This article appears in the December 9, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Address to BRICS International School
The Principles Required for a New Paradigm of International Relations
[Print version of this article]
It is a great honor and an even greater pleasure for me to talk to you, the young leaders of the BRICS countries and countries who may join the BRICS soon. I would like to talk to you about what the Schiller Institute is actually trying to do in this incredible, pregnant moment of history, as Friedrich Schiller would call it. A moment which is fraught with even the danger of the present geopolitical conflict—between NATO on the one side and Russia and China on the other—escalating into a thermonuclear war, which could be the annihilation of mankind, but which also has all the potential to be the transition point to a completely new and much better epoch in the history of mankind.
This new currency will be based not on monetarist values, such as the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) of the IMF, but on a basket of commodities. New credit institutions are being designed to finance development projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Some History
When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991 with amazing tranquility, there was already a great historical chance to create a peace order for the 21st Century. The “enemy,” the communist system, had disappeared, there was no threat to anybody, and not only Gorbachev, but also many people in the West talked about the “Common European House,” where it would have been very easy to create an international peace order for the 21st Century. We, the LaRouche movement, proposed the Eurasian Land-Bridge in 1991, to connect Europe and Asia through development corridors—a new Silk Road, which was supposed to be the economic basis for that peace order. It was an idea that has grown over the last 31 years into the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) with the potential that the New Silk Road becomes a World Land-Bridge, connecting all continents by tunnels and bridges.
But the British and the neocons in the U.S. had no intention to allow such a peace order, and they went for the concept of a unipolar world empire, based on the special relationship between the UK and the U.S., declaring the “end of history,” by which they meant that the liberal model of western democracy would take over the whole world. But the reality of that empire was not so pleasant for the different parts of the world. There were far-reaching attempts to deindustrialize Russia in the 1990s, and then five expansions of NATO to the East in order to contain and potentially dismember it; the continued denial of development for the countries of the Global South in the form of a continued colonialism in new clothes; the futile efforts to lure China into the acceptance of “western values” by offering it membership in the World Trade Organization (WTO); and then they tried to “contain” China’s rise after they realized that it pursued its own model of development. All of these facets of the unipolar model caused a tremendous blowback.
This new currency will be based not on monetarist values, such as the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) of the IMF, but on a basket of commodities. New credit institutions are being designed to finance development projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Encouraged by the unprecedented economic rise of China, which lifted 850 million of its own citizens out of poverty, many countries of the Global South are now proceeding to build a new just world economic order. The BRICS represents a new model of international relations, which many more countries want to join. In response to the weaponization of the dollar, namely the confiscation of foreign currencies for geopolitical reasons, the BRICS-Plus, the SCO, the EAEU, and potentially other institutions of the Global South are preparing the creation of a new currency. This new currency will be based not on monetarist values, such as the Special Drawing Rights (SDR) of the IMF, but on a basket of commodities. New credit institutions are being designed to finance development projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
Multipolarity
The unipolar world is already a matter of the past, a multipolar world has emerged. But does that solve the problem?
Multipolarity still contains the problem of geopolitical manipulation in it, and therefore does not safeguard the world from the danger of potential wars, even world wars. Many proponents of the idea of a multipolar world assume that one could settle conflicts among the different nations of the multipolar world by dialogue, diplomatic negotiations, and then finally arrive at a pragmatic compromise. While that approach for sure is better than coercion by the stronger against the weaker country, as is now often the case, this pragmatic approach does not prevent all participating parties from proceeding on a course which is altogether leading humanity in a completely wrong direction. A very good example for this is what former President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, calls the “green delirium.” That is, if all countries would agree to transform their economies based on “green” energy sources, i.e., energy sources with a low energy-flux density, the result would be a massive population reduction, and the long-term survivability of mankind would be endangered.
Coincidentia Oppositorum
The concept of President Xi Jinping of a “Community of a Shared Future for Humanity” offers a better idea. It contains the idea of the ONE mankind, which subsumes all parts of it. There is a very important concept developed by Nicholas of Cusa (Kusanski, as he is called in Russian), and that is the idea of the Coincidentia Oppositorum, the coincidence of opposites. By that he means that human creative reason is always able to conceptualize that higher One, which has a higher power than the Many, and establishes a higher level and a higher power of thinking than the level of the Many, on which the conflicts arrive. Naturally, Kusanski arrived at that notion through a theological discussion, the One for him is the level of God, in which all contradictions between the Many are resolved. Einstein had the same idea, that a solution can never be found on the same level on which a problem originated.
This idea of the Coincidentia Oppositorum, however, is not a static, but a dynamic one—a concept of continuous change, of permanent development for the better. It is a method of thinking, of problem solving, by always defining the next higher level of development. It is a method to arrive at the principle of arriving at the correct solution, rather than a pragmatic compromise, which necessarily contains erroneous assumptions.
A very good example for this arrival at a principle, rather than a compromise, is the Treaty of Westphalia, which concluded 150 years of religious warfare in Europe, for which the 30 Years’ War was only the last part. After four years of intensive negotiation, the warring parties arrived at three important principles, which were the beginning of the establishment of international peoples’ law. The first of these principles was the idea that there can not be peace, unless one considers the interests of the other. Secondly, that for the sake of peace, one has to forgive all crimes which were committed by the one side or the other. And thirdly, that the duty of reconstruction after the war is the role of the state, which was the conception, out of which the theory of cameralism developed.
Ten Principles
Since the war in Ukraine erupted, the Schiller Institute has conducted a series of conferences, which were devoted to the idea that the present conflict between NATO and Russia and China can only be resolved by the application of the method of the Coincidentia Oppositorum. What is needed is a new international security and development architecture, which applies the principles of the Peace of Westphalia. At the most recent conference of the Schiller Institute on Nov. 22, I presented a proposal for discussion, of how these principles could be designed.
Here they are:
First: The new International Security and Development Architecture must be a partnership of perfectly sovereign nation states, which is based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and the UN Charter.
Second: The absolute priority must be to alleviate poverty in every nation on the planet, which is easily possible, if the existing technologies are being used for the benefit of the common good.
Third: The life expectancy of all people living must be prolonged to the fullest potential by creating modern health systems in every country on the planet. This is also the only way that the present and future potential pandemics can be overcome or be prevented.
Fourth: Since mankind is the only creative species known so far in the universe, and given the fact that human creativity is the only source of wealth through the potentially limitless discovery of new universal principles, one of the main aims of the new International Security and Development Architecture must be to provide access to universal education for every child and adult person living. The true nature of man is to become a beautiful soul, as Friedrich Schiller discusses this, and the only [kind of] person who can fulfill that condition is the genius.
Fifth: The international financial system must be reorganized, so that it can provide productive credits to accomplish these aims. A reference point can be the original Bretton Woods system, as Franklin D. Roosevelt intended it, but which was never implemented due to his untimely death, and the Four Laws proposed by Lyndon LaRouche. The primary aim of such a new credit system must be to increase dramatically the living standard of especially the nations of the Global South and of the poor in the Global North.
Sixth: The new economic order must be focused on creating the conditions for modern industries and agriculture, starting with the infrastructural development of all continents to eventually be connected by tunnels and bridges to become a World Land-Bridge.
Seventh: The new global security architecture must eliminate the concept of geopolitics by ending the division of the world into blocs. The security concerns of every sovereign nation must be taken into account. Nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction must be immediately banned. Through international cooperation, the means must be developed to make nuclear weapons technologically obsolete, as it was originally intended by the proposal that became known as the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), suggested by LaRouche and made as an offer to the Soviet Union by President Reagan.
Eighth: In former times, one civilization at one corner of the world could go under, and the rest of the world would only find out years later, due to the length of distances and the time needed for travel. Now, for the first time, because of nuclear weapons, pandemics, the internet, and other global effects, mankind is sitting in one boat. Therefore, a solution to the existential threat to humanity cannot be found with the help of secondary or partial arrangements, but the solution must be found on the level of that higher One, which is more powerful than the Many. It requires thinking on the level of Coincidentia Oppositorum, the Coincidence of Opposites, of Nicholas of Cusa.
The basic assumption for the new paradigm is that man is fundamentally good and capable to infinitely perfect the creativity of his mind and the beauty of his soul.
Ninth: In order to overcome the conflicts arising out of quarreling opinions, which is how empires have maintained control over the underlings, the economic, social, and political order has to be brought into cohesion with the lawfulness of the physical universe. In European philosophy this was discussed as being in the character of natural law, in Indian philosophy as cosmology, and in other cultures appropriate notions can be found. Modern sciences like space science, biophysics, or thermonuclear fusion science will increase the knowledge of mankind about this lawfulness continuously. A similar cohesion can be found in the great works of classical art in different cultures.
Tenth: The basic assumption for the new paradigm is that man is fundamentally good and capable to infinitely perfect the creativity of his mind and the beauty of his soul, and [he is] the most advanced geological force in the universe—which proves that the lawfulness of the mind and that of the physical universe are in correspondence and cohesion, and that all evil is the result of a lack of development, and therefore can be overcome.
Provided we can rally the better part of humanity around such principles, and thus put the interest of the ONE humanity in front of all particular interests, we will be active creators in what could become a beautiful “Sternstunde der Menschheit,” a star hour of humanity. For Friedrich Schiller there was no contradiction between a patriot and a world citizen, who would take the fate of all of humanity into his heart and mind. So let’s create a world movement of world citizens!
Thank you!
