LaRouche: Iran Is Not the Problem;
We Must Defeat Globalization
Here are Lyndon LaRouche's remarks to a private seminar in Berlin, Germany on March 6, 2006.
First of all, on the Iran crisis, the probable remedy in the short term, will come from negotiations between Russia and the government of Iran, because there is no other visible intermediary at this time which could probably do the job.
What we're looking for, is a time-buying operation. This was very unfortunate, bringing this crisis on from the United States and Britain, at this time, upon Iran. Iran had just had an election. It had things, internal affairs, to sort out after the election. And to bring this on, which was totally unnecessary, has created a danger for civilization, which Europe, in general, could not handle, and which is a problem for us in the United States itself, caused by Cheney.
I believe that there is a very good chance of success, of the intervention of Russia, as my opinion is echoed, I believe, by ElBaradei, the key negotiator. Europe can not at this point generally handle it, because Europe has internal problems also, in trying to deal with the United States, which would make it difficult for Central Europe, Western Europe, to deal with this problem at this time. So, I'm looking forward, optimistically, to the success of the Russian negotiations.
Now, if that were not to work out, we have a number of problems to discuss: First of all, what would be the effect of an attack if it came from the United States or some source sponsored by the United States? And what is really behind all of this nonsense? Were the attack to occur, it would probably result in a drive of the price of petroleum up to $100 to $150 a barrel, which would then be a crisis for Europe and other parts of the world in general, because we have a fragile economic situation, and the sudden zooming of the oil price to over $100 a barrel, would be a crisis.
A Major Financial Crisis Under Way
However, it goes much beyond that. At this time, we have already a major financial crisis under way, in terms of hedge funds, in terms of the things that happened in Iceland and New Zealand and so forth, and the world in general is going through a financial-economic crisis, headed toward a general collapse. So, under these conditions, the spread of a crisis in the petroleum-producing countries, nominally in Southwest Asia, which affects both Iran and the Arab countries adjoining it: There's an immediate danger to the Saudi oil fields under those kinds of conditions. If that were to go down, you can imagine what the effect would be, in terms of price of petroleum and the effect upon the economy of Europe, the United States, and other parts of the world. So, this is something that has to be prevented. The consequences of an attack on Iran, would be of that nature.
The attack, if it came, would come in the following form: It would come generally out of a faction in the United States associated with Vice President Cheney—and I'll speak of Vice President Cheney before I conclude these remarks today. But, what it probably would be, would be an aerial attack, or principally an aerial attack, with some use of special forces, ground forces of an irregular type, maybe not U.S., maybe something else. It could involve Israel, if Netanyahu were to become the Premier of Israel; it's a possibility. There's pressure from people in the United States to have Israel make an attack on Iran. Other forces in Israel, apart from Netanyahu, probably would refuse to make that attack. But Netanyahu is capable—and he's being pressured to do that.
If this happened, what it would do, is set off a chain reaction in the world, not only in the petroleum area, but also, it would consolidate what has been built up, during the 1970s to the present: a gradual attempt to start a Crusader-type of conflict in world affairs. That is, to make Islam the target, and to—as under the Crusaders, under the Venetian and Norman chivalry during the Middle Ages—to have perpetual warfare, and perpetual regime-change of that type, going on in the world. To take a billion people in Islam, and declare them an enemy, and open up what we call "irregular warfare" or "asymmetric warfare" throughout the world, among religious bodies, using the Islamic issue as the primary cause.
This would be, under these conditions, the end of civilization as we have known it. The world at present could not stand it. This is insane; that is, the idea of such a war is insane, especially in view of the consequences. But nonetheless, there is a determination in some quarters of the world, in London and in the United States, particularly, to have such a war. Jack Straw, the Foreign Minister of Great Britain, is a key player in moving things in this direction, as is Cheney in the United States. The President of the United States is not mentally competent. Cheney is the virtual acting President, and has been since the beginning of the Bush Administration, and therefore, that is a factor, a negative factor, but is not a causal factor in the situation. The key here is what Cheney works for.
And the other thing to bear in mind: You have to ask the question, since it's so obvious that from our standpoint, from the standpoint of people in Europe, in general, and so forth, that this is an insane project, there's no need to do it; there is no immediate danger of nuclear attack from Iran; the U.S. official line is that Iran will not have the kinds of weapons that are talked about, for ten years, so, we have a lot of time to discuss these matters. Why should somebody in high position, the Vice President of the United States, high officials in Britain, with support from people in other parts of the world, want to have such an unnecessary attack on Iran at this time?
A Return to Nuclear Technology Is Inevitable
Let's take one other consideration on this thing, of the nuclear question: We do not need to settle, in the long term, the question of nuclear technology in Iran. It is not an urgent question, and it's not even a good question to try to settle at this time. We are at the point in the world, where the return to emphasis upon nuclear technology is now inevitable. This was a factor, of course, in Germany, and a cause for the recent snap elections, special election. The world is going back to an emphasis on nuclear energy.
The reason for it—and this is part of the picture—is that, for example, the world is short of fresh water, potable water. About 40% of the use of water in the world, depends upon what's called fossil water, digging down deep for water left by melted glaciers, at some depths under deserts or under other areas. Without the fossil water, we have a crisis for much of the population of the world. Therefore, we're in a situation, in which we have to have high-technology, high-energy-density processes to produce the fresh water needed for human consumption and other such uses. This requires nuclear energy.
We also have a fuel problem. We depend too much on petroleum. We're going to have to start to make hydrogen-based fuels for automobiles and other uses, rather than importing petroleum. Petroleum will become a product for making plastics and other kinds of things. It will not be used as a fuel.
Now, to produce hydrogen-based fuels for general use—and bear in mind that Japan is already developing hydrogen-based, fuel-driven automobiles—this is going to be a technology used around the world. To produce hydrogen-based fuels, you require, as one model, an 800-megawatt, high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, to do that. So, that would mean, in order to provide fuels, hydrogen-based fuels for various purposes, you would have high-temperature gas-cooled reactors of that type, in various countries, or the equivalent, to produce the fuels for this.
Also, we are in a period, in which the rate at which we are using up raw materials generally, is high. And now we have a population of about 1.4 billion people in China, over a billion in India: If the poor people in these countries are to realize their goals, of an improved standard of living, they're going to use up more raw materials. We can deal with that problem, through the world of people like Vernadsky in Russia, the old scientist. We know how to approach this problem of actually reproducing and maintaining the necessary raw-materials supplies for human life, even at a higher rate of consumption.
So therefore, for these and other reasons, we are naturally going toward—if we wish to survive and maintain civilization, in a population of 6 billion people, or already more than 6 billion people—we're going to depend upon an economy which is based largely on very high-temperature sources of power. This means nuclear power; it will mean fusion-energy power down the line, and other things of that type. Low, or so-called soft technologies, can not provide for the security of the human race in times to come.
So therefore, the rationalization and rational use of nuclear technologies, is necessary for all humanity. And therefore, we must think of devising a rational policy, for using these modes of production for future generations. Therefore, until we understand exactly what we want to do with nuclear power, we should hold off trying to come to final decisions on what kind of nuclear power we're going to use, and how.
The Example of India
Just to give you one concrete example of this: India has the world's largest single concentration of radioactive thorium. Now, thorium is a radioactive substance which does not lead in any direct fashion at all, toward the production of weapons, of nuclear weapons. India has a lot of this. I've recommended for a number of years, that we proceed in India with the Jülich model, which is developed here in Germany, of the high-temperature gas-cooled reactor, as a mode used in India, because they have a lot of thorium.
Now, to get the radioactive thorium functioning in reactors for power, India needs tremendous amounts of power. India's one of the areas where the great water crisis exists, particularly in the southern part of India, in the Deccan, where they're drawing upon fossil water. And therefore, if we're going to deal with the terrible problem, of 70% extreme poverty in India, we're going to have to improve the standard of life, we're going to have to ensure them water, and we're going to have to give them power to do it.
But, to get this going, we need to use plutonium to charge the thorium, to make this program available. The United States government has interfered: They're trying to get the Indian government to agree not to use the plutonium resources they have, which are in the military sector, to charge the thorium units which would be in the non-military sector. So, already, we're dealing with this kind of problem, where in a rational policy on the use and control of radioactive processes, as power processes, we are putting irrational things in the way. That's why I say, we must hesitate, to go ahead to try to settle the question of nuclear technology, finally, until we get a better picture of where we're going, and what we intend to do about it.
For the purposes of our subject here, tonight, it's important to emphasize that the turn toward nuclear power, is a worldwide turn. It is going to happen; it is inevitable. The period of the recent 25 years or so of suppression of nuclear processes is going to come to an end: That is inevitable. The question is, we've got to bring the population to an understanding of the inevitability of this. This is being discussed in most governments of the world, in most circles in governments in the world. The only thing they're concerned about in dealing with this, apart from knowing they have to do it, is how are they going to tell the people that this is going to happen. Because it is inevitable, and the pressures for doing it will increase from popular sources, as the demands for the benefits from this process become more apparent to people.
So therefore, recognizing that it is understood by most leading governments of the world, that the turn to nuclear power, as high-density power, as opposed to so-called soft energies, is inevitable, and absolutely necessary, why would somebody try to do something to prevent a country like Iran from gaining access to this technology, or at least coming to an agreement for an orderly process which deals with this?
The further consideration is, that there is no reason to conduct nuclear war: No one could win nuclear war. So, why are you going to start a nuclear war—unless you're a madman? So, there really is no threat from nuclear warfare, in general, at this point. Because most of the world knows today, what the effects of nuclear war are. And there's no way that anyone can win, starting a general nuclear war, even on a fairly low level.
We already have chaos from the kinds of wars we are allowing to happen now. Why would somebody do, what Jack Straw of London, and Dick Cheney in the United States, and people like that, are trying to do, to get a nuclear war, or an issue of nuclear war, going in Iran?
The Problem Is Globalization
What we're dealing with, as you see with what happened to Germany in the period of the Maastricht agreement: Remember, that even though I was warning that it was inevitable that the Soviet system was going to collapse, and it did, about the time I predicted it would, that at that point, Germany was ready for being reunited and rebuilt. But London and Paris—Thatcher and Mitterrand—objected; and conditions were imposed upon Germany, that it would have to, in a sense, destroy some of its people, as we've seen in part of the former D.D.R., as in Saxony for example, where the economy is suppressed, because "Germany must not be allowed to develop as a power. Germany must be broken." So, you had a system which said: Put Germany under controls, under terrible conditions, which were actually fraudulent, in which Germany would support the rest of Europe, virtually, by subsidizing it, but would not be allowed to live and benefit from this process. We're now in a situation, with the unemployment in Germany for example, and the economic conditions which are worsening, which are a result largely of that Maastricht agreement, which is like an occupied country. The British and French come in, Mitterrand and Thatcher come in, and demand that Germany be put under the conditions of an occupied nation, again, as its own nation, as a condition of reunification.
This shows that what we're dealing with here, is, from Cheney and from other circles who are a part of this kind of thinking, a determination to actually destroy parts of the world economy, as a way of keeping a kind of imperial system called "globalization," under which most of the human population, at present scale, could not live. That's their intention. So therefore, when you ask: Why would people behind Cheney, who are the kind of people, the same group of people who were behind the Thatcher-Mitterrand imposition on Germany at the time of reunification—why would these people want to destroy parts of the world economy? Why would they want to bring the whole world economy down, through a petroleum crisis, say, $150 a barrel petroleum, and things like that? Why would they want to do things like that? Why would a government, or people at the government level want to do that?
Just to get a general picture, this is not just Germany: If you look at Eastern Europe, the former Comecon countries, they're in worse economic conditions than they were under Soviet domination. The poverty is terrible. The desperation is terrible. Right-wing tendencies are arising out of those kinds of terrible social circumstances. So, there are forces in the world, which are determined to turn civilization back, under the title of "globalization." That's our problem.
Iran is not the issue. Iran is an issue only in the sense, that it has been picked out as a target, as Iraq was, for terrible treatment. But what is done to Iran, and the implications of an attack on Iran, now, for the world at large, indicate not that Cheney is making a mistake, not that Jack Straw is making a mistake, is misguided: They intend to do what their actions would cause. They intend to ruin civilization. We've seen examples of this otherwise.
Therefore, the problem is, that those of us who should have known better, have not prevented these people from coming into positions of power, where their imperial schemes for a one-world dictatorship in the name of "globalization"—where their schemes are allowed. We have to fight for the nation-state, for the defense of cultures, for the right of people to develop, to enjoy reasonable prosperity and progress. And somebody's against it. And Cheney's one of them.
There are these kinds of forces in the world. The attack on Iraq, the attack on Iran, the focus of attack on Iran now, are not the result of any "issue" as such. These are targets, as a part of a general policy which aims at many parts of the world: For example, look at Africa, look at sub-Saharan Africa, since the early 1970s, when a change in policy occurred. What have we done? We have promoted, from Europe and from the United States, forces have promoted an increase in revolutions, in wars, in all kinds of looting. We are committing mass murder in Africa, today! These wars were deliberate, they were organized, they were engineered. There are forces in the world, which would like to turn back the clock on civilization, because that's the kind of world they want.
The problem here is that we, who should understand this, and recognize this, who should be able to be represented in governments, don't mobilize our governments, and mobilize ourselves, to prevent these kinds of policies from continuing.
So, what you have, is, you have two things: First of all, Cheney is merely a tool. He's a tool of George Shultz, who is a part of an international financier group, in the United States, associated with Halliburton and Bechtel. And the war in Iraq was generally an operation, not so much by the U.S. government, as by Bechtel and Halliburton, who ran this war.
So, the problem is, that we have forces which can be called evil, in the world, who have these kinds of policies. And the problem is, we either don't recognize that pattern, or we think that there must be some issue in Iran, which caused the United States government to react as it has reacted; and the British side. It has not. There are simply forces in the world, who have power in governments, who shouldn't have power in governments, who have this kind of policy. And we're not doing anything effectively so far, to stop it.
Mobilize Around a Positive Alternative
Faced with an enemy of this type, how should we deal with it? Now, some people say, you have to hate and fight back. Well, you should fight back, but you shouldn't hate. The legacy of the achievements, where there have been achievements of European civilization, which have been outstanding, since ancient Greece—prior to the Peloponnesian War, of course—was that the approach to dealing with man, and the problems of enemy status among people, is not hatred, is not killing, but love for mankind. This was the policy which was known in the ancient Greek, as agape: love for mankind, which became known as the regard for the general welfare of humanity, as the basis for modern European civilization, born during the Italian Renaissance of the 15th Century. This was the basis of the great peace treaty, of the Treaty of Westphalia, of love which got Europe to stop killing itself, with religious warfare.
And therefore, when you're dealing with an enemy, like Shultz and his crowd, the thing behind this attack, this focus on Iran, what you have to do, is mobilize humanity around a positive alternative, which reflects love for mankind, doing good for mankind.
We have the opportunity now to do that. I just give you one example from the United States. We haven't done it yet, but we're fighting it out. In the past year, or a little more than a year, I've played an increasingly significant role in the Democratic Party, with which I used to have some fights, even though I was associated with it. And in the beginning of last year, we recognized that the auto industry was about to be destroyed. Probably about two-thirds of the U.S. auto industry, or more, faces immediate destruction. You have a similar kind of problem in Germany, with the collapse of the auto industry here, and other industries. But the auto industry in the U.S. in particular, as I've pointed out to our friends in the Congress, and they agreed—they haven't done anything about it yet, but they agreed, and maybe they will do something about it—is that in the United States (and to some degree in Germany, also), the machine-tool-design capability of the entire economy is concentrated chiefly in the automobile industry, among the machine-tool sector of the industry. We used to have it in the aerospace sector, also here in Germany, before much of that was shut down. The ability of a modern nation to develop its economy, lies chiefly in the ability of its machine-tool-design sector to translate science into better products, with better technologies.
Now, what I proposed, is simply that the Congress, with our Constitutional powers, create a special corporation to sort of subsidize and take over the auto industry—not as a permanent takeover of the industry, but to reorganize it—in order to use the two-thirds or so of the industry which is not going to be used now. Keep the people in place, but change the product they produce: We need to build a railroad system, we've lost it. The machine-tool design for a modern rail system or equivalent, lies in the machine-tool sector. We need to repair our rivers, our canal system, which is an essential part of our internal economy. They can do it! We need to build power plants: They can design it! They can do it. We can take two-thirds of our total industrial capacity, and without really moving anyone from the place in which they live, we can turn the part of the industry which is collapsing into a positive factor for rebuilding the U.S. and world economy.
We could do the same kind of thing in Europe; we could do the same kind of thing in Germany, if you had the authorization to do it. Take the machine-tool sector, which is being destroyed; keep it in place; keep people in place; and launch the projects, whether in public works or other things, which are going to give the country things it needs, which will increase the average level of wealth in the country, and deal with problems such as unemployment, in this way. We have the same thing to do in other parts of the world.
A Eurasian Development Perspective
So, with this kind of approach, let's look at the world, look at Germany: Germany's future lies as an industrial, science-driven nation, across Eurasia. You go from Germany, you can go into places like Belarus, into Russia, into Ukraine, Kazakstan, to the coast of the Pacific in China. These parts of the world are areas in which new development must occur, plus the development of raw materials, for example. Also in development of the conditions of the population. The kind of investments which are required have a useful economic life of about a quarter-century, in some cases a half-century, in infrastructure. China does not really have the ability to pay for this all at once, but with long-term credit agreements, say between Germany and other parts of Europe with China, you can set up long-term credit agreements at low rates, and therefore, Germany would be occupied, as other countries in Europe, in producing products which are needed for raising of the standard of productivity in China and these other countries in Asia.
So, you have a perspective of Eurasian cooperation, between European technology and Asian development, to bring up the level of the whole Eurasian continent. So a new Eurasian policy is the option for Germany. This is a great opportunity. And it's a long-term opportunity: It gives a mission and a destiny for nations that participate in it. These are the kinds of solutions we require, and they're available to us, in a very practical way, if we organize our governments, politically, to support our entrepreneurs and others in this kind of project.
People Will Fight To Save Their Nation
So, finally, one thing to consider: Here we have a great threat to humanity, a great threat represented by the policies of Cheney, Jack Straw in London, and so forth. How should we deal with this? The problem is that we find that our politicians are impotent—and I deal with politicians in the United States, I can tell you about their impotence. And many of them are my best friends! So, how do you get politicians, who behave with impotence, to suddenly find the strengths within themselves, to make the strategic decisions on which great endeavors of this type depend? Because, if you can, if you can mobilize the political forces, and mobilize the people around such political leaders, for these kinds of projects, they will not tolerate something like this threat to Iran, right now! They will not tolerate this threat to humanity. It's because people have become sophists: They sit back and say, "You've got to go along, and put up with this. You've got to accept this." Because they have no confidence, no courage. And they have no confidence and no courage, because they have no perspective, and they do not understand the efficiency of love for mankind as the greatest political force in world history, for the greatest things.
You fight Cheney by mobilizing people around objectives, which mobilize people with an idea of the beauty of the future before us. In that case, they find the courage to fight, just like the person who fights in warfare to save their nation. They fight, and risk their lives, for the future of humanity. They fight because they want to do something good with their lives: Give them something good. Give them some care for other people. Give them care for strangers in different countries. And they will rise with courage to deal with these kinds of problems.
Thank you.
