

In solidarity, Dr Chandra Muzaffar, President, International Movement for a Just World”

United Nations General Assembly Resolution 377 (V), adopted November 3, 1950, empowers the General Assembly to override the United Nations Security Council—in this case, specifically the United States—under conditions that the world deems immediate action to be essential, in order to preserve the international peace and security of the world. The United Nations website, regarding Emergency Special Sessions, says that Resolution 377 “resolves that if the Security Council, because of lack of unanimity of the permanent members, fails to exercise its primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security in any case where there appears to be a threat to the peace, breach of the peace, or active aggression, the General Assembly shall consider the matter immediately with the view to making appropriate recommendations to members for collective measures, including, in the case of a breach of the peace or active aggression, the use of armed force if necessary, to maintain or restore, international peace and security.”


Helga Zepp-LaRouche Addresses Orvieto Forum Panel

The following is Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s transcript of her responses to two questions, at the Orvieto Forum of the panel on “The Spirit of Sovereignism Is Once Again Haunting Europe,” sponsored by the Indipendenza! party on July 27, 2024. Here she responds to the first question, which was presented in Italian. The English translation was not available. Zepp-LaRouches presentation can be watched here.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Well, I think we have a big crisis in Germany right now, because when the NATO summit took place, Scholz—the Chancellor—afterwards declared that the United States had decided to install long-range missiles in Germany. Now, that was not discussed in the German Parliament, there was no referendum among the German citizens, and these long-range missiles represent a clear escalation towards nuclear war. The Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov already answered by saying that Russia will counter that with similar measures, possibly including nuclear-armed missiles. So, the question is, how is it that the United States can make a decision which puts into jeopardy the very existence of Germany? When Scholz says, it was the United States who decided, who in the United States? We just experienced that there was an assassination attempt on Trump, where the cui bono is still a very open question. Then shortly afterwards, President Biden resigned [from running for reelection], because he clearly was not fit for the office anymore, and there was a big discussion that this was not new, but that he had not been fit for quite some time. So, Biden obviously did not make the decision to put these long-range missiles into Germany.

So, this is a big problem. If you think that some unknown entity is making a decision over the very existence of Germany, that just brings on the table, very clearly, the question that Germany at this point has zero sovereignty. This is, however, clear to a small, but significant portion of the German people, who, basically I would say, join most of what has been said here yesterday and today, meaning that they do not regard Russia as a mortal enemy, which the NATO summit just had declared. The NATO summit declared Russia to be a direct threat, the axis of Ukraine to NATO is irreversible, China to be a challenge for the Euro-Atlantic security order, all of which are assumptions which are not shared by the average people, because they have not been consulted, and the mass media is just trying to get people convinced to believe the narrative of NATO.

So, in reality, the present situation is one where NATO is trying to impose its global dictatorship, which would mean, decouple from Russia, from China, and with that, from the Global Majority. Because in a complete blowback to the policies coming from NATO for some time, there is now a new system emerging in the form of the BRICS, the SCO, and other organizations of the Global South, who are trying to create a new economic system, including a new currency, a new development bank. And Europe is very much in a position where we have to decide, do we want to be the vassals of NATO going into a Third World War with the majority of the world—the Global Majority? Or, do we want to line up with the economic bloc, which clearly is on the rise, to create a new system?

So, I think that we are right now in Germany in a very existential decision-making process, where I think we have to ally forces, and that’s why I’m very happy to be here, and I want to thank you for the invitation, because I think the Italians, the Germans, the French, and other people of Europe have to unite at this point to fight this existential danger. [applause]

Here is Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s response to the second question, also presented in Italian:

Zepp-LaRouche: We have a situation where the German economy is in a free-fall. The economic collapse is much, much worse than meets the eye, if you look at the media or so. I think Germany is heading towards an absolutely existential collapse. And I think, in that, unfortunately lies also a chance that people are waking up, because, it’s not just Germany which is collapsing: You have the trans-Atlantic financial system which is bankrupt. It’s sitting on $2.1 quadrillion in unpayable derivatives debt. That is a bubble which can detonate at any moment.

Now, there is a safety boat already, and that is the new economic system which is emerging in the Global Majority—the BRICS, the SCO, the Eurasian Economic Union, ASEAN: All of these countries are building an economic bloc. The danger is that if NATO puts pressure on Europe to decouple or to de-risk, not only are we heading towards a thermonuclear war, because any one of the crises—Ukraine, the situation between Israel and Gaza; Netanyahu was just in the United States lobbying for a war against Iran; the crisis around China and Taiwan. [applause] We have three regional crises which could go into a nuclear war in a very short period of time.

So, what is the way out? The way out is that we have to think completely differently. If we stick to normal party politics, or normal procedures, I don’t think there is a way out. But if we think in terms of a paradigm shift, that we are experiencing right now a historic transformation, where 500 years of colonialism is ending. Because of the strength of China, the countries of the Global South are now forming a new economic system. This is where economic growth is: The growth rates in Asia and the countries that are working with the BRI are extremely high, while Europe and the trans-Atlantic world are collapsing.

So I think the task we have to solve is we have to convince and make clear to the people of Europe that they do ally with the Global South. Germany is collapsing, but Germany is an export nation, and if we would say, “Let’s work with the BRICS, let’s work with ASEAN, let’s work with the Global South,” we could participate in the prosperity which is developing there. We have to create 2-3 billion new productive jobs in the Global South, which we could do. If all the countries of Europe would ally—hopefully with even Japan, and even the United States at some point—we could solve the migration issue in the only possible human way, in creating productive jobs so that the young people of Asia, of Latin America, of Africa want to stay home and build up their own countries. [applause]

So, I think the biggest challenge we have is, how do we get to the mainstream influence people? In Germany for example, the East Germans are not believing the NATO narrative, because they had a different socialization than the West Germans. There are very important people in all of Germany, who are already thinking the way I’m talking about now. But we have to succeed in making clear to the people who are reading BildzeitungFAZ, the mainstream media every day, that there is a hope.

So, I’m promoting, since the special military operation in Ukraine broke out, the idea that we have to have a new security and development architecture, which must include every single country on the planet, because if we create any kind of structure, which does not include every country, it is a step to war. That is the lesson of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended 150 years of religious war in Europe and it came to the conclusion that you have to pay attention to the interest of the other if you want to have peace: And that means the interest of every other.

Now, what I’m suggesting is not so far-fetched. On June 14th, President Putin of Russia proposed a new Eurasian economic security architecture. He did not mention the United States, he only said this Eurasian security architecture could be open to NATO countries. He left it undefined if that includes the United States or not. Now, Xi Jinping has made similar proposals by always talking about the need to have a shared community for the one future of mankind. He has proposed several initiatives—the Global Security Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, and the Global Civilizational Initiative—which go very much in the direction of what I’m saying.

So, I think we have to conspire, if you want, to put this idea of a new security and development architecture on the table, which includes every single country on the planet. And because the present constellation of governments is so difficult—to put it diplomatically—I have also called for the creation of a Council of Reason: that is the call to elder statesmen, retired military, people from science, from culture, who have merit in having contributed something important, to step forward and advise governments and suggest solutions. Because I think the present crop of governments is not fit for the job, and obviously, the electoral process is very difficult, and many obstacles are there. But I think if we would find in every single country on the planet, in all continents, the wisest people who would step forward, like there are examples: For example, the Council of Florence in the beautiful Italian Renaissance was such a council, bringing together the wisest people from the Roman Catholic Church and the Greek Orthodox Church. They managed to get unity in Christianity, at least for a certain period of time. The Peace of Westphalia itself was such a council of the wisest, and also the Truth and Reconciliation Commission which helped South Africa to get over apartheid was such a precedent.

So, I think we need to come up with new solutions, because the fate of humanity has never been so much in danger as right now.

Now, why is sovereignty the absolutely important precondition, and why we have to make that clear to people? Now, up until the 15th century, all government forms were oligarchical. You had kings, monarchs, aristocrats, a small elite of privileged people, who would keep the population deliberately backward, and there was no participation of the individual in government. Then, in the 15th century, through several influences, like the Italian Renaissance, which was a big step forward in the history of Europe, the government of Louis XI in France, where the income of the people doubled in 20 years, and through the writings of Nicolaus of Kues, who developed for the first time, the idea that government is only legitimate, if it has the consent of the governed. That only if the people agree with what the government is doing, is the government legitimate. That’s something which is completely lost today—you know, governments do whatever they like.

So, it was this invention by Nicolaus of Kues of the reciprocal relationship between the government and the governed, mediated through the representatives, whereby the individual—for the first time—could participate in government. And this is why we absolutely have to reject supranational institutions like the EU, because the EU is a gigantic bureaucracy, with enormously large numbers of people, no transparency, no accountability, and the participation of the individual citizen in Italy, in Kosovo, in Germany, does not exist.

So, I think this principle of sovereignty needs a broad discussion. Why do we need sovereignty? It’s an existential question.

Now, lastly, I think we need a cultural renaissance. And I heard some of the speakers yesterday and today speaking about the need to have the Greek, Roman, Christian foundation, and I fully agree. I would even go a step beyond, and say, we urgently need a Classical Renaissance of the best traditions of Europe. [applause] The Classical Greek, the Italian contributions of Dante, of Petrarca, of the Council of Florence, of the Golden Renaissance in Italy; likewise the German Classical period of Bach to Beethoven, from Lessing to Schiller: These are so important ideas, and our young people have completely forgotten it!

So we have to revive that and make it real. Furthermore, we have to have a cultural dialogue between the best traditions of Europe and the best traditions of China, of India, of Africa, of Latin America, because only if we understand the other culture, if we start to discover the beauty of the poetry, of the music, that we start to love these other countries, and that is the best medicine against any kind of chauvinism, or wrongly understood nationalism. [applause]

And I have not heard Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz, Annalena Baerbock, or any of these people ever speaking about any beautiful idea of Europe. And that is why they are completely unfit to save Europe at this point. [applause]

I think we are in a minority, obviously, right now, but I think we have the vision. I have a vision, where the world can be. I think we are, at this point, this close to thermonuclear war which would be the annihilation of civilization. But we are also only this far away, from making the jump, to create the new world economic order in which all countries can live in a win-win position. And it soon will become apparent that Europe has only one choice: Either go with NATO on the road to destruction, or join with the Global Majority towards a beautiful future. And I think this is what we have to make clear to people so that they understand the potential much better.

I would like to invite your party to participate in a conference we are planning, at this point: A European-wide conference where we are trying to put together people from Scandinavia, from France, from the Benelux, from Germany, and hopefully from Italy, as well. So, that is what I wanted to tell you. [applause]


Call To Create a Council of Reason

July 23, 2024 (EIRNS)—The following statement was written by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute and convener of the International Peace Coalition (IPC), on July 23, 2024. It is being made available for widespread distribution by the IPC and its collaborators worldwide.

In judging the outlook from the recent NATO summit in Washington, which defined Russia as the “most significant and direct threat,” China as a “systemic challenge for the Euro-Atlantic security,” and generally a perspective of a Global NATO, there seems to be no place anymore for diplomacy and dialogue as means to resolve conflicts. With the many escalations we see around the world, from Ukraine, to Southwest Asia, or the Indo-Pacific, each of these has the potential to evolve into a global nuclear conflict in the shortest time.

All the values which were once cheered so dearly, “democracy,” “human rights,” “freedom of speech,” and many others, have been eroded by double standards, evident to the whole world. In sum: The world community is experiencing a deep civilizational and cultural crisis, which needs to be addressed.

There are various peace initiatives, from Pope Francis, who offered his mediation in the Ukraine war, to the Chinese peace plan in collaboration with Brazil, to the initiative of several African leaders, to President Erdoğan of Türkiye, as well as others. But as long as the leading institutions in the West stick to the objective that Russia must be inflicted with a “strategic defeat,” as is now official EU policy, diplomacy and dialogue are banned.

There is an acute danger that the world could split into two separate blocs, the collective West on the one side, and the nations of the Global Majority on the other. If this happens, not only could we see a new edition of a cold war, economic decoupling, and tremendous fall-outs and even crashes, but it could lead to a global nuclear war which could end all life on Earth.

It seems that the leadership presently in positions of power have forgotten the horrible experiences of their parents and grandparents, who suffered through two world wars and who learned the painful lesson that nobody wins in a world war. The fact that there seems to be no longer any place for diplomacy and conflict resolution through dialogue, should horrify anyone who thinks through what the effect of a global nuclear war will be.

The UN may need a reform, but it is still the only available venue to bring all nations together. When its institutions are being eroded, the law of the jungle gains the upper hand. Only some countries currently respect the UN Charter, while others claim that they are the chosen ones who should preside over an undefined rules-based order, which however is not the rule of law, but the rule by law, arbitrarily applied wherever it seems to fit.

In all countries there are wise men and women, mostly from older generations, who see the present world crisis with great concern, and who could and must bring their knowledge and expertise to advise and develop options for how to get mankind out of this crisis and onto a better road to a safe future.

We, therefore, call on Elder Statesmen, religious leaders, former diplomats and elected officials, retired military and other civilian leaders—from all nations—to step forward and create a Council of Reason to explore the potential for a new international security and development architecture, which can take into account the interests of every single country on the planet.

There are precedents for such an approach, from different times and different circumstances, but they can give us a hint about what to do in the present crisis. To name only a few examples: The Council of Florence, which unified the Christian Church, at least for some short time; the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the Thirty Years’ War and laid the basis for the establishment of international law; and the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which found ways to overcome the wounds of Apartheid.

These examples should serve as an inspiration to come up with new and bold ideas for the creation today of a Council of Reason, bringing together all moral and intellectual reserves humanity has at this point to move the world away from the brink.


Helga Zepp-LaRouche – Keynote Address

Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Keynote Address to the April 13 international Schiller Institute Conference: The Oasis Plan: The LaRouche Solution for Peace Through Development Between Israel and Palestine and for All of Southwest Asia

Hello. Greetings to all of you from many different countries, from wherever you may be listening now. We are organizing this Oasis Conference to inject a perspective of hope and show a way out of an otherwise desperate, extremely dangerous, and indeed, catastrophic situation in Southwest Asia.

If we don’t replace this present escalation, which could rapidly turn into a full-fledged regional war, turning into a global nuclear war, it could mean the end of the human species on this planet. In order to avoid that short-term danger, what is needed is a cognitive jump, to conceptualize an entirely different approach, namely to define the economic and security self-interest of the Palestinians, the Arabs in general, as well as the Israelis, and then the neighboring countries in the larger region.

Why am I saying this?

What has happened in the last six months is unprecedented in all of history. A genocide, which is happening in real time, is transmitted live from the battlefield in Gaza to the TV sets in the living rooms of the world audience. So while in the first instance after the Hamas attack October 7th on Israeli villages causing 1200 deaths, the sympathy of much of the world was with Israel. That changed day by day, week by week, month by month, as billions of people could watch with their own eyes, unfiltered by commentators and narrative-authors. And what they saw was not a measured counter reaction by a country under attack, but a relentless ethnic cleansing in a sealed tiny territory by one of the most highly technologically equipped military forces in the world, using artificial intelligence for targeting of Hamas fighters and at the same time denying water, food, medical care, electricity, housing, clothing, sanitation, etc., to an entirely unarmed population. So far, the casualties on the Palestinian side are around 33,400, of which 17,000 are children. That is, 44% of all killed are children! And more than 1 million are starving to death acutely. That is why there have been hundreds of thousands in the streets in Islamic countries, in American and European cities, and in the universities!

In the aftermath of the Israeli attack on the Iranian consulate in Damascus, U.S. CENTCOM commander Gen. Michael Kurilla, is presently visiting Israel where he met with IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi, and Defense Minister Gallant, and visited the Air Force Command Centers, as well as the air bases. Western media are buzzing about a possible Iranian strike on a variety of targets in Israel, as early as today or two days from now. This morning, the Netherlands closed its embassy in Tehran, Lufthansa cancelled flights to Iran until next Thursday [April 18] and the Foreign Office of Germany has called for all German citizens to leave the country. It’s clearly a hair-trigger situation, which in the worst case could turn into regional and even global war.

Despite this escalation, and all the more because of it, it is therefore of the utmost urgency that a completely different approach is being introduced, namely the so-called Oasis Plan, which was proposed in 1975 by my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche. It is based on the idea to create an incentive for both the Palestinians and the Israelis, to replace the present feelings of deep injury, pain and despair for some and hatred for others, with a perspective of a common economic development for the creation of a better future for all generations to come. For the Palestinians it is of vital importance for their very existence, and for the Israelis they should listen to those who are warning them about the change in the perception of the world, such as Ami Ayalon, the former director of the Shin Bet during the time of the Oslo Accords. In an article in the current issue of Foreign Affairs, he warns Israel, that following the IDF attack on food trucks on Feb. 29, killing 112 people, and wounding 760—who were desperately trying to obtain the food that could save them from starvation—and the attack on the 7 World Central Kitchen workers, eradicated the legitimacy of the war in the eyes of the world; that it is seen no longer as a war in self-defense, but as an act of expansionist aggression. Furthermore, Ayalon writes that Israel can not win by eliminating the Hamas leadership, since that would not make the Hamas ideology disappear.

That is an understatement of the year. Even if this present crisis would not lead to a global annihilation of the entire human species, in which obviously also Israel would vanish, if the cycle of violence is not interrupted once and for all, the future for all will be a hell, in which one war will follow the next, as we have seen during the last 75 years, always naturally feeding the various arms producers of the growing military industrial complexes.

What we propose therefore is the updated version of the Oasis Plan first introduced by Lyndon LaRouche in 1975, which he proposed after attending a celebration of the Ba’ath Party in Iraq, attended by many leaders of the Non-Aligned Movement. For anyone visiting Southwest Asia, the most striking experience is the overwhelming presence of the desert and the obvious shortage of water, especially fresh water. It is also clear that the requirements for the water consumption for any population, Israeli or Arab, for a modern living standard, cannot be satisfied from the existing “natural” water resources. Furthermore, in all the military conflicts so far, the lack of water and the efforts to control the access to water have played a decisive role.

The existing aquifers in the region do not provide even approximately sufficient water, therefore even a fair sharing agreement would not solve the problem. In order to create large amounts of new fresh water a variety of methods must be deployed. The most obvious to begin with are several canals connecting the Mediterranean with the Dead Sea, and the Dead Sea with the Red Sea. Because of the difference in altitude, the Dead Sea is about 400 meters below the Mediterranean, so this allows for hydropower generation. But if one creates an additional canal from the Gulf of Aqaba to the Dead Sea, and then links the two canals by a cross canal, something else is possible. The basic idea is to increase the size of the canals sufficiently to allow for large-scale desalination projects along the banks of the canals with the aid of a number of nuclear power plants. Because of the breakthroughs in technology in the recent decades, the availability of the fourth generation pebble-bed reactor, the high-temperature reactor, that was originally developed by Professor Schulten in Jülich, Germany, and which is produced now by China, the safety concerns have been solved. There is also the option of using thorium-cycle reactors, which are uniquely usable for civilian consumption of nuclear energy. One could build a significant number of 300-megawatt electricity plants, what used to be called “nuplexes” or “duplexes” along the canals, providing fresh water for large-scale irrigation for reforestation, agriculture, the building of transport infrastructure and new cities.

Even if the cost of producing fresh water from desalination of saltwater with nuclear energy is relatively high, the economic benefit from the enormous economic activity generated this way in areas, where there was absolutely none before, is orders of magnitude larger than the amount originally spent. It is the unique power of human labor, that with the help of science and technology, it adds value to the process, so that the outcome of work is always higher in terms of value than all the elements which went into it. The energy-flux density used in this, determines the ratio of added value. So it really pays for itself.

One should therefore not only look at the projects mentioned here so far, but have the vision of how this region can look in one, two, three, four generations from now. Take as an example China, which has in the last 30 years greened several desert areas successfully. The Chinese economist Dr. Ding Yifan describes in his new book, The New Dynamics of Development: The Crisis of Globalization and China’s Solutions, how nearly one-third of the Hobq Desert in Inner Mongolia has been effectively treated, and has become an economic cluster of desert tourism, food, and photovoltaics, and how in the Sekhangba not far from Beijing, thousands of hectares of forest have been restored, and how on the border between Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia in the Mawusu Desert, 30% of the desert is now covered with vegetation, soil erosion has ceased, and the newly reclaimed farmland has reached 1.6 million acres, generating tremendous economic benefit for local farmers. Dr. Ding Yifan reports that Eric Solheim, UN Undersecretary and UNEP Executive Director, praised the Hobq Desert model which provides excellent experience for other countries and regions that face desertification problems, and that China’s experience in sand control can also spread to Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

In order to conceptualize a vision of development for the entire region: from India to the Mediterranean, from the Caucasus to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and how that area can develop as a future hub between Asia, Africa, and Europe, one should imagine the infrastructure density, for example, of Germany; where you have an integrated system of highways, railways, water systems, which represent the precondition for advanced industrial development and agriculture. There is no objective reason why Southwest Asia cannot achieve a comparable level in the future.

If the looming war can be avoided, the tectonic change which is taking place in the world today where the countries of the Global South are already working to create a new economic system, can create the conditions for the full development of Southwest Asia. Russia, China, India, Iran, the United Arab Emirates, and Egypt are already members of the BRICS; Saudi Arabia is a candidate, and others like Türkiye have indicated an intent to join. If all these countries would agree to the development perspective of the Oasis Plan and convene a comprehensive Southwest Asia conference on an emergency basis in the tradition of the Peace of Westphalia, the present looming catastrophe can be avoided, and the crisis turned into the beginning of a new era of peace and development.

Henry Kissinger, who pretended to be an expert on the Westphalian Order, actually grossly misunderstood it by insisting, that it required a “balancing power”—namely an unipolar policeman. He claimed that “the Westphalian system never applied fully to the Middle East,” since only Türkiye, Egypt, and Iran had an historical basis, while the borders of the other states would reflect the arbitrariness of the victors of World War I. He obviously was referring to the intent for future manipulation of the Sykes-Picot Treaty.

That is why the world must return to the actual Peace of Westphalia and establish a new international security and development architecture, which takes into account the interest of every single country on the planet. That new architecture must emphatically include Russia, China, the U.S., as well as a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine.

According to the Cost of War Project of the Watson Institute at Brown University in Rhode Island, in the 20 years from 9/11 in 2001 until 2021, the U.S. military expenditures including collateral costs were $8 trillion, which was spent for military and counter-terrorism measures in 85 countries, not including U.S. special operations forces, CIA operations, “military information support operations,” “psychological operations,” etc. In this same period, more than 940,000 people have been killed by direct war violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan; and the number of civilians who have died as a result of indirect causes, is significantly higher. If that amount of money—$8 trillion—would have been invested in programs to overcome poverty and underdevelopment, the world would be today a prosperous garden, and the United States would be celebrated as a friend of humanity.

I can already hear the critics who say that this perspective of an Oasis plan as the starting point for a new international security and development architecture in the spirit of the encyclical Populorum Progessio of Pope Paul VI is not realistic, or even worse, completely utopian.

When Friedrich Schiller wrote his trilogy Wallenstein about the powerful warlord of the 30 Years’ War, he portrayed Wallenstein, not in the way the handed down historic interpretation characterized him, but as a man who really wanted to end the war and reach peace. In the play, Schiller puts the vision of the Peace of Westphalia, which was reached 16 years later, in the mouth of Max Piccolomini, the fiancé of Wallenstein’s daughter Thekla. In a conversation with his father and a representative of the Vienna Court, Questenberg, Max says:

“You make him [Wallenstein] an indignant man and, God knows!

To what even more, because he spares the Saxons,

Seeks to inspire confidence in the enemy

Which is the only way to peace;

For if war does not end in war,

Where then shall peace come from?”

That is the whole idea: “For if war does not end in war, where then shall peace come from?” To inspire confidence in the enemy, that is the only way to peace! At the abyss of what could become the end of all life on the planet, are we, mankind, the creative species; and can we define a solution out of this danger? So let us put the Oasis Plan on the table of all governments of the world!

Thank you.


Christmas Message from Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Turn Swords into Plowshares!

Christmas Message from Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute December 21, 2023

No one will be able to claim, as historians said of World War I, that we sleepwalked into World War III. The war cries today are so deafening that they threaten to awaken from the dead all of the victims of previous wars, including the First and Second World Wars.

Tax money is poured into military spending of all kinds, while civilian economies collapse, infrastructure decays, and schools and hospitals are closed or fall apart. In the United States, the Pentagon’s defense budget for 2024 amounts to nearly one trillion dollars, while the entire EU budget and all national budgets in Europe are slated for militarization. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius is demanding that society become “war-ready” and has asserted that we only have five to eight years before a major military confrontation with Russia. American think-tanks are working feverishly on “war games” for a major war with China, which should, in their view, take place sooner rather than later. See the article by the Council of Foreign Relations magazine, Foreign Affairs, “The Big One: Preparing for a Long War With China.”

How did we end up on this trajectory, which can only take us to a Third World War, a global nuclear war between the U.S. and NATO on the one side, and Russia and China on the other, and thus nuclear Armageddon?

President Eisenhower, at the end of his mandate, warned in 1961 against the explosion of the power of the military-industrial complex (MIC), saying: 

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

Since then, history has unfortunately shown that Eisenhower’s advice was not followed, and that this “unwarranted influence” has spread throughout society and reduced governments to institutions doing the bidding of that MIC.

The decisive turning point occurred when the Soviet Union dissolved. Instead of establishing a new global order of peace, as Lyndon LaRouche had envisioned with his proposal for the Eurasian Land Bridge, which would have integrated the Eurasian continent economically and ensured close ties between East and West, the neocons opted for Anglo-American dominance over a unipolar world. The Wolfowitz Doctrine of 1992 stipulated that no country or group of countries would ever be allowed to surpass the U.S. in political, economic or military power.

Contrary to promises made to Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev at the time of German reunification, that NATO would not expand an “inch” eastward, NATO did just that. There were five NATO expansions extending 1,000 km eastward toward Russia’s borders, including the installation of potentially offensive missile defense systems in that area, which all preceded the Russian special operation of February 24, 2022 in Ukraine. A new Cuban Missile Crisis at a snail’s pace, so to speak.

The U.S. and NATO countries went for political control, for the idea that all countries in the world had to adopt the Western neoliberal model, i.e. regime change, color revolutions; interventionist wars in which many millions have died; military bases built around the world; war training for their foreign allies; imperial expansion of the EU and NATO up to the point of creating a global NATO as a means to contain real and potential rivals; sanctions aimed at affecting regime change; and finally weaponization of the dollar. All this under the banner of the “rules-based order,” liberal democracy, and human rights.

China, on the other hand, went for economic development and overcoming poverty for 850 million of its own citizens, initially, and then increasingly for win-win cooperation with the nations of the Global South through the New Silk Road Initiative. Thanks to this cooperation, those nations were given the chance for the first time to free themselves from the poverty and underdevelopment dating back to the colonial era. Today, 150 countries of the Global South are working together with China on thousands of New Silk Road projects, building roads and high-speed railroads, ports, airports, development corridors, industrial parks and more.

In the past ten years since China put the Belt and Road Initiative on the agenda, unbounded cultural optimism has spread among nations of the Global South, which has long since become the Global Majority, with the idea that they will soon become fully developed nations. They are responding to the weaponization of the dollar with de-dollarization, i.e., by trading in their own currencies and eventually planning their own reserve currency, by deepening the strategic partnership between Russia and China, creating their own organizations, such as the BRICS Plus, which will include ten members as of January 1, 2024, and dozens more very soon. 

Conclusion: the attempt to respond to the disintegration of the Soviet Union with the utopia of a unipolar world order, held together by military power, has been a monumental failure. It has led to an unprecedented strategic blowback.

Therefore, the most crucial question is: Can we in the West, the U.S. and European nations, correct our political course in time, and choose cooperation with the Global South instead of confrontation? China and Russia have repeatedly emphasized that the Belt and Road Initiative and the BRICS countries are open to cooperation with the West!

The main difficulty lies in the fact that much of the economic capacities in the United States, and a growing share of those in Europe, have been taken over by the MIC, and are so closely entwined with the big investment firms and asset management companies of Wall Street and the City of London, that a better term is the military-industrial-financial complex (MIFC). (See this package of material on the MIFC.) 

Technically speaking, it would be relatively easy to re-tool these capacities for civilian purposes, and rather than producing bombers, fighter jets, and missiles, to produce modern high-speed rail systems, inherently safe nuclear reactors of the 4th generation, and nuclear fusion reactors, as well as space stations for international space travel. In other words, all the industrial capacity currently used for the destruction of actual physical value—what else are weapons systems good for?—could serve the production of useful goods that promote the common good. Instead of tanks and ammunition, they could produce schools and hospitals, and help our nations to have prosperous economies once again!

Russian economist Sergei Glazyev put it in a nutshell in a message on the occasion of what would have been Lyndon LaRouche’s 100th birthday, which he unfortunately did not live to see. LaRouche not only forecast with farsightedness the crisis of the neoliberal system, but also proposed solutions to overcome this crisis. The countries that rejected his solutions are in crisis today, while those that implemented his ideas are prospering, Glazyev stated: 

“In practically all the major countries in the world that today are developing successfully—above all India, and China—there are partisans of LaRouche. They have used his thoughts and ideas, for creating their economic miracles. It is the principles of Physical Economy championed by LaRouche, that today underlie the Chinese economic miracle and are there in the foundations of India’s economic development policy. The supporters of LaRouche in those countries exert a fruitful, very positive, and constructive influence on economic policy-shaping in these leading nations of the new world economic paradigm.”

It’s not yet too late. We need to replace the war cries for ever “more weapons” with a return to diplomacy and the idea that we can—and must—resolve all conflicts through negotiation, if we are to avoid ending up in global nuclear war and a nuclear winter, which would wipe out all memory of humanity’s existence.

Instead of the greed of the speculators of the MIFC, Wall Street, and the City of London, whose high rates of profit rely on taxpayer money pouring into new wars, we must defend the existential interest of the population: The interests of farmers, small and medium-sized businesses, train drivers, bakers, etc.

Swords to plowshares! 

We are many, they are few! 

For cooperation with the nations of the Global South!


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