Schiller Institute Weekly Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche

The Old System Is Dying—An Historic Opportunity for Humanity

The following is an edited transcript of the Jan. 15, 2025, weekly Schiller Institute dialogue with Schiller Institute founder and leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Embedded links and subheads have been added. The video is available here.

Harley Schlanger: Hello and welcome to our weekly dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche. She’s the founder of the Schiller Institute. You can send your questions and comments to Helga to questions@schillerinstitute.org.

Helga, you made a statement on Monday where you said that in 2025, we will see the end of the old system, the end of a unipolar order enforced by the military power of the United States and NATO. But you also said that things could go really wrong in crisis hotspots, as the neoliberal oligarchy will not surrender. The key to moving into a New Paradigm, you have insisted, is a rejection of geopolitics. This seems to have hit some of our academic viewers right in the face. So, let’s start with the question about geopolitics—actually two questions, from an American podcaster. He asked: “Don’t you think the geopolitical worldview is too dominant among Western leaders to break with it?” And he said, “it’s entrenched in the political thinking in both political parties in the United States, including among many Republicans who are supporting [President-elect Donald] Trump.” And the second question was from a professor in the UK. He asks: “Isn’t geopolitics based on the idea that, since there is no agreement on what defines a commonwealth or a general welfare, that, therefore, the identity-divides used to foster geopolitical divisions are natural and cannot be overcome?”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: Well, I think if geopolitics would be natural, we would be part of the animal species, you know? I mean, everybody knows that male animals mark their domain by certain methods, and make sure that there is no competitor. But we are not animals, we are human beings. And, I look at it from the long arc of development: How old is the universe? We don’t know exactly, but maybe 13.5 billion years—that was the James Webb Telescope finding. And in this long period, human history is maybe 2 million years, and the recorded history is, maybe, at most 10,000 years, depending on which artifacts you take as an account. So, we have only been around for a very short time in the history of the universe. But then, think 10,000 years ago or 20,000 years ago, at the end of the last Ice Age, where were we? And where are we today? We have increased the population potential from a few hundred thousand, maybe maximum a few million people, because, before we were really developing agriculture, and were on the level of hunters and gatherers, the population density of the planet was very little. And, at that time, probably people used the stone to hit their neighbor, and it was regarded as a murderous weapon. Today you look at the same stone and you say, “Oh, that’s interesting. This is a rare earth,” or “this is a cell phone of the same size.” And in that cell phone, or in that ability to use the rare earth for production, you have the embodiment of all the scientific and technological development of that entire period.

Now, 10,000 years is a very short period of time. And you can think 10,000 years from now. We [will] probably have made leaps and moves forward much, much bigger than what we have done in the past. So, do you really think that we will be still—if we don’t cause ourselves to become extinct in a nuclear war in the meantime, which could happen, naturally—do you think in 10,000 years we still will be struggling over pieces of territory, and wells, and so forth, when we will, for sure, have long before colonized nearby space, we will have made villages on the Moon; we probably will have—even Elon Musk is excited about this perspective—we probably will have built cities on Mars: Do you really think that it is the nature of human beings to be in a geopolitical fight? I don’t think so. I think we are different from all other species by our power of reason, by the fact that we can change whatever is limiting us. And eventually it will be clear that we are the one human species, which will have an important task to survive in the galaxy. I think the latest count of the James Webb Telescope is we have at least several trillion galaxies. Now that is mind boggling! But if we are supposed to survive as a species in this incredibly large universe, we have to change our mode of behavior and we cannot spend the energy to fight against each other. So that’s my answer to the professor from UK.

And, I agree the geopolitical view is prevalent. If you look at the top of the system—the two political parties in the United States, the EU bureaucracy— [They] think that we now have to become a geopolitical force against other great powers, like China, and Russia. But if you ask the people, if you ask the population, I don’t think that they’re thinking geopolitically. I think people tend to be immediately friends with other people when they get to know them. You know, on the lowest level, they cook together, they dance together; if it’s a little bit more developed, they start to appreciate their different cultures. So, I think that the idea of the geopolitical outlook, which has the seed of world wars in it—geopolitics was the reason why we had two world wars in the 20th Century—I think this is definitely something which needs to be overcome, and it must be superseded by the idea that there is a greater interest which unites us as the one humanity. This is an existential question, because if we cannot overcome it, the likelihood is that we will blow ourselves up and destroy everything on this planet—unfortunately, we have never been closer to that—but on the other side, I think that if enough people realize that this danger exists, maybe we can mobilize the moral fiber to overcome it.

Return America to its Best Traditions

Schlanger: You’re listening to Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute, and also the instigator of the International Peace Coalition, which is going to be meeting again this Friday, as it has every Friday, for 84 weeks.

Now, there’s a sort of follow-up question to that first one, Helga, from Pat M., who asks: “It would seem to be crucial for a transition of power in the United States to be fairly quick, approving cabinet choices to grasp the reins. What kind of strategies do you think will be used to stop this? And would it be the military that would be involved?”

Zepp-LaRouche: I think it’s very much in flux. I think the key question is: Does Trump have a strategy to put [in] his own policy and control the diversified elements of the appointments he has made. If you look at many of the aspects, people are extremely worried that there are too many war hawks in the positions, or too many monetarists, who would like to go for an orgy of deregulation; people who have all kinds of things. But, I think—and I’m not only hoping, but we have an idea of what to do—that Trump has said various things, which are in part contradictory, but he has said he wants to end the wars. He thinks the endless wars were devastating to American interests. He has said he wants to meet both Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, fairly soon. He has said that if the United States and China work together, there is no problem they cannot solve. So, there are several reasons to think that he, indeed, will want to make a different policy, and I also would tend to think that he has learned the hard lesson from his first administration, for example, by the appointment of such people as Tulsi Gabbard [for Director of National Intelligence] and Kash Patel [for Director of the FBI] (one hopes). On the other side, he has made statements which are hair-raising to many people who believe in sovereignty, such as that he wants to take Greenland, either [with their consent], or militarily, which is hair-raising. He wants to reintegrate the Panama Canal into American control, which is also not exactly respect for sovereignty. He has said all kinds of things which are going in a different direction.

So, rather than looking at that as the rabbit and the snake, or waiting on the fence like a sparrow watching where things go, I have a different perspective: And that is that I believe in the bottom of my heart that we only will overcome the war danger forever, if we find a way for the countries of the so-called “collective West” to collaborate with those countries of the Global South that are trying to shed 500 years of colonialism. And I think it’s much underestimated in the West, both in the United States and also in Europe—at least in some European countries—that the countries of Africa, of Latin America, and Asia are determined to overcome slavery, to overcome slavery in its modern forms—not having access to credit for development, being forced by the trade terms to sell raw materials without really being able to use those in their own countries—there is a tremendous spirit. This year, we will have the 70th anniversary of the Bandung Conference, and the spirit of Bandung has woken up in a very powerful way. And despite massive efforts by certain financial interests to destabilize these aspirations, I think the fact that the BRICS are becoming stronger, that Indonesia joined the BRICS, that the countries of Africa are definitely determined to overcome poverty and development, with the help of the BRICS—I think that the only way how you can destroy that is by nuclear war! But nuclear war has no winners. So, whoever thinks of curbing that, is also thinking about his own funeral, so that’s not an option to contemplate.

If, on the other side, we would really convince the people in the United States and the people in Western Europe to just say: “Look, the world has changed already. The unipolar world no longer exists. We already have a developing multipolar world.” Why not really go back to the best traditions of American policy, in terms of foreign policy, with John Quincy Adams, to cooperate with a system of sovereign countries around the world. And in Europe, it would be the tradition of de Gaulle, or Adenauer, or Rathenau, Enrico Mattei—tendencies where people had the idea that we are not imperialists, but we have to find a cooperative way of working with the countries of the Global South that have now become a much more prominent force in the world.

If we do that, it would be so easy to solve all the problems, because the only people who gain by wars are the military-industrial complex, and the irresponsible people who have invested in these firms, owning stock which they think makes them richer. But what does it help them, if the result is that the whole world is blown up?

If we would go and say, let’s revive our economies, let’s rebuild the United States— The California fire should have given everybody an absolute warning message: The United States needs infrastructure! You need massive water development, water management. The North American water project NAWAPA should have been implemented decades ago, but let’s now do it, and this way, prevent future such catastrophes from happening! There are so many constructive things to do, that if the countries of the collective West really want to survive, we will go in this direction, and we will try to put this objective and alternative more powerfully on the agenda than ever before.

Schlanger: For those of you who are worried about what’s going to happen with the confirmation hearings for the various nominees by President Trump, we put out a dossier called “The Liars’ Bureau,” which draws the attention, or is trying to draw the attention of the Senate, to the fact that the people who are opposing, especially Gabbard and Patel, are people who themselves are the ones responsible for the endless wars, the spying, the surveillance, and so on. So, that’s available through The LaRouche Organization: “The Liars’ Bureau.”

Now, Helga, you’ve actually answered several questions in what you just said. Someone asked, “Trump, you say, is ready to meet with President Putin to end the war. What if the European countries continue to support Ukraine, as indicated by last week’s Ramstein Air Base conference? What could Trump do to end the war?” I think you just answered that, with “go to the Global South and outflank them.”

Changes Are Coming to Germany and Europe

But there are a couple of questions on Germany in specific that I want to give you. One is: “Is there any hope that Friedrich Merz, the Christian Democratic Union candidate for Chancellor, and a dedicated war hawk, can he be defeated?” And secondly: “Is there support for the call from Sahra Wagenknecht’s party to rebuild the Nord Stream pipeline?”

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, I think Merz, as of now, has said nothing which would convince me that he would be any better than the “traffic light coalition” [Social Democrats, Free Democrats and Greens], which is just going out. As a matter of fact, he is even worse, in promoting sending the Taurus missile to the Ukrainians. Now, this is really incredible, because, General Harald Kujat, the former Inspector General of the German Army and head of the NATO Military Committee, just made a very, very strong warning, saying that whoever is promoting the sending of the Taurus is promoting that German soldiers should man this missile, because the Ukrainians are not trained to use it. So, it would have to be delivered and used by German soldiers, which would make Germany immediately an active party of the war, and therefore a target of an escalation in the tensions with Russia, leading potentially to the destruction of all of Germany. Now, Kujat has said that in the strongest terms, because this obviously applies for Merz. It applies for [Vice Chancellor Robert] Habeck, who for some strange reason thinks he can ever become Chancellor of Germany—which I think is a joke, given the fact that he successfully destroyed the German economy; and, you know, why would anybody vote still for such an incapable person? What happens to the Merz vote, I think, in large part depends on what Trump does. Trump clearly has a different policy for Ukraine.

In Germany, unfortunately, the policy seems to be still dominated by the relics of the Biden administration, of the British policy, of the EU policy; Ramstein divided the tasks which will be not taken care of by the United States, into eight groups or so, and two countries each, are supposed to replace what the United States did before. There is still this unbelievable talk about making Germany “war ready,” with this [Defense Minister Boris] Pistorius. He was just in Kiev. And they have now plans to make a home division, which is supposed to help to supply NATO troops in their move toward the eastern front. This is against the German Constitution [the Basic Law (Grundgesetz)]. And I can only hope that there are enough people who should be horrified by the idea that Germany, again, would drive tanks against Russia! I mean, how much can you forget such history? We had a Second World War, in which even so, Hitler was brought to power by many influential forces, including in the United States and Great Britain—naturally, in Germany as well—but the Germans did have an incredible guilt for the Second World War! I mean, there’s no way you can talk yourself out of it.

And, in light of that history, to then do what these people are doing now—I’ve said this, even on this program before: I always thought that when it came to the German unification in 1989-1990, that the Russians were incredibly generous, by allowing German unification, including Germany united, joining NATO, with the provision, however, that there should be no expansion of NATO to the East, that there should be no foreign troops on the territory of the former G.D.R. Both things are massively violated, with NATO expansions, and now with the new [multinational naval tactical] headquarters for the Baltic Sea in Rostock, which is, again, a violation of the Two Plus Four Treaty [on the reunification of Germany]. So, I think that in light of all of that, it is an absolute shame what these people, who seem to be occupied by some alien spirit trying to go the Drang nach Osten, it’s almost like a repetition of that terrible sentiment of the ’20s and ’30s of territorial gains in the East. You know, I think everybody in the EU would go bananas about the comparison, but if you really look at the substance of it, that’s what it is!

So, I think, the hope is that enough people wake up.

Now, the CDU has gone down a little bit from 32%; I think they are now around 30%, 31% at most; and the AfD [Alternative for Germany] has gone up from 20% to 22%. Now, that’s still a big gap of 9%. But under dramatic conditions—and I’m not saying I want the AfD to win, I’m just saying any party that is against the war should be voted for. And right now, it’s only the BüSo [Civil Rights Solidarity Movement], which is my party, which is very small, and we are in this fight, not so much that we think we can win, but we are an extremely important producer of ideas, of solutions, and an election campaign is a very important medium to spread those. And unfortunately, the Wagenknecht party [BSW] is losing in the polls. I think it has to do with the fact that the people don’t like the fact that they have now made coalitions with other parties in the three East German states and made significant compromises. And a lot of people say, “Why should we vote for them, if they are becoming like just another party?” And I think people are really very disappointed about Wagenknecht repeating all the time about Russia’s “unprovoked war of aggression,” when it comes to Ukraine. And many people, especially in East Germany, just don’t believe that NATO narrative, because they have their own historic memory, and they have been contemporary witnesses, so it’s not so easy to fool them.

So, even if Merz wins, which I really think he should not, because he is for deregulation, he’s a complete liberal in terms of economics. He is even against nuclear energy—he just ruled out a return to nuclear energy. So why would you vote for somebody who clearly will not remedy the economy, and who clearly is going to escalate the geostrategic conflict with Russia and China? So, I can only say that he would be, under the circumstances, the worst choice. And even if he would win, look at what happened to [French President Emmanuel] Macron: Macron is now the most hated man in France. Even the people who helped him to come to power are absolutely against him. His government is extremely unstable, and there is no perspective of a stable government under present conditions for France. And that could happen to Merz, as well.

And you should also really look at the massive change of the European Union. You have now a whole number of countries that are turning away from the EU: You have Slovakia, Hungary, then the recent changes in Austria. Now you have the vote in Croatia, where the new, or the person who was voted in for the second time, [President Zoran] Milanović—he got 74.7%—that’s three-quarters of the people. So, you have Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Georgia. Some of these are not in the EU, but it’s the whole East European tendency. And, you have [Prime Minister Giorgia] Meloni in Italy, who went to Mar-a-Lago and came back with a clear mandate from Trump to make her voice heard stronger. So, there is a complete shift.

So, Macron, France being practically not relevant anymore, because of the instability of the country. So, Germany would be alone, with whom? Only with the Baltic states. Now, how many people do they have? You can count them on one hand—I’m joking. I’m exaggerating, but not many people. Then you have Poland and Scandinavia, and that’s it. So that is not exactly an overwhelming force. And maybe that will cause some industrialists in Germany to change their view, because the German economy is in a free fall. And the only way how Germany can survive is by orienting towards the Global South. And that is a choice which will become obvious; you know, it’s really the existence of Germany. So, things will not be settled with the election, because we are in a complete, tectonic change with a period of 500 years coming to an end, which is colonialism.

Does Trump Know About NAWAPA?

Schlanger: Well, you mentioned, earlier, the North American Water and Power Alliance [NAWAPA], which your husband strongly supported in many of his campaigns, as a solution to the California fire crisis. We have two questions on that. One is: “I almost fell out of my chair when I heard Trump say that water could be brought down from Canada to replenish water supplies in California. Do you think he knows about NAWAPA? Once again, we see how far ahead of the curve Lyndon LaRouche was.” And a second question, from Michael D. in Los Angeles: “What are the odds, in his second term, that Donald Trump will start thinking like Lyndon LaRouche?”

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, I think we will do all the work necessary to get there, because that would be the best for the United States—seriously! I mean, it should reflect— Let me say this, because Lyndon LaRouche prophetically recognized the devastating consequences it would have, when [U.S. President Richard] Nixon decoupled the dollar from the gold standard, and replaced fixed exchange rates with flexible ones. And he said, if one continues on that road, meaning the maximization of profit, of liberal deregulation, and all of the paradigm which goes along with it, that this would lead to a collapse of the economy, a depression, the new war danger, and new fascism, and the danger of a new world war, actually.

Now, he updated that prognosis with nine major prognoses throughout his political career, which all turned out to be absolutely true. I can only ask you go to the websites of The LaRouche Organization and EIR and look at some of the speeches Lyndon LaRouche made over the years. I mean, some of them would make you fall off your chair, because you think he spoke yesterday, or today, addressing immediate issues. I mean, he was one of the most far-sighted persons in history, ever. And I’m not saying that because I was married to him, but it’s an objective fact!

Now it’s the biggest tragedy that he was prosecuted—I mean, here you have a person who clearly had the intellect of a Leibniz, of a Plato, of one of the outstanding people where you have one in a century, if you are lucky; and you know, the fact that the United States’ apparatus, what is generally called “Deep State,” has been deployed against that man, is the most tragic element of U.S. history. Because it was not just an injustice done to him, but it prevented the American people from recognizing the solutions he presented, from recognizing the analysis he presented. And all of this hardship which is happening right now could have been prevented, including the moral collapse of the population, the effect of the dope legalization, the effect of the violence in the schools, the effect of the suicide rates among youth, the collapse of the infrastructure in the cities—and what happened in Los Angeles, because, as you hinted, if NAWAPA would have been implemented, there would have been no such fire! Or, if there would have been a fire, there would have been enough water to extinguish the fire, immediately.

Now, I would be very surprised if Trump doesn’t know about NAWAPA, because NAWAPA was a project which was very known, at least among engineers, and given the fact that Trump thinks of himself as a builder, it’s almost unthinkable that he doesn’t know about it. And his remark— Maybe if we campaign for it and if we make it an issue among scientists, among engineers, among city councils, among all the people who are affected by the devastation of this fire, we can create an environment where it is being implemented.

I think that would be great! I mean, what if Trump could be surrounded with a mood of people demanding the reconstruction of the United States, building a fast train system, connecting all the cities through the fast train system, like that of the Chinese—or even better, the Chinese now have 45,000 km, that’s about 28,000 miles, approximately, of fast trains going 350 kilometers per hour. They are now upgrading it to 400 or 450 km/h. And they’re already working on a loop system with 1,000 km/h.

Can’t the United States just say, these potholes in the highway system should end, and build a new highway system, build new cities? There was a whole effort to open up the western parts of the United States, which stopped at a certain point, so as a consequence, you have many states which are very thinly populated. You could build new cities, connect them with infrastructure. And it would really be the best for the American population, and everybody would have a perspective of learning, of having universities for young people to compete, becoming the world’s best again, which is not happening right now. So, I think if we really create conditions where the population demands it, maybe we can move it in this way. That is absolutely a goal which everybody should have.

Schlanger: I have just two quick points to make on NAWAPA. One is that we have a video on NAWAPA on The LaRouche Organization website that’s available for people to watch. Secondly, it’s not insignificant that in 1968, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy introduced a bill for NAWAPA. RFK, Jr. is now a close advisor to Trump. Maybe they have talked about it.

Now, we have one comment and then a question for you to close out our session today, Helga. The comment is from Diana from Canada, who says that she thinks that Trump has to put out the fires in Ukraine and Gaza as his first job. But then he can work on repairing and strengthening the United States, again. And this would be the way to get global stability and peace for us all.

Africa in the Year 2050

Now, the question comes from Jocelyn Tchakounte, who’s the president of the African Diaspora International Trade Association, and he asks: “How does Lyn’s Classical approach apply to the colonized states in Africa?”

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, I think the African countries right now are, on the one side, there are still enormous dangers from terrorism, war, and so forth, but on the other side, there is an absolute determination by many leaders of African nations to modernize the African continent, to build up all the countries as middle-class-income countries. And I think that the attitude, for example, when President Ramaphosa participated in a financial conference in Paris about two years ago, he told all the Europeans who were there: I don’t want to hear your sermons. You build the Grand Inga Hydroelectric Project in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is about $80 billion, and then we can talk. I don’t want to hear anything else. And that, I think, is the attitude many of the Africans have right now, because they are sick and tired that there are arrogant Westerners coming, preaching to them about what they should do—human rights, democracy, “rules-based order.” And they basically, they don’t believe this anymore, because they have seen that the rules-based order is something which can be bent in a minute, to mean the opposite of what it meant before, if it suits the interest of whoever is talking about it. And after the West condoning what is happening in Gaza, I think no leader in the Global South will listen to anybody from the West anymore talking about human rights. That, I think, is a change which most people have not realized yet. But you will see in the future that what I’m saying is absolutely to the mark.

So, I think that the best thing which could happen is not that the United States goes to Africa and tries to compete with the influence of China and Russia, which would again create tensions and factions, and so forth, but take a cooperative approach! I mean, we have written a pamphlet, which you can also see on our websites, how to create 2 to 3 billion new productive jobs in the Global South in the next decades. Africa will have 2.5 billion people by the year 2050. That’s only 25 years away—one generation, that’s not much. And that means there will be approximately 1 billion people more. So, when we say that we need 2 to 3 billion new productive jobs in that period, that is not a big number. That’s just approximately adequate to the number of young people who will need a job! And that would be the only way to solve the migrant crisis, because if you build infrastructure, if you build industrialization, mechanization of agriculture, modern states, enough electricity—600 million people in Africa still have no access to electricity, but that is the precondition for any industrialization. Now, if the West would join with the BRICS to build the kind of basic infrastructure, then that problem can be solved. And the young people and older people who are now marching through the Sahel zone, through the Sahara to then try to go over the Mediterranean—many of them dying, either in the Sahara, not being even reported about, or drowning in the Mediterranean Sea—to then be received by a hostile Frontex [border-control] organization of the European Union, who are trying to push people back—and there have been many legal cases about that.

So, rather than having that miserable perspective, which is ruining Europe, and it’s ruining Africa—likewise in the United States, the effort to push back the migrants to Central America equally does not function, other than creating misery. But if there would be an effort of the collective West working with the BRICS-Plus, to solve this problem once and for all, create human conditions of economic development for everybody on the planet, we could solve all of these problems. And that is within reach.

So, if you are in any part of the world and agree with this perspective, join us! Don’t sit on the fence: Join the Schiller Institute. Come on Friday to the IPC meeting we have every week, and work with us. This is now a period of history where the individual intervention can change history. So, please join us.

Schlanger: I think our viewers have a sense of that, because we have more questions than we can take, more than we have time for. But in concluding before we go, what can you tell us about the IPC meeting on Friday, at 11 a.m. Eastern Time?

Zepp-LaRouche: I don’t have the full list of speakers. I heard that Colonel [Lawrence] Wilkerson will be on; then several spokesmen from Southwest Asia, because that is also now an extremely important conjuncture. If the deal which seems to be negotiated between the Israelis and the Palestinians, mediated by the United States, by Qatar—it’s a very difficult moment, obviously, still. There will be people reporting about what that looks like from the ground. So, we will definitely discuss the perspective for Ukraine and the Middle East, and the overall strategic picture. So, please come: This is the one place, where every week you have important experts and specialists discussing the actual strategic situation. And we have been told by many viewers that this is a format which really has no parallel. So, it’s the place to go.

Schlanger: Well, Helga, I’d also say there’s no parallel for you. So, thanks for joining us today, and we’ll see you on Friday.

Zepp-LaRouche: Till Friday.