EDITORIAL
Revolt of the Lame Ducks in Berlin:
The Music of History Plays Elsewhere
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chairwoman of the German political party Civil Rights Movement Solidarity (BüSo)
[Print version of this article]
Nov. 19—The great waves of hysteria in die-hard Atlanticist circles and the mass media, which were already sweeping in before the U.S. election, have reached an unprecedented scale since Trump’s victory, and give us clinical insight into the mental state and understanding of democracy of these people. Evidently they would rather have a President Hillary Clinton and a Third World War resulting from her announced Syria policy, than the potential improvement of Russian-American relations, which is indispensable for establishing world peace and achieving positive solutions for Syria and Ukraine.
It is truly remarkable: After the repudiated President Obama managed to find three days to stay at Berlin’s Hotel Adlon, and to dine and talk with his friend Angela Merkel, and then to hold a mini-summit of the self-appointed European “Six,” the two of them decided—along with the other heads of state—to prolong the sanctions against Russia for another year. These not-so-secure others were French President François Hollande (7% approval rating), Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi (the likely loser in an Italian referendum on Dec. 4), Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (interim head of state of a minority government), and the hapless British Prime Minister Theresa May. It is doubtful that they will contribute to cohesion in the EU with this move to make themselves a virtual Directorate of the European Union, and then decree a policy which half of the EU member countries oppose.
Our Inalienable Rights
This self-anointed “Six” have obviously not yet grasped that their variant of neoliberal policy, based on confrontation with Russia and China, was voted out in the Brexit vote in June and in the recent presidential election in the United States.
They have not understood that a situation has developed in the trans-Atlantic world that is evoked in the American Declaration of Independence: namely, that if governments have become “destructive” “of the ends” of their mandate—specifically, to guarantee the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—then it is the right of the people, indeed it is their “their duty” to alter or abolish such a government. The “long train of abuses and usurpations” elaborated in the Declaration of Independence corresponds exactly to what those people whom Hillary Clinton so contemptuously called the “basket of deplorables” have endured under Obama’s policies—abuses and usurpations which they did not want continued under a President Hillary Clinton.
The self-anointed Six, and above all, the utterly crazed members of the media, who themselves do not shrink from issuing threats against Trump, disguised as humor, are so imprisoned in their own ideology that they cannot grasp the natural-law dimension of this revolution.
Yet the New York Times on Nov. 18 published an article on its front page with the headline “Trump-Size Idea for a New President: Build Something Inspiring.” The Times stated correctly that Trump can only unite the country if he brings on line investments in great infrastructure projects, the likes of which have been totally ignored over the last decades. He must build modern versions of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Golden Gate Bridge, Hoover Dam, and Lincoln Tunnel. Then the “newspaper of record” enumerated Roosevelt’s most important projects. But the article is, of course, far behind the program of Lyndon LaRouche, who in 2015 published a proposal to build the New Silk Road in the United States—a program of large-scale infrastructure building and reindustrialization—which would integrate the United States into the World Land-Bridge.
The APEC Summit
Meanwhile, the “win-win cooperation” for development of the New Silk Road is going forward in giant steps. It is the dominant theme at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, the Peruvian capital, on Nov. 19-20, in which Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, as well as Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, are participating and at which they are also holding bilateral meetings. Abe had met with President-elect Trump beforehand, and attested to his admirable leadership qualities.
President Xi paid a state visit to Ecuador prior to the APEC summit and has state visits scheduled in Peru and Chile afterwards. President Xi and Ecuador’s President Rafael Correa agreed on a “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership” between their two nations, which involves regular, wide-ranging exchange and cooperation on a broad range of issues. Among them are strengthened productive investment, the development of economic and trade relations, economic cooperation, and cooperation in science and technology. China has already provided generous aid for the reconstruction of buildings and grounds which were destroyed in the severe earthquake in April of this year.
President Correa gave eloquent thanks to China in which he stressed that the two countries were of a like mind. China wants to place its economy on the foundation of innovation; Ecuador seeks to progress from being an exporter of goods to being a knowledge-based economy. Without Chinese financing and technology transfer, it would be impossible. In a joint declaration, they pledged to work together for the realization of great projects in the areas of oil, gas, mining, infrastructure, water, water management, communications, the financial sector, agriculture, petrochemical production, shipbuilding, metallurgy, paper production, and the construction of a new science city. In his speech, President Correa stressed that President Xi’s state visit was the most important event in the history of Ecuador.
Can you imagine Chancellor Merkel going to Greece with such a program? Probably not. Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble turns red when a journalist asks about partial debt relief—as he did at a bankers’ conference in Frankfurt—and then pontificates about the Greeks having lived beyond their means. This, after the Troika’s austerity policy has driven 45 percent of Greeks below the poverty line. The policy of the trans-Atlantic sector is not “win-win,” but “lose-lose”—unless, of course, one is a banker or a corporate executive.
The Interests of One Mankind
Now that Obama’s free trade deal for Asia, the TPP, is now as dead as the TTIP deal for the Atlantic region, it is the Chinese-designed, inclusive Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) and the Regional Comprehensive Partnership (RCEP) that are on the agenda.
In answer to irresponsible media articles about these trade agreements, official Russian and Chinese spokesmen stressed that they are in no way intended to shut out or isolate the United States. Xinhua quoted Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Geng Shuang saying that China would not seize a leading role in either the FTAAP or the RCEP, and that the trade agreements are proposed for working together, not against one another. The contrast with Obama’s “the United States makes the rules” could not be clearer.
Another important subject of discussion at the APEC conference is the construction of the bioceanic railroad from Brazil to Peru, from the Atlantic to the Pacific, which will also be built with China’s help, and whose construction is an important step toward the infrastructural development of the Latin American continent.
The contrast between the two paradigms, between the “win-win perspective” of the New Silk Road, versus the “Western community of values” of Obama and Merkel, could not be more obvious. In the first, nations work for the mutual advantage of their common development. In the latter, there is much talk of democracy, freedom, and human rights, but a deafening silence on drone strikes, regime change against legitimate governments with the aid of terrorist groups, total surveillance, and life-shortening austerity policies.
As Abraham Lincoln once said: “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. But you can’t fool all of the people all of the time.”
It is high time that Germany freed itself from the grip of the fantasy of imperial dominance, be it dictated from Washington and London, or the derivative of “More Europe.” Mankind’s future can only lie in a completely new paradigm that serves the interests of one mankind and respects international law—a paradigm through which the creative potential of every human being on this planet can be developed. And that is exactly why we need to cooperate with the New Silk Road.
Written for the newspaper Neue Solidarität and translated from German.
