This transcript appears in the January 5, 2024 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Friday, December 29, 2023
War Policy Is Suicidal for the West in Its Genocidal Intensity
[Print version of this transcript]
This is an edited transcript of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s remarks to the 30th weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC), which was launched on June 2, 2023 at a meeting with representatives of 25 peace organizations from a dozen countries.
Let me greet all of you, and indeed thank all of you for sticking to this important task during this holiday period. I think many people in the world are really struggling with the idea that despite all our mobilizations and many initiatives, the massacre in Gaza is still continuing.
In a certain sense, we are all confronted with the situation that the implication of that is far, far worse. Even if the ordeal and the suffering of the people is the most immediate and most horrifying—the implication that the West and the world are allowing this to go on now for such a long time is mind-boggling.
Chas Freeman, the former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, who also served in other high-ranking positions in various administrations, just made an important interview which I can only bring to your attention. He is definitely one of the Americans who has the guts to speak out. He basically said in this interview that what is happening right now is making Israel a pariah state for a very long time to come. What will happen to Israel as a result of it is not clear, but that the West is going to suffer a similar fate. He says that the intention to completely depopulate Gaza and the West Bank is made very clear, among other things, by the fact that real estate agents are already advertising the selling of sea-front villas along the beaches of Gaza.
The intention, obviously, is to drive all Palestinians out, which creates another horrendous situation, because Egypt for their own reasons has made absolutely clear that they are not intending to allow large numbers of Palestinians to resettle in the Sinai Peninsula. Similarly, the West Bank of the Jordan River is an equally impossible situation.
So, I think it is important that despite the obvious difficulty, we continue to demand an immediate, permanent ceasefire to stop the killing and extermination of the Palestinian people in Gaza and much of the West Bank. But I think the implication is that we have to really wake people up in the West, in the United States, in Great Britain. I hate to say it, but also in Germany. Germany is totally mistaken and has misunderstood its historic responsibility with the decision to stand on the side of Israel no matter what Israel does.
That means there is damage being done to the West by this kind of action, which is going way beyond the regional situation which still has the potential to go into a regional conflict and beyond.
Who is going to believe the United States, or Great Britain, or others in Europe when they’re talking about democracy, human rights, the rules-based order? It is absolutely clear that all the values that they keep putting up as a banner in front of what they are doing, are total utter hypocrisy, to say the least. This is why we have to really escalate our efforts.
It is quite interesting that even military people from Europe such as General Fabio Mini, who was the commander of the KFOR troops [in Kosovo], has come out—in Il Fatto Quotidiano, which is a major Italian newspaper—warning that the situation in Israel is not going to go anywhere. He says you cannot defeat Hamas militarily, and this disproportionate, indiscriminate bombing of the population is amounting to a war crime. He points to what happened with the United States, with its 20 years in Afghanistan and many other wars in the Middle East before. And al-Qaeda still exists. They may not be in the same form and in the same place, but as an ideology it exists.
Free Marwan Barghouti
I think that on the situation in the Middle East, we absolutely have to escalate our campaign for immediate permanent ceasefire, humanitarian aid, but then have a comprehensive settlement with a two-state solution and whatever it takes to get there. I would like to suggest that we add into our mobilization, the demand to free Marwan Barghouti from Israeli jail. He is a very integral and respected Palestinian who would be the person to unify all the Palestinian factions and to negotiate in such a process. We should demand the release of Barghouti as one of the absolutely important demands.
The situation in Ukraine is equally bad. It is admitted by now that the Ukrainian war is lost. The United States, now entering the election period, would like to get rid of some of these conflicts which could potentially determine the outcome of the U.S. election. They have started to shift gears by hinting that a negotiation whereby Russia would necessarily be withdrawing from all of Ukraine is a possibility. But there again, there are still forces that would like to escalate the situation.
War Also Aimed at Russia, China
All of that means that even if we were to solve the Ukraine situation and we were to solve the Middle East conflict, there is still the absolute drive to subdue, contain, and hopefully dismantle Russia into 40 pieces; to contain and hopefully dismantle the rise of China. There is the clear momentum where you have a lot of people in Sweden talking about a war with Russia on Swedish territory in five years. There is talk now in Finland that people have to be prepared to have a war with Russia on Finnish territory in two years. There is this absolutely insane discussion to militarize the German economy, all of the EU economies, and to insist on a “change in mentality” as they call it, whereby the idea of a coming confrontation with Russia on European soil is supposed to be accepted by all layers of the population.
Unfortunately, if we do not change the present dynamic, that is what is going to happen. Look at the increase of power of the military-financial complex. We shouldn’t call it “military-industrial complex” any longer, but a military-financial complex, because, as we have demonstrated in a recent fact sheet, it is really a combination of the military-industrial firms with the financial investment houses of Wall Street and the City of London which are behind this war machine.
Look at the figures showing how this military-industrial complex has increased. In the 1990s, U.S. military expenditures were $4 trillion. This was during the period of Desert Storm; it included the bombing of Serbia, and the war against Yugoslavia. Then in the period from 2001 to 2011, which included the Afghanistan War, the Iraq War, and the building of hundreds of U.S. bases around the globe, the military-industrial complex budget expenditure increased to $6.5 trillion—a 50% increase. Then, in the period 2012 to 2022, to the wars against Iraq and Afghanistan were added the wars against Libya and Syria, bringing the total to $8-9 trillion—so double the 1990s figure.
One can see that in this century, the military spending of the United States alone was $15 trillion. Then you have to add $2 trillion for the so-called Overseas Contingency Operations, which needs to be explained.
Already in 2023, the Ukraine and Israel wars alone amount to about $1.9 trillion, so you have to add that. If you look at the industrial capacity in the same time period, the U.S. debt rose in this time period to a whopping $34 trillion. At the same time, the productivity of the economy fell. U.S. spending on infrastructure collapsed from 2001 to 2020, from $70 billion to $40 billion—peanuts, compared to the vast sums of the military-industrial complex.
The Power of the Spiritual Truth of Our Humanity
So, you can see this is a cannibalistic process whereby the war machine is becoming bigger and bigger, devouring the physical economy. Therefore, that mechanism has to be interrupted. This is why we produced these fact sheets showing exactly what the increase of the military-industrial complex is, and what it would take to retool these industries for peaceful production for the common good, for infrastructure, fast train systems, fourth-generation inherently safe nuclear energy plants, space investment, and similar things. That can be done. I think it’s the only way we can organize enough constituencies who are being affected by cuts and austerity measures. They have to demand the retooling of the military-industrial complex for peaceful production.
I was extremely moved by the fact that after having released a Christmas Message to this effect, about the need to turn swords into plowshares, I then listened to the Angelus prayer of Pope Francis, the Urbi et Orbi this Christmas, and he was saying exactly the same thing. I can assure you, he did not consult with me, but obviously it was an idea which was in the air, because what Pope Francis said, quoting from Isaiah 2:4, is the need to turn swords into plowshares. He also said we absolutely have to name the names of the military-industrial complex, because people have to know who is responsible for the consequences of these policies.
So, I felt very encouraged by that, and I think we should take the encouragement as an absolute need to ask not only all representatives of Christian religions to take up this demand of turning swords into plowshares, but to ask all representatives of all religions—Muslims, Jews, and others—to all support that. Because I think if we would get all the civil organizations, trade unions, farmers, entrepreneurs, and religious leaders to all demand that this policy changes before it is too late, we could gain such a momentum to make it happen.
In conclusion, I can only say that the coming year will be one of gigantic changes. I think the consequences of what will happen to the West in terms of the moral impact of this behavior is going to be absolutely tectonic. The rise of the BRICS-Plus, along with the countries of the Global South, is definitely moving in the direction of forming a new economic system. I have said many times that the only way I can see that we are getting out of this incredible mortal danger to all of humanity is that we get the United States and European nations to stop the confrontation with Russia, China, and the Global South. And to join with them in the building of a new world economic order. That’s why I have called for this new international security and development architecture, to have many conferences about it to discuss this idea and hopefully impact policy, before it is too late.
