Graham Fuller was interviewed by LaRouche Movement Associate Mike Billington on Dec. 9, 2021. Graham Fuller is a former U.S. diplomat, CIA official, and Islamic scholar. The lengthy interview spans many subjects, from US-China and US-Russia relations, to the Islamic world and its cultural revival, to the changing landscape of the world's geopolitics as the Western neoliberal order increasingly collapses, and the need for a more healthy relationship between the world's leading nations.EIR: This is Mike Billington with the EIR, Executive Intelligence Review, and the Schiller Institute. I’m here with Graham Fuller, and if you can, perhaps you can give a bit of your various hats in your career. Fuller: Well, in terms of public service, I was 25 years an operations officer in CIA, serving in Germany, Turkey, Lebanon, Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong. So a good bit of international background. I graduated from Harvard with a B.A. in Russian language, literature, and history; M.A. in Middle East studies; and had a long interest at the same time in China. After retiring from CIA, I was four years as the vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which is the long-range forecasting institution within CIA, and then went to Rand Corporation to do more geopolitical writings and things. And since then I have been kind of freelancing, written two novels, both somewhat political, and a lot of different books about the Middle East, Islam, political Islam, et cetera. Danger of War With ChinaEIR: Okay, thanks. So, we sort of came about having this interview because you watched the interview I did with Ambassador Chas Freeman a couple of weeks ago. He warned that the U.S. has already crossed the red line in China by essentially promoting Taiwan independence and breaking all of the U.S.-China agreements in the ’70s that led to the one-China policy and the recognition of Beijing. How do you appraise the danger of a potential war between U.S. and China, even a potential nuclear war? Fuller: Of course it is serious. I’m not sure that the U.S.—and I’m a huge admirer of Charles Freeman—but I’m not sure the U.S. has actually crossed the red line. But I think we are in the vicinity of doing that. And meanwhile, I think the United States is learning a lot about what it means to have a true peer competitor like China, as opposed to, say, the Soviet Union, which was militarily formidable, but in terms of societal and soft power, not at all. I think the U.S. has actually avoided specifically saying they will support Taiwanese independence, but certainly American policy wants to make it as difficult as possible for China to entertain any military views of re-conquering, re-joining Taiwan to China. It’s going to be a tight game, and I think the main goal really should be for both sides to tamp down the pressure, the level of rhetoric, that is underway now, which makes it very hard for more rational and thoughtful discourse. Danger of War With RussiaEIR: On the same issue really, on the Russian side, President Putin has also indicated that the accepting of Ukraine into NATO or moving advanced weapons systems into Ukraine or on Russia’s border would be a red line. And Biden, when asked about that, said, “We don’t recognize any red lines.” On the summit Tuesday, Blinken and Sullivan both came out immediately and gave read-outs, which would make it appear that the whole thing was Biden ‘dressing down’ Putin (and Russia) for its aggression and its threats and so forth. But then Biden himself said that he would be announcing tomorrow, Dec. 10, a meeting with four European countries and Russia to address Putin’s request for guarantees that NATO would not move any further east or deploy weapon systems on their border. What, in general, do you think about the summit, and the potential for avoiding the conflict on the Russian side? Fuller: Well, this is, of course, a long-standing issue. I think in, very broad terms—and this applies to China policy as well as to Russia policy—the United States has been so long in the habit of dominating, not always in a negative sense, but dominating the world since 1945, where other countries would defer to the United States. We, the United States, had the money, the weaponry, the technology, and everything else to be the number one player, really, in the world through that time. So, I think this has been a gradual policy of the rest of the world, much of the rest of the world slowly trying to catch up. Certainly, Europe has, but much of the rest of the world as well. But in the meantime, during the whole Cold War period, the United States was in the position of—the rhetoric was—defender of the Free World, quote unquote. So I think the United States has felt itself really the dominant power, the hegemon of the world, the leader of the free world, whatever terms you choose to use. But the reality in the modern world, and especially since 9-11, has been that the American hegemony, predominance, is a fading quality, and that much of the rest of the world is now rising. This, I think, American mentality, strategic mentality, maybe even cultural mentality finds it nearly impossible, intolerable, to accept the idea that any other country could become a peer competitor with the United States. I remember a couple of years ago, attending some military conferences, wherever, and in Washington, that the term used by the Pentagon in those days was America’s search, or maintenance, for all-horizon dominance. That’s not quite the word. It wasn’t horizon, but all- spectrum dominance, full-spectrum dominance. That says a lot right there. And I think this is a slow, very painful, hopefully learning process, by which the U.S. is going to have to back away ever more carefully, from overt assumption that it’s going to be able to call all the shots anymore. I mean, I think we even saw this with the very unfortunate Blinken, and maybe Sullivan as well, in the Anchorage meeting, when Sullivan, or Blinken, prior to the meeting, announced that he was very confident the meeting would go well and the United States would be dealing with China from a position of strength. Well, you may recall he was dressed down for that quite sharply by the Chinese, who basically said, how dare you say that? You have no right to say that you are dealing with us from a position of strength. We are going to deal, we want to be treated, we WILL be treated as equals by you on an equal footing. I think that pushed back, maybe shocked even, the foreign policy blob in Washington, which has never quite been addressed in those terms, by a country that is pretty demonstrably becoming a peer competitor in almost all respects. EIR: It reminds me of the Clean Break doctrine in the Nineties. This was [David] Wurmser and [Douglas] Feith and [Dick] Cheney and [Donald] Rumsfeld. They basically said, we need a clean break to defend our friends in Israel. And then literally said—I think this was called the Wolfowitz Doctrine—that we must prevent any country or any combination of countries to reach a position of challenging our dominance, our superiority. I mean, that was literally the thinking. Fuller: And even challenging Israeli dominance, I think was a good bit part of that. But yes, I mean, times are changing, the world is changing, and it’s going to be a painful lesson. But I think maybe even Biden in his late years, may be beginning to realize that the old rhetoric just doesn’t work quite as well anymore. And Russia is not quite the old Soviet Union, and Russia now working with China certainly represents a very different global force, not just militarily, but I think, you know, strategically, culturally, diplomatically in all senses. EIR: You know, it’s interesting, several of the Russian readouts on the summit included saying what you just said—one of them called Biden “an old-fashioned politician” who understands the danger of war, and one of them called on Biden to calm down the people around him. Fuller: Yeah, well put. U.S.: Revenge On the Afghan and Syrian PeopleEIR: Yeah, right. Okay, so you were the CIA station chief in Kabul in the 1970s, and I know you’ve remained very active in Afghan policy debates right up until today. Clearly, that country is now in an economic and humanitarian catastrophe. Both the World Food Program and the World Health Organization are screaming as loudly as they can, that many millions of Afghan citizens face death by starvation and lack of medical care as the winter sets in. And yet, the U.S. is maintaining sanctions, and freezing billions of dollars that belong to the Afghan people. How do you explain this, what I consider depraved indifference, and how can we resolve that in your view? Fuller: Well, as you know, Mike, the Afghan people have been victim of great power rivalry for many, many decades, going back to the initial Soviet invasion of Afghanistan to protect the new communist regime that came into power there in 1978. So Americans, and many Muslim states and others, have been participating in war within Afghanistan that has killed hundreds of thousands, probably millions of Afghans over the many years, leading to civil war, after the Soviet departure, the civil war among the mujahideen, and then utter anarchy within Afghanistan for a number of years. And then the Taliban came in to restore order, a rough sort of frontier justice, peace order, within the country. And then the whole bin Laden business, and then the American invasion. So this has been a nonstop, brutal thing. What I fear is, how gracefully the United States is capable of accepting the fact, that this is yet one more war, which we did not win, and that it is not going to have blood in its eye for the victors of the country, the Taliban. I’m no great admirer of the Taliban, but they are the de facto winners, and I think nearly everybody in the region acknowledges it, for better or for worse. It is the reality. So I think if this is some kind of vengeful policy towards the Taliban, to make them suffer, and who knows, maybe even there are those who hope that civil war might break out, or whatever, and give the U.S. a chance to win a new foothold. I don’t know, but it is a very ugly policy if it goes beyond mere tactical, temporary pressure points to try to get the Taliban to make a few political domestic changes in outlook. If it goes much beyond that, into a broader vengeance, or a desire to restore the status quo, it will be tragic. And it’s part of such a long tragedy. We see this elsewhere as well, I think, in the case of Syria. The United States has been unhappy with Syria as far back as I can remember. When I first went into government in the Seventies, Sixties even, the Assad regime, father and son, have long been hostile to America, and what they perceive as American hegemony in the Middle East, and Israel’s ability to absolutely dominate militarily the entire region, without giving any particular justice to the Palestinians. So I think the United States has had it in for Syria for 40, 50, 60 years of trying to overthrow, not with major force, but with constant undermining of Syria in one way or another. Again, I’m no great admirer of the Syrian regime. It’s never been a democracy, it’s a minority government, but it’s been the reality of the Middle East for a very long time. But even down to today, we can see U.S. involvement in civil wars in Syria, in which much of the goal, still, is to punish Syria, bring down the regime, change it all, and it again has failed. And again, the victims, sadly, are the Syrian people. We just cannot seem to accept the reality that we have been bested again in that kind of a struggle. Islamist Political Movements Must Be AcknowledgedEIR: You argued at one point that there will be no resolution to the Middle East crisis, unless the Hezbollah and Hamas, and Iran, are recognized, that they have to be a part of this. And yet, the Israelis and many people here in the U.S. consider all three of those institutions terrorists, evil people, and so forth. How is that going to be achieved? I mean, what can be done, especially with the Hezbollah and Hamas issues? And in Syria, how can you resolve that today? Fuller: Well, as you know, the United States in particular has been ready to slap the label of “terrorist” on any Muslim group that it does not like. I find it frankly almost grotesque, that we have now come to persuade our American countrymen that Iran is the number one terrorist threat in the world. I mean, this is alongside Saudi Arabia, which has been pumping out extraordinarily damaging interpretations of Islam, which really leaves little room for generous accommodation, even among Muslims. So I think the term terrorist—you’re familiar with many countries that are slapped with this label, on groups that are seeking better rights, or even seeking separation. And that applies as well today. Hezbollah is the spokesman, basically, for most Shi’ites in Lebanon. The Shi’ites are the biggest single group in a very multicultural, multi-religious country. They have formidable spirit and drive. Many Lebanese who don’t like them, believe that Hezbollah is the one thing that maybe keeps Israel at bay from interfering or invading Lebanon at will. Indeed, Israel is very nervous about Hezbollah’s strength, and it’s not just purely military, it’s this kind of a drive, a will, not to permit Israel to invade the country. Similarly, with Hamas, I mean, Hamas is the Muslim Brotherhood. The Muslim Brotherhood has not been a terrorist organization, fundamentally, in 50 years. It is a relatively middle-of-the-road Islamist organization. I’m not arguing for Islamist movements, but they are a major force within the Middle East, and there’s a huge spectrum of them, from radical terrorists, genuine terrorists like Bin Laden, or other groups in that region, to rather very moderate Islamic-oriented groups, such as in Turkey. So you can’t smear them all with one label. The Muslim Brotherhood continues to be concerned with Palestinian rights there. It’s an Arab organization, largely. So, I think if we don’t acknowledge full Palestinian rights, and begin to solve that problem, this is going to continue to be a festering issue, that plays right into the hands of more radical organizations, whether we like them or not. They’re there, and there is a call, an issue, to which they can play. Let me just mention one other term which has always been very important to me over the years, from the Egyptian ruler Abdel Nasser, if anybody still remembers him back in the Fifties and Sixties. He was the charismatic leader who sort of put Egypt on the Third World map for the first time, and he became the darling, really, of much of the Arab world. He stood up for Arab rights, and spoke about them. Somebody asked him once, why do you think Egypt has such a major role in the Arab world at that point? And he said, the Arab world is in search of an “actor,” and Egypt is now that actor. I think that applies to many situations around the world, where there’s a strong need for some political voice to speak up on behalf of one or another injustice of the world, and whatever country takes up that challenge, automatically moves into a position of greater respect, and even support, by much of the world. And sadly, all these three organizations—the Muslim Brotherhood, Hezbollah and Iran itself—are formidable, political, ideological forces in the region. Iran is probably the oldest civilization in the entire Middle East. It has managed to survive decades and decades of American sanctions, and Israeli punishment, and assassinations by Israelis, et cetera, and they’re still holding their own. It’s a strong country, whether again, we may not like it all, but I think we have contributed to pushing Iran into a corner in which it is reacting, perhaps in a much more aggressive, reactive manner than might otherwise be the case. And we might talk about this before the interview is over. But just let me say here, we are not thinking enough in this world about why conflicts are coming about. Are they inevitable and can they be avoided? Sadly, I think in American thinking or much of the thinking of the world, these conflicts, wars, are inevitable, but they’re not. They just aren’t. And the trick is deciding how and why to avoid them, because it is doable. The Military-Industrial ComplexEIR: Well, that obviously brings up the issue of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned about a long, long time ago, that they need wars to be going on. They’re required by the military industrial crowd and their Wall Street backers, thinking that this cannot be allowed to diminish or they’re going to lose their power. I don’t know what you think about that. Fuller: Well, it’s very impressive when you look back at what Eisenhower said way back in the day and look at today’s reality. I think he was spot-on in his observation. I try to avoid an entirely conspiratorial view that it’s all Wall Street and military-industrial complex, because there are many huge capitalist organizations, corporations that do not profit from war and seek to avoid war, because it’s not good for business. Many businessmen and capitalists feel, if you’re not producing arms—it may not be necessarily good [to have] war at all. But that said, yes, there is a war lobby and it is linked with the idea that we must preserve American power and hegemony and dominance at all costs. And that plays, of course, into the hands of those who want to support America’s overwhelming military dominance in the world today. EIR: And yet we lose everywhere we fight. Fuller: Well, somebody once commented to me, a correspondent who worked at the Pentagon. He said, you know, Graham, you don’t get it (or some somebody in the Pentagon said to him), you don’t get it. It’s not about winning wars. It’s about maintaining the organization, maintaining the infrastructure. As long as the funds keep coming in, as long as we can maintain the structure and the training and the weaponry and all of this, you don’t have to win the wars. That’s secondary. It’s nice to win, but that’s secondary. EIR: What kind of an image of man is that? Which thinks that secondary issues which murder millions of people and drive millions out of their homes are secondary issues? Fuller: I agree. I agree. It’s shocking, but I fear it’s the human condition. Project Ibn Sina To Save AfghanistanEIR: Well, let’s hope that’s not the case. Actually I’ll bring up this issue of Ibn Sina that I mentioned to you before the interview. Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s idea of this Project Ibn Sina for Afghanistan, is based on that tradition of a great Islamic leader who represented the kind of leader you talked about with Nasser, but at an even higher level, a great philosopher, a great poet. And of course, also a medical genius. So I wondered if you might want to comment. You know the history of Islam quite well. If you want to comment on the role of Ibn Sina, and Helga’s idea of so-called Project Ibn Sina as a way of bringing the world together around the reconstruction of Afghanistan, but also applying that to these issues of festering wars in the Middle East. Fuller: Yeah, that’s a very interesting question, Mike. Absolutely. I think by now, most Westerners are aware that there was a golden age of Islam. There was a time when intellectual life in the Muslim world, Arab world, Persian world, and beyond in India and even further east, intellectual life was very rich. There were very interesting, open theological discussions about religion, about science, philosophy. There was no shutting down of the mind at that point. Many Muslims have written since then, about, “Has there been a closing down of the Muslim mind?” I think probably you can demonstrate that there has been. The more important question is, why? One simple answer—it’s not the only answer, but it’s an important answer—is, of course, the long centuries of Western imperialism; British, French, German, Italian, Dutch, and American in another sense, that really helped keep these countries infantilized, is the word I would use most readily. They came to rely on outside—they came to fatalistically yield to the power of outside forces that would prevent them from taking charge of their own lives, thinking about these issues more deeply. So, I think many people trace some of the decline of Arab and Persian, and Muslim in general, Muslim intellectual and intellectualism, its sciences, its arts, and this gradual suppression of intellectual tradition within the Muslim world, largely by the ulema, the clerical class that found itself entrenched in positions of power as long as they supported the regime in power. They could have their voice over religious policy absolutely; that contributed to it. Certainly even the shift of the great trade routes from overland across the Silk Route, to new sea routes around the Indian Ocean to East Asia, that also was a factor in the decline of the Muslim world. But it’s undeniable that this has taken place. I think in this sense, Ibn Sina is a reflection, is an aspiration to go back to what made the Muslim world so rich, so strong, so thoughtful, so productive intellectually in its time. I think it can happen again. There’s no reason why it should not. But the Middle East has been caught in this terrible mess now—you can you can go back many, many, many decades, if not one hundred years of colonialism and foreign control and dominance by dictators supported readily by the West, et cetera. It’s a long, sad story, but Ibn Sina is one great symbol. He’s not the only one; there are many great symbols of a broader vision of Islam, a more open thinking, exploratory Islam. Turkey and the Arab SpringEIR: Good. You have something of a specialty on Turkey within the Islamic world, and you wrote a book which was called Turkey and the Arab Spring. I take it this is your reflection on the Muslim Brotherhood, which was sort of the dominant force in the Arab Spring. As I understand it, Erdogan is part of that. Do you want to comment on that now in retrospect, with the downfall of the Arab Spring? Fuller: Yeah, well, this brings up the very important question that I alluded to briefly earlier about Islamism, Islamic movements, Islamist, whatever, there are many different terms. But basically the idea of Islamists is, to put it in very simple terms, it’s a spectrum of views, as I said, from bin Laden to peace activists from an Islamic perspective. But it essentially is Muslims saying, Look, Islam has something to say about the future of governance and society in the Muslim world. What it has to say, what we choose out of it, just as some of the early European movements, Christian Democrats, et cetera, felt that Christianity had something to say intellectually or religiously or theologically, to say about good governance in Europe. So I think the Muslim movements – some are horrible, brutal, violent, as bin Laden is the major case in point. The Taliban have been quite brutal in their own way. Saudi Arabia has been a very brutal state, supporting many brutal movements and ideas outside the country, indeed fomenting these ideas of intolerance—it’s not only Islam, but there’s only one form of Islam, and that’s the Saudi form of Islam, which is Wahhabi, which is utterly uncompromising and very retrogressive. So anyway, the Muslim Brotherhood in all the spectrum is rather centrist. It has accepted the idea of democracy. It has political parties. These are not secret organizations and terrorist organizations. It hasn’t been that for half a century. It has accepted the idea of elections at the student level, the national level, participating in elections, accepting the idea of some kind of democratic practice. These ideas are utterly anathema to countries like Saudi Arabia or other Arab dictators, or Muslim dictators anywhere, who see this as subversive. So, they have moved all out—that’s why Saudi Arabia has been quick to condemn the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorists, even though it’s very, very difficult to make that case over the last 50 years. Fifty years ago, yes, they dallied in it, but not since. So I think, Turkey doesn’t officially call itself Muslim Brotherhood, but certainly the ruling party has good ties with it. And again, Turkey, it’s become an abusive democracy, but it’s still a democracy. I mean, there are real elections. It’s an unfair, or illiberal democracy, is the term I think we use. But nonetheless, it still has elections. And I believe that when the day comes that President Erdogan in Turkey is voted out of power, if there aren’t manipulations, I believe fairly surely he will step down. So the question of the compatibility of Islam and democracy that the Muslim Brotherhood in particular, I think has accepted, is far from over. And the debate is far from over. I mean, we’re even arguing in the United States about religious ideas, in social belief, abortion, among other things. So you cannot totally separate moral views from policy views, and moral views are importantly founded often on religious ideas. It doesn’t have to be, but that tends to be their source. NED: Surrogate of the CIAEIR: To what extent do you see the NED [National Endowment for Democracy], Open Society, regime-change crowd influence in the Arab Spring? And to what extent would you think that caused a backlash against it? Fuller: At one time when I was still working in Washington, I was a big believer in the National Endowment for Democracy, and I believed that democracy had a lot to offer to much of the world. I still believe democracy—it’s like Winston Churchill said, it’s the worst form of governance, except for all those that have been tried before it. But somehow, over the years, the National Endowment for Democracy, or NED, really became almost a surrogate for the CIA. The U.S. largely got out of the business of having the CIA overthrow countries—and this wasn’t, by the way, the CIA choosing to overthrow these places; this was by Presidential Order or Kissinger order or whatever. The National Endowment for Democracy became a much nicer face for regime change. Not by violence, but certainly through using all kinds of financial and ideological and training, and other kinds of things, to bring about change. I believed that democracy was a great goal for the United States, but as I began to watch it over the years, I began to see how much of this was cherry picking. That democracy was, as I often said, democracy was a punishment to deliver upon our enemies, to overthrow them. Democracy is never a gift for our allies. You know, we’re not deciding that we’re going to bestow democracy upon Saudi Arabia or any other number of authoritarian regimes around the world. We have all kinds of things to say about the rights of Uyghurs in China, and I care very deeply about the Uyghurs in China. I’ve been there. I’ve written about it. But, I think the fact that they’re in China seems to be the more important point for the U.S. policy than what the state of the Uyghurs is at this particular time. So it’s highly selective, which undermines the credibility, the ideological credibility of the United States in pushing for democracy. We’ll do it when we want to overthrow somebody, but we don’t have much to say about it otherwise. We don’t have much, even in human rights, I mean, this tends to be a weapon used to overthrow or seriously weaken countries. But if it’s a friendly country, we don’t do it. We never talk about the Kashmiris and Indian policy against Kashmir, or Indian policies against Muslims in general, or other religious groups in India, because India—they’re the good guys, so we don’t talk about it. But if it’s Palestinians rights being crushed in Israel, we don’t talk about it. But if it’s Chechens in Russia, or other groups in China, then we’re all over it. So, I just feel we ideologically corrode the very validity of pushing for democracy. The Uyghurs and China’s Nation BuildingEIR: I certainly agree with you on that. Let me take you up on the Uygher, Xinjiang issue. I read the study you and Frederick Starr did in 2004, called “The Xinjiang Problem,” which involved scholars… Fuller: But it was mainly Jonathan Lipman, who is an outstanding scholar of Muslims in China, who was my partner in writing that essay. Fred Starr very capably brought the book all together, many different disciplines, but it was myself and Jonathan Lipman, who has a wonderful book about Muslims in China. Very readable, delightful book. [see Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China ] EIR: I’ll look that up. Since that time, of course, you had the ISIS-linked Uyghurs who carried out terrorist attacks in Xinjiang, and the Chinese response to that was to launch what they call a mass education or mass re-education campaign for the young people being influenced by the jihadis. But at the same time doing massive economic development in the region; they created new industrial and agricultural projects across Xinjiang. And certainly, that is quite the opposite of the so-called anti-terrorist campaigns in the West, which were largely bombing countries back to the Stone Age. So nonetheless, what China is doing is now, since Pompeo and his ilk, is labeled genocide, and in fact, they’re imposing sanctions on China, and even the so-called diplomatic boycott of the Olympics is because of genocide in Xinjiang. I find this to be not only absurd, but really disgusting, but you certainly know a great deal about the Uyghurs in Xinjiang. How do you look at that now in light of this crisis? Fuller: You know, it’s a complicated issue, Mike. For starters, I would not accept the term genocide, which I think is being extremely loosely applied by Washington again, not so much on the facts of the issue, because if you looked at Palestinian treatment, the numbers are vastly less. But treatment of Palestinians in the West Bank and in Israel, there might be very comparable things. But anyway, this is not genocide, but I think it is—some people have used the term cultural oppression. Some have even called it culturacide. China is known to be—and I’m a huge admirer of China, I’ve studied Chinese history and literature and things. I have great admiration for China’s past and indeed even present extraordinary accomplishments. But China is also a tough country in which to be a minority. The Han Chinese massively dominate, just numerically, the country, overwhelmingly, so that it’s difficult to be a minority in China anywhere and not get “Han-ized”, if you will, turned into Han Chinese linguistically, culturally, and otherwise. This is not unique to China; other countries have pushed for cultural integration in the past. I don’t know the years exactly, but I think in the 18th Century, France had an extraordinary policy of imposing, with some force, imposing the language of Paris on the entire country and wiping out regional dialects and languages such as Celtic languages or Basque and other such. So in the process of nation building, whether you like it or not, governments, whether good or bad, or harsh or not, tend to try to push towards homogenization of their population to make it easier to rule, to maybe make it easier for people to get along socially. I don’t know. So the Chinese are part of this long tradition. And it’s easy when you got one-point-four [billion] people — and I don’t know what the statistics are of non-Han minorities, but they’re probably pretty small in comparison. So yes, I do feel that the Chinese have been rather harsh in Xinjiang in the effort to Han-ize, or turn into “good Chinese”, Han Chinese, the Uyghur population. And the Uyghurs, of course, are the furthest away from Beijing of any group in the country, way off to the West. I mean, the capital of Xinjiang province in China is closer to Islamabad than it is to Beijing. So you’re talking about a very distant, culturally long-time Turkic Islamic Muslim society. I deplore the re-education camps. It smacks a bit too much to me of kind of more fascist organizations in the past. But I think, I do not believe that calling this genocide is a legitimate term. And we also have to come to the deeper question of, who is it that deserves an independent state? The Chechens in Russia and the Soviet Union have been a totally distinct ethnic group. They’re Muslims, not Christians, but they have been pushing, including using violence for years, for over a hundred years, to gain independence from the Soviet Union, or from Russia. So this is an ongoing problem. And I certainly don’t support violence on either side of this. But I do acknowledge that in any process of industrializing China, including its distant western regions, factories are going to be built, and even more to the point, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Han Chinese have come into areas that have long been occupied, long inhabited by Muslim Uyghur people, Turkic Muslim Uygur peoples. And they naturally are deeply disturbed at this huge influx of industrial Chinese workers, who are changing the real estate, they’re tearing down their old towns, they’re weakening Islam, closing mosques, you know, imposing Chinese language requirements. Obviously, if you’re going to live in China, you damn well better learn Mandarin. So you can’t say that it’s all brutal, but it’s a complex issue of how do you try to integrate this country without using brutal techniques? And I think China in recent years has moved in the direction of unnecessary harshness in that issue. The Visionary Belt and Road InitiativeEIR: Well, let me say that they’ve built more mosques in Xinjiang than any area in the world. So you have to take that into consideration, too. What you’re saying about Xinjiang is also true of Tibet, and our organization from the beginning—LaRouche’s idea and the ideas of the Schiller Institute—was always predicated on the idea of peace through development, that you can’t try to bring about peace and then development. You have to actually bring development as a way of addressing the common needs of all people, all religious movements, all ethnic differences, and so forth. And certainly, that’s the way the Chinese have approached both Tibet and Xinjiang, and in the process have dramatically increased the populations of Xinjiang, the Uyghur population, increased their standard of living enormously. And their argument, of course, is that when people complain about human rights, that the most fundamental human right is the right to life and to a decent standard of living. And they’re very proud of having brought the entire country, including all the people of Xinjiang, out of abject poverty. There’s still poverty, but [abject poverty] has been eliminated. A lot of this is also what they launched to take internationally, the process of development, through the Belt and Road. And of course, Xinjiang is a crossroad for the Belt and Road. So let me ask you to say what you think about the whole Belt and Road process, which of course, is also roundly denounced by the anti-China people in the West with all kinds of nasty terms. But it is a basis on which, if you believe in the idea that peace comes through development, that you can resolve these issues not only in China, but in Afghanistan and in the Middle East. In particular, I wonder what you think about the efforts by China to bring the Belt and Road into the Middle East. Fuller: I think the Chinese idea of the Belt and Road is an extremely imaginative and exciting idea. It is visionary in the sense of uniting and bringing together diverse societies across Central Asia that have not been united since the days of Genghis Khan, who was a brutal conqueror, but for a hundred years thereafter proceeded to run a pretty enlightened and peaceful administration all across Central Asia, as a Chinese dynasty—later, as a Chinese dynasty. So I think it’s inspired. Central Asia has been the backwater of the world for a long, long time. Even though in medieval periods it was a rich center of commerce and trade and ideas and science, et cetera, along the lines of Ibn Sina, who lived in that area himself. This includes Iran, of course. So, I think it’s an extraordinary idea that the Chinese have been developing here, in context with Russia as well. It’s a complicated area. There are many ethnic sensitivities in the area. Muslims traditionally do not like to feel that they’re under the thumb—however, you choose to interpret it—under the dominance, under the overwhelming power of non-Muslim power, and they would view China in that regard. They would view Russia in that regard, but it doesn’t mean that they will reject it. It just means there are going to be certain sensitivities about Islamic culture, Islamic history and tradition, that will play an important role, I think, in the future of that Belt and Road. And China will need to—and Russia, of course—will need to move very cautiously with full regard for the cultural and religious traditions of that area. But I think, yes, it can do a great deal for the welfare, the livelihood, standard of living, cultural development, and everything else to have this area opened up from an area that will go from, well, you know, you can say Beijing, but in many senses, even from Korea, all the way across land and sea to now Italy, I think, which is the westernmost point at this stage of the Belt and Road concept. It’s very positive, it’s a very highly constructive, imaginative idea. EIR: Have you looked into the efforts between China and, let’s say, Iraq, for instance, to bring in some of these Belt and Road projects? The last government had agreements of oil for development, which got crushed, unfortunately. Fuller: Yeah, I’m not terribly familiar with where Iraq stands on the Belt and Road. I mean, inevitably, it will be part, it would be a natural part. I mean, going way back when it ran from Beijing to Beirut in effect, back in the day. I don’t know where it stands now with Iraq, but certainly Iran. And in Iran, already, China is playing a very significant role in helping relieve some of the more oppressive aspects of American sanctions. Iran has been historically a major country, a major culture that was part of that whole Belt and Road civilization. It was a Muslim, Arab, Persian society, Turkic as well. Very important. All those three cultural groups. China does not always have the best reputation, going way back, as fully honoring societies that resist homogenization, and Muslim societies tend to resist, a bit, homogenization into non-Muslim cultures. You could have a long discussion about why. So I think the idea is brilliant, but as I said before, China and Russia need to step cautiously and sensitively with this huge new cultural region, that will benefit that region, I believe, hugely. Afghan War Targeted China and RussiaEIR: Good. I’d like to ask two other things on Afghanistan before we leave that. One is that I read an article you wrote recently called “Time to Smash the Urge of Imperial Strategic Groupthink”. Fuller: That wasn’t my title. EIR: Oh, it wasn’t, Okay. It’s quite a title. Well, anyway, what I noted in there was that you said that the entire Afghan misadventure was less about fighting terrorism and more about establishing a base near the Russian and Chinese borders, sort of as part of the Great Game. There are indications that the pullout of Afghanistan was less about ending regime-change wars and more about repositioning for confrontations with China and Russia. And you may have heard that Tony Blinken just yesterday basically acknowledged that. He said (I wrote it down): “In ending America’s longest war and making sure that we’re not sending a third generation of Americans back to fight and die in Afghanistan, that frees up a tremendous amount of resources and focus for other challenges.” And the reporter even asked, “Do you think the American people have an appetite for other challenges?” And he said, “Oh, I think the appetite is significant.” I wonder what you think about this in terms of going forward. Fuller: I think it was fairly clear back in 9/11, 2001, that the invasion of Afghanistan was about far more than bin Laden. Bin Laden certainly was the perfect poster-boy enemy for that invasion. And it wasn’t outrageous—9/11 was an outrage, an outrage against the United States and generally, through the use of terrorism and murder. But yes, I think it was not by accident that the U.S. was well aware that Afghanistan sits athwart China, Russia, Central Asia. They understood that all you have to do is read about the British Great Game back in the day, 19th Century, and America supporting the Afghans against the Soviet invasion in 1978. So the idea of the geopolitical significance of Afghanistan is well known. We just didn’t talk about it very much, because it was a much better sell, to talk about terrorism and Afghanistan. I am not sure that the U.S. is quite ready to throw in, give up its spurs in Afghanistan, for the very same reason that it borders on Russia, borders on China, and might in the U.S. eyes be a check, possibly to elements of the Belt and Road. If the U.S. has a better idea than the Belt and Road or could contribute to it or work simultaneously with it, that would be great. But I think now anyway, it seems to be a zero-sum game in American eyes, and it doesn’t want to participate in any way that would facilitate this Chinese venture. I don’t think we’ve really let go quite there, and it won’t be until we start generously helping rebuild that country that we helped to destroy, that we become credible in our willingness to look for better days for the Afghan people and get out of the region. Drugs and the U.S. Cultural DecayEIR: So, I want to ask as, I think, a last question, the issue of the cultural decay in the United States and in the western world generally. I read some reviews of your memoir, I didn’t read the memoir, but the book you wrote about the death of your son to drug addiction. And, as you probably know, it was just recently announced that there have been 100,000 overdose drug deaths this last year. That’s by far the highest ever. And the economic and cultural decay in the country has really left a whole generation of children who have no sense of a positive future. They don’t have a sense of a mission in the world. And this, of course, has resulted in some horrible atrocities like the child killers. We had one just the other day in Michigan, and record-high teen suicides. Since you did have that experience, how do you read this yourself, in terms of what we’re going to have to do to revive the culture in the United States? Fuller: Well, drugs in many ways are the bane of the modern world, everywhere, in some sense. In the United States, as you know, we’ve not had a great deal of luck even with the banning of all kinds of drugs over the years, have not had great success with it. And the so-called war against drugs that’s been going on, what, 20, 30 years, as part of many administrations punishing various Latin American countries for helping produce this stuff, in which we are the main market. This goes back a long way, and with all the problems that you talk about; yes, it’s been, it’s really sad. It’s been exacerbated by COVID. It’s got to be exacerbated by just existential angst from global warming, the future of the world. What I now feel is an excessive sense of individualism within the United States culture. Individualism has been a wonderful feature of American culture, and produced amazing artistic accomplishments and scientific and technical accomplishments, all kinds of things. But it does have a downside. This extreme, extreme individualism of the United States, which means that there’s not so coherent a society, as you might find in, say, slightly more traditional European cultures, but even they are suffering from drugs. So, I’m not sure what the answer to all of this is, but certainly the conditions of American life, the discrepancy between rich and poor, and the negativism that emerges from this, that you can see in the music and the arts and other things, certainly is exacerbating it hugely. But it’s in some senses, it’s a global problem. It’s a human problem. Addiction to Never Ending WarsEIR: Let me close by asking if you have anything else you’d like to like to say to our audience. Fuller: No, just to express my concern about where the U.S. is headed now, the viability of American democratic practice at this point. I think the future of the world is going to be ever more demanding. Obviously, for starters, because of global warming, and pandemics. Also, the negative impacts of technology. Apart from the many wonderful aspects of technology, there are many, many socially negative impacts of technology. My fear is that countries are going to find themselves increasingly unmanageable, in which the power of the state is going to be perceived as more and more necessary. Just in COVID alone, to try to control the spread of COVID and manage the treatment of COVID, has required a great empowerment of the state, not just in the U.S. but globally. So, I think in a country that’s as intensely individualistic as the United States is, where people can say, well, you know, I want to do what I want to do and it’s my freedom, it’s my body. There are all kinds of very good reasons for pushing back against this. But I think in the modern world and the modern world of delicate technology and countries existing on delicate balances of how technologies interact, you can’t really survive in a country that is verging on the anarchistic in many regards, that cannot provide good government and good governance. So I fear very much for where the future of the U.S. is headed right now. It may not just be the United States. It may be the West, and the West may be ahead of much of the rest of the world. But the problem of control of populations getting ever bigger, and the crises, global warming, disease, technology, et cetera, et cetera, I fear are going to hugely empower states. And China is basically arguing that they are the vanguard of the future in this regard. I think the thing that I find most deeply depressing about the United States is its still addiction to never ending war. We talked about that briefly before, but I think I am appalled that even with very progressive thinkers like Bernie Sanders, even Bernie Sanders has not dared to grasp the nettle of the Pentagon budget and the ongoing wars, or only very slightly. Its still, you know, we can’t afford medical care, we can’t afford infrastructure, we can’t afford COVID, or one thing or another. But boy, we can afford those damn wars. I’m appalled that even today, nobody, just about nobody is suggesting that maybe, one-third of the Pentagon budget might go a long way to beginning to solve a few of these domestic problems. It’s beyond the pale, that discussion, right now. EIR: Yeah, either party. Fuller: Either party. EIR: Okay, well, thank you very much. This will be most interesting.
In the last days, Putin spoke with Macron and, at some length, with Xi. With the former, he emphasized why he insists that western countries demand that Ukraine adhere to the Minsk agreement on resolving tension over eastern Ukraine, and agree to no further expansion of NATO. With Xi, the discussion focused on achieving "ever-lasting peace and good neighborliness" on their common border. Meanwhile, new German Chancellor Scholz is trying to reassure Germans that his radical Green transformation won't negatively affect their personal well-being!
Fast-moving changes in the international strategic situation require that we direct our attention to answering this essential question: How are ideas, such as “The Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites” intervention into the world health crisis, and “Operation Ibn Sina,” a military-strategic, as well as philosophical alternative to the lethal geopolitics of Southwest Asia, intended to transform the present, clearly failing complex of “credible policy options” in order to secure, not only durable human survival, but even unprecedented economic prosperity? In other words, is it true that under certain circumstances, an idea, representing a deeper, unseen, higher, “poetic” principle, can take the form of an effective policy, perhaps embraced by much, even all of humanity, such that imperfect people and leaders, “even whilst they deny and abjure, are yet compelled to serve, that power which is seated on the throne of their own soul?”Three developments in the past 48 hours indicate the potential for great, profound, and lasting change. These developments also show that those operating from the “higher manifold” of creative reason, can not only out-think, but also out-flank, those who don’t. First: the Russian rejection, accompanied by the “billion-people-plus” nations of India and China, of the United Nations Security Council resolution declaring that “climate change is a global security threat.” This counters the geopolitical policy thrust that has been in the works for years to substitute the slogan “climate change” for “resource scarcity,” the earlier argument of documents like “National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” Those three nations, representing 40% of the people on the planet, defended those that were too weak, beaten down, or divided to stand up for themselves. Russia and China in particular are aware that “The 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community” report was written after the sabotage of the panel that was to be chaired, at the request of President Donald Trump, by physicist William Happer, who was assigned to the National Security Council. The panel was intended to question the false scientific narrative concerning the “link” between carbon emissions and global warming. Trump had rejected the 2017 Threat Assessment, which had originally made the same claim, and had brought Happer into the administration in 2018. Before Happer’s committee could even meet, however, it was sabotaged—probably by the CIA, according to one source—and the review was never done. The 2019 report concluded that climate change is man-made, and a significant threat to national security. On page 23, it states:“Global environmental and ecological degradation, as well as climate change, are likely to fuel competition for resources, economic distress, and social discontent through 2019 and beyond…. Diminishing Arctic sea ice may increase competition—particularly with Russia and China—over access to sea routes and natural resources.” On page 24, one page later, under the title “Regional Threats: China and Russia,” it states:“China and Russia will present a wide variety of economic, political, counterintelligence, military, and diplomatic challenges to the United States and its allies. We anticipate that they will collaborate to counter US objectives, taking advantage of rising doubts in some places about the liberal democratic model.”That was what was actually out-flanked by Russia, China, and, in a different way, India, in their action at the United Nations on Monday. Second, the Atlantic Council on Monday published an Open Letter to President Biden entitled “Afghanistan is about to collapse. Here’s what the US must do about it.” It was signed by 13 US diplomats and military personnel, including Ryan Crocker, James Cunningham, James Dobbins, David Petraeus, and others. It includes the following passages: “In addition to food and medicine, Afghanistan needs a stable medium of exchange and a functioning banking system to avoid experiencing widespread economic and governance failure. Health professionals, teachers, and other essential workers need to be paid if the most basic functions of the state are to be maintained. Ordinary Afghans deserve access to their own funds, now frozen in banks wary of US and international sanctions and the potential collapse of the Afghan financial system.” Sounds positive, right? Then, "… discussions are underway in Washington and elsewhere to explore various means of stabilizing the Afghan currency and averting the collapse of the banking system without providing the Taliban with discretionary resources that could be used for nefarious purposes. Good ideas for how to do so are available, including proposals by former US ambassadors, USAID directors, and World Bank officials, among others. Because any scheme along these lines will be very controversial, and no system of controls will be perfect, what is needed is the courage to act. Whenever you hear the phrase “courage to act” from these circles, who “act” everywhere in the world, all the time, often in your name, and without your permission, take heed, and proceed with caution. Those who have read Confessions of An Economic Hit-Man by John Perkins can recognize the thinking here. There is no necessary intention of stabilizing the nation of Afghanistan indicated here, actually—but there is, on the other side, another important, influential factor. “The longer decisions are postponed, the more difficult it will become to prevent the looming humanitarian catastrophe in the country and the deaths of many Afghans”—deaths which will be on the hands of the United States, NATO, and those that have refused “Operation Ibn Sina,” or any real emergency collaboration with the nations of the area. Operation Ibn Sina is such a collaboration, proposed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and involving Pakistan, the United States, China, and Russia, as well as Uzbekistan and all the nations surrounding Afghanistan. Such a collaboration, especially in light of the Putin-Biden discussions of the tensions occurring at the border of Ukraine and Russia; the military experience of both Russia and the United States in Afghanistan; and the possibility of collaborating with “opposites” for the purpose of doing something good, for the benefit of the other, and members of another faith, particularly at the Christmas season, should be even more intensely pursued. Operation Ibn Sina, as “unlikely” as it might appear, is a war-winning strategy, against the real enemies—“poverty, famine, disease, and war itself.” Third, evidence rigorously compiled in Denmark and Norway regarding the omicron variant of the coronavirus, indicates that those with even two vaccinations are infected by it at very high rates. This poses the obvious question: what if omicron were as deadly as the Delta virus, which it appears to not be? What would we do about it? Even without that, what is about to happen to the hospital systems of the world, which are about to be flooded with cases of omicron—and perhaps, any day, a more lethal variant? The Dr. Jocelyn Elders call for a world dialogue and symposium to catalyze an emergency world economic platform, as impractical as it sounds, is the “canopy of victory” under which the world’s weakest and strongest, wealthiest and poorest, must meet, if we are to survive. Lyndon LaRouche said in December 1985: “In a true republic, the true citizen is personally accountable to the Creator, for the outcome of that republic; for the outcome of the general welfare, as it affects all persons in that republic; for the outcome, thus, of every personal life in that republic, and the outcome of the role of that republic in the world; for the welfare of humanity as a whole, and of every individual personality, present and future, of humanity as a whole. The individual citizen of a republic is personally accountable to the Creator, to the extent that that individual either has the capacity to influence the course of events, or can develop the capacity needed to influence the course of events.” We may deny and abjure, but we may also serve the higher power of reason and beauty that, if we are fortunate, will, “even in our despite,” sit and preside upon the throne of our souls.
The following interview with Ambassador Chas Freeman was conducted by EIR’s Mike Billington on Nov. 29, 2021. Ambassador Freeman’s extensive career in U.S. foreign policy includes his role as interpreter for President Richard Nixon in his famous 1972 visit to China. He did the legal analysis that inspired the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 and was Country Director for China, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for African affairs, and Assistant Secretary of Defense. He served abroad in India and Taiwan, and as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassies in China and Thailand. He was U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia during the 1990-1991 war to liberate Kuwait. He edited the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Diplomacy, and is the author of several books on statecraft as well as on Middle East and Asian policy.Chas Freeman: I’m Chas Freeman and it’s a pleasure to be with you, Mike. EIR: Do you want to say a bit about your history, your many hats? Freeman: Well, not particularly. I was a public servant for 30 years, emerged penniless from that experience and have since devoted myself to remedying that condition with modest success. I am currently a visiting scholar at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, and a frequent speaker on a number of subjects which are controversial in U.S. foreign policy, including relations with China, with the Middle East and so forth. So that’s about it. Will the U.S. Start Nuclear War?EIR: Ok, so I prepared some topics. I’ll just go through them and let you expound. I wanted to start with the worst-case scenario, which is, as you noted in your Watson Institute presentation last week, that China launched its nuclear weapon development after the U.S. had threatened to use nuclear weapons against China during the 1958 crisis, over the islands in the Taiwan Strait. Admiral Charles A. Richard, the current commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, said this summer, that while nuclear war used to be considered unlikely, due to the rise of China it was now likely. Do you suspect that the U.S. would rather use nuclear weapons than lose a military conflict over Taiwan? Freeman: Well, that has always been the strategic nuclear doctrine espoused by the United States: The assumption that if conventional warfare fails, there is a nuclear option, and indeed that was the case with the use of nuclear weapons by the United States in World War Two. It was only when it was determined that conventional warfare would be problematic, casualties would be enormous, that it was decided to drop nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is consistent with American reasoning over the years. I find it very unnerving, frankly, in the current context. There are now nine countries known to have nuclear weapons. The United States risks the use of nuclear weapons against our own territory if we threaten or use such weapons against others. We have seen, for example, that a policy of maximum pressure on North Korea has driven the North Koreans to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile and a nuclear warhead, for it, precisely to strike the United States and to deter American attack, or regime change efforts against Pyongyang. We now have a different situation than we did in World War Two, when we had a monopoly on nuclear weapons. And it seems to me a very serious misjudgment to imagine that nuclear weapons remain the ace in the hole that Adm. Richard believes them to be. Now, in the case of China, it is not simply the nuclear modernization program that the United States has undertaken, to which we’ve committed some $1.4 trillion dollars, much of it aimed at China, in order to achieve battlefield supremacy over the Chinese, but it is also the breakdown of all of the understandings that enable peaceful coexistence in the Taiwan Strait. In the finessing of the issue of Taiwan in U.S.-China relation, essentially, the United States agreed to three conditions: one, that we would end official relations with Taipei; two, that, we would withdraw all military personnel and installations from the island; and three, we would void our defense commitment to the island. We have now gone back on each of these commitments. It’s very hard to tell the difference between the way we conduct relations with Taipei now, and an official relationship or diplomatic relationship. We know that there are now American troops on Taiwan training Taiwanese forces, and we hear loud calls in Congress and elsewhere for the U.S. defense of Taiwan, on the grounds that it is a democracy resisting an authoritarian government. Somehow lost in all this is the history. You mentioned the 1958 offshore islands crisis, involving Quemoy and Matsu, as the precipitator of the Chinese nuclear program. But the U.S. threatened the use of nuclear weapons on China during the Korean War, and on three occasions that I know of. The Chinese claim there are six occasions on which they were threatened with nuclear attack, on precisely the grounds that Adm. Richard appears to espouse. And this did indeed lead Mao Zedong to demand help from the Soviet Union, in developing a Chinese nuclear deterrent. Soviet refusal to oblige played a large role in generating the breakdown of Sino-Soviet relations. So, this is a history that is very tangled, very long, very complex, and which we appear to approach rather in the mode of people with Alzheimer’s—you know, where we remember nothing, and everything is new every time. China’s Nuclear DeterrentEIR: You also noted in your presentation with Lyle Goldstein at the Watson Institute last week, that China had given fair warning of their military interventions before Korea in 1950, India in 1962, and Vietnam, when they crossed the border in 1979. But nonetheless, Washington is ignoring similar warnings that are coming today over Taiwan. Why do you think, and what is your expectation if China does in fact use force? Freeman: A great deal of the denial that one sees in Washington on subjects like this, reflects hubris on the part of the so-called blob—the foreign policy establishment and its military component. But it represents a failure to understand the extent to which the global order and geopolitics have rearranged themselves, as others rise to match American power, at least at the regional level. When we did the normalization agreement with China and finessed the Taiwan issue, China did not have the military means to mount an invasion or an attack on Taiwan with any credibility. It now does. It has been developing a wide range of options for taking action to resolve the Chinese Civil War, which is how the Taiwan issue came about, and to bring Taiwan into an agreed relationship with the rest of China. It prefers a negotiated means of doing this. But it’s become apparent that it is developing alternatives, including a wide range of possibilities for the use of force, and it is in that context that one must see the recent Chinese heavying-up of nuclear forces. If China is engaged in a calibrated escalation of pressure on Taiwan to bring it to the negotiating table, which is what it is currently doing, that’s one thing. But if it is put in the position where it sees no peaceful prospect of resolving the Taiwan question, then it is forced to consider the use of force. And the conquest of Taiwan would have to be conducted with speed and with a knockout blow. It would have to present a fait accompli to Americans who wish to intervene in that conflict. And it is in this case that the nuclear deterrent becomes invaluable, because China will be in a position to say to the United States, “if you intervene, all options are on the table,” to use the phrase that we have so often used with regard to others. In other words, are you really prepared to give up Chicago in order to preserve Taiwan’s democracy and autonomy? Since, if there is a war over Taiwan, the first things to perish will be Taiwan’s democracy and its prosperity. Are you really prepared to make this trade off? This is a replay of Cold War-style Cuban Missile Crisis confrontation that we should be doing everything possible to avoid. But it is looking more likely every day. Resolving the Taiwan Issue PeacefullyEIR: Do you think there’s any potential within Taiwan for the Guomindang [Kuomintang, KMT] or any other forces within Taiwan, who would prefer having normal relations leading towards a long-term peaceful reunification, to regain any kind of political influence, or win an election in Taiwan? And on the other hand, what would it take for Washington to convince the DPP [Democratic Progressive Party] and President Tsai Ing-wen to negotiate with Beijing? Freeman: I think the KMT’s electoral prospects are limited, and if it is elected, it will not be on the basis of a vision of cross-Strait relations, but on the basis of local issues. Tip O’Neill was right, all politics is local, and people in Taiwan are much more concerned, for the most part, about issues closer to home, than the prospect of conflict with their Chinese motherland. The DPP contains quite a variety of opinions. There are those who are firmly committed to the idea of independence and advocate risking it now. There are those who, like Tsai Ing-wen, now say that Taiwan is already independent, and has no need to declare independence. This is an answer to the extremists in her own party who advocate immediate declaration of independence. Unfortunately, it is heard very differently across the Strait. Beijing hears it as meeting the conditions it has set for having to use force, namely that Taiwan achieves independence, where there is no prospect of a peaceful reintegration of the two sides of the Strait. So, what could we do to influence the DPP? We would have to back off from our support of our denial of the One-China principle. As you recall, Taiwan and the mainland in 1972, during the negotiation of the Shanghai Communique, both Taipei and Beijing were firmly in agreement that there was only one China, and Taiwan was part of it. Taiwan’s democracy has changed the view of many in Taiwan on that question, and so it is not easy now to have a discussion. In the previous government in Taipei, lip service was paid to the One-China principle, and this permitted very productive dialogue across the Strait; that dialogue has now dried up. If there is no dialogue, if there are no talks, there is no apparent path to a peaceful resolution of the issues. So, I think the United States ought to be advocating dialogue. We should be saying firmly that we do not agree with the DPP that Taiwan is an independent state. But this is politically very difficult, given the anti-China hysteria in the United States at present. Belt and Road—An Opportunity, Not a ThreatEIR: In regard to that general anti-China hysteria, as you know, EIR and the Schiller Institute have long promoted the Belt and Road Initiative. To a certain extent, we initiated this idea back in the 1990s with the Chinese. But the idea of bringing major infrastructure development to nations which have been denied major infrastructure and development by the colonial and neocolonial forces—this is not aimed at taking over the West, as many Western leaders like to argue, but rather to liberate these nations from poverty, as they did their own population in relatively record time, 30 to 40 years, eliminating abject poverty from seven or eight hundred million people. So why, in your view, do the U.S. and the EU oppose this process of the Belt and Road? Freeman: Well, I think unfortunately, the natural American response to any international development at present is to view it through military eyes. Therefore, there is a suspicion that the Belt and Road has a geopolitical military purpose. I don’t think it does. I think it is a geo-economic outreach, which takes advantage of the fact that China now has the best infrastructure construction technology and equipment on the planet. That it has surpluses of materials for construction, like concrete, aluminum, steel and so forth. And it has experience in solving very difficult engineering problems, and it is applying this to create a potential economic community that will span the entire Eurasian landmass from Lisbon to Vladivostok, and North, from Arkhangelsk to Colombo, as well as parts of East Africa. This will be an open economic architecture based on connectivity, whether it’s roads, railroads, fiber optic cable, ports, airports, industrial estates or whatever. And I think the Chinese bet, is that in such an open environment, China’s size and dynamism would give it a natural leadership role. But this is very different from imagining the sort of military positioning that we characteristically try to impose on such developments. I think the proper response by the United States to the Belt and Road Initiative would be to take advantage of it. Somebody builds a road, let’s drive an American car down it. Someone connects Tokyo and London with fiber optic cable, let’s use that to improve the speed of trading on the stock market. If someone builds an airport, there’s no reason that only Chinese aircraft can use that, and so forth and so on. I’m very impressed actually, by the extent to which the Belt and Road Initiative is not just physical connectivity, but a series of agreements on the management of the transit of goods, openness to services, improvement of customs and immigration procedures, bonded transit between China and Europe and a third country or region. I think this is a great opportunity, if it’s approached in that way, for American business, for the American economy. We need to leverage the prosperity of China and the increasing prosperity of Central Asian and European countries, as well as these African countries, and South Asian countries, to the benefit of our economy, not regard it as a threat. There Is no Debt Trap from ChinaEIR: You say that the opposition to this is primarily because it’s viewed militarily, but on the other hand, the western financial institutions have made very clear over the last few years, and emphatically at the Glasgow COP26 conference, that their primary interest, the financial interests, people like Mark Carney and the Bank of England, and Wall Street interests, is to stop investments into fossil fuels, into any industry or agriculture they deem to have too much carbon, because of their argument that carbon is going to burn up the world and so forth. This would appear to be an economic policy not so different from the colonial policy of intentionally wanting to keep these countries in a state of dependence and backwardness. What would you think? Freeman: Well, I don’t agree with the theory that climate change and carbon emissions should not be tackled, but I think that’s really almost irrelevant here. It’s almost laughable that the very institutions which pioneered debt trap diplomacy—a phrase invented by an Indian polemicist to describe a mythical reality involving Chinese lending—the very countries and institutions that pioneered this, for example, in loans to Latin America and so forth, now object to the Chinese competing with them for lending. I don’t see anything very profound in all this. It is just a case of banks trying to screw other banks. If JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs and Citibank, or Wells Fargo or whoever, whichever criminal enterprise you wish to refer to, if they cannot beat the terms that the Chinese offer for various reasons, including political factors, and Western insistence on human rights and other norms that the Chinese leave to the decision of local people, then it’s natural that they would try to prevent China from making loans. As a general proposition, competition with China is mainly economic and technological. It doesn’t fit easily into a military prism, and it doesn’t fit easily into a financial prism. So, the odd thing is, if you want to compete, the best way to do it is to improve your own performance and offer better terms. It’s not to try to hamstring or tear down your competitor. If you are a rival of China, that could potentially be very beneficial to both you and to the Chinese, because that is a competition to improve performance on both sides. If you are engaged in adversarial antagonism, which is clearly what is happening here, then your means of competition is trying to trip up your competitor. And that does nothing for yourself, your own people, your own country, or your ultimate competitiveness. There are many issues involved in this, but at root, it is just a tradition of underhanded, rather amoral competition by Western banks. The U.S. Needs Trust BustingEIR: I agree with you. I’ll just mention as a side note here, when we first published in 2014, the 370 page report called The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge, promoting this, it was our hope—I guess you would say, even an expectation—that we would take this report to American entrepreneurs and investors, and they would say, “Yes, wonderful, a great opportunity for profitable investment and development.” But as we now know, nothing like that happened. Freeman: Well, I think part of the problem is, there is a sense of malaise in the United States at present, for good reason. And part of the reason for poor performance and slipping competitiveness is the emergence of an economy dominated by corporate oligopolies, rather than engaged in open market competition. This is true, people have noticed it, particularly in the area of media and social media, communications, telecommunications. But it’s true more generally. Any mall in the United States that you visit is likely to have the same outlets, the same franchises. The role of small business, whether it’s booksellers or independent restaurants or whatever it is, has been largely superseded by national level monopolies and oligopolies. So I think part of the problem, if we wish to compete with China, which despite its label as communist or socialist, has a fiercely competitive domestic market with a very fractured structure that generates cutthroat competition between enterprises, whether they’re owned by the state or by the province or city, or by individuals, or by the shareholders, doesn’t really matter. If we wish to compete with China, one of the things we’ve got to do is rediscover antitrust policy. Interestingly, the Chinese are currently applying antitrust policy to the very media oligopolies, the analogs of the ones here—the Facebooks and Instagrams and Twitters and whatever—on their own soil. And in many ways, China seems to me to be recapitulating the American response to the Gilded Age. It has had its Gilded Age, like Teddy Roosevelt and company; it is now discovering the merits of antitrust policy. And I suspect that John D. Rockefeller was not very pleased when Standard Oil was broken up, and that there are moans and groans on Wall Street about this being the end of capitalism. Actually, it saved capitalism from itself. We are looking at the Chinese through glasses that are either military, or that ignore our own history, our own past, our own experience with financial capitalism, which the Chinese appear to be determined not to develop. I wish them luck. It may be an inevitability. The Foolishness of the ‘Leaders’ Summit for Democracy’EIR: On the historical side of all this, you were engaged in the opening up to China. You were with Nixon on his first visit, as his interpreter. ou mentioned in your presentation last week that the opening up was largely based on the idea of the “China card” against the Soviet Union. Now China and Russia are increasingly coordinating both their strategic and economic relations. The NATO provocations against Russia over Ukraine are as intense as those over Taiwan. In your view, is this administration, or the previous one, or Congress, or the media, or Wall Street—are any of them taking into consideration that a military operation in Taiwan, or in Ukraine, could easily become a war with both Russia and China? Freeman: I suppose there are people at the Pentagon who understand that. It’s pretty clear the American political elite does not make that connection. Just a minor correction on the opening to China: it was Richard Nixon’s idea to open to China after he contemplated the consequences of a possible Soviet attack on China, removing China as a factor in global geopolitics. And that caused him to see China as the useful counter to Soviet expansionism that it was, and it led to the United States, essentially in the 1970s, treating China as a protected state. We had no real expectations that the Chinese would do anything, but we really wanted them to survive, and to remain a part of the global chessboard. So that was the origin of it. It then turned out that this set up a healthy competition in Moscow for our favor. So, the famous strategic triangle worked to our advantage. Generally speaking, in diplomacy, or military strategy for that matter, it is considered wise to divide your enemies, not unite them. But we have been doing everything possible to push Moscow and Beijing into an entente, meaning a limited partnership for limited purposes. It’s not an alliance. There is no broad mutual commitment to aid. But there are clearly understandings emerging about precisely the sort of issue that you just mentioned. If the Russians feel sufficiently provoked to take the Donbass, which is Russian-speaking, from Ukraine, it will probably time that to coincide with Chinese military operations against Taiwan, and perhaps vice versa. So, we have done ourselves no favor by simultaneously designating China and Russia as adversaries. I make one further point. We’re about to have a Summit on Democracy, which is ironic, because our own democracy is clearly in bad shape, and we are evaluated internationally as having a partially failed democracy. So, this is an odd moment to be attempting to trumpet the virtues of the system we ourselves are abandoning. But by trying to reorganize the world along ideological lines—democracies versus authoritarian regimes or non-democracies—the whole conceit was ridiculous! Because authoritarians—I know lots of autocrats, I’ve dealt with many of them over the years, I’ve never met one who was the least concerned about others—don’t think they have anything in common. They’re concerned to stay in power, not to keep other autocrats in power. So, there’s no international league of autocrats, but we are creating one. Because by excluding countries that don’t meet or aspire to sycophancy in the democratic sphere, by assembling them as a sort of broad coalition aimed at Russia and China, we have stimulated Russia and China to issue a joint declaration against this, and then try to organize their own coalition. We are trying to replicate the Cold War. I don’t think we’ll succeed, because basically the underlying proposition that somehow the United States is currently in a condition to appeal on a democratic basis to the world is problematic. And I don’t think countries want to choose between the United States and its designated adversaries, whether they are China or Russia or Iran. We are in effect, creating the very phenomenon we invented and imagined. And it’s not to our advantage. EIR: And not only did they exclude Russia and China from invitations for this Summit of Democracy, but they left out Hungary, Singapore, all of Central Asia. But they did invite Taiwan as if it were…. Freeman: They also invited the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is not a famous democracy in any one’s eyes, and Angola was invited, I believe. This smacks of geopolitics rather than ideology. And it will be interesting to see how it goes. Here we are in a country where it’s very uncertain that we will make it through our next general election without violence, or that there will be a peaceful transition in 2024 or 2025 when we have our next Presidential election. This is an odd moment to be insisting that others democratize. Perhaps we should focus on practicing democracy at home. I’m all in favor of democracy. I’d like to see more of it here. The U.S. Is Already Over China’s Red LineEIR: We had [Secretary of State] Tony Blinken not only inviting Taiwan to the Summit, but also going to the U.N. and calling on the U.N. to welcome Taiwan in a robust way into all the institutions of the U.N. How close would you call that to the red line? Freeman: I think it’s over the red line. This is a resurrection of something I did as a very young diplomat—namely, manipulate Chinese representation in the UN. Taipei sat in the Security Council representing China, and all of us in the U.S. Foreign Service were engaged in keeping it that way, while keeping Beijing out, and we were pretty good at it. It lasted for, I think, 21 years or so. And then finally, reality caught up with us in 1971, when the rest of the world repudiated our approach. But now we’re going back to it. We just had an election yesterday, in Honduras, in which a candidate committed to switch relations from Taipei to Beijing, has apparently been elected. It’ll be interesting to see how that develops. The last time this happened, in El Salvador, we undertook punitive action—this was under the Trump administration—to punish San Salvador for switching its allegiances. Mrs. Castro, the president-elect apparently, in Honduras, will have to make some hard choices. Among other things, one of the reasons for Taiwan’s strong foothold in the Central American region, is that it supplies the surveillance equipment and technology to keep dictatorships in power. I don’t know whether Mrs. Castro, as president-elect Castro, has aspirations to do away with dictatorship sincerely, or whether she will be tempted, as Mr. Ortega was, in Nicaragua. She will also face a backlash from Americans of a certain political persuasion, so it’s not going to be easy for her to keep her campaign promise. You spoke of crossing red lines. That is an effort on our part to delegitimize the government in China and legitimize that in Taipei. This is not a way to exist, coexist peacefully with Beijing, whatever it may or may not do for Taipei. U.S. on Afghanistan: ReprehensibleEIR: One approach which Helga Zepp-LaRouche has initiated, in order to try to bring these so-called adversaries together, is the situation in Afghanistan, where one would think that it’s in the self-interest of all parties, to not allow that country to descend back into a terrorist conclave and opium producer. Helga has promoted what she calls Operation Ibn Sina, to try to bring all the nations together, both in the region and internationally, including the U.S. and Russia and China, to develop Afghanistan with a modern health system and other urgently needed infrastructure, to make it again a great crossroad, as it was when Bactria was the “land of a thousand cities.” There is a functioning so-called extended troika on Afghanistan, which is the U.S., Russia and China, together with Pakistan, focused on the development of Afghanistan, hopefully. And just recently, Pakistan has agreed to allow India to transport wheat across its territory, which it had forbidden before, to meet the huge humanitarian disaster that’s taking place in Afghanistan. Do you think, as Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche does, that if you can bring these nations together around the Afghan situation, this would have implications for other hotspots, including Taiwan? Freeman: I think there’s a very strong case to be made that the effort that the Russians made, and then we made, to modernize Afghanistan, to promote the rights of women, to improve education and health care, can only be effectively carried out on a multilateral basis. It cannot be carried out, as Moscow and Washington attempted to do, with an occupation force engaged in pacification over resistance. The idea of a multilateral approach to Afghan development is an excellent one, and probably the vehicle for this, given, what I’m sorry to say, is a degree of petulance and vindictiveness in Washington that is, in my view, unconscionable, by which we are withholding the Afghan national reserves from the de facto government in Kabul, and thereby pushing Afghanistan into a state of famine and anarchy, which I think is intended to punish the Taliban, but which will probably provide fertile ground for the growth of Daesh, the ISIS, Islamic State elements, who regard the Taliban as milquetoast. The most likely vehicle, unfortunately, does not involve the United States, but it’s probably the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which includes most of the countries which would be needed for such an approach. We are creating a terrible humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan as we speak. Europeans may be more willing than Americans seem to be, to step forward to cooperate with others in the region to address this. So far, the Biden administration has shown a degree of cold-hearted disdain for the suffering of Afghans, that I find really reprehensible. Now you ask, does this have implications for Taiwan? I don’t think so. I think Afghanistan has to be approached in its own right, and the Taiwan issue is one that involves factors that are quite different from those in Afghanistan. China Does Not Want To Occupy TaiwanEIR: I found something you said in your Watson Institute presentation very interesting—and you said you’d written a book about this—that nations which occupy countries tend to cause total demoralization in general, and deterioration, of the military forces themselves. I think your argument there was aimed at saying that the Chinese really do not want to have to occupy Taiwan. Do you want to say anything about that? I assumed you were looking at the deterioration of the U.S. forces and their occupation of Vietnam, and now Afghanistan, and so forth. Freeman: Well, I thought my model was actually before the U.S. misadventures in either Afghanistan or Iraq. My model was the Israeli occupation of Palestine, which I think has led to a degree of cynicism and callous disregard for human life, that is quite contrary to the universal values of Judaism, which inspired the original creation of Israel. I think this is actually something that is documented in many contexts. It was interesting to me that the PLA [Peoples Liberation Army] General Staff Department, when they read the book in English, seized on this particular small section of it as a justification for producing a translation into Chinese. This is the book [holding it up], Arts of Power. It’s very clear that the Chinese have absolutely no desire to replicate the Japanese occupation of Taiwan. I think I mentioned, the first 25 years of that were characterized by violent resistance and really brutal repression. I don’t think in the modern world, this sort of thing would be without major effects on China’s foreign relations in general. I don’t doubt that they have the capability to occupy Taiwan. I think the last thing on Earth they want to do is to occupy Taiwan. They would much prefer, as I said, a negotiated solution which leaves Taiwan essentially self-governing, but within the context of One China. That’s something Taipei and Beijing have to work out; the United States and other countries can’t speak for either one of them, and can’t resolve the Chinese Civil War, it has to be resolved among Chinese. But, I think it’s reassuring that the PLA understands it would be a mess if it were forced to occupy Taiwan. Biden Administration Failure of Foreign Policy EIR: You said at the Watson address,, “Don’t get me going on this crew in Washington today.” I’m not sure I want to “get you going” on that, but if you look back, Biden has had long talks—a three-and-a half hour talk with Xi Jinping. He’s had a couple of meetings with [President Vladimir] Putin; he plans on another meeting before the end of the year with Putin. But if you look back at [former President Donald] Trump, he was elected, I think to a great extent, because he said we should be friends with Russia, we should be friends with China, although he wanted to solve the trade thing. He said we should end the endless wars. And of course, none of that happened, but quite the opposite. In the current circumstance, Biden appears to want to maintain a personal friendly relationship with Xi Jinping and Putin. But the question is, is that the way policy is made in Washington? And what’s your sense in that? Freeman: Well, the Trump administration essentially destroyed the organized policy process in Washington. Biden has tried to resurrect it, but the National Security Council staff, which is charged with coordinating policy, has now grown to such a bloated size, that it replicates the expertise of different government departments, and therefore it’s incapable of synthesizing a strategy. What I mean by that is best exemplified by the Chinese expression describing a frog in a well. There’s a frog at the bottom of the well, the frog looks up, and he or she sees a circle of sky, and imagines that’s the universe. Well, now there are 100 frogs or more at the NSC, each imagining that the little patch of sky that they see is the universe, and there’s nobody tying those multiple views into a coherent whole. It has not helped that Biden’s staff, meaning his National Security Advisor, who is essentially a campaign operative, and his Secretary of State, who is a congressional staffer, are both people who built careers focused on the manipulation of domestic American opinion rather than on diplomacy, or foreign policy in general. I don’t see any new ideas or vision coming out of this administration. Part of the reason for that—and I’m sure Mr. Biden, in fact, I know, he’s a very decent, warm individual, and I’m sure he does wish to retain good personal relationships with other foreign leaders, including Mr. Putin and Mr. Xi. But the fact is, that he’s in a box. He has no convincing majority in the House, and he has a 50-50 split in the Senate, which is not even that, because on major issues, there are differences with some members of his own party. So, Biden is trying to get through legislation on a variety of issues, and having a hard time doing it. In these circumstances, there’s nothing in it for him, to raise new approaches to either China or Russia. Essentially, to do so would be to open himself up to additional fractious denigration by politicians within the Beltway. So, he’s essentially immobilized. I used to think that perhaps if the political constellations were changed in 2022 in the midterm election, that Mr. Biden would have some flexibility, some ability to abandon the Trump policies and those of the so-called deep state. But it’s now not looking very good for him in that election, which means it just adds to the paralysis. We’ve had a series of meetings with both the Chinese and Russians, with the Iranians indirectly. We approached these meetings—the first two meetings in Anchorage, then in Tianjin—with an opening blast of insults directed at the Chinese. We sent Victoria Nuland, of all people, to Moscow to talk about securing the Ukraine. These are not the actions of a mature diplomatic establishment. These are the actions of an administration that comes out of a demagogic environment in Congress, and has not transcended that. So, I don’t think it’s a case of the individuals involved being stupid or ill-intentioned, but their experience does not suit them for dealing with these issues. And finally, there’s nobody in this administration who really knows China, other than one or two hard-liners. I think a Rush Doshi, [Director for China at the National Security Council], is the epitome of that—a very serious scholar, wrote a good book, but it’s infected with the Washington playbook on military matters. Kurt Campbell, [Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs], is a re-engineered Soviet specialist. Anybody who has dealt with the Chinese directly, as opposed to from an academic perch, or through occasional visits on the diplomatic level, knows that “face” is all important. If you want to drive a Chinese berserk, deprive him or her of the self-esteem that comes from the respect of those he or she respects. That is what “face” is. You get an irrational reaction, you get a sharp reaction—that is exactly what happened at Anchorage, and again, at Tianjin. And it’s not that the Chinese are not pragmatic, or that you can’t talk to them, but you can’t open the discussion with anyone, as I said in the Watson meeting, by saying, “You’re a moral reprobate, I despise you. Your values stink. And I’m going to do everything possible to keep you down, and maybe push you down. But by the way, I have a problem or two, I’d like you to help me on.” What do you think you’re going to get when you try that approach? And that is essentially the approach that the Trump administration pioneered, and which the Biden administration has perpetuated. U.S. Diplomacy Must Restore Diplomacy Over Military EIR: Another thing that I found very interesting when you were speaking at the Watson Institute, was that you said that deterrence is simply bottling up the problem, which will certainly fester and become worse. I think you know that Lyndon LaRouche had actively promoted in the late 70s and early 80s, an end to deterrence, an end to the Mutual Assured Destruction [MAD] idea, promoting the idea of the U.S. and the Russian scientific and military communities actually collaborating on building a space-based anti-missile system, which he introduced to President Reagan. Reagan adopted it, and it became the SDI [Strategic Defense Initiative]. In Reagan’s words, the intent was to “render nuclear weapons obsolete.” This never took off. The Soviets initially rejected the proposal that Lyndon LaRouche had made to them, and eventually in the U.S., the military-industrial people were more interested in building a lot of anti-missile missiles for their industries’ production, than any new technology based on the frontiers of knowledge, new physical principles. So that did not work. What are your thoughts on how to end deterrence? Freeman: Well, I’m not sure that I would advocate ending deterrence, I think I would advocate using it. Deterrence makes sense under one obvious circumstance—and I’m not speaking here of Mutually Assured Destruction, which is simply a form of deterrence—but deterrence in general. If circumstances are likely to evolve in a way that resolves the underlying problem that leads to potential conflict, maybe deter that conflict, then time works on your side and the problem is likely to be ameliorated or mitigated, and maybe even go away. But that is not the case with many, many situations. A case in point, is the standoff in Korea. When the armistice was signed in Korea, the United States, wearing a U.N. uniform, agreed to pursue a peace treaty. Well, we never did. Instead, we focused purely on military deterrence, and threats of regime change. And the result, as I said earlier, is that North Korea now has the ability to strike the United States with a nuclear weapon. In the Taiwan case, we had 70 years to promote a resolution of the differences between Taipei and Beijing, we did nothing. Instead, with a brief exception in the 1980s, we focused purely on military deterrence. The situation festered and it got worse. So, we now have, in the cases of a divided Korea and a divided China, we have situations that appear to be unfolding in the direction of a conflict which could be nuclear. What we should have done, is use deterrence to enable diplomacy, to resolve the underlying issues. We did not do that. Now, in the case of the U.S. and the Soviet Union, Mutually Assured Destruction—in effect, arms control talks, efforts to provide a basis for strategic stability—mitigated the problem. That was a diplomatic effort undertaken within the framework of deterrence. That’s an imperfect solution. There have been no similar efforts with the Chinese. And it may now be that with the Chinese heavying-up their nuclear forces, there will be a basis for some kind of effort to produce a stable situation. But here, I want to register again, a severe doubt about the concept of so-called “guardrails.” When proposed to the Chinese, what these appear to mean is, “We’ll keep doing what we’re doing, but you don’t challenge us. We’ll keep running patrols along your shores. We’ll keep modernizing our nuclear forces. We’ll keep salami-slicing on Taiwan, and the guardrails that you’ve agreed to will prevent you from responding.” I don’t think it’s any surprise that that argument gets us nowhere. We have to deal with countries like China and Russia, on the basis of equality, and in accordance with the Westphalian order. We should do the same with North Korea. To deal with them in a condescending and insulting manner is directly counterproductive. To fail to deal with them because we rely on military deterrence, is to create a ticking bomb that may go off in the future. Stop Condescension Toward AfricaEIR: I’d like you to comment on the Africa situation. The FOCAC, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation, began this morning in Beijing. Xi Jinping gave an introductory speech, in which he agreed to send a billion doses of vaccine, some of which would be produced jointly in Africa. He also has offered expanded Belt and Road and related kinds of development programs. I know you were at one point the Africa coordinator, I think, in the State Department, earlier on in your career. And now, of course, we have this competition, where Blinken actually toured Africa right before this FOCAC meeting was to take place, where he seemed to complain about “democracy” rather than actually proposing any kind of alternative to the Belt and Road. In any case, how do you see this very crucial issue of Africa being faced with both the pandemic, the starvation, the breakdown, the imposition of these restraints on their fossil fuels, and so forth? And how do you see that in regard to China’s role? Freeman: I think the West and the United States in particular need to stop treating Africa and Africans with condescension. The continent is not a humanitarian theme park. It has plenty of disasters and challenges. Africans are serious people, and they have, in many cases, risen to the challenges before them. I think they must be dealt with as equals. The question is, what help do they need, not how do they stand in some mythical contest between Beijing and Washington, which they want nothing to do with. It’s nice if African countries, like Botswana, are democracies. One hopes that democracy in South Africa, which is in difficulty, will reverse course and grow. But this is the business of Botswanans and South Africans, and the role of outside powers should be to be helpful. Africa is the continent which is going to have the largest labor supply in the future. Countries like Nigeria are huge already; they are going to become even larger. Nigerians are very clever people. Africa in many respects is the continent of the future, and it needs to be treated as such. The most constructive thing any country outside Africa can do, is help it build the institutions it needs to cope with its challenges. If the African Union creates a CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] of its own, or an FDA [Food and Drug Administration] analogue, that deserves the strong support, not just of the Chinese who are supporting them, but of the United States. So, I think there’s every reason for the United States and China to cooperate in support of African development, and no reason to see it as a zero-sum game.
There is no better example of the fraud behind the Biden administration's "Summit for Democracy" than the attempt to murder whistleblower publisher Julian Assange. His crime? Publishing documents exposing war crimes committed by U.S. forces in Iraq, and covered up by U.S. officials. The U.S. is proceeding with the case to extradite Assange from the U.K., where he continues to be held in Belmarsh prison. As Assange awaits a predetermined guilty verdict if he is extradited to the U.S., the same networks he exposed for war crimes in Iraq are running yellow-journalist reports on Russia's alleged plans for a military attack on Ukraine, risking the danger of triggering World War III.
Whoever thought that U.S.-Russia tension, and the threat of war between the superpowers, would diminish naturally with the Dec. 7 videoconference summit between Presidents Biden and Putin, hoped in vain. Despite remarks by President Biden himself, the extreme belligerence of Secretary of State Blinken and British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss at the G7 ministerial meeting Dec. 10, and their refusal to step back regarding Ukraine joining NATO, have combined with a wild nuclear bombardment threat by Senate Armed Forces Committee second ranking Republican member Roger Wicker, to keep the crisis just as intense, and even to raise its pre-war-like temperature. The inevitable Russian response came today.No citizen can assume that war will be averted except with the strength of his or her own efforts in the direction pointed by Schiller Institute Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s article-length statement over the past weekend, which cites former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard’s sharp call for sanity on Twitter. Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned today, Dec. 13, that Russia would be forced to deploy intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe in response to its conviction that NATO will do the same in Ukraine after placing “ABM” missile launchers in Poland and Romania. “It will be a confrontation, this will be the next round, the appearance of such resources on our side,” he told RIA Novosti news agency. Ryabkov said Russia would do this if NATO continued refusing to engage with it to prevent that escalation. He cited “indirect indications” that NATO was closing in on re-deploying intermediate range nukes for the first time since the 1980s—including NATO’s restoring last month the 56th Artillery Command which operated nuclear-capable Pershing missiles during the Cold War. And Russian President Putin told British Prime Minister Boris Johnson today, according to Reuters, that NATO was directly threatening Russia with potential war by expanding military activity in Ukraine.
By Helga Zepp-LaRouche Dec 11—In view of the political orientation of the new government in Berlin, it seems almost hopeless to demand Germany’s immediate exit from NATO. But if Olaf Scholz is serious about the oath of office he took two days ago when he took office as Federal Chancellor, namely that he “wants to dedicate his energies to the well-being of the German people, increase their benefits and protect them from harm,” then he has to set this exit in motion immediately. Because in NATO, and especially in the U.S.A. and Great Britain, there are influential forces who, for geopolitical reasons, toy with the existence of Germany and beyond that, of all of humanity. The real reason for the global military muscle play on multiple fronts is the systemic collapse of the neoliberal system, which they are trying to cover up with a complex confetti shower of anti-Russian and anti-Chinese narratives. Some weeks ago, a media scenario was set up about the alleged preparation for a Russian military invasion in Ukraine, of the existence of which the U.S. National Intelligence Director, Avril Haines, tried to convince the NATO ambassador in Brussels, but Russia emphatically denied it. For weeks there were simultaneously a series of provocations— such as a NATO maneuver in which a nuclear attack on Russia was rehearsed and U.S. planes flew within 20 kilometers of the Russian border—as well as drone attacks in eastern Ukraine and daring “reconnaissance flights” in the Black Sea. Russia accused NATO of crossing several “red lines” in Ukraine and of failing to respond to protests about it. In the run-up to the virtual summit proposed by President Biden at the height of the tension between Biden and President Putin, Putin demanded legally binding agreements that NATO would not expand further east to the Russian border, which Biden initially rejected with the argument that one does not accept Russia’s “red lines”; while NATO Secretary General Stoltenberg emphasized that Russia has no right to develop “spheres of influence.” Amid the escalation of tensions, the second-highest ranking Republican member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi, threatened a first strike with nuclear weapons: “Military action could mean that we stand off with our ships in the Black Sea and we rain destruction on Russian military capability.... We don’t rule out first use nuclear action.” Tulsi Gabbard, former Congresswoman from Hawaii and a lieutenant colonel in the Hawaii Army National Guard, commented on Wicker’s tirade: “Anyone who would propose or even consider what he is saying as an option, must be insane, a sociopath or a sadist.” Wicker is no exception with his proposals, which would destroy not only the American people and the whole world, but also the Ukrainians, whose democracy is supposedly being protected. The same rhetoric comes from the Democrats and Republicans in Congress, the administration and the media, the same neoconservatives and neoliberals who dragged the country into the regime change wars in Iraq, Libya and Syria. One can only agree with Tulsi Gabbard. Anyone who has followed the escalating propaganda against Russia and China, which has come from practically the entire political spectrum in the United States in recent years, will be reminded of the saying, that whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad. The Reality of Ukraine and Iran The content of the two-hour conversation between Biden and Putin is not yet public. In any case, Biden contacted four NATO partners regarding the legally binding assurance of a limitation on NATO, and announced further consultation with all NATO partners. And of course, all European governments know the true story of the Victoria Nuland-backed coup in Ukraine in February 2014, the active role of neo-Nazis from the tradition of Stepan Bandera in this coup, and the lie about the alleged annexation of Crimea by Putin, which was in reality the sovereign choice (by voting) of the people in Crimea that, in view of the neo-Nazi terror in Kiev, they would rather belong to Russia. Perhaps it is time for the European governments to admit the truth about the events in Ukraine, in which they were naturally involved with their charitable foundations, before World War III breaks out on a fake narrative of Putin’s alleged aggression. But even if the acute Ukraine crisis can be temporarily defused—Biden speaks of postponing Ukraine’s NATO membership for ten years—the acute danger of a world war remains. The second source of danger from which a war could spark and spread is the situation surrounding the nuclear program in Iran and the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action —ed.] treaty, which the Trump Administration had terminated. Although CIA Director William Burns has just confirmed that the secret service is not aware of any indications that Iran is working on a nuclear weapons program, Israel also sees the civilian nuclear program—to which Iran is entitled under international law—as a threat to its lifestyle, as Israel’s Defense Secretary Benny Gantz pointed out during his visit to the Pentagon, where Secretary of Defense Austin affirmed that the United States was determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. But the most dangerous situation is undoubtedly the US-China conflict over Taiwan. After the world got dangerously close to World War III as the situation in Ukraine worsened, a number of American political experts spoke out—and this is new—about the American habit of staging pretexts for the initiation of military operations. The retired diplomat Peter Van Buren referred to the explosion of the battleship USS Maine in the port of Havana in 1898 (the cause of the Spanish-American War [was] not a Spanish terrorist attack, but a boiler explosion); the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin, with which the United States entered the long-planned Vietnam War; and of course the 2003 Iraq War, in which everyone involved knew beforehand that the WMD story was a lie, as Nancy Pelosi has publicly admitted. Endless Wars Do Not Protect Human Rights With regard to China, Van Buren wrote, it “appears to be the next war now searching for a reason.” Since China refuses to invade Taiwan and thus provide a pretext for war fever in the United States, he wrote that there could be a less problematic outcome, an arms race for hypersonic weapons. “But what if the U.S. has its mind set on a real war, as in Vietnam and after 9/11, and needs a palatable reason to be found?” asks van Buren, only expressing what has long since become obvious. Can it be assumed that these and many other “false flag” incidents are known to western governments and parties? Apart from maybe a few inexperienced backbenchers — absolutely! That is why the participants who took part in President Biden’s “democracy summit,” which should more likely be called a hypocrisy summit, are about as trustworthy as the organizers of the notorious “carpet bus rides,” where plush carpets are foisted upon unsuspecting pensioners as “real Persians.” The idea that this is an alliance of the “good guys,” a community of values that campaigns for democracy, human rights and freedom, against the “bad guys,” the autocratic regimes that oppress their populations, is an advertising story with which a spoiled product is intended to be disguised with cosmetic plasters and sold. At least since the U.S. administration and its “allies” left Afghanistan in an absolutely catastrophic state after 20 years of war (withholding money that belongs to the Afghans and thus exacerbating the worst humanitarian catastrophe on the planet, where 24 million people are threatened with cold death from starvation), none of these flawless democrats should use the words “human rights” any more. We should speak of the millions of dead, injured, and refugees as a result of the endless wars built on lies. And what about Julian Assange, whose only crime was exposing war crimes? He is being murdered by legal means before the eyes of the world. The list could be much extended: The martial “pushback” policy of the EU using Frontex against refugees who are only refugees because they are the victims of the “endless wars”; the refugee camps, which Pope Francis compared to concentration camps; the consequences of the Malthusian policy of the Klaus Schwabs of this world, which sees the attempt to overcome poverty as the greatest threat to the “climate” and thus says any development must be stalled for decades through “conditionalities.” On the other hand, the success story of the “autocratic” governments does not look so bad: China has not only lifted 850 million people of its own population out of extreme poverty, but given developing countries the chance to overcome poverty and underdevelopment for the first time. The United States has almost 800,000 coronavirus deaths with a population of 330 million people, while China has fewer than 5,000 deaths with 1.4 billion people. Perhaps—the Eurocentric carpet sellers might want to think about this—human life is worth more to the “autocratic” regimes? Germans should really urgently draw the conclusion that remaining in a military alliance which, in the event of a crisis will result in their annihilation, may not be such a good idea. There is, indeed, an alternative to NATO’s policy of confrontation which has been obsolete since 1991. There is an urgent need to establish an international security architecture that takes into account the security interests of all nations.
Ten years ago, in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 20, 2011 murder of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, Lyndon LaRouche wrote an article on Oct. 28, 2011 titled: “Threat of World War III: Qaddafi’s Death” In it. LaRouche stated:“In the opinion of certain relevant, higher placed circles in the trans-Atlantic region, the extraordinary mass-execution of the former Libyan principal Muammar al-Qaddafi and his companions, in their attempted flight from Libya, signals a potential for an early outbreak of more general warfare within Europe, the Mediterranean region, and beyond: potentially a new general state of warfare throughout much of this planet. This were probably the included outcome, unless a radical correction in trans-Atlantic financial and related policies were made more or less immediately. The object is to prevent that general warfare from occurring…. “The manner in which British-directed interests, acting in concert with the British puppet known as U.S. President Barack Obama, have created and manipulated the recent warfare within Libya, has now created a serious, more or less immediate threat-potential of a ‘Third World War.’ This is a threat potential which is coincident with the immediately threatened, general breakdown-crisis of the already hyper-bankrupt, trans-Atlantic monetarist system…. It is the accumulated potential triggered by the Libya affair, which has now cocked the potential for a sudden eruption of a pattern of active general warfare. “Long nurtured potentials for the greatest of wars, explode into great wars which have been prepared, in fact, over long periods when the victims were sleeping.” Three months later, in a Jan. 18, 2012 webcast, LaRouche elaborated on the British Establishment’s intention of launching war against Russia and China. “Now, the purpose of doing this was not to conduct a war against Syria and Iran—that was not the purpose. That was the sideshow. What you had, if you looked at the map, and looked at the Eastern Mediterranean and the bay around Iran, you saw the greatest concentration of thermonuclear-warfare capabilities on this planet, represented by the forces of the United States, Britain, and other powers. Why would they have to have the thermonuclear capabilities of major powers and others combined, against two small nations—a relatively very small nation, Syria, and a medium-size small nation, shall we say, Iran: Why? “Because their target wasn’t Syria, their target wasn’t Iran. Their target was—as we know now, from the diplomatic scandals that have broken out in Washington and Europe—the target was Russia and China. What does that mean? Why should Britain and the United States, and other nations, wish to launch thermonuclear war, against two great thermonuclear powers, Russia and China? And you have a nuclear power, Pakistan; and India’s also a thermonuclear power…. “So therefore, what’s the point? The British now say, what’s the purpose of this? They told you: The purpose is, as the Queen of England and others have insisted, their intention is to reduce the population of the planet, from 7 billion people to 1 or less! Their argument is the Green policy! And therefore, if you want to have a Green policy, and what that connotes, you can not tolerate Russia’s existence; you can not tolerate 1.4 billion people in China; you can not tolerate 1.1 billion people in India, and other nations. Therefore, this is a British operation, run under the Green policy of Her Majesty the Queen and her cohorts to change the character of the planet, in this way. In other words, these guys make Hitler look like a piker!”
The farcical Summit for Democracy hypocritically held by the United States at the end of this week put on display both how little the “democracy” brand name has to offer, and the increasing disregard it receives from other nations of the world. But it has unintentionally served as a useful foil against which to discuss policies that actually would create a better future.The “Summit for Global Dominance,” as one Russian leader accurately called it, was officially devoted to “strengthening democracy and countering authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights.” But coinciding with the summit (and Human Rights Day of the United Nations) came a decision from the U.K. that showed just how opposed to authoritarianism and respectful of human rights the United States truly is: the U.S. won its appeal to extradite Julian Assange to face charges of violating the (likely unconstitutional) Espionage Act of 1917. Assange’s crime? Publishing information passed on to him, including proof of U.S. war crimes and of Democratic National Committee (DNC) bias towards political failure Hillary Clinton in 2016. The publication of those Democratic Party documents were used as the excuse to launch the Russiagate hoax, which paralyzed needed efforts to improve U.S.-Russia relations and was used to attempt to effectively undo the democratic election of political outsider Donald Trump in 2016. Apparently the aspirations of the demos, the people, of other nations mean little to the organizers of the sham summit, as U.S., U.K., and NATO institutions continue to drive towards war with Russia and China. Their crimes, in the eyes of the Anglo-American elite? Economic development and political-strategic independence. China’s response to the “Democracy Summit” excoriated the United States for using the term “democracy” into “a weapon of mass destruction,” used to spread war and chaos, to drive confrontation between nations. While the status of “democracy” in the U.S. itself is nothing to be proud of, China has adopted a different vision of what it calls “whole-process people’s democracy,” and the outcomes in terms of quality of life have been tremendous! As for Russia, one need only look to 2014 to see the cynical use of “democracy” as a weapon of war. In that year, billions of dollars were poured into Ukraine from the U.S. and the U.K. into effecting a coup in that nation, after its President hesitated to reject Russia and to tie its fate to the European Union. That coup, which brought literal fascists into power, was rejected by people in Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, who resisted the anti-democratic change in government through forms of autonomy, or, in the case of Crimea, voting overwhelmingly to rejoin the Russia of which they had been a part. What would true “democracy” mean for the future? Some slight potential is seen in the assent by a World Bank donors’ group (led by the U.S.) to allow a portion of the funds set aside for Afghanistan to be released this month towards urgently needed projects for food and humanitarian assistance. This slight advance comes as the Red Cross warns that “the international community is turning its back as [Afghanistan] teeters on the precipice of man-made catastrophe.” The Indira Gandhi Children’s Hospital in Kabul reports a 50% increase in malnourished children. Amnesty International has called for the easing of financial restrictions, which prevent the provision of basic services for fear of running afoul of the U.S. sanctions regime. Another possible advance is seen in the Russian motion towards presenting a framework for legal security guarantees to provide stability with respect to NATO. But the forces promoting a “war seeking a reason” are not motivated by specific security considerations. They are driven to conflict by the relative failures of the “Green” policy to achieve their aims of preventing development, reducing population, and reversing the potentials of scientific advancement. They trumpet the decoupling between “GDP” and carbon dioxide emissions, as though the post-industrial financialization this change reflects is a good thing. They propose, today, locking up 30% of the Earth’s resources, land, and water away from human use. But why would they stop there? Think of what could be called a global democratic approach, one that would advance science, living standards, and cultural optimism. In the midst of the Covid pandemic, the achievement of modern health infrastructure in each country, with the other physical, social and other infrastructure and physical development needed to support it, can serve as an organizing point for a new paradigm of growth and development, as proposed for decades by the Schiller Institute and the entire LaRouche movement, a paradigm whose potential global realization has taken an enormous leap forwards with China’s economic success and its Belt and Road Initiative. War, which should be unthinkable, is actively contemplated. What do you think you will do about it?
The discussion of "de-escalation" from the threatening situation around Ukraine did not last long. While Biden affirmed that he never intended to engage U.S. troops against Russia if a war broke out in Ukraine, the war hawks met at a G7 Foreign Ministers meeting, threatening "devastating consequences" if Russia would invade Ukraine, even as they were goading on Ukraine's neo-Nazi extremists in the defense and security forces to provoke a confrontation in eastern Ukraine. Read Helga Zepp-LaRouche's statement, "Psychotics Are Threatening Our Existence! Germany Must Leave NATO!", to understand what's behind the war drive, and how to counter it.
While you were being encouraged by “the independent media” to look elsewhere this week–at the various judicial sideshows, such as the Jussie Smollet and Ghislaine Maxwell cases, for example – the world stood poised to walk another few steps down the ladder into thermonuclear hell. What actually happened in the two-hour exchange between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Joe Biden, plus Biden’s chaperones, Anthony Blinken and Jake Sullivan?The published reports aren’t telling us the truth. For example, Vladimir Dzhabarov, the Russian Federation Council First Deputy Chairman, spoke with TASS about his view of the summit. "It is unlikely that any breakthrough decisions were made there, but the very fact of negotiations gives hope for a constructive development and establishment of a dialogue. We will hope that Biden will calm down his allies….overall, I think, he will make it clear for them that neither Russia nor the Americans need a confrontation.” Unlike Mississippi senator Roger Wicker who crazily called for the United States to “rain destruction on Russian military capability and to not “rule out first-use nuclear action” American conservative columnist Pat Buchanan said that the United States cannot “guarantee the independence of a country 5,000 miles away that shares not only a lengthy border with Mother Russia but also a history, language, religion, ethnicity and culture… Biden should tell Putin: The U.S. will not be issuing any NATO war guarantees to fight for Ukraine.” Those who believe that thermonuclear war is unthinkable, may have a problem with thinking. The LaRouche Organization has formulated both a solution and an approach to stepping humanity, not only back from the brink of civilization-ending war, but forward into an era of peace through economic development. If you, too, believe in thinking, join our Saturday town meeting to find out what’s going on, and what to do about it. Speakers: Harley Schlanger
Perhaps the strongest evidence that President Biden may indeed be attempting to head off World War III was a headline today in London’s preeminent newspaper, the Daily Telegraph: “Joe Biden’s Offer of NATO Talks To Avert Russian Invasion of Ukraine Is Big Win for Vladimir Putin.”Biden’s announcement after the Summit with Putin on Dec. 7 that there would soon be a meeting of the U.S., France, Germany, Italy and the U.K., with Russia, to discuss Putin’s call for legal guarantees that NATO would move no closer to the Russian border, nor deploy major weapon systems on its border, has sent chills through the Anglo-American imperial institutions. The Telegraph’s Russia correspondent Roland Oliphant had this to say: “Russian diplomats/officials/whoever have been telling me they want this conversation for literally years. I never thought they’d get to have it, but here we are.” Several Russian officials have expressed “cautious optimism” that the extremely dangerous rush to military confrontation can be reversed. As expressed by Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov, the Russian Federation Council First Deputy Chair of the Committee on Foreign Affairs: “What’s reassuring is that Biden is an old-school politician after all…. We hope that the wise Biden will prevent the red lines from being crossed.” The level of danger can not be exaggerated. Sergey Ryabkov, Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister, told the Federation Council on Dec. 9 that, “Unfortunately, we see that our warnings are ignored, and NATO’s military infrastructure is getting as close to us as possible.” Asked if this could reach the level of the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, Ryabkov said that it was totally possible, “if comrades on the other side fail to understand and keep doing what they are doing…. That would be a total failure of diplomacy, a failure of foreign policy, but there is still time to try to reach an agreement based on reason…. People realize that it can’t go further that way.” In 1962, President John Kennedy and his brother Robert, then the Attorney General and the President’s closest advisor, barely avoided war with the Soviet Union through wise, and stealthy, diplomacy, ending a nuclear showdown through compromise. Oliver Stone, who has released a film titled “JFK Revisited, A Documentary,” 30 years after his famous 1991 film “JFK,” noted on Dec. 6 that “since Kennedy was killed, no American President, not one—think about it—has been able to touch the military complex, or this intelligence agency complex.” Whether “old-school politician” Joe Biden will be able to repeat the Kennedy diplomacy in the current nuclear showdown, this time with both Russia and China, will depend on the level of international pressure brought to bear from an aroused American population, which is now beginning to wake up to the collapse taking place in nearly every aspect of life within the U.S., and from an international community which is increasingly aware that the U.S. is careening towards a war which could end civilization as we know it. In the last two weeks, a senior U.S. diplomat and a former leading CIA official stepped forward to conduct interviews with EIR, both sending warnings through this platform that there are madmen in positions of power who are trying to drag the country into war with Russia, China and Iran. Ambassador Chas Freeman, who played a major role in the opening of relations with China in the 1970s, and in formulating our relations with both China and Taiwan at that time, told EIR on Nov. 29 that the Trump and Biden administrations have gone past the “red line” which could provoke a war with China: “In the finessing of the issue of Taiwan in U.S.-China relations, essentially, the United States agreed to three conditions: one, that we would end official relations with Taipei; two, that we would withdraw all military personnel and installations from the island; and three, we would void our defense commitment to the island. We have now gone back on each of these commitments.” Graham Fuller, an Islamic scholar who served 20 years in the CIA, including four years in Hong Kong, told EIR in a Dec. 9 interview (to be released soon) that the U.S. elites have been unable to come to terms with the fact the nation is no longer the single hegemonic power in the world, that China has emerged as a “near-peer” competitor in nearly every aspect. If the U.S. fails to “tamp down its rhetoric,” he warned, the consequences could be catastrophic. He added that calling Iran a terrorist state was “grotesque,” while accusing China of genocide against the Uighurs was ridiculous. Both Chas Freeman and Graham Fuller believe President Biden does not want a war, but neither are they confident that he can overcome the addiction to war among the United States’ elites and the military-industrial complex. The danger is great, and in such a situation in history, the potential power of every individual is vastly increased, as a worried and frightened population looks for the truth behind the lies coming from the politicians and the media. It is time to listen to the wise words of Lyndon LaRouche.
Since the COP26 flop, along with the inevitable economic breakdown from the casino-monetarist system, and the green madness to-date, the geopolitical confrontationist hysteria against China and Russia from the U.S./UK/NATO alignment has reached the stage of war provocation. This is exactly the dynamic that the Schiller Institute has warned of, and its process of international dialogue sought to prevent. More voices are now sounding the alarm. The urgent task is to create a mighty chorus.Peter van Buren, an American with a long career in foreign service, has issued a warning posted today, in an article titled, “What Will Be the Casus Belli for War with China?” He makes the point that China “appears to be the next war now searching for a reason.” When it comes to making war, in recent decades, the U.S. “created a false pretext for doing so,” in Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, and so on. In contrast, in the case of Pearl Harbor, the aggression against the U.S. was real. But in these other cases, the casus belli was made up, like WMD in Iraq. The same thing is going on regarding China, and the danger is extreme. Tulsi Gabbard, U.S. political leader based in Hawaii, ripped into the rabid war-talk of Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Mississippi) this week. Wicker, the second-highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said on Fox TV, Dec. 7, that U.S. military options against Russia must include that “we stand off with our ships in the Black Sea, and we rain down destruction” on Russia. “I would not rule out American troops on the ground. We don’t rule out first use nuclear action.” Gabbard responded on Fox TV last evening, "Anyone who would propose or even consider what he is saying as an option must be insane, a sociopath or a sadist. Let’s go and launch a nuclear attack that would start a war that would destroy the American people, our country and the world and, oh, also, the Ukrainians so that we can save Ukraine’s democracy? I mean, it literally is insane. “And the crazy thing is, Senator Wicker is not an outlier. He is the number two Republican on the Senate Armed Forces Committee, and you are hearing the same kind of rhetoric coming from Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the administration and in the media—no problem with this because they actually agree with this. They are pushing this same narrative themselves, which is why this is such a dangerous, dangerous situation…. We are being pushed closer and closer to a hot war, a nuclear war.” By whom? By “the same neocons and neo libs in Washington who dragged our country into regime change wars in places like Iraq and Libya and Syria.”There are consequences to leaders in our country, influential people in our country to throwing things out like, [that] a first use nuclear attack is on the table. This directly undermines our national security, and it directly puts the American people and our country and the world at risk." Against these voices of reason, comes the U.S-convened Summit of Democracy, which opened today, online from Washington, D.C., and stands out for its lies and confrontation. China and Russia were not invited. Pakistan declined, given their exclusion. Many poor nations were among the roster of 80 countries, participating with short messages out of fear of retribution. President Biden and Sec. of State Blinken announced that a new organization to combat corruption and misinformation that, they assert, threatens democracy, is being formed, called the Global Anti-Corruption Consortium, which has funding from the United Kingdom, Taiwan, the Open Society Foundation (George Soros,) Denmark, and the United States. The State Department’s Agency for International Development (USAID) will start up a Partnership for Democracy program, under the direction of its administrator, Samantha Power, who has been in the forefront of U.S. initiatives at this Summit and at COP26. The USAID was founded 60 years ago, under President John F. Kennedy, for the purpose of providing aid where needed, and doing good. It has been itself subverted years ago to serve British geopolitical purposes, as shown in the extreme by its latest mandate to enforce “democracy.” Now is the time to mobilize for true emergency aid, rebuilding war torn nations, starting with Afghanistan, and building the world economy. Kennedy’s mandate for the USAID was seen in action early today, when China’s air shipment arrived at Kabul International Airport, with 800,000 doses of vaccine against COVID-19, and other supplies. More will be coming soon. Tulsi Gabbard, who is an Army Reserve officer, currently serving at Ft. Bragg, displayed the needed spirit when she spoke out Dec. 7 on Pearl Harbor Day (before Wicker’s insanity), wearing her Army fatigues, delivering a call to action (on Twitter): “It’s time for anyone who cares about their loved ones, other Americans, and all human beings and wildlife, to wake up to this very grim reality of what lies ahead … if we allow the mainstream media, military industrial complex, and self-serving politicians to lead us into the apocalypse of World War 3.”
The financial elite, and political leaders driven by them, want to distract with anger, hatred, and in some cases even hysteria, against the "adversaries" Russia and especially China, who continue to push for economic development in underdeveloped countries as well as at home, and which stiffen resistance in the developing world to “climate colonialism.” Now, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche said, we go to a Putin-Biden video conference “summit” midway between peace and war, “that gives you an idea how close we are actually to a brushfire which could go all the way up to nuclear war.” Insisting on development in the countries which have suffered the worst crimes from the war party—she is focused on Afghanistan—is the way to fight that threat. Join Paul Gallagher on this week's Fireside Chat to discuss the Green New Deal as the danger of world war.
Friday questions -- What is the Summit for Democracy? Do you think that it is inevitable that the U.S. will go to war against Russia and China? What is the alternative to war, how can the War Hawks be stopped? Who or what is behind the War Hawks, and the drive for more wars? Is there a strategy to take power from the hands of the corporate cartels? (Hint -- study LaRouche's Four Laws, and fight for their implementation)
Both President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin made public comments today about the actual content of their summit discussion yesterday. Biden announced that he is working on a further meeting to address Russia’s red-line concerns regarding Ukraine and NATO. “The positive news is that, thus far, our teams have been in constant contact,” Biden said, adding that he hoped to announce by Dec. 10 that there would be a meeting in short order involving Russia, the U.S., and at least four major NATO allies, to address “Russia’s concerns relative to NATO,” and to try to “bring down the temperature along the Eastern Front.”President Putin today again explained what those red-line concerns are: “It would be criminal inaction on our side to spinelessly watch all that’s taking place” in Ukraine, he said, and continuing: “We have a right to provide for our own safety. U.S./NATO weapons are the issue.” As Putin has repeatedly explained, the encroachment of NATO up to Russia’s very borders over the last 20 years, and now the explicit threat of having Ukraine join NATO or otherwise have American and NATO troops on its territory, makes Moscow indefensible—other than by the use of hypersonic nuclear weapons. Each side would then have nuclear weapons within 5-minutes flight time from the other, Putin pointed out. Or would it be four minutes? Right after yesterday’s summit, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told the press that Biden said to Putin at their summit that he would discuss NATO’s eastward expansion with his Alliance colleagues. That appears to have been born out by Biden’s own comments today. But on Washington’s side, the lies are coming fast and thick—signaling the enormous danger of war that not only still exists, but is growing by the hour. The war party has moved to entirely take control of strategic policy out of Biden’s hands, and to immediately escalate the provocations against both Russia and China to the snapping point. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan participated in the summit with Putin, acting like Biden’s chaperones the whole time, while Putin sat alone. Blinken and Sullivan then emerged from that meeting to immediately run to the press to issue statements about what had supposedly happened at the summit—making zero mention of the planned meeting to address Russia’s concerns. Instead, Sullivan said that Biden read Putin the Riot Act. Blinken was chillingly clear in delivering threats and warnings to both Russia and China, blaming them for the Ukraine and Taiwan crises, respectively, and threatening a blistering U.S. response to any military moves those countries might make. Blinken was particularly brazen about the Establishment’s gambit in pulling out of Afghanistan, actually arguing that the American people do still have “an appetite … to re-engage overseas if necessary”—i.e., launch more perennial wars, only this time directly against Russia and China, exactly as Lyndon LaRouche had warned all along was the true strategic intention behind the Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. provocations. If there is no significant opposition in the U.S. to such a war between the superpowers, then it will happen, Helga Zepp-LaRouche warned today. The Ukraine crisis is far from over, and the London-led war party is on a rampage, as can be seen in Blinken’s threats against both Russia and China and his explicit intent to starve Afghanistan into submission—a Nuremberg crime if ever there was one. Will Americans just look the other way while a sitting Senator, Robert Wicker of Mississippi, states on national TV that “I would not rule out American troops on the ground” in Ukraine, and that the U.S. also shouldn’t “rule out first-use nuclear action” to deter Russia? Zepp-LaRouche further warned that, if this goes any further, the countries in Europe where nuclear weapons are stationed will shortly cease to exist. On both sides of the Atlantic, it should begin to dawn on people what the existence of hypersonic weapons actually means. In her weekly webcast today, Zepp-LaRouche summarized the situation and issued a call to action: “My assessment [of the summit] is that we are still sitting on a powder keg of potential nuclear war…. I think this is all extremely dangerous and we urgently need a new security architecture in Europe and in Eurasia which rules out the possible danger of a nuclear war…. Hopefully reason will prevail and this incredibly dangerous situation can be turned into something else.” She reminded listeners of her proposed Operation Ibn Sina, in which the world’s major powers would join efforts to stop the looming mass deaths in Afghanistan, and provide that country with a modern health system, adequate food, and the infrastructure needed to make that possible. “Under conditions of a pandemic—which not only has health implications, but is a complete threat to the economy, as we see in many countries—the only way you can address the most urgent issues facing humanity is to say: We have to concentrate on the common aims of mankind, namely to defeat this pandemic, and we have to work together internationally. This would be a step in the direction of overcoming this insane, extremely dangerous geopolitical confrontation.” Zepp-LaRouche urged listeners to mobilize with the Schiller Institute to stop the danger of nuclear war. “And cooperate with us on Operation Ibn Sina, because it is a step towards defusing an otherwise extremely dangerous situation.”
In her weekly webcast, Helga Zepp-Larouche said that in spite of a potential for de-escalation of tensions between Russia and U.S./NATO resulting from Tuesday's video summit between Putin and Biden, we are "still sitting on a powder keg." Biden said he will speak to allies about Putin's request for a guarantee of no further NATO expansion, and putting pressure on Kiev to stick to the agreements they signed at Minsk. However, Sullivan and Blinken, who flanked Biden during his talk with Putin, continued to make threats against Russia, including that there would be a "blistering response" if Russia invades Ukraine. This was backed up by threats to Russia from Democrats and Republicans, including one Republican Senator who called for considering a first strike with nuclear weapons against Russia. In contrast, Tucker Carlson called such talk a "bipartisan sort of insanity." Zepp-LaRouche concluded her comments by calling for reasonable voices to speak up now, and join her in pursuing multilateral cooperation through such projects as "Operation Ibn Sina."
De-escalation, or heightened tension and danger? The initial reports indicate there may at least be a pause in the pre-war build-up. But will NATO continue its eastward expansion, which breaks a pledge made by the U.S. in February 1990 -- of "not one inch eastward" -- and which Putin has called crossing a red line? Biden responded by saying he will accept no red lines. Despite the benefit gained from continuing a dialogue, the danger remains, especially as the U.S. and its allies continue the provocative claims that Putin plans to invade, as part of a broader propaganda offensive that splits the world into two camps, the "democracies" versus the "autocracies." Thus, the deeper problem continues to be the commitment in the Trans-Atlantic to a world-view shaped by classic British geopolitics.
Wednesday December 8th, from our special correspondent: Guess what? There's going to be another summit! Aren't you so excited? Joe Biden and Boris Johnson are getting their tuxedos pressed at this moment. This one is about DEMOCRACY--by which they naturally mean slavery. To be classified as a democracy, you must meet at least 4 of the 5 following criteria:1) You must have an absolute monarch as your head of state, as in the UK, where this monarch has the authority to abolish the elected parliaments of the UK, Canada or Australia at will, the right to arrest and jail anyone without trial or cause, or the right to abrogate the wealth of the subject population, through bail-out, bail-in, or any other means the Great Reset deems necessary. 2) You must be a nation where nobody will ever know the actual victor of key elections, such as the USA's 2000 Gore vs Bush election, 2004 Bush vs Kerry election, and 2020 Trump vs Biden election. Who actually won any of those elections? Who cares, what the heck. 3) You must have absolute dictatorial control over all print and electronic media. Any dissenting voices must be either totally blacked out or crushed by jailing or assassinating of dissenting voices. 4) While promoting extreme violence and murder in television and movie entertainment, you must act outraged when such violence actually occurs in the real world, as with mass shootings and other such events. "How could anyone have ever thought such a thing could happen when they see it every day on TV and at the movies?" 5) Your citizens must have the right to have fierce debates between liberals and conservatives on whether to eat dog poop or cat poop for dinner. This fiery debate must also descend down to the level of college campuses, talk shows, local gambling houses, whore houses and bars. Everyone gets to have an opinion as long as it is stupid. Apparently Russia and China are NOT invited. They didn't make the cut.
Even at a distance of 200 years—he passed away in 1828—the immortal painter Francisco Goya still likes to comment, as the occasion demands, on “current events” that, no matter how “contemporary” or “cyber” they may appear to be, still reflect the time-worn folly of brinkmanship, of war, and of “strategies of tension” that can lead to war. This folly appears to arise from an almost-genetic stupidity on the part of a financial oligarchy that is so ideologically inbred, that it is constitutionally incapable of learning anything from its mistakes. On such a full sea of folly is the world now afloat, in the mounting tensions seen instigated by the “Queen’s Navy,” the United States/NATO “ship of fools”, with Russia and China, and the allies of the Belt and Road Initiative.Ever hear of the idea of “threat inflation?” For example, accusing the Russians of plotting to invade Ukraine, based on the same reliable “yellowcake” intelligence method used for the 2003 Iraq War, and for “Russiagate,”—and then, if/when they don’t invade, claiming “a strategic-military victory for the forces of democracy?” Francisco Goya knew all about this flim-flam 200 years ago. He illustrates the “threat inflation” fraud in his engraving “disparate conocido”—, “well-known folly.” A crowd cowers before two figures, one of whom brandishes a saber and appears to be shouting. The other, behind him, may actually only be a scarecrow, made up to look human, which the “soldier” seems to be defending. One lone figure in the cowering crowd, who stands out, has one hand on his ass, (which is prominently turned toward the face of the threatening soldier,) and one on his mouth. He isn’t fooled by the fraud, so he says to the threatening soldier-figure, in a graphic language that all viewers can understand, “Kiss my ass.” And that we hope, reader, will also be your response to this current “threat inflation.” We urge you to ask, “What’s really going on?” It is to that, that our publications, our analysis, and our strategic initiatives, such as “Operation Ibn Sina” are directed. Though at this hour we have yet to receive an official Russian response, it can be safely said that, short of a face-to-face summit, as described by Vladimir Putin’s “P5” proposal, and additional face-to-face talks between Biden and Putin, and/or Biden and Xi Jinping, nothing more than a tense pre-war truce, at best, will prevail in the world. That is not enough to ensure that the world does not go to thermonuclear war, either intentionally, or accidentally. The American response, as expressed in the words of National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who spoke for 40 minutes after the Biden-Putin call, and then took questions, was (in approximation) that Biden told Putin that there is “another option” to confrontation: de-escalation and diplomacy. We were able to do this at the height of the Cold War, creating stability mechanisms to help increase transparency. This was done in the post-Cold War period through the Russia-NATO Council and the OSCE, and there’s no reason that cannot be done now. Biden also said that the U.S. is prepared to advance the Minsk accords in support of the Normandy format. But, according to Sullivan, Ukraine was “the main topic of discussion.” Biden let Putin know that if Russia’ “further invades” Ukraine, that “strong economic measures” would be the response of the United States and the NATO countries of Europe, along with additional defense materiel sent to Ukraine, and “fortification of NATO allies on the eastern flank.” Seventeen countries have joined NATO since the verbal pledges were given by Secretary of State James Baker to Gorbachov on February 9,1990, that NATO would move “not one inch eastward.” (Baker used that formulation a full three times during that post-Berlin Wall meeting, saying, according to archival documents, that “not only for the Soviet Union but for other European countries as well it is important to have guarantees that if the United States keeps its presence in Germany within the framework of NATO, not an inch of NATO’s present military jurisdiction will spread in an eastern direction.” Former CIA Director Robert Gates, speaking in 2000, criticized the 1990s “pressing ahead with expansion of NATO eastward when Gorbachev and others were led to believe that wouldn’t happen.”) President Putin has for some time requested written guarantees that NATO will cease to expand its presence eastward, to the very borders of Russia. He raised this matter in the two-hour discussion with Biden. Apparently that has been rejected outright by the United States. The United States is also saying that it will not respect the Russian notion of “red lines.” Really? Filmmaker Oliver Stone, in an interview conducted yesterday, pointed out that “in 1962, when the Missile Crisis came, the generals were very clear: bomb the shit out of them (Soviets.) . We’re going in there. [Gen. Curtis] LeMay wanted to go in. This was an excuse for them to go in, because the Russians had put missiles in Cuba. Kennedy … refused to go to war. It came very close. We owe perhaps our lives to his judiciousness in this case, because it was very close. And it was really Robert, Jack, and the Soviet ambassador, and Khruschev who solved this issue at the last second.” From 1974 until today, forces associated with Lyndon LaRouche have suffered the slings and arrows of outrageous stupidity from those unable to understand how close—as a result of decades of population-destroying, genocidal economic policies conducted against the world’s poor by the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and, now, the likes of the Davos World Economic Forum and the “Guardians for Inclusive Capitalism” (in the form of the Great Reset)— we have often come to thermonuclear war. We have conducted many mobilizations to prevent that occurrence. Too many people apparently believe that such a war is unthinkable, and would therefore never occur. But thermonuclear war is only unthinkable for those that have trouble thinking. The danger is also impossible to resolve without a viable global alternative. In this time of the pandemic, when potentially species-threatening diseases make everyone on the planet potentially vulnerable, the folly of the past five decades of IMF/World Bank policy is luridly obvious. A world health platform, accompanied by 1.5 billion jobs in the water, sanitation, transportation, energy, construction, medical, agricultural, and educational sectors—an effort that must accompany the vaccines and medicines that are, in the short term, the necessary measures for any viable crash effort—will be led by the nations with the physical-economic capabilities to do so. China, the United States, and Russia will find the solution to “threat inflation” by facing the real threat, which is not each other but the limitations of our imagination that must be overcome to solve the present and looming challenges facing humanity as a whole at the frontier of medical, biological, and physical science. The figure of Ibn Sina is the “patron saint” of that challenge, and Operation Ibn Sina is a higher-order strategy, generated from the world of the unthinkable, for the “axiomatically challenged.” Perfidious Albion is “hereditarily incapable” of playing that positive role, and that is the elegant, nonviolent solution to the pestilence of oligarchy.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche presented a sobering assessment of the global strategic situation following the Dec. 7 video summit between Presidents Biden and Putin, warning that what preceded the summit -- a war-time like propaganda campaign accusing Russia of preparing to invade Ukraine -- is continuing, with potentially disastrous consequencesThe push for further eastward expansion of NATO, with membership for Ukraine, was identified by Putin as crossing a "red line". This ws rejected by Biden, despite promises given by the U.S. in 1990 that there would not be expansion eastward. The threat of nuclear war is being raised by others besides us, including Tucker Carlson, while unhinged war hawks, such as Sen Wicker of Mississippi, are calling for consideration by the U.S. of a nuclear first strike option. Mrs. LaRouche reiterated how her initiative for addressing the horrific crisis in Afghanistan, Operation Ibn Sina, is a pathway to cooperation between the U.S., Russia and China. The other choice, ramping up geopolitical confrontation, through the phony division of the world into "democracies versus autocrats" -- which is the idea behind Biden's upcoming Summit for Democracy -- leaves humanity "sitting on a powder keg."
In the incoming German government there are two 'Green' Party ministers—Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock and Economics and Energy Minister Robert Habeck—who epitomize a grave threat also emanating from others in governments across the trans-Atlantic nations. With one hand they are anti-carbon climate extremists, who demand sacrifice of the economy—reliable power, heat, livestock growing, farming, industry and all—to "the planet"; with the other, they demand war preparations and diplomatic and military confrontations with Russia and China, two of the major nations that refuse to sacrifice their economies to "the planet." At a much higher level than these two new ministers, among the financial oligarchy whose centers are the City of London and Wall Street, there are the likes of British central banker and now UN envoy for Climate Action and Finance Mark Carney, who organizes bankers publicly to order companies—"Get out of fossil fuels and carbon or disappear." Carney's close "Green Deal" colleagues and friends are Prince Charles, Sir Michael Bloomberg and like billionaires, for whom President Joe Biden spoke at the "FLOP26" so-called climate summit in Glasgow, when he said that China's President Xi and Russia's Putin "would have to answer to the world for not showing up" at that summit. Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, along with the elites of the Atlantic Council, Chatham House/Royal Institute of International Affairs, focus their confrontations and provocations on the claim that Russia's about to invade Ukraine, and China is about to attack Taiwan. But the more and more obvious failure of the "Green New Deal" and the threat of energy hyperinflation and financial crisis, makes them take blaming adversaries for that failure to its extreme—which may bring on war. As former Army Colonel and former Virginia State Senator Richard Black warned yesterday, either of these confrontations could become nuclear war. Just at this crisis point, a Nov. 30-dated report from the New York Federal Reserve Bank began to acknowledge that the very strategy associated with banker Carney and Prince Charles—"shifting the trillions" of investment funds out of all carbon-related industries and into a green finance wave, or bubble—is hastening the global banking crisis they are afraid of. The report, "How Bad Are Weather Disasters for Banks?" found that these disasters are not bad for larger banks at all, to put it mildly. But more seriously for the Carney-Bloomberg "shift the trillions" cabal, the report concluded that "our findings suggest that potential transition risks from climate change warrant more attention than physical disaster risks." We emphasize "transition risks" because "the fundamental transition" has become the underhand for Green New Deal among Prince Charles/Carney forces. Here is Charles at Glasgow: "What is needed is a vast military-style campaign to marshal the strength of the global private sector. With trillions at its disposal ... it offers the only real prospect of achieving fundamental economic transition." Now the International Energy Agency, a creation of the Davos World Economic Forum, has upped its already economically absurd "forecast" of global additions to electric power capacity in the next five years, to say that 95% of it will be wind, solar and biomass electricity. Back in 2018 the London Guardian, writing about then- Bank of England Governor Carney, observed that "climate risk" for many companies was the risk that Carney's carbon-disclosure bank committees would go after those companies and force them to go green or face disinvestment or bankruptcy. Now, the New York Fed admits "banks could face outsized losses" from the "transition to a low-carbon economy"—in other words, from the Green New Deal. These findings are summed up in a Dec. 2 op-ed by Michael Shellenberger, "The Real Threat To Banks Isn't From Climate Change: It's From Bankers," featuring Mark Carney on its cover photo. That is exactly the direction from which a banking crisis and financial crash are now coming. For a decade, central banks have been printing money to inflate away the vast "everything bubble" of primarily corporate debt since the 2008 crash. It didn't work until the addition of the Green New Deal, the drive to "shift the trillions" to unreliable and anti-productive zero-carbon technologies, which are unleashing hyperinflation and chaos. So the financial elite and political leaders driven by them want to distract with anger, hatred, in some cases even hysteria against the adversaries, Russia and especially China, which continue to push for economic development in underdeveloped countries as well as at home, and which stiffen resistance in the developing world to "climate colonialism." Now, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche said today, we go to a Putin-Biden videoconference "summit" tomorrow midway between peace and war, "that gives you an idea how close we are actually to a brushfire which could go all the way up to nuclear war." Insisting on development in the countries which have suffered the worst crimes from the war party—she is focused on Afghanistan—is the way to fight that threat.
