This article appears in the June 19, 2015 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

Rebuilding the World in the BRICS Era

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

[PDF version of this article]

June 13—Thank you, and I welcome you. I would like to preface my actual speech with a short report about what Mr. LaRouche had to say yesterday, because yesterday we had extremely important breaking developments. President Obama went to the Congress and tried to really threaten the Democratic Party members of the Congress, telling them that they absolutely had to vote for the Fast Track Authority, as it's now called: that this was not about the free trade pact (TPP), but it was about him.

Christopher Lewis Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Reports were that when this 40-minute session was over, members of Congress came out completely furious, and then voted with an overwhelming majority against this TPP proposition, which is really a major defeat, one more of the many defeats of Obama in the recent period. Mr. LaRouche commented, that this is a reflection not of a last-minute opposition, but this is a process of rebellion going on in the last period on both sides of the Atlantic. And it reflects much more an awareness by important factions, that we are in the danger of immediate nuclear war.

So, he said that that means for the next period, you have to expect even an increase in the inclination of the Obama Administration to push the confrontation, but that the real reason has to be addressed, and that is that Wall Street is on the chopping block, that the entire trans-Atlantic financial system is hopelessly bankrupt, and that the only hope is in the existence of a bloc of nations who are numerically much stronger. However, he said that what has to be also avoided, is the plunge of the world into chaos. And that therefore, we need a program which immediately addresses the situation, because you have the impending blowout of the Greek debt, which would have immediate consequences for Spain and Italy, and that even if Germany is in a relatively stronger position, we're looking at the breakdown of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system.

Therefore, the kinds of measures which have to be taken, are like what Franklin D. Roosevelt did in the period from '33 to '39, and that is what we have to concentrate on. I think that is something which the deliberations of this conference must deal with.

Because this is not an academic conference. This is an actual effort to intervene in a moment, when it is very clear that the leading institutions of the G7, for example, which just met in their summit, have absolutely failed to address these existential dangers for civilization.

Now I will come back to these optimistic solutions, but let me tell you: Mankind has never been at such a dangerous moment.

Beautiful Options

In the beginning, I want to express my conviction that I think it is absolutely possible to save civilization, and realize the very beautiful options and alternatives which will be the subject of this discussion. If we do our job right—and obviously it will not only depend on us, but our subjective intervention, I think, will be the margin of difference as to whether mankind goes into annihilation, or into a new era of civilization—we could have, very soon, a completely different world.

And I think it's important to start with the vision of where we want to go, because we could have a completely different relationship among nations, not focussed on geopolitical confrontation, not focusing on so-called narrow or national interests vs. the national interests of some other country, but where we would be united for the common aims of mankind, such that we could have a new world economic order, which would give justice to every nation on this planet, combined with a Classical Renaissance of culture, which, in my view, is equally urgent, if you look at the degeneracy of the Western culture at this point.

But that can only be realized if we succeed in realizing the task which we set out for ourselves quite some while ago, namely that we get the European nations, and the United States, in a cooperative mode with the BRICS nations, and the win-win policy of President Xi Jinping of China.

FIGURE 1

Now, this is the program Figure 1, a blueprint for the next 50 years. Maybe, if you look at the speed of developments in China, it will take only 20 years, but it could also be the next 100 years. It is really the key. This program of building a World Land-Bridge, uniting all the nations on the planet in a common development strategy, is really the way in which to overcome all problems.

*The war danger—because it would represent a peace strategy for the Twenty-first Century;

*The underdevelopment and hunger of billions of people—because it would provide development and production for all of them;

*It would eliminate, or help to eliminate, the drug trade, and it would especially give hope for the future, and therefore overcome the decadence of the mind.

However, this shift has to occur very, very suddenly. Because it's very urgent.

G7 Insanity

If you look at the results of the recent G7 summit, well, you have a situation where unfortunately Chancellor Merkel, pushed by Obama, Cameron, and Canada, excluded President Putin for the second time, and that action of Mrs. Merkel created the forum for Obama's very provocative attacks at the end of the Summit.

Now, given the fact that the G7 only represent about 10% of the world's population, I find it quite an enormity that they decided to implement a so-called decarbonization of the world economy by the year 2100. Who authorizes 10% of the world population to define the program of the entire world for 90 years from now?

Mrs. Merkel, if history remembers her, will probably go into history for her very infamous exit from nuclear energy, and the sole reliance on renewable energies. Decarbonization would mean only having solar and wind—no fossil fuel energy resources—and since they are also against nuclear energy in Germany, well, it basically would mean implementing the program of Mr. Schellnhuber, who is the head of the VDGU in Germany, an advisory institution, but also a CBE, Commander of the British Empire. He has developed this program of the transformation of the global economy which would be decarbonization of the world economy, and if we realize that there is a direct correlation between the energy flux density in the production process, and the number of people who can be supported with that energy flux density, you have to come to the conclusion that the approximate number of people who could be maintained is about 1 billion people.

Zoologist and advocate for population reduction Sir David Attenborough.

Then there was this very ominous meeting between President Obama and Sir David Attenborough. Sir David Attenborough is the key advisor for environmental and energy questions to the British Crown. He was flown in by Obama shortly before the G7 summit, and basically it was not made public what they discussed, but we know what Attenborough has said in the past: namely, that mankind is a plague. That we should purge it massively by at least half; so you can assume that what went into this summit on the side of Obama, was the British advice on how to reduce population.

Now, fortunately, there are three important German personalities who intervened shortly before the G7 Summit, saying that President Putin should be invited. They were, very importantly, the current Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier; and the former Chancellors Gerhard Schröder and Helmut Schmidt; and Helmut Schmidt, in particular, said not only that Russia should be invited to the G7 summit, but China and India as well. And Schmidt, who is 95 years old—it seems to be the quality of older people that they are often more courageous in speaking the truth, than younger people—had warned of World War III many, many times before.

So, you can be assured that these people—Steinmeier in that sense really being on a completely different track than Merkel— know the warnings which military experts in the recent period have expressed: Namely, that we are today in a situation that is more dangerous than at the height of the Cold War. And the height of the Cold War was the Cuban Missile crisis.

Now during the Cuban Missile crisis, you had, despite the extremely adversarial relations, communications between President Kennedy and Khrushchov, and they were able to defuse the crisis at the very last moment.

That is not the case between President Obama and President Putin. It has been noted by many military experts that the biggest danger, or one of the biggest dangers, is that there is no communication between the United States and Russia, in particular.

President Kennedy consults the military at the time of the Cuban Missile crisis—but he was also able to talk with the Kremlin.

A Cuban Missile Crisis in Reverse

How did we get to this crisis?

This has been the result of a long-term buildup, which really started with the decision of the neo-cons in 1997 to go for the policy of the PNAC, the Project for a New American Century. This was the idea that, especially when the Soviet Union disintegrated, between '89 and '91, no country could refuse to be part of an Empire run by the Anglo-Americans, based on the special relationship between Great Britain and the United States. And it was explicitly noted that the goal was to maintain a U.S. global pre-eminence precluding the rise of a power, or a group of nations, who could challenge the power of the United States. And it is that concept which still exists. It was only briefly interrupted halfway into the Clinton period. It was fully carried on by Bush Sr. and Bush Jr.—two administrations—and now by six and a half years of Obama.

So what this policy meant is that immediately following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the neo-cons went into policies of regime change, through a variety of measures—color revolution, paying NGOs with the aim of toppling the democratically elected government, with policies of sanctions—we see it in the case of Russia, where the exclusive aim of these sanctions is to cause so much uproar inside Russia, that you would have a Maidan phenomenon in Moscow, and get rid of Putin.

These policies included the NATO and EU expansion to the borders of Russia, whereas, according to Jack F. Matlock, who was the American Ambassador in Moscow during the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, promises were given that this would never happen. These promises were never kept. And it means troop and military equipment forward-positioning at the Russian borders.

And now, very recently, you have the extremely flimsy accusation that Russia has violated the INF treaty, and that this could be related to an alleged test-launch of a sea-based cruise missile from a launcher on land, which, if it ever happened, or something similar, would have been an extremely minor technical thing,—but, as I said, it's not even proven. The Russian side has maintained very clearly that there is no proof, and Deputy Defense Minister Antonov basically has said the U.S. is ramping up these allegations against Russia, to justify their own military plans to return the U.S. short- and medium- range missiles to Europe and other regions.

When Obama came into office, he had promised that he would reduce nuclear weapons, and eventually get rid of them, but now, for him to put nuclear weapons back into Great Britain—which already has been accepted, in the person of Cameron—and other places, is really a push for nuclear war. Some people think it would be nuclear war in Europe, but by the logic of nuclear war, it would not be just for Europe. It would be a generalized global thermonuclear war, which nobody would survive.

General Leonid Ivashov, who is right now the head of the Academy of Geopolitics, said this is a Cuban missile crisis in reverse. And it is the acting-out of the Cheney-Wolfowitz doctrine of a unipolar world.

Now the Obama Administration has admitted that it is considering an option of leaving the INF Treaty, deploying so-called counterforce IRBMs (intermediate-range ballistic missiles) to Europe, or even a countervailing strike capability involving the possibility of a pre-emptive nuclear attack on targets inside of Russia.

Also, the transformation of the military doctrine during the last period—Prompt Global Strike, and the U.S. Ballistic Missile System are de facto first strike doctrines. And if you remember what President Putin said when he announced the upgrade of the Russian military doctrine over the Christmas period,—he said there may come a point where Russia feels compelled to use nuclear weapons to avoid this danger. That should show you why we are really in mortal danger, and absolutely must act.

The NATO website presently lists 71 maneuvers and events between April and November, all close to the Russian border, in the Baltics, the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea. And Poroshenko just announced that he is ending all military cooperation with Russia, which blocks the supply of Russian troops in Transdniestria, Moldova, and this, on the surface, could be a repeat of the events of Georgia in 2008, but it could also be a pretext used for actions against Russia.

Russia is intensifying its strategic ties with China and India, and Russia and China are drilling their airborne amphibious troops in the Far East, in a maneuver called Joint Sea 2015.

In light of the fact that the pretext for all of this escalation against Russia is the Ukraine situation, supposedly the Crimea issue,—it should be absolutely noted that what triggered this event was, on the one side, the fascist coup in Kiev on February 18-22, 2014; and before that, the effort to incorporate Ukraine into the EU through the EU Association Agreement; and even before that, as Helmut Schmidt said, and I fully agree: the real Ukraine crisis started with the Maastricht Treaty, because this is where the idea of having an eastward expansion of the EU really started.

So what happened therefore at the G7 meeting, you could only call a suicidal delirium on the side of Germany, France, Italy, and other nations. The only chance is that the opposition of Steinmeier, Schmidt, and Schröder has to be escalated. Merkel, in my view, should be replaced, because she is violating her oath of office—to protect the German people against perils—and because of her scandalous behavior in the NSA-BND affair, which violates the rights of all German people, and not only the German people. Because, as you know, the BND-NSA collaboration spied against France, against Belgium, Austria, even Germany's own industry,—and Merkel obviously doesn't know that the German economy, without cooperation with Russia and the BRICS, does not function.

Now, Russia is part of Europe, and the sanctions designed to harm Russia are really extremely stupid. Because they not only hurt Russia, which obviously is suffering from them, but, for example, in the first quarter of this year, German machine tool exports to Russia collapsed by 28%, and German industry is extremely furious that the U.S. exports to Russia in the same period, increased by 17%.

Basically, there is not only stagnation in the economy of Europe, but there is right now nothing to protect all of Europe from disintegration, especially in light of the pending explosion of the Greek situation, which seems clearly to be coming to a head.

So Merkel should be either forced out, or she should be completely reined in, subdued, by forces in Germany from industry, the military, and a larger faction in the SPD, represented by these three individuals. But we should also be aware that the United States has long been running on this geopolitical idea, of preventing collaboration between Germany and Russia. I think that what needs to be done—and it is not just the task of Germany—but all of Europe has to make sure that the sanctions are ended right away. And it's very easy. All we have to say is, we are starting to trade with Russia again, and that would be the very first step to get back to normality.

A Policy of Genocide

But the declaration of decarbonization and economic warfare against Russia are not the only terrible evils which were agreed upon at the G7 summit. They decided on a hard line against Greece, an austerity policy to the total advantage of the too-big-to-fail banks, and one should note that 97% of all the so-called rescue packages, really went back to the banks. And what is being imposed on Greece is the kind of debt dungeon, or debt corset, in the tradition of Versailles and Brüning. And Jean Ziegler, who's a prominent Swiss activist and UN representative, basically said the modern slaveholders are sitting in the upper floors of the banks and multinationals. And he called the present system of globalization "cannibalistic," and that is absolutely true.

UNHCR/F. Malavolta These refugees from Africa and the Middle East were rescued in the Mediterranean in April 2015. Here they’re shown arriving in Palermo, Italy.

Your average Eurocentrist will say: Oh, Mr. Ziegler is too radical. But if you think about it, is it not true? What is the difference between the ships of the slave traders and plantation owners of the Confederacy, where thousands of people drowned or died of hunger and thirst, and the refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, where many thousands of people, almost every week, are risking their lives and that of their children, having a 50% chance of not making it, running away from wars in the Middle East, starvation, and epidemics in Africa, and terrorism?

The EU policy on refugees, for me, reflects the total moral bankruptcy of that institution. Because the EU is only serving the interests of the too-big-to-fail banks and the IMF, which are run by the interests which basically have turned the whole developing sector into a plantation. You think about the land grab, speculation on scarcity of water, blocking water management projects with the purpose of having high water prices, to speculate in bottled water, controlling the food chain. Jean Ziegler said that every child who dies of hunger, is murdered. And I agree. Because it would be so easy to solve it. It would take half a year, and you could eliminate that from happening.

youtube/Newsy Source The toll of the Ebola “pestilence” in Sierra Leone in September 2014.

A few days ago, on the plane, I watched the movie "Twelve Years a Slave," which is a remarkable movie. I normally don't encourage people to watch movies, but this one is very advisable. Because it captures the mentality of the slaveholders which is today alive and kicking in the U.S. pro-British tendency.

Behind this unipolar world outlook, is, in reality, the mentality of plantation owners and slaveholders in the modern form. Granted, the CEOs of too-big-to-fail banks and the EU bureaucrats probably don't have the perverse lust which is portrayed in this movie, where you can really say that the sadism and absolutely disgusting mentality goes to the borders of what human beings should be able to do. But nevertheless, they are the masterminds, behind the desks; they are the perpetrators at the desks; they speculate with CO₂ certificates, and they couldn't care less about the consequences of their policies. As long as they have profit, what happens to the people as a result, leaves them completely indifferent.

This brings us back to Mr. Attenborough, who said that we human beings are the plague on the Earth, and that we have to fight the explosion in human numbers. He is associated with the so-called Optimum Population Trust (now called Population Matters), which basically says that the present number of people on the planet, has to be reduced before the end of the century to half—that would be 3.5 billion. One in every two people? You have to take it very personally.

Friedrich Schiller, in the very beautiful essay "The Legislation of Lycurgus and Solon," portrayed Sparta as the oligarchical model, in which he said that the oligarchical model permits the elimination of the so-called helots. They can be killed off if there are too many. Bertrand Russell, in his book The Impact of Science on Society, wrote:

Bad times, you may say, are exceptional, and can be dealt with by exceptional methods. This has been more or less true during the honeymoon period of industrialism, but it will not remain true, unless the increase of population can be enormously diminished. At present the population of the world is increasing at about 58,000 per diem. War, so far, has had no very great effect on this increase, which continued through each of the world wars... War has hitherto been disappointing in this respect... but perhaps bacteriological war may prove more effective. If a Black Death could spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. The state of affairs might be unpleasant, but what of it? Really high-minded people are indifferent to happiness, especially of other people.

In his Prospects of Industrial Civilization, Russell wrote:

The white population of the world will soon cease to increase. The Asiatic races will be longer, and the negroes still longer, before their birth rate falls sufficiently to make their numbers stable without help of war and pestilence... Until that happens, the benefits aimed at by socialism can only be partially realized, and the less prolific races will have to defend themselves against the more prolific by methods which are disgusting even if they are necessary.

With that mindset, a splendid little war—as the British always used to call it—seems to be just the right thing, even a splendid little nuclear war. It may be disgusting, but necessary.

The Promise of the Silk Road

Now, fortunately, there is an alternative.

Since about two years ago, when President Xi Jinping announced the New Silk Road and the maritime Silk Road, and especially since the Fortaleza Summit in July 2014, there has been a completely different economic system. The BRICS have made among themselves an enormous number of deals: areas of cooperation, involving infrastructure, science and technology, nuclear energy, space development, worth several trillions of euros, dollars, and so forth.

From the standpoint of European habits of the last couple of years, these countries have done so with an unbelievable speed, and other organizations have coalesced around the BRICS. All of Latin America, most of ASEAN, parts of Africa, and even Europe. With Chinese help, they are now building a second Panama Canal in Nicaragua. The Chinese are planning to build a trans-continental railway between Brazil and Peru. This plan was concluded at the recent visit of Prime Minister Li Keqiang in Latin America. And they are also building four tunnels between Chile and Argentina, all with direct Chinese investment.

But beyond that, the BRICS have created a completely parallel financial system: the New Development Bank, with initial capital of $100 billion; the Currency Reserve Arrangement, which is a pool to defend participating countries against speculation; the AIIB, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, where, contrary to the wishes of the Obama Administration, 58 nations rushed to be founding members, including France, Germany, Italy, and Scandinavia. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has a new bank; so does SAARC, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation. There is a New Silk Road development fund, and a Maritime Silk Road Fund. And they all have the explicit aim of filling the vacuum that has been left by the IMF and the World Bank, who only spend $60 billion a year for infrastructure investment, and therefore, these banks have now engaged in an effort to invest in huge infrastructure development programs all over the developing sector.

Xinhua/Ding Lin Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in Santiago, Chile with Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, on May 25, 2015.

Now the main impetus of this clearly came from the Chinese President Xi Jinping, but there is also an extremely strong strategic partnership between Russia and China. The New Silk Road, and "One Road, One Belt" policy has, in the recent period, completely integrated with the Eurasian Economic Union of Russia, Belarus, Kazakstan, Armenia, and Kyrgyzstan. There is an extremely close strategic cooperation between Russia and India, and at a recent visit of President Putin to India, President Modi said that India and Russia are united by the strongest strategic partnership in respect to security in the past, and it will be like that for the indefinite future.

Also, between India and China, the strategic partnership has been strengthened, and territorial and other conflicts have been put on ice. At the visit of Li Keqiang to Brazil, a couple of weeks ago, he was able to completely reverse a strategic attack on Brazil by Wall Street, and stop the destabilization efforts against Dilma Rousseff.

Press Trust of India Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (right) and Russian President Vladimir Putin at their press conference in New Delhi, December 11, 2014.

So, there is right now emerging, a completely different model of relations among nations, based on completely different principles. Not so completely different, because they used to be the property of the United Nations, before this imperial policy took over. Like non-interference, respect for the different social models, mutual economic benefit, a "win-win" policy.

Obviously this new model of economy has an enormous attractiveness, and it has led to an eruption of optimism. Projects which have been on the shelf in many countries, have been taken off and are now being realized.

The Chinese economic miracle has become contagious. China, since the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, and especially in the last 30 years, has developed at breathtaking speed, and was able to do what the industrialized nations needed 150 to 200 years to do. China, contrary to the coverage in the Western media, has the best human rights record in the world, because they have transformed 800 million people from extreme poverty, into a very decent living standard. And what is a greater human rights violation than poverty?

Now, with the New Silk Road, China is also intending to upgrade the not-yet-developed parts in its interior region, and upgrade the living standard of the rural population. It has announced that it wants to double the GDP from 2010 to 2020. Now that is a remarkable goal, and it is believable if you look at what happened in the last 30 years.

The Realization of Our Vision

Now, for us in the Schiller Institute, the New Silk Road is a realization of a vision which we started to develop 25 years ago. At the time of the Fall of the Wall, we proposed to unite the region between Paris, Berlin, and Vienna into the so-called Productive Triangle, because the Wall was no longer there. And when the Soviet Union collapsed in '91, (Figure 2) we extended that Productive Triangle into the so-called Eurasian Land-Bridge. This was the idea of uniting the industrial and population centers of Europe with those of Asia, through so-called Development Infrastructure Corridors, but it was not only meant as an economic program. It was deliberately meant as a peace-order for the Twenty-First Century.

FIGURE 2 View full size

The Eurasian Land-Bridge was the idea of having a higher order of reason, where historic conflicts, tensions, ethnic tensions, and so forth—wounds of the battles of the past—would be overcome because there would be a mutual benefit for everybody to participate in this program. It was really, even if we didn't call it that, a "win-win" policy.

Now, naturally, it did not get realized, because of the reason I just said—the Project for a New American Century, the efforts by Bush Sr., Margaret Thatcher, and Mitterrand, to force Germany at the time of the German unification, to give up the D-mark for the euro. And the Maastricht Treaty. But, up to '89, it was the so-called best-kept secret of NATO that Germany was still an occupied country,—and the Maastricht Treaty would insure that Germany would remain an occupied country, by containment, by putting Germany into the straitjacket of the Stability Pact, the debt brake,—and it was clear to us that the euro could not function, because it was not designed to be an economic program. It was a geopolitical attack on Germany.

At that time, we conducted hundreds of conferences and seminars on five continents, and in '96, at a conference in Beijing on the Eurasian Land-Bridge, that program was de facto put on the agenda by the Chinese government to be the strategic perspective for the year 2010. And naturally that got interrupted by the Asia crisis in '97, and the Russian state bankruptcy in '98.

Therefore, we were overjoyed, but not fundamentally surprised, when Xi Jinping announced the New Silk Road.

Now, for about two years, the mainstream media has completely ignored the fact that a parallel economic system is developing, or they slandered it by giving Putin a bad name, or Xi Jinping. But for the last four weeks, you have a flood of articles. As in Time magazine: "New Silk Road Could Change Global Economics Forever;" "Great Infrastructure Projects in History—This is a great game over the control of Eurasia, It could lead to a New Cold War. The outcome is uncertain."

Deutschlandfunk also has had coverage of the New Silk Road.

Most of these articles are all of a sudden saying, there is a completely new system, but you know, it is still really geopolitics. And they completely miss the point that this is explicitly a way to overcome geopolitics by inviting everybody in the whole world to participate.

Athens’ Solon (left) versus Sparta’s Lycurgus (right) represent two contrasting models of the state and nature of man.

They also say, China must have a secret agenda. They want to take over the world. They want to replace American imperialism with Chinese imperialism, and it is very clear that the journalists and politicians of the trans-Atlantic region, have an extremely hard time imagining that there could be governments which are devoted to the common good. Because you have not had such governments for such a long time, that it's almost a distant memory. It reminds me of Hegel's words, when he wrote that if a world-historical individual has a valet (a butler), that the valet, who sees the world-historical individual always in only his underwear, cannot imagine that he's a world-historical individual. But he says, this is not because the world-historical individual is not a world-historical individual, but because the valet is a valet.

Now, the key to understanding the real motives of China is Confucius.

From Confucius to Schiller: The Beautiful Soul

Confucius has, along with Mencius, influenced Chinese philosophy, actually the Chinese state philosophy, for about 2,500 years. That philosophy has an image of man that man is good by nature. The key notions of the Chinese philosophy are ren, which is the idea corresponding to agapē—love, charity in the Christian tradition; and the idea of li, meaning principle, which is the idea that if each person and each thing develops in the best possible way, you have harmony in society. This corresponds to the idea of Nicolas of Cusa, that if each microcosm develops in the best way, you have concordance in the macrocosm; or the idea of the monad of Leibniz, that if each develops his fullest potential, you have harmony.

Now, the idea of harmony is very central to Confucian philosophy. It is not an aesthetic relationship, but a contrapuntal development of mutual forward development: If all microcosms develop in the optimal way, you have harmony in the macrocosm.

There's also the idea that there is such a thing as the Mandate of Heaven: that there must be harmony between nature and man, and this comes originally from the idea of God's will of the Western Zhou dynasty, from 1046-771 B.C., which said that there must be harmony between the heavens and man, and that they are closely related.

This concept, by the way, exists in all great religions and philosophies: You have the same idea of cosmology in India, coming from the Hindu tradition. You have it in the form of natural law in the European tradition. And it is really what we have to come to as humanity, if we are to overcome the present level of thinking.

Harmony without uniformity is what Confucius writes about in his Analects. Unity in diversity is the idea as expressed by Nicolas of Cusa. In the Book of Rites, which is the preface to the Great Learning of Confucius,—it's attributed to him,—he says:

The ancients, wishing that all men under Heaven keep their inborn luminous virtue unobscured, first had to govern the nation well; wishing to govern the nation well, they first established harmony in their household; wishing to establish harmony within their households, they first cultivated themselves; wishing to cultivate themselves, they first set their minds in the right; wishing to set their minds in the right, they first developed sincerity of thought; wishing to have sincerity of thought, they first extended their knowledge to the utmost. The extension of knowledge to the utmost lies in fully apprehending the principle of things.

Now, harmony in society and among nations is based on an understanding of the principles of things. This is the same idea Friedrich Schiller has in the Aesthetical Letters, that only scientists and Classical artists understand the truth. Xi Jinping, in his book Governance of China, which is a collection of 71 of his speeches, 2013-14, reflects this Confucian spirit. He quotes an ancient Chinese saying:

Learning is the bow, while competence is the arrow. You should regard learning as the top priority, a responsibility, a moral support and a lifestyle. You should establish a conviction that dreams start from learning.

Xi said:

This is what Confucius meant when he said 'if you can in one day renovate yourself, do so from day to day.' Yes, let there be daily renovation. Life never favors those who follow the beaten track, and are satisfied with the status quo, and it never waits for the unambitious and those who sit idle and enjoy the fruits of others' work.

This is what Lyndon LaRouche says to us every day: that we cannot do today what we did yesterday, and that each day we have to be creative and innovative. Xi Jinping quotes Victor Hugo, who said, "Things created are insignificant, when compared with things to be created."

China has been able to progress step by step over centuries, thanks to the tenacity of generations, one after another, and to the nation's spirit of constant self-improvement through hard work. "Innovation-based economy" is what China is aiming at and already realizing: not to have "Made in China," but "Created in China." Xi Jinping has demanded breakthroughs in basic scientific fields such as the structure of matter, the evolution of the universe, the origin of life, and the nature of consciousness.

China’s work on the frontiers of science includes thermonuclear fusion power. Here, China’s EAST fusion reactor, the first fully superconducting Tokamak in the world.

Where does the new road lie? It lies in scientific and technological innovation, the acceleration of innovation-driven growth, and he also said that they are proud to have the most scientists and engineers in the world.

But I was most impressed when I found this quote by Xi Jinping:

Like the spring drizzle falling without a sound, we should disseminate the core socialist values in a gentle and lively way, by making use of all kinds of cultural forms. We should inform the people by means of fine literary works, and artistic images: What is the true, the good, and the beautiful? What is the false, the evil, and the ugly? And what should be praised and encouraged, and what should be opposed and repudiated?

I wish we would have politicians in Europe and in the United States who call for the "implementation of the true, the good, and the beautiful." Because the idea, that there is a coherence between those—the true, the good, and the beautiful—was the idea of the ancient Greek Classics; that there is a knowable truth; that man is good; that when he is a truth-seeking individual, what he then discovers is beauty, as well as that the process of discovery is beautiful. The idea of "the true, the good, and the beautiful," is the essence of the German Classical period, and Friedrich Schiller said, "Art is only art if it is beautiful, because only then does it elevate the human soul."

Now, by that definition, most of what is being produced today, does not qualify as art, because it's not beautiful. Because the idea of beauty is an idea derived from reason, not from sensuous experience. Schiller is emphatic on that: that you do not define beauty by your opinion, your likings, but that there is an idea of beauty associated with reason, although at the same time, it appeals to the senses; and that through aesthetical education, beauty becomes the synonym for the happy reconciliation between reason and sensuousness: That in beauty, things harmonize.

For Friedrich Schiller, the highest idea of man was the beautiful soul for whom freedom and necessity, passion and duty, are one. But also, the analogy between beauty and freedom is pretty obvious, because both are not determined from the outside, but from the inside. The greatest idea of self-determination reflects itself from certain characteristics of nature, and that we call "beauty."

The Poet of Freedom, Friedrich Schiller

But beauty is also, according to Schiller, a necessary condition of mankind. The state is merely the means; the goal is humanity alone. The ideal of the state presumes, therefore, the ideal of mankind, and the idea of mankind is based on the laws of the beautiful. Schiller in 1789 writes to his friend Körner:

What is the life of man if you take away what art gives to him? An eternally discovered sight of destruction. Because if you take out of our life what serves beauty, the only thing remaining is need, and what is need, other than protection against the always-threatening demise?

Schiller, with that, most convincingly argues against the state whose only purpose is the maintenance of power, which is what the state is today! The politicians have no interest in beauty or the perfection of their people, but in keeping their job, in keeping their position. But only when the beautiful has become the purpose of the life of the people and nations, rather than the necessity of organizing everything for protection against permanently-threatening doom, do you have humanity. The condition of the West, especially in the United States after September 11 should really looked be at from the standpoint of the soon-to-be-published 28 pages, revealing who really financed the terrorist attack; and the DIA documents pertaining to what really happened in the Benghazi attack. But the war against terrorism has become a hydra, where life has become quite miserable by being reduced to only protecting people against the threat of terrorism.

Therefore, this new model of cooperation among nations is not a utopia, but a vision of the future. The closest thinker in the European philosophical tradition to Confucius, Nicolas of Cusa, created an epochal new philosophical approach, which really separated the Middle Ages from modern times: He said the principle bringing about order and wholeness, the idea of concordance, of a universal concordance in the universe, is that harmony is not an aesthetic thing, but that in a contrapuntal way, the different microcosms must develop each other to the fullest, to the benefit of the other—the "win-win" idea; also the principle of the Peace of Westphalia.

Why is it that some people can see and believe in this vision, and others cannot? It's an epistemological problem. Cusa makes the distinction between ratio, what Lyndon LaRouche calls "practical people," and the intellect and reason. On the level of the ratio, the understanding, you have the level of Aristotelian contradictions of what we perceive with the senses. The intellect, however, reason, transcends the ratio; the intellect is situated as an indestructible prescience; it is our eye for the search for truth. If we didn't have that, we would not even start the search, or even if we found something, we wouldn't know if that were what we sought. The intellect is an intuitive insight, which allows us to see the coherences and conceptions of causal relations, of connectivities. It is a new method of thinking, completely different from the discursive way of thinking. The Aristotelian practical man, according to Nicolas of Cusa, is like a horse tied to a feeding trough, who only eats what is put in the trough.

If you are on the level of the intellect, you have to free yourself from established opinions to be open for new thinking. And one has to break free from the trough. "You can't do anything anyway," that is what most Europeans say when you talk to them about that. But it's not true! Why should Europe go along with a policy like the U.S. nuclear missiles in Europe, which only makes Europe the target of its own extinction? Why should we get drawn into another war based on lies? The lies of those around the Ukraine crisis?

FIGURE 3 View full size

The truth must come out of that. It is not enough to oppose the war, but we have to do, maybe what Charles de Gaulle did in 1966: namely, disassociate from NATO. More important, we have to implement these existing solutions. We have to mobilize like nothing in our lifetime before, to get the European nations and the United States to join with the World Land-Bridge, and to create a peace order for the Twenty-First century. By joining the New Silk Road and the World Land-Bridge (Figure 3), we not only cooperate with the developing countries, like Africa and Latin America, to develop them, but we need to rebuild the United States! We need to have a transcontinental fast train system across the United States, because the infrastructure in the United States has completely collapsed. We have to declare a war on the desert, because California, Texas, the states west of the Mississippi, are being destroyed by drought.

We have to do what Prime Minister Modi of India said: we have to build 100 new "smart cities," which we called for many years ago, "Cusanus Cities," although it would take too long to discuss this now. We have to build up southern Europe, the Middle East, Africa; we have to overcome hunger; we have to create a world which is livable for every human being. We have to create a new paradigm based on the common aims of mankind.

We have to consciously initiate the next phase of the evolution of the human species, and agree on joint space exploration. All the BRICS countries are space-travelling nations, and Europe and the United States have to accelerate their efforts to cooperate on that. We have to take the view of the astronauts, cosmonauts, and taikonauts, who, when they look at the blue planet from outer space, always say, "there are no borders," and they realize how small our planet is, in a very large Solar System, and even larger Galaxy, in the middle of billions of galaxies.

And if we want to exist in 100 years, in 1,000 years, in 100 million years from now, we should prove that those geophysicists who say that mankind only arrived one second before 12, and will disappear one second after 12, are wrong: That mankind, so far, is the only creative species we know.

Vladimir Vernadsky said that the nösphere will gain more and more dominance over the biosphere because the human creative process will become more important in the universe, and that is what we have to focus on. Because the future of mankind is one where the identity of each individual as a genius will become the rule. Each man becoming a genius in the future: But for that to arrive, beauty is a necessary condition of mankind.