HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE:
Only a Dramatic Paradigm-Shift
Can Avert World War III
[PDF version of this transcript]
Feb. 12, 2014 (EIRNS)—Helga Zepp-LaRouche made the following keynote remarks today to a private luncheon in Washington, D.C. She was introduced by EIR Washington Bureau Chief Bill Jones.
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Hello, good day. I would like to start with a prognosis of my husband, Mr. LaRouche. And for those of you who know of him or who know him, I can say that Mr. LaRouche is differentiated from other economists and statesmen through the fact that his prognoses have never been wrong, both in terms of the prediction of the systemic collapse of the financial system, and many other occasions. And he has recently issued the warning that if the present policy in Ukraine by the United States, by the EU, and by NATO, is continued, that we may have a thermonuclear war by the end of February or the beginning of March.
Now, for some of you, this may sound dramatic, but the situation is dramatic. And just yesterday, two relevant Russian groupings, or in one case a person, and in another one a grouping, confirmed their absolute concern that there is Nazi coup in Ukraine underway. One was Gen. Leonid Ivashov, who is now with the Geopolitical Institute, who basically accused the West of using Goebbels' propaganda, that, he says that he hopes the Foreign Ministry of Russia is already aware of the fact that a war has started, and that the first phase of this war is an information war by basically lying.
Now, there are a lot of lies going on: One lie is that the West, and in the United States, to my knowledge there has been one single newspaper article pointing to the fact that the so-called opposition in Ukraine, is made of, largely and dominated in terms of its violent aspects, by Nazi groups, people who openly refer to Stepan Bandera, the Nazi collaborator in the '40s who helped to prepare the invasion in Ukraine, and such people as the Svoboda party and other groupings, right-wing extremist groupings who openly follow this tradition.
Now, why is it that the West, at least in the United States, is portraying this opposition as something completely different, a freedom-loving people, who want to join democracy, who want to join the European Union, and where an evil dictator, Yanukovych, who is sympathetic to an even more evil dictator, Putin, are trying to prevent these peace-loving people from joining democracy and the West? That is the picture which you hear. Why are they not telling the truth! That these people have committed violence, they have thrown molotov cocktails, they have occupied a ministry, they have organized violent takeovers throughout the whole country, they are wearing openly Nazi symbols, they have swastikas in their logo; and you know, I wrote recently an article, where I said, if the same thing would happen in Berlin, and the NPD, which is the neo-Nazi party there, would occupy a ministry, would have violent demonstrations in front of the Chancellor's office, organize militant takeovers throughout the whole country, what would the police do? They would smash it, and try to calm it down. So why is there such a lying presentation of this?
NATO Expansion Aimed at Russia
Now, this has to be seen in the context of the effort to continue the NATO East expansion which started immediately after the collapse of the Soviet Union. When the Soviet Union collapsed, between 1989 and '91, basically, there was an agreement probably between Mr. Gorbachov and Mr. Kohl and Mr. Genscher, that there would be never an eastward expansion of NATO, and there would be never foreign troops east of the Elbe.
Then in 1994, there was another agreement, that basically in the Budapest Memorandum signed between the United States, Great Britain, and Russia, that the territory of Ukraine would be guaranteed by these three nations, and that basically, if there would be a threat to either the security of the country, that both would come and protect it, and there would be no economic coercion.
Well, all of these have clearly been violated. Now, how was this recent development triggered? End of November, when at the EU summit in Vilnius, all of a sudden, Yanukovych in the last minute refused to sign the EU Association Agreement. Now, it is very likely, almost certain, that one part of that agreement included a military part, whereby in the medium term, NATO would have had access to the territory of Ukraine, and that was one of the reasons why it became very clear that for Ukraine to sign the EU Association Agreement would have been practically suicide: First of all, it would have destroyed the Ukraine economy and turned Ukraine very quickly into the new Greece, eastward, west of the Russian border; because contrary to the mythologies, the EU is not in tremendous condition. The EU is disintegrating. There is a very great likelihood that the EU may not outlive this present year of 2014.
Now, what then happened was a provocation, where these elements, which according to President Putin had been prepared for the Presidential election in 2015, were activated. And you know, this is not just a sudden eruption, but one has to see that the whole eastward extension of NATO really started with the collapse of the Soviet Union, when you had in the United States, existence in power of the neo-cons around Bush Sr.; and the neo-cons had the New American Century doctrine, which was the idea that, instead of using the historic opportunity which the collapse of communism had represented, because there was no more enemy, and it would have been very easy to establish a peace order for the 21st century.
Instead, Bush Sr., and Margaret Thatcher, and also Mitterrand decided to go in a different direction, and especially between Bush Sr. and Margaret Thatcher, they decided to build a new empire based on the special relationship between the United States and Great Britain, and go for a policy of regime change, practically against every country which would oppose that.
On the Edge of World War
In that context, in Ukraine, there developed 2,200 NGOs, who built networks of anti-Russian conviction, people who would in part be activists and just paid, like in Maidan, most people get paid $50 a day plus food for their demonstrations, and others who are just full of illusion. Naturally, if you have young people who are hedonistic and you promise them freedom, then you can build up networks. So over 22 years, these anti-Russian networks have been built up, and basically at the same time, you had the eastward extension of NATO and also the EU, which have become more and more integrated and identical.
And you have to see that what is now the danger: You have a situation where Ukraine as a result of this, is almost at civil war, and there can be a debate if the civil war has already erupted. Now, the Izborsk Club, which is a group of influential intellectuals just issued yesterday, a memorandum where they said that the aim is very clearly, to get rid of Yanukovych, to put [Yulia] Tymoshenko[1] or [Vitali] Klitschko[2] into office based on a right-wing extremist coalition, drive out the Russians from Sevastopol, deny them access to the Black Sea, and basically have then a continuation of that: Destroy the industry in the eastern parts of Ukraine which are linked to the military-industry complex of Russia, and then carry out the Maidan tactic into Russian cities, and eventually get rid of Putin.
Now, it is very clear that this is an unacceptable situation for Russia, because you have to see that this is part of the military deployments. The U.S. missile defense system in Poland, in Romania, and two days ago, the deployment of the USS Donald Cook Aegis destroyer is part of a missile defense system where Russia has declared many times that it is not acceptable for them, because the aim is obviously not some missiles in Iran, but the very position where this missile defense system is, it's aimed to take out the second-strike capability of Russia. And they have declared they will not allow that this U.S. missile defense system is being built beyond a certain point, because Russia would become indefensible after that situation.
So therefore, we are looking at a situation in the short term of a Russian counter-reaction. There are some people in military circles in Western Europe who think that you may look at a replay of what happened in at the end of the Beijing Olympic Games, that after the Sochi Olympic Games are over, that a Russian reaction could be like in Ossetia in 2008.[3] I would not count on such timetables, because the situation is — you know, we are on the verge of World War III, right now, and it could happen much, much earlier.
In addition to the U.S. missile defense system, is the Prompt Global Strike doctrine, which is a doctrine which is basically using traditional ICBM missiles, but with non-nuclear weapons, also supposedly to be able to take out the second-strike capability. And you have to also take into account that the "Asia pivot" policy, the so-called Air-Sea Battle doctrine against China, is characterized by the same illusion and utopian idea that you can take out the second-strike capability of China.
Now, China has made very clear that they will not capitulate. In October, on one Monday, all the Chinese publications published maps where they pointed to the fact that they have 70 strategic submarines in the Pacific off the West Coast of the United States, and they could hit the entire West Coast with nuclear weapons as a second strike, and they have maps where you can see the radioactive fallout going all the way to Chicago, and then, how you would have a second line going over the North Pole, hitting the East Coast.
Similarly, the Russian joint chiefs of staff had a conference in Moscow, I think it was almost two years ago, where they showed video animations, where they show that the U.S. missile defense system is targetting Russian capabilities and why they can not accept that. And even the Chief of Staff General Makarov at that point said that the Russians may be forced to go into a first strike, when it becomes clear that if they wait any longer their position becomes indefensible.
So therefore, when my husband says that we are looking at the short-term confrontation and that we must change the agenda, I mean, all the evidence points to the fact that this is under way. And the fortunate publication of the YouTube discussion between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the Ambassador Pyatt, there was a big hoopla about it, naturally, and the Western media immediately tried to play it down and say, "Oh, she's used this profane language." Now, I'm not interested in the sexual preferences of Mrs. Nuland, but what I'm very interested in, is what it really refers to, namely, that this is a total interference into the internal affairs of Ukraine, it shows that they are managing by the minute how this process goes, and it is a total, total violation of every form of international treaties and diplomacy.
And it is not a surprise, because, if you look at the career of Mrs. Nuland: First of all, she is married to Robert Kagan, who is an arch-neo-con. He was in the Old Bush administration, and one of the authors designing this idea of NATO eastward extension and encirclement of Russia and China. So that she would then basically be in Kiev, or wherever this phone call was made, and was caught, and then, there was a complete cover-up, and that there is absolutely no mentioning of the true Nazi character of coup in Ukraine is really absolutely incredible.
Now, I think that the immediate danger is not just in this long-term preparation, but it has to do with the fact that the Western trans-Atlantic financial system is about to blow. I think that the only reason why, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, the system didn't go bankrupt, was because all the major central banks decided to go for quantitative easing, to print money, to do what the Reichsbank did between 1919 and 1923, just to print money. And at the same, go for bailouts, and they realize this is now not enough, so they have the mechanism of "bail-in," which we have seen in the Cyprus model which means the expropriation of people who have savings accounts above EU100,000, but if it comes to a crash, it would be even worse.
Now, all this money printing, naturally, has the danger of hyperinflation, which is already building up in a gigantic bubble. And that is why there has been since a long time, a debate in the Fed and other places, about the need to reverse that. And there was a general recognition that you can not reverse it, because if you start to take the liquidity out of this bubble, the danger is that it busts.
Now, in the recent period, Mr. Bernanke decided to go for the so-called "tapering," meaning to reduce the liquidity injection from $85 billion a month, to first, $75 billion, and now $65 billion, but, exactly as was to be expected, this has already shown tremendous reactions by the collapse of the currencies of the so-called "emerging markets," and capital flight out of these countries. And the BIS recently put out a statement that they are totally against this "tapering" of the Fed, because it involves the danger of a catastrophic development, meaning a blowout of the system.
Now, we are on the verge of such a blowout, and that collapse of the financial system is what decides the speed of this adventure towards Russia.
Hell on Earth
So, I think what we need to do, is, first of all, and one of the reasons why we have this luncheon, we have also prepared written materials for you, I think it is extremely important that the character of the coup in Ukraine is made known. Fortunately, there were some papers in Germany by now, the Guardian, also Time magazine, Stern and others, published the Nazi character, even so in much too mild fashion. But it must become known: This is a Nazi coup, and this is the danger to world peace!
Then, in addition to that, we are working very hard, my husband in particular, to try every possible way to get patriots of the United States to return the United States back to its Constitution. And that is not for me to comment on, but there is a big effort by American patriots to do exactly that.
But I think internationally, it is extremely clear: if we continue on the present course of action, you know, the extreme financial free-market economy which has led to a situation where the gap between rich and poor has become intolerable! Recently a report was published that 85 individuals own as much as 3.5 billion people! Entire regions of the world are dying; Africa is dying, many other places are in a terrible condition.
If you take the entire region from Afghanistan, Pakistan, to Syria, to North Africa, to Central Africa, this is a region which is in total chaos. The policy of regime-change in Iraq, in Libya, in Syria, has created Hell on Earth: This area is dominated by terrorists, by people who are receiving their money from the money laundering from the drug production in Afghanistan, which has increased by 40 times since NATO has moved into Afghanistan 12 years ago, this is what sponsors the terrorism, this was what was responsible for the terrorism in Volgograd.
So I can give you many more aspects, but one thing is very clear: If we continue on the present course, the likelihood that human civilization will not exist beyond next month is very high. And we must have a dramatic, dramatic change of the paradigm: There is no reason why we can not have an international security agreement, including Russia, including China, in which the United States would cooperate in joint missile defense, with Russia, China, the Europeans, where we would concentrate on the common aims of mankind, such as defense of the planet against asteroids, comets, and other objects.
There are many issues where mankind must work together if we are not going to make ourselves extinct, and it is the question; do we have enough people who have the intelligence and the morality to recognize that in time, so that we can avoid a human catastrophe, and possibly the extinction of civilization?
[1] Ex-Prime Minister, poster-girl of the 2004 Orange Revolution, currently serving a jail term on a conviction of exceeding her authority while in office.
[2] Ex-champion heavyweight boxer, long based in Germany, promoted in European circles as the charismatic leader Ukraine needs.
[3] Georgia attacked the capital of its autonomous province, South Ossetia, as well as Russian peacekeeping forces there, on Aug. 8, 2008, the opening day of the Beijing Olympics. Russia quickly bolstered its forces and drove the Georgians out of South Ossetia, which subsequently declared its independence.
