HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE IN NEW DELHI
Future U.S.-EU-NATO Relations:
Implications for India, Central Asia
Helga Zepp-LaRouche gave this address to the United Services of India and the Forum for Strategic and Security Studies, in New Delhi, on Dec. 5, 2008. Here is an edited transcript.
I'm speaking on the subject of "The Future U.S.-EU-NATO Relations in Light of the Projection of NATO Spheres of Influence in the Central Asian Region, and the Implications for India's Strategic Interest." Now, obviously, this subject can not be discussed without consideration of whether this strategic future is taking place under the reign of Plan A or Plan B: Either the world will be, in a very short period, one of economic recovery and reconstruction—in this case, the strategic situation will look in one way. Or, the world will plunge into political, economic, and military chaos. The fact that we are on the brink of a potential World War III is clearly on the minds of a lot of thinking people.
And I think that possibility was a contributing factor to, why, at the NATO foreign ministers meeting at the beginning of this week, there were two outcomes: one, that the Russian-NATO relationship has been put back on track, as it was before the Georgia attack on South Ossetia, an attack which now is clearly recognized by everybody in Europe and elsewhere, as having been a Georgian aggression by the Saakashvili government—a government which is on the payroll of George Soros, including the cabinet, and the police force. The second outcome of the NATO meeting was that the NATO membership of Georgia and Ukraine has been put on hold for the indefinite future. Also, the NATO-Russia Council is resuming sessions again.
This was commented on by the Russian Ambassador to NATO, Dmitri Rogozin, as a defeat of the Orange Ukraine, and the Saakashvili government, which I think is clear. And it is a recognition by NATO members, that this Georgian aggression brought us to the brink of a potentially larger war.
The NATO Expansion Policy
Now, let's look at the origin of the NATO expansion policy, which clearly has been understood as an encirclement strategy of Russia. You have to take this back to 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed. At that point, the neocons around Dick Cheney, George Shultz, and Donald Rumsfeld, reacted to the breakup of the Soviet Union by discussing the so-called "American Century" doctrine, which was essentially the effort to transform the United States, which was created as a republic, into an empire, based on the Anglo-American "special relationship."
This policy received a temporary setback during the eight years of the Clinton Administration, but it remained a live policy among the neocons, and found one expression, for example, in statements by Richard Perle, who uttered the policy of a "Clean Break" for the Middle East, as a counter to the Oslo peace process, which, then, two days later, was pronounced by Benjamin Netanyahu, who was prime minister of Israel at the time, as being official Israeli doctrine. And the Clean Break policy already was this idea of empire, of regime change in the entire Middle East and other areas of the world.
This policy of empire was clearly put back on the table with the Sept. 11, 2001 event, an event which had been predicted by Mr. LaRouche on the 3rd of January in 2001, in a webcast three weeks before Bush came into office; in which Mr. LaRouche had basically predicted that the U.S. administration would go for a terrorist incident, a "Reichstag Fire," as a pretext to implement certain policies. Now, that is exactly what happened, nine months later. And one day after Sept. 11, Cheney came out, and without any further investigation, declared it was clear that Saddam Hussein was to be charged, and weapons of mass destruction, and all of this.
Remember, that it was October 2001, when, based on that assessment of al-Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, and all of these backgrounds, Article 5 of NATO was invoked, as the reason for war in Afghanistan. Now, I think this is still a big question mark, because if you look at what came to light in the meantime, about what really happened on Sept. 11, maybe the entire Afghanistan War was as wrong as the Iraq War, which has been now proven to have been based on lies, completely.
This entire setting was the context for the NATO expansion eastward, into Eastern Europe; a lot of new U.S. bases have been set up, and simultaneously, you had the EU enlargement. And I know from personal discussions, that, at the latest, in 2003, Russia was convinced that there was absolutely no difference between NATO enlargement and EU enlargement. And when Saakashvili used the day of the opening of the Olympic Games for the attack on South Ossetia, the Russian government reacted decisively, because Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and President Dmitri Medvedev knew very clearly that, if they would not put their foot down, then this strategic escalation towards Russia would continue; and it was effectively stopped, as you can see by the recent developments.
The Bush Administration used the Saakashvili attack on South Ossetia, to then rush to get agreements with Poland and Czechia, to set up radar and ABM systems in these countries, supposedly because of threats from missiles from Iran. Now, this is the most absurd explanation ever, because everybody knows that these so-called defensive systems can be retooled in a very short period of time, to become offensive systems, and then, the warning time for these missiles to reach Moscow is about three minutes. So that is why the Russian position has been very clearly that this is an unacceptable thing.
President Medvedev immediately answered, by saying that if these systems are installed, Russia will put short-range missile systems along the Polish border and in Kaliningrad. This will be, very clearly, one of the big tests for Obama. Because, if Obama goes ahead with the Bush policy on these systems, then you will have, in a very short period of time, a reverse Cuba Missile Crisis on your hands. And then we are in Plan B. So therefore, the big question is: Will Obama pick up the proposals by both former President Putin and present President Medvedev on a new security architecture instead?
The Abominable Lisbon Treaty
Now, what does Europe look like in this context? What kind of a Europe are we talking about? Now, thanks to the Irish "no" concerning the so-called Lisbon Treaty, this treaty temporarily has been stalled, which is very good, because this treaty is an abomination. It's just a renamed version of the European Constitution, which was defeated by referenda in France and The Netherlands in 2005. And in a very sneaky way, they just changed a couple of wordings and made it completely unreadable. And then, not publishing it, so that no parliamentarian could read it—there was not one major newspaper article about it—they decided last December to sneak it through without referendum or public debate. And it would have been, if it would have succeeded, a coup d'état from above.
Because what this Lisbon Treaty, essentially, would do, if it would have been implemented, is to turn the European Union, which already went through the very terrible process of the Maastricht Treaty, the Amsterdam Treaty, the Stability Pact, the Nice Treaty, which essentially put the European Union into a neoliberal corset, totally disarming the member-states, against their own interests. It would turn the European Union into an oligarchical dictatorship, and a federal state, with the elimination of any sovereignty of its member states.
In this case, all legislation would come from Brussels: Already now, 85% of all laws are being made in Brussels (I'm always saying we can save the costs for the national parliaments, because they have become pretty superfluous, as it goes right now); and it would install a supranational bureaucracy. Now, this bureaucracy has zero accountability with the voters of Europe. And—that is one of the main criticisms I have against it—it would transform the European Union into a military alliance, integral either with the United States or NATO, depending on whether NATO is buried or not. And it would make the European Union part of a global intervention force.
There has been obviously a change in the status of NATO, establishing majority rule, eliminating the veto right of members, based on the solidarity clause; so no member can abstain if a decision for a deployment is made by the leadership, and this would then apply also to the European Union, if the Lisbon Treaty would be implemented, namely, deciding on interventions by majority rule.
This has already created a major crisis in countries like Austria, which are, according to their constitutions, neutral. Because, in the case of a decision to go into any military activity, such a country could not oppose it, which has caused a constitutional crisis, not only in Austria, but also in Ireland, and so forth.
The rationale for those people who are arguing this, is that with such a structure this would be the only way Europe could assert itself against the United States, the growing power of Asia, and so forth. But I have looked at this very closely and it's not true: It's an imperial, oligarchical design and has nothing to do with the true culture of Europe, which would actually vanish to a very great extent.
Now, a certain spokesman of the City of London, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, recently wrote, why Great Britain should oppose this Lisbon Treaty, even if the Brussels policy is 100% the British policy: Namely, that it's good for Europe to have that, but the British should not be underneath such a supranational structure.
Asymmetric Global Warfare
The worst insanity in this whole debate has been temporarily off the table: This was a new strategic proposal by five generals, five former Chiefs of Staff, including retired German Gen. Klaus Naumann, retired Gen. John Shalikashvili, and the respective generals from Britain, France, and The Netherlands. They issued a paper, "Towards a Grand Strategy for an Uncertain World," which was really an incredible paper. It's a strategy for asymmetric global warfare, under the pretext of humanitarian causes, human rights, democracy. It would include first use of nuclear weapons in surgical strikes, in an arsenal of escalation.
This paper could have been on the table at the Bucharest NATO summit last Spring, and the only reason why it was not discussed, is because Bush went to Kiev and promised, very quickly, NATO membership to Georgia, and that caused such disarray at the NATO summit that there was no time to take up this Naumann proposal.
But the present EU policy is bad enough: Because, shortly thereafter, the so-called "Solana paper" was presented, discussing the implication of "climate change" for the security policy of the European Union. And they treated climate change as a threat multiplier in the fight over strategic raw materials in the Arctic, with the rationale that, because the polar ice is melting, therefore, you will have access to these raw materials more easily, and this would then lead, in Spitsbergen, to a fight between Russia and Norway.
This idea of a global intervention force is the face of the empire. There was, just a couple of days ago, an agreement between the United Nations and NATO, to work together for humanitarian interventions without consulting either Russia or China, which, after all, are among the five permanent members of the UN Security Council; and this made the Russians, in particular, very, very upset.
'The Death of NATO'
I want to point your attention to another very problematic thing, which is called the European Council on Foreign Relations: This was created one year ago, modeled on the New York Council on Foreign Relations, and it was created by two individuals in particular: the former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who had an amazing career, starting off as a street fighter and squatter with clear links to the terrorist milieu in Germany in the '70s; and now, he's quite established. And, George Soros.
On the 20th of November, there was an article published for the European Council on Foreign Relations, by a certain Nick Witney, who is from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, and had been assigned in the last years to the Al-Yamamah program of defense sales to Saudi Arabia, namely the famous, or infamous, BAE project. He wrote an article with the headline, "The Death of NATO," where he said: "NATO is dying." It should have disappeared already when the Soviet Union collapsed, but, because of the situation in the Balkans in the '90s, and then Sept. 11, and the Afghanistan War, it's being kept in business. But the idea of NATO with a U.S. leadership and a European followership is no longer accepted; and the whole idea of having a partnership between NATO and the European Union is a waste of breath. Also, the idea of a tripartite directorate between the U.S., NATO, and the European Union, as proposed by these five generals, found no traction. Therefore, what should be beefed up, is the relationship between the United States and the European Union, with the European Union as an equal partner; now, meaning with the European Union as an military-oligarchical imperial force.
General Naumann at a meeting of the CSIS [Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University in Washington], spoke extremely sarcastically about the idea of a strategic partnership among Russia, China, and India, by saying that "nations have only interests, not friendships, and what common values do these three have, anyway, compared to us in the West? Good luck to the Russians, and the Chinese and the Indians. If they have problems, who is supposed to help them? It can be only us."
Russia, India, China in the Crosshairs
I think in light of what Mr. LaRouche was saying, it is very clear that in the present world strategic situation, the aim of the British Empire is to destroy the possibility of collaboration between Russia, China, and India. Cheney has said repeatedly, that the United States would not allow one country, or a combination of countries to ever reach the power of the United States—this was obviously years ago now—but that has been the thinking. And if you look at the operations run against each of these three countries, you have an ongoing campaign against Russia, against Putin, and now against Medvedev. The destabilization against India, you have just seen with the developments in Mumbai.
And there are massive operations against China. I know people here may have other feelings about the Tibet question, but we are looking at it from a strategic point of view, and there was a year-long hype-up of the Tibet campaign, aimed at the Olympic Games in China, run through NGOs in the West, and basically, organizations we all could trace down to what we generally call the British Empire apparatus.
Now, on the 30th of March of this year, there was a very revealing article in the London Sunday Times—this was at the height of the Tibet campaign—with the headline, "Tibet, One Thing; But Tensions Between India and China Promise an Even Bigger Disaster." And then the article goes on to praise the genius of George Bush for having pulled India onto the side of the United States, away from Russia and China. And it describes the tensions between India and China over Arunachal Pradesh, south of Tibet, and around Aksai Chin, in the northeast of Kashmir, in the Himalayas, where the highest highway in the world is connecting Tibet and Xinjiang, which would allow a much faster connection than the previous existing route.
There have been negotiations between India and China to put this conflict ad acta, but this they don't mention.
They continue with the scenario, saying that, given the fact that the Dalai Lama is already 73 years old, when he dies, there will be a fight between China and the exiled Tibetans, over who is the real incarnation of the new Dalai Lama, and then China will move very hard against the rioters in Tibet. And then there will come the problems of China facing an economic collapse, which will make it much harder for them to go against the rioters in Tibet, because there will be riots all over China. And, in this case, India could become part of an international intervention force against such a thing, or do a direct troop deployment itself.
Now, China will go deeper into the crisis as a result of the U.S. crisis; then it will move harder against the rioters. This will cause tensions with Japan, and then, eventually, it will have a military strike even against Taiwan. Now, that option fortunately has been nixed, because of the recent election in Taiwan.
But obviously, this is not a scenario for the far distant future; China is experiencing this kind of an economic crisis right now. And I'm just mentioning it, because you should always be aware of the kind of manipulation of these legitimate, or historically existing conflicts.
The Afghan Strategy Has Failed
Now, very briefly, a look at the situation in Afghanistan: Leaving aside the circumstances under which Article 5 got invoked, which I really think should be opened at a certain point, the Afghan strategy has failed completely. And that should not be a surprise, because the Soviet Union did not manage in ten years of fighting in Afghanistan to win, having 100,000 troops on the ground; and that was one factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union, because it contributed to the demoralization of the Soviet army.
NATO has now beefed up the troops to 60,000, which is 40,000 short of the earlier Soviet deployment, and there has been now, in negotiation, a trans-Atlantic agreement to send more troops, but with more civil-military accompanying programs. Germany just has increased its number of troops by 1,000, to 4,500, but the compromise is to have more development aid funds. Now, "development aid" has to be taken with a grain of salt, because it's not really development aid; it's supposed to be used for other purposes. For example, there is a conflict between the ISAF [NATO-led International Security Assistance Force], which wants to move to eliminate drug production, but that obviously upsets the warlords, and the farmers, because it is a threat to their existence. So the German proposal now, gloriously, is to buy the opium from the peasants and the warlords, and then destroy it. Now, that fits very well with the new report by George Soros, for drug legalization in the United States.
We Are at a Crossroads
Now, if you look at Plan A then the only way to solve the Afghanistan problem is through real economic development. Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries in the world, probably with a handful of African countries, really the poorest. And what they need most is infrastructure, agriculture, and industry, which is the only weapon against the Taliban, and that obviously only functions, if regional development involves all the neighbors of Afghanistan, as well.
Mr. LaRouche has already, in the context of the Iraq problem, said that the only way you can have peace in the region, is to take the entire region, from Central Asia, Iran, Iraq, the Gulf States, Egypt, Israel, Palestine, and have a regional development plan, because that's the only way you can bring stability into this region.
Is this feasible? Well, we are at an end of an epoch. The neoliberal paradigm has failed. The system of globalization, the neoliberal free-market system, today, is more bankrupt than the Communist system was between '89 and '91. And the only way the world will get out of this mess, is with a new financial architecture, as Mr. LaRouche has just mentioned.
I would like to add to that, we also need a new security architecture. Because if you leave the present events on their course, a disaster is sort of pre-programmed. And I would like to point your attention to a proposal made by President Medvedev, who is presently here in New Delhi, who basically proposed a new security architecture, and I think it should be taken up, internationally, as quickly as possible.
I personally think that war is not an option any longer for the solution of any conflict in the 21st Century, because if you start a war, it would necessarily end up being a global asymmetric war, including the use of nuclear weapons, and that soon would go out of anybody's possibility of control. If such a war would occur, in the context of a financial meltdown, we would clearly have a Dark Age. And I personally also think that the problem of terrorism can only be contained, if the four powers work together: If the United States, Russia, China, and India would work together and make a determination that, as part of the new financial architecture, and part of the new security architecture, terrorism would be rooted out. Then I think the Pakistan problem could be clearly contained.
So, I think we are at a crossroads of mankind in many ways, and I think it depends on the ingenuity of leading people to make sure that this period of history has a positive outcome.
