Conflict Is Not the Natural
Condition Among Men and Nations
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.
The following is Mr. LaRouche's keynote to an EIR seminar in Berlin, Germany on Dec. 18, 2002.
On the 28th of January of this coming year, about five days after President George W. Bush, Jr. will have delivered his State of the Union address, I shall issue mine, which will be broadcast on a webcast at 1 o'clock Washington, D.C. time, which will be 7 o'clock in the evening Berlin time. Until those two addresses have been made, it will be extremely difficult to estimate what U.S. policy is going to be, and consequently, very difficult to estimate what the world situation will be.
We are presently at the fag end of a global systemic crisis, without any real comparison in the most recent century. The nearest comparison is Europe, and the Americas, between 1928 and the inauguration of Hitler in January of 1933. We have entered into a period of financial, and other crisis, in which none of the existing parties, in Europe or the Americas, have the slightest competent conception about what to do about the worst systemic crisis in modern history, at least since the French Revolution. And therefore you see, that we've entered a period, as in the fall of the Müller government, in which governments are either technically, ministerial governments, not true parliamentary governments, or an approximation of a ministerial government.
For example, I played a key role, which is now recognized as such, in certain leading Democratic Party circles in the United States, in Russia, and elsewhere, in preventing what was going to be an Iraq war from taking place at the time it was intended. That war is not off the table entirely. Forces which are determined to have it, are still active. They wish a Middle East war, for reasons I shall indicate. But, we stopped it temporarily. And I was able to play a key role, in certain institutions in the United States, to get the United States to work with forces in Europe. And with the help of a remarkable position taken by Chancellor Schröder in Germany, Europeans solidified their position, and the United States was inclined to move toward a United Nations security option, and pressures were put on to ensure that Saddam Hussein would make a proposal, that the United Nations would accept it, and that the United States government would accept that proposal.
Since that time, of course, the people behind the war, most conspicuously behind the war, in Israel, and in the United States, and in some forces under the British monarchy, are determined to get such a war going by any means possible. What is intended is not an Iraq war, what is intended is a limes war, like the Roman Empire ran in control of its borders with the legionnaires. It would designate a certain part of the world, geopolitically, as we say these days, as an area to be destroyed, and by destroying that part of the world, or tying it up in permanent warfare, to prevent civilization from developing, at that time, on the borders of the Roman Empire. In this time, as I shall indicate, the threat to the Roman Empire, such as it is, is targetting largely Asia.
The Strategic Triangle
One of the solutions to the present crisis is emerging in what is called a Strategic Triangle, among Russia, China, and India. It's something I proposed, first in August of 1998, in the context of the so-called GKO crisis. Then, Primakov, later the Prime Minister of Russia, presented such a proposal in Delhi, in November of 1998. Primakov was ousted in Russia, from the Prime Minister post, under pressure from the United States, and others, precisely because he had made that speech. However, in the course of events under the Putin Presidency, Russia, China, and India have been moving in a direction of cooperation, which means they will cooperate as a keystone for bringing other nations of Asia, into collaboration.
That is now emerging. Japan has no possibility of continued existence, except returning to its former role as an industrial producer, cooperating chiefly with markets in Asia. Korea can not survive without cooperation of this type. Russia needs it. China needs it. So you have the northern three, Japan, Korea, and China, in Asia, together with the nations of Southeast Asia, as represented at the recent Phnom Penh conference on the Mekong Development Project, and as also attended by the Prime Minister of India. And since then you've had a visit from President Putin of Russia, to the outgoing President Jiang Zemin of China, and from thence to Delhi, for extended meetings with the Indian government. And statements coming out of that, would show that the Strategic Triangle is well. It is in motion.
Now, presuming no Middle East war, or extended global Clash of Civilizations war occurs, we have the situation in which Europe—Western Europe, Central Europe—can not survive economically under the present economic crisis trends, unless it has a major new market to which to export, together with certain reforms that must be made in terms of regional and international monetary-systems arrangements. But under those conditions, if Europe enters into what I've called a New Bretton Woods style of agreement, replacing the present monetary system, in that case, then the area of Russia, China, India, and their adjoining nations, will become the greatest market on this planet, for the long term, for a period of a quarter-century to a half-century. These areas of the world, which have some high technology—as China does, obviously, India does, and so forth—can not meet their internal needs, by their own high-technology capacity at this time. China, for example, must move from its characteristics of the past, as a coastal economy, a coastal-region economy, to develop the interior of China. This means large-scale infrastructure, it means water systems, it means new cities, it means all kinds of development. It's a large area. China can not exist without developing this so-called "internal market," for its continued economic life.
Southeast Asia, including part of China, the Mekong River Valley, is also a major area of large population, of large development. India has crucial problems, it has some advantages. But without this kind of cooperation, India can not, in the long term, solve its problems, either. All of these nations together, have a critical problem of security, of national security. And therefore, we're looking at national and regional security, and economic security and development, as one package. The two go together.
This is what this war drive is aimed against. The war drive did not start recently. It started essentially in this form, really at the close of World War II, when certain forces in Britain and the United States, decided they wanted to drop the nuclear bomb on Germany, but it wasn't ready in time. The peace came first. If the bomb had been ready in 1944, the uranium bomb would have been dropped on Berlin. That was the intention. They couldn't do it because it wasn't ready. So they waited until a defeated Japan was bombed, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not for any sound military reason. Generals of the Army MacArthur and Eisenhower both indicated Japan was a defeated nation: There was no need to invade the place. Negotiations with Emperor Hirohito were already in progress, before Roosevelt's death. These negotiations were continuing. The death of Roosevelt disrupted it. A close friend of mine, subsequently deceased, was involved in those negotiations. There was no military reason for dropping those weapons on Japan, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Nor any reason for the fire-storming of Tokyo, before the nuclear bombardment.
The Utopians' Clash of Civilizations Policy
This was set into motion due to what has been called a Utopian policy, as defined by intellectual influences such as H.G. Wells, in his 1928 The Open Conspiracy, and by Wells' collaborator, and the author of the nuclear warfare age, Bertrand Russell, the so-called pacifist: "Kill 'em all. Make the world peaceful for Bertrand Russell." So what's happened is that this geopolitical impulse, to prevent the continent of Eurasia, first of Europe and then of Eurasia, from developing an internal economy which is stable and a power bloc against the attempt to run an Anglo-American maritime-based empire. This was the reason for geopolitics as it was launched towards the end of the 19th Century and during the course of the 20th Century.
So, what we're looking at in the so-called Clash of Civilizations war, as typified by British intelligence operative Bernard Lewis, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and Samuel P. Huntington: What we're seeing here, is a resumption of that geopolitical policy, of disruption of the Eurasian mainland's internal development by aid of operations of that type. And the Clash of Civilizations war, the Middle East war, the threat to Iraq, and so forth and so on, are nothing more than a continuation of that kind of imperial drive, of a certain Anglo-American faction in particular.
What happened is, recently, where I got into the middle of it, again—because I've had some off-and-on influence with the institutions around the Presidency in the United States, as some of you know, from my work on the SDI, inaugurating that and working closely with President Reagan's Administration in launching that; and then more recently, during the period of the Clinton Administration.
I've been involved with, in a significant way, with some of these leading circles—they were undecided as to what to do. I was aware of what the attitudes were in Europe, about this proposed Iraq war. So, I took what I knew of European attitudes, and said, "Europe will not stop this war by itself: They don't have the courage to, they're too much the victims of an imperial overlordship. But, if forces in the United States are intelligent, they will look to and try to reinforce the resistance to this war among Europeans, and typified by France, Russia, and then again, very importantly, by Chancellor Schröder here in Germany," even though he was not part of the United Nations Security Council operations. That succeeded. We succeeded in preventing the war from being launched in September, in October, November, and so far now.
The danger is not over, but the war party has taken a major defeat. It's frantic, it's terrified, it's desperate, it will do almost anything. If an election in Israel ousts Sharon, then I think the possibility of a Middle East peace is greatly increased, and there's an increasing mood in Israel, and among other relevant circles for such a regime, in which either there is a renewal of the Rabin policy of the Middle East, or an agreement to have two separate states suddenly, and then negotiate from there. Either approach, which has been proposed by Mitzna, in my opinion, would work. And I can say that, in the United States, and outside the United States, and in Israel itself, there's some very important efforts in that direction, but nobody can guarantee, that it will succeed at this time.
So, that's the general situation. I believe, that on the basis of our experience, in at least temporarily stopping this Iraq war, which was done largely from inside the United States, picking up on the resistance to the war in Europe, and that combination worked. It did not work because of President Bush, it did not work because of the people behind Cheney and Rumsfeld, it worked because people who are involved in the permanent institutions of the Presidency of the United States, banded together in sufficient numbers, and with sufficient influence, to influence the way the policy was shaped.
My belief is, the same institutions are capable of acting, at least politically, together with Europe, and together with some nations in Asia, to bring about a similar approach to the problems of the economy in general, of the world as a whole. I believe that if this is done, it is possible, that we will see that Europe's problems will essentially be solved, in terms of opportunity at least, by new relations to this emerging phenomenon around Russia, China, and India, in Asia generally, and this will be the new market upon which a revived Europe will depend, for the coming 25 years. And the United States will play its own role in that, if we succeed.
The Systemic Crisis Is a Classical Tragedy
Now, the thing I want to present, a few of the problems which stand in the way of getting the solution to both problems: That is, to get the war danger off the table; and secondly, to have the economic recovery program, which enables us to push the war threat off the table.
We are in a systemic crisis. In artistic terms, a systemic crisis is called "a Classical tragedy." A Classical tragedy is not caused by the leaders of a nation. It is caused by the people themselves, and the popular culture. It is caused because popular opinion has reached a point at which what is believed, what governs choices of decisions, like the axioms of a Euclidean geometry, always results in the wrong decision. In other words, this is not a cyclical crisis, it is a systemic crisis. The system can not survive this crisis. And we are now at the end of that system. It can no longer survive. Compromises within the system will not work. You must change the system.
We have a model for the change in the Bretton Woods agreement which was reached in 1944-45, in launching the postwar reconstruction of 1946-58, in particular, and also efforts which continued in that direction in the United States, until 1964, and continued in Europe until a somewhat later time, until after the 1971-72 decisions, at which time Europe began to collapse, too.
So, going back to that kind of system, or something modelled on it—not quite the same, because in that time, remember, the United States was the only world power, it was the only bastion for setting up the recovery of Europe and other parts of the world. Today, the United States economy is a piece of disgusting wreckage. The United States has political power. It has political influence. But it does not have economic power in any sense, as it had in 1945, or 1946, on a world scale. We don't even have the power to sustain our own economy, let alone to support others. But, we do have a political position, an historic political position, and political power; we can intervene to bring together forces around measures which can address problems. In many cases, I believe, only the United States could play that role, at this time. Therefore, my objective, of course, is to get the United States, despite the flaws of its present President, and other problems, to take those kinds of actions, on the economic front, which will lead to a change in the world financial and monetary system, while also promoting and launching economic recovery programs, typified by the cooperation between Western Europe, in particular, and the Eurasian countries, who are gathered around the emerging, developing Russian-China-India Strategic Triangle. That is the general hope for civilization, and I believe the United States should, and could, play that role, despite the imperfections of the existing President.
The Institution of the U.S. Presidency
You know, the Presidency of the United States is a wonderful institution. It has a kind of "one size fits all" quality. You can take almost anything, and make it President, and the Presidency could still function. Sometimes, you require a genius; sometimes you get an idiot; sometimes you get a traitor. You get all kinds. And we've had them all. We've had great geniuses: Washington was a genius. Franklin, who was not a President, but the founder of the nation, was a genius, one of the greatest geniuses of European civilization in his time—though that is not generally known, but that's a fact. Abraham Lincoln was probably the greatest genius to occupy the Presidency of the United States, even though he's, obviously, often deprecated. Franklin Roosevelt was a bit of a genius; not a genius like Abraham Lincoln, but he was a tough bird, and he knew what he was doing. He had a program, and he did it.
So, we've also had people like Truman, who was a disaster; Eisenhower, who played a useful role, but I used to refer to him as "President Eisen-however," because he would do one thing good one time, and something else another. But he was generally not a bad person, and he did some good things. And he made a lot of mistakes: One of the worst of them was called Arthur Burns, who gave us many of our problems today. We also had Nixon, who was no good. We also had Johnson, who was not brilliant, but he was a courageous man on civil rights, and he gets a lot of credit for that. After that, we had disasters generally. As a matter of fact, we had two Presidencies, who were not Presidents. Nixon was not President, he was the acting President; he was the nominal President. Henry Kissinger was the President. Carter was not President. Zbigniew Brzezinski was President. And so forth and so on.
So, we've had a one-size-fits-all Presidency, in which the institution of the Presidency, is all of those institutions which are either part of the Executive branch, or are resources tied into the Executive branch. For example, I've never been a member of the government, or the Executive branch, but I've done—on several occasions, I've done several very important things of strategic significance, as a private citizen, in conjunction with circles in the permanent government. So, a lot of us are in this orbit, of being part of the Presidency, or being assets of the Presidency, and we generally work together, or fight each other. But when we are united, we can generally get a President of the United States to come to a fairly reasonable decision.
This is the advantage of the United States, with respect to the constitutions of Europe. We have a Presidency, an Executive power, which can not be destabilized by a parliamentary destabilization—not easily. It was attempted twice, it didn't work, in recent times. So, my view is that, despite the weaknesses, which I think are obvious to many of you, of the incumbent President, that we have a one-size-fits-all constitutional institution called the President, and if sufficient forces in the United States, of influence, gather together, and are determined to make something happen, when it's necessary, it is likely we could succeed.
So, therefore, we're not talking about something the next President might do. We're talking about something that has to be done very soon, as I mentioned the date January 28th, this coming year, which is going to be a crucial point.
The U.S. Turn Away From Production
Now, what's our problem? I said, "Tragedy."
During the period of 1964, approximately, when we entered the Indo-China War, and shortly after that, when a terrible thing was made the prime minister of England, of the United Kingdom—Wilson. Wilson was a disaster, and what happened after 1964, was a disaster, economically and otherwise. We began a shift, away from the system that had worked in most of recent history in Europe and the Americas. The system was, we were a society based primarily on the idea of production, of productive powers of labor in manufacturing and agriculture, in infrastructure-building, and so forth. So therefore, the sense of personal identity, of the person in society, was what they could do to contribute to this improvement of performance of productive power.
In about 1964-65, there was introduced from England, and the United States, into these countries, and into continental Europe, what was called "post-industrial society." Or what is called today, "consumer society." This is matched with free trade, with deregulation; with a cultural transformation, we may say, "cultural degeneration": degeneration of education, where you would no longer recognize university education, as even bad secondary education. Our educational systems have been destroyed. We are destroying the minds of our young people, by the educational system on all levels, including the secondary and university levels, most notably.
We no longer have productive ability. We have a generation, in leading positions in government, both in Europe and in the Americas, who came to maturity, after this change occurred. These are people who have risen from university students, to become heads of governments, or important officials in the private sector, who never had an ethical, moral commitment to productive values. We are a post-industrial-oriented society. As a result of that, the people who are running most of the world today, its institutions, have no conception of what a healthy economy is!
For example: Someone will tell you, the United States has got a balanced budget. Or the United States has no inflation. The United States has, probably, one of the highest rates of inflation of any industrialized nation in the world. We lie! Our figures are fraudulent. We introduced a thing back in the 1980s, that I protested against at the time, which is called a "quality adjustment index." And what was notable, was that you would take things like automobiles, you'd make this year's model poorer in quality than the previous year's model, and say that this represented as much as 40% of an improvement in quality of the vehicle. This was called the quality adjustment index, and it was celebrated, by putting out for the first time, instead of putting a spare tire in the trunk of a car, you put a little thing that looked like it came off a kiddy car, and if you had a flat tire, you pulled the real tire off and you put this funny thing on the place where the flat tire had occurred, and you'd wobble down the road to the nearest repair station. This was called an "improvement"! This resulted in as much as a 40% increase in the counter-inflationary valuation of that automobile.
This was a fraud run by the Federal Reserve System's statistical department, together with the U.S. Commerce Department. And since that time, until the present, every year: Did you know that the value of a house increases 12% over last year, simply because it exists? Its intangible value is increased. Therefore, even though the prices of real estate represent galloping inflation, because of these frauds, which we perpertrate in our official statistics, it shows we are not suffering inflation. We're suffering up to 10% to 20% inflation, per annum.
Now, we're at a point, where the official discount rate of the United States is about 1.25% of the Federal Reserve System. Now, if we're having a 5% to 10%, minimal, rate of inflation, and you're trying to pump up the economy with financial inputs at 1.5%, what are you doing? You're doing what Japan did with the yen bubble. You're issuing Federal Reserve currency desperately, at desperate rates, to pump up bankrupt financial markets, while the rate of inflation is already, at least, between 5% and 10%, varying, depending on what sector you're looking at.
What is this comparable to? This is comparable to 1923 Germany, between June and November of 1923, when the Reichsbank was pumping money into an inherently inflationary system, until the reichsmark blew out and was bailed out subsequently by the Dawes Plan, from the United States. So, this is not quite as intense as 1923 Germany, but it's analogous, in what's happening right now.
So, that's why we have a systemic crisis. We have lost our rail system, our passenger rail system. You can not—if we don't have a change in the law, within the next 60 days, you will no longer have a rail system in the United States. If the collapse of United Airlines, American Airlines, and so forth continues, which will be a chain-reaction effect on all the major airlines, we will not have a passenger air traffic system in the United States. You will not be able to get, on a commercial basis, from one part of the United States to another. Only in certain regions; beyond that, you won't.
So, this is a systemic crisis: a change in policy, a destruction of infrastructure, which affects energy systems, which affects water systems, affects education systems, health-care systems; everything that you depend upon, to make a workable economic environment for production, is being undermined and destroyed.
This is a systemic crisis. The only way you get rid of a systemic crisis, is by changing those values, those rules of the game, those axioms which have caused the crisis. It is not a matter of adjusting it without changing values. It means you've got to say, "Hey, folks! You've been stupid, that's our problem. You've been stupid. Don't blame the politicians, they did what they thought you wanted them to do. So, why are politicians stupid? Because they listen to you, the citizens." And, this is what's called in Classical terms, a Classical tradedy.
The Case of Hamlet
A typical case is the case of Hamlet. And I've spoken of this before, but it's important to refer to this issue, here, and on many other occasions, because this goes to the question of leadership in a time of crisis. What kind of leadership can get you out of a crisis? And the lack of that kind of leadership will ensure you have the crisis. Hamlet's a case of that.
What was the failure, was not Hamlet. The last scene of Hamlet makes that clear. Hamlet is dead in the last scene, his corpse is being carried off the stage. And, the damn fool Danes are out there, doing the same thing they did to get to that mess beforehand. So, the tragedy lay in the Danes, the Danish culture! And this was presented by Shakespeare, during the period of James I, which is a very relevant example at that time. And, Horatio out there, speaking to the audience off-stage, while Fortinbras is saying, "Let's go on and do more of this!"—Horatio, the friend of Hamlet, is standing, saying to the audience, "Let's reconsider the recent experience, before we make damn fools of ourselves all over again." Now, Horatio was showing a certain potential of leadership; he wasn't a leader, but he was a commentator who made the relevant point.
The problem in a crisis, a Classical crisis, all Classical crisis, is that the people are the problem. Not because people are bad; people are inherently good, they're born good. But, because the culture is bad. The culture is disoriented. The way the generation which came to power, gradually out of the middle-1960s generation, they're all, with a few exceptions, bad. Not because they were born bad, but because they inherited a post-industrial culture, which led us away from the things which caused the postwar reconstruction of Europe and other good things during that time. So therefore, a leader is one who is able to convince the people to change their ways.
Now, generally this kind of change in ways can occur only when the people themselves realize there is a crisis. When people are willing to say, "Yes, we've done something wrong. Yes, we have to change our ways." And that's what our problem is right now: is to get the people themselves to understand that the crisis means, that they have to change their ways. Otherwise, this civilization is going the way of the Roman Empire. We're at the end-phase, we're at this point where we can no longer continue the kinds of policies, or the kind of policy-making which has dominated us up to now.
It's simple to do that. As I say, we take the Bretton Woods model and use that as a guide. This time, it will not be the United States issuing money to the world: It will mean a group of leading nations, taking over the IMF in bankruptcy reorganization; taking over bankrupt central banking systems, in bankruptcy reorganization, by state authority; creating, in effect, national banking: That is, in which the banks continue to exist, but they exist under the direction, and protection, of the sovereign governments. The sovereign governments, which are the only agency which is to be allowed to create credit, must use the credit-creating power, and use it in ways which are typified in the German reconstruction phase, by the Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau. Those methods work. You get credit out there, and recycled into large-scale projects, you get governments to make treaty-type agreements, on long-term trade. You go into 25-50-year agreements on large-scale projects.
For example: Take this Three Gorges Dam project in China. This is a long-term project, which has required international support, directly or indirectly. This thing has to be financed over a period of its maturity—25-50 years. To develop the Mekong River development project, as it should be developed, from China all the way down through Southeast Asia—is a 50-year project. Maybe we can finance our way out of it in 25 years, but we need to think of it as a 50-year undertaking, which we can finance at 1% to 2% maximum, simple interest rates.
The Eurasian Land-Bridge
We do it not because we are interested in making money on the interest. We do it because we are building the economies, based on infrastructure projects, which will be the stimulant, for the growth of employment, and the growth of the private sector, agriculture, industry and so forth. So therefore, nations will agree over long terms, 25-50 years, on credit, as, say, for the Eurasian Land-Bridge program.
We now have in Korea—if somebody doesn't make a mess of it—the linking of the two parts of the railroad, which will enable you to get freight from Pusan, on the tip of Korea, by modern rail, all the way to Rotterdam, either by way of the Trans-Siberian route, or by way of what's called the "New Silk Road" route. Also, the same system will take rail systems down through Kunming, through Burma, down through Malaysia, across Bangladesh, and into India.
So, you will have essentially three major spines of transport, coming out of the rim area of Japan, Korea, and so forth, down through Siberia, through the Silk Road route, the Central Asia route, and down through the coastal road leading toward Africa, across the straits toward Cairo, Alexandria, and into Africa as a whole.
So, this is a multinational effort, which requires resources from many nations: It requires long-term financing. It requires agreements among states, which can keep the thing stable, so it doesn't blow up in the meantime, with some financial problem. And on that basis, we can cause the world system to grow.
We can use a gold-reserve system—not a gold-standard system, but a gold-reserve system, again; this time, not backed by the U.S. dollar as such, but backed by the authority of an international agency of these banking systems, which are national banking systems. And on that basis, we could maintain, with the aid of the domination of the world market, 50% of the world market should be dominated by these long-range infrastructure development programs. Under those conditions, we can survive.
Reject the Hobbesian World-View
Now, let me turn to one very specific problem, among the many problems that this poses. I had a meeting last Spring, the year 2001, that is, in which a number of people of some influence in government, out of government, but influential parties—we had a discussion. And I raised this question about this Land-Bridge, Europe-Eurasian cooperation, as U.S. policy, and a riot broke out, among people who I had previously thought were reasonably sane! What was the problem? And this is the problem we face. They began screaming: "How can the United States trust these countries? How can the United States trust these countries? Yes, we can deal with them. But, we're not going to do this kind of sharing of power on this basis with them, economic power, on this basis!" "Why not?" "Because they're our competitors! We have to think of a conflict of national interests."
Now think of this on the edge of war. What does that mean?
First of all, what this represents is the legacy of two of the worst clowns in English-speaking history, Hobbes and Locke. Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. The idea that there has to be, that you have to run society, on the basis of some sort of inevitable, natural conflict among persons, nations, and peoples. Aren't we all human? I mean, even Henry Kissinger may qualify as human, under biological examination. Aren't we all human? Don't we all have a common interest in humanity? Don't we all have the same flesh and blood, and the same impulses and desires, really, fundamentally, as needs? Why should we be in conflict? Yes, we may have conflicts, but that doesn't mean this is a natural condition of man. This is the friction of trying to avoid conflict, as the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, exemplifies that. And we would think, that after all that work that was done, including by Cardinal Mazarin, to bring about the Treaty of Westphalia, and you read the agreement itself, what it means: You would say, "This proves, and it proved to many in Europe until recently, that no matter how intense the war, how intense the struggle, there is always a way to find peace, and resolution, if you're willing to admit, that nations should love one another." Which is the Treaty of Westphalia: Nations should naturally tend to love one another. There is no such thing as a natural, axiomatic human conflict. There are human conflicts, but they are by their nature curable, because there's always a higher principle, lurking in the background. We are all human. None of us resemble apes. We're not. No ape can understand Gauss's fundamental theorem of algebra. And even though some people try to monkey around with it, that doesn't do it.
All right, now. What then? Shouldn't we say, as some people say, Utopians say, "Let's have one world, let's globalize everybody"? No. Why not?
Because the communication of ideas, the processes of deliberation, of any people, always come in terms of a culture, in which their use of language is an expression of the culture. By expressing the culture, and using the language to express the culture, they are able to engage in the equivalent of Platonic-Socratic dialogues with one another. Only by means of that use of culture and language, shared among a people, can a people deliberate, as a body.
Now, if we wish to have a world which is not ruled by dictators, but a world which conforms to what some people call "democracy," that is, the participation, the willful and efficient participation of people in regulating the aims of their government—maybe not all the details of the government, but the aims of the government—as I've emphasized, the aims of government mean: What kind of world are we going to have two generations from now? What are my grandchildren's lives going to be like? I want that kind of policy. We want governments which respond to that question, that definition of general welfare and national interest. We don't want it based on making people happy today: We have to be concerned about what is going to make our grandchildren happy, two generations ahead. Otherwise, it's not a sane policy.
So, you have to have nations, based on this cultural-language function, as a people who is now capable, not of babbling at each other, in incoherent argot, but a people which can think profoundly, as Shelley put it, in the "most profound and impassioned concepts respecting man and nature." And you don't need a simplistic language to do that.
So, therefore, we need highly developed populations, highly developed forms of cultures, highly developed forms of the language of that culture, as a medium of communicating scientific and Classical ideas of culture, among themselves, so that they, as a body, as a nation, can decide what they want. And can enter into discussion with other nations, around common goals, common missions.
But, our objective is to end this business, where some people, most people, are stupid, and a few wise guys, who ain't so smart, are running the world. We have to have a system in which government is responsive to, and involves the participation of the people. For that, you need an institution of government called a sovereign nation-state, which is based on a highest possible development and improvement, of an existing culture and language, for the communication of "profound and impassioned ideas concerning man and nature."
Common Aims for Mankind
Therefore, we all have a common interest, and that common interest is, in what? Common aims for mankind, for looking at the state of the world, two to three generations ahead. Deciding what kind of a world we want.
Now, you have that, in a sense, in the Strategic Triangle agreements. You have six nations in Southeast Asia, you have the three up north, you have Russia, you have India, you have other nations coming into this. What do they want? They want a Eurasia they can live in, three generations from now, which will meet their needs, of their people then, of a growing population. They want a relationship with regions such as Western Europe, to supply them, as Germany typifies this—it's the one area, China's the area of growth of German exports; the rest of the picture is pretty much a disaster. They want those exports from Germany! From France; from Italy; from other parts of the world—for their future, for their grandchildren's benefit.
So therefore, we have an inherent agreement, in principle, in interest, among these nations. And therefore, this means that we should come to understand one another better, each nation; we should promote the improvement of the culture of each nation, to come to the highest possible level of development of its culture, its language, and have an understanding of this process in one nation to another. This is typified by the idea of an ecumenical dialogue, among Judaism, Christianity (if you can find any Christians these days; they're getting scarcer all the time), and Muslims. The obvious thing, obvious. You have to have these profound questions of man's conception of his own nature, and the purpose of man's existence. These have to be the fundamental questions which motivate society.
So, we have a vital concern, a practical concern, in loving one another, as nations. The idea that we must have a Hobbesian, or Lockean, type of conflict among people, is, itself, the great obstacle.
And whenever you hear that, you're hearing the voice of sickness, mental and moral sickness.
I've got a problem in the United States. I've got people, who are influential people, who are not unfriendly to me—some are friendly—who talk with me, but they have this sickness. The sickness of saying that conflict is the natural condition of relations among nations and peoples. It is not natural—it's unnatural. And therefore, we need all the help we can get, to put that question on the table, and get that kind of discussion. Because I think that that one point is the greatest source of danger to peace. Because I think that every nation in the world would like to be out of this financial crisis, this economic crisis. Most nations of the world would like to be out of this war business. We may have to have military forces. We may have to have justified defenses of nations against some abusive threat. But, we do not need war as a policy. We need a policy, as it was called by people such as Lazare Carnot, of "strategic defense." We defend what we're fighting for: What we're fighting for is peace. The objective is peace.
And as long as we think that we have to—as the Utopians do—set up a system of conflict, of managed conflict, by which nations are managed and controlled by outsiders, by which people inside a nation are managed and controlled, I think that the kind of mission to which I'm dedicated, which I've identified here, is in jeopardy. And I would suggest to all of us, that we think about that. I'm committed to that. I need help. And I'm asking you to help me.
