Helga statement, article, transcript

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

June 18—The following statement was released today by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and leader of the Schiller Institute.

The signing of a memorandum of understanding between Washington and Tehran is definitely an historic breakthrough, ending hostilities between them, reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and hopefully preventing in this way the further collapse of the world economy into a depression. The outcome of this war, which lasted more than three-and-a-half grueling months, is a significantly changed strategic situation, where it is not yet decided whether the truce can be transformed into a lasting peace, or will only have been a pause until the next, and possibly worse, round of fighting erupts.

What is clear, however, is the fact that the largest military power on Earth, the United States, was unable to defeat a medium-sized power, Iran. Neither regime change, nor the neutralization of its ballistic missile system, nor the elimination of Iran’s nuclear program was accomplished, due to the unexpected resilience of the Iranian population which, irrespective of the government’s current policies, united around its identity as the ancient civilizational state of thousands of years—Persia! Iran, while suffering significant losses, nevertheless is the clear winner of this war, not least since it has discovered the significant reach it has with control over the Strait of Hormuz. This control over one of the choke-points of the world economy has now become a factor in the strategic situation, which nobody can afford to ignore. Moreover, the fact that Iran was able to demonstrate the inability of the United States to defend those Gulf states hosting U.S. bases, will have permanent consequences for the security architecture of Southwest Asia.

High praise definitely goes primarily to Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who was crucial in the mediation between the United States and Iran, and in defending diplomacy over war as a method of conflict resolution, as well as to many other forces of the region attempting to avoid escalation into a global catastrophe.

Obviously, the big Damocles sword hanging over the situation is the reaction by Israel, the other big loser in the situation. Even with a second war within a year and backed by the strongest military power, Israel was unable to accomplish any of its war aims. Prime Minister Netanyahu is currently under severe attack by opposition leaders, and even members of his own Cabinet, for his failure, while the big sticking point is that part of the new agreement provides for a ceasefire in Lebanon, which Israel totally rejects. But Israel will have to realize the changed international climate, in which the vast majority of world opinion has shifted, and even a growing majority of the American population thinks that the Israeli government has gone entirely too far in respect to the Palestinians and Iran.

President Trump is currently balancing his interests between his financial supporters, who favor an even harder line against Iran, the hawks in the Republican Party who want the whole deal to be decided in Congress so as to be able to block it, and Trump’s old MAGA base, whose support for him is dwindling, because they feel he has betrayed his election promises. With the midterm elections a few months away, Trump has to weigh his gains and losses.

So, what should be done to ensure that the agreement holds and lasting peace can be secured? The answer is, that a real vision of economic development for the entire region of Southwest Asia has to be seriously put on the agenda: the Extended Oasis Plan, proposed by the Schiller Institute. Only if all the populations of the countries of the region, especially the youth, have a perspective of ending the war forever, and building a bright and prosperous future, will there be an incentive for a lasting peace.1

The deeper answer to that question requires one to consider the larger strategic context of the promises to end all wars. Trump faces the deadline of the midterm elections. While the crisis in Southwest Asia has a history dating back thousands of years, and is multi-faceted and very complex, it must be seen, just as the Ukraine war and almost any other current conflict must be, as part of the overall geopolitical situation. That situation is characterized by the failed attempt of the Collective West dominated by the Anglosphere to establish a unipolar world dominance after the end of the Cold War. That attempt turned out to be very short-lived, since the combination of six NATO expansions to the East, breaking all promises not to do so, as well as the policies of regime change, color revolutions, unilateral sanctions, and interventionists wars produced an enormous blowback, especially among the countries of the Global South. They have not accepted the NATO narrative on all these events, but instead have recognized the obvious effort to revive an imperial and neocolonial order. Since the historically unprecedented rise of China enables the countries of the Global South, for the first time, to overcome 500 years of colonialism, they seek to establish a new economic order that will establish a more just and equal system for all.

Part of any conflict, therefore, is the dynamic in the background, whereby the West aims to maintain its dominance in the strategic situation and, as some politicians put it, to “ruin Russia” and to, at a minimum “contain China.” That, however, is only in the interest of the very few in the establishments of some Western countries, and not in the self-interest of the peoples of Europe and the United States.

As the recent war in Southwest Asia has demonstrated with undeniable clarity: The old world order, as it was established after the Second World War, and then again after the end of the Cold War, is disintegrating. It is therefore of the highest strategic importance to put a new international security and development architecture on the table, which must take into account the interest of every single country on the planet. The situation is comparable to the circumstances of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended 150 years of religious warfare in Europe, after the warring parties realized that, if the war were to continue, no one would be left alive to enjoy a victory. So they arrived at the realization that in order to have peace, one has to respect the interest of the other, and specifically, of All others!

There are several initiatives on the table already, which reflect an understanding that the international order urgently needs to be reorganized, such as the new White Paper of the Chinese State Council, “More Just and Equitable Global Governance: China’s Principles, Proposals and Actions,” which proposes an improvement of the international order based on the idea of a community of a shared future of mankind.
Coming from a very different background but arriving at essentially the same idea of the necessity of an urgent reform, is Pope Leo XIV. His just-issued new Encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, not only criticizes the present tendencies to create a new “Tower of Babel,” but also provides a very substantive proposal on what principles a new system worthy of the magnificent human species must be established.2 This author has proposed ten principles, to be taken into consideration, on how such a new security and development architecture could be conceptualized.3

Therefore, one should not just comment on the agreement reached between the United States and Iran, speculating on whether the situation in Lebanon, and Israel’s refusal to accept its inclusion in the deal, will turn out to be the main factor leading to the failure of the agreement. If the Extended Oasis Plan is put on the agenda by several countries of the region, it can become the first step to bringing the whole world into a new paradigm, in which war is made obsolete as a means of conflict resolution—an existential matter in the era of thermonuclear weapons—and an equitable order is realized, which allows the well-being of all nations.

1. Schiller Institute Oasis Plan webpage, https://schillerinstitute.com/the-oasis-plan-the-larouche-solution-for-southwest-asia/
2. https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2026/06/18/urgent-appeal-from-pope-leo-xiv-stop-repent-before-its-too-late-the-new-name-for-peace-is-development/
3. https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/11/30/ten-principles-of-a-new-international-security-and-development-architecture/

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

June 17th 2026

Of all the important and urgent speeches delivered recently by politicians and experts from many countries with the aim of preventing the strategic situation from escalating into a catastrophe that would wipe out the human race, Pope Leo XIV’s intervention—with his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas (1) and the addresses he delivered during his recent trip to Spain (2)—is, in my best judgment, by far the most important. When historians later examine the question of what—hopefully—proved to be the decisive factor in bringing Western civilization, in the midst of a deep spiritual and cultural crisis, to change course, they will come upon the role played by the Pope, and the willingness of a sufficiently large number of believers and people of good will to take his words to heart and bring about a change in policy.

Without ever having to name the guilty parties, Pope Leo XIV defines with absolute clarity the structures of sin that today pose existential threats to humanity—structures whose concrete relevance everyone can recognize, and which must be urgently eliminated. At the same time, he indicates the way out of the crisis, which is within reach—namely, that people summon up the highest ideal of the Christian view of humanity, and put it into practice. Precisely because the mainstream media largely suppress these texts by the Pope, Christians and peace-loving people need to create a political climate in which no politician seeking re-election can afford to admit his or her ignorance of his writings and speeches. For that of course, as many people as possible must first not only read, but also study, this encyclical and these addresses.

At the very moment when the first multi-billionaire on the basis of an AI fiction declares himself the first trillionaire, this encyclical warns against a new Tower of Babel, in which a new form of idolatry pays homage to profit at the expense of the weak, a dehumanization that uses others as means, an age-old yet ever-renewed temptation that today comes cloaked in technology. And coinciding with the entry into force of the EU Migration Pact—which, as of June 12, will accelerate procedures for deporting refugees at the EU’s external borders and thus massively restrict the right to asylum—Pope Leo XIV counters with the Christian principles as to how the migration issue should be addressed.

When one considers the encyclical and the Popeʼs speeches in Spain together, they represent a complete reckoning with the entire political agenda of the liberal West, and do so with a clarity that should compel all politicians who have sworn an oath of office to serve the common good (above all, those whose parties bear the word “Christian” in their names) to completely reverse their policies.

Among the various aspects of these policies, all of which are building blocks of the new Tower of Babel, are the idolatry of profit at the expense of the poorest, the financial interests that fuel tensions and conflicts to keep the war industry up and running, and support for modern forms of slavery, where child labor is routine and the health of adolescents is sacrificed for the profit of an upper class whose consumption habits would once have been considered extravagant, while the poor lack the basic necessities. This also includes a new form of colonialism that enslaves not only people’s bodies, but also data and information about them—ranging from health records to epidemiological profiles, genetic charts, and demographic data.

In the encyclical, the Pope laments the “normalization of war” and recalls Pope Paul VI’s powerful 1965 address to the UN General Assembly: “Never again war! Never again war!” (3) Despite a deep desire for peace, Leo writes, the intervening 60 years have been marked by conflicts of astonishing brutality, claiming the lives of countless civilian and innocent victims, mass displacements, social destabilization, and long-lasting wounds. Today, he notes, we are witnessing an alarming paradigm shift in which rearmament and war are once again publicly promoted as instruments of international politics, while the ethical principles that would previously have opposed war are being systematically undermined. Desires for territorial expansion, which we thought had been overcome, are returning, and a disconcerting loss of historical memory is becoming apparent, as eyewitnesses to the Holocaust and World War II pass away. (No, this is not Russian President Vladimir Putin speaking, or Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, but Pope Leo XIV) And so, the Pope argues, war is being prepared for culturally through simplistic narratives and a “friend-or-foe” mindset, disinformation, and the instillation of fear.

Under the heading “Force without limits,” the Pope addresses the growth of the military-industrial complex: “The armaments industry, and countries that supply weapons, profit from a market that thrives precisely on conflicts. In this sense, there are also financial interests that contribute to fueling tensions in various regions of the world.” And further in section 194: “ In the past, recognition of the threat posed by weapons capable of destroying all of humanity had promoted paths toward détente and disarmament negotiations. Unfortunately, this approach has been left behind, and the evolution of nuclear arsenals—including the prospect of its “tactical” use—makes the use of such weapons seem less improbable.”

The encyclical observes that we live in a time of significant intellectual and cultural blindness, and that a form of historical nihilism fosters the illusion “that the atrocities of the 20th century cannot be repeated, that the atrocities of the twentieth century can never happen again. Yet, in reality, the same dynamics are re-emerging under new guises…. In many countries, including those in the Global South, increased military spending is presented as the only response to an uncertain future or perceived threats. Meanwhile, the real cost falls on the poorest, who see resources for healthcare, education and social services being reduced.”

Pope Leo quotes Pope Pius XI’s encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, which condemns the concentration of economic power in the hands of a few, and he refers to Pope Paul VI warning of the dangers of extraordinary scientific, technological, and economic progress if it is not does not go together with corresponding ethical and social progress.

This applies in particular to AI, whose assessment and critique is the main focus of the encyclical. Starting from the decades-long debate over whether computers might one day surpass human creativity, he explains the renewed discussion regarding AI:

“99. It is not possible to provide a single, comprehensive definition of AI. “What can be stated, however, is that we must avoid the misconception of equating this type of ‘intelligence’ with that of human beings. These systems merely imitate certain functions of human intelligence. In doing so, they often surpass human intelligence in speed and computational capacity, offering tangible benefits across many fields. Yet this power remains entirely tied to data processing. So-called artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate language, behavior and analytical skills, or even simulate empathy and understanding, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. Even when these tools are described as capable of ‘learning’, their way of doing so is different from that of a human person. It is not the experience of those who allow themselves to be shaped by life and grow over time through choices, mistakes, forgiveness and fidelity. Rather, it is a form of statistical adaptation based on data and feedback, which can be very effective, but does not imply inner growth.”

Pope Leo XIV argues from the perspective of the Augustinian tradition, according to which there need be no contradiction between faith and knowledge, and quotes Pope Francis, who “recognizes the importance of listening to scientific research and of encouraging a serious and honest debate among experts while welcoming a diversity of opinions.”

The Right To Not Have To Migrate

Less honest, however, according to the Italian newspaper La Veritá and the French Le Figaro, were the liberal media, which reportedly provided a rather incomplete account of the Pope’s speeches in Spain by only covering his calls to accept and integrate refugees, while omitting the parts where the Pope defended people’s right not to have to emigrate and emphasized the need to address the root causes of their fleeing.

In fact, Pope Leo XIV’s six-day trip to Spain, which took him to Madrid, Barcelona, Gran Canaria, and Tenerife, was an intervention of extraordinary historical significance. For even today, 87 years after the end of the Civil War, the political debate in Spain remains extremely polarized, and issues such as the role of the Church and migration are emotionally charged. In this context, the way in which Pope Leo elevated the migration issue to such a high level was very important in respect to Spain’s internal situation and also set a precedent for all of Europe. There could hardly be a greater contrast between the EU Migration Pact—which came into force on the very last day of the Pope’s trip—and the migration policy advocated by Pope Leo XIV. While the EU wants to get rid of people as quickly as possible and lock them up in so-called “reception camps”—which Pope Francis used to describe as “concentration camps” and which certainly resemble prisons—the Pope has a completely different, humane perspective on the problem. In his address to the Spanish Parliament, he emphasized:

“The affirmation of human dignity cannot remain abstract when so many people are forced to leave everything behind in search of peace, security, and a future. The tragic drama of migration also challenges the conscience of nations and the ethical foundation of the international order today. Numerous men, women, and children are forced, by often dramatic circumstances, to leave their communities and leave behind loved ones, histories, and ties. This reality goes beyond any purely demographic or economic analysis: it constitutes an eminently moral and legal issue. Wherever people are discriminated against because of their national, ethnic, religious or linguistic origin, or because of their economic or social status, the universal principle of the equal dignity of all human beings is seriously violated.” (4)

He then went on to quote from his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas:

“81. A litmus test for social justice today is the treatment of migrants, refugees and those forced to move due to poverty, violence, climate change and environmental disasters. The way a society treats them reveals whether its sense of justice is driven by fear or by the spirit of fraternity. Pope Francis urged us to see migrants not simply as a problem to be managed, but as a living image of the People of God on the move. [109] They are people with dignity, resources and dreams, who have the right to be treated with respect and to ask to become active members of the societies that welcome them. Social justice in this area entails at least two complementary commitments. On the one hand, this means protecting the rightful hopes of those forced to leave by ensuring safe and legal routes, dignified conditions for receiving them, and genuine pathways to integration. On the other hand, it means promoting the right to remain in one’s homeland in peace and security by addressing the root causes that force people to migrate, including those linked to economic injustices and the climate crisis. When these rights are respected, migration can become an opportunity for encounter and mutual enrichment among peoples.”

A Call to Action

Western governments are hereby called upon to take Pope Leo XIV’s urgent appeal as an opportunity to immediately undo the inhumane and, from an economic standpoint utterly incompetent, migration policy as formulated in the EU Migration Pact. Instead, cooperation on an equal footing with the nations of the Global South must be placed on the agenda, with a serious commitment to eliminating the root causes of migration.

The right “to remain in one’s own homeland in peace and security by addressing the root causes that force people to migrate” is relatively easy to implement if the political will is mustered to do so. What the nations of Africa, Asia, and Latin America need is a genuine industrial and agricultural development policy aimed at realizing their full potential for the benefit of their own populations. The Global South, which in reality represents the global majority of approximately 85 percent of humanity, is in the process of leaving behind 500 years of colonialism and implementing, above all in cooperation with China, infrastructure projects and investments in key technologies that will enable these nations to fully establish value chains within their own borders. Instead of clinging to an inhuman neo-colonialist mindset, the governments of Europe and the United States are called upon to immediately commit to international cooperation aimed at completely eradicating poverty and underdevelopment in all nations on this planet.

For example, by the year 2050, Africa will have a population of approximately 2.5 billion people—one billion more than today. This means that it is in the very best interest of both Africa and Europe to create one billion productive jobs on the African continent over the next 25 years. Even though most other regions of the world face negative demographic projections, effective programs to overcome poverty are necessary everywhere if social explosions between the billionaire class and the impoverished billions are to be prevented.

The Schiller Institute has worked out concrete development programs to this end as to how clearly defined investment programs in basic infrastructure, energy production and distribution, and communications can create the conditions necessary to industrialize the nations of the Global South, and how cooperation between the BRICS countries, the industrialized nations of the North, and developing countries with joint ventures can achieve the goal of addressing the root causes of migration. (5) (6)

This would fulfill the call of the encyclical Populorum Progressio, that true peace can only be achieved through social justice and the overcoming of global inequality, “whose injustice cries out to heaven.” This call by Pope Paul VI, in his encyclical—”Development is the new name for peace”—is the urgent imperative of the hour!

In his address to the Spanish Parliament, Pope Leo XIV called for precisely this form of international cooperation:

“No nation can face a challenge of this magnitude on its own. Therefore, a coordinated, supportive, and effective response is indispensable, one capable of guaranteeing protection, welcome, and real opportunities for integration to those who migrate. When the institutional response is accessible, just and coordinated, borders cease to be places of abandonment and can become spaces for the responsible protection of human dignity.” (4)

In his encyclical, which bears the title Magnifica Humanitas—”Magnificent Humanity”—a title that can certainly be regarded as programmatic, the Pope refers quite specifically to the highest ideal of classical Greek thought, thereby following the Augustinian idea that the harmony between that thought and Christian revelation means there need be no contradiction between faith and knowledge. “23. The Church regards all who sincerely seek “truth, goodness and beauty” as companions on the journey, and considers them as “precious allies” in defending the dignity of every person and in caring for creation,” he writes. In accordance with this ideal of “the True, the Good, and the Beautiful,” the encyclical defines art and culture—when they are authentic—as a protective wall against the “normalization of evil.” And how necessary this is for contemporary human society, in which phenomena that can ultimately only be described as satanic seem to dominate nearly the entire so-called entertainment world. Pope Leo attributes an “almost prophetic value” to certain works of art, such as Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, describing them as a “desire for unity.”

Perhaps the most important idea is that Pope Leo, in memory of Pope Paul VI, calls for the creation of a “civilization of love”:

“Today, we must resolutely recover this vision, for the civilization of love is no naïve utopia, but a demanding project, which consists in translating charity into structures of justice, giving institutional form to fraternity and regarding others—whether individuals or peoples—as allies necessary for building the common good. As the Encyclical Letter Fratelli tutti reminded us, only this social love is capable of becoming a culture and a norm, and thereby of bringing about a stable international order, transforming mere armed coexistence into a community with a shared future.” [186]

It should give pause to all people in the nations of the so-called Collective West—that is, people living in a system dominated by liberal values, which has produced both the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the EU Migration Pact as responses to the refugee crisis —that both the head of the Catholic Church and the Chinese government have reached essentially the same conclusion: that the only a conception of the One humanity as a community of shared destiny can be the basis for peace.

The encyclical Magnifica Humanitas is Pope Leo XIV’s urgent call for change. The Schiller Institute’s development programs show a concrete path to overcoming the refugee crisis. What humanity needs now is a movement to promote the idea: “Development is the new name for peace”!

Notes

1. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/encyclicals/documents/20260515-magnifica-humanitas.html

2. Pope in Canary Islands: Remain united through the Cross and the Eucharist—Vatican News

3. https://holyseemission.org/contents/statements/address-of-the-holy-father-paul-vi-to-the-united-nations-organization.php; https://www.vaticannews.va/en/vatican-city/news/2025-10/never-again-war-pope-paul-vi-s-unheeded-but-ever-relevant-cry.html

4. https://www.vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/en/speeches/2026/giugno/documents/20260608-spagna-parlamento.html

5. https://cloud.schillermeet.de/s/BQZXjgHWf78MJW5?dir=/&editing=false&openfile=true;

6. https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2024/11/24/report-development-drive-means-billions-of-new-jobs-no-refugees-no-war/

The following press release was issued on June 5 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute.

Viewed from a deeper historical perspective, Germany’s failure to win a rotating seat on the UN Security Council offers an urgently needed opportunity to reorient German policy. This author has long argued that, in light of the entrenched geopolitical confrontation between NATO, on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other, the Global South needs to make its voice heard more loudly and forcefully in the international debate—and that is precisely what these states have done by rejecting Germany’s candidacy. German institutions should use the result to conduct an honest analysis of a foreign policy, that has clearly been a complete failure, and to redefine one corresponding to Germany’s true interest.

The initial reaction from Foreign Minister Wadephul and in most media commentaries, however, follows the same long-standing pattern of self-deception: Russia was to blame, they claimed, then the bureaucracy, the application process started too late, etc., etc. Others, such as the FAZ, commented that the UN isn’t that important anyway, and the Hessian Minister for European and International Affairs, Manfred Pentz of the CDU, even called for Germany to cut its financial contributions to the UN as a result.

The only thing that will really help Germany is take a hard look at the causes of the “bitter disappointment,” which could only have come as a surprise to those who have been sitting on their Eurocentric high horse.

The shift in international perception of German politics has been in full swing for several years now. The generally positive image of Germany that once prevailed throughout the world—that of the land of Bach and Beethoven, of Goethe, Schiller, and the Humboldts, of a nation of engineering and inventors—has been lost for quite some time.

The de facto unconditional support for Israel’s actions in Gaza—for which the International Criminal Court has issued arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant—has damaged Germany’s reputation, and this damage will continue to grow as long as the governments in Berlin maintain their position. For, while the crimes of the Nazis only became fully known and understood by the general public after the end of World War II, Israel’s crimes in Gaza—and increasingly also in the West Bank and Lebanon—are in the spotlight of the global public. The fact that Germany did not approve the extension of the mandate for the UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) in December 2025 under pressure from Israel, and has cracked down brutally on pro-Palestinian protests domestically, has further tarnished Germany’s image.

People everywhere are talking about the double standard that prevails in this country. Berlin constantly claims it is the champion of international law, but Chancellor Merz finds the kidnapping of an elected head of state in Venezuela too “complex” to take a position on, and needs “time” to assess it. That was five months ago, and he has still not reached a conclusion.

During the first unprovoked war of aggression by Israel and the United States against Iran in June 2025, Merz uttered the unspeakable words that “Israel is doing the dirty work for all of us”; during the second such attack by the U.S. and Israel, the consequences of which threaten to plunge the global economy into the abyss, he has remained reserved, merely stating that it is not our war.

Virtually no one in the countries of the Global South agrees with the endlessly repeated mantra that Russia attacked Ukraine in an unprovoked war. These countries recognized all too clearly in NATO’s actions the parallels to their own oppression by the colonial powers, and they also remember very vividly who came to their aid during their struggle for independence at the time, namely, the Soviet Union and China.

But what is manifestly lacking in Berlin, is a feel for the tectonic epochal shift now taking place worldwide. At the time of German reunification and the end of the Cold War, Germany undoubtedly enjoyed the sympathy of the so-called developing countries. But it was lost, step by step, to the extent that Germany and the countries of the collective West attempted to impose a unipolar world order through methods such as color revolutions, regime change, unilateral sanctions, and wars of intervention.

The combination of all aspects of this imperial and neocolonialist policy has produced a massive boomerang effect, in the course of which these countries have increasingly sought to distance themselves from the influence of the collective West. China’s economic rise—unprecedented in history—and its policy of win-win cooperation offer the nations of the Global South the chance to finally overcome the 500-year period of colonialism.

The defeat in the UN vote is the long-overdue wake-up call for Germany to finally free itself from its lamentable status as a colony of the Anglosphere (the whole world ridicules our lack of reaction to Biden’s announced sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines), and to stand on the right side of history. This can only mean cooperation with the countries of the Global Majority, that is, with 85% of humanity, on equal footing as equal partners. Instead of spreading racist chimeras, such as Josep Borrell’s fiction of a European garden surrounded by a jungle, we should help Africa, Asia, and Latin America build beautiful gardens of their own. Additionally, we could also ensure that our own bridges are repaired in a timely manner, that our industry recovers, and that our students once again learn something.

In that way, even if unintentionally, Annalena Baerbock will have contributed something positive to German politics through her fraudulently obtained presidency of the UN General Assembly, from which position she had to announce Germany’s defeat in the vote.

The following statement was issued March 9 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, for immediate and widespread international circulation and endorsement. We encourage signatures of endorsement from religious leaders of all faiths, as well as from people of good faith, to urgently develop the dialogue of civilizations needed for world peace.

Holy Father,

I am writing to you at this grave hour of mankind, as you may be the only person who could hopefully avoid a descent into what you yourself have called an “irreparable abyss,” an escalation of the unprovoked war against Iran into potentially a global nuclear war, which would end all life on Earth.

The world has now entered a radically worse phase, in which international law has been declared nonexistent; the so-called “rules-based order” declared as always having been a charade; and the principle of “might makes right” elevated to be the privilege of the powerful. As a result, billions of people are suffering a dramatic worsening of their living conditions, and countless people are paying with their lives. But still worse, if the present course of events is not changed, the ultimate sin may be committed: the annihilation of the human species for the sake of satanic delusions.

Millions of ordinary people, in total despair, are asking: What can be done to change the course of history, when many governments, especially in the West, are obviously incapable of fulfilling their obligation to avoid damage to the people for whom they are responsible? Where are the institutions that can bring the remedy at this late hour?

Something that could be a positive, maybe even decisive step to arouse the consciousness of the world—in the spirit of the 1439 Council of Florence, and Nicholas of Cusa’s idea of unity of the church, bringing delegations of the Orthodox Church to the Councils of Florence and Ferrara—, would be for you, your Holiness, together with Patriarch Kirill of Moscow, and Patriarch Bartholomäus I of Constantinople, to take a most courageous step. Together, call for all religious leaders of the world, as well as all people of good faith, believers and non-believers alike, to step forward in defense of peace.

Last year, on October 25^th. in your Angelus sermon, you evoked the great philosopher and Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa and his notion of the Coincidentia Oppositorum, as the necessary method of thinking to bind things together in the world today. It was that same method of thinking which underlay Cusa’s beautiful dialogue “De Pace Fidei,” about “peace in faith,” which he wrote in answer to the fall of Constantinople in 1453. That dialogue served to uplift the thinking of the people of his time to the highest possible level—that despite distinct rites and practices, there is a knowable understanding that there is only one God, and one truth, which can, and must, be brought to believers of all faiths

At a time when there is the danger of a world war, and when some use the cloak of religion to argue for an early Armageddon, that same voice of reason must be raised, and the same question asked, as did the representatives of 17 nations and religions ask God in “De Pace Fidei.”  It cannot be that people kill each other in the name of God.

The bells of all churches should begin to ring, the Adhan of all mosques should be shouted, the Shofar of all synagogues should be blown, in the whole world in this moment of utmost urgency to save mankind from its final tragedy.

If, as a first step, the Churches of the West and the East would unite and campaign actively and daily for world peace, this could affect the majority of people to express their commitment for peace and thus cause a change in world history,  fulfilling the will of God, who for sure did not create the world and gift humanity with reason, to have it destroyed by the lack of it.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Founder, Schiller Institute

Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche issued an open letter on Nov. 5, calling for representatives of all religions and cultures around the world to start a dialogue to solve the strategic crises facing Mankind, inspired by Nicolaus of Cusa’s “coincidence of opposites” method of thinking, as recently emphasized by Pope Leo XIV in his Oct. 25 Jubilee Audience sermon. Zepp-LaRouche’s letter is followed by a packet of print and video documentary materials, including crucial writings on Cusa by Zepp-LaRouche and her late husband, Lyndon H. LaRouche.

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.