Executive Intelligence Review, Volume 47, Number 4, January 24, 2020

- Cover

- Masthead

- EDITORIAL The World Order Urgently Needs New Principles to Ensure World Peace by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

- EDITORIAL These Are the Days of Decision by Tony Papert

- PDF edition Table of Contents -- Volume 47, Number 4, January 24, 2020

- LaRouche’s Forecast of the 2008 Depression: The End of the Post-FDR Era (July 25, 2007)

- Southwest Asia: Where Do We Go From Here? by Hussein Askary

- Trade Will Increase Industrial Jobs Under Trump’s Two Agreements by Paul Gallagher and Marcia Merry Baker

- The Xinjiang Story: Securing People’s Livelihood and Greening the Desert by William Jones

- INTERNATIONAL CHORUS FOR A NEW AGENDA LaRouche Movement Mobilizes for a Trump-Putin-Xi Summit by Daniel Burke

President Trump Evokes LaRouche at Davos

Founder: Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. (1922–2019)

Editor-in-Chief: Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Co-Editors: Marcia Merry Baker, Paul Gallagher, Robert Ingraham, Tony Papert

Managing Editor: Stephanie Ezrol

Editorial Staff: David Cherry, Charles Notley

Technology: Marsha Freeman

Transcriptions: Katherine Notley

Ebooks: Richard Burden

Graphics: Alan Yue

Photos: Stuart Lewis

Circulation Manager: Stanley Ezrol

INTELLIGENCE DIRECTORS

Asia: Michael Billington

Economics: Marcia Merry Baker, Paul Gallagher

History: Anton Chaitkin

Ibero-America: Dennis Small

United States: Debra Freeman

INTERNATIONAL BUREAUS

Berlin: Rainer Apel

Copenhagen: Tom Gillesberg

Lima: Sara Madueño

Melbourne: Robert Barwick

Mexico City: Gerardo Castilleja Chávez

New Delhi: Ramtanu Maitra

Paris: Christine Bierre

Stockholm: Ulf Sandmark

United Nations, N.Y.C.: Richard Black, Leni Rubinstein

Washington, D.C.: William Jones

Wiesbaden: Göran Haglund

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EDITORIAL

The World Order Urgently Needs

New Principles to Ensure World Peace

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

The following is an English translation of an article appearing in the German newspaper, Neue Solidarität.

Jan. 19—During the hours following the murder of the Iranian political and military leader, General Qassem Soleimani, by a U.S. drone attack near the airport in Baghdad, Iraq, the world held its breath. Most thinking people were aware that we were on the brink of a potentially uncontrollable escalation. Then came the “moderate” response from the Iranian government—a missile attack on a military base used by U.S. troops in Iraq, which failed to kill U.S. troops thanks to Iran’s warning to the Iraqi government.

For many people, that was the end of the crisis. My emergency appeal of January 3, that only a summit among the heads of government of the three main nuclear powers—Presidents Putin, Xi Jinping and Trump—can create the basis for overcoming the acute danger and craft a lasting solution for peace in Southwest Asia, was circulated by friends of the Schiller Institute to many hundreds of institutions on January 15 in an international day of action—in rallies, press conferences and interventions in dozens of cities in the Americas, Europe and Australia, with the intention of creating a worldwide chorus of people calling for such a crisis summit.

But during this mobilization for the emergency summit of the three presidents, another phenomenon came to light: The vast majority of the population in the different countries has absolutely no idea that there is an acute danger that the strategic situation could continue to escalate into a Third World War. Warnings in this regard are only “scaremongering,” Trump already has “everything under control,” or “it’s already too late, the Third World War is already taking place.” The vox populi covered the whole spectrum from denial of reality to pessimistic resignation, based less on a well-thought-out analysis than on various, mostly ideologically motivated assumptions. Or, on a more contemplative than active political stance.

The maintenance of world peace in the age of thermonuclear weapons is the existential issue for humanity. It’s not a matter of scaremongering, but of understanding the dangers, without illusions, in order to then look for ways to ensure lasting peace in the world. Let us remember that during the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, after U.S. medium-range missiles were stationed at a NATO base in Turkey and then Soviet medium-range missiles were transported to Cuba, for 13 days, the world was on the verge of nuclear war. The world public was aware of this—but the communication between Presidents Kennedy and Khrushchev and military experts on both sides, and thus crisis management, existed at a completely different level than today, when between June 2019 and January 15, 2020 there was extensive “radio silence” between the USA and Russia.

Worse But Unacknowledged

During the 1983 mid-range missile crisis, when the Pershing II and SS20 missiles in Europe were constantly in a “launch on warning” position with a flight time reduced to three minutes, politicians like Helmut Schmidt repeatedly spoke of the danger of World War III, and there were hundreds of thousands of people in the streets protesting this danger.

Today the strategic situation is much more complex and dangerous, but public awareness or even debate about it is virtually non-existent.

It borders on mockery when Western think tanks, politicians and the media speak of the need to defend the rules-based international order of democratic nations against dictatorships and autocratic regimes in the world. The most important step in the direction of today’s strategic chaos was UK Prime Minister Tony Blair’s speech to the Chicago Economic Club in 1999, in which he replaced the international law as laid down in the UN Charter with the Blair doctrine, the right of nations to engage in so-called “humanitarian interventions” into other nations, which led to the “Right to Protect” doctrine, agreed to by the United States and the UK. As Russia and China have insisted, however, and as Trump himself stated in his UN speech in 2019, respect for absolute sovereignty alone guarantees a peaceful coexistence among states.

The Blair doctrine formed the background for the subsequent wars of intervention, which were all based on lies and led to regime changes, color revolutions and the chaos and loss of millions of lives that we are witnessing today in Southwest Asia. On the pretext of defending democracy and human rights, proponents of this “rules-based order” continue to support a regime change policy against governments that do not want to submit to the dictates of a unipolar world, whether it be the British ambassador to Iran, who was brazen enough to lead the student demonstrations against the Rouhani government (!), or the think tank of the German government, the German Council on Foreign Relations (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Auswärtige Politik), which has posted a commentary on its website with the title: “First Hong Kong, then Taiwan—How Democracy is Moving in on China.” It has long been obvious that regime-change operations against proxy states are ultimately aimed at regime change in Russia and China.

If you take into account the changes in military doctrine initiated by the United States and supported by its allies, then everyone should be aware of how extremely volatile world peace is. For example, there is the “Prompt Global Strike” doctrine of the United States, which was introduced roughly in parallel with the Blair doctrine; the building of a global anti-missile defense system that Russia considers to be a clear encirclement policy; the unilateral termination of the INF treaty by the USA; the unilateral withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear agreement with Iran by the USA; and the expansion of NATO eastward toward Russia, along with the provocative orientation of the upcoming NATO maneuver “Defender-Europe 20” (in which up to 40,000 soldiers will be transferred mainly to Poland and the Baltic States).

The Underlying Crisis

Conversely, Russia will install new weapon systems that massively weaken the efficiency of the U.S. missile defense system.

When geopoliticians speak of systemic competition between the supposedly noble ideals of Western democracies and authoritative dictatorships, they are also driven by the panic that the transatlantic financial system is facing a “terrible collapse,” as George Soros’ former colleague Jim Rogers recently put it. China’s New Silk Road program, on the other hand, with which 157 nations are now cooperating, has been extremely successful despite all the prophecies of doom.

The accidental shooting down of the Ukrainian plane by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards following the murder of General Soleimani should make it clear to everyone how right, for example, the former Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, Harald Kujat, was, when he repeatedly warned of the danger of nuclear war by mistake from cyber attacks, hacking, technical failure and misunderstandings.

President Putin reflected this danger in his January 15, 2020 address on the state of the nation, and offered an extremely important proposal, saying:

We can see how unpredictably and uncontrollably events are developing in the world, what is happening in the Middle East and North Africa literally in recent weeks and recent days, how regional conflicts can rapidly grow into threats to the entire international community.

I am convinced that it is high time for a serious and direct discussion on the basic principles of a stable world order and the most acute problems that humanity is facing. . . .

The founding countries of the United Nations should set an example. It is the five nuclear powers that bear a special responsibility for the conservation and sustainable development of humankind. These five nations should first of all start with measures to remove the prerequisites for a global war and develop updated approaches to ensuring stability on the planet that would fully take into account the political, economic and military aspects of modern international relations.

This serious discussion of the principles on which a sustainable order for all of humanity must be based, is urgently needed. Instead of sticking to the backward-looking and dangerous concepts of geopolitics and more recently “geo-economics,” European nations should participate in the potential of the New Silk Road.

It is therefore imperative that all forces in Europe that are interested in ensuring world peace, support the summit between Putin, Xi and Trump. Just two examples of what this could imply: China has not only lifted 850 million of its own citizens out of poverty in the past 40 years, and has brought a perspective of hope to developing countries to overcome underdevelopment. Over the same period, China has implemented the largest reforestation program in human history. In 1981, the National People’s Congress required all Chinese over the age of eleven to plant three tree seedlings each year, which resulted in China planting more trees than the rest of the world put together; between 2000 and 2010 alone, the Chinese planted 56 billion trees.

The principles on which the world order urgently needs to be built are the common goals of mankind. The liberal establishment in Europe and the USA would do well to rethink the premises of its own financial profit-oriented system and to cooperate with the New Silk Road program in the economic development of Southwest Asia and Africa. The European Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Beijing fears that Europe will only become an insignificant caboose of a market at the end of Eurasia if Europe does not play a competitive role against the New Silk Road. The exact opposite is correct: Europe can only have its own prospects for the future if it gives up geopolitics and actively cooperates with Russia, China and the USA on a principled basis for a more human world order.

—zepp-larouche@eir.de

EDITORIAL

These Are the Days of Decision

by Tony Papert

Jan. 16—Far beyond the level at which most Americans are daring to think today, the deepest issues of history and the destiny of man are being fought out during these earliest days of 2020. Decisions are being made in these moments, whose implications will play out for centuries. What is needed now are the men and women who can bring themselves to comprehend this.

Thus, the call of Helga Zepp-LaRouche and the Schiller Institute for an urgent summit of the Presidents of the U.S., Russia and China—in order to avoid the risk of war after the killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani—was not merely a flash-in-the-pan idea conceived in answer to an immediate crisis. For lawful reasons understood and taught by Lyndon LaRouche for decades, it is precisely these three most-powerful sovereign nations—to be joined by India when that is possible—which have the unique ability to link arms, and by agreement among them, to put an end to the era of imperialism and geopolitics.

Helga’s thought was echoed most clearly by Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday, when he said the UN Security Council permanent members—Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States—must

eliminate the prerequisites for new global wars, and develop updated approaches to ensure stability on the planet, in full consideration of political, economic and military aspects of modern international relations.

On a related issue, we have reported that the London-centered adversary’s plans to deny President Trump a second term—which, if successful, would probably result in near-term nuclear war—revolve around three projects. First: a long, messy impeachment trial, even if acquittal is ultimately certain in the end. Second: Trump will be defeated if he is made to repudiate his campaign promises and involve the U.S. in war. The third flank is negative publicity: Michael Bloomberg intends to spend $400 million in anti-Trump advertising in swing states, where he is also deploying forces on the ground. The goal is to find the weak points in Trump’s support and ultimately defeat him as part of this whole squeeze-play.

But underlying this whole nefarious effort is Trump’s one great vulnerability—precisely the one that is never mentioned. Begin with the fact that U.S. agriculture and industry were already in depression, even before the Depression of 2008 stuck. And now, today, any cursory look past the transparently worthless official statistics, to the true physical-economic underlying conditions, shows that they have yet to recover even to their pre-2008 levels of misery.

President Trump’s Achilles heel is none of the things the media are pointing to. It is the depression bequeathed to him by Bush and Obama. As long as that depression persists, Trump is vulnerable (as the 2018 elections proved—if proof were needed).

It was this depression, his recognition of it, and his promise to overcome it, that brought President Trump to power. Once in office, he has made many economic improvements. He merits special praise as the only head of state to withdraw from the murderous COP21 Paris Agreement. Yet for all he has been able to do, the depression persists. It is still destroying the country; he still has not been able to lick it—not so surprising if you recall the Gargantuan efforts required of the Franklin Roosevelt administration to begin to roll back the Depression of those days, which was a far, far easier task than what we face today.

President Trump is well aware of the problem; he knows perfectly well that stock market indices do not represent the real economy, and ridiculed his opponents for that delusion during the 2016 election cycle. If more evidence were needed, look at the terms of the Phase One Trade Agreement just signed with China. It is predominantly a treaty to vastly expand U.S. industrial exports to China. Of the $200 billion in increased U.S. goods and services China has committed to buy over the next two years, fully $80 billion are manufactured goods. A Bloomberg wire claims the treaty will require a 56% increase in U.S. exports, which it implies is impossible.

The causes that have prevented President Trump from licking this depression have some kinship to the reasons he has been unable to withdraw U.S. troops from foreign wars as he has wanted to, or effectively fight the killer drug plague: corrupt officials, not just in the bureaucracy, but emphatically in the Congress as well. But the brainwashing of academia, officialdom, and the media with lying doctrines of so-called economics is a still more powerful factor in this case. Idolaters for whom empty catechisms like “free trade” overshadow any human, or even divine duty.

Reinvigorate the World War II Alliance

In these circumstances, there is no substitute for a mobilized, active and vociferous leading element among the Trump base, which understands and promulgates the proven solutions that Lyndon LaRouche developed for precisely this crisis—not for the 1930s or any other period, but for now. He summarized them in his “Four New Laws” of June 2014, which should be the beginning of a course of study for everyone who intends to help lead the country out of this crisis.

To return finally to the considerations with which we began, this is no “merely American” question. The United States’ role in the world is no less vital today than it was in the 1930s and World War II—indeed, we must now re-invigorate the World War II alliance in a new guise. For that, we must rebuild our economy, prominently including missions to the Moon and Mars, and retake our sovereignty from the usurers of Wall Street and the City of London.

EIR Contents

www.larouchepub.com Volume 47, Number 4, January 24, 2020

Cover This Week

President Donald Trump at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on January 21, 2020. Trump’s speech is available here. The Italian LaRouche Movement’s subsequent video features LaRouche and Trump on the construction of the dome of the Cathedral in Florence, Italy.

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PRESIDENT TRUMP EVOKES LAROUCHE AT DAVOS

2 EDITORIAL

The World Order Urgently Needs New Principles to Ensure World Peace

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

5 EDITORIAL

These Are the Days of Decision

by Tony Papert

8 LaRouche’s Forecast of the 2008 Depression: The End of the Post-FDR Era

by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

July 25, 2007

19 Southwest Asia: Where Do We Go From Here?

by Hussein Askary

26 Trade Will Increase Industrial Jobs Under Trump’s Two Agreements

by Paul Gallagher and Marcia Merry Baker

30 The Xinjiang Story: Securing People’s Livelihood and Greening the Desert

by William Jones

36 INTERNATIONAL CHORUS FOR A NEW AGENDA

LaRouche Movement Mobilizes for a Trump-Putin-Xi Summit

by Daniel Burke

The Jan. 27, 1989 Jailing of Lyndon LaRouche

Defined an Era, Which Now Must End

Watch The LaRouche Case video

Watch the LaRouche Memorial video

Sign the Petition to Exonerate LaRouche

at lpac.co/exonerate

July 25, 2007

LaRouche’s Forecast of the 2008 Depression: The End of the Post-FDR Era

EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

LaRouche at the July 25, 2008 webcast.

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Editor’s Note: These are excerpts from Mr. LaRouche’s opening remarks and his dialogue with the audience, which were published in full in EIR Vol. 34, No. 30, August 3, 2007, pages 4-29.

We are republishing these excerpts because this was LaRouche’s proven, detailed forecast of the 2008 depression, whose effects are still with us to overcome today. Lyndon LaRouche addressed an international webcast on July 25, 2007 in Washington, D.C., which was attended by about 150 guests, and broadcast in full over the Internet. LaRouche’s opening remarks were followed by two hours of dialogue.

Pull Back the Troops in Southwest Asia

Now, the first thing we’re going to have to do: We’re going to make a decision right away, to pull back the U.S. troops in Southwest Asia. You have to pull them back into holding positions. The fundamental thing we have to do, and it won’t work by itself: The holding position means you’re pulling the United States troops out of the conflict, into holding positions. Therefore, you are changing the positions of the U.S. troops from combatants, and the issue and the target, to a factor, in which a group of nations will make the decision to solve the problem. That, from a military and strategic standpoint, and a diplomatic standpoint, will work: It can be done. The algebra is known; a number of specialists have presented the algebra. It will work! As far as its motion is concerned, its mechanics will work, but, it won’t work by itself. Not because it’s not a good idea, not because it’s not a workable idea, because politically, it’s not adequate. You have to come up with something more. You have to come up with a group of nations, a group of powers, who recognize that the instability of this region is a threat to the continuation of civilization. And therefore, a remedy has to be forced through. And the only way, is that a group, a dominant group of nations says, “We agree. We are going to take the concerted power of our nations and insist that this happens. There will be no resistance. It will happen. We’re going to have stabilization in this region.”

This means what I proposed earlier. It can not be done unless we induce the idiot who’s under adult supervision in the White House, without Cheney, to carry forth on what was started at Kennebunkport. Move in that direction, an inclination to move in that direction. Get Cheney out and go back into the Kennebunkport posture. [The Summit meeting of Presidents George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin in Kennebunkport, Maine on July 1-2, 2007.] At that point, the President of the United States, or the Office of the President of the United States, has to make an offer to Putin, and Putin will, without question, accept the offer. And that is, to build a coalition immediately, in the context of moving these troops, U.S. troops, away from the area of conflict, where all they are, are targets; they’re not accomplishing anything, except being targets. If you want them to be targets, keep them there. The only function they’re performing right now is as targets. Get them out of the target range.

Presidential Press and Information Office

Putin and Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine.

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All right, now, if we approach Russia and Putin, Putin will accept the offer. If the United States government proposes to President Putin that the United States, Russia, China, with the support of India, become a sponsoring committee to build immediately a group among nations who are going to address these global problems which have to dealt with immediately—because, smaller nations, individual nations can’t do it. You have to change the world monetary-financial system immediately, and you can not do that with a couple of small nations. You can only do that from the top. You have to pull together the might of the world, the major powers of the world and those who will support them, and say, “We’re going to change immediately the world monetary system. We’re going to get rid of the floating-exchange-rate monetary system. We’re going back immediately to a fixed-exchange-rate system.” Because if we do not go back to a fixed-exchange-rate system, of the Franklin Roosevelt prototype, then there’s no possibility of preventing a general collapse and disintegration of the world economy. It can’t be done. Therefore, you have to have a power group which says, “We’re going to save this planet from Hell.”

One of the things which we’re going to do, which is a trigger point, is to get something done in Southwest Asia: to get the U.S. troops out of the target range, and pull them into a holding position where they become a factor in negotiating the peaceful reconstruction of the region. That will not work by itself unless you have a power group which includes four powerful nations of this planet, and others, who decide that that’s going to work. A power group which agrees that we’re going back to a fixed-exchange-rate system, by government decree, as made by governments in concert. We’re going to stop the floating-exchange-rate system, we’re going to take steps to clean up the financial mess.

Most of the financial claims and the financial assets and obligations in the world today, are worthless. You have play money; the stock market is a fraud. The Treasury Department is committing a fraud. Most governments are committing fraud, and the British government is the worst of them all. The British government and the British system is the worst offender that we have to deal with on this planet. They organized this war, they organized most of the evil that is done in the world today. So, they will not be considered as having any veto rights in this matter. But the major powers are going to say: We’re going to have to go back to a fixed-exchange-rate system. We’re going to do it immediately, by treaty agreement, by signed agreement among countries. We’re going to freeze a lot of things, and we’re going make sure that things that have to be paid, things that have to go on, go on. That production is not cut; farming proceeds, food is produced, infrastructure is built, and so forth. And we’ll have to build our way out of this process with steps which begin with these measures. And the measures are a matter of the will of a powerful group of nations, not just the four, but a powerful group of nations who agree that this has to be done, because Hell on Earth has to be prevented. And that’s the only way it is going to happen.

And therefore, to do this, we must remove Cheney. Anyone who is not prepared to remove Cheney, should immediately leave any official position in the U.S. government—right now! And they should be told to leave; they should be impeached, hounded out of office, or whatever is necessary. Get ‘em out of there. They’re an impediment! Because we’re going to return this government, in particular, to its people. And you see what has happened with this contempt which the leaders of Congress have shown toward the people, the contempt they’ve shown toward the majority of elected representatives in the Congress; toward the majority of people who are out there who are their constituents? What right do they have to say they represent the people, when they’re against the people? The people want us out of Southwest Asia, and anyone who is not prepared to do that is not going to have a hearing with a great majority of the American people. More than three-quarters of the Democrats insist on this; more than half of the Republicans insist on this. Others will insist and join it en masse if they think it has a chance of surviving. That’s what they want.

U.S. Army/Sgt. Tierney Nowland

U.S. forces on patrol in Baghdad, July 25, 2007.

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When you say you’re going to get us out of that mess in Southwest Asia—that’s even what the New York Times said today in an editorial column—when the American people hear that we are determined to actually get out of that mess in Southwest Asia, then, and only then, will the American people respond with confidence to their government. If you don’t do that, you’re worth nothing. You should get out of office; you’re an impediment; you’re an embarrassment. For the sake of your descendants, get out of office; don’t disgrace them any further. They’ve got enough trouble with the debt you’ve left them, on top of everything else. So, that’s the general outline of the situation.

So, you have to, on the one hand, if you don’t take the drastic action—get out now!—nobody’s going to listen to you. You’re a fool. Shut your mouth; no one wants to hear it. Don’t bother us with your babble anymore. Secondly, that’s not going to work by itself. But it opens the door for something else. It opens the door for the President of the United States [George W. Bush], under adult supervision, without Cheney, going to Putin and saying, “We need this.” I guarantee you, reading the situation in Russia, Putin will say “Yes.” The United States will say to China, and Putin will say to China, “We want you in on it.” “Yes.” China will say “Yes,” because China has a number of problems which I understand very well, and they will say yes, if you speak the right way. In terms of India: India will be somewhat reluctant because it was too long under British influence, and they have to get rid of some of that problem. But nonetheless, India is seeing what is happening with the Pakistan destabilization, and Indian leaders who understand what that means, will say “Yes, we, too, have a problem. We are being used as a cat’s paw in respect to Iran.” The Pakistan situation is a cat’s paw in respect to Iran. It’s a cat’s paw of those who are determined to destroy India, too. And Indian patriots don’t like the United States, particularly with the current treaty proposals being shoved down their throats. India will go along, in an Indian way; it’s not the same thing as China. China is simpler. If China says they’re going to do it, they’re going to do it.

All right. Now, four powers on this planet agree that we’re going to sponsor this type of approach, to getting out of the mess which has been created in the world today, and say, “The British have to be put under adult supervision.” Then we can begin to do certain things.

EIRNS/Stuart Lewis

“And you see what has happened with this contempt which the leaders of Congress have shown toward the people, the contempt they’ve shown toward the majority of elected representatives in the Congress; toward the majority of people who are out there who are their constituents?” Here, the U.S. Capitol.

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The Economic-Financial-Monetary Crisis

Now, the big problem we have to deal with, as I mentioned before, is the economic-financial-monetary crisis. The United States is disintegrating. If a depression occurs, the United States will see conditions you won’t believe. Nothing in the past century, no depression, is comparable to what will hit the United States if this system collapses now. We don’t have industry; we have destroyed our agriculture; we have destroyed our health-care system. We’re destroyed almost everything that we’ve depended upon. And if we lose the power of money—which we’re about to lose—as long as the U.S. dollar was around, and as long as world affairs were denominated in U.S. dollar exchanges, we had a certain strength in this world. Not because we were worth anything, we weren’t worth anything; we threw that away a long time ago. But we were worth something because the U.S. dollar was, in effect, a reserve currency of the world. Why? Because the currency of China depended upon the value of the U.S. dollar. The currency of many countries depended upon the value of U.S. dollar; the debts were denominated in dollars. And as long as we were respectable, people would respect us, and treat us nicely, because they were afraid of the collapse of the U.S. dollar. Once the U.S. dollar is collapsing, we ain’t nuttin’ no more!

Now, therefore, we have to put the dollar under a fixed-exchange-rate system again. And we have to start to rebuild what we’ve destroyed. We have to take what was being shut down, the auto industry—put these hedge funds out of business, foreclose them; they’re all swindles anyway. Start to rebuild the infrastructure capacity, the hi-tech infrastructure capacity, which existed in Michigan, in Ohio, in Indiana, in other places we’ve destroyed. Build up our infrastructure, our mass transportation systems. Restore the growth of our agriculture. Go back to a high-tech economy again, not a Baby-Boomer economy, not a synthetic diaper economy. And therefore, if we do not mobilize to go away from what has happened to us since 1968, to get away from the ‘68er mentality, to get away from zero growth, to get away from post-industrial society, to go back to high-tech, to proliferate nuclear power—we need it.

I mean, the future of humanity is nuclear power. You want fresh water? You need nuclear power. We’re just about to unleash a prototype of nuclear plant which is specifically designed to make not only fresh water for us, but to make fuels, hydrogen-based fuels, made synthetically from water. And the world is going to go to 800-1,000 megawatt power units, which are of a new type, a fourth-generation type, which are efficient for producing fuels from water, hydrogen-based fuels, whose waste product is water. Much better than coal; much better than anything else. And certainly much better than using up our food supply and starving people to death so we can run our automobiles, and still function.

Courtesy of Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power Co. Ltd.

We need a 50-year perspective to go back to the American System, LaRouche said, to “go back to a high-tech economy, to proliferate nuclear power—we need it. The future of humanity is nuclear power.” Here, the six-unit Yongwang plant in South Korea.

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So, therefore, we’re going to go back to the American System. We’re going to go back to an image of the United States as if we had remembered Franklin Roosevelt and what he did in the 1930s. What he did in the United States, saving the world from Hitler. Because without us, without Franklin Roosevelt, Hitler would have won. The British would have joined him. They already had joined him; they created him, after all. So therefore, we have to go back to that image. The world needs it.

Let’s take the case of China. Now, China has a population of 1.4 billion people, and India has 1.1. Now China is—people think China is very wealthy; it’s not true. There are some wealthy people in China, there are some industries in China, which are important, but also, the majority of the population of China is extremely poor. And therefore, without a revolution in technology, affecting the infrastructure and so forth, of the masses of China, the massive area, China has not got a future. Therefore, we have to think about that. We have India; we have probably 70% of the population of India, even though about 30% of the population of India, 1.1 billion people, is in fair shape, the majority is in worse shape than ever before. They’re short of water, they’re short of everything. They’re short of the conditions of life. They need development. All of Asia needs development. Desert areas need development. So, we have to go into a period of high-tech nuclear-fission-driven growth in basic economic infrastructure.

Well, for example, one case in which we just had some agreement on, in terms of the Bering Strait Tunnel project. If we proceed—and my proposal, of course, is magnetic levitation—to build this tunnel which connects this tip of Siberia with Alaska. Now, if we do that—and preferably if we use magnetic levitation as the mechanism—we build a line which runs throughout Europe, along the route of what Mendeleyev designed as the Trans-Siberian Railroad. We run a line down through Canada, through the United States, through the Isthmus of Panama, down into South America. We run the other line through the so-called Middle East, Southwest Asia, into Africa, and build trunk lines. If we do that, we can build a transportation system which has certain very interesting characteristics.

First of all, it’s fast—200, 300 miles an hour, or something like that. That’s good enough, isn’t it? It’s a lot cheaper than air flight, a lot more efficient, and it can carry more people, and does the job. And no airport jam-ups. It’s also for freight. If we can have an efficient system of moving people and freight across borders, across continents, the continent of Eurasia, the continent of the Americas, the continent of Africa: If we do that, we will have transformed this planet. If we do this with nuclear power, and go on to developing thermonuclear fusion technologies, including the management of the supply of our Periodic Table for the needs of humanity, we have then a prospect of a 50-year recovery program, because you’re talking about a lot of very long-term investment in very capital-intensive heavy works, among other things. And these are like large river systems, water management systems, power systems, all these types of things, are 25- to 50-years’ investment; some are longer. We have to change the character of the planet in terms of fresh water supplies, and things of that sort.

So, we have a 50-year perspective before us if we start it now properly. We have some very good ideas about what to do. We can begin to reverse the post-industrial society, and that’s what we have to do. We’re suffering from an ideology of post-industrial society.

Now, let’s go back one step on this: Why post-industrial society? Why did this disease of post-industrial society come about?

We’ve lived in this world for most of what we know of it under the influence of the oligarchical model, typified by Aeschylus’ play Prometheus Bound, in which the Olympian Zeus punishes Prometheus by sentencing him to eternal torture for the crime “of lifting mankind above the level of animals, by allowing human beings to know how to use fire to improve the human condition,” LaRouche said. This illustration from a Greek vase, ca. 500 B.C., depicts Prometheus (right) bound to a rock, with an eagle tearing at his liver.

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We have a famous play by a great author, Aeschylus; it had three parts, a trilogy, but the middle part is the one we’ll focus on: Prometheus Bound. You have this evil bastard, the god Zeus, Olympian Zeus, who proclaims to Prometheus, who has been taken captive, that he is going to be tortured—he can’t kill him because he is immortal—but he can torture him forever, sort of the Guantanamo effect. And that he is going to be tortured because he committed the crime of lifting mankind above the level of animals, by allowing human beings to know how to use fire to improve the human condition. That’s the crime that Zeus condemned Prometheus for.

The Oligarchical Model

We have lived in this world for most of what we know of it under the influence of what is called an oligarchical model. Sometimes it’s called the Persian model, in the times of the Ancient Greeks, but it’s generally known as the oligarchical model. The oligarchical model is typified in European history, by the Spartan model in Greece. It’s typified by the Roman Empire; it’s typified by the Byzantine Empire. It’s typified by the Venetian system, with the alliance of Venetian bankers with Norman chivalry, which is a form of empire; and it’s typified today by the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system, which has pretty much run most of the world, increasingly, since about February of 1763, when the British defeated the French and some others, and used a war in Europe to make Europe impotent; and the British East India Company—not the British Monarchy, but the British East India Company!—ran India, as a colony, with a private army, as a colony—not the British monarchy, but the British East India Company! The British East India Company ran a war against China! And they did all these kinds of things. And today, the British East India Company exists in the form of the BAE, which is being investigated for its connections to what happened on 9/11. It’s the one capability on this planet that could have done 9/11—and probably did.

So, this empire: This is an oligarchical system! And the oligarchy does not like a republican state. It does not like a state in which society’s policy is based on raising the productive powers of humanity, through science and technology, and the use of that, to transform the planet, to raise the standard of living, to raise the knowledge, to elevate man; but rather like something out of a nightmare of Quesnay: It’s to have peasants who are treated as cows on the estate, on the assumption that the profit of the estate, as Quesnay specified, and Adam Smith admired him for this—the profit of the estate is due to the magical powers of the ownership of the title to nobility! So, you pay your peasants, who work on the farm, on the basis that you support your cows, until you decide to slaughter them. But you don’t give them any more—you don’t give them any credit for creating wealth. You treat them like cattle.

That’s the oligarchical society. Whereas, somehow, the magical powers of ownership bestow upon the owner the riches which are produced by society: the oligarchical model.

So the historical struggle of humanity is centered around the struggle, at least in known history, the struggle for the republic, in which the commonwealth, the well-being of mankind in society as a whole, is the standard of government, the standard of policy. As opposed to government and the masses of people as an object of convenience, for a few wealthy or otherwise powerful landowners, or people-owners.

And that’s the struggle. That’s the meaning of the Roman Empire. That’s the meaning of the Byzantine Empire. That’s the meaning of the Venetian chivalry system. That’s the meaning of the British Empire. And that’s the meaning of every petty, tyrannical regime which has ever cursed this planet.

And therefore, the issue is, the nature of man, the nature of the human individual. Is the human individual an animal, who simply has dog-like characteristics, or cow-like characteristics, certain species-characteristics given by a biological endowment? Or is mankind the human mind? Is mankind the creative being that Zeus hated? The individual who can create, discover universal physical principles, and apply the knowledge of these principles to change the condition of life for humanity, and to conquer man’s problems as a whole?

Is the individual sacred? Is the individual human being different than a mere animal? Do we have the kind of society which fosters that fact, and bases relations within society on the basis of the knowledge that the human individual is not an animal, but has a power of reason, the power of discovering new universal physical principles, and artistic principles, which no animal can do? And that we desire a society, a form of society, which we call a republic, or a commonwealth, in which the well-being of all of the people in society, and their descendants, will have a constantly improved condition of life, a constantly improved realization of the meaning of their life in the eyes of their grandchildren, and great-grandchildren, and so forth to come. And of other nations too.

And that’s what the struggle is about.

Democratic Desertion

The change came with Roosevelt’s death. Roosevelt represented that principle. He was the epitome of that principle, and for that reason, people like Felix Rohatyn hate him. There was a meeting in the Spring of 2005. As you’ll recall, I had some success in sparking the Democratic Party and others to lead in the defense of Social Security against George W. Bush. And we had a very successful mobilization in that respect. We did save the Social Security system. But unfortunately, beginning in the Spring of 2005, my fellow Democrats deserted one side of the cause. They continued to defend Social Security, but we’d also raised the question that we had to defend the birthright of the nation, as represented by its automobile industry. Not simply for making automobiles, but for making all kinds of things, like rebuilding river systems, and so forth, which that industry, because of its tool-making capacity, had provided us, during World War II, and so forth. And still could.

We had a rotting system in the United States, and we, the members of the Congress, allowed this capacity, this idle capacity of the automobile industry, which is the machine-tool sector, the infrastructure-building capacity—we allowed that to be disassembled, and destroyed! Instead of fixing up what had happened in Katrina, in Louisiana, and so forth; instead of fixing our rivers; instead of fixing our transportation system; instead of restoring our health care system; we destroyed a precious part of our capability as a nation, of taking care of our own needs.

National Archives

President Franklin Roosevelt built up the U.S. industrial capability in depth during World War II, under conditions of crisis. The Democratic Party, under the thumb of Felix Rohatyn, allowed it to be crushed. Here workers assemble the cockpit of a plane in 1942.

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Who did it? The leadership of this came from the Democratic Party. There was a meeting, in which the subject was me. The meeting was organized by Felix Rohatyn, who is a fascist. He’s a guy who played a key role in putting Pinochet into power in Chile, which tells you what his character is. If you knew what he did in Big MAC in New York, you know what his character is. The guy’s a fascist, together with George Shultz, and people of the same type. And his argument was very clear at this meeting. His argument was: We don’t want a LaRouche. Why? Because LaRouche is like Franklin Roosevelt, and we don’t want another Franklin Roosevelt. We have to stop another Franklin Roosevelt.

So the Democratic Party, which Felix Rohatyn considers himself a controller of, moved to sideline what I was doing. Backed off. And you saw the result.

The Democratic Party participated in condoning a takeover of the Supreme Court, or a near takeover, by a fascist organization called the Federalist Society! That fascist organization is built around the ideas of Carl Schmitt, the man who designed the Hitler dictatorship!

Are they Nazis? Of course they’re Nazis.

It’s just like the Bank for International Settlements is a Nazi institution too—how the thing was organized. So, they’re back at it. And Pinochet’s a Nazi. Pinochet’s also part of the British organization, the BAE. He’s dead now, but he’s still a part of it. Now his deadness makes him a much more confirmed part of it, and tradition.

Who else? George Shultz created that monster also. Others created it. Pinochet not only was Nazi in his thinking, but his government, with the backing of Shultz, and with the participation of Rohatyn, ran Operation Condor, which was a genocide operation in the Southern Cone of South America, which was run by a third-generation of the Nazis! Who were imported for that reason. This is what we’re dealing with.

You say, why is it that Nazis are bad? Well, it’s not just that Nazis are bad. Nazis are a product of the belief in oligarchical society. Look back in history. What did the Roman legions do? They ran extermination operations against populations too! That was their method. Exterminations as a method of controlling society. They ran the gladiator system, didn’t they? What is that? The same thing.

Now the problem is, you have a mentality which is loose, typified by Felix Rohatyn, and Felix is treated as respectable in the Democratic Party! He may not have a swastika, a Hakenkreuz on his sleeve, but he has one in his heart. That’s what he does. Look at what he does. Look at Big MAC in New York. It was a swindle. Highway robbery! They looted the city! They wanted to get the human beings out of there, and you had to conceal your membership card in the human race, and just show you were very rich, and you could live in New York City. Unless you came in as slave labor, or something, to maintain things.

But the problem here is this ideological problem. It permeates this society.

The Physical Conditions of Life Are Collapsing

We have, for example: Look at the United States, look what’s happened to it, since 1970-71. Look at what has happened to the lower 80% of the family-income brackets of our households, as opposed to earlier, under Roosevelt, in that Roosevelt tradition. Look around the world at systems. What do you see?

The objective physical conditions of life, the conditions necessary for human qualities of life, of our people, the lower 80%, have been collapsing at an accelerating rate since 1977. Collapsing, consistently: There’s been no prosperity in the United States! Not for the lower 80% of family income brackets. Anyone who says so is a fool, or a liar. Everything is worse. Look at health care. Look at the cost of housing. Look at the quality of education. For the lower 80% of the family-income brackets in the United States, everything has become consistently worse. And the means by which we had a higher standard of living, was destroyed, as part of the program of the Rockefeller Trilateral Commission. This policy destroyed the United States: destroyed our agriculture, destroyed our industry, destroyed our infrastructure.

It was continued under the Reagan Administration. It accelerated under the Bush I Administration. Clinton wasn’t on to it yet; he didn’t understand it yet. Bill Clinton probably now does understand it, but he didn’t understand it when he was President. He made the mistake of thinking that Al Gore was human; that’s a big mistake. Remember the coal mine—”16 Tons” and the company store. Al Gore owned that place, that got that song written about it. That’s Al Gore. The guy’s no good, and he comes from a background of a daddy who was no good either. Something that cross-bred with a possum up in the swamps of Tennessee. You know how they are.

Anyway, the problem is, the cultural problem is that our people have come to accept the idea of an oligarchical model in society, even in these United States. We accept the injustice which is heaped upon the lower 80% of our income brackets. We accept the injustice that’s done in many other ways, to our own people. We sit in awe about the upper 3% of family-income brackets in the United States. We kiss the butt of some billionaire who’s nothing but a thief. That’s what we do. We have destroyed the idea of the commonwealth. We destroyed what we prized when we built our Constitution, in terms of Solon of Athens. We tore apart and disregarded every tradition, noble tradition of humanity, particularly of European civilization. And that’s what we’ve done. And we’ve come to accept that! We’ve come to accept politicians who think like that. We’ve come to accept laws that practice that.

The founders came to America, LaRouche said, “to bring the best of European culture here, to build a nation, to be a cynosure for nations of the world as a model republic, the way that humanity should live.” Here, the Statue of Liberty.

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We look at other nations in that way. We don’t think, as we should, as we used to as Americans: We used to think of how we came here—like I can say, some of my ancestors came here in the early 17th Century, into Massachusetts and related areas, as colonists. People came here, in the original settlements—they didn’t flee from Europe, in the sense of having to escape from someplace—some people did fit that category, but that wasn’t the way the colonies were built. The settlements were built by people who represented the best of European culture, but an anti-oligarchical sense of European culture. People came here because they were looking for a place in which to take the best of European civilization, and move it out of Europe, where Europe was dominated by oligarchical traditions. To build a true republic based on the commonwealth model, which had been repeatedly tried in Europe, particularly beginning in the 15th Century, but had repeatedly failed, because of the return of the old oligarchical forces, who still represent nobility. You know, you bow before nobility, even to this day, in Germany. You bow to nobility, the Black Nobility, in Italy! These are the most degenerate people you can imagine. The same thing goes on in France. There are more policemen than there are people. And this is Europe. Europe is permeated with oligarchical culture. Look, you have these two Polish twin idiots in Poland, and the Polish put up with this crap.

And therefore, we came here, the founders came here, to bring the best of European culture here, to build a nation, to be a cynosure for nations of the world, as a model republic, the way that humanity should live. This is what is built into our Constitution. This is what is built into our Declaration of Independence. These are the ideas of Leibniz, and people like that. This is what Lincoln did. And we’ve always had a struggle in our country, between the oligarchical tendencies coming in, particularly, chiefly, from Britain, into the United States, as in New York City and so forth, but we had a republic.

A World Based on Sovereign Republics

And in the case of Franklin Roosevelt: Franklin Roosevelt found us in a low moment. We’d lost 30% of our standard of living, our income, in a short four-year period. And he led in rebuilding our nation, which was shattered. Not only rebuilding our nation, but moving to preserve this, to extend this, to eliminate colonies and similar kinds of oppression throughout the world. To promote a world based on republics, sovereign republics, which are each dedicated to serving their own people, by republican standards, and promoting republican standards of life among people of other nations, knowing that our security, and our well-being, and our purpose in living, depended upon what we did to promote these kinds of ideas, and these kinds of opportunities, among other peoples. The same rights that we desired for ourselves.

We have turned away from that.

clipart.com

FDR rebuilt our nation, and moved to extend our republican standards to the rest of the world. But after Roosevelt died, LaRouche said, “Truman, who was a little bit of a pig, came in. (He was. I was there. And I saw the curly tail myself—figuratively speaking, of course).” Here, President Truman, announcing the Japanese surrender.

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This happened at the end of the war. Roosevelt died. Truman, who was a little bit of a pig, came in. (He was. I was there. And I saw the curly tail myself—figuratively speaking of course.) But we turned away.

The United States joined with Churchill and other Brits, in restoring colonialism! We took the Japanese troops out of the prison camps in Indochina, where they had surrendered to a force organized by the United States. Ho Chi Minh was an asset of the United States, an ally of the United States, in the freeing of Indochina from colonialism, and from the Japanese. The Japanese were put into prison camps. The ever-loving British came in, armed the Japanese, and told them to get out and take over the country, until the British could get the French in there to replace them.

We restored colonialism in Southeast Asia! The Dutch went in to conduct a long war to suppress independence in Indonesia. This happened throughout the world, in that form, and various forms. This was the Anglo-American policy. Which is what Truman represented. This is what Eisenhower understood, when he gave the speech at the end of his term as President. He understood what had taken over the United States. He gave it a name: “military-industrial complex.” But the military-industrial complex was what was unleashed on the day that Franklin Roosevelt died, when Truman took over. And the thugs who had been originally—like the grandfather of present President of the United States [George W. Bush], who’d been one of the people who had put Hitler in power in Germany—this crowd took over power in the United States, under Truman. And we haven’t gotten rid of it since.

So we have, in the United States, a tendency, this oligarchical tendency, of preferring an oligarchical society in which, a few of the rich, the beau-ti-ful people—they’re ugly as hell, I mean, actually. You see the way they dress. And the stuff they bare at parties. Oh! Disgusting. Anyway.

So that’s what’s happened to us. So therefore, there’s a factor, a rottenness in our culture, which the Baby Boomer generation was brought into, and that’s another story in itself, which I’ve told a number of times.

So, we’ve come to the point that we have a way of choosing. We can choose to do what I propose, which, from a strategic standpoint, is the only sequence of major developments which will get the world out of what would otherwise be a plunge into a Dark Age, something comparable to the 14th Century in Europe. We could do that. We could return to our character, as Franklin Roosevelt once did earlier, under conditions of crisis. And what I’m proposing could only be done, admittedly, under conditions of crisis. Only when these guys get down on their knees, and people admit that this isn’t working, that this is a danger to human life, and they have no choice, no acceptable choice but to do what I say, on this one—then they will choose it. They will be happier. And that’s the only chance for humanity.

Without the United States, it can’t happen. Europe couldn’t do it. Asia couldn’t do it. We must be the sparkplug. That is our destiny; that’s our legacy. Not to rule the world, but to be the sparkplug by which the world comes to rule itself. We have to be the sparkplug. We have to say: We’re going to pull our troops back, unilaterally. We’re offering everybody: We’re getting out. We’ll take the U.S. troops and move part of them out of Baghdad city, into the airport. We’ll move them into other holding positions. We’re not here to shoot, nor to be targets. Now, we’ve created a mess for you, haven’t we? Uh-huh, good. Now you guys, get yourselves together, we’re going to bring this fighting to an end. We’re going to bring this to an end.

Then we turn around, knowing that won’t work by itself. We’ll then go to Putin. The President of the United States [George W. Bush], whose one redeeming feature is that he seems to like Putin, or something. You never know, or understand exactly why or what goes on in that funny mind, if there is a mind at all. But this is one thing he seems to do—and we encourage that, not because it’s very good, but because it’s the only virtue we can find with the guy.

So, he goes to Putin and says, “We, the United States, need your cooperation. We’ve got to cooperate, and get these Brits under control.” And Putin will say, “That’s a very good idea.” And “We’ve got to have China involved in this.” Putin will say, “Yes, that’s true.” “And India has to be involved.” Putin will say, “That’s good, that’s good. A better balance.” And then four of the most powerful nations on this planet agree that what we’re doing in Iraq, in pulling back, is the right thing to do.

But it’s not sufficient, because we have a world financial crash coming down. It’s fully in progress. Therefore, we have to act also together, in unity, to take certain emergency measures which will stabilize the situation, and enable us to organize our way out of this mess. If we do that, you will find that Germany will probably be the first to desert Britain on this kind of thing. They’d love it, because the Germans are really getting sodomized by the British. And they really, despite appearances, they don’t like it. The Italians will laugh, and say, “Ah!” and they will be happy. The French will say, “Mmm-hmm.”

But what will happen is that you will find, very rapidly, immediately, and if we solve this problem, we take this whole area of Southwest Asia, which is now a terrible crisis area, and we say, “This thing is going to be settled, peace is going to come here now,” it will happen. It will happen.

Because, you know, one of the things that feeds the problems in this region, in particular, is the fact that it’s a region of injustice. And the Saudi royal family is not an asset. I tell you, it’s not an asset in this area. They have their own agenda, and people like Prince Bandar are really a menace.

But in this area, if we get this kind of agreement, we can bring about peace in the Middle East. It will be tough, but with that combination of power, we can do it. Because we will end the injustice. We will present a plausible, clear alternative to a perpetuation of the injustice.

And by our initiating that, initiating the measures which bring this about, we will give the United States back a position of moral leadership in the world.

Southwest Asia: Where Do We Go From Here?

by Hussein Askary

kremlin.ru/Sergey Guneev

Russian President Vladimir Putin with the President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in Istanbul, Turkey on January 8, 2020.

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Excerpts from the remarks of Hussein Askary on the LaRouche PAC International Webcast of January 17, 2020. The full webcast can be viewed here.

Askary was interviewed by LPAC’s Matthew Ogden, who discussed the January 15 international day of action called for by Helga Zepp-LaRouche after the drone strike that killed Maj. General Qassem Soleimani.

Zepp-LaRouche’s statement calls for an immediate, emergency summit to be convened by the presidents of the United States, Russia, and China to address the danger of war.

A very important response after Helga Zepp-LaRouche made her international call, came from President Putin of Russia. President Putin does not have his hands tied in some geopolitical game. Therefore, he is free to move all over the world and create a new situation. The day before yesterday, Putin somehow echoed Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s call by saying, in the concluding section of his State of the Nation speech on January 15, that the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council—which include three of the leaders whom Helga has called upon—that these five permanent members of the UN Security Council have to intervene toward a peaceful solution for most of the conflicts we have in the world. And that their cooperation is very important and key to resolving many hotspots in the world. That’s exactly what is needed.

Many people even in the West have admitted that Putin—people who are not fans of Putin—is now the real adult in the room trying to fix things. And they are somehow admiring of his attitude. So, President Putin is playing a very key role right now and we hope that it will be reciprocated by other leaders in the West, most importantly by President Trump. If you see what President Putin has done, he has intervened in very critical areas.

First of all, in Libya he achieved a ceasefire, through an agreement he got with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, because the Turkish government is supporting one side in the conflict and Egypt and other countries are supporting the other side, General Khalifa Haftar and the Libyan National Army. Putin got the ceasefire going and a meeting between the two different warring parties in Moscow. Now, on the 19th, in two days, we will have the Berlin conference, which President Putin himself has announced he will attend personally. That, in a sense, will defuse the hotspot created by President Barack Obama and the British and the French and the other European partners, when in 2011 they went into Libya and killed President Muammar Qaddafi and delivered the whole country into the hands of terrorist groups who have been fighting ever since. So, this is a very important move.

The other place where a ceasefire has begun is Syria. Last week, President Putin visited Damascus, meeting with President Bashar al-Assad in very relaxed circumstances. They visited an Orthodox Church which was right in the middle of the Orthodox celebrations. The atmosphere was so relaxed that Assad made half a joke—it could be an offer—saying that President Trump might need to take the Road to Damascus to get his change of heart, like St. Paul did before. So, that was how relaxed it is when you are with President Putin, because you know that you are in safe hands. But this is not a joke. I’m sure that if President Trump says, “Look, I’m willing to go to Damascus,” President Assad will immediately welcome him.

kremlin.ru

Russian President Vladimir Putin with Patriarch John X of Antioch and All the East, and Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, at the Orthodox Mariamite Cathedral of Damascus, Syria on January 7, 2020.

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President Putin also got the ceasefire in the Idlib region. We previously discussed that the Syrian Army was going to move into Idlib, where Turkish-supported militant groups are still active, and clean up the place. We have since heard that many of these groups have been sent to Libya by the Turkish Army, because the Turks have an agreement with the Libyan government in Tripoli, to support it. But immediately after that, President Putin went to Istanbul and met with President Erdoğan formally to inaugurate the TurkStream pipeline that will bring natural gas from Russia across the Black Sea into Turkey. In the meantime, they also agreed to the ceasefire in Libya and also the ceasefire in Idlib.

Two Proposed Pipelines in South Asia

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The Russians are solving things in a way that is completely different than the failed efforts of the United States and the British and Western Europeans. Turkey had been on the opposite side in the war in Syria; they were fighting against the Russians. They shot down a Russian jet. The Russian ambassador to Turkey was killed right in Istanbul; he was killed by a Turkish security guard. But in spite of that, the Russians have kept their relationship with the Turks. TurkStream is a very big export project for Russia; it’s 950 km long. Russia will export 30 billion cubic meters of natural gas to Turkey, which will then be shipped to southern and central Europe. This was part of a project called South Stream, shut down by the European Union, which would have gone from Russia across the Black Sea to Bulgaria, and then to Europe. But the Europeans backed out after the Crimean and Ukrainian crises.

There is a lot going on with natural gas, which is important for all the countries in the region. In the eastern Mediterranean, the potential for conflict is growing because huge amounts of gas have been discovered; it’s right in the Mediterranean, but it’s not clear which country owns what. These gas fields are shared by Egypt, Israel, Lebanon, Syria, Cyprus, and now the Turks also want to have a hand in it.

There are certain agreements between Egypt, Cyprus, and Greece to mark where the borders go. The Egyptians are already active in this gas field with the Italian ENI company; they are producing gas. But there are areas where nobody knows where the borders go. And now you have between Lebanon and Israel a contested area which can become a cause for war between these countries. Also in Gaza, the Israelis are pumping natural gas which belongs to the Palestinians in principle. So, these resources are important, but in the absence of a comprehensive economic structure for all these countries, where everybody benefits in a win-win manner, these things always lead to war. Instead of having development on land, now we have conflicts offshore. So that’s the kind of thing that you can expect.

Anyway, the Russian intervention in Turkey brings us to the importance of economic cooperation to get stability and peace in the region—something Lyndon LaRouche and our international Schiller Institute have been calling for. We cannot have peace without economic cooperation. Nations can realize that their stability and the interests of their future generations depend on making sure that their neighbors are prosperous and that every nation involved has long-term economic development plans.

Photo via China’s government website

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (rear right) and Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi (rear left) at the signing of a series of bilateral cooperation agreements in Beijing, China on September 23, 2019.

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‘Development is the New Name for Peace’

The idea of integrating the infrastructure networks, which the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is all about, is to integrate nations’ economies into each other and make them somehow positively dependent upon each other for their prosperity and progress. Iran and Iraq and Syria are in the center of this. These three most inflammable places on Earth could become the most interesting areas where nations and big powers can work together.

Then there is Yemen, the other horrible human disaster, a disaster caused by these geopolitical games. The conflict in Yemen could be resolved in the context of this kind of integrated economic development.

Let’s look at Iran’s role in the region. Iran is right in the center of East, West, North, and South. Iran’s massive natural gas and oil resources are of interest to many other nations, big powers like India and China. In its southern natural gas fields, Iran has the second largest reserve in the world after Russia. For decades now there has been work on a so-called Iran-Pakistan-India peace pipeline, which could bring natural gas from Iran, to where it is needed in Pakistan and India. Those two countries have a massive shortage of power, which could be used for industry.

The Iranians actually built their part of the pipeline, but it was stopped in Pakistan because the United States said the Saudis did not like Pakistan working with Iran. Also, ten years of tension between Pakistan and India has made it impossible for this project to go forward.

What has happened in Afghanistan is well known to many. It’s a disaster after the U.S. and British invasion. The only thing which grows in Afghanistan is drugs—opium from the poppy fields. There was no intention of building for economic development. Instead, the Iran-India-Pakistan Peace pipeline was blocked.

Of similar importance is the North-South international transport corridor, which goes from India via the Arabian Sea to Iran’s Chabahar port, or to Bander Abbas port, and then northwestward toward Azerbaijan. This corridor is actually now functioning; it’s already built. India has been building the Chabahar port, which has become a very important transport corridor between South Asia and Northern Europe. It’s very important for Iran. Despite all the economic hardships in the 1990s and 2000s, Iran has built a very efficient railway network which is very important for getting goods from the Gulf to the landlocked countries of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

China-Pakistan Economic Corridor

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Iran is also connected to Turkey and to Europe along the Chinese Belt and Road corridor which links China through Central Asia to Iran and Turkey, and then further to Europe. So, Iran has a key role to play in this Chinese Belt and Road—the connection to Pakistan, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which is a revolution for Pakistan’s economy.

The CPEC is not simply a railway; it’s a massive economic development plan which includes infrastructure, railways, power plants, dams, and so on. This is a massive project. It’s unparalleled in bilateral relations. Since the post-World War II era Marshall Plan, nothing like this has happened, where a major economic power invests massively in a country deemed by the IMF and World Bank as bankrupt. These are the kinds of things that are emerging now, due to the Belt and Road. This can also benefit Iran and can also help with the relations with India. This is the kind of thing China is pushing.

Operation Phoenix

Syria’s geographical position connects the continents of Asia, Europe and Africa in the World Land-Bridge. Here, rail lines that can be modernized.

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We discussed earlier Operation Phoenix for the reconstruction of Syria and Iraq; mostly Syria, but it has a lot to do with what’s going on in Iraq and Iran. We have heard recently that Iran, Syria, and Iraq have decided to go ahead with the project of connecting the railway systems of these three countries, so Iran can get access to the Mediterranean, and the Mediterranean ports of Syria can get access to the Gulf. This is very important, and Iraq is right in the middle. This is the kind of thing that can emerge now immediately if we have a stable situation where these nations can start working together. Of course, because of the tension in the region, Israel is not in the picture, but that’s going to be a natural aspect of these developments.

I received some news today from two sources—one from the Services Committee in the Iraqi parliament, and the second from an advisor to the Prime Minister of Iraq—that the China-Iraq oil-for-reconstruction agreement, which has been stalled, is now actually active, that money has already been allocated. Under this agreement, the Iraqis will put aside the worth of 100,000 barrels of oil exported to China into a special reconstruction fund. About $3 million would be placed in that fund. Iraq exports 1 million barrels of oil to China every day, so this would be about 10 percent of Iraq’s sales to China. The reconstruction fund is a credit mechanism whereby China will add to that fund at a ratio of 6:1. The Iraqis would have one part, and the Chinese export-import bank and other banks would put in six times more.

Iraq-Iran-Syria Rail

The northern (red) and southern (green) rail routes of the land bridge. The southern route has upper and lower branches that pass, respectively, through al-Qaim/Albu Kamal and al-Tanf.

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Eighty-five percent of this fund will be covered by the Chinese side for the purpose of financing Iraqi infrastructure projects—railways, highways, hospitals, housing, water systems, power generation. It’s similar to what is going on in Pakistan; it will start with $10 billion capitalization, and will end up with $30 billion, maybe even more. It’s a 20-year agreement.

So, this kind of thing will continue. I’m very happy that the agreement is being implemented. The Iraqi government wants the projects to start as soon as possible. Young people are still demonstrating in the streets, but if the government can start putting young people to work in these projects, this will make people understand that this is the way to go. Because this is what they are really asking for; they want jobs, they want a future, they want employment. So, this is the kind of thing that, with China’s intervention, with Russia’s intervention, we can now get going. But not only in a single country; we can have it in the whole region.

Major Power Cooperation

As Mr. LaRouche said, this region has fantastic possibilities—the whole Southwest Asia region and parts of North Africa. What is necessary now is to get an agreement among the major powers to first end these endless wars and then, as the LaRouche PAC put out, bring home the tanks and send tractors to the region. That’s what is needed. President Trump has a golden opportunity to pull out the troops as he has promised; then the United States can send its engineers to this region. They will be welcomed.

The Mid-East: Crossroads of the Continents

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The Iraqi government actually has a condition in its agreement with China that it will be allowed to choose other companies from Europe and the United States to participate in these reconstruction plans. So, American companies and President Trump should start negotiating with the Iraqi government as to which American companies should be involved in the reconstruction in Iraq and get part of that money allocated for these projects. That’s a good deal, I think, President Trump can make.

This is the kind of thing which can bring us on track to what LaRouche had already proposed in Abu Dhabi in 2002. Addressing the Zayed Centre think tank, LaRouche gave a keynote presentation, “The Middle East as a Strategic Crossroad.” All the resources are there. Only the tools are lacking to start reconstruction.

Go back to LaRouche’s 1996 Oasis Plan and secure justice for the Palestinian people by implementing the economic aspects of the 1993/95 Oslo Accords.

We can have justice for the people of Yemen; stopping the war and starting the reconstruction there according to the plan we have proposed to the Yemenis called Operation Felix. The Yemeni government in Sana’a has actually endorsed that plan. That will put that very sensitive area on the Maritime Silk Road and make it even safer for the trade between East and West and bring stability to the region.

Lyndon LaRouche (center) delivering the keynote address at the Zayed Centre in Abu Dhabi on June 2, 2002. On his right is H.E. Essam Abdul-Aziz Al-Galabi, former Iraqi Minister of Oil; on his left is H.E. Obaid Bin Saif Al-Nasseri, Minister of Oil and Mineral Resources, UAE.

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We have a fantastic opportunity to get things back on track. It’s calm in the region now, but if we don’t solve these problems, if we don’t put the bulldozers on the ground and start giving young people jobs and hope, the conflicts will re-emerge. There are many people who are interested in getting wars going.

Recruiting Young Minds

Askary responded to a question about the class series he is giving, in Arabic, on LaRouche’s physical economics.

It was a big challenge for me to start this, but as I made a promise to Mr. LaRouche at the memorial honoring him in Bad Soden, Germany last year, I have kept my promise. The first introductory lecture for the first course has just taken place. It’s going to be a series of courses, but the first course is devoted to Lyndon LaRouche’s book, So, You Wish to Learn All About Economics? Yesterday, I taped the first class, which deals with who Lyndon LaRouche is, why we are starting this school, why we call this physical economics. I have received a very enthusiastic response already from people who told me it makes a hell of a difference when you speak to us in Arabic, rather than listening to an American talking to us in English.

LaRouche’s ‘Oasis Plan’

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I’m very happy with the response so far, but as I said in my introduction to the course, the reason we started this school is not just to explain economics. Young people are demonstrating in the streets. They have the full right to be frustrated and angry, but they need to learn the basics of how to build a nation’s economy, to know what economics is really about. What is being taught as economics in the Arab countries is similar to what is being taught in the West. It’s all about how to manage limited resources, which is completely wrong and destructive. As LaRouche understands well, economics has to do with the development of the human mind, being creative and being productive.

I’ve gotten a very interesting response today from some people, and I think the class series will expand; a new set of leadership is dearly needed. Young people need to understand how economics works, to understand how building a nation works. What is the scientific basis for doing that? Understanding the cultural basis for a progressive and sustained economy is very important for young people to grasp these days, especially in the Arab countries. This is the goal we have set out to achieve.

Yemen in the New Silk Road

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We need to bring people to not only understand why it is good to build infrastructure, but how economic processes work in a scientific manner, so they can replicate that in their own mind. And when we are not here, they can continue doing that on their own. So, that’s very encouraging and a very beautiful reminder that it is great ideas that change history, and therefore we have to keep our promise to Lyndon LaRouche to keep these ideas alive and enrich them and spread them as much as we can.

It is also very important, as we know from the work of LaRouche, that you cannot have a discussion of economics detached from reality. Therefore, we have to give people examples of what is going on; show them how they can analyze and understand the situation; how they can propose solutions from their understanding of LaRouche’s ideas and economics. The economics LaRouche is discussing is not simply production of certain products; it’s a whole process. It has philosophical, scientific, historical aspects which people need as an education to be able to cope with current situations.

EIRNS

Author Hussein Askary (left) is now teaching a course, in Arabic, on physical economics, based on So You Wish to Learn All About Economics? (center) by Lyndon LaRouche (right).

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Therefore, we need to give people a sense that all these ideas are related to what is going on now. The way to deal with the situation today is for them to craft the ideas to implement this kind of understanding of economics in their own situation. It helps them understand the big picture; it helps them understand the context in which their lives are situated. But also it gives them the means to open their minds and look a bit further than their immediate situation to find out how the situation could be changed. Therefore, we will combine the education of the curriculum with the discussion of the current economic and strategic situation. The two go hand in hand.

Trade Will Increase Industrial Jobs Under Trump’s Two Agreements

by Paul Gallagher and Marcia Merry Baker

White House/D. Myles Cullen

President Donald J. Trump with Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, at the White House signing ceremony of Phase One of a trade agreement between the United States and China, on January 15, 2020.

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Jan. 18—President Donald Trump this month is signing two significant trade agreements just days apart, a first-phase reciprocal trade agreement with China and then the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement, or USMCA. The most notable effect will be an increase in industrial and manufacturing employment in the United States and in the availability of American industrial and household products for consumption in China. Because of the elevation shown in the President’s positive relationships with Presidents Xi of China and López Obrador of Mexico, the near-term outlook for cooperation in joint economic development projects is improved, among these three nations and beyond.

Trump signed the U.S.-China agreement January 15 in Washington with Chinese Vice-Premier Liu He, calling it “fair and reciprocal”; on the 16th, the Senate sent him the USMCA which he is expected to sign in the week of the 20th.

At the Jan. 15 signing, the President stated for a second time that he intends to go to China “in the not too distant future” to discuss further agreements. Although no visit is set, this statement is important both to China as showing reciprocal respect, and to world peace and economic development, as it could lead to a near-term summit.

Trump praised his “good friend” President Xi Jinping: “We’ve developed incredible cooperation throughout this process.” Now, he said, he foresees “greater harmony between the U.S. and China, leading to stronger world peace.” The governments have made “a big investment in each other,” Trump added. Going beyond trade, the President praised Xi for helping Trump’s negotiations for denuclearization in North Korea, and noted the respect DPRK leader Kim Jong-Un has for President Xi. In general, “They [China] help us and we help them. We’ve created a beautiful mosaic” of cooperation, Trump said. (The reactions of those savage China-bashers, Vice-President Pence and Secretary of State Pompeo, can be left to readers’ imaginations.)

On the Chinese side, Liu He read a letter from Xi to Trump, in which the Chinese President said, “I will stay in close touch with you personally,” on implementation and progress.

What the U.S.-China Agreement Does

What surprised most of those speculating about the agreement, is that its impact on American industrial/manufacturing exports and energy exports to China is likely to be substantially greater than that on food exports, which had dominated discussion in the media before January 15. China agrees to increase manufacturing goods imports from America by just under $80 billion over 2020-21; these U.S. exports to China have recently been at a level of about $55 billion. Energy exports have not been much over $10 billion annually for years, but are to increase by a very substantial $52 billion over 2020-21. Agricultural exports, on the other hand, have been in the range of $10-15 billion per year and it is agreed to increase them by $40 billion over 2020-21. There will be increased agricultural imports of beef, pork, poultry, seafood, dairy, rice, and potatoes.

Proportionally, energy and agriculture are the larger increases—if they are implemented as agreed. But in terms of the volume of exports, and most importantly in terms of the additional well-paid jobs that should result in America, manufacturing predominates. Electrical machinery and communications equipment will be particularly favored.

Ford Media Center/San VarnHagen

The benefit from the U.S.-China trade deal and the USMCA for U.S. manufacturing and energy exports will be greater than that for food exports. Shown: a Ford employee installing the engine on a Ford Explorer at its Chicago Assembly Plant, in June 2019.

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This not only agrees with the Trump Administration’s goal of increasing exports to China, putting trade more in balance and increasing industry and manufacturing in the United States. It also reflects China’s own policy of working to increase imports from American medium-sized and small production companies, one of the key goals of China’s two-year-old “Import Expo” project.

Many politically biased analyses in the United States assume that China wants to keep doing what it was doing in the 1990s and the first decade of this century—exporting huge volumes of low-value-added products to Europe and the United States. President Trump has certainly realized that the two nations could move beyond the “unfair trade” which he always insisted “was not China’s fault,” but the fault of American economic policy. In reality, more than ten years ago, China shifted its economic growth driver to using large-scale credits to build new, very high technology economic infrastructure, in China, and since 2013, increasingly also in other countries through the Belt and Road Initiative.

Now, while continuing to do so, it is shifting its domestic economy toward “consumption-driven growth,” and this emphatically features not just raising household consumption—living standards—but more consumption by Chinese companies, of high-technology manufacturing imports. With this trade deal, China is for the first time allowing U.S. exporters to set up wholly-owned wholesaling subsidiaries in Chinese port-of-entry cities, through which they can get their products sold in other cities in China, increasing their export profits.

Thus the trade agreement reflects both countries’ priorities, and both Presidents may well have the view that they are making, in Trump’s words, “a big investment in each other.” Other recent developments back this conclusion as well. In late November, China cut tariffs unilaterally on nearly 900 types of U.S. exports, more than half of them manufactured goods. And second, the goals noted above—increasing exports to China, putting trade more in balance, and increasing industry and stimulating manufacturing in the United States—were already visible in changes over months before this agreement. U.S. exports had increased from recent years’ $115 billion to a pace estimated at $125 billion in 2019. Monthly trade deficits with China had fallen by as much as one-third.

(Other, more general agreements such as China setting up a comprehensive legal system of intellectual property protection and enforcement, allowing full U.S. financial parent-company ownership of subsidiaries in China, and making technology transfer completely voluntary, also reflect changes in policy which China was already making before the agreement.)

This has to be seen in perspective: American manufacturing exports have increased in the second half of 2019, while overall U.S. industrial production has stagnated and manufacturing output and employment have fallen. This so-called “industrial recession” is worldwide, deepening fast in Western Europe, and threatening to trigger a global financial crash of corporate debt. Only in the past few months has China shown signs of pulling out of it.

Under the agreement, the Trump administration eliminated tariffs originally set to take effect in December 2019, and cut duties on $120 billion worth of China’s exports, from 15% to 7.5%. But unfortunately, in a joint statement January 15, Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said there is no agreement to remove tariffs imposed in 2018 on imports from China totaling more than $360 billion annually.

USMCA Benefits Industries

The United States-Mexico-Canada-Agreement that President Trump will sign this week is clearly an industrial job creator, and will raise wages and labor standards in some industries in Mexico; for this it got the backing of the AFL-CIO after some renegotiation of the originally agreed terms. There are estimations that the USMCA will increase manufacturing employment in the United States by 175-200,000. This is a small amount—manufacturing jobs grew by 200,000 in 2017 and again in 2018—but does reverse the drop that began in 2019.

The biggest manufacturing sector that spans all three countries is auto and auto parts and systems which, together with aerospace, constitute America’s major machine-tool reserves. Even as USMCA was being approved in the House, with guaranteed approval in the Senate, Ford Motor Company announced production increases at two of its Michigan sites, bringing on 3,000 production workers.

The USMCA provides that 45% of all “auto content” produced in North America, and 75% of motor vehicles to be sold in North America, must be produced by workers earning at least $16 per hour. This will have the effect of raising some industrial wage levels in Mexico, but also increasing the industry’s employment in the United States and Canada, where most production workers are earning that level or above.

The tripartite agreement also aims to try to bring back the decimated U.S. textile industry, by requiring that many textile products and sub-products be made in North America to qualify for trade benefits. Clearly, China’s textile industry is the target of this. The United States’ military-oriented industrial policy, commissioned in 2017 by President Trump and published in early 2019 by the Pentagon with direction from the anti-China Trade Advisor, Peter Navarro, identifies the entire textile sector as one which needs direct Federal government support. That report complained that critical elements of the armed services’ high-tech uniforms, for example, are not being made in the United States, but imported primarily from China.

In many other respects, particularly those dealing with intellectual property and guaranteeing large banks and financial firms the ability to repatriate profits, the agreement resembles the NAFTA agreement it replaces. An exception is the USMCA’s distinct reduction in pharmaceutical companies’ length of patent protection.

Agreement’s Shortcomings for Agriculture

But, like NAFTA, the USMCA is worst in regard to agricultural measures, which have been completely distorted and deranged across the three countries by the 25 years of NAFTA. The agriculture measures presuppose the continuation of the NAFTA-WTO destructuring of farm production and food supply lines in the U.S. and North America. Over the decades, production has been relocated to low-cost areas, increasing the profits of farm commodity cartels and Wall Street investors and creditors. For example America, by means of economy of scale, became the dominant supplier of staples of the Mexican diet (corn, beans) to a Mexico which stopped producing them; Mexico became the dominant supplier to Americans of fruits and vegetables formerly produced in America. All food groups have been affected.

USDA/Lance Cheung

USDA/Lance Cheung

CC/Eric Dufresne

U.S agriculture has been shorted in both the trade deal with China and the USMCA. Shown are familiar scenes from the vanishing family farms in North America: A combine in a Virginia cornfield, pigs on a hog farm in Virginia, a soybean field in Tennessee, and dairy cattle in Quebec.

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The USMCA, amplifying NAFTA, offers U.S. farmers the prospect of still more exports as the relief from destruction by extreme low prices and negative farm income. For six years, commodity prices to farmers have been below their costs of production; thousands of independent family farms across North America have been shut down—especially livestock and dairy. The degree of monopolization of processing and trade has reached record extremes. The suicide rate in America’s rural areas is the highest in the nation.

Some farm commodity groups were quick to applaud this week’s trade actions, on grounds of getting some predictability in hardship circumstances where farmers otherwise are whipsawed by commodity speculation, lack of Federal parity pricing and production management policies, and of course, bad weather.

But here is an example of what they’ve “won.” Canadian dairy farmers’ protection from American dairy products is lowered; Mexican dairy producers will have no protection; U.S. dairy exports will increase. But regarding beef products, USMCA disallows labelling to show U.S. consumers the product origination. Such “country of origin labelling” (COOL) for beef was in effect from 2013 to 2015, but Congress removed it under pressure from the global meat packer lobby. Thus if cattle from Canada and Mexico (or Brazil, Argentina, Australia, etc.) are slaughtered in America, or the meat is packaged in America, the product is labeled, “Made in the U.S.A.” Tysons, Cargill, JBS and National Beef/Marfrig process and pack 85% of all U.S. beef.

Belt and Road Opportunity

There is currently a complementarity between Chinese demand for certain commodities, and American capacity to produce them. As in manufacturing, there is a win-win potential. Take soybeans and pork, for example: The Chinese swine herd has been reduced by fifty percent over the past 18 months by African Swine Fever. U.S. pork production capacity is large, and could make up much of the pork gap in the Chinese diet. The pork tariff was just one of the nearly 900 unilaterally reduced by China in November, though it is not removed by this phase-one agreement. And China will need soybean imports to build its swine herd back up. In agriculture, as in other economic sectors, China is on course to upgrade its dietary level and domestic production capacity. It is in the interest of the United States to collaborate.

These two trade agreements, imperfect as they are, nonetheless come from respectful dialogue among Presidents Trump, Xi and López Obrador. Thus they show a potential that those presidents could discuss a higher order of progress in productivity and productive employment, than trade in industrial products—that is, joint building of major high-technology public works of infrastructure, including the joint issuance of credit for them. Xi Jinping continues to keep open the offer of participation in the Belt and Road Initiative, for the United States to join in its corridor and port projects across Eurasia and its projects in Southwest Asia and Africa. Trump and López Obrador have discussed the latter’s proposed $20-30 billion joint infrastructure initiative from the Rio Grande border down through the Central American countries. China is clearly interested in such investments in Mexico.

These ideas require a new international credit system, or a new Bretton Woods which, together with Glass-Steagall break-ups of the megabanks, can head off a new global financial crash which is otherwise certainly close. These heads of state, together with those of Russia, India and other nations that may join in, must launch that system.

The Xinjiang Story: Securing People’s Livelihood and Greening the Desert

by William Jones

Schiller Institute/Christine Bierre

The White Mosque in Urumqi, the capital city of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in the far northwest of China, in July 2019.

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Jan. 17—Given the intensity of the Western media campaign that depicts the strategic Chinese western province of Xinjiang as something akin to a police state, it is necessary to report some features of the province, its government, and its people, some of which were garnered by this author on a visit to Xinjiang in December 2018. While Chinese reporters have been scouring Xinjiang recently to be able to report the truth about the region, its importance, its development and the real lives of its people, the Western media are still determined to continue to repeat their false narrative.

A Eurasian Crossroads

Xinjiang has been a part of China for centuries. This border region came to be of central importance for China during the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-220 A.D.), the first period of the ancient Silk Road. It is home to a great number of ethnic groups and diverse religions, but it has never been an independent state, and the much-touted notion of an “East Turkestan” state has never existed in reality.

Particularly since the Tang Dynasty (618 A.D.- 907 A.D.), this “Western region” has been under the administrative control of China. During the 18th and 19th centuries, it was an area of conflict among the Great Powers, namely, China, Russia and Great Britain, and while the question has long been settled between China and Russia, the British have never ceased using the “Xinjiang issue” in order to create problems for China. While there were attempts earlier by Turkey to create an Islamic Turkic Republic in the region, this never proved a viable option, and has now been put aside. And although there had been some attempts by the old Russian Empire to incorporate the region as a part of its expansion into Central Asia in the 1800s, Xinjiang remained a part of the Chinese Empire.

With the establishment of the Republic of China in 1911, Xinjiang was again declared a part of China. And while the disruption of the Second World War and the Japanese occupation of much of northern China served to weaken central administrative control, the region was not again brought under firm Chinese control until 1949.

The immense region of Xinjiang—roughly the size of Great Britain, France, Germany, and Spain combined—with its 1.66 million square kilometers, is divided roughly on an East-West axis by the Tian Shan Mountains. The northern part of Xinjiang, the Dzungarian Basin, where the capital Urumqi is located, has a more moderate and humid climate, with the fertile plains of the Irtysh and Yili Rivers running through it. South of the Tian Shan range lies the Tarim Basin, an arid region, which includes the massive Taklamakan Desert.

The northern region has benefited greatly from the establishment of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), with the inland ports of Urumqi and Ili, bordering Kazakhstan, serving as major centers along the BRI route. The poorer southern portion of Xinjiang, which has been the most afflicted by the spread of radical Islam and by radical terrorist groups, has not fully reaped the same economic benefits in spite of major efforts by the Chinese government to provide irrigation for farming and grazing, including the major Tarim River Basin project, which succeeded in reviving that prime source of water for the region after years of increasing desertification. A railroad has now been cut through the southern desert region as well, and will provide more commerce with Pakistan along the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a key element of the Belt and Road Initiative.

Xinjiang has many religions, including Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, Protestantism, Catholicism, and the Eastern Orthodox Church. It has 24,800 venues for religious activities, including mosques, churches, and Buddhist and Taoist temples, with 29,300 religious staff. Among these, there are 24,400 mosques, most of them built by the Chinese government; 59 Buddhist temples; and one Taoist temple. There are churches or meeting grounds for Protestants (227), Catholics (26), and Orthodox Christians (3). In the course of development of the province, many of the mosques have been provided with running water and electricity, wi-fi, and internet connections.

Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China

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Spread of Terrorism from the West

The wave of insurgencies in the Middle East and Afghanistan in the 1990s, particularly in the aftermath of the Iraq War, also spread to Xinjiang from neighboring Pakistan, and has served as a catalyst for the proliferation of fundamentalist versions of Islam. It also served to revive the largely moribund East Turkestan Independence Movement (ETIM), which had been around for over a century, but which received a new lease on life through British patronage and then through its collaboration with Al-Qaeda and ISIS. A television network promoting Uyghur independence, Istiqlal, has been operating in Turkey for some time, although with its growing ties to China, Turkey has been very reticent about giving overt support to Uyghur independence.

The World Uyghur Congress, a key umbrella group for Uyghur dissidents, established in Munich in 2004, has become the darling of the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED was founded in 1983 by the U.S. Congress as a “non-governmental” organization to give it greater leverage in pushing for the type of “democratic” changes in other nations that were in line with U.S. policy. Since then, the NED has been very active in most color revolutions, including President Obama’s “Arab Spring.”

The World Uyghur Congress has brought together many of the dissident Uyghur groups in the diaspora around the idea of splitting Xinjiang from China. During the wars and insurgencies in the Middle East—in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere—Uyghur ETIM activists were filtered into the Middle East with the help of some of the dissident networks for terrorist training. Uyghur units participated in much of the heavy fighting in Syria.

Many of those fighters were later infiltrated back into Xinjiang in order to create local networks of terror on the ground. Virginia State Senator Richard Black, who has visited Syria several times, reported on the existence of extremist Uyghur terrorist cells in Syria, which were playing a major role in the insurgency against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and represented, in his opinion, some of the most fanatical proponents of radical jihad, creating a major threat for the Chinese authorities.

A March 2019 White Paper published by the State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, titled “The Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism and Human Rights Protection in Xinjiang,” notes that there have been thousands of terrorist attacks in Xinjiang since the 1990s. In 1997 an attack in Yining killed 7 people and wounded 188.

But what provided a “9/11 effect” on Chinese authorities was a major coordinated and multi-targeted attack in Urumqi, the capital, on July 5, 2009, in which 197 people were killed and 1,700 wounded. It was in the light of this extensive operation—which, like many others, was clearly coordinated by forces outside Xinjiang—that authorities were put on high alert.

Then, in 2013, there was a car attack on Tiananmen Square in Beijing, just outside central government headquarters. While only a few people were killed, a tape of the event went viral on the ETIM websites as proof that the terrorists could strike even in the heart of China’s capital. And in 2014, a lone assassin armed with a machete descended on the Kunming Railway Station, killing 31 people and wounding 140. In none of these attacks did the terrorists distinguish between Han Chinese and Uyghurs. All were targeted.

The White Paper also notes that Chinese authorities have disrupted 1,588 violent terrorist gangs in Xinjiang since 2014. While ringleaders and major offenders who are responsible for extremist attacks are severely punished (as are repeat offenders), minor offenders are dealt with leniently. But the real key to government policy has been its de-radicalization efforts, that is, a pro-active policy of eliminating or reducing the spread of radical Islamist ideology. There have been no major attacks in the last three years; China’s policy seems to be very successful.

While Islam, like the other religions, is freely practiced in China—and many Muslims are playing important roles in Chinese society—the government is attempting to reduce the influence of radical Islam, which in Xinjiang, as in other Muslim regions, is attempting to spread its sinister influence. Before the spate of terrorist actions in the 1990s, the members of the various religious and ethnic groups in Xinjiang lived in relative harmony. With the growth of terrorism, however, it was necessary for the authorities to monitor more closely the growing influence of radical Islam.

Schiller Institute/Christine Bierre

Learning machine-sewing to get better jobs, at the Gaochang vocational center in Turpan, a city in the eastern part of Xinjiang, on July 12, 2019.

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Education, Training, Jobs

Radical Islam among the Uyghurs has objectives similar to those of Al-Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups. Women will again be veiled, education—other than religious education—will be abolished, technology (except for that useful in conducting jihad) shunned, and people will be relegated to conditions similar to those of the pre-industrial era. A modernizing China is therefore seen as a deadly threat to this radical ideology.

The government’s education centers have provided an alternative for people who might otherwise be attracted to such a mindless ideology, by giving them the tools they need to function in a modernizing China, i.e., job skills, language skills, an understanding of the nation’s laws, and of their rights and privileges. The purpose was not to punish, but to help people become productive members of society and provide them with the ability to support their families.

Two members of the Schiller Institute had an opportunity to visit the region in the past year, visiting one of these centers in Gaochang in the Turpan Prefecture. As one of them noted, people in the center feel that they are getting the training they need to play a valuable role in Xinjiang society. And this has been generally confirmed by members of the numerous foreign delegations that have been invited in to visit these centers.

Schiller Institute/Christine Bierre

Learning life-saving procedures at the Gaochang vocational center, on July 12, 2019.

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Exposing the Media Lies

Over the last few weeks, Chinese media, in particular, China’s English-language network, the China Global Television Network (CGTN), has been traveling all over Xinjiang, talking with people who have graduated from these vocational training centers. CGTN reports that these graduates are now leading successful lives in various professions, Those talked about included an artist, a real estate agent, and a woman operating a textile factory. Having learned Chinese as well as their native ethnic language, they now have a greater opportunity in sharing in the economic growth that has been brought to the region by the Belt and Road Initiative. And on December 9 last year, Xinjiang Governor Shohrat Zakir announced that all the people at these centers had graduated.

The Western media hype, led by The New York Times, also accuses Chinese authorities of “forcing” children to attend boarding schools. CGTN and other media conducted numerous interviews with some of the children, who were, in fact, getting free education as well as three meals a day, something not always available in their home villages, which were very poor. Given the great distances in the region, the possibility of students boarding at school opened up a level of education which would be unattainable in their local villages. And the choice of attending was up to them and to their parents.

EIRNS/William Jones

EIRNS/William Jones

Local musicians at the entrance to a subway station, and native Kazakh dancers in a popular restaurant, cater to the growing tourist trade in Urumqi. Photos from December 2018.

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As numerous interviews on China Global Television Network (CGTN) have shown, the graduates from these centers are now able to earn a living as artists, teachers, textile workers, or entrepreneurs. Their mastery of Mandarin Chinese also allows them a wider choice of employment, including in the growing tourist industry in Xinjiang, which is booming in the aftermath of the added security the region now enjoys. More than 200 million tourists visited Xinjiang in 2019.

Xinjiang Unrest Helps to ‘Contain’ China

During the period of the Cold War, the West generally pursued a policy of “containing China” in an effort to “contain communism.” With the Sino-Soviet split, that policy changed somewhat, and the U.S. began to court China as an ally against Moscow. But the containment policy focused on what were considered China’s “Achilles heels,” namely Tibet, which had long been a region that the British used from their base in India to counter China, and the Uyghur majority province of Xinjiang. British Hong Kong served largely as another base, together with Taiwan, of anti-China operations. Now that China has become a rising power, these nodal points of destabilization are again being activated today by those in the West who want to keep China down.

But Xinjiang would never have experienced development without the thrust of China’s rejuvenation. From the beginning of the People’s Republic in 1949 and the creation of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC) in 1954, the task at hand was to develop the region’s agricultural production. While the Corps acted as a form of border police in a region that had been a bone of contention between China and the Soviet Union during the Second World War, it also had the task of developing the region, expanding agricultural production and building irrigation projects to better utilize the scarce water resources of the region. It chose those areas that were generally most arid, to avoid putting itself in competition with farmers already established in the region.

In 1962, as a result of the stresses of Mao’s Great Leap Forward policies and the ongoing Sino-Soviet split, many of the ethnic groups in Xinjiang moved to the Soviet Union. The farms they left behind were then cultivated by the XPCC members. During the Cultural Revolution, the Corps was decimated and in 1975 completely disbanded. But when the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor (1977-1981) began to encourage Muslim extremists in Afghanistan to build the mujahideen to wage jihad against the Soviets, there was a fear in China that the extremism would soon spread to Xinjiang. So in 1981 the Corps was reestablished. The XPCC has built ten medium-sized cities during its existence and participates in their administration. The XPCC comprises members of 37 ethnic groups.

It was also in Xinjiang that the seeds were planted for the Belt and Road Initiative. Xinjiang was the focus of China’s Western development in the 1990s, which was premised on the construction of increased rail transportation lines to the Western regions. And with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, there were suddenly several new states bordering Xinjiang. The ability to increase trade with these new nations would present a major boon to China’s western development project.

Indeed, the first leg and prototype of what became the Belt and Road Initiative was the railroad that passed through Xinjiang to Europe through Kazakhstan, known as the Eurasian Land-Bridge. Some of the scholars involved in this project in the Xinjiang region, were the first to link up with the forces of Lyndon LaRouche in the early 1990s in the LaRouche-proposed expansion of the Productive Triangle development project in Europe to the countries in Central Asia and China, labeled the New Silk Road. The first conference on the topic was held in Beijing in 1996 and was a joint effort by the LaRouche movement and the Chinese government. The conference was sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology and featured Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder and President of the Schiller Institute, as a speaker.

Greening the Desert

In addition to crops—wheat, millet, and sorghum—Xinjiang has also been a major producer of cotton. Since 2000, the XPCC has concentrated on drip irrigation, a technique that the Chinese developed with the help of the Israelis, who had utilized this technology so successfully in the desert regions of their country. Drip irrigation can reduce water consumption by 60% and fertilizer use by 70%. It also helps control diseases and pests. The introduction of modern agricultural machinery to the region also helped to increase productivity. Liu Xunzhang, vice-president of the Xinjiang Yinfeng Modern Agricultural Equipment Company, said in 2014 that each of their harvesting machines could harvest 167 hectares of cotton during the month-long picking season. With improvements in efficiency, the number has risen to 300 hectares today.

In the first decade of this century, the Chinese government also launched a major forestation program near Kashgar in southern Xinjiang near the Pakistani border. Fifty-meter-wide belts of poplar trees were planted in the Makit region just west of the Taklamakan Desert. At the same time, saxaul trees were planted in neat rows to improve the condition of the soil and to act as windbreaks during sandstorms and thereby mitigate soil erosion. Drip irrigation was applied at night and wire fences were placed around the young trees to protect them from animals. According to meteorological authorities, Makit saw 100 millimeters of rainfall in 2018 compared to only half that amount a decade ago. Sandstorms currently only occur about 50 days a year, compared to about 150 in 2009.

Forest coverage in oases has risen from 15 percent to 23.5 percent, and a total of 3.3 million mu—217,200 hectares (ha)—of farmland have been returned to forest, to hold back the desertification. Major projects for ecological protection have been launched, such as the Million Ecological Economic Forest Project in the Ili Valley and the Project for Prevention and Control of Desertification around the Tarim Basin, restoring a total of 24.6 million mu (1.64 million ha) of degraded lands and enclosing 51.6 million mu (3.4 million ha) of grassland to prevent excess grazing. The Tarim Basin project has curbed water and soil erosion over more than 4,000 square kilometers of small river valleys. Xinjiang has also benefited greatly from China’s poverty alleviation campaign; 2.4 million Xinjiang residents have been enabled to rise out of poverty between 2014 and 2018.

CC/Ccyber5

Urumqi, a major hub on the original Silk Road, is today a modern cultural, political, and commercial center on the Belt and Road, a gateway to China’s western neighbors and Europe beyond. Photo from 2018.

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In War, Truth Is the First Casualty

Statistics from Xinjiang tell a much different story than the fabrications of The New York Times. Per capita GDP in the province increased 100 times between 1978 and 2018. Xinjiang now boasts 21 civilian airports, more than any other Chinese province, and a road network now connects almost all villages across the region. In 1949, about 90 percent of Xinjiang’s population were illiterate, and school enrollment for children was less than 20 percent. In 2018, the enrollment rate of school-age children at the primary school stage reached 99.9 percent. The number of people living in poverty has dropped from 19.4 percent of the population in 2014, to 6.1 percent in 2018. Average life expectancy has risen from 30 years in 1949, to 72 years at present.

The development of the Belt and Road will also provide further upgrades in the form of transportation and other infrastructure in the region. The city of Urumqi has already been transformed from a sleepy border town into a major center of high-tech production and high-end boutiques. As a major transit hub between Europe and China, it is fast becoming a booming metropolis with an international flair. All the major boutiques and department stores are setting up operations there and the dire poverty that so long plagued the region is gradually being eliminated.

A highway connecting Kashgar city to Pakistan as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor is expected to be soon completed, bringing the wealth of the New Silk Road into southern Xinjiang. This will also enhance the movement of Chinese trade and investment into all of South and Southwest Asia, enabling countries like Syria and Iraq to begin their much-needed reconstruction after the long years of war.

That would be a grand achievement for China’s BRI project. But there are clearly forces in the West, particularly among the old British colonial crowd and their neoconservative U.S. disciples, still licking their wounds over the “loss” of Hong Kong. These are forces accustomed to playing with Tibet, Xinjiang and Hong Kong in their “great game,” in order to stop a “rising China” that threatens to seriously disrupt their international (imperial) “world order.” This is the root of that intensive anti-China propaganda spewing out of the mouthpieces of London and Washington.

But for the people of Xinjiang, including the large Uyghur population in the province, the bright future delineated by China’s modernization provides an avenue of hope for them as well. The high-speed locomotive that is China’s economic development will also carry them to new heights of prosperity and success, heights greater than ever imagined in the hellish world of radical Islam.

INTERNATIONAL CHORUS FOR A NEW AGENDA

LaRouche Movement Mobilizes

for a Trump-Putin-Xi Summit

by Daniel Burke

EIRNS/Clara Maria Beildorff Nieva

LaRouche PAC in Flushing, Queens, NY.

EIRNS/Tim Rush

LaRouche PAC in Washington, DC.

EIRNS

MOCILA at the University of Sonora, Sonora Mexico.

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Jan. 20—The fifteenth of January, Martin Luther King’s birthday, was an International Day of Action to circulate Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s call for an emergency Trump-Putin-Xi summit, and to rally people on all five continents to devote themselves optimistically to “winning the peace.” In a parallel action directed to the same end, Russian President Vladimir Putin, in his State of the Nation address on January 15, called for a new process among the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council to ensure that global war does not take place.

Activists around the world endorsed Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche’s statement, with a common understanding that we, members of the human species, must not accept the continuing state of current history, in which we each perpetually hold our breath, fearing what next crisis might trigger an escalation toward regional war in Southwest Asia, with the threat of Thermonuclear World War lurking close behind. Rather, let us raise an international chorus of voices demanding a change in the agenda: The time has come for Presidents Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping to meet, to address the crisis between the U.S. and Iran, and to initiate steps toward finally ending the danger of an extinction war.

The call was joined by organizations including the LaRouche Political Action Committee in the USA (founded by the late Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.), Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität (BüSo) in Germany (led by Helga Zepp-LaRouche), Solidarité & Progrès in France (chairman, Jacques Cheminade), the Citizens Electoral Council in Australia (CEO Craig Isherwood), the LaRouche Citizens Movement of Mexico (MOCILA), the Amazonian Integration Network in Defense of the Environment and Biodiversity (REDIA, led by Roberto Vela Pinedo) in Peru, and LaRouche South Africa (LSA, led by Ramasimong Phillip Tsokolibane). All of them endorsed the Schiller Institute statement.

Copies of the call for a peace summit were distributed on the streets on both sides of the Atlantic and shared across the planet on social media, and through direct emails. Reports of distributions have been received from Frankfurt, Mainz, Wiesbaden, and Berlin, Germany; Stockholm, Sweden; Copenhagen, Denmark; Paris, France; Lima, Peru; Hermosillo, Mexico; Evaton, South Africa; Montreal, Canada; and from the United States—New York, Connecticut, Boston, Baltimore, Chicago, and Washington, D.C.; Houston and Austin, Texas; Detroit, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

EIRNS/Sylvia Spaniolo

Büso in Frankfurt, Germany.

EIRNS/Lissie Maria Brobjerg

LaRouche PAC in Flushing, Queens, NY.

EIRNS/Megan Beets

LaRouche PAC in Manhattan, NY.

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Students on college campuses were also reached. In Hermosillo, Mexico, two organizers distributed the call to 300 students at the University of Sonora, inviting them to an upcoming event at the Civil Engineering department to discuss the vital elements of the LaRouche economic development strategy for Southwest Asia and the world. Recent political discussions at venues ranging from the University of Houston in Texas to several college campuses in Michigan and New York, demonstrate that today’s youth generation does not have the same assumptions about the inevitability of war that afflict many among the older generations. Bringing the power of these youth to bear on the creation of this summit, may be essential to victory.

Legislators and Policy Makers

Activists made sure that the call for a peace summit got to policy makers and journalists all over the world. LaRouche PAC organizers in Washington, D.C. hand-delivered the call to the media stationed at the National Press Club, and leafleted the area surrounding the White House, reaching tourists and those involved at the highest level of the national’s politics. One person who took a flyer wanted it to be known that he had attended the signing ceremony of the U.S.-China trade deal and another that he would make sure it got to the right people when he returned to Moscow. As of this writing, we know that Zepp-LaRouche’s call was received by state legislative officials in Maine, Massachusetts, Texas, and Utah. More than 130 offices of United Nations member states received the international call. Other United Nations officials were reached by organizers in Montreal, Canada. Hundreds of leaflets were distributed a block from the United Nations Headquarters in New York City.

In Germany, organizers of the BüSo visited the environs of the Bundestag (the parliament) and the Foreign Ministry building in Berlin. In Mexico, MOCILA activists attended a “China Day” event hosted by the Ministry of Economics, bringing Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche’s statement, as well as the MOCILA open letter to President López Obrador proposing a LaRouche strategy to defeat Dope, Inc., to the attention of leading diplomats. Teams of Solidarité & Progrès organizers got material to the crowds passing by the National Assembly and the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Paris.

EIRNS

LaRouche PAC in Los Angeles, CA.

EIRNS/Mike Carr

LaRouche PAC in Montreal, Canada.

EIRNS/Eli Santiago

LaRouche PAC in Manhattan, NY.

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Boston, New York, Washington

LaRouche organizers in Boston, Massachusetts, who wore signs reading “TRUMP-XI-PUTIN PEACE SUMMIT NOW!” called out, “Read the latest from LaRouche!” and “Support an Emergency Peace Summit!”

The report from those organizers in Boston stands out in showing the potential to now end the geopolitics of war that has so plagued the human race. The name of LaRouche and the urgent cry to end these endless wars—to take the world from the brink of nuclear annihilation—were clearly drawing people in.

A 60ish graffiti artist sporting Bernie Sanders buttons came up to express support and complain about how badly Sanders was treated in 2016. When he was told that the Russiagate fraud hijacked the story of Clinton rigging the Democratic primaries, he replied, “Yeah, and the b**** still lost!” A woman who did not like Trump, found herself forced to consider a Trump-Xi-Putin peace summit seriously. She came over to talk to the organizers expressly because they were with the LaRouche movement.

Most political personas crack in these types of crises, and that’s a very good thing. Several young people were emphatic that Zepp-LaRouche’s call must be made known on college campuses, and at teach-ins and peace marches—all this despite the freezing temperature, 20 mph winds, rain, and snow flurries.

Ten of thousands of people, if not more, are being brought into action through official and non-official Trump networks on social media, and internet-based logs and talk radio.

A LaRouche PAC team to which this author belonged, positioned large, colorful signs facing up and down Fifth Avenue in New York City, mere blocks from Trump Tower: “Trump-Putin-Xi Peace Summit Now!” as LaRouche representative Harley Schlanger was encouraging listeners to Sputnik Radio’s “Fault Lines” program to join in the action.

EIRNS/Madeleine Fellauer

Büso in Frankfurt, Germany.

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We began to distribute the statement as morning commuters were streaming by. Within minutes, two women stopped. “I’m worried about World War Three,” one said. She listened intently, but hesitated, seemingly discouraged by the enormity of the problem. The subjective challenge of the day had presented itself. How shall we move the individual person, to find his or her own identity magnified by the apprehension of a solution? A solution beginning with dialogue among the three Presidents, but leading toward the realization of a new organizing principle for world relations—a devotion to the common aims of mankind.

Looking up at the White House from Pennsylvania Avenue that day, as our team of activists did, one might have considered the potential significance of the meeting going on inside—the signing ceremony of the U.S.-China “Phase One” trade deal. President Trump remarked at that meeting that the agreement will lead to “a more stable peace throughout the world”; China’s Ambassador to the United States, Cui Tiankai, called the agreement “good for the peace and prosperity of the whole world.” But will the appropriate discussions take place among the leaderships of the world’s major powers, to ensure that such potential for peace may indeed become the end of war?