Prof. Wangsou Wu: Future Perspectives of Nuclear Power in the New Era of the Silk Road

In stark contrast, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi are proceeding to build an alternative economic system and have declared themselves optimistic, noting that China and India together account for 35% of the human race and are together writing the screenplay for the future.

Indeed, Xi’s three-day state visit to India represents a qualitative breakthrough in Sino-Indian relations. Not only does China intend, in the next five years, to invest $20 billion in the expansion of India’s rapid transit systems, the modernization of its railway stations, industrial parks, power transmission equipment, and auto parts production—it also wants, in return, to open its market for Indian pharmaceuticals, agricultural products, and films. Other agreements were reached on cooperation in the development of nuclear energy, the peaceful use of space, a sister-city relationship between Shanghai and Mumbai, as well as cultural exchanges, and—especially importantly—it was agreed to prioritize settling the country’s outstanding border dispute, once and for all.

Solving this question threatens to leave the Western media and think-tanks with nothing left to say that would satisfy their need, bordering on the absurd, for nitpicking. Failing to recognize the grand design behind this summit, the Western media have tried to outdo one another in describing only the supposed geopolitical conflicts of interest between the two nations.

“No man is a hero to his valet; not, however, because the man is not a hero, but because the valet is a valet,” wrote Hegel in his Phenomenology, describing this state of mind. What these media representatives and think-tanks don’t understand, from their petty, geopolitical perspective, is the qualitative change that has been underway for more than a year, with Xi’s New Silk Road policy, and the drive of the BRICS countries for real development. More and more countries of Asia, Latin America, and Africa are defying the conditionalities of the IMF and World Bank and are creating their own development banks, the AIIB [Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank], NDB [New Development Bank], and a bank of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which are dedicated to financing only real economic projects and not speculation.

Underlying this is the determination to finally tackle the shift from underdevelopment and poverty, to the defense of the general welfare of their people. What the scribblers and talking heads cannot imagine, is that there are governments today that truly represent the interests of their nations and of mankind—and not those of the banks, as is common in Europe and the United States.

The growing alliance of the BRICS countries [Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa], the Union of South America (UNASUR) countries, and the ASEAN and SCO members in Asia, in which such countries as Egypt, Nicaragua, and South Korea must also be counted, is not only joined by the common perspective of economic development, but also by the recognition that the current strategy of confrontation against Russia on the part of the U.S. administration, Great Britain, NATO, and the EU, is causing the imminent threat of global thermonuclear war.

– Threat of World War –

Prof. Han Xudong of the National Defense University of the People’s Liberation Army, in an extraordinary article headlined, “As Possibility of a Third World War Exists, China Needs To Be Prepared,” deals with this question.

Prof. Han Xudong

“As the Ukrainian crisis deepens, international observers have become more and more concerned about a direct military clash between the US and Russia. Once an armed rivalry erupts, it is likely to extend to the [rest of the] globe. And it is not impossible that a world war could break out,”

he wrote in the People’s Daily on Sept. 16.

“…Currently, the world has entered an era of new forms of global war. Outer space, the Internet and the sea have become the battlefields of rivalry… China should not be pushed into a passive position where it is vulnerable to attacks. We must bear a third world war in mind when developing military forces, especially the sea and air forces.”

Pope Francis said essentially the same thing, on the occasion of a commemoration of the outbreak of World War I.

Pope Francis

“A third world war in pieces”

“A third world war in pieces” is already being waged, with crimes, massacres, destruction, he said. And German historian Michael Stuermer, writing in Die Welt, gave the diagnosis that since the Ukraine crisis began, world politics has found itself in an experimental mode, in which the time-tested rules of crisis prevention and crisis management have been thrown overboard, and senior staff are inexperienced in the management of emergencies. The saber-rattling, he wrote, fails to take account of the limitless possibilities of destruction and self-destruction. The security architecture that emerged during the Cold War and that ended in German unification—amazingly, without catastrophe—was an era of undeclared small wars with no beginning and no end, extending from Indochina/Vietnam to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. In the Ukraine crisis, he wrote, both sides have acted without a goal or an exit strategy; nobody knows where it will end. One escalation drives another, and the reasoned imperatives of the long nuclear peace seem to be forgotten.

Russian Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev, for his part, addressed the situation at an economic conference in Sochi recently:

From the Chinese military to the Pope, the Russian government, and growing segments in all European nations, people see that World War III has actually already started, that all the rules of war prevention have been thrown overboard and there is actually no longer a security system. Why then do we not immediately pull the emergency brake and stop this madness, this train that is hurtling at full speed toward a wall behind which there is only a great void?

– Call for an Emergency Conference –

We immediately need a global emergency conference with only a single theme: How should a global, inclusive security architecture be designed which guarantees the existence and security of all nations on the planet?

It is obvious that the strategic crisis began with the broken promises to Russia at the time of the disintegration of the Soviet Union, namely that NATO would never be extended up to the borders of Russia. We must start again from that point and the equally obvious point, that in 1991, there were no convincing reasons to exclude Russia from alliances, but rather to expand NATO and the EU further to the east; the intention to encircle Russia and eventually render it indefensible can no longer be denied.

President Xi has repeatedly argued that there can be no security structure that grants security only to a few states, while others remain in chaos and danger; only an inclusive security architecture can guarantee world peace. Precisely such a security architecture, which encompasses all States, must urgently be placed on the agenda, if we do not want to collectively kill ourselves off.

The obvious economic basis for such an inclusive security approach is the New Silk Road program, which China is working to bring about and whose spirit the aforementioned alliances have embraced. The Chinese government has repeatedly stressed that this New Silk Road is an open concept, which every nation can join.

The human species will survive only if we learn the lessons of the two world wars of the 20th Century and stop thinking in geopolitical categories. We must replace this imperial, oligarchical approach with a new paradigm: that the common aims of mankind are the priority for everyone. This is also the view of “the coincidence of opposites” that Nicholas of Cusa put forward in the 15th Century, in his Coincidentia Oppositorum: that this is the only way to achieve “concordance in the macrocosm.”

Now we have arrived at the point where our survival as a species depends on achieving this level of thinking.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Founder and president of the international Schiller Institute, reported on her recent trip to China in a webcast on Sept. 11, 2014 (in German, at bueso.de). We excerpt here that portion of her overall strategic briefing:

…We were just on a very interesting trip to China. We first visited western China, along the ancient Silk Road, where we conducted a kind of fact-finding tour. We traveled to some of the hubs of the ancient Silk Road, which gave us an incredibly good, sensuous impression of what a tremendous breakthrough the ancient Silk Road was, because the obstacles that had to be overcome at that time—2,000 years ago, during the Han Dynasty—were so gigantic, such as crossing the Gobi Desert, and even more so the Taklamakan Desert, where there are sand dunes 200 meters high and sandstorms that then blow everythng away again.

We visited not only some of the sites of China’s cultural heritage, but also saw films about the ancient Silk Road. We visited the famous caves of Dunhuang and several places along the Great Wall, including its furthest northwestern point, almost on the border of Xinjiang, which dates back 2,000 years.

It reminded me a bit of the poem “Ozymandias” [by Percy Shelley], where statues and buildings in the desert sand were blown away; and then, after 2,000 years, the question is: What remains of what a person did with his life?

It had a very profound effect on me. In any case, it was all very, very inspiring and instructive, because the Chinese government is obviously making extraordinary efforts to keep alive and strengthen in the population the awareness of its heritage.

A Giant Construction Program

We also, of course, were extremely enthusiastic to see the Lanzhou-Dunhuang railroad being built, which will reach Urumqui—i.e., it is really the ancient Silk Road to Xinjiang, but now connected by a high-speed rail system.

On the way from Lanzhou Airport to the city, a bus ride of about an hour, we saw the frenzied pace at which the railroad is being built. You can see bridges, then a few kilometers further there are embankments for the railway, then just marked-out routes or fortifications—everything going up at an incredible pace, in complete contrast to the way our projects are built [in Germany]. For example, it took ten years to build the ICE railroad from Cologne to Frankfurt, while China is obviously pushing ahead the development of its interior regions, and also the upgrading of the Silk Road, at a rapid tempo and also with high quality.

In the second week, we had many meetings and attended conferences in Beijing itself, and I will summarize my impressions.
The West’s Geopolitical Thinking

This is very important: We must get people in Germany and the rest of Europe and America to have a really correct understanding of what’s going on in China with the Silk Road and the space program. In a few days, there will be a big conference on space in Beijing, with all the astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts who were ever in space, and who were invited by China to take part in the future Chinese space station.

But if you listen to the think-tanks in the West, from America and Europe, they all say: “Yes, China wants to increase its influence now: It wants imperialist expansion.” But nothing could be further from the truth. Because the think-tanks’ characterization of the Chinese policy of the New Silk Road, or other Chinese initiatives such as the space policy, show that everything is being judged from the standpoint of projecting their own geostrategic interests, such as the EU’s desire to expand. Now, the Balkan countries are also supposed to join. I believe it was [Javier] Solana [former NATO General-Secretary], and later also [European Commission President José Manuel] Barroso, who said that there is no limit to the expansion of the EU.

The EU is a neo-imperial entity pursuing geopolitical interests, which it sees in a blatant contradiction to the supposed geopolitical interests of other countries such as the United States, Russia, China, the BRICS. And that’s simply wrong.
China’s Development Perspective

Thus we encounter the question of what Chinese policy actually is, a policy which has now really become the beacon for the BRICS and many other countries that are joining this new combination. This is not geopolitics at all! People in the West cannot imagine that there are nations that don’t operate on the basis of neo-liberalism, monetarism, positivism, and geopolitics, but rather on axioms that may not be quite identical to, but are yet very similar to the ideas and principles that Gottfried Leibniz upheld at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries—namely a true development perspective for the universal history of mankind. This was comparable to the policy of the American Revolution or John Quincy Adams, one of the first Presidents, who said: We need an alliance of sovereign republics, which jointly work for the common aims of mankind.

And that is emphatically what China is doing today.

I know that many people don’t understand or believe that, nowadays. But I can really say, to my best of my knowledge and conscience: China is operating at the moment on the basis of 5,000 years of Chinese history. One must realize that China is the only culture that has survived as a continuum for such a long period, without interruption and without major territorial shifts.

This is noticeable, among other things, in the crucial role of Confucianism for China’s identity. It is noticeable in such nice things as the excellent, world-famous cuisine. In China you can eat thousands of dishes, which are all excellent, and which are always new, and with hundreds of regional differences.

This is, to put it simply, a cultured nation, which is not imperialistic, but which has an interest in the development of mankind. And this concept of the New Silk Road is something that China has in a sense experienced itself, in its development since the Cultural Revolution, or overall, since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949. There were of course some initial problems, such as the Cultural Revolution. But at the latest since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, China has applied correct scientific principles to bring about the largest economic transformation that has taken place anywhere on this planet.

They are now at the point where they say: We are going to transform the remaining underdeveloped regions of China, so that the standard of living of the population is increased, but we are also going to make this model of development available all over the world, in the form of the New Silk Road, in the tradition of the ancient Silk Road. And that is an open concept: that anyone can work with them, because everyone is invited to join. It is explicitly included and not directed against the alleged geostrategic interests of other nations or groups of nations.

That is a very important distinction. It is just not geopolitics, but a dynamic concept of the upward development of the human species. And I challenge all of our viewers who do not believe me: Send me your questions! I am eager for a dialogue, because it is really a question of existential importance for Germany, that we understand this.

This article was originally published in the EIR Online

August 2014—When the authors of this study decided last year to set out a new concept for peace in the 21st Century, by producing a revised version of the World Land-Bridge program—23 years after the first proposal for the Eurasian Land-Bridge—it was their intention not only to provide a concept for reconstruction of the world economy, but to present a war-avoidance strategy in the context of an acute strategic crisis at the same time. For in the intervening years, the danger of an intentional—or even an accidental—thermonuclear world war has grown dramatically. The attempt, fed by geopolitical motives, to associate Ukraine with the EU, and thus bring it, de facto, into the NATO sphere of influence, has triggered a series of escalating confrontations, which, in the worst case, could end in the extinction of the human race.

But in addition, nearly the entire Near and Middle East is burning; set off by wars built on lies, against so-called rogue states, the seeds of violence were sown which have called to life a million-headed hydra, which has not only leveled the Cradle of Civilization to the ground, and created there a Hell on Earth, but has also become an existential threat to the West.

The consequences of this policy of “regime change” have long thrown large parts of Africa into chaos, and overrun the continent with wars of terror and civil wars. But there are also geostrategic conflicts breeding in the Pacific, which have the potential to set loose regional wars and beyond. And since absolutely nothing has been done to remedy the causes for the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the TBTF (too-big-to-fail) banks are, on average, 30-40% bigger today than they were then, the indebtedness still more massive, and the derivatives bubble grown to nearly $2 quadrillion; so that a new systemic crisis could result at any moment, this time, given the strategic situation we have sketched here, with the danger that chaos will be triggered, making a strategic catastrophe unavoidable.

The entire world thus finds itself in such an alarming condition that one can only wonder how those responsible for the so-called Western community of values could have let things get to this point.

Pope Francis, who has characterized the global financial and economic system as “intolerable,” recently put it this way, in an interview with the Spanish newspaper La Vanguardia:

Though one could not put it better than the Pope has done, in this case, he underestimates the satanic energy of the system of globalization, which is ready to defend its privileges with all weapons available. One hundred years after the First World War, we find ourselves in a very similar geopolitical situation, except that this time there are thermonuclear weapons whose use would wipe out the human race.

There Is an Alternative

Meanwhile, an alternative to the collapsing trans-Atlantic system has been created; the attempts of that system to use supranational institutions such as the IMF, World Bank, WTO, TTP, TTIP, and similar monetarist instruments of globalization, to extend a worldwide imperium, have produced an opposition which might not have been expected to manifest itself as it has.

In less than one year, an alliance of nations has been created, which has built a parallel economic order with giant steps, one which is dedicated exclusively to the building of the real economy, in opposition to the maximization of speculative monetary profit, and which now includes more than half of mankind. This new community of nations represents a power center based on economic growth, and above all, on leading-edge technology, one which belongs to the future, as shown above all by the success of the Chinese lunar exploration program, focused on the idea of bringing large quantities of helium-3 from the Moon back to Earth, for the future economy of thermonuclear fusion power. It points the way to a scientific and technological revolution which will increase, by orders of magnitude, the energy-flux density, both in production processes on Earth, and in fuels for space travel, and thereby introduce a completely new phase in the evolution of the human species.

The first step in the direction of a new economic world order was the announcement by Chinese President Xi Jinping at a conference in Kazakstan in July of last year, that China would build a new Silk Road Economic Belt, through Central Asia to Europe, in the tradition of the ancient Silk Road. Then, in October, in a trip to Indonesia and Malaysia, Xi took the initiative to involve all of Southeast Asia in the construction of the Maritime Silk Road.

Maglev transportation in China. Lars Plougmann

They named, among others, one goal of this collaboration as follows: “Increasing the effectiveness of collaboration in high-technology areas, priority projects in the international use of nuclear energy, civil aviation, and a program of cooperation in basic research on space flight, satellite observation of the Earth, satellite navigation, and research into deep space and manned space travel.” A further militarization of space should, on the contrary, be prevented, and the unilateral stationing of missile defense installations was judged to be a “destabilizing factor for the world.” Other goals include innovative research, improvement of agricultural techniques, and increasing agricultural production. They also expressed the intention to reform the international financial architecture.

The 30-year Russia-China natural gas treaty, with a total value of $400 billion, can be called historic. The two countries’ cooperation in the petroleum field is also to be deepened; coal mines in Russia will be jointly developed; additional power plants will be built in Russia to supply electricity to China; and there will be collaboration on many other projects in infrastructure, transportation, water, and nature conservation.

Of still greater importance is President Putin’s support for President Xi’s strategic initiative to expand the New Silk Road. Their common statement says:

“Russia recognizes the enormous significance of the Chinese initiative for the building of the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt,’ and particularly appreciates the readiness of the Chinese side to take Russian interests into account in its development and realization. Both sides will seek further opportunities to combine the perspective of the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’ with the conception of the ‘Eurasian Economic Union.’ Toward this purpose, they intend to deepen the cooperation of the relevant agencies in the realization of both projects, especially in the development of transportation routes and infrastructure.”

The BRICS Summit

Other nations were then drawn into this collaboration at the May 20-21 4th Summit Conference on Interaction and Confidence-Building Measures in Asia in Shanghai. On July 16, the 6th BRICS Summit was held in Fortaleza, Brazil; on the following day, the Latin American heads of state and government joined the conference, and thus, 48% of humanity was represented at this meeting.

At the BRICS Summit itself, and in a series of multilateral and bilateral discussions within and around this summit, the heads of state agreed on the creation of an entirely new economic and financial system, representing a fundamental alternative to the casino economy of the present system of globalization, which is based on maximized profit of the few, and impoverishment of billions of people. Included in the 72 points of the “Declaration of Fortaleza” is the real thunderbolt: the announcement of the creation of a new financial architecture. The new architecture was launched with the formation of a New Development Bank with an initial capitalization of $50 billion, and a Currency Reserve Agreement (CRA) with an initial capacity of $100 billion to help participating nations defend themselves against capital flight and other forms of financial warfare.

China had already previously decided to found an “Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank,” the AIIB, to have an initial capitalization of $100 billion, with the invited participation from the start of more than 30 countries. Xinhua quoted Jin Liqun, under whose direction the Chinese Finance Ministry placed the founding of the Bank:

Jin Liqun

The general secretary of the Chinese Center for International Economic Exchanges emphasized that the AIIB is to be an open and freely accessible platform, welcoming not only nations in Asia, but also others, such as the United States and the European countries. Up to this point, the nations of ASEAN, at a summit in Myanmar, on Aug. 9, agreed to deepen their cooperation with China on “New Silk Road” development projects, while Thailand and Singapore agreed to join the AIIB as charter members, as has Bangladesh. South Korea, despite direct U.S. pressure not to join, is considering charter membership, and requested that Seoul be considered as a possible location for the Bank.

In the course of this series of summits, collaboration was decided upon, among the various states, in a large number of projects, above all, the development of nuclear energy in Russia, China, India, Brazil, Argentina, and South Africa, and also, such groundbreaking projects as a second Panama Canal to be built by China through Nicaragua, and a transcontinental high-speed rail connection from Brazil to Peru.

The multiplicity of projects decided on among this community of nations in the areas of infrastructure, energy, industry, agriculture, research, and education, has reached a dimension which dwarfs the investments made by the U.S.A. and Europe in the same spheres over the past 30 years. The claims that Russia is only a “regional power,” and China only a “cheap-production country,” as was said at hastily arranged seminars at various thinktanks on the theme of the allegedly minor significance of the BRICS nations, have rather the character of whistling past the graveyard.

For in reality, there are now two economic and financial systems built on completely different principles. One, the trans-Atlantic system, as an imperial structure, seeks constantly to extend the boundaries of its sphere of power through supranational structures which threaten the sovereignty of other nations. It forces regime change against governments it disapproves of, insists on submission to a “consensus,” and in the process, uses methods which do indeed produce an aura of domination for a while, and the feeling of powerlessness among the populations dominated in this way, but it ultimately goes the way of all empires. The moment this aura of power fades, whether because the imperial financial system is bankrupt, or because the people realize the hollowness of the values handed down, then the capability for intimidation disappears.

The newly arising system of the BRICS nations and the countries associated with them, bases itself on entirely different principles. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi formulated it most expressively at the plenary session of the summit: “BRICS is unique as an international institution. In the first instance, it unifies a group of nations, not on the basis of their existing prosperity or common identities, but rather their future potentials. The idea of the BRICS itself is thus already aligned with the future.”

Modi stressed that the high percentage of young people, in India for example, represents an enormous potential for the future, and proposed forming a BRICS forum for young scientists, and a school of languages “offering language training in all of our languages.” Modi made an appeal: “Excellencies, we have an opportunity to define the future—not only for our countries, but for the entire world…. I conceive that as a great challenge.”

The Future Lies in Outer Space

Nicholas of Cusa, the founder of modern natural science and a revolutionary scientific method, came to the conclusion, in the 15th Century, that every human being who strives to do so must be capable of reproducing virtually the entire evolution of the universe in its essential qualitative levels of development, and that this standpoint makes it possible to determine the necessary next step in scientific progress.

Today, this necessary next discovery, which defines the future for the entire world, is the conquest of the energy source that will bestow energy and raw materials security on mankind for thousands of years into the future: the utilization of thermonuclear fusion power on the basis of helium-3.

A picture of the Yutu “Jade Rabbit” rover taken by the Chang’e 3 lander

LRO close-up image taken on 25 December 2013. The lander (large arrow) and rover (small arrow) can be seen.

The collaboration among China, Russia, and India is paradigmatic for the new area of mankind, in which we—instead of plunging ourselves into geopolitical wars—will concentrate on the common aims of mankind. With the attainment of energy security for at least 10,000 years on the basis of helium-3-fed thermonuclear fusion power, and with the technologies associated with this, such as the fusion torch technique which will enable raw materials security by reducing waste and all types of materials into isotopes which can be recomposed as needed, mankind will reach a completely new economic platform on the basis of a very high energy-flux density. This new economic platform begins a new age of mankind. The utilization of helium-3 sources for the fusion economy will be the game-changer which will revolutionize all relationships in science, economy, and politics on the Earth and in the Solar System.

It is obvious that a continuation of the geopolitical thinking which already led to two world wars in the 20th Century, into a third, and this time, a thermonuclear world war, will cause the extinction of mankind. Instead of seeing the rise of China as a threat to the West’s supposed geopolitical interests—and thus, as the American Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey has repeatedly warned, groping around in a new “Thucydides Trap”—we need a new conception, a new paradigm which considers the development perspective of mankind as a whole.

A New Economic Order

Scientist, Engineer, Author – Krafft Ehricke helped develop many of the rocket systems that later became the backbone of the NASA Apollo missions.

 

By doing so, the human species will achieve a considerable advance in bringing its relationships to this planet and to near-Earth space, into harmony with the cosmic order. Perhaps the most important contribution of Lyndon LaRouche consists in that by the further development of the Leibnizian term “physical economy,” he has created a theory of scientific economy which corresponds to the real laws of development of the physical universe.

One of its basic concepts is that it is indispensable for the continuously sustained existence of the human race that its relative potential population density should increase on the basis of rising energy-flux densities in the production process, because at any arbitrary stage of economic development, there is a relative exhaustion of resources. The entire history of human development, particularly the most recent 10,000 years, in which the population potential has risen from a few millions to presently over 7 billion, demonstrates the correlation of the anti-entropic character of human creativity with the knowable universal principles of the physical universe.

The use of the helium-3 resources on the Moon for the fusion economy on the Earth also recalls in an interesting way the controversy between Plato and Nicholas of Cusa, over whether ideas possess an existence already effectively present in the objective universe, independent of mankind, or whether it is only with human creativity that these ideas are created. Helium-3 supplies on the Moon are, in the first instance, only deposits in the upper layer of the regolith. Only human creativity, in mastering thermonuclear fusion power, makes these isotopes into the fuel which can even exceed the power of nuclear fusion in the Sun!

But mankind has reached a phase-change not only from the scientific standpoint, but also from that of universal history; that is, the end of geopolitics is necessary for the survival of the species. Shortly before the Berlin Wall fell, LaRouche proposed the “Productive Triangle Paris-Berlin-Vienna” infrastructure program, and thereby, the plan to make this triangle the scientific motor and starting point for development corridors for the transformation of the Comecon states (the then-Soviet Union and Eastern Europe).

When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, and thus the Iron Curtain disappeared, Schiller Institute teams further elaborated this program into the conception of the Eurasian Land-Bridge. Thus the idea was developed of linking the population and industrial centers of Europe with Asia by so-called development corridors, and thus providing the landlocked regions of Eurasia with the same site-characteristics which the regions with ocean or river access already had.

In the 23 years which have passed since then, this idea has not only been presented in innumerable conferences and seminars in cities around the world, but also further filled out into the idea of the World Land-Bridge. The linking of peoples through this World Land-Bridge is now the realistic perspective emerging from the collaboration of the BRICS nations, Latin America, and the ASEAN nations, and in which the U.S.A., Europe, and Africa must urgently participate.

A new strategy for mankind means the ability, from now on, to see the human species as a unity, and to see that unity in the process of mutual development. Thus, along with Friedrich Schiller, we see no contradiction whatsoever between the inviolability of national sovereignty, which is guaranteed by the law of nations and by the United Nations Charter, and the rationality of the world citizen who has in view the interests of mankind as a whole. For this unity lies in the higher development of all; the concordance of the macrocosm requires the maximal development of all microcosms to their reciprocal benefit, as Nicholas of Cusa said.

This also signifies a new model of cooperation among the nations of the world. It means that all potential treaty organizations and alliances must be inclusive, that they cannot be for the security and economic interests of some nations, while excluding others. While the support of mutual development is the premise, they must nonetheless respect the different levels of development, history, culture, and social systems, and above all, respect national sovereignty. That is Cusa’s idea of unity in multiplicity, and it must be inspired by a tender love for the idea of the community of nations, for the idea of mankind as the creative species.

We must learn to view this mankind from the same perspective as the astronauts, cosmonauts, and Taikonauts have seen it, as so wonderfully expressed by one of the Apollo astronauts who walked on the Moon:

“The fact is that evolution is now taking place in space, as much as on Earth. Man has shown that as a species mankind was willing to commit itself to living in environments that were completely different than those in which the species evolved—with a shield of life around ourselves in order to protect the life within. But the willingness to go out there, is there. We’ve shown that. The curve of human evolution has been bent.”[1]

 

Translated from German by Paul Gallagher
[1] See the YouTube video, "Apollo 11: For All Minkind." [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxgoV9IMgCg]