Helga Zepp-LaRouche

Let's Win Mission Impossible, or Find Another Planet

This is the edited transcript of the presentation of Helga Zepp-LaRouche to Panel 1, “A Decoupling of the Two Systems or a New Paradigm for Humanity?” of the Schiller Institute’s June 18-19 Conference, “There Can Be No Peace Without the Bankruptcy Reorganization of the Dying Trans-Atlantic Financial System.” Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche is the founder of the Schiller Institute.

Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends of the Schiller Institute all over the world, imagine you are sitting in a high-speed train which is going at 1,000 miles an hour. You know that the railroad will, in a few minutes, reach a cliff, which means that the train will crash into an abyss in which the train, including all the passengers, will die in a hell of fire. And you know that the engine driver is totally mad, and will do absolutely nothing to prevent a certain train wreck.

That is approximately the situation the people of the United States, of Europe, and unfortunately the entire world as a result, find themselves in. Only it is much worse, because the train wreck is actually a nuclear war. A hell of fire [that] is actually five times hotter than the center of our Sun, which is 100 million degrees Kelvin; because that is the temperature caused by a nuclear explosion. If you can’t find the emergency brake, and pull it in time, afterward there will be a nuclear winter, and there will be nobody to even investigate how it came to this final moment in the history of the once-promising human species.

The train I’m describing here is the policy of NATO, of the U.S., the EU, and the countries who side with them and their central banks. The fateful train got on the wrong track, ending with the crash over the cliff with the hubris that guided the intention to establish a unipolar world based on the Anglo-American Special Relationship, when the Soviet Union disintegrated, and the West arrogantly declared itself the winner of the Cold War. It is important to recognize that the intention to “ruin Russia” has been there since the end of the Soviet Union. This is not Russian propaganda; it is a very well-documented historical fact. The Western-induced “shock therapy” against the economy of the Yeltsin period had the explicit intention to reduce a nuclear superpower into a Third World, raw material exporting country, which reduced the Russian industrial capacity from 1991 to 1994 to only 30%. It resulted in a demographic collapse of 1 million fewer Russians per year. George Soros did everything possible to organize a brain drain, to eliminate Russia as a potential competitor.

NATO Expansions and More

Four NATO expansions to the east, including the establishment of the Aegis Ashore missile defense system in Poland and Romania; the MK-41 launchers which can be used to launch Tomahawk missiles and other strike systems, were part of a continuous policy of encirclement, against which Russia repeatedly issued red lines indicating where they would see their existential security interests threatened, and against which Russia developed the new nuclear systems, like the hypersonic missile Avangard, a highly maneuverable intercontinental missile with a speed of Mach 20; the hypersonic cruise missile Kinzhal; fast underwater drones; the hypersonic cruise missile Tsirkon, etc.

Other wagons were added to the train along the road, such as the color revolution, the interference into the internal affairs of former Warsaw Pact countries financed to the billions by the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), the IRI (International Republican Institute), or the U.S. State Department. Or even a Western-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, which brought in Nazi groups which had been the assets of Western intelligence services since World War II; to which the Russian-speaking populations of Crimea and Donbas did not wish to submit.

When Putin reacted to the increasing military activities by the Ukrainian Army, which now it is clear had been trained by the U.S. and British military for many years, as well as maneuvers flying U.S. bombers capable of carrying nuclear weapons up to the Russian border, by demanding legally binding security guarantees from the United States and NATO on December 17th, he not only got no answers to the core demands—namely guarantees that Ukraine would not become a member of NATO and no offensive weapons would be installed at the Russian border—but unnamed White House officials stated explicitly in an anonymous “background briefing” on January 25th—that is, before the military invasion in Ukraine—that the aim of the sanctions regime was to “devastate” the Russian economy, and prevent any attempt of modernization and diversification away from raw materials production.

On March 4th, the Financial Times gloated that the “weaponizing of the financial architecture” by the West, would drive Russia into a government debt default. And there is the quote from French Finance Minister Bruno Le Maire, with a statement that was so vitriolic that he had to withdraw it:

We will provoke the collapse of the Russian economy. We are waging total economic and financial war against Russia, Putin, and his government. And let’s be clear—the Russian people will also pay the consequences.

The Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the self-proclaimed oldest military think tank of the British monarchy, described the policy against Russia as “boiling the Russian frog.” You all know this image, that the frog does not jump out of the water if you slowly increase the temperature. RUSI calls to provoke a Cuban Missile Crisis on steroids over the Ukrainian attempt to retake Crimea militarily and to come up with creative and nuanced proposals on how to steal Russian frozen assets.

On cue, Ukrainian General Dmytro Marchenko declared that once the necessary weapons were received, the destruction of the Kerch Bridge connecting the Russian mainland with Crimea would be Target #1, and the weapons would be used to retake Crimea. The delivery by the U.S. of long-range weapons into Ukraine and their possible use to strike into Russian territory, such as the High Mobility Rocket System (HIMARS), makes the United States, under international law, immediately a participant in the war, which could trigger, instantly, a hot war between Russia and the United States, which no side would want to lose. Therefore, an escalation to a full nuclear exchange could happen very quickly.

Our Mad Engine Driver

Coming back to the image of the mad engine driver in our train, the horrifying reality seems to be that the establishment of the West is playing this thermonuclear chicken game without, apparently, having the intelligence to think through that the consequences of this reckless adventurism could be the annihilation of all of us, including themselves.

While it is clear to the leaders of a great number of countries in the world, in Africa, Latin America, and Asia, that the present strategic crisis did not start on February 24th with “Putin’s unprovoked war of aggression,” the synchronized war propaganda coming from almost all politicians, the media, and think tanks in the United States and Europe reflect a deep-seated hateful mindset against Russia, and increasingly also against China, which has nothing to do with the reality of these countries; as everybody knows who does know them, but which is the result of the perpetuation of the Cold War mentality, ready to risk the hot war at any moment, which apparently has been cultivated over the last three decades as a group-think in the institutions of the mainstream. The desire to “ruin Russia” as the unspeakable NATO-assigned German Foreign Minister expresses, is a return to barbarism in international relations, and reflects a deep-rooted problem in her understanding of diplomacy, which she should represent as the First Diplomat of the country.

The offer for Ukraine to join the EU, even as a candidate, which was made by Scholz, Macron, Draghi, and Iohannis at their recent trip to Kyiv, is again a further step in the escalation. In reality, it is the equivalent of offering Ukraine NATO membership, because since 2007, there is the duty of military assistance in the EU Treaty, and Ukraine could demand military assistance from all EU member states, of which all but four are also members of NATO. That means that if only one country gets militarily involved in warfighting, this country can automatically invoke the duty of assistance of NATO. This comes on top of all the deliveries of heavy weapons systems and training of Ukraine troops, as well as the deployment of foreign mercenaries inside Ukraine, which according to U.S. Constitutional expert Bruce Fein, has made the U.S., Great Britain, and other countries involved already co-belligerents.

To stay with the image of the train, the front wheels of the locomotive could be hanging over the cliff already. Obviously, Russia and other countries could not avoid noticing that the U.S. and her allies have gone far beyond the simple containment towards the Soviet Union of the Cold War, but that the West now openly speaks about “ruining Russia,” to cut relations forever, as if we were not living on the same Eurasian continent. In this geometry, there is no room for a diplomatically negotiated end of the war in Ukraine, but only a “victory” of Ukraine and a “defeat” of Russia. In this scenario, the desired decimation of Russia then creates room for a containment strategy against China, which the U.S. and Great Britain regard as the most challenging competitor. The campaign to also disentangle from China economically, accompanied by similar demonization is already in full swing.

The net result of all of this is not only that we are teetering on the verge of a global nuclear war, but that we are in a gigantic process of self-destruction of our economy, our social stability, and the very foundations of our society. This policy will ruin the U.S. and British economy as well, but the effect on Germany will be absolutely catastrophic.

A Blow-Out of the ‘Everything Bubble’

The tendency towards a hyperinflationary blow-out of the “everything bubble” was already in process as the result of the reckless money printing of the central banks, and repeated bail-outs for the banks and speculators since 2008, which was already a systemic collapse of the system, long before the war in Ukraine started. But the effect of the “everything sanctions” and suicidal capitulations by Germany, as in the case of Nord Stream 2 and planned embargos against Russian oil and gas, will drive up the prices for gas, energy, food, and all other essential goods for life in the next weeks and months, and for large segments of the population to an unaffordable height.

What is threatening is a total social collapse; a mass bankruptcy of small and medium enterprises. Already, supply lines in many areas are interrupted, for which China’s COVID policy has only a very small part of responsibility. But the Russian sanctions affect almost all areas. Wood for construction from Russia is no longer there; oil tankers’ insurance are not being paid; fertilizers are lacking; etc.

The effect on the developing countries is by orders of magnitude more devastating. According to the UN and the World Food Program, 1.7 billion people are threatened with famine in the coming period. The entire economies of many countries are completely disintegrating, such as Lebanon or Peru, and many others.

The runaway inflation is already threatening entire segments of industry and agriculture. In the formerly rich Germany, every sixth person is already skipping one meal per day because of the increase of food prices. Starting with the Federal Reserve raising rates by 0.75% now and again in July, the central banks have begun to raise the interest rates. This brings up the immediate danger of a serious debt crisis in the emerging countries, and a chain reaction collapse of firms in the formerly advanced sector. We are in the midst of a blow-out of the entire trans-Atlantic financial system. If this is not remedied soon, we could face a total plunge into chaos before the end of the year, which is even acknowledged by the President of the World Bank, David Malpass.

The sanctions are naturally hurting Russia, but much less than the West, as Putin just triumphantly declared at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum. They are actually almost a blessing in disguise, since they have accelerated the creation of an entirely new financial and economic system in which many principles defined by my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, are being applied. Anchored on China’s Belt and Road Initiative, several organizations are in the process of de-dollarization, a currency which is not regarded as secure after the seizure of assets of several countries by the U.S. Treasury. Multilateral trade is now occurring in rubles, rupees, renminbi, and other national currencies. For Russia, it resulted in a broad Asian change in the geographical structure of its foreign economic relations, which almost fully compensates for the cutting of trade with the EU. A conference of the Eurasian Economic Forum took place [May 26] in Bishkek, [Kyrgyzstan] which discussed—among other things—the introduction of a digital ruble for cross-border payment, bypassing a banking system subject to sanction pressure, and serious investments in R&D to build independent capacities in all fields.

Common Interests of Mankind

The BRICS nations will have their summit in a few days, on June 24th, in China, where they will discuss the inclusion of new members. According to Duma President Volodin, the Emerging G8, of Russia, China, India, Indonesia, Brazil, Mexico, Iran, and Turkey, already has bypassed the G7 in terms of the GDP. Other organizations and nations are working toward a new model of a global order, such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, ASEAN, and many nations in the Global South.

What all of these countries are aiming at, is the wish for common poverty alleviation, real development of their physical economies, national sovereignty, the right to choose their own model of social and economic development, and cooperation in their mutual interests. They have found that it is essentially their cooperation with China and Russia which is the reason why many of them did not bow to pressure to join the condemnation of Russia for what is happening in Ukraine.

So, the “democracies” are really only the U.S., Great Britain, the EU (which, however, is divided), Japan, Australia, and South Korea. So when, at the end of this month, the annual NATO Summit meets in Madrid to present a plan for a Global NATO and a new security doctrine, without a real economic development plan, naturally, which it certainly will not have, it will fail to address the actual needs of a world faced with famine, pandemic, and economic chaos. It will have a big posture, but it will be a colossus on clay feet.

In 1971, my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, made what is very likely the most important and prescient analysis ever made in history. When President Nixon abandoned the Bretton Woods system by taking the dollar off the gold standard, and replacing the fixed exchange rates with floating ones, Lyndon LaRouche made the forecast, half a century ago, that a continuation of that policy would inevitably lead to a new depression, a new fascism, and a new world war, unless a completely different system would be established. This is exactly the point where we are right now.

Lyndon LaRouche’s Four Basic Points

He also prescribed, since long ago, the remedy in four basic points: Unless the trans-Atlantic system should go the way of the hyperinflation of Weimar Germany in 1923, or face a sudden blowout, there needs to be first a global Glass-Steagall banking separation, exactly what Roosevelt did in 1933. That means that the commercial banks must be put through bankruptcy reorganization. Once they have been cleared of different categories of junk such as involvement in derivatives, they have to be put under creditor protection. The other banks and financial institutions have to bring their books in order, but under no circumstances can receive any more bail-out packages under any guise whatsoever. If they can’t live without taxpayer money, they should close up shop.

Secondly, every country needs to set up its own national bank, in the tradition of Alexander Hamilton, as it was done successfully with the Reconstruction Finance Corporation with Roosevelt, and the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau credit institution for reconstruction, which was modelled on the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. This was the main engine for the German economic miracle in the postwar period. This way, the power of credit generation for investment in projects for the common good is given back to the sovereign governments, instead of being the bazooka of the private bankers.

Thirdly, long-term multilateral cooperation agreements have to be set up between these national banks for investments in international infrastructure projects, such as development corridors, industrial parks, agriculture, water management systems, energy production and distribution, a modern health system in every country, education systems, and so forth. These agreements of credits, with long duration and low interest rates, do already represent a new credit system. With that system, there must be periodically fixed exchange values of the national currencies, limited convertibility, exchange and capital controls, and an outlawing of the creation of markets for currency speculation.

And fourthly, there needs to be an international crash program to arrive at the commercial use of fusion technology, because that will give humanity energy and raw materials security, and therefore eliminate a major cause for war in the past. Together with space cooperation and major investments into basic R&D of life sciences, this will create for the world economy the next economic platform with a higher productivity, which will compensate for the losses in productivity due to the monetarist and falsely understood ecological policies of the neoliberal model.

The Happy Courage To Do Good

Why did I give this presentation the title “Mission Impossible”? Because literally everything—the continued existence of the entire humankind—depends on the prospect that we can convince the United States and European nations to stop the insane, costly, and self-destructive policy of confrontation with Russia and China, go for an immediate ceasefire and diplomatic solution in Ukraine, and start the process of reconstruction of the world economy. The way out of both the war danger and the financial collapse is a new security and development architecture which takes the interest of every country on the planet into account; that of Russia, China, the United States, European nations, and emphatically that of the developing countries. Given the present policies of the “democracies,” this seems impossible, but it is not.

In the coming weeks and months, the utter failure of the neoliberal model will become so absolutely clear to everyone, that neither “freezing for freedom” as the German Economic Minister Habeck suggests, who wants to decree how cold it has to be in the apartments, nor “starving for democracy,” will have much appeal.

What we need now is a movement of state citizens, of ordinary people from all walks of life, who become leaders when they see that their country has been hijacked by a policy establishment that doesn’t care about them; that only thinks about how to protect their positions and privileges, and whose policies have created a class of millionaires and billionaires, and the majority of people whose life savings are eaten up by hyperinflation.

In each nation, we need a movement of citizens who have the courage to act to correct what they know to be wrong, who refuse to submit to the presently unbearable “opinion dictatorship” which allows only the official NATO narrative to be repeated, and which accuses anybody who tries to shed some light on why we are in this crisis, to be a Putin agent or in the service of the Communist Party of China.

Why not invite commentators from Russia, China, India, Mexico, Afghanistan, Ghana, Syria, or Pakistan into our talk shows, instead of the ever-same clique of synchronized pundits who try to make us believe the Earth is flat, and that the snow is black? Yes, for the sake of the wonderful democracy and human rights, let us discuss the case of Julian Assange, and what crime he committed. Let us reject what is rotten in our culture: the perversion and banality of the entertainment industry, which is designed to make us stupid and passive.

To win Mission Impossible, we have to revive the best cultural tradition in every country in Europe and in the United States; the Asians are already doing it. The Germans have to become again a people of poets and philosophers. The Italians, great artists of the Renaissance; the French, scientists of the École Polytechnique. The Americans should turn their country again into a temple of liberty and a beacon of hope. Only if we are willing to change ourselves in this way and become better human beings who don’t go around like beast-men or beast-women for that matter, who want to “ruin” other countries, but who want them to develop in the best possible way, who want them to blossom and have all the talents of their people unfold, will we have a beautiful future for ourselves.

And then, we have the courage to get up and pull the brake of that terrible train we are sitting in and stop the dash into Armageddon. Thank you.