The all-out mobilization underway this week to consolidate the forces of Global NATO, to continue the war against Russia in Ukraine, and to target China, was the subject of this week's conversation with Helga Zepp-LaRouche. The "Ukraine Contact Group" meeting on Friday at Ramstein Air Base in Germany will likely see an increase in pressure on Germany to send more offensive weapons to Ukraine. Even as the War Hawks behind Global NATO are projecting the war will continue into 2024, or until Putin is removed, there is a battle plan to try to prevent Chinese development aid in Latin America, she said, citing a presentation last July by the head of the U.S. Southern Command, and an article from Army War College associate Evan Ellis, calling for the U.S. to counter the desire for development in South America.
Zepp-LaRouche pointed to the series of conferences held by the Schiller Institute as the most significant alternative to the war party. To get out of the war geometry, she said, it is necessary to organize around a different conception of man, and to bring strategic and development policy into coherence with the actual nature of man. She urged viewers to watch the videos of the recent Schiller events to see the emergence of forces committed to that change, and urged them to register for the upcoming event on February 4.
Transcript:
Weekly Webcast with Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Wednesday, January 18, 2023
HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello welcome to our weekly conversation with Helga Zepp-LaRouche. She is the founder and chairwoman of the Schiller Institute. I’m Harley Schlanger, today is January 18, 2023.
And what we’re seeing is an absolute frenzy of activity of the war party, with discussions of continuing to fight until Russia is defeated, carrying this war into 2024; it’s really quite bizarre to see what’s going on. But you have especially the Ramstein meeting coming up on Friday [Jan. 20] of the Ukraine Contact Group. Helga, why don’t you catch us up on some of what you have on this?
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: You can actually see that the announcement which was made by the NATO summit in Madrid last summer, to go for a Global NATO, that that is in full swing. It’s really, if you watch the totality of these things get really get the impression that this is all a preparation for World War III, for a global showdown with China, in which the present conflict between NATO and Russia over Ukraine is just a stepping stone, but that’s not the whole picture.
What will happen in Ramstein on Friday is that that will be the third of such meetings. I know for sure that [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman] Milley will be there, maybe [Defense Secretary] Austin, as well. And naturally, the pressure on Germany to finally agree to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine is escalating by the day. So one can expect that at this meeting, some new escalation will be announced, and it is as if some of these people are driven by this frenzy, without thinking about the consequences.
You have on the other side, more and more people warning that this may lead, step by step, into an escalation, leading to World War III. For example, General Erich Vad (ret.), the former advisor to Chancellor Merkel said this in a very important interview with the magazine EMMA; but also former Sen. Ron Paul said we are edging toward nuclear war, World War III. And there is, on the one side, people who are waking up that sending this more weapons to Ukraine, crossing red lines every five minutes, that actually is implying the danger of a global nuclear war; and then you have on the other side, you have people who are associated with the NATO-U.S.-British outlook who are saying these war-mongering things as if all of this had no consequence.
And it’s very clear in this context, that the continental Europeans are completely trampled upon, or their interest is trampled upon. And the German economy is about to be completely destroyed, everything which happens is really at the orders of Washington and London, and we apparently don’t have governments any more in Europe that are defending the interest of the European people.
So I think this is a situation which cannot continue very long, even that is very clearly the intent. For example, Wolfgang Ischinger, the former chairman of the Munich Security Conference basically said this war is going to be in there for the long run, despite the fact that he points to the anomaly that Ukraine is using every day as much ammunition as Germany needs to produce in half a year, so how that should go, is another mystery. But he indicated that the war is supposed to go on, and others are saying well into 2024.
Now, that is obviously the date of the presidential election in Russia, and some of these people clearly want to drag out this war until you have a war of attrition, where hopefully, according to their calculation, by 2024, the Russian population will be so affected that they will accept a regime change which finally gets Putin out of office. Now, that’s completely illusory, but that is clearly what some people are wanting—you know, they don’t think for a minute what that would do: That would repeat the horror-show of the Verdun fight in the trenches in World War I, when 1 million German and French young men were slaughtered for no good reason. And obviously, this led to the horrible social consequences which then led to World War II. So they don’t want to learn the lesson of history, but to have the idea to drag this war on for another year or so is completely evil.
SCHLANGER: Let’s just take a look at a couple of the frenzied activities. We had the U.K. Foreign Secretary Cleverly was in Washington yesterday. The British, of course, have announced they’re sending the Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine. You have the U.K.-Japan alliance that was announced, and a lot of this is aimed at pressure on Germany. And in Germany, we just had a change of Defense Minister. What do you think the effect of that will be?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I don’t know—there are some reports which say that Boris Pistorius is more capable to defend his decision than Christine Lambrecht was. Now, Lambrecht for sure was the wrong person in the wrong spot, but the way how the media hyenas went after her after the decision was leaked on Friday that she would resign, you almost feel sorry for her. Because this style of politics has become so absolutely disgusting and brutal, that people should look into the mirror when they write such things—and interestingly Spiegel is called “Spiegel” because when these people look into the “Spiegel,” into the mirror, they don’t see a very nice face.
But anyway, Pistorius, I don’t have a clear opinion yet; there are some hints that he may be loyal to Chancellor Scholz, that he in the past was critical of sanctions. He has rolled back, so to speak, from that by qualifying that remark. Be that as it may, as long as this German government, with Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock from the Greens, running around calling for tribunals against Putin, and all kinds of things, being basically a sidekick of Blinken—I think this government is not really standing up for German interests, because it is not in German interests to become a war party. And step by step, already with Marder tanks, with training Ukrainian troops, Germany is a war party, and if this thing goes wrong, there will be absolutely nothing left of Germany, nor for any other country either. But I don’t have the opinion that this will cause a significant change. He may be a different personality than Lambrecht, and he may have some opinions that—but nothing stands against this war drive right now in any serious fashion, and that is the problem.
SCHLANGER: Now, talking about Global NATO, there were some developments in the last few days: There was the publication of an article by R. Evan Ellis, who is from the U.S. Army War College; the article, titled “The Strategic Role of Latin America in a Global Conflict Over Taiwan.” And this includes the idea that Latin America should be a resource base for the United States to loot, and the threat of China’s Belt and Road development there is a threat against the United States. This is pretty blatant, isn’t it? This is the new face of colonialism. (https://revanellis.com/the-strategic-role-of-latin-america-in-a-global-conflict-over-taiwan )
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes, this article was published in a magazine of the Peruvian army, and therefore, maybe this Evan Ellis thought it was for a limited audience. This article is actually quite revealing, because he says, there will be war with China, at the latest by 2027 over Taiwan, and that that war will be global, and therefore the countries of Latin America have no right to ally with the Belt and Road Initiative, because that would give China access to resources in Latin America.
Now, first of all, to say this, that there will be war with China by 2027 and this war will be global, and obviously, planning for that war and preparing for that war, I think that’s just insane! It’s insane! Who wants to plan for World War III, and then think anybody will survive it? So, if you thought that this was just a statement of some low-level guy from the War College, well, now the head of the U.S. Southern Command, Gen. Laura Richardson, basically said the same thing, and even being more specific, saying Latin America has all these raw materials; they have 60% of the world’s lithium, they have rare earth minerals, they have other crucial minerals and raw materials, and therefore Latin American can absolutely not be allowed to make deals with the “adversary,” meaning Russia and China, because, she says, this is a total confrontation, including the whole gambit—air, sea, cyber, space. And she says also that China would only make these infrastructure projects with countries in Latin America to lure them into the “debt trap.”
Now, if people start to believe their own propaganda, it’s really becoming bad! One hundred and fifty countries of the developing sector are very happy to work with the Belt and Road Initiative, because it gives them for the first time, the chance to have real infrastructure projects, to overcome poverty, to have the hope to overcome the underdevelopment. And as for the “debt trap,” if you look at the record of which country is indebted to whom, you find that the majority of debt is going to banks of the Paris Club, to the IMF and World Bank, and to the West, and it is not China at all.
Obviously, with the election of the Lula government in Brazil, you have now the overwhelming majority of countries in Latin America that are determined to cooperate with China in the formation of new world economic order. But you have, at the same time, massive destabilizations going on in many countries, Brazil being the most violent so far, but also Peru. So, I think it’s really amazing what is going on.
SCHLANGER: Well, Richardson also said, “we are not in competition, we are in conflict.” And she said, we’re not going to allow this to occur in “our neighborhood.” Doesn’t that remind you about what Brzezinski said in the late-1970s about “no Japans south of our border?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes. And it also reminds me of the famous, or infamous, Kissinger NSSM-200 memorandum from 1974, which was only published somewhere in the 1990s, in which he said very blatantly, that all the raw materials of the world belong to the United States, or are of U.S. national security interest.
This is definitely not going to go unnoticed, because, what you have right now—let me add this concerning the Global NATO: You have right now a very clear effort to put together one military alliance after the other, to create a network of corresponding military agreements. For example, between the EU and NATO, there was just made an agreement that they basically want to merge, in such a way that each member of the one group is automatically in contact with all other groups. Now, if you then add to the fact that you have the Japan-U.K. reciprocal access agreement between Japan and Great Britain, they can now basically use each other’s territory and forces in a reciprocal way. Then you have the AUKUS, which is the U.S., Australia, British military alliance, which China is clearly the target of. Then you have an effort by Japan—Japan is now, with Kishida’s visit to the United States, going back to its militarist past. Really, one has to look at that! Germany is going back to its military past, and if people talk about putting the German industry back on a war economy, well, doesn’t that bring forward very eerie memories of 80 years ago? If Japan is now talking about nuclear weapons and doubling its military budget; and Kishida also said that Japan is going to actively seek a role in military alliances with countries in the Caribbean and Latin America, in Africa, in Asia—obviously courting India very heavily, with an India-Japan strategic partnership.
So you can actually see there is a real effort to cement this Global NATO in an alliance against Russia, China, and the countries of the Global South that want to go in the direction of a new world economic order. And that’s really the fight that all of this is about: You have some people who want to keep the status quo, which makes the billionaires happy, but keeps the billions of people in relative poverty. And then you have an effort by those countries that want to overcome colonialism, because they have recognized that colonialism did continue to exist in modern clothes, basically by monetary and trade agreements which put them in a status of inferiority, and they want to end that.
So that is really the essence of the conflict, and it has very little to do with what the mainstream media are telling anybody, because Ukraine is just the battleground for the containment of Russia, which is now linked to China. So you can’t look at Ukraine in an isolated fashion: You have to look at this totality of the process which is going on, and this has the potential of disaster, which is why we are calling for a complete shift in the policy, and that you have to go back to negotiation and find solutions by diplomacy. Because if you continue on this road of militarizing the whole world, while what’s at stake is really the existence of humanity.
SCHLANGER: And Helga, you’ve been asking the question, where is the outcry, where are the sane leaders from around the world? We’ve seen certain things, such as General Vad, as you mentioned; Ron Paul. There were some relatively decent statements from Schallenberg, the foreign minister of Austria, that Russia must be included; Milanovic from Croatia, and others. But I think it’s important that people realize that the real center of the opposition to this war policy requires an alternative, and we’ve had a series of conferences, and I think it’d be useful for you to review, just going back to last week, when we had the conference on the Merkel/Minsk story, and then on the weekend, on the “International Assassination Bureau,” where people coming forward with very profound expressions of opposition to this, what some people call the “deep state,” or what really is the unipolar order.
Give us a sense of how you’ve been deploying to bring about this change?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, since the war broke out, we’ve had a whole series of internet conferences of the Schiller Institute, where we are trying to put together a group of people from all over the world, who are fighting for a shift in the strategic situation, by saying, we have to put on the agenda a new international security and development architecture, which takes into account the interest of every single country on the planet. And obviously, we have to think, how can we, as a human species, govern ourselves in a very complex situation of the 21st century, and how can we self-govern? Are we condemned to repeat the mistakes of the 20th century, with world wars, which this time would be a global thermonuclear war? No. I think that’s not acceptable, and therefore, we are trying to fight to actually build a world partnership of world citizens, who put humanity first.
You know, Friedrich Schiller coined this idea that there is no contradiction between patriots and world citizens, and we have to get people to think as world citizens. Because only if you take the interest of humanity as a whole into account can you come up with the right answers.
So, that series of conferences, and I would ask you, our viewers, go to the Schiller Institute website, and look at the “Conference” page, and you can go back to April 2020, and just look at the 20 or more conferences, and the extraordinary list of speakers who came there together, and you can actually see that this is a growing movement of people who say, we definitely need an alternative.
Just the last conferences were addressing specific aspects: One was what was triggered by the revelation that then-German Chancellor Merkel and then-French President François Hollande admitted themselves that they had basically agreed to the Minsk process, only in order to gain time to arm the Ukrainian troops and to prepare them for war with Russia. And I can tell you, from the reaction to this program, and discussions we had, people in Germany are really very, very upset! This was noticed by at least the more conscious political people and we got several reactions in which people said: Look, I didn’t have much trust in government before, but this was really the last straw; that Merkel would cheat in this way was really one step too much. That’s one aspect.
Now, obviously, the Russians reacted very, very severely to this admission, and Putin said that just confirmed to him, that he should have started the special military operation in Ukraine much earlier. And he has some internal opposition in Russia, of people who say that it was Putin’s softness that he waited so long.
For those people, who want to get rid of Putin, by the way, they should just consider that he may not be the worst option from their standpoint, because there are some real hardliners in Russia, who may take even other steps than Putin has taken.
Then, on Jan. 14 we had an even on the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s birthday, and there, we had a whole variety of speakers who looked at the different aspects: Because the murder of Martin Luther King was in the context of three other murders, John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, and Malcolm X, and the coverup of those murders. And there’s now a big motion in the United States to finally open the files on the Kennedy assassination, which supposedly was to happen 25 years after the murder occurred. It did not happen. For some reason, Trump did not open it, and now Biden didn’t reveal them either. And now some leaks have occurred that maybe Hoover was involved in this assassination. So the making these Kennedy files public is extremely important, because if you want to know what went wrong in the United States, you have to go back to the paradigm shift which occurred with the murder of Kennedy, and especially the coverup of the Warren Commission.
Then we reviewed also some other political assassinations: In Africa, the murder of Lumumba, of Enrico Mattei and Aldo Moro in Italy, the assassination attempts against de Gaulle, and for Germany, all the assassinations of the Baader-Meinhof between 1977-78 and then again, the so-called “third generation” of Baader-Meinhof with the murder of Herrhausen in 1989 and Rohwedder in 1991, which clearly was an attempt to make sure that German sovereignty would not occur in the reunification context. [https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2023/01/13/stop-natos-world-war-and-dismantle-the-international-assassination-bureau/ ]
So, if you look at all of this, you get a sense of history which is quite different from the official “narrative.” Narrative, already by definition means that it’s an effort to control the explanation of what happened, and has nothing to do with historical truth.
I can only encourage you, our viewers, if you haven’t done that yet, go back and view these conferences, because they were incredibly rich in terms of groundbreaking historical materials. And in order to understand this present situation, one absolutely has to look at these historical contexts.
SCHLANGER: I think especially the Jan. 14 event, which gave a continuity that doesn’t exist anywhere else: The fact, that as you mentioned, Italy, France, Germany, Africa, you see that these were not isolated instances. And this is crucial for being able to figure out how this oligarchy is operating, has been operating, and what their intention is.
Now, Helga, we have another event scheduled for Feb. 4. Do you want to say something about that?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes: That will be a major Schiller conference, where we on the one side will try to analyze where we are at in terms of the war danger. But then the larger part of the conference is designed to bring together speakers who actually discuss how do we get out of this situation? What are the principles, what such a new security and development architecture must look like. And there I can already say we have a growing interest in many countries, of people who want to be part of that, because the efforts of the Schiller Institute to actually discuss what is necessary, what are the principal programmatic solutions for overcoming poverty, creating a world health system, have universal education, create a credit system which finances all of that; go back to a crash program for thermonuclear fusion power, international space cooperation, to have the necessary jump in productivity: All of these things will be elaborated. And nobody but us, and maybe China has a similar approach, but I will say, that the Schiller Institute is really the most comprehensive in terms of how do we get out of this.
And, naturally, we have to discuss the philosophical underpinnings: What is the nature of man? Are we beasts? Are we just a burden on nature? Or, is man, by definition, good and the most advanced geological force in the universe, as Vladimir Vernadsky was saying? And naturally, our answer is good by definition, and all evil comes from a lack of development, and therefore, can be overcome.
So we will have a quite challenging discussion. So I can only suggest to you that you should reserve the date, Feb. 4. Register to be part of the conference, because then you have access to simultaneous translation; and get the word out, because we urgently need a real alternative which is visible and which has the power to change the present course of history.
SCHLANGER: And we need more voices that know what they’re talking about, and that’s why I would recommend, look at these series of events that are archived on the Schiller Institute website, including the ones from last week.
So, Helga, thanks for joining us again, and we’ll look forward to seeing you again next week.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Yes, till next week.
