Lyndon LaRouche:
The Issue Is Globalization
The following opening statement was delivered by Lyndon LaRouche, at a Feb. 8 meeting of diplomats in Washington, D.C.
I'd like to bring to your attention an item in the latest edition of the London Economist magazine. I recommend that you look at it, particularly the article on page 12, which is a one-page reference to a special central feature in the same edition of that magazine: because this refers to what I'm going to deal with here today.
Now, looking at the U.S. Presidential candidacies: It's a farce. These people that are running are not a farce, but what they're saying is a farce. It's totally irrelevant to anything of importance to the world today; but it's very important to them, because it's an ego-trip.
But the realities are far different. You should know, first of all, that we are on the verge of the greatest financial crisis in all modern history: that is, in modern European history since the great crash in the middle of the 14th Century.
The urgent financial situation is absolutely impossible; there is no solution. Present policies will lead to an absolute disaster, globally. Not just the United States, the whole world will go down; because, obviously, a collapse of the U.S. economy would mean a collapse of the China economy: because China depends currently upon exports to the United States.
A similar thing is true with respect to the rest of the world. Europe, continental Europe, is essentially non-functional. It has a role to play, but, it is not an independent power. The nation-states of central and western Europe are not functional, apart from the British, which is significant.
We recently had an incident that occurred involving China; that incident involved the illumination of a U.S. satellite passing over China. And, then there was a second incident, where China has shot down one of its own bodies in space, with the aid of a laser-guidance system. Now, this is not the most sophisticated system that can be used; but, it portends what is going on.
For example, China today is expending more effort in terms of scientific personnel on developing laser and related systems than the United States was expending during the 1980s. It's a much higher level, over 300 such cases. You never had that in the U.S. The problem that comes up that causes this, is the behavior, particularly, of the present Bush Administration in two terms, which has been moving toward a globalized world: which is why I referred to this China coverage in Britain, in which the intention is to have a world system of weapons, controlled entirely by the United States, which would be able to rain death on any part of the world it chooses. It is assumed that the economy of the United States is broken down, the economy of Europe is broken down; they are no longer industrial economies.
We are now, in the United States, as in continental Europe, we are in a post-industrial economy. In an economy of stupid people, who don't know how to do anything, because they are not bred to do anything, they're not educated to do anything. So, you have the idea of a kind of super-science-fiction kind of system, around the planet, in which the United States can rain death on any part of the system it wants.
Now this kind of thing is foolish. Because an automatic system, or a quasi-automatic system of the type that's being proposed now from the United States by this Administration, is vulnerable. Automatic systems depend upon the control system which controls them.
Therefore, if I'm Chinese, I'm going to develop a system to knock out the control system. We have enough junk flying around the planet in outer space, that we can create all kinds of things, one nation can create all kinds of things which can wreck the functioning of the control system. And, what you're seeing as was developed in Russia, which is echoed in India and in China—you're seeing the development of systems which could be used to disrupt such a control system, by going after the control mechanism.
The Drive for World Empire
That's what is at stake. So therefore when you're talking about important issues, like the issue of Southwest Asia or the current Iran issues, these are not the real issues. These are issues, but they are not the real issues.
The real issue is the attempt by a group centered in the United Kingdom, and integrated with forces in the United States, typified by the circles represented by the Bush Administration—these circles are moving toward total globalization. The environmentalist turn of the current President of the United States is a featured example of that.
What they're headed for, is a world empire, a world empire of a type which is modeled on what happened when Byzantium collapsed as an imperial force, around A.D. 1000. At that point, the Venetian financier oligarchy took control of the European Norman chivalry, and ran what was called a medieval (ultramontane) system, which was based on attacking Islam and also on anti-Semitism, back during the period of 11th, 12th, and 13th centuries.
What you're looking at is an apparently stateless system like that in medieval Europe under the Crusaders and the Venetian oligarchy. Today Venice is still a factor—the Venetian oligarchy; but, the key thing is the Anglo-American or the Anglo-Dutch liberal financial oligarchy,*[1] which is now running the world. It's crazy, but it's running the world.
Defend National Sovereignty
And Britain is a power which says we can not have a globalized system if there is a big power alliance in Asia plus the United States: that is, if the United States, Russia, China, and India are determined to defend the principle of national sovereignty, and agree to agree on defending that principle of national sovereignty, then, globalization cannot happen. Therefore, the immediate enemy, the target of what Cheney represents, and what Blair represents in London, are Russia, China, and currently India. These are the primary targets. Not Iran, Not Iraq. Not Southwest Asia. Southwest Asia, including Iran, are targets precisely because they are the door to an open attack on China, Russia, India, so forth. And that's what we've said.
Now the politicians in the United States, the ones who are running for office, are largely from the U.S. Senate. They are not quite as stupid as they seem. What they are, is they are opportunists. You, looking from the outside, must recognize, that when they run for office, they become prostitutes, walking the streets looking for customers. But when they are in the Senate they tend to be a little better quality. The problem is, when they're running for office, as for President, they become stupid even in their behavior in the Senate, because their Senatorial actions are conditioned by their Presidential campaign ambitions. So we now have that kind of situation.
But the important thing for nations to understand, is that there are four key nations on this planet, on which the fate of the planet as a whole depends. These four nations are the United States, Russia, China and India. If we can establish an agreement among Russia, China, India and the United States, to defend the principle of sovereignty and to make agreements which will serve that purpose, then we can defend the world from chaos and we can come out of the current mess.
I emphasize that here, because this is reality. What you get from the press here, is not reality. What you get from the mouths of politicians running for office here, is not reality. The reality is that the Anglo-American crowd, of which we have a big chunk inside the United States, is typified by the Bush Administration, and also by dubious Democrats like Gore and Lieberman. This crowd is moving around the policy of globalization, a global reduction of the population of the planet, total control over the planet of a medieval type, of a type based on the model of Venice, the Venetian financial system, which was the imperial power of the Middle Ages, which was allied then with the private interests of the Norman chivalry.
What we're getting today is a pattern of private armies, eliminating state power, replacing this with private armies controlled by large corporations such as the Halliburton complex, which is taking the place of the military forces. These are the policies which are inside the United States government. These are the policies associated with Cheney today, to eliminate the military. They don't care if they lose the United States Army; they'll transfer the power to private forces, such as Halliburton. They're destroying the rest of the world economically; they hope to establish an empire.
This is the real issue. And the threats to Russia, China, and India in Asia, are the real issues. Because, if the United States defends the right of Russia, China, and India to have national sovereignty, then we can unite the world around the idea of restoring the principle of national sovereignty, and can eliminate these evils. If we do not understand this, if we think that the issue is Iran, or we think the issue is Iraq, then we are fools. Because these are merely the doorways into the major crisis.
And what you see with the talk now in response to this discussion of the Chinese development of laser-assisted—and they're not just laser-assisted, we're talking about all kinds of systems way beyond lasers involved in this, which are being developed by serious countries. And these issues have come on the table now. And, when they start talking about China and its lasers; about breaking China; when they talk about attacks on Russia; when they talk about trying to disrupt India's sovereign development of its own economy, you're getting signs of what the real issue is.
The issue is globalization. And this little issue of the publication, the London Economist, if you read it carefully with what I have just said in mind, you will know exactly what I'm talking about.
So the question is, we have to have a system which deals with a general collapse of the world financial system. The world financial system is now immediately doomed. Nothing could save it in its present form. It's finished. There is no way to reform it, you must eliminate it. There are ways to eliminate it.
There are ways to deal with that; but, we must save the nation-state system. We must set up a system under which nation-states are protected in their rights to sovereignty; and, we must organize methods of cooperation in the economic field, as well as otherwise: where we provide not competition, not cutthroat treatment of one nation by another, but we provide security for the nations of the world for their development.
The FDR Legacy
And, this goes back to Franklin Roosevelt's death. When Franklin Roosevelt died, we had one policy. The policy of the United States was, that all the former colonialized nations would be free in their national sovereignty. The United States would take the great industrial military power we had built up, we would use, we would convert that, to develop the world, to develop the nations, like India, to develop projects for Africa, which were the projects that Roosevelt threw in the face of Winston Churchill in Morocco.
But, the moment that Roosevelt died, the Anglo-Dutch Liberal crowd, using President Truman, took over and reversed every policy that they could that Roosevelt represented. My view today, to sum it up, is, the policy of the United States must be—and this is what I fight for—to return to the policies of Franklin Roosevelt at the moment of his death, or to the modern equivalent of those policies.
We must set up what Roosevelt intended as the United Nations, as a system of cooperation among respectively sovereign nation-states, which must cooperate in their common interests and establish treaty-systems which provide for the separate, and independent role, but cooperative role, among nation-states. By treating this part of our memory, of our historic memory, and going back to that point, saying, "This is the policy the United States must return to, the policies of Franklin Roosevelt up until his death." And look at nearly everything that was done after that as a big mistake.
We are forced to do that now, because the entire financial monetary system which has dominated the world increasingly, especially since the Nixon Administration, especially since the middle of the 1960s, that system is now finished. And if we don't replace it, we will have chaos on this planet, and we will not have much to salvage, that's the essential part. And I think this is the crux.
I think every other leading issue of this jigsaw puzzle, is irrelevant. We must establish, among nations, a consciousness that this is the problem: that we have to understand what the meaning is of four major world powers, leading world powers, which, if they can come to an agreement on this issue, we can create a system under which all nations can be protected, including the nations that are too weak to fight for themselves.
That is what I think are the real issues on the table at this time in history.
[*] Cf. Carroll Quigley, The Anglo-American Establishment: From Rhodes to Cliveden (New York: Books in Focus, 981).