Statement by Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Jacques Cheminade
Against the Threat of a New World War
Let Us Build the
Eurasian Train for Peace
[Print version of this statement]
On the sidelines of the Oct. 21, 2016 Schiller Institute conference in Essen, Germany, on the prospects opened for Europe by the New Silk Road Policy of China, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, president of the German Schiller Institute, and Jacques Cheminade, French Presidential candidate, made the following statement.
Never since 1945 has the world been so close to a new world war, which today would be a nuclear conflict. At the same time, however, never have the possibilities for establishing a new world order of peace and development, been so great.
The danger of war is coming from an attempt by the Western powers to maintain their hegemony over the world at all costs, despite the fact that they have nothing but wars and financial looting to offer. The great hope is coming from a rising group of countries—Russia, China, India, and the BRICS—fighting for a world where all have the right to progress through development in science, advanced technologies, and industry; a world of peace and stability based on the international body of law that emerged from the victory against Nazism, and which is embodied in the UN Charter.
The only alternative to the policies of the Washington Consensus, which have led us to the present crisis, is the New Silk Road project proposed by China, as a policy for peace and cooperation worldwide. This project, which is already a reality for the 70 countries that are participating in it, is the biggest project of industrial recovery ever to have existed on the planet, mobilizing close to $1 trillion in scientific research and great infrastructure projects in Eurasia, Ibero-America and Africa.
Patriots and world citizens in the tradition of de Gaulle’s and Adenauer’s Europe of the Fatherlands and great projects, we call on our governments to immediately join the efforts of these rising powers, and to demand from the United States and Britain that they bury the Empire’s axe of war.
We should immediately respond to three great projects being proposed, all of which are within our reach and directly concern our national interests:
1. France and Germany must start building with China, the Silk Road freight train of the future, coming from China and branching towards different countries in Europe. Convoys exist already, but have great difficulty in crossing all borders. We must envisage now, a Silk Road train which will run in a Eurasian continent which 30 years from now will be as developed as China today. This railway, running on single standard unified tracks and having minimal border controls, must be, in the tradition of Lincoln’s Transcontinental Railway, and of the Trans-Siberian Railway, a trans-Eurasian railroad, built by a Europe of the Fatherlands and of great projects. An agreement will be necessary from China, Russia, and all the other countries which the train will traverse.
2. France and Germany must respond to the efforts of China and Russia to bring the Middle East wars of destruction, ignited by the Western powers, to an end, and to begin the reconstruction. These policies are the only human response, not only to those countries’ plight, but also to the ever-increasing flow of immigrants to our countries.
3. France and Germany must work towards joint great projects with China in Africa. A joint framework to that effect was already signed by France and China on June 30th, 2015. The priority must go to large-scale infrastructure projects: dams, railroads, and energy including nuclear power.
When the Western elites have no other policies than to impose brutal austerity on populations to save a financial world dead since the 2008 crisis; when the only way for the West to maintain its hegemony is through deployment or toleration of bloody Nazis in Ukraine and hideous jihadists in the Middle East—clearly, we can say with China, that if the West wants to maintain the mandate of Heaven to govern, it must change.
