Learn how to outflank geopolitical war-mongering from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who turns 266 on Thursday! In 1781, when the American colonies turned the world upside-down on the British Empire, there was a chance for a breakout for Western civilization amongst the courts of Europe. Mozart’s bold intervention in Vienna, upon the court of Emperor Joseph II in 1781/2, blew up the attempt to inveigle the Austro-Hungarian Empire into a geopolitical war. It allowed Joseph the political and cultural room to attempt his ‘American System’ reforms. EIR's David Shavin joined the discussion tonight.
The following is an edited transcription of an interview with Prof. Li Xing, PhD, conducted on Jan. 26 by Michelle Rasmussen, Vice President of the Schiller Institute in Denmark. Dr. Li is a professor of Development and International Relations at the Department of Politics and Society, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, Aalborg University. Li Xing was born in Jiaxing, China, near Shanghai. He earned his BA at the Guangzhou Institute of Foreign Languages. He came to Denmark from Beijing in 1988 for his MA and later completed his PhD studies at Aalborg University. Read the full transcript below. Michelle Rasmussen: Welcome, Professor Li Xing, thank you so much for allowing me to interview you. Prof. Li Xing: Thank you too. Michelle Rasmussen: Li Xing, as we speak, there is an overhanging threat of war between the United States and NATO against Russia and China, countries which the war faction in the West sees as a threat to the disintegrating, unipolar Anglo-American world dominance. On the other hand, the Schiller Institute has led an international campaign to try to get the U.S. and Europe to cooperate with Russia and China to solve the great crises in the world, especially the pandemic, the financial and economic crises, the underdevelopment of the poor countries, and the cultural crisis in the West. Our international president, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, has stated that the U.S.-China relationship will be the most important relationship in the future. You recently gave a lecture at the Danish Institute for International Studies about the U.S.-China rivalry. And you are a contributor to the book The Telegram: A China Agenda for President Biden by Sarwar Kashmiri, which was published in 2021 by the Foreign Policy Association in New York City. The book is composed of statements by the contributors of what each would say if they were granted a personal meeting with President Biden. What would your advice be to President Biden regarding China? Advice to President BidenProf. Li Xing: Thank you for giving me this chance for this interview. If I had the chance to meet the President, I would say to him: Hello, President Biden. I think that it is a pity that you didn’t change Trump’s China policy, especially regarding the trade war and the tariff. We can see from the current situation that in the U.S., the shortages issue, the inflation issue, these are all connected with tariff issue. Many congressmen and senators are calling for the removal of the tariffs. So, I really think that the president should give second thoughts to continuing the trade war. Contrary to this, though, the data from 2020 and 2021 shows that the China-U.S. trade actually surged almost 30%, compared with early years. So, the trade war didn’t work. The second issue is the competition in the area of high technology areas, especially regarding the chip industry. I’d say to him: Mr. President, the U.S. has the upper hand in that technology, and China has the largest market. I think that if the U.S. continues to use a technology sanction on Chinese chips, then the whole country and the whole nation will increase the investment on the chips. Once China has the technology, then the U.S. would both lose the market, and also lose technology. So, this is the second issue, I think the president should give a thought to. The third issue, which I think is a very touchy issue, is the Taiwan issue. I would really advise the President: Mr. President, to play the Taiwan card needs caution, because Taiwan is the center of Chinese politics, in its historical memory, and the most important national project in the unification process. So, to play the Taiwan card really needs caution. But still, I would also say to the President: Mr. President, China and the U.S. have a lot of areas for cooperation. For example, climate change; for example, North Korea, Iran, Afghanistan; and last but not least, because China has great technology and skill in terms of infrastructure, so you, Mr. President, should invite China to come to the U.S. and play a role in the U.S. infrastructure construction projects. That would be an ideal situation to promote bilateral relations. Attitude of the U.S. Toward ChinaMichelle Rasmussen: In your statement in the book, The Telegram, you address whether the United States should consider China as an enemy or as rival. What would you say to the American people about the attitude that the United States should have towards China? Prof. Li Xing: I don’t think that the U.S. should regard China as an enemy, but as a rival. I think there is a truth in that because China is obviously a rival to the United States on many, many grounds, both in materials and also in ideation. Nevertheless, it is not an enemy. China and the U.S. have so many areas of cooperation as you point out, that this bilateral relationship is the most important bilateral relationship in the world. Were this relationship turned into an enemy relationship, it would be a disaster for the world. Michelle Rasmussen: On January 17, Chinese President Xi Jinping addressed the World Economic Forum in Davos. What do you think is most important for people in the West to understand about his speech? Prof. Li Xing: Xi Jinping was invited to the World Economic Forum, and he sent some messages. In his address he admitted that economic globalization has created problems, but that this should not constitute a justification to write off everything regarding globalization, regarding international cooperation. So, he suggested that the world should adapt and guide globalization. He also rejected the protectionist forces on the rise in the West, saying that history has proved time and time again that confrontation does not solve problems; it only invites catastrophic consequences. President Xi also particularly mentioned protectionism, unilateralism, indirectly referring to the U.S., emphasizing that this phenomenon will only hurt the interest of others as well as itself, meaning that the U.S. trade war, or sanctions against China, will hurt both. It’s not a win-win, it’s a lose-lose. President Xi delivered a message that rejects a “zero sum” approach. I think it was a very constructive message from President Xi Jinping. He totally rejects, if I interpret his address correctly, the Cold War mentality. He doesn’t want to see a Cold War mentality emerge in either the U.S., or in China. The Belt and Road ConceptMichelle Rasmussen: Let’s move on now to the question of the Belt and Road Initiative. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Schiller Institute has worked to establish a new Silk Road, the World Land-Bridge, and many of these economic principles have been coming to life through China’s Belt and Road Initiative. Li Xing, in 2019 you wrote a book, Mapping China’s One Belt One Road Initiative, and have lectured on this. How has the Belt and Road Initiative created economic development in the underdeveloped countries? Prof. Li Xing: First of all, I think that we need to understand the Belt and Road concept—the historicity behind the Belt and Road; that the Belt and Road is not an international aid program. We have to keep that in mind. It is an infrastructure project attempting to link Eurasia. It has two routes. One is a land route, consisting of six corridors. Then, it has another route called the Maritime Silk Road. Globally, about 138 countries, ranging from Italy to Saudi Arabia to Cambodia, have signed a Memorandum of Understanding with China. Just recently another country in in Latin America signed up with the Belt and Road. The idea of the Belt and Road is founded on two basic Chinese economic strengths. One is surplus capital. China has a huge amount of surplus capital in its banks, which it can use for investments. The second is that after 40 years of infrastructure development in China, China has huge technology and skill, particularly in the infrastructure development area. So, the Belt and Road is basically an infrastructure development project. The driving force of China’s Belt and Road is that after 40 years of economic development, China is experiencing a similar situation experienced by the advanced countries in world economic history—for example, rising wages, overproduction, overcapacity, and a lot of surplus capital. So, China is looking for what the Marxist analytical lens calls a ”spatial fix,” as in its domestic market, the mass production manufacturing is getting extremely large. In looking beyond Chinese territory at Chinese neighbors, China has discovered that all the countries around China are actually very, very far behind in infrastructure development. So, it’s kind of a win-win situation. The idea behind the Belt and Road is a kind of a win-win situation. Historically, the Post World War II Marshall Plan in Europe, and the military aid to East Asia, were, you could say, like Belt and Road projects, helping those countries to enhance economic development. I recently came across a World Bank study pointing out that if the Belt and Road projects were successfully implemented, the real income level throughout the entire region would rise between two or four times. At the global level, the real income can rise between 0.7 -2.9%. So, you can say, the international financial institutions, and economic institutions like World Bank, are also very positive toward the Belt and Road. However, the Belt and Road also has four areas which we need to be concerned about. Number one: the debt trap, which has been discussed quite a lot at the global level. Number two: transparency, whether the Belt and Road projects in different countries are transparent. This, too, is an issue for debate. Number three: corruption, whether Chinese investments in countries creates corruption by local officials. The number four area for concern is the environmental and social cost. So, these definitely need to be taken care of, both by China and those countries. As a whole, I think the Belt and Road project is huge. It’s very constructive. But we also need to consider its potential to create bad effects. We need to tackle all these effects collectively. ‘Debt Trap’ DiplomacyMichelle Rasmussen: When you spoke just now about a debt trap, our correspondent Hussein Askary, who covers the Muslim world, and also developments in Africa, has argued against the idea that China is creating a debt trap, pointing out that many of the countries owe much more money to Western powers, than they do to China, and that China has done things like forgiving debt, or transferring physical assets to those governments, because the debt trap accusation has been used as the primary argument against the Belt and Road. Do you do you think that this is legitimate argument or that this is overplayed to try to just create suspicion about the Belt and Road? Prof. Li Xing: No, I fully agree, actually, with the comment you just quoted from another study. It is true that the “debt trap” has been used by Western media, or those politicians who are against the Belt and Road, as an excuse, as a kind of a dark picture. But, according to my research, China actually understands this problem, and very often, the Chinese government uses different measures, or different policies, to tackle this problem. One is to write off the debt entirely, when the borrowing country would really suffer, if it had to repay. For example, the Chinese government announced that during the pandemic, debt service payments from some poor countries is suspended until their economic situation improves. China is a central-government-based country. State policy plays a bigger role than in the political system of the West, where different interest groups drive their countries’ policies into different directions. Therefore, the Chinese central government is able to play a bigger role than Western governments in tackling debt problems. Michelle Rasmussen: What has this meant for the underdeveloped countries, for example, in Africa, and other poor countries in Asia, in Ibero-America? What has the Belt and Road Initiative meant for their economic development? Prof. Li Xing: The increasing number of countries that have signed up with the Belt and Road, shows that the Belt Road project is comparatively quite welcomed. I have also followed many debates in Africa, where many African leaders were asked the question and they completely agree. They say that the situation regarding the debt of the old time, their experiences with the colonial countries, is quite different from the debt incurred with China’s investment projects or development projects. So, they still have confidence in China’s foreign development policies, especially in the Belt and Road project. From the many studies and reports I have read so far; they have strong confidence in that. Infrastructure Means DevelopmentMichelle Rasmussen: What would you say about the role of infrastructure development in China in creating this unprecedented economic growth and lifting people out of poverty? What role has infrastructure played in the incredible poverty elimination policy that China actually succeeded in achieving this year? Prof. Li Xing: The entire 40-year history of China’s economic growth and economic development, and China’s prosperity, is based on the lesson that infrastructure is one of the most important factors leading to China’s economic success. China has a slogan: “If you want to get rich, build a road.” Infrastructure is connected with every aspect of national economy. The raw materials industry, the metal industry, you name it. Cement industry, etc. Infrastructure is really the center of a nation’s economy, which can really get different areas of the country running. So, I think this experience of China is really a good lesson, not only for China itself, but also for the rest of the world, especially for developing countries. That’s why China’s Belt and Road project, identified as infrastructure projects, is really welcomed by many people, and especially President Biden. Even though his budget was not passed, because of the resistance, or even if it’s shrunken, the idea about improving U.S. infrastructure, became a kind of hot spot. I think that the U.S. needs to increase its infrastructure investment as well. Definitely. Europe-China RelationsMichelle Rasmussen: Let’s move on to Europe and China relations. You have edited the book China-U.S. Relations at a Crossroads: “Systemic Rivalry” or “Strategic Partnership.” What is your evaluation and recommendation about European-Chinese relations? When we spoke earlier, you had a comment about how the impact of African development, if there would be development or not in Africa, would impact Europe. Could you also include your idea about that? Prof. Li Xing: EU-China relations are increasingly complex, and affected by a number of interrelated factors, such as China’s rise, the growing China-U.S. rivalry, U.S. global withdrawal, especially under the Trump administration, the trans-Atlantic split, the Brexit, and at the same time, the China-Russia comprehensive alliance. Under these broad transformations of the global order, EU-China relations are also getting very complex. Right now, I feel that the EU and China are struggling to find a dynamic and durable mode of engagement, to achieve a balance between opportunities on the one side, and challenges on the other, and also between partnership and rivalry. For instance, China and the EU successfully reached what is called the EU-China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment treaty in December 2020. It was a joyful moment. However, in 2021, due to the Hong Kong events, the Xinjiang issue, and mutual sanctions in 2021, this investment treaty was suspended. Not abandoned but suspended. You can see that the relationship can be hurt by events. It’s really difficult to find a balance between strategic partnership and systemic rivalry. “Systemic rivalry” was the official term used in a European Commission document, “EU-China—A Strategic Outlook,” issued March 12, 2019. That document states that China is “simultaneously … an economic competitor in the pursuit of technological leadership. and a systemic rival promoting alternative models of governance.” So, you can see that a systemic rival means alternative normative values. That’s why it’s a new term, when used in that way. It shows that China’s development has both a material impact, and, also, an ideational impact—that many countries are becoming attracted by the Chinese success. For that reason, the Chinese, and the rise of China is increasingly regarded as a systemic rival. On the other hand, the message from my book is also that the EU must, one way or another, become autonomous, and design an independent China policy. Sometimes I feel that the EU-China policy is somehow pushed around or carried by U.S. global interests, or affected by the U.S.-China competition. I really think Europe needs an independent China policy. You know, the EU is thinking of developing “defence independence.” That is, it is pursuing autonomy in defense. But that’s something else. According to data from Kishore Mahbubani, a very well-known Singaporean public intellectual and professor, the Belt and Road has special meaning for Europe in relation to Africa. This is of importance to your question about Africa. According to his data on the demographic explosion in Africa, Africa’s population in the 1950s was half of that of Europe. Today, Africa’s population is 2.5 times that of Europe. By 2100, Africa’s population will be 10 times of that of Europe. So, if Africa still suffers from underdevelopment, if any crisis appears, where will African refugees migrate? Europe! From Kishore’s point of view, the Belt and Road is doing Europe a “favor,” so Europe should be very supportive of China’s Belt and Road project. I totally agree with that. What he says is also a part of the message of my book. A ‘Differentiated’ EuropeMichelle Rasmussen: You were speaking about Europe becoming more autonomous in its relations with China. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has stated openly that Germany should not be forced to choose between the United States and China, that Germany needs to have relations with both. Can you say more about that? Is China Europe’s biggest trading partner? Prof. Li Xing: Yes, since November last year. Michelle Rasmussen: There’s differentiation inside Europe. For example, the Eastern European countries have a forum called “16+1,” where 16 Eastern European countries, plus China, have a more developed Belt and Road cooperation with China, than the Western countries. And there’s differentiation in the western European countries. You mentioned that some are making Hong Kong and Xinjiang into obstacles to improving European relations to China. What would you say to these concerns? Prof. Li Xing: China-EU relations are being affected by many, many factors. One is, as you mentioned, about 16+1, but now it’s 17+1, because, I think two years ago, Greece became a part of 16+1, so now it’s 17+1. And the western part of the EU, was quite worried about the 17+1 because some think that the Belt and Road plays a role in dividing Europe. Because Europe has this common policy, common strategy, and common action toward the Belt and Road, they also see the 17+1 grouping as somehow playing a divisive role. So, the EU is not very happy about that. Because you’re right, the Belt and Road is more developed in the eastern part of the EU. This is one issue. The second issue is that the EU has to make a balance between China on the one side, and the U.S. on the other. Right now, my assessment is that the EU is somehow being pushed to choose the U.S. side. It’s fine with me, from my analytical point of view, that the EU, most of the countries in the West, the traditional U.S. allies—like including Denmark—if they choose the U.S., that’s fine. But my position is that their choosing sides should be based on their own analysis, their own national interests, not purely on the so-called values and norms, that the U.S. and EU share norms, and therefore should have a natural alliance. I think that is not correct. I always advise Western politicians, thinktanks, and policy makers that they should study China-U.S. relations or EU-China-U.S. relations and try to find their own foreign policies. What is the correct direction? And based on their own judgment, based on their own research results, not based on what the U.S. wants them to do. Michelle Rasmussen: One of Denmark’s top former diplomats, Friis Arne Petersen, has been Denmark’s ambassador to the United States, to China, and to Germany. At the Danish Institute for International Studies, he recently called for Europe to join the Belt and Road Initiative. Why do you think it would be in the interest of Europe and the United States to join or cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative, instead of treating it as a geopolitical threat? Prof. Li Xing: Well, on the Belt and Road, as we have already discussed, we must first understand what it is. I fully agree with Friis Arne Petersen. When he was Ambassador to Beijing, I met him at one of the international conferences. He was always very positive towards Denmark-China cooperation. I fully agree with his point on the Belt and Road. But we have to understand, first of all, why the West is nervous about the Belt and Road. This is very important, because the European’s or the American’s worry is based on two perspectives. One is geopolitics. The second is norm diffusion. Geopolitics means that through the Belt and Road, China’s economic political influence will gradually expand to cover all of Eurasia, which is not in the interest of the West. This is a geopolitical rationale. Then the second perspective is norm diffusion, which means that through the Belt and Road, the Chinese development model spreads. As I mentioned before, because of the global attraction to China, the Chinese development model will be consolidated and extended through the Belt and Road, and that is also not in the interest of the West. That’s why China is a “systemic rival,” because it has a norm diffusion effect. We have to understand these two aspects. But why should Europe support the Belt and Road? I have already discussed this issue in my answer to your previous question regarding the importance of infrastructure development, and regarding why Europe should support the Belt and Road, especially in the context of Africa. Michelle Rasmussen: And you also spoke about the need for infrastructure development in the United States. The American Society of Civil Engineers gave the United States a grade point average of C- for the state of its infrastructure. Looking at high speed rail in China and in the United States, there’s nothing to compare. Prof. Li Xing: No, no. Michelle Rasmussen: In its 14th Five-Year Plan, China has committed itself to increase its high-speed rail lines by one third, from the present 38,000 kilometers to 50,000 kilometers by 2025. The U.S. has maybe a hundred and fifty kilometers. Prof. Li Xing: I was told by American friends that the U.S. has not invested heavily in infrastructure for many, many decades, about half century, something like that. I was shocked to hear that. So, I think Biden’s idea of infrastructure investment is great, but somehow the bill could not be agreed on by the Congress, and also the Senate, due to partisan conflict. Michelle Rasmussen: And it was not very ambitious in any case. Prof. Li Xing: Yes, totally. Reordering the World OrderMichelle Rasmussen: It was a step in the right direction, but was not very ambitious. Let’s move on to Latin America, which we in the Schiller Institute call Ibero-America. That’s because our members say that the Spanish language did not proceed from Latin. The Iberian Peninsula is Portugal and Spain, so Ibero-America is a better term. In any case, Li Xing, you are working on a study, China-U.S. Rivalry and Regional Reordering in Latin America. Can you please share the main idea with us? Prof. Li Xing: Yes. I’m working on this book, together with a group of Latin American scholars from different countries in the region. The objective of the book is to provide a good conceptualization, first, of the changing world order, and the reordering process. When we talk about that the world order is changing because of the US-China rivalry, at the same time, we also suggest that the world is experiencing a reordering process, that we do not know the future order, or the new order, but the world is in the process of reordering, driven by the China-U.S. rivalry. The book will also try to convey that the U.S.-China rivalry, according to our conceptualization, is “intra-core. According to the world system theory, you have a core which is the advanced economy countries, then you have a semi-periphery, and then you have a periphery. The semi-periphery is between periphery and the core, and the periphery is the vast number of developing countries. So the China-U.S. rivalry, competition, especially in high technologies in the security areas, is between these two core countries, or is intra-core. The China-U.S. rivalry also represents a struggle between two types of capitalism. On the one side is Chinese state capitalism, very centralized, state led, with central planning. On the other side is the U.S. free market, individual capitalist economy. Somehow the China model is gradually appearing to be more competitive. Of course, the U.S. doesn’t agree with that assessment, at least from the current perspectives. So, this rivalry must have a great impact on the whole world, especially on the developing world we call the Global South. Here we’ve tried to focus on the U.S.-China rivalry, and its impact on the Latin American and Caribbean region. The message of the book is, first, that global redistribution of power is inevitable. It’s still in process, and the emerging world order is likely to be dominated by more than one superpower, so the world order will likely look like a polycentric world, with a number of centripetals competing for high positions or strong positions. This is the first message. The second message is that the situation shows that the world is in a reordering process driven by the competition between the two superpowers, and it poses opportunities, and also constraints, to different regions, especially for the Global South, such as Latin America, because Latin America is the U.S. backyard; it is the subject of American doctrines—that North America and South America, are a sphere of U.S. influence. The Monroe DoctrineMichelle Rasmussen: You’re talking about the Monroe Doctrine? Prof. Li Xing: The Monroe Doctrine. Thank you very much. North America and South America have to be within the U.S. hegemonic influence. No external power is allowed to have a hand in, or interference in these two regions. You can say that China’s relations with Latin America has really been increasing tremendously during the past two decades. At the same time, the U.S. was busy with its anti-terrorism wars, and its creation of color revolutions in other parts of the world. If you look at the investment in infrastructure, and also imports of agriculture, China-Latin American trade and Chinese investment in Latin America are increasing tremendously, dramatically, which becomes a worry, a really deep worry, to the U.S. The different scholars, the book’s chapter authors, will use different countries and country cases as examples to provide empirical evidence to our “theoretical conceptualization.” This book will be published around summertime by Brill, a very good publisher in Holland. Michelle Rasmussen: Well, actually, the Monroe Doctrine was adopted in 1823, in the very early history of United States. This is after the United States had become a republic and had freed itself from the British Empire. It was actually John Quincy Adams— Prof. Li Xing: Exactly. Michelle Rasmussen:—who was actually involved in the idea, which was that the United States would not allow imperialism, imperial powers to bring their great power games into Latin and South America, but that the United States would help those countries become independent republics. So the question becomes, will Chinese policy strengthen the ability of the Ibero-American countries to be republics and enjoy economic development, or is China’s intention also a kind of imperialism? Prof. Li Xing: Based on your definitions, on your conceptualization of the Monroe Doctrine, you can say that there are two implications. One is that the U.S. should defend these two regions from imperialist intervention. The U.S. itself was not an imperial power at that time. The U.S. didn’t have intentions to become a global interventionist then, but today it is a different situation. Second, that the U.S. definitely interprets Chinese investment and infrastructure cooperation, and economic investment in Latin America as “helping,” to consolidate the country’s independence? No, I don’t think that is the case. That would be a kind of positive-sum game. Today, unluckily, these two countries are trapped into a zero-sum game. Whatever China is doing in the South American region, is interpreted as not being good for United States. That’s a very unfortunate situation. Michelle Rasmussen: Actually, we in the Schiller Institute have said that if the United States were to join with China to have even better economic development in Ibero-America; that would be a win-win policy. You spoke about the immigration challenge from Africa to Europe. It’s the same thing from Ibero-America to the United States. People would much rather stay in their own countries if there were jobs, if there were economic development, Prof. Li Xing: Yes. Michelle Rasmussen: And if the United States would join with China, then instead of— Prof. Li Xing: —building the wall! Instead of building the wall! Michelle Rasmussen: Exactly, exactly. Prof. Li Xing: Yeah, I agree with you. Operation Ibn SinaMichelle Rasmussen: Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the President of the Schiller Institute, has stated that one very important way to lessen the war danger between the United States, Russia and China would be for these countries to join forces to save the people of Afghanistan, where there is the worst humanitarian crisis in the world now, after the war, the drought, and the freezing of Afghanistan’s central bank assets by the western countries. She has proposed what she calls Operation Ibn Sina, named after the great physician and philosopher from that region, to build a modern health system in Afghanistan to save the people from disease, and as a lever to stimulate economic development. I know that when we spoke about Afghanistan before, you also referred to very important discussions now going on in Oslo, for the first time, between the Taliban and Western governments, including in the United States. But what do you think about this idea of China and the United States, and also Russia and other countries, joining hands to act to alleviate the terrible crisis for the people of Afghanistan? Prof. Li Xing: It’s a superb idea. This is one of the initiatives by the Schiller Institute. When I read your website, you have many development projects, and this one is a great idea. This is one of the areas I mentioned where the U.S. and China have a common interest. Unfortunately, what is happening today is the Ukraine crisis and the China-U.S. rivalry—so many battle fronts—puts Afghanistan more into the background. Right now, the Taliban delegation is talking with the West in Oslo, and I really hope there will be a constructive result, because after the U.S. withdrew from Afghanistan, Afghanistan’s Taliban government immediately went to China. And it was a Chinese interest. It was in China’s fundamental interest to help Afghanistan, because if Afghanistan is safe and prosperous, then there will be no terror and terrorism coming from Afghanistan across the border. Many of the terrorists in Xinjiang actually based themselves in Afghanistan. So it is in China’s national interest to help Afghanistan. Right now, I don’t know whether it is still in the U.S. interest to help Afghanistan. The U.S. might be tired of that region, because the U.S. lost two trillion dollars in the Afghanistan war, without any positive results. So, I do not know. I cannot tell the what the U.S. politicians’ feelings are, but the U.S. holds $9.5 billion of Afghanistan assets. And I think that money has to be released to help in the country’s rebuilding. And particularly, the Shiller Institute’s suggestion of a health care system is the priority. When people are in a good health, then people can work, and earn money. When people have a job or have a family, normally, people do not move. According to refugee studies, people normally do not move just because of a shortage. People move because of a situation devastated by war, by climate change, by various crises. Otherwise, people are relatively stable and want to stay in their homeland. XinjiangMichelle Rasmussen: You mentioned Xinjiang again now. Do you have something to say about Xinjiang for people in the West? Prof. Li Xing: I think that there are a lot of misunderstandings between the West and China, especially the misunderstanding from the Western side concerning Xinjiang. The other day, I saw a debate at Oxford University between an American former politician and a British former politician, about whether China is a friend or a foe. The American representative put forward the claim that in Xinjiang, we are experiencing what is called genocide. But later, at the end of his discussion, he admitted that there is no genocide, but he deliberately used genocide as a kind of provocation in order to receive attention from the world. The British representative asked if this view caused such a bad misunderstanding, misperception, then why not just give it up? Do not use genocide. You can criticize China for human rights abuses. You can criticize China for its minority policies, etc. But to deliberately defame China is not a good way. I don’t think it’s a good way. We also have to be fair. On the one side, you can criticize China’s policy treating problems in the minorities and others. But you have to also condemn terrorist actions because there were a lot of terrorist bomb killings in that region, especially from 2012-2015, around that time. In the beginning of the 2010s. I was in Xinjiang as a tourist in 2011, and I was advised to not pass by some streets, because there could be some risks. You can see that it was a very tense situation because of a lot of bombings. People pointed out to me, here were some bombings, there was some bombings. You don’t understand. So, the West should be fair and condemn these things, while at same time, also advising the Chinese government to develop a more constructive policy to resolve the problem, rather than using harsh policies. It has to be fair. This is the first point. Second, is that genocide not only defames China, it’s also contrary, it’s opposite to the facts. Twenty years ago, 30 years ago, Xinjiang’s Uighur population was about five million or eight million. But after 30 years, I think it’s about 11-13 million. I do not know exactly, but there has been a growth of population. How can you claim genocide, when the local population is increasing? Do you understand my point? So, this is not a good attitude. It is not a very good way to discuss with China and it makes China much more resistant in talking with you, when China is fears that it is being defamed. When some Western sources, in particular one German scholar, use a lot of data from a Turkish scholar, who is connected to the “minority resistance” from Xinjiang, then the credibility, reliability of the source is in question. You understand my point. So, the Xinjiang issue is a rather complicated, but the West and China should have a dialogue, rather than use in this specific discourse rhetoric to frame China in a way that China is the bad guy. It should be condemned. I think this is not constructive. The SWIFT SystemMichelle Rasmussen: Going back to the war danger, what do you think the impact on China and on the world economy would be, were the U.S. to force Russia out of the SWIFT international payment system, or similar draconian measures? Prof. Li Xing: Let me tell you that Olaf Scholz, the current German Chancellor, already expressed it very well, saying that if Russia were sanctioned and pushed out of the SWIFT payment system, then Europe could not pay Russia for its gas and oil. “If we can’t pay Russia, then Russia will not supply us. Then what should we do?” I read in the news today that the U.S. said, “We could supply most of Russia’s oil and gas.” Then Europe began to ponder: “Well then, this war has become your war, you know—a very egoistical interest, because you actually want to replace Russia’s gas and oil supply. That’s why you want to instigate the war.” So, I think it’s the U.S. that has to be very cautious in its sanctions, because the only sanctions possibilities for the United States today against major powers is financial, is payment—it’s the U.S. dollar. That’s the intermediate currency, the SWIFT system. And when China sees this, that only strengthened China’s conclusion to develop what we call electronic currency. China is using a lot of energy today investing in electronic currency. This electronic currency is a real currency. It’s just electronic. It’s being implemented in some big cities in test trials. Then, back to the SWIFT system, [if a country were thrown out] it would be rather impossible or would rather create a lot of problems in the international payment system, then the whole system will more or less collapse, because most countries watch this, and they will try to think about how they should react in the future if the U.S. uses the same system of sanctions against them. I just mentioned China, but also many other countries as well. They have to find an alternate. One other alternative is to use currencies other than the U.S. dollar as much as possible. I just read in the news today that the Chinese yuan has surpassed the Japanese yen as the fourth international [reserve] currency. And the situation will accelerate in that direction. So, I think that the U.S. should think twice. On China-Russia relations, I definitely think that China will help Russia in case the U.S. really implements a sanction of pushing Russia out of the SWIFT payment system. China definitely will help Russia, because both face the same pressure, the same struggle, the same robbery from the U.S. So, it is very bad. It is extremely bad strategy from the U.S. side to fight, simultaneously, on two fronts with two superpowers. This is what Henry Kissinger had said many times during the entire Cold War period. The U.S. was able to keep relatively stable relations between U.S. and China and between U.S. and the Soviet Union, keeping the Russia and China fighting against each other. But now it’s the opposite situation. The U.S. is fighting with two big powers simultaneously. I don’t know what is in the mind of the U.S. politicians. I really think that the U.S. needs to redesign its strategic foreign policy. The Schiller InstituteMichelle Rasmussen: Yeah. We’ve been speaking mostly about the U.S., but the British really are an instigator in this: the British Old Empire policy of trying to drive a wedge between the United States, Russia and China. That also has a lot to do with the current situation. We spoke before about that the Schiller Institute is trying to get the United States’ population to understand that the whole basis for the existence of the United States was the fight against the British Empire, and against this divide and conquer strategy, and, rather, to cooperate with Russia and China. In conclusion, this conversation has been very wonderful. Do you have any parting words for our audience? We have many people in Europe and in the United States. Do you have any parting words of advice as to how we should look at China and what needs to be different about our policy? Prof. Li Xing: No, I think that I want my last words, actually, to be invested in talking about the Schiller Institute. I think that some of your programs, some of your projects, and some of your applications are really interesting. The Schiller Institute has a lot of ideas. For example, you just mentioned your campaign for an Afghanistan health care system, but not only in Afghanistan. You promote these ideas for Africa, in developing countries. I really think that the Schiller Institute should continue to promote some of the ideas—a health care system in a country, especially now, considering the pandemic. The rich countries, including China, are able to produce vaccines, but not the developing countries. The U.S. has more vaccine doses stored up than necessary [for itself]. But Africa still has only very low percentage of people [who have been vaccinated]. Michelle Rasmussen: I think 8%. Prof. Li Xing: And we claim the Omicron variant of the coronavirus came from Africa. That’s an irony. That’s an irony, because it’s definite that one day, another variation will come from Latin America, or from some other part of the world. So, it’s rather important for the West, and for China, to think about some of the positive suggestions by your Institute. I’m glad that you invited me for this interview, and I expect to have more cooperation with you. Thank you very much. Michelle Rasmussen: Thank you so much, Li Xing.
Secretary of State Blinken used the occasion of the release of the U.S. response to Putin's proposed treaties to repeat the accusations of Russian aggression, and reiterate that Russia will face a harsh response if Russia invades Ukraine. Putin insists upon written security guarantees because the U.S. has broken numerous promises, financed and organized Color Revolutions and regime change coups, and launched aggressive wars, all supposedly to defend "human rights" and "democracy." In reality, the hypocritical and bloody foreign policy of the U.S. since the end of the Cold War has not been to secure peace or benefit the American people, but to defend the geopolitical interests of the City of London and its allies on Wall Street. What is needed is not further militarization in Europe, but diplomacy aimed at achieving mutually beneficial economic cooperation.
Jan. 27, 2022 (EIRNS)—Over 400 Iowa farmers have filed objections to threats of eminent domain and are opposing and protesting the 1,200-mile carbon-capture pipeline system across five Midwest states to a permanent sequestration site in North Dakota. Three companies, Valero Energy Corporation, BlackRock Global Energy & Power Infrastructure Fund II, and Navigator Energy Services, together, have teamed up with an Ames, Iowa, company, Summit Carbon Solutions, whose senior advisor is Terry Branstad, former Iowa Governor and Ambassador to China. Carbon dioxide has many useful roles in the modern economy, not to mention as plant food, and the infrastructure for CO₂ includes, in some locations, pipelines and storage capacity. However, the three green CO₂ pipeline proposals now rightly contested in the Midwest states, centered in Iowa, are not only not useful; they are crazy and unproductive in the extreme. They should be cancelled immediately. The four companies have CO₂ capture agreements with 31 biofuels plants and 20 fertilizer and ethanol plants, to transport their CO₂ to a destination where it will be sequestered underground. In the course of this, CO₂ burial certificates will be available as carbon credits for sale to other entities needing them, such as in California. This will supposedly benefit farmers by making the ethanol plants “green,” ensuring that their corn will still have a market. Those pushing the scheme say that without it, the ethanol plants may be shut down. Farmers in the dozens of counties that the pipelines would cross are in revolt against the scheme and the whole damn pack of lies. There are three schemes: An Iowa project, Midwest Carbon Express, envisions building 710 miles of pipeline across about one third of Iowa’s 99 counties. A second section would go into Minnesota and Nebraska. A third pipeline would connect the first two pipelines to pipelines passing through South Dakota and finally to North Dakota, where the CO₂ would be stored in underground caverns. All told, the pipes would extend 2,000 miles and cost $6.5 billion. The pipelines would supposedly capture the carbon equivalent of over 25 million cars per year. How would it get paid for? These companies would look to loans, hopefully government-backed, and “green investors”! John Deere & Co. is a “strategic investor,” and many ethanol plants have agreed to help finance this, as they will get added dollars from selling their low-carbon footprints. California currently pays $200 per metric ton for carbon credits and federal tax credits pay $50 per metric ton of carbon sequestered. Ethanol is already wildly inefficient in physical-economic terms. These added incentives would continue to drive the economy towards wasteful processes of low energy-density. Instead of burning corn and sending CO₂ thousands of miles away, use crops for food! The future of power lies in nuclear fusion, not shoveling your dinner into the gas tank. [rlb]
Today Secretary of State Antony Blinken held a State Department press conference, and closed-door sessions with members of Congress, announcing that the U.S. has provided written responses to Russia’s December texts of proposed security agreements. He also stated, “Additionally, NATO developed and will deliver to Moscow its own paper with ideas and concerns about collective security in Europe—and that paper fully reinforces ours, and vice versa. There is no daylight among the United States and our allies and partners on these matters.”In reality, while Blinken’s remarks repeated his usual dark litany of accusations and threats against Russia, daylight is showing through from many directions, on how dangerous and how “British” this whole confrontationism is. Blinken may blow clouds of smoke about “unity,” input from “allies,” and the like, but reality is otherwise. Even a reporter asked Blinken, you talk about “a unified approach with Europe. What do you make of Germany’s stance?” She said, “Would you say that you’re happy or satisfied with Germany sending helmets to Ukraine instead of arms shipments?” Blinken could only huff and puff about how each country has “different capabilities.” In brief, what Blinken did say in his press briefing, was that Russia is the aggressor against Ukraine, and warned, “We’ve lined up steep consequences, should Russia choose further aggression.” Blinken reiterated his “two path” sophistic approach to Russia: that Western militarization in Eastern Europe is the path of deterrence, but otherwise, the U.S. and the West are open to diplomacy, “should Russia choose it.” On the so-called deterrence path, Blinken gave a full report. He said, “Three deliveries of U.S. defensive military assistance arrived in Kiev this week, carrying additional javelin missiles and other anti-armor systems, 283 tons of ammunition and non-lethal equipment…. More deliveries are expected in the days to come. We have provided more defensive security assistance to Ukraine in the past year than in any previous year…. Last week, I authorized U.S. allies—including Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—to provide U.S.-origin military equipment…. Also last week, we notified Congress of our intent to deliver to Ukraine the Mi-17 helicopters….” And 8,500 U.S. servicemen are on “heightened readiness to deploy” in case needed to “to harden the Allies’ eastern flank.” Among the expanding opposition to this dangerous showdown are several political leaders and formations in Europe. In Croatia, President Zoran Milanovic said this week that his country will in no way get involved in the Ukraine crisis, nor send soldiers. He states that Ukraine does not belong in NATO, and that it was the European Union (N.B., including the U.K.) that triggered a coup in Kiev in 2014. Moreover, Milanovic said, as reported by Euractiv, that the crisis has nothing to do with Ukraine or Russia, but is connected with the dynamics of the United States internal situation, and that international security problems reflect “inconsistencies and dangerous behavior” by the U.S.A. In Spain, the Unidos Podemos party and eight smaller parties, all nine leftwing members of the Socialist Party’s governing coalition, have publicly opposed Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s decision to send military forces to participate in NATO’s buildup of forces against Russia, and are calling for an anti-war mobilization like that of 2003 which drove out the Aznar government that had deployed Spain’s military forces for George Bush’s war on Iraq. The existence of NATO itself is being questioned. On Friday, Jan. 28, French President Emmanuel Macron will be speaking by phone to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Today in Paris, officials of the Normandy group of four nations—France, Germany, Russia and Ukraine, met for eight hours, and issued a statement. They plan to meet again in Berlin next month. Today, Sputnik news ran an article reviewing the opposition in France and elsewhere in Europe to the U.S./U.K. showdown with Russia. Headlined, “French Politician: Puzzled by U.S. Warmongering, France & Germany Trying to Avoid EU Militarisation,” the article is based on an interview with Karel Vereycken, Vice-President of Solidarité & Progrès in France, who said that “France and Germany aren’t interested in dancing to the U.S., the U.K. and NATO’s tune—for good reason….” The Schiller Institute is providing the critical platform internationally to wake up the world to the war danger and to what has to be done in foreign relations and economically, including emergency humanitarian action, to stop the conditions and perpetrators who created this terrible emergency. The website offers ammunition, and another international conference to rally action is in the works for early February.
To protect a bankrupt financial system, the City of London and its allies in the Military-Industrial-Complex in the U.S. and NATO are demanding an end to sovereign governments, insisting that nations submit to their Great Reset -- which is a global central banker's dictatorship. Russia and China will not submit, putting us on a pathway to war in Ukraine and Taiwan. But such wars cannot be won, and could trigger nuclear war. The alternative was developed by Lyndon LaRouche: put the predatory financial institutions into bankruptcy, establish a New Bretton Woods financial system, and apply his Four Economic Laws to revive the American System of Physical Economy.
Natalia Vitrenko, the Chairwoman of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, has announced that the party's Central Committee had issued an open letter to the leaders of the world, ripping apart the fraud of those pushing for confrontation with Russia on the pretext of allowing the people of Ukraine to “write their own future.” She opens bluntly: “The Central Committee of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, expressing deep concern over the socioeconomic catastrophe in Ukraine, considers it unacceptable and dangerous, for both the citizens of Ukraine and the entire world community, to use political blackmail in inciting Ukraine to war with Russia. Countries of the West, led by the USA and NATO, are inciting our country in that direction.”The letter follows: On January 19th, the Central Committee of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine (PSPU) issued the following Open Letter, signed by the Chairwoman of the PSPU, renowned Ukrainian economist Natalia Vitrenko, and addressed to the Heads of State of the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Poland, and NATO General Secretary Stoltenberg, with copies for others noted below. To:President Joe Biden, USA;PM Boris Johnson, UK;PM Justin Trudeau, Canada;President A. Duda, Poland;General Secretary of NATO Jens Stoltenberg CC:UN General Secretary A. Guterres;General Secretary of the Council of Europe Marija Pejčinović Burić;General Secretary of the OSCE H.M. Schmid;President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky;President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin Dear heads of state and government, dear leaders of respected international organizations, The Central Committee of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine, expressing deep concern over the socioeconomic catastrophe in Ukraine, considers it unacceptable and dangerous, for both the citizens of Ukraine and the entire world community, to use political blackmail in inciting Ukraine to war with Russia. Countries of the West, led by the USA and NATO, are inciting our country in that direction. Since 2014, to our deep regret, fratricidal warfare has been under way in Ukraine, in which more than 15,000 innocent civilians have already been killed. In violation of international law and Article 17 of the Constitution of Ukraine, the Armed Forces of our state have been dragged into this conflict. In our view, the reason for this situation in Ukraine is not only the rewriting of history, making heroes out of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and Ukrainian Insurgent Army (OUN-UPA) collaborationists who abetted Hitler, but also the implementation, unacceptable for a civilized nation, of a state policy based on the ideology of Ukrainian “integral” nationalism (fascism). This is what has given rise to ethnic and religious hatred and discrimination against “non-indigenous” ethnic groups, which lawfully enough led to a split within our country. That policy has been enshrined in the laws on “lustration,” “de-communization,” indigenous peoples, and languages. The split in society and deceiving of our population have been intensified by the policy forced upon our country of seeking to join the EU and NATO. In 1991 Ukraine’s sovereignty was recognized by the world community on the basis of the norms and principles set forth in the Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine, which was twice affirmed by our people in nationwide referendums (17 March and 1 December 1991). The legal force of this Declaration still has precedence. That means that the world community not only recognized, but is obliged to defend the sovereignty of Ukraine as a neutral, non-bloc state, committed to a foreign policy of creating a union state with the former republics of the USSR. We understand that you, the leaders of countries in the West, do not like that kind of sovereignty for Ukraine and it does not benefit you in geopolitical terms. But that was the choice of our people, as against the false choice of the Ukrainian puppet regime that has been dragging the country towards joining the EU and NATO. It is quite clear that as long as our country maintained its non-bloc status, we had peace and tranquility. The policy of joining the EU and NATO, however, and the policy of Ukrainian “integral” nationalism (fascism), have led not only to a socioeconomic catastrophe and the loss of state sovereignty, but also to our people’s transformation into cannon fodder in the West’s geopolitical struggle against Russia and China. The Central Committee of the Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine categorically opposes that policy, which is forcing the Ukrainian regime to provoke a full-scale armed conflict with the Russian Federation. We have drawn these conclusions not only from the aggressive rhetoric of your countries’ officials and the NATO leadership, and not only from the bellicose propaganda of the Ukrainian regime and all its mass media, but also from the continuous supply of lethal weapons to Ukraine, construction of (essentially foreign) military bases on our territory, and the dispatch here of one after another unit of special forces, instructors and advisers from your countries. We understand that capitalism, by its objective nature, is sinking into an ever deeper crisis and that ominous social and economic problems are increasing in your countries. We understand that in the People’s Republic of China a magnificent event will soon take place, the Winter Olympic Games, which will show to the entire world an unprecedented, never before achieved level of development of a socialist state. That is why your countries have organized a “diplomatic boycott of the Olympics,” and to discredit this great international sports festival, just like in 2008 you need a military provocation. If it’s not Georgia against Russia, then this time it’s Ukraine against Russia. It’s clear that you want a military conflict, but you want it to be done by somebody other than yourselves. You won’t be the ones with zinc coffins coming home, and it won’t be your cities and villages that lie in ruins. You’ve grown accustomed to getting somebody else to do it for you. And for this purpose you buy off and intimidate the puppet regimes in your colonies. We are categorically opposed to this being done in general. And, included, to its being done through Ukraine and at the expense of the people of Ukraine. We draw your attention to the fact that delivering weapons to Ukraine today, in the current blistering-hot conflict situation, is a violation of the UN Charter, the Minsk accord on the peaceful settlement of the conflict in the Donbass (an agreement affirmed by the UN Security Council!), and international humanitarian law — in particular, the international Arms Trade Treaty (April 2013). Beyond any question, your countries’ supplying weapons to Ukraine is harming peace and security and provoking an intensification of the armed conflict and a growth in tension. This is expressly forbidden by that Treaty. We also draw your attention to the International Code of Conduct on Arms Transfers, drafted in 2000 by laureates of the Nobel Peace Prize. In particular, Article 4 of that Code, “Compliance with international human rights standards,” and Article 8, “Commitment to promote regional peace, security and stability.” The Code calls for not supplying weapons in instances of a Nazi regime or if it may lead to “a significant number of displaced persons or refugees.” Peace and accord will be established in Ukraine not by weapons deliveries, but by implementing the Minsk agreements, recognizing that Ukrainian “integral” nationalism is a criminal ideology, and the denazification and democratization of our country. The governments of your countries and of Ukraine are obliged to realize that war and incitement to war are not the main values of world civilization. Those values are peace, life, and the mental and physical health of people. Dr. Natalia Vitrenko is a noted Ukrainian economist, who formerly served as a member of parliament and ran for president. In 2019, she delivered an address on the topic “LaRouche’s Science of Physical Economy as the Key to Solving the Problems of the World, Eurasia, and Ukraine” at a Schiller Institute conference.
Saturday, January 22, 2022 Helga Zepp-LaRouche made a video address to the National Congress of Peru’s Christian Democracy, which was translated into Spanish and played at their conference on Saturday, Jan. 22, 2022. Here are her remarks: Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Dear Friends of the Christian Democracy in Peru: It is a great honor and pleasure to send these greetings to your national conference. I think you are all aware that we are at an extremely important moment in history, where world peace is not safe. We are still in an acute danger zone of a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis, over the situation in Ukraine, and the continued expansion of NATO eastward, toward the Russian border. This has been going on despite promises made to Russia during the time of the German unification in 1990-1991, where the promise was given to Gorbachev that NATO would “not move one inch eastward.” But NATO has moved 1,000 km to the east; 14 countries have joined NATO. And right now, you have a very fragile situation where the media are talking about that Russia would attack Ukraine, which Russia has denied. In any case, the situation is extremely volatile. And a little sign of hope comes from the discussions which just took place in Geneva between the United States and Russia, between NATO and Russia in Brussels, and in Vienna in the OSCE discussions, that maybe diplomacy will replace confrontation and that new arms control discussions can actually start in earnest.But the real reason behind this geopolitical crisis is that the systemic crisis of the neoliberal system is coming to a head. My late husband Lyndon LaRouche has made a forecast 50 years ago, in 1971, when President Nixon decoupled the dollar from the gold-reserve standard, and replaced fixed exchange rates with floating ones. My husband at that point said, if the world continues on that course of monetarism, sooner or later, the world would be faced with the danger of a new depression, new fascism, and even the danger of a new world war, unless a new financial system, and a new credit system would be implemented with a new, just world economic order. I think the countries of the developing sector are more acutely aware of this problem than anybody else, that we have now the danger of a hyperinflationary collapse. You see it in the prices of energy, of food, of basic raw materials. And the worst humanitarian crisis, of the many, is naturally happening in Afghanistan now, where after the withdrawal of NATO in August and takeover of the Taliban, when the Western countries cut off the aid to Afghanistan, because they didn’t like the Taliban, but everybody knew at the time that 75% of the budget of Afghanistan came from international aid! And when that money was cut off, all of a sudden, the economy of Afghanistan was plunged into an absolute chaos. Now, the United Nations is warning dramatically, again and again, that there are 8 million people right now, who are in immediate danger of starvation. They’re dying of hunger and freezing right now as you hear my words. The United Nations World Food Program also warned that there is the danger that 23 million people may not outlive this winter if there is not a dramatic change in this situation, and that over 90% of the people in Afghanistan have not enough food, are food insecure, have not enough medicine or no medicine at all, in the middle of a pandemic, and that 98% of the people are in danger of becoming permanently extremely poor, which is a starvation level. Now, this is why I have called for, what I call Operation Ibn Sina, in reference to the great physician who lived 1,000 years ago, who is the father of modern medicine, who was the one who first discovered quarantine, as a symbol that we have to build a modern health system in every single country on the planet, starting with Afghanistan, but not limiting it: Every country must have access to modern medicine, modern hospitals, and this is obviously only possible if you have electricity, if you have clean water—2 billion people in the world have no access to clean water; that has to be immediately reversed. We need basic infrastructure. And this building of a world health system must become the beginning of overcoming underdevelopment and poverty in the world, for good, forever. 2022 is the year when my late husband would celebrate his 100th birthday, and that’s why I have called that the year 2022 must become the Year of LaRouche. It is the year when all the beautiful plans which he developed in his lifetime must be realized. He developed already in the 1970s a plan to develop Africa through a large infrastructure program as the precondition for industrial development. He worked together, as you all know, with López Portillo, the President of Mexico, on what he called Operation Juárez, which was the idea that all of Latin America must be integrated and must have a coherent infrastructure program as the precondition for agriculture and industry to develop. This program of Operation Juárez is actual today than ever before. He also worked with Indira Gandhi: We worked with her on a 40-year development program for India, which was the idea that you need, at that time, in 1979, about two generations to reach a modern development state for the nation of India. After 1991, he proposed the Eurasian Land-Bridge. This has become the basic idea which is now being carried out by China with the Belt and Road Initiative. We published the study, “The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge.” Now, this is the hope, because, the fact that China and about 150 nations have signed memorandums of understanding with China, to cooperate in the Belt and Road Initiative is where the development of the world is taking place right now. And we, the LaRouche movement, and the Schiller Institute have made it our commitment to try to convince the United States and Europe to cooperate with the Belt and Road Initiative, and not oppose it for geopolitical reasons. This is the program to overcome poverty and underdevelopment, and create a decent living standard for every person on the planet. Now, this is the obvious task and challenge for us, because it should note be self-evident and accepted that several billion people are living in poverty! Poverty eradication is the absolute demand of this coming year, and the reason why we can be optimistic about the human species finally accomplishing that is because, as my husband said many times, the human species is the only species which has the ability of creative reason: We can do what no animal species can do, we can make fundamental discoveries about physical principles of the universe, and when we apply those principles as technologies in the production process, it leads to an increase of the productivity of the labor force and of the productive forces. And that is the way how to increase the living standard, the life expectancy, and to create the conditions for an improvement of the general welfare. It is the principle of physical economy, and not monetarism, which we have to bring back to the world economy. This coming year, we will see a worsening of the crisis, because there is no way how this casino economy will last forever. It will come to a point of crisis, where we need to put all forces of the world together, people of good will, to implement the Four Laws of Lyndon LaRouche: The first of which is a global Glass-Steagall banking separation, the speculation of the derivatives casino has to come to an end forever, and the economy must again be put to the service of the people. The second is, we need a National Bank in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton in every single country, and when these National Banks among the different countries work together, then that can create a New Bretton Woods credit system which will provide credit lines for long-term investment and the kind of infrastructure program which Latin America needs in the same way as parts of Asia and Africa, and even parts of Europe, which are not yet developed. Now, this can be done. And I think we should be optimistic that this coming year is going to be the year where that is going to be put on the table, because the crisis will demand it. Well, I had the fortune, together with my husband, to visit your country in 1987, and I have the most beautiful memories of that visit, and I think Peru is a great nation, which has an absolutely great population. And I wish you the best possible future, for your country and the great success for your conference. And I look forward to our collaboration, so that we together bring humanity from the abyss of a catastrophe and start to create a new paradigm in international relations, and start a new, more optimistic chapter in the history of humanity. All my greetings to you.
Executive Intelligence Review, the Daily Alert Service, and other LaRouche publications, including our video, must be vectored, especially in the next days, to asserting the reality of the present danger of total war, including thermonuclear war, and what to do to avert it—even as mistaken distortions in the calm strategic evaluation required in this situation abound in the printed and electronic media, whether through incompetence or design. This begins with accurately reporting, particularly to the largely clueless American people, what the Russian government is actually saying. On Monday, Russian Presidential spokesman Dmitri Peskov said during his briefing: “The head of our state, as the commander-in-chief and the man who defines the foreign policy of our country,.. takes necessary measures to ensure our common security and to protect our interests… It were us who initiated the negotiations, the consultation [on guarantees of security for Russia], and we expect to receive written responses to our proposals, which aim to help us avoid such tense situations in the future.”Peskov refused to speculate on any potential military action that might be initiated, either by Ukraine, or by Russia. He indicated that there was no plan at this point for Biden and Putin to speak again. Those written responses by the United States and by NATO are the clear precondition for anything else. We also insist, emphatically, and as only these publications will, that despite the obvious culpability of the knuckle-dragger factions of American intelligence agencies, including their criminal manipulation of, and deployment into, the United States Congress, the war design that is presently unfolding is British in origin, as it was in Iraq I (Margaret Thatcher,) and Iraq II (Tony Blair.) Today, the hapless Boris Johnson represents the tattered imperial “Remains of the Day” that is the silly “Global Britain” scheme. A vigorous, polemical attack on “the sexual impotence of British liberal imperialism,” on lurid display yesterday in a “senior U.S. administration officials’ special background briefing” on the “incredibly potent” sanctions about to be imposed on Russia, or in Britain’s depraved indifference to defending the General Welfare of British subjects as expressed in the “herd” approach to the coronavirus pandemic, is certainly in order, and would uncomfortably echo through the halls of Buckingham Palace right now. (The now-demoted Andrew was, in fact, the ideal representative of the latter-day British “Great Game.”) The imposition of new sanctions against Russia, now being discussed in the U.S. Congress by Senators Menendez (D-New Jersey) and Risch (R-Idaho,) is also being simultaneously contemplated against China, ostensibly because of the “imperial threat” China may pose to Taiwan. Notably, manic Republican legislators have proposed that these new Russian sanctions should happen now, before any incident even occurs involving military forces at the Ukrainian/Russian border. Sophistries aside, are not sanctions, in fact, an implicit act of war? The present drive towards war was not, in fact, provoked by any recent Russian actions whatsoever. Ukraine’s Natalia Vitrenko documents in her " Open Letter to World Leaders: Stop supplying weapons and using political blackmail to incite Ukraine to war with Russia!" that, “The split in society and deceiving of our population have been intensified by the policy forced upon our country of seeking to join the EU and NATO. In 1991 Ukraine’s sovereignty was recognized by the world community on the basis of the norms and principles set forth in the Declaration on the State Sovereignty of Ukraine, which was twice affirmed by our people in nationwide referendums (17 March and 1 December 1991). The legal force of this Declaration still has precedence…. That means that the world community not only recognized, but is obliged to defend the sovereignty of Ukraine as a neutral, non-bloc state, committed to a foreign policy of creating a union state with the former republics of the USSR….” The reality is that the same Anglo-American intelligence establishment that manufactured the “Russia-gate” hoax, and instigated the overthrow of the duly elected government of Ukraine in February 2014, has partnered with a pro-Nazi grouping to provoke a war on the border of Russia. We should note in this context, recent reference by Chinese spokesmen to a “zero tolerance” policy toward attempts at “color revolutions” in nations such as Kazakhstan, which borders both Russia and China. Various American commentators now warning about the war threat opine that “there is nothing that the United States actually can do to stop a Russian action,” and that “there is no basis to believe that NATO can expect to win a war in this area.” They, however, miss the point. British imperial interests, which dominate the thinking of the United States State Department, realize that their system is doomed unless China and Russia are subjugated—which, however, will bring about planetary doom, not merely monetary doom for an already-dead system. Trans-Atlantic policy no longer follows logic, let alone reason. In an article entitled, “NATO As Religion,” author Alfred de Zayas, professor at the Geneva School of Diplomacy and a U.N. official, states: “I dare postulate the hypothesis that the best way to understand the NATO phenomenon is to see it as a secular religion. Then we are allowed to believe its implausible narratives, because we can take them on faith…. As [with] every religion, the NATO religion has its own dogma and lexicon. In NATO’s Lexicon a”color revolution" is [the same as] a coup d’état, democracy is co-terminous with capitalism, humanitarian intervention entails “regime change,” “rule of law” means OUR rules, “Satan Nr. 1” is Putin, and Satan Nr. 2 is Xi Jinping. Can we believe in the NATO religion? Sure. As the Roman/Carthaginian philosopher Tertullian wrote in the Third Century AD—credo quia absurdum. I believe it because it is absurd “….I dare consider myself a US patriot—and an apostate from the NATO religion—because I reject the idea ‘my country right or wrong.’ I want my country to be right and to do justice—and when the country is on the wrong track, I want it to return to the ideals of the Constitution, of our Declaration of Independence, of the Gettysburg address—something I can still believe in. “NATO has emerged as the perfect religion for bullies and war-mongers.” It is not enough, however, to aspire to “return to” the American Republic. Policies must be formulated now, to deal with the shock of what British monetarist-economist Jeremy Grantholm characterized on January 20 as “the end of the Fed U.S. bubble extravaganza: housing, equities, bonds, and commodities,” the “three-and-a-half super-bubbles collapse.” For the Anglo-Dutch imperial impulse for total war, including thermonuclear war, to be defanged, the American Presidency must publicly reject war with Russia and China. It should consider, and respond positively, to the perspective presented to an apoplectic Davos audience last week by Xi Jinping: " Countries need to strengthen international cooperation against COVID-19, carry out active cooperation on research and development of medicines, jointly build multiple lines of defense against the coronavirus, and speed up efforts to build a global community of health for all….In the context of ongoing COVID-19 response, we need to explore new drivers of economic growth, new modes of social life and new pathways for people-to-people exchange, in a bid to facilitate cross-border trade, keep industrial and supply chains secure and smooth, and promote steady and solid progress in global economic recovery…." Operation Ibn Sina, the World Health Platform policy of the Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites, and the “Four Economic Laws” of Lyndon LaRouche, the most concise statement, and advancement of Hamilton and the American Revolution’s rejection and replacement of British liberal imperialism, are the readily available solution for a rapid move forward by the United States Presidency into the Twenty-first Century, free of the “eighteenth-century methods” of the British Empire that Franklin Delano Roosevelt rejected.
From the moment last Friday that Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken announced that they had met and agreed that the U.S. would provide a written response to Russia’s urgent security concerns, the British have been working overtime to make sure that nothing of the sort ever happens—or at least that whatever written response Blinken provides will be a further anti-Russian provocation.First, there are the stepped-up direct military deployments: another American planeload of sophisticated weapons for the pro-Nazi Kiev government; the transfer of Ukrainian rocket launchers and other heavy weapons to the conflict zone with Donbas; and the Pentagon confirming that President Biden had instructed them to put 8,500 U.S.-based troops on heightened alert for potential deployment to Europe, based on a briefing on “military options” presented to him by Defense Secretary Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff head Gen. Milley. Those options included sending up to 50,000 U.S. troops to Eastern Europe—steps which the Russians will read as a direct military threat. Then there are the British psy-ops: British intelligence reached a fact-less finding that Russia intended to topple the Kiev government and put in their own puppet (denied by the Russian government); an anonymous diplomat in Beijing reported that Chinese President Xi Jinping had asked Putin to hold off on invading Ukraine until after the Winter Olympics (denied by the Chinese and Russian governments); and yet another round of anti-Russian bravado by Blinken (there will be “massive consequences” for Russia if a “single additional Russian force” enters Ukraine) and by Karen Pierce, the British ambassador to the United States (“you’ll always find the U.K. at the forward end of the spectrum” in going after Russia). “What is clear,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche reported today, “is that we are in an extremely dangerous situation and, given the number of lunatics in leading positions and also the absolute certainty of miscalculation based on wrong epistemological approaches, I think the only conclusion we can have out of this present situation is that we have to go into an all-out anti-war mobilization, waking up especially the American public, because that is the main force which is uninformed about what the danger of the situation is.” Russia expects an answer this week, she continued, and that answer cannot fail to address their existential security concerns by putting in writing guarantees that NATO will cease its eastward expansion up to Russia’s borders. But at this point, everything indicates that the U.S. will do nothing of the kind. If that is the case, Zepp-LaRouche warned, then we are in a showdown for a countdown to Russia’s activation of “military technical measures” of their own—which could include the deployment of hypersonic Zircon missiles on submarines within five-minutes flight time of both American coasts. For an anti-war mobilization to be successful, however, it must not simply issue pronouncements against war, but it must address two key policy points: 1) identify who is behind the war drive, and why (the collapsing trans-Atlantic financial empire); and 2) present a program to build a durable peace—based on the policies of global economic reconstruction encapsulated in LaRouche’s Four Laws. As then-presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche summarized the matter nearly 40 years ago, in the opening sentence of a March 30, 1984 “Draft Memorandum of Agreement between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R.”: “Article 1: General conditions for peace. The political foundation for durable peace must be: a) The unconditional sovereignty of each and all nation-states, and b) Cooperation among sovereign nation-states to the effect of promoting unlimited opportunities to participate in the benefits of technological progress, to the mutual benefit of each and all.”
Harley Schlanger, a spokesman for the Schiller Institute and The LaRouche Organization, gave the following presentation at the Schiller Institute Conference on January 22, “A Difference in Leadership – Can a War with Russia Still Be Averted?”, following presentations by Russian Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy and Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche. HARLEY SCHLANGER: What I will show is that the U.S. official position -- that Russia is the cause of the problem, and Russia has to back down, Russia has to move back its troops and so on -- is either based on ignorance of history, or an arrogant view of the U.S. as the unilateral enforcer of a “rules-based order.” What I intend to show is that it’s the latter.Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov said the other day, that ignoring Russia’s legal concerns over the eastward expansion of NATO to include Ukraine and a deployment of forces, including weapons, near the Russian border, will have the most serious consequences. In stating this, he was repeating the formulation that I think is the most clear from President Putin, from his annual press conference on December 23rd. I want to read the quote from President Putin: “Our actions will not depend on the negotiation process, but rather on unconditional guarantees for Russia’s security concerns. In this connection, we have made it clear that any further movement of NATO to the East is unacceptable. Is there anything unclear about this? Are we deploying missiles near the U.S. border? No, we are not. It is the U.S. that has come to our home with its missiles, and is already standing on our doorstep. Is it going too far to demand that no strike systems be placed near our home? What is so unusual about this?” In listening to that, it’s very striking the similarity to the argument made to the American people on October 22, 1962 by President Kennedy, as to why he had to adopt a quarantine—which was actually a blockade—of Cuba, to stop the import of further Soviet missiles, during the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Here’s what Kennedy said in that speech to the American people: “In the world today, due to the destructive power of nuclear weapons and the swiftness of ballistic missiles, any substantially increased possibility of their use, or any sudden change in their deployment may well be regarded as a definite threat to peace.” He talked about the build-up of the Soviet Union’s missiles in Cuba, and added:“In an area well known to have special and historical relationship to the United States,” and I might add parenthetically, exactly as Ukraine does with Russia today, “the sudden clandestine decision to station strategic weapons outside of Soviet soil, is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo which cannot be accepted by this country.” I think you’ll see in his language, something very similar to what President Putin is saying today, which is why many people, including Helga, have called this a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis. I want to give you a quick view of what the idea of a “unipolar world” is, and what it means. The people who argue for the U.S. to be the main power, start from the standpoint that we’re “democratic,” we’re “good.” Therefore, when we deploy missiles, it’s for the good. As Dr. Andrey Kortunov (of the Russian International Affaires Council) told us: when the Russians deploy the missiles, since they are “bad,” these are “bad missiles” and have to be opposed. From that standpoint, we have to look at where this idea comes from. The underlying issue today, which is called into question by President Putin’s insistence on legally binding security guarantees, is that the construct of a unipolar world is dead. The whole idea that there’s only one nation on the planet which, because of its immense military power and economic power, can dictate the rules to the rest of the human race, and use satraps such as the European Union and NATO to help enforce it, no longer applies. The Western financial system is collapsing. There’s a further point, though. In reality, this idea never really existed, except in the minds of those who enforced it and tried to convince the rest of the world that it had no choice but to accept it. They believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union left them with no military obstacle to impose their unilateral decisions on strategic and financial matters. We’ve talked about this before. Helga brought it up again this afternoon. What is the “rules-based order”? Well, for the unilateralists, it’s the rules that sustain their control over the global economy. This goes back to a merger during the George Herbert Walker Bush administration, and actually before that. It occurred during the Reagan administration with the emergence of the Democratic Leadership Council taking over the Democratic party with its so-called “Third Way,” which became the approach of the Clinton administration. The idea of the neoconservatives and neo-liberals essentially joining as an American force to impose this unipolar world. In particular, it was the neo-cons who were the most arrogant, with their Project for a New American Century, in which they insisted that the United States had emerged as the only power on the planet. Therefore, they created a narrative to explain why everyone else has to march to the tune of the United States. The narrative starts with, “We won the Cold War.” Second, the victory in the Cold War was one of “democracy” and the “free market.” The third point: This means that every nation must submit to those who won the Cold War, because we’re the good guys; we did what was right. The fourth point, which is usually not expressed, is that this means there’s no more sovereignty, no morePeace of Westphalia, as Tony Blair blatantly stated repeatedly in trips to the United States. The idea that there’s a common good is no longer acceptable. The idea that there should be no interference in other nations’ internal affairs, which was part of the Peace of Westphalia, is no longer valid. That the “common good” is whatever the unipolar power insists on. I want to give you a sense of what the so-called “democratic order” that this “rules-based order” has done in the world in the last 30 years.
As war preparations hit a feverish pace, driven by the usual false narratives from the Military-Industrial Complex war hawks, there are other warnings being stated quietly, hoping you are not paying attention. These have to do with the Fed's decision to "fight inflation" by raising interest rates, a strategy that risks triggering a wave of defaults of 54 mostly poor, heavily-indebted countries -- including Ukraine -- but also of debt-ridden zombie corporations, banks, insurance companies, etc. If you suspect there might be a connection between the war drive and the systemic financial collapse of the economy, you are right.
Once again, a fraudulent report has been produced by British intelligence to push the U.S. into war, this time with Russia over Ukraine. Using the usual tactics -- anonymous sources, promoting fake intelligence, asserting devious schemes by Russia -- they may be reacting to a sense of reluctance in Washington, by Biden, and some NATO countries, to plunge into World War III. That the U.S. has now announced that it will respond to Putin's demands for "legally-binding security guarantees" may have spooked the Brits into "ramping up preparations" for war. A thorough background report was produced in a Schiller Institute video seminar on Jan. 22, "Can War with Russia Still Be Averted", available HERE.
The Schiller Institute today sponsored a critical forum under the title: “A Difference In Leadership: Can War with Russia Still Be Averted?” Speaking from the Russian Mission to the United Nations, Ambassador Dmitry Polyanskiy, First Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN, presented the stark reality of the current rush to war by Western leaders. “It seems,” he said, “that our Western colleagues are blinded by the so-called ‘victory’ in the Cold War, and continue to live these memories and try to talk from the position of superiority, and impose double standards. They blame us for the presence and movement of our troops on our own sovereign territory, while claiming that everything they do on NATO territory is nobody’s business. This will no longer work.”Helga Zepp-LaRouche posed the higher order approach to the crisis: “I suggest very strongly that we need a new security architecture, which has to reflect on the basic lessons of history. You have to look at treaties which did lead to peace, and those which didn’t. A good example for the first is the Peace of Westphalia, where after 150 years of religious war, especially the Thirty Years’ War, people realized that nobody would be the winner of the continuation of the war. So, they agreed on the famous principles of the Peace of Westphalia, the most important being that you have to take into account the interest of the other if you want to have peace. Every time that was done—and this Peace of Westphalia, by the way, was the beginning of international law and what constitutes the UN Charter today—that leads to peace. The other example is the Versailles Treaty, which proclaimed that Germany was the only guilty party in World War I, which was not true. For sure, it was not just. It put burdens on Germany to pay not only the cost of war, but reparations, which was completely overburdening the German economy. So, the Reichsbank started to print money; that led to the hyperinflation; that contributed to the Depression. Naturally, the deep sense of injustice which the people coming out of this had, led to the rise of the Nazis and the actual takeover by the National Socialists which led to World War II.” Harley Schlanger, a spokesman for The LaRouche Organization, reviewed the arrogance of the neoconservatives and the neoliberals who believed that the West had “won” the Cold War, and that this gave them license to impose their imagined superior system of “democracy and free market economies” on all nations, by military means if necessary. He posted a chart of the illegal and genocidal wars waged against nations—Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, and then the coup against Ukraine in 2014—against nations which were no threat to anyone, wars based on fraudulent charges which are acknowledged now to have been manufactured to justify the wars. This included the “shock therapy” imposed on Russia itself, in an attempt to reduce a great scientific and industrial nation into a “raw material exporter” with impoverished and declining populations. When Vladimir Putin reversed that destruction, he was labeled an “autocrat,” while both parties in the U.S. united behind the war policy. The era of unilateralism and a unipolar world is now finished, Schlanger asserted, as the China-Russia cooperation in nation building, for themselves and the 140 nations which have joined the Belt and Road Initiative, are no longer taking orders, and will no longer allow color revolutions or neo-colonial wars and oppression. Paul Gallagher, EIR Economics Editor, then dissected the destruction of the “American System,” which had been restored by Franklin Roosevelt through Glass-Steagall bank regulation and the post-war Bretton Woods system. The destruction began with the 1971 decoupling of the dollar from gold by the Nixon Administration, turning the banking system into one based on speculation rather than production. With the collapse of the speculative bubble in 2008, Lyndon LaRouche’s proposal to restore American System policies was rejected in favor of mass money printing to save the banks, creating the greatest “everything bubble” in history. The effort to sustain the $275 trillion bubble through the Green New Deal, run by the same bankers responsible for the bubble itself, by shutting down fossil fuels, many industries and farms, would result in mass depopulation of the world, already evident globally, and even within the United States. Here again, the emergence of Russia, China and the Belt and Road Initiative demonstrates that the unipolar world run by the City of London and Wall Street no longer can dictate this destruction on the rest of the world, with the danger that they may choose to launch a nuclear war rather than joining as an equal partner in a new world order. Richard Black, the Schiller Institute representative to the UN, followed up Ambassador Polyanskiy’s call for ending the forced division of the world into warring blocs, to seek those things which unite us rather than divide us. He reviewed LaRouche’s work with the scientific community in Russia, in the tradition of that nation’s great scientific geniuses, calling on the citizens of the Western nations to organize their political leaders and candidates to force their governments to give up their phobias, and cooperate in the great tasks facing mankind as a whole. A rich discussion and Q&A followed. You are encouraged to watch this crucial and productive forum, and to act on the ideas there presented.
With the sounding of a “Russian coup coming in Ukraine” siren by British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss on Jan. 22—to push the British demand to hit Russia now with the financial super-sanctions that were supposed to be threatened to deter war—it has become clear that there is no “unity of the NATO allies and partners” on dealing with Russia in the Ukraine missiles crisis.Rather, there is a British drive to force Russia to invade Ukraine or capitulate; a beleaguered but definite German opposition to the British war drive; a French President who wants to negotiate but is trying to look good and get re-elected; and a weak American President who would like to avoid war. If war, even world war, comes, it will be war imposed on the weakened American Presidency by the City of London and Britain. Not a second Crimean War, but a war for revenge against Russia and China for resisting and ruining the grand Glasgow global climate summit in November, leaving the British ministers who ran that summit in angry tears as it ended in failure. That included Prime Minister Boris Johnson, “BoJo” the nasty clown, who is discredited and inches from a no-confidence vote by his own Conservative Party MPs. “His resolve has hardened” against Russia, his spokesman announced on Jan. 22. The New York Times coverage of the new fake was headlined, “Britain Pursues More Muscular Role in Standoff with Russia on Ukraine,” although it’s always U.S. muscle Britain uses. Even the nervously hyper-aggressive U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken did not respond to the newest British war fable, beyond “We’re taking that seriously,” when it was thrown at him today by “Face the Nation’s” anchor Margaret Brennan, who raved as if she had taken some British meth with her coffee before the program. Against the London-Kiev demand that the supposed financial super-sanctions be imposed on Russia tomorrow, Blinken noted the obvious, “We’re using them as a deterrent. You would lose their deterrent effect.” He did not include the equally obvious, “and push Russia toward war”—the British intent. Blinken repeatedly stressed two points: “We have rallied allies and partners across Europe in a very intense way in recent days”; and “We are also responding to some of Russia’s concerns in further talks, and we expect them to respond to our concerns.” The Russian Embassy in London stressed today that the British were outside the process of negotiation with Russia: “The U.K. Foreign Office continues with a series of provocative statements on the situation around Ukraine…. These rallying cries come against the background of an obvious deterioration of British expertise on Russia and Ukraine. …The words by Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss about Ukraine having suffered from various invaders, ‘from the Mongols to the Tatars,’ is one example. Then came the ‘news’ of Russia intending to establish a puppet regime in Kiev led by a former Ukrainian MP—one that happens to be under Russian sanctions for being a threat to national security,” referring to Yevheniy Murayev. Germany does not want to allow the British war drive to succeed. Its Navy Chief Vice Adm. Kay-Achim Schönbach was forced to resign by media attacks, when he stated that what Putin “wants is respect. And my God, giving someone respect is low cost…. It is easy to give him the respect he really demands—and probably also deserves.” It is now widely reported that Chancellor Olaf Scholz was asked to Washington for consultations with President Biden and declined to go until some later time. Germany will not permit Baltic nations to which it has sold German weapons to pass them on to Ukraine, and the breakneck British shipments of lethal weaponry are having to be flown over Danish airspace because the U.K. does not dare ask Germany for flyover permission. The Biden Administration is about to respond in writing to Russian President Putin’s proposed agreements to keep NATO missiles and warfighting arrangements out of Ukraine and off Russia’s border—“and stating our concerns” about Russia, Blinken said today. The United States has decided it wants Russia to agree not to publish these responses, most likely because such publication will either infuriate the warmongers around BoJo’s government and inside the City of London, or cause more doubts in Germany, France, and perhaps other “allies and partners.” The most important question now is, what will American citizens do to direct their flailing government toward solving the most important problems facing humanity? That requires cooperation with at least Russia and China as a means to reverse the American industrial economy’s decline toward “green” suicide, and involve the United States in building new public health systems and infrastructure development programs around the world. London’s Malthusian policy of deindustrialization by war can’t be tolerated.
This is translated for publication in EIR from Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s lead article in the January 27, 2022 issue of Neue Solidarität Jan. 23 (EIRNS)—After the hectic diplomacy of this week—Annalena Baerbock in Kiev and Moscow, Antony Blinken in Kiev, then in Berlin to meet with the foreign ministers of the United States, France, Great Britain and Germany, Blinken’s meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz and finally the meeting of foreign ministers Sergey Lavrov and Blinken in Geneva—the danger of a world war which could annihilate mankind has not been averted. After the last meeting, Lavrov stated that he expected to receive a written answer from the U.S. and NATO next week concerning the legally binding treaties demanded by Russia, which provide that NATO will not expand further east to Russia’s borders, that Ukraine will not be admitted to NATO, and that no offensive weapons systems will be placed on the Russian border. Blinken referred to further talks with “allies and partners in the coming days,” after which Western concerns and ideas could then be shared with Russia.However, if the U.S. position remains what Blinken, according to RT, told journalists after his meeting with Lavrov—namely that there is no room for compromise on Moscow’s main demand, and that a non-negotiable principle of America and its allies is that the Ukrainian people have the right “to write their own future”—then the very short fuse threatens to burn very quickly. Indeed, the formulation used by Blinken is just a sophistical way of referring to Ukraine’s entry into NATO, which is part of the Anglo-American narrative on “Russia’s aggressions.” But for any honest historian, as well as for everyone who looks at a map, the facts are clear: After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was not Russia that moved its borders some 1,000 km westward from the border of the then-Warsaw Pact to reach somewhere in France around Lille, but it was NATO that advanced to the east by 1000 km. Thus, it clearly broke the verbal commitments given to Gorbachev by the George H.W. Bush administration, and especially by then-Secretary of State James Baker III, that NATO would not move “one inch to the east.” A closer look shows that the methods used by NATO to add 14 new member states in Eastern and Central Europe and in the Balkans were not always the most subtle. According to the Western narrative, it was the desire for freedom that pushed these countries into NATO. But the reality is different. After the shock therapy of Jeffrey Sachs and the brutal policy of privatization, with no concern for the social consequences, had drastically impoverished the populations of the former Comecon, a massive network of NGOs was set up with thick checkbooks, with the aim of effecting a paradigm change in favor of the West. In 1990, at the time prior to German reunification and during the upheavals in Eastern Europe, this author personally experienced how the first democratic attempts of self-organization by the people in the East were cold-bloodedly smothered and replaced by compliant opportunists, often enough in positions of government. “Corruption is good” became the motto in many places—then at least we know whom we can trust. So much for the principle of “letting peoples choose their own future.” The latest example just came from the—failed—attempt to carry off a color revolution in Kazakhstan, with the use of “Maidan techniques” as Vladimir Putin correctly pointed out. If Putin is now demanding—in the context of what German Gen. Harald Kujat (ret.) told DLF radio/TV was not in preparation for a military attack, but rather as a threatening backdrop (i.e., the redeployment of about 100,000 Russian troops closer to the Ukrainian border although some of them are still hundreds of kilometers away)—legally binding written assurances that NATO will neither be extended further eastward to the borders of Russia, nor will ever accept Ukraine as a member, then this is simply a way of expressing that for Russia a red line has been reached. Given the fact that there are already 10,000 NATO troops in Ukraine, including some 4,000 U.S. troops, that private mercenary outfits are training Ukrainian military units in eastern Ukraine for false-flag operations, that the U.K. is supplying offensive lethal weapons to Ukraine, that U.S. and British warships and fighter jets are provoking incidents in the Black Sea aimed at providing the reconnaissance aircraft with information about Russian military capabilities—what conclusions is Russia supposed to draw from all these and many other policies? In reality, NATO is already operating practically in Ukraine, but formal NATO membership would definitively confirm that it was no longer possible to defend Russia’s fundamental security interests. Even as the abovementioned diplomatic talks were ongoing, the British broadcaster Sky News reported that the U.K. had deployed 30 members of its “Special Operations Brigade” to Ukraine to train Ukrainian troops on anti-tank weapons that were also supplied by the British. According to the military spokesman for the Donetsk People’s Republic, more than 460 tons of various lethal weapons, including 2,000 NLAWs (anti-tank missiles), have recently been delivered by nine C17 aircraft to Ukrainian forces stationed on the line of contact with the Donbas, which include a considerable number of radical nationalists. Whether these weapons are defensive or offensive in nature depends, as always, on the specific combat situation. Shortly after Moscow presented the two treaties to the United States and NATO on Dec. 15, Putin announced that Russia would respond to their rejection with “appropriate military-technical retaliatory measures.” In a Jan. 15 article in National Interest magazine, David T. Pyne, currently working for the Task Force on National and Homeland Security (a Congressional Advisory Board), cited Brussels-based U.S. analyst Gilbert Doctorow’s interpretation of what these “military-technical retaliatory measures” might entail. Doctorow assumes that it means the additional deployment of Russian nuclear-capable SS-26 Iskander-M short-range missiles to Belarus and Kaliningrad, which would threaten NATO front-line states and eastern Germany. Moreover, the new nuclear-armed Tsirkon sea-launched hypersonic cruise missiles could be stationed off the American coast near Washington. Earlier statements from Russian officials noted that such missiles could destroy the American capital faster than the President could escape on Air Force One. Therefore, if the U.S. and NATO reject Russia’s demands for security guarantees, there is a real probability that we may have to deal very soon with a double Cuba crisis, but without a John F. Kennedy as U.S. President. Rather, we have a President Biden whom the war hawks in his entourage openly refuse to respect and who “correct” him if he says he does not seek war with Russia. It should be clear to all thinking persons that in the event of a war waged with nuclear weapons—be it “limited” or not—no one in Germany would survive. For our new Foreign Minister Baerbock, it is obviously not clear, otherwise she would not fall into NATO jargon in such a synchronized manner with “dear Tony” as she just did at the Berlin press conference. The Greens have completely morphed into a war party. And if someone begins pondering, like former Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, what nuclear options there might be against Russia, then they should seek therapy against suicidal and homicidal thoughts. Under such circumstances, Germany’s membership in NATO can no longer be defended. We immediately need a new international security architecture that takes into account the interests of all countries, explicitly including those of Russia and China. If we have learned anything from history, it is that only those treaties that include the interests of all the states involved, such as the Treaty of Westphalia, can be the basis for lasting peace. Peace treaties that do not do so, such as the Treaty of Versailles, contain the opening salvo for the next war, as we in Germany should have painfully learned. NATO, which unnecessarily excluded Russia from the European house after the dissolution of the Soviet Union and has since increasingly become an offensive alliance, not only no longer corresponds to Germany’s security interests, but has become the primary threat to Germany’s existence. We need a new security architecture that overcomes the geopolitics responsible for two world wars in the 20th century, one that defines the common goals of mankind as its fundamental principle. And this includes, first and foremost, the elimination of the primary cause of war—which is the imminent collapse of the trans-Atlantic financial system—and the creation of a new credit system, a New Bretton Woods system, that vanquishes poverty and underdevelopment everywhere in the world. All peace-loving people in the world are called upon to enter into an open dialogue on this issue.
This question, “Can War with Russia Still Be Averted?” is the title of the Schiller Institute’s International Dialogue Saturday, January 22 at 2 pm (ET) for the purpose of strengthening the forces to stop the dangerous brinkmanship of the U.S., the British Empire and NATO against Russia and China, and make way for a complete shift toward a world security system based on the principle of the mutual benefit of all, most assuredly, the economic benefit of all.The results of today’s important meeting in Geneva between U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, do not change this focus, only heighten it. The meeting ran for 90 minutes, with remarks before and after by the officials. There is expected follow-on to the talks—with a rough time frame of the next week to 10 days; but at any time, expect sabotage from enemies of this process of engagement. In brief, Blinken, who said that President Biden had asked him to meet with Lavrov, said that after today’s talks, he will go back and consult with NATO, and allies, plus Congress, and “we will be able to share with Russia our concerns and ideas in more detail and in writing next week, and we agreed to further discussions after that.” TASS reported that Blinken said that the U.S. and Russia will meet again, after Moscow scrutinizes Washington’s security proposals next week. However the Foreign Ministry threw cold water on that report, saying there are no plans for a meeting, until Russia receives an “article-by-article” reply to its demand for security guarantees. Otherwise, Blinken stuck to the assertions in his litany of accusations and demands, admonishing Russia to de-escalate its force placement, not invade Ukraine, etc. Lavrov said of Blinken’s remark that the U.S. will respond in writing to Russia’s “concerns,” that, “I believe it would be right to make this reply public and I will ask Antony Blinken, so that they do not object.” He said there was no arrangement for another meeting between himself and Blinken. Among many other points, Lavrov said that the U.S. repeats its charges against Russia “like a mantra” and pointed to Western “hysterics” when it came to Ukraine. Especially noteworthy was the inclusion of China in what is at stake. The Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement at the time of the talks which said, “It is high time that our American colleagues understand that Washington’s dual containment policy towards Moscow and Beijing is completely outdated and offers no good prospects for the U.S. The Americans would do more good for themselves and the entire world if they abandoned their arrogant claim for global dominance and engaged in an equal and honest dialogue with Russia, China and other major players in order to search for balanced solutions to pressing global security and development issues.” Ominously, hostile initiatives have been conducted against Russia all during the period of today’s Geneva talks. Yesterday, Blinken’s State Department and the U.S. Treasury issued sanctions against four individuals in Ukraine, on charges that they are instruments of the Russian FSB. Two of them are members of Parliament, and of the opposition party to the Zelenskyy government, and one of them a media company operator. Thus, once again, the U.S. warhawks—while singing of democracy, are interfering blatantly in another nation’s internal politics. More military personnel and armament are flowing into Ukraine from individual NATO countries. In the U.S., the hype over Russian “aggression” is at fever pitch, and even more shrill because it is bipartisan. A call for “pre-emptive sanctions” on Russia by the U.S.—before Russia has a chance to aggress!—was made this week by Republican Sen. Joni Ernst (IA), appearing as a CNN guest of rabidly Democrat Anderson Cooper. On the eve of today’s Geneva meeting, the State Department posted three fact-sheet type write-ups to defame Russia, that qualify the agency as akin to the Ministry of Truth, in George Orwell’s 1984, which was noted by Maria Zakharova, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman. Just consider the names of one of the documents, “Russia’s Top Five Persistent Disinformation Narratives.” One of the narratives that the U.S. finds Russia guilty of, is to say Western culture is decaying. The State Department reports that Foreign Minister Lavrov has even accused U.S. schools of teaching that Jesus Christ was bisexual. This is madness gone wild, and very dangerous. Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche said in her weekly strategic webcast on Jan. 20 that, “I think the danger of war is what people should be concerned with.” But she further stated that the concern should be “from the standpoint of the dynamic [whose] directionality goes very clearly in the direction of the Belt and Road cooperation, because many nations see it much more to their advantage to economically cooperate, rather than have geopolitical games.” In this way, the BRI alliances and projects are anti-war policies. Look at the urgency of action to support Afghanistan in that way, as part of a greater development zone from Central and South Asia, westward across the war-torn Southwest Asia, into the Horn of Africa. Just this week, on Jan. 19, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was in Moscow for discussions. China and Iran are implementing their 25-year cooperation agreement. In Pakistan, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is proceeding. In the war-devastated Horn of Africa, China has recently committed to the “Initiative of Peaceful Development,” involving rail, port, power and other infrastructure programs. Add to this the thrust of “Operation Ibn Sina” in this region, and elsewhere internationally—the drive for a health care platform with full economic support, called for by Zepp-LaRouche—and the end of war is a given. However, in complete opposition to all of this, came the mass-murder bombing today in Yemen—the heart of this extended region, by Saudi Arabian-led forces. The wave of bombings has killed at least 200 people, and injured many more, including a strike on a prison in Sadaa, north of Sana’a, where the death toll is 150 so far. This amounts to a “shock and awe” crime, timed exactly with today’s Geneva U.S.-Russia meeting. The Yemen mission director for Doctors Without Borders Ahmed Mahat called the prison strike a “horrific act of violence.” Moreover, the main communications tower in Sana’a was deliberately bombed, knocking out all internet service, whose import could mean that, without communications, the Saudis will perpetrate more heinous crimes. Fouad Al Ghaffari, the leader of the ALBRICS Youth Parliament in Sana’a, sent a message by text to the Schiller Institute this morning, “We condemn the terrific aggressive murder attack on Sada’a Prison, and destroying the internet connection in Yemen that violates the right to information and may hide a massive attack at any moment!” Attend the Jan. 22 International Dialogue conference, “Can War with Russia Still Be Averted?” and activate with the Schiller Institute.
Join us LIVE on Saturday, January 22 at 2pm EST. “The war danger is greater than ever, and we are on the verge of World War III,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche warned today. “We are now down to the wire and things will have to break one way or the other in the days ahead.” Although there is a growing chorus of voices calling for sanity in the U.S. and Europe, the control of U.S. policy by the insane British and their American war party confederates has not been broken. Furthermore, Zepp-LaRouche stated, the descent into war is being driven by the systemic breakdown of the trans-Atlantic financial system, which is now going out of control, as Lyndon LaRouche repeatedly explained.There is a second dynamic underway in the world, which is the emerging realignment of nations of all continents around China and Russia, and the Belt and Road Initiative as an alternative to the policy of Malthusian depopulation being promoted by the dying trans-Atlantic system. If the United States remains hostile to this policy alternative, and continues to defend the City of London and Wall Street’s bankrupt system, then the world will in all likelihood careen toward thermonuclear war in the short term. If the U.S. joins with the Belt and Road, as Lyndon LaRouche advocated from the outset, then the prospects for peace and development are excellent.
Today could prove to be a fateful day for history as U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meet to discuss the security proposals Russia formally introduced in writing, just over one month ago. Speaking to an audience in Germany on Thursday, Blinken said, “I don’t expect a breakthrough.” But a breakthrough is what is needed to pull humanity back from the brink of nuclear war.In the United States, former member of Congress and presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard denounced the White House and Congress — on both sides of the aisle — for hiding from Americans the immense danger of ongoing provocations against Russia. Tucker Carlson interviewed a guest who warned that the “U.S. is sleepwalking towards conflict” with the other biggest nuclear power on the planet. Meanwhile, the U.S. legacy media are in overdrive mode to demonize Russia (while still keeping the pressure on China). They claim that nothing less than democracy and goodness itself are at stake, and that only an enormous display of anti-Russian might can save all that is good in the world from the Russian menace. Time is running short to avert catastrophe. The U.S. has participated in tyrannical overreach around the world — twenty years in Afghanistan, the murderous Iraq War, the murder of Qaddafi and consequent chaos in Libya, the destruction of Syria, and the 2014 coup in Ukraine that has since been used to demonize Russia. This tyranny in the name of democracy knows no shame. And that same tyrannical overreach is increasingly occurring domestically. The failed vote on ending the filibuster for a partisan voting bill was intended not so secure that bill’s passage. Its purpose is more aligned with the declaration that domestic terrorists — that is, people with unorthodox opinions — must be denied rights. It is of a piece with the spreading censorship of non-Atlanticist views on social media. Do you oppose war with Russia? You must be in Putin’s pocket. In fact, you should be prosecuted for treason. Do you oppose war with China? A CCP spy must have gotten to you. Do you support affordable energy capable of powering a growing human population at higher standards of living? You are supporting ecocide, and should be tried for your crimes. Have you revealed inconvenient truths? Ask Julian Assange how the UK and US treat practitioners of press freedom — a virtue they hypocritically claim to promote around the world. A new security architecture is needed, one that both ends attempts at unipolar hegemony, and that recognizes that peace is not merely the absence of conflict. What are to be the economic, social, and scientific-technological contours of that peace? Whatever may be presented as the outcome of today’s Blinken-Lavrov discussions, the world needs the analysis and direction of the LaRouche Organization and the Schiller Institute — to be presented at an event tomorrow, “Can War with Russia Still Be Averted?” Learn more on Saturday at 11am PT, 2pm ET, 8pm CET, on schillerinstitute.com
The comments made in Berlin yesterday by Tony Blinken on the continuing war tensions between the U.S. and Russia over Ukraine show a dangerous detachment from reality. In stating before his meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov today, "I don't expect a breakthrough," he is demonstrating the delusional attitude of much of the Trans-Atlantic leadership, which is willing to risk a nuclear war, rather than take President Putin's demand for national security guarantees seriously. Lavrov will likely call his bluff -- then how will Mr. Blinken respond?
These days, when someone offers you a “narrative,” expect a lie. The new (annual) book out this month from Klaus Schwab, the head of the World Economic Forum, whose Davos sessions are this week (virtual,) is titled: The Great Narrative (The Great Reset Book 2). Health care itself has been one of the deadliest examples of lying narratives for over half a century. Take the case of how the principle of public health embodied in the 1940s Hill Burton Act, was subverted by “managed” care and privatization. There’s more to this story, even involving Tony Blair’s health care hitman, who came to the U.S. to help design Obamacare. Marcia Merry Baker, of the EIR Editorial Board, joined the discussion this week.
In the last days, and in the next days ahead, decisions are being made which will determine whether mankind has the moral capacity to survive. In her weekly dialogue, Helga Zepp-LaRouche presented a dramatic tour d'horizon, weaving together an analysis of summit meetings, troop deployments, and positive economic developments around the Belt-and-Road Initiative, communicating both the tremendous danger of the present, and, importantly, a pathway out of that danger.She emphasized that the bluster of Blinken in Ukraine is not completely in step with the pronouncements of Biden. She also emphasized that Putin has been clear on why Russia requires strategic guarantees, and that some in the West, such as David Pyne, Gilbert Doctorow and Gen. Kujat, are openly discussing that. You have the delegation of seven knucklehead Senators blustering after a trip to Kiev, demanding that Biden toughen up, with one — whom she referred to as Sen. Wicked — saying that Putin must be given a bloody nose. At the same time, the Iranian President was in Moscow, signing a 20-year deal, and the Chinese and Syrians finalized a Memo of Understanding for collaboration on the BRI. Finally, she spoke movingly of the Schiller Institute conference on January 15 on Afghanistan, which contrasted the present threat of millions starving, with the axiom-busting decision by India to ship wheat to Afghanistan, traveling through Pakistan.
Read the full transcript below. Mike Billington: This is Mike Billington with the Executive Intelligence Review and the Schiller Institute and The LaRouche Organization. I'm here speaking with Jim Jatras. Jim served in the State Department in Mexico and in Russian affairs. He also served for many years as an adviser to the Republicans in the Senate. He worked in the private sector, and he's established himself as a leading analyst on political issues internationally. Would you like to say anything else about your career, Jim? Jim Jatras: No, I don't think so, except to say that the extent to which somebody can be in the belly of the Beast for 30 years and come out relatively sane, I hope so. I guess we'll let the viewers decide that. Mike Billington: You presented a speech to a student seminar at the Ron Paul Institute last September titled "It's Later Than You Think." What did you mean by that? Jim Jatras: Well, we tend to think of political and economic. Developments in a kind of an isolation -- what are good policies, what are bad policies, what are constructive, what is destructive -- rather than looking at the underlying health of society itself and macro historical trends that make such policy choices viable or not. My concern was, and is, that we are approaching some kind of a crunch, some kind of a major crisis, not only in America but globally, that not only could totally remake what it means to be an American, but maybe means the end of the American nation and the republic itself. I would even go as far as to say, I don't think the American Republic, as we've known it, really exists anymore. I'd like to ask the question of people: how many republics have there been in France? Well, this is the Fifth Republic. Yet the French nation still exists. So many Americans are so wedded to the notion of our constitution, our political structures, that they lose sight of the fact that that's all they are -- they're just structures. Those structures are going through the biggest crisis, certainly since the Great Depression and possibly since the Civil War. And we don't really know what's going to come out on the other side of it. I think the problems America faces today are not going to get solved by an election or a political party or a political movement -- we're going to have to go through a great destructive ordeal of some sort. And we cannot really envision what comes out on the other side. Mike Billington: The talks this week between Russia and the United States, while not an absolute failure, were described by Russia as having failed to budge an inch for the West, having failed to budge an inch on the fundamental issues of guarantees for Russian security. Nonetheless, several leading Russian experts, including Gilbert Doctorow and Dmitri Trenin, have described the talks as a victory for Russia by forcing the U.S. to admit that they could not conduct a war with a nuclear armed Russia over Ukraine. You have headed an organization called the American Institute in Ukraine and have insight into this. What's your view of this week's diplomatic efforts? Jim Jatras: I'm basically in agreement with the analysts you cited, I think sometimes there's too much of a focus on, you might say, the CNN headline -- which is: “Will Russia invade Ukraine?” -- when that is not really what this is about. In fact, it's not even primarily about Ukraine, in the sense that it's really about NATO expansion and the United States and our satellites. Let's not even call them allies, they are satellites, basically on Russia's doorstep, its front porch, its back porch and everywhere else, threatening its vital security interests. And the Russians have basically signaled that they've had enough. As President Putin said, "We have no place left to retreat to." So I think they're coming back to say, "All right, we're giving you one last chance to address our security concerns seriously, to provide us with guarantees." I don't know what those guarantees would look like, by the way, since the West can never be trusted to keep its word. But, but nonetheless, I think they're making one last chance to say, "Will you take our serious concerns seriously? Here are two draft treaties. Do we have a deal or not?" And I think the West is coming back and saying, "No, we don't have a deal." Jim Jatras: We can delay Ukraine's accession to NATO for about 10 years. Maybe we can have some more confidence building measures in Europe, things of that sort. I don't think that's going to wash with the Russians. As you mentioned, Gil Doctorow, as he's pointed out, he thinks that the Russians are ready to act in some decisive and dramatic way, stationing advanced hypersonic weapons close to the United States that would give them the same flight time to our major cities as we are posing a threat to Russian cities. Jim Jatras: Maybe some kind of surgical strikes within Ukraine against hostile forces that would force NATO to wake up and smell the coffee and say, "We have to accommodate these concerns or else the pain level is going to keep getting ratcheted up." NATO is no longer the master of all it sees in Europe, as we were, say, in the 1990s, and the Russians are in a position to act. They're acting unilaterally, and there's really not much we can do about it unless we want to start a major war. Unfortunately, what I'm seeing from most of the establishment -- there was an absurd discussion at the Atlantic Council, (which, just saying Atlantic Council almost tells you how absurd it was going to be), where the most reasonable person on the call, if you can believe it, was Evelyn Farkas --who had this horrible piece in Defense One basically talking about how we need to fight a war with the Russians in Ukraine. But she was the only one that took that seriously. The rest of them were all saying, "No, no, the Russians are just bluffing. We just need to crank up the weaponry going into Ukraine and crank up the sanctions threats and the Russians will back down." That's what I think is the dominant view within the establishment. Mike Billington: This brings up the issue of some of the mad men who openly propose a nuclear war. The head of the U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Richard, said earlier last year that because of the rise of Russia and China, nuclear war, which we used to consider unlikely, is now likely, which is literally madness. And of course, you had Senator Roger Wicker directly calling for a first strike nuclear attack on Russia. Do you think these people have the power to influence decision making on the questions of war? Jim Jatras: I think they can influence it. Even I don't believe that there are people who are crazy enough to actually deliberately push the button and say, let's have a nuclear war. Maybe there are. They've got to be out there somewhere. But the bigger concern I have is that we are in a very dangerous period, especially since I think the Russians will do something fairly dramatic before the end of the month, my guess is. Then you always have the risk of unintended escalation, that if you have -- as we've been having increasingly for the last few years -- if you have American and Russian planes playing chicken over the Black Sea or the Baltic Sea or with boats, something unintended could happen, leads to an escalation, and then we don't really know what happens after that. So the risk is there. The question is, can we find some way to come to an understanding of security in Eastern Europe, which basically means getting out of Russia's face, or can we not? I find it very hard to believe this establishment can accommodate them. So that risk will be there. Mike Billington: The Obama administration and the Trump administration and the Biden administration have all referred to the violent overthrow of the elected government in Ukraine in 2014 as a "democratic revolution." You know the situation well. What can you say about that coup and its aftermath today? Jim Jatras: Let's remember what triggered it. You hear, again, misreported in the Western media that it's because Yanukovych was Moscow's stooge and he refused to to proceed with a deal with the European Union. All Yanukovych did --first off, he wanted his country to be non-aligned, not either part of a Western bloc or part of a Russian led bloc. He very much wanted to be a neutral country, which many people, by the way, are even proposing now as a solution to the problem. Well, that solution has never been acceptable to the West. We want Ukraine in our camp, by hook or by crook, despite the fact that Ukraine is a very, very divided country. If you look at the electoral map, you look at the linguistic maps, the only way to hold Ukraine together is by having it straddle both sides of the East-West divide. Anybody with any sense knows that, but that's not good enough with Victoria Nuland and people like that. You have this almost Bolshevik mentality which says, "The people of Ukraine have chosen their historical path." No, they haven't. The people of Ukraine are certainly as divided as the people in the United States are. They haven't made a choice of any historical direction at all. It was, as you say, a coup, and it was clearly planned for many years in advance. Jim Jatras: A lot of money being poured in there by the National Endowment for Democracy and other Soros organizations and other outside groups, to prepare for a color revolution, the overthrow the Yanukovych government, similar to what we saw recently in Belarus and very recently in Kazakhstan, an attempt to do that as well. These things don't just come out of thin air, whatever the local roots of those might happen to be. Yanukovych (unlike President Tokayev in Kazakhstan recently) President Yanukovych dithered. He couldn't make up his mind whether to accommodate the demands or to try to defend himself and to crush what was an insurrection -- a real one, not a fake one like we talk about a year ago here in this country. He ended up paying for it by being driven out of office. At that point, we had this triumphalism coming from the West. “Ukraine is ours! Ukraine is coming to the West! Ukraine is coming to Europe! NATO,” blah blah blah. Well, the Russians felt they had some cards they could play in the Donbass and supporting the local people there who, remember, were the people who voted Yanukovych in in the first place. They saw their vote taken away by a violent mob in the streets of Kiev, and they were not willing to accept it. And they were certainly the people in Crimea were not willing to accept it, and the Russians took steps to secure their interests and the interests of those people in Ukraine. Jim Jatras: We saw, as you know, the Minsk agreement by which Kiev was given an opportunity to repair some of this damage by saying, "OK, fine, let's have a federalization of Ukraine. Let's give self-rule to these areas and eastern Ukraine. Let's not repress the Russian language. Let's try to put Humpty Dumpty back together by accommodating the diversity of Ukraine." And of course, they and their Western sponsors had no intention of ever doing that, despite Kiev's legal commitment to the Minsk agreement. So that's where we are now. In the meantime, the West has proceeded with NATO expansion. Right after Trump was elected they swept Montenegro into NATO, even though the polls showed that, at best, there was an even split within the population about whether they should join NATO. I actually think the majority was opposed to that. They just swept in North Macedonia -- a ridiculous name for a ridiculous excuse for a country. Why are we doing all of this stuff? It has nothing to do with American security, certainly, but it does have to do with tightening a stranglehold around Russia, which has been the purpose of NATO ever since, supposedly, the Cold War ended in 1991. Mike Billington: What do you think of the relations between forces within the U.S. and Europe with the overtly neo-Nazi groupings within Ukraine. Even Israel has complained bitterly that Ukraine is allowing these neo-Nazi organizations to parade with swastikas and with pictures of Stepan Bandera and so forth. What's behind these institutions and how much influence do they have over actual policy? Jim Jatras: It's hard to say, Mike, because we know that especially in the Republican Party -- not exclusively -- some of this kind of World War Two Losers Association stuff, went all the way back to the 1950s, really, even in the late 1940s, where the CIA and MI6 and other -- you may be familiar with something called the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations. This is something that was around largely led by West Ukrainian pro-Nazi elements that went all the way back to the late 1940s and was originally created by British intelligence and then was adopted by the Americans as well. But there were many groups like that. Now, some of them may have been simply people who were nationalists of various sorts and thought that their countries had gotten a raw deal on the territorial arrangements in Europe in both World Wars, and others, I think, were very ideologically committed to something along the lines of fascism or Nazism. And we do see some elements like that in Ukraine. Jim Jatras: I would draw a parallel to the way the United States, especially the intelligence agencies, have used jihadists of various sorts as proxies in various wars, going all the way back to Afghanistan in the nineteen eighties. We used them in Bosnia, we used them in Kosovo, we use them in Libya. We are still using them today in Syria. There is, I think, a very cynical attitude of the intelligence agencies toward extremist groups, whether they're neo-Nazis or whether they're jihadists. They say, "Yeah, these people are operational, we can use them with a degree of plausible deniability. If they get into trouble, too bad for them. ‘The secretary will disavow any knowledge of your actions.’ But they can get the job done because they're ruthless." So I think the degree of cynicism about groups like this is really hard for most Americans to believe, that their government would engage in. Mike Billington: The coup in Ukraine also included an effort to separate the Ukraine Orthodox Church from the Russian Orthodox Church as part of this anti-Russian hysteria. You are a member of the Greek Orthodox Church and you're active in issues regarding Orthodox Christianity. What can you tell us about what was going on in Ukraine and where that stands today? Jim Jatras: Well, a lot of this is "inside baseball" in the Orthodox Church. I'm of Greek origin personally. The parish I attend most of the time is a Russian parish although it's mostly full of just regular Americans. They are some Greeks, some Russians, some Serbs, Romanians and so forth, but it's mostly just Americans. We're still one Church at this point. We like to say the devil can never subvert our Church because he can't figure out the organization chart. We have this feud going on between Constantinople and Moscow over Ukraine and what really was the status of Ukraine in the 17th century and all this sort of thing. But I think we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that, again, just as I was mentioning with regard to jihadist and neo-Nazi groups, for outside meddlers, religion is simply another lever that they can use to try to manipulate society and to try to even break down society. For example, we're talking about specifically the Orthodox Church: back in 1948, there was essentially a coup in Constantinople (Istanbul) that removed the patriarch then, Maximos, who was considered to be too friendly toward the Russian Church -- which, let's be honest, at the time was under the control of the Soviet authorities -- and replace him with the archbishop here in America Athenagoras, who was actually flown over there on Truman's plane and installed by the U.S. government, the Greek government and the Turkish government acting in concert and has been an asset of the United States, the State Department and the CIA, ever since 1948. Of course, this is also consistent with Constantinople's kind of "neo-papal" aspirations within the Orthodox Church, which is itself a-historical. At the same time, you've got Russia, which -- again in a very peculiar structure among the local Orthodox churches -- is itself a majority of the entire Orthodox Church, a good chunk of that being in Ukraine. Now in Ukraine, the Orthodox Church is called the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. It is an autonomous part of the Russian Orthodox Church, it is self ruling in virtually all aspects. That church is the canonical Church in Ukraine. Its status has not changed. What has happened is, with U.S. support, Constantinople has tried to create a rival Orthodox church in Ukraine from a group of, actually several groups of, schismatics that they tried to cobble together into a new church. That's where we stand right now. We have two competing Orthodox churches in Ukraine. The canonical one aligned with Moscow, which is very much the majority, and a much smaller one supported by the United States and Constantinople, which is not acceptable to most of the rest of the world, in Romania and Jerusalem and Serbia and Bulgaria and the other places of the Orthodox Church. Again, I know this is very complex inside baseball, but what it shows is frankly a degree of sophistication, and again, cynicism of the Western powers that they're willing to manipulate this in order to make some kind of a political game. Because I think the way they see it is, just as the Maidan in 2014 was a political coup to try to separate Russia from Ukraine, this is, if you will, a spiritual coup to try to accomplish the same thing, to take two very closely kindred people in language, culture and especially religion, and set them at odds against each other. It's not working, it's not successful, but it is creating a lot of discord, a lot of unhappiness and hurt, and even to some extent, violence. Mike Billington: Georgia is yet another country where the NED, Soros apparatus ran a color revolution in 2003, the so-called Rose Revolution, which saw the mobs connected to Mikhail Saakashvili, overthrow the government of Eduard Shevardnadze, who himself had been the Soviet Union's foreign minister before becoming president of Georgia, a position that he kept after the falling apart of the Soviet Union and Georgia became independent. Then in 2019, you've pointed out that there was a second color revolution -- you could call it a "rainbow revolution" -- which was unleashed by the Soros organization, and some people in the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi, demanding support for an LGBTQ parade, a Pride parade, against the strong opposition of the 80% of Georgia's population who are Orthodox Christians. Where did this lead and what is the status of that at this point? Jim Jatras: I think to a large part is simply the application on the local level of what is a huge, huge part of Western policy, which is the promoting of -- I'm trying to think of a … -- socially and morally destructive forces the equal of LGBT. As I like to say, there's no trans-Atlanticism without transgenderism. This is a huge part of American and Western democracy promotion and human rights promotion. There's a great meme out there of an American soldier with an automatic weapon and a flag and a skull mask saying, "Until I'm out of ammo or out of blood, I will fight for homosexuality in Botswana." This is one of the great causes for which Americans are willing to shed blood and treasure? Evidently so. And I think part of it has to do with the fact that if you look at maps of social attitudes like, for example, towards same sex marriage or toward the role of religion and public life and things like that, you will notice a rather odd thing -- that is, that Eastern Europe, the areas that were under communism, are much more conservative than the countries of Western Europe. Maybe it was because as a progressive Promethean force, communism was such a failure that the underlying social attitudes are actually much more pre-modern conservative when it comes to social and family values and religious values than Western Europe, and presumably the United States, that have been corrupted by decades of consumerism and all these other materialist forces. Jim Jatras: So I think that the Western policymakers instinctively understand that if we want to conquer these societies, we need to break down their social attitudes. And one way to do that is to tell them, "Hey, if you want to be part of the West, you want to be part of the EU and NATO, you want to be part of the democratic club? It's a full package. You have to take this as well.” I think that's what they were doing there in Georgia, but they also do that in Ukraine. I even remember there was one of the priests from the church in Odessa, after they had a big Pride parade there, he went out afterwards with holy water to re-sanctify the streets after the parade had passed through. People there don't like this sort of thing, but nonetheless, the Americans and the U.S. embassies with their rainbow flags and all that, they're all over it. They're being forced to do this because, well, "this is democracy. This is the West. You have to get used to it." Mike Billington: I'm reminded that Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov once said regarding the so-called "Western values" that you hear spoken of so often, that the West insists on defending, are not the values of their grandfathers. Jim Jatras: No, they're not. And by the way, I can remember back in the 1990s, when I was at the Senate, there was a big issue about giving observer status to some big coalition of LGBT organizations, which included groups like NAMBLA, the North American Man Boy Love Association, which is a pro pedophile group. This was a very controversial thing at the U.N. This was under the Clinton administration. North America, the U.S., Canada and all of Western Europe were really promoting this, and the countries in Eastern Europe -- this was the 1990s -- newly liberated from communism were saying, "What is going on here? We have to accept {this?}." I mean, the communists there, they never would have accepted anything like that. So you really had this kind of weird thing, where these Western countries, the paragons of democracy, are promoting this kind of depravity. Latin America was opposed to it. The Islamic world was opposed to it. The Far East, I think, was mostly puzzled by it, by "what kind of people are these?" And then you had Eastern Europe who was sort of on the fence, because they knew they should be integrating in with the democratic West, but at the same time they couldn't figure out why in the world we would be pushing something like this. Mike Billington: You've noted often that the leaders in both parties -- you've named in particular, John McCain, Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton -- have never seen a war they didn't like. Biden's push for the war started by George W. Bush and Tony Blair in Iraq, is well known, that he promoted that strongly. But less well known is that Biden led the effort to launch a war on Serbia in 1999, which led to 78 days of bombing without U.N. authorization, laying waste to much of that country. Biden also backed the al-Qaida-linked Kosovo Liberation Army in that conflict and the independence of Kosovo. So you were involved in some of this, if you could explain that? Jim Jatras: At the time I was the analyst at the Republican Policy Committee in the Senate, and the Clinton administration had decided on -- "intervention" is a nice word -- I would say in "aggression" in the Balkans, not only in Bosnia, but also in Kosovo. I tried, to whatever extent I could, to inform Republican Senators and their staff, which it was my job to do, as to what was the reality behind some of the claims of the Clinton administration, That was a little difficult to do when the leader of the Republican Party in the Senate at that time was Bob Dole, who was on the same program as Biden and the Clinton administration were. But I did my best to try to say, "Look, here are the open sources. Here's what they're saying. Here's the various Al Qaida and other groups that are involved here in terms of the human rights and other claims. Here's what's really going on. Yeah, we've unleashed a brutal inter-communal war between Serbs and Muslims and Croats and Albanians. Rather than trying to find some way for a peaceful resolution, we're trying to aggravate it, in a conflict that was kind of a rock-paper-scissors thing. Well, "the Serbs are always the bad guys. Let's just start with that and work from there." And by the way, some of this goes back to what we were talking about earlier, as I mentioned, the World War Two Losers Association. If you look at a map of occupied Europe in the Balkans in 1943, and compare it to the way we carved up Yugoslavia, the two maps look awfully similar. We essentially adopted all of the Axis clients from during the war and said, "Oh, these are now democratic NATO clients." So, you know, again, the roots of these things tend to go back a long way. In any case, obviously I was unsuccessful in trying to enlighten people about what was going on, although I will say that when the vote on the Kosovo war occurred in Congress, the Republicans voted primarily against it. Maybe a lot of it was just partisan because it was the Clinton administration, a Democratic administration. But even with Bob Dole in the Senate and Henry Hyde, at the time the Republican leader in the House, whipping votes in favor of the war, the Republicans in the Senate voted, I think very heavily in the majority against the war, and in the House, not only a very heavy majority of Republicans vote no, they even voted down the war resolution. It failed on a tie vote in the House of Representatives. Jim Jatras: Nonetheless, Clinton proceeded with the war, which tells you something about the integrity of our constitutional process, when a war can take place not only against international law, in violation of the U.N. Charter, aggression against another country, but even against American domestic law. When the Congress says "no, you do not have the authority to go to war," and they said, "Yeah, well, I'm going to do it anyway." And so there are many things that are all wrapped up in these things. The long and the short of it is that it is amazing to me how many people, even who are essentially anti-war and against these wars -- You remember there was a great series by Oliver Stone about the history of American wars and aggression around the world. I notice he skipped over the Balkans. He sort of forgot that war. These are the wars everybody wants to not really pay attention to because they sort of went down in the history as the place where NATO, the West, you know, came as the cavalry with the rescue. We were there for mom and apple pie and human rights and democracy. Well, it really wasn't that way. But nonetheless, that then set the stage and the precedent for places like Iraq and Libya. Mike Billington: On Kosovo. Secretary Tony Blinken and other U.S. officials have insisted that under the so-called rule of law -- which means their own made up rules, nations cannot change the borders of other nations by force. Maria Zakharova, the Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, responded to that statement by saying, "Do we get it right? That Washington no longer supports Kosovo's sovereignty?" You were directly involved in much of this. What is Zakharova referring to? Jim Jatras: Let's remember, under U.N. resolution 1244, which ended the war in Kosovo, Kosovo was supposed to remain part of Serbia, and there were supposed to be negotiations about its status with the fullest possible autonomy, which is what Belgrade was offering. They were willing to jump through any hoop requested of them in terms of whatever autonomy could ever exist anywhere on Earth, for any part of any country, they were willing to offer that to Kosovo. But the Western powers, especially Washington, had decided {ab initio}: "No, no. The only possible solution is independence." Well, the U.N. resolution doesn't say that. At that time -- I was in the private sector -- I was involved in lobbying on behalf of the Bishop of Kosovo, Bishop Artemije, against the American policy of pushing for independence for Kosovo. I would say we met with some success. That was supposed to be resolved by the end of 2006. It wasn't. It was dragged out until the beginning of 2008, when I think the Western powers thought they were losing support, so they needed to push the button they needed to move quickly on unilaterally recognizing Kosovo as an independent state, even though there was no legal mandate for that at all. And certainly there was no negotiated solution to that effect. I think that's one reason why we have a stalemate now where you have about one hundred and ten countries at last count that recognized Kosovo, but a lot of those are micro states, that if you look at the vast majority of the world's population, India, China and so forth, not to mention Russia, even still today, five members of the European Union -- Greece, Cyprus, Romania, Spain and Slovakia -- have not recognized Kosovo's independence. So it's not an acceptable solution for anybody, but that's where we are right now. Jim Jatras: I think the point that Zakharova is referring to is, you say you can't change borders by force. Well, what do you think the West did in 1999 in the war and then 2008 in recognizing Kosovo's independence? We did precisely that without any legal authority at all. We detached part of a state, or at least claimed to, and say this is now a new country. Well, OK, you know, some things, once you break them, stay broken. Once you have a principle like the inviolability of borders, and say, "Oh, well, we can break them when we want, but you can't." Well, the other side says, "Oh no? Watch." And then, if you want, might makes right. If you want the law of the jungle, if you want to say that the U.N. guarantees of the inviolability of borders and state sovereignty no longer matter, OK, they don't matter anymore, I guess. Well, who asked for that? Mike Billington: On China's role in all of this, the Belt and Road Initiative, which is taking the the economic miracle within China over these past decades through massive infrastructure, lifting the productive platform of the nation as a whole, they are taking that to the rest of the world. they are also very active in Eastern Europe in huge amounts of trade through the thousands of trains that now traverse the new Silk Road routes from China to Europe, and also through investments in infrastructure across the region, especially in Eastern Europe. How do you see the difference between China's approach to international relations to that of the United States? Jim Jatras: This is something we've discussed before, especially with regard to some of the ideas that Mr. LaRouche was championing for many decades. It really comes down to construction versus destruction. Are you going to build? Are you're going to integrate -- a rising tide raises all boats? Or are you going to try to look at the other people trying to do that and say, "Let's beggar thy neighbor, let's try to throw roadblocks into that. Let's try to break it down." We've talked about in the past. For example, why don't we have a land bridge across the Bering Strait, with trade between Eurasia and North America? Why are we not building our own Belt and Road Initiative here in the Western Hemisphere? Why are we not trying to come up with a way that countries can act in a cooperative way to build up their economies and to maximize their mutual advantages in the way that I think the Chinese and the Russians and the other countries behind Eurasian integration are doing that. Our response is what? To try to give the Chinese the hotfoot in Xinjiang, to try to give the Russians a hot foot in Kazakhstan with a coup there, rather than trying to find a way to build up the world economy, build up standards of living. We're trying to find a way to play "dog in the manger" by trying to retard those efforts if it's being done by somebody else, while we neglect to do it ourselves. We're not doing any of these things. I think we have -- unfortunately, put it in a nutshell -- that is the distinction between construction and destruction, and it's a really sad thing. But that gets back to what we're saying about the nature of our ruling class and the duopoly in this country. They seem to see eye to eye on these things, about preserving American hegemony, primarily based on military power {ad infinitum} and using whatever dirty tricks in the book they can, to try to preserve that and to keep the other guys down. Mike Billington: President Trump insisted -- one of the reasons he got elected -- that he was going to rebuild the American industrial economy, and Wall Street basically said, "Forget it. We have to bail out the bankrupt financial institutions," and as a result, really nothing, nothing has changed. We continue to see no infrastructure and no development within the U.S. Do you have thoughts on that whole financial situation? Jim Jatras: I'm not an economist. I'm not an expert on financial matters. As I say, I do understand the difference between construction and destruction. I think Trump did want to do that. I think he did have a concept of a national economy. When it comes to China, yeah, I do think our China trade relationship with China is terribly lopsided. It seems to me that is because, frankly, it's beneficial to a lot of corporate America to hollow out our industries, our production, and ship those operations to foreign countries. China, certainly, but many other countries as well. And then, of course, bring their goods back in the United States, duty free, basically undermining our national economy. At the same time --I was saying this back at the time of the Trump administration --there's a natural deal here between the United States and China, to where we rebalance our trade relationship to favor American production and the American industrial base, but at the same time, we get out of China's face in the South China Sea, the Taiwan Strait and so forth, the same way that we should be getting out of Russia's place in Eastern Europe, that it seems to me there's the making of a deal there. I don't know that Trump really saw that. It seemed to me a lot of people in his administration had a strong animus against China across the board, that not only did they want to address the trade issues, which I think is legitimate, but also wanted to threaten them on some of the security issues, which I thought made no sense whatsoever. Jim Jatras: But that's where we are. But I do think Trump, on some level, at least in his gut, had a sense that we need to build up our own national economy, get control of our borders, get control of our trade. Unfortunately, like many other things, I don't think he really had any idea how to do that. He certainly populated his administration with all the wrong people when it came to getting any of his agenda from 2016 done. When you turn to the Heritage Foundation and the Republican National Committee to hire a bunch of Bush retreads for your administration, hey, you're going to get your tax cut, which any Republican president would want to push through the Congress, but you're not going to get an infrastructure bill, you're not going to get any of the other things you want. I think looking back on it, Trump was a great missed opportunity and perhaps in some sense, the last missed opportunity for an America that, maybe, could have been revived. Mike Billington: As to the two party system, you were an adviser to the Republican Party in the Senate, as you mentioned, for many years. You have insight into the two party system that we have today -- what Lyndon LaRouche referred to as the two potty system. What is your view on democracy in America today, which the war party claims to be defending in their wars around the world? Jim Jatras: To be precise, I was an adviser to the Senate Republican leadership, which is a Senate office, not a party office. The structure of the Senate, as in the House, is partisan, but it's the Senate, part of the U.S. government. It's not the Republican Party {per se.} I don't know, Mike, we might not be fully in agreement on these things. I'm a pretty retrograde guy when it comes to political theory. I do notice that the founding fathers did not intend to create a democracy. They knew their history, they knew their Aristotle, they knew how democracies tend to end. For the first 80 or 90 years of our republic until the Civil War, we had a confederal republic. And then after the Civil War, until at least in the post-World War Two period, we had a federal democracy. But then increasingly in recent decades, we've had a consolidated administrative state, managerial state. I don't think you would even call it democracy anymore. This is the way democracies tend to end. Once you have, everybody has the vote, everybody can say, "Well, I want, I want, I want." You tend to vote yourself benefits out of the other guy's pocket. And that goes for the plutocracy, too. They say, "Well, we can manipulate the levers of this thing too, and we have our propaganda machine in the media" and so forth. So none of this should be particularly surprising where you get to a moribund state where a constitution on paper is simply honored in the breach. Jim Jatras: It's honored with fingers crossed behind your back, and it really doesn't exist anymore. The fact that we have this entrenched duopoly, which is as entrenched in America today as the CPSU was entrenched as a one party system in the Soviet Union, is something that is -- I don't know that there's any coming back from that, except in the same sense that, well, when the Soviet Union collapsed, so did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, and something new arose from the ashes. Unfortunately I think that's sort of where we are now in America today, what that looks like, how bad it's going to be, with things like supply chain breakdown, collapse of the dollar. Who knows what else is going to come, whether it results in the breakup of the country or what level of violence. I don't think we really know. I explored some of this in the piece you mentioned earlier, the "It's Later Than You Think." I think unfortunately -- and again, we might disagree on this, Mike -- a lot of this is baked into the cake. I don't know that there's much any of us can do by shouting from the rooftops that "bad things is a'comin." The bad things will come, and then we'll see how we get through it, who survives, who doesn't, and what comes from the ashes. Mike Billington: At the end of of that talk you gave to the students at the Ron Paul Institute, you said that, I have a quote: "I think your ability to impact the big picture regarding any of this is slim to none." That's somewhat like you are saying right now. That's clearly rather pessimistic. As you know, LaRouche always told the youth, and others, that in a systemic crisis like we're in today -- and you acknowledge it's a systemic crisis -- the ability to make big changes is even greater than normal, rather than less, precisely because the old system is falling apart and people are forced to give up their delusions and look for new solutions, including outside of the United States, internationally. So how do you respond to that? Jim Jatras: Well, I would say that it largely depends on the human factor and the mechanisms. I remember during the 2020 election, so many people were saying, people who believe that the vote was stolen -- and I'm I'm one of those people -- "Well look, the Supreme Court's going to do this, or the state legislators are going to do that, or Congress is going to do this." And I kept saying, "No, no, no. None of those things are going to happen, because those people who are in charge of the system, in charge of being the guardians of the system, will not do their duty even when the facts are plain." I think a lot of us have a kind of a naive -- and I'm not calling Mr. LaRouche naive -- but a lot of us have a naive faith, in facts. If you throw the facts on the table -- whether it's about COVID or whether it's about CRT and Black Lives Matter and Antifa, or whether it's about foreign policy -- that people will wake up and say, "Oh my God, you're right, let's do the right thing." The trouble is, you have people holding all the levers of power who will not do the right thing. That means what you have is stasis. You have stasis until the collapse comes. Now what that happens after that? Jim Jatras: Yeah, I think there are things that people can do. I'm not advising complacency by any means. I just don't see the levers. I don't see the pathways to changing national policy even in the middle of a crisis until the collapse comes. That doesn't mean that the local, and to some extent at the state level, things can't be done like, you know, I live in a rural county in Virginia. We did pretty good in this last election here. We're very optimistic here at the county level, maybe even a little optimistic at the state level. That may be a little naive. But you look at states like Florida and Texas to some extent, maybe we have a kind of a soft secession going on in some of the states and localities in America where, yeah, a healthy America could still be sustained and provide the groundwork for a kind of a revival of the American spirit and something like an American republic in the future. But I think those pathways are not yet clear to us. I think being active at the local level, being active with your community, acting with likeminded people and why conversations like this, I think are valuable, are something we should focus on. But not to expect that, "oh great. The Republicans are going to take the House this year," and that goodness and niceness will break out, because it won't. Mike Billington: Lyndon LaRouche always, always represented himself as an American, supporting the American system of Hamilton and Lincoln and Roosevelt, but he always insisted he represented the human race as a whole, and fought for the human race as a whole, rather than for one nation. You have followed LaRouche for many, many years, and you've been involved in many of our discussions and forums and conferences. How do you see LaRouche, his role in history and his impact on the international situation today? Jim Jatras: I think he will be remembered as a visionary and maybe a reminder of what could have been, that if there had been people who are willing to listen to common sense at the right time, when opportunities had not been frittered away one after another, the outcome could have been different, that we would not have to go through this crisis or crunch or whatever you want to call it, which I think we will have to go through now. I think one of the things that occurred to me, looking back on my comments at the time when we were asking about his exoneration to try to get a pardon and a exoneration for him from the unjust prosecution -- persecution that he suffered, and that you and many others suffered, by the way, at the hands of Robert Mueller and the establishment. You think about that. What if, if those policies had been heeded at the time when they could have made a big difference, rather than saying, "let's squash this guy," which was what the response of the power was at the time. I think it could have made a big difference in the life of this country, but unfortunately that didn't happen. Remember, he was out talking about these things, how many decades ago? There were how many missed opportunities through all of those decades? And now here we are. So I'm not saying those ideas are not applicable now. As you point out, we do have to look at the rest of the world, that to a great extent some of the things he proposed about a new Silk Road and so forth are being followed by the Eurasian powers. I don't want to sound naive in that regard. I'm sure the Chinese and the Russians and other countries are looking out for number one, the way, frankly, a national government should do. I think we discussed a little earlier, we have so many people on the Right in this country today who are calling for the "China, China, China" alarm, the same way the Left fell for "Russia, Russia, Russia" during the Trump years. "Oh, the Chinese Communists, you know, they're behind everything.' Well, first off, despite the formality of the CCP being the ruling party in China, I think it's pretty clear that it's not -- I like to call it Han National Bolshevism. The bottle may be red and has a picture of Mao on it, but the wine inside the bottle is Han Nationalist and Confucian, and there's simply nothing really communist about it other than the name of the party. Now, it's authoritarian. In some ways, it behaves in ways that we would consider quite inhumane. But I think it reflects the long history of China as a civilization, and it is focused on China's national interest, but not in a kind of a "let's destroy everybody else" kind of mentality, but rather that China will have its greatest flowering and opportunity when other people do as well. Why can we not see that in our leadership? I think it gets back to the level of corruption that has become almost ubiquitous at the upper ends of our system, or as, hopefully, at the lower end, the local level, maybe to a lesser extent on the state level, they're still healthy things there that can be preserved. Mike Billington: Thank you. Any further thoughts or last words for our readers and supporters? Jim Jatras: No, not really, I would just ask people if they want to see what I have written --I have lost my muse for writing, I do try to do interviews from time to time. But I am an incessant tweeter, until they kick me off. So go to @JimJatras if you want to see what my latest thoughts or dumb ideas I have. And I do want to say that, black pilled as I do tend to sound -- I am a Boomer after all -- I am fundamentally an optimist in many respects. As I pointed out with respect to France, the fact that one republic is ending doesn't mean the nation goes away. And I do believe there is an American nation. I realize that concept is not well understood or accepted in America today because we tend to think in "civic terms" rather than national terms. But I do think that there is a future for the American people as we come through this crisis, which still, I think has another five to seven years to go. And we'll see how bad it gets. But something, some phoenix, will arise from the ashes. At the same time, even in a greater sense, on a moral, spiritual level, the hairs on our head are all numbered. God is in His heaven. Nothing happens without His allowance or his will. If we pray without ceasing and have confidence in the final triumph of good, it will sustain us through even very difficult times. Mike Billington: Ok, thank you very much, Jim. I think this will have a very good and long term impact on those who have a chance to watch or listen or read this. Thank you. Thank you, Mike, for the opportunity.
David T. Pyne published an article in the Jan. 17 issue of the conservative National Interest under the headline “Biden’s Opportunity for Peace in Eurasia.” In it, Pyne warns that “bilateral U.S.-Russia negotiations broke down this week after the U.S. delegation reportedly refused to offer Russia any concessions or recognize any of its legitimate security concerns, most importantly in Ukraine,” and that as a result, the crisis between the two countries is in danger of spiraling out of control, towards a thermonuclear war. (On Jan. 18, U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke by phone, and agreed to a hastily-arranged meeting between them in Geneva on Jan. 21.)Pyne is a former U.S. Army combat arms and HQ staff officer with an MA in National Security Studies from Georgetown University. He currently serves as Deputy Director of National Operations for the EMP Task Force on National and Homeland Security, whose website describes Pyne as “an authority with regards to the U.S., Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals, U.S. and Russian missile defense systems and the increasing threat posed by Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) weapons.” We quote the opening section of Pyne’s article, which speaks for itself: “In late December 2021, Russian president Vladimir Putin threatened that the rejection of Russia’s proposed security agreements with the West would be met with ‘appropriate retaliatory military-technical measures.’ Gilbert Doctorow, a Brussels-based political analyst, has translated this to mean the deployment of additional Russian military equipment including nuclear-armed SS-26 Iskander-M short-range ballistic missiles to Belarus and Kaliningrad to threaten NATO’s frontline states and eastern Germany. He also speculated that it might refer to a possible deployment of nuclear-armed Zircon sea-launched hypersonic cruise missiles off the coast of Washington, DC, which Russia has previously stated could be utilized to destroy the U.S. capital before the president could escape on Air Force One. “When Russia’s other weapons of mass destruction are added to the mix, the stakes for bilateral negotiations between the United States and Russia could hardly be any higher. Russia has also threatened these retaliatory military-technical measures in response to the United States enacting much stricter economic sanctions against it. Of course, if the United States and NATO were to move their troops to the Ukrainian border in response to a Russian invasion of Ukraine, it would almost certainly provoke a Russian attack upon NATO’s frontline member states where these troops are stationed, potentially starting a third world war. Thus, that is one Russian “redline” that must not be crossed. Furthermore, any Russian invasion of Ukraine and/or outbreak of war between the United States and Russia in Europe could be shortly followed by a Chinese invasion of Taiwan and a North Korean invasion of South Korea—all but ensuring that the United States would be unable to effectively counter any of these aggressions. “Unfortunately, bilateral U.S.-Russia negotiations broke down this week after the U.S. delegation reportedly refused to offer Russia any concessions or recognize any of its legitimate security concerns, most importantly in Ukraine. In response, Russia has stated it has no plans to resume bilateral discussions with the United States to end the crisis and is continuing to escalate its preparations for war. At this point, the only way to give Russia a face-saving solution to the Ukraine crisis would be for the Biden administration to offer a significant concession such as the suspension of U.S. military assistance to Ukraine.” Pyne ends his article by calling for the U.S. to change policy and instead forge “comprehensive peace agreements with Russia and China,” adding that they “would not be without challenges.” They would however, Pyne states, “provide an unprecedented opportunity for Biden to secure his presidential legacy as a transformational peace president while also serving to safeguard vital U.S. national security interests.”
