LaRouche: New Bretton Woods
Must Revive Peace of Westphalia
Oct. 16—Lyndon LaRouche responded today to reports of a planned "New Bretton Woods" conference of heads of state, before the end of November, by asserting that any such gathering must be based on the principles of the Peace of Westphalia, the 1648 treaty agreement that ended the Thirty Years War in Europe, and established the principle of cooperation among sovereign nation-states, around the idea of "the benefit of the other."
At the close of a heads of state summit of the 27 members of the European Union in Brussels earlier today, French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the current president of the European Union, said that a conference to establish a "New Bretton Woods" would take place in New York City within weeks. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown arrived at the Brussels meeting with a seven-page outline for a new global financial scheme, which he, too, called a "New Bretton Woods," although Brown's plan ruled out any regulation of offshore financial centers or hedge funds.
LaRouche cautioned: "If the heads of state proposing to convene this conference are, talking about some kind of negotiated set of terms, then you can forget it. It won't work. Right now, no government has genuine sovereignty. So you have to get back to basic principles, including the restoration of true national sovereignty."
LaRouche elaborated, "Any agreement, any discussion, must center around the combined benefit of all. You must start with the criterion of the Peace of Westphalia, or you will go nowhere."
LaRouche has been the architect of just such a New Bretton Woods proposal for decades. He has called for Four Powers—the United States, Russia, China, and India—to take the lead in convening a conference to carry out a bankruptcy reorganization of the hopelessly bankrupt global financial system, and to establish, by treaty agreement, a new, fixed-exchange-rate system, to end the tyranny of currency speculation. LaRouche has further emphasized that governments of the world must agree upon a series of high-priority, large-scale development programs, and establish a mechanism for issuance of long-term, low-interest credits to begin those development programs immediately.
"By launching urgently needed great projects on every continent," LaRouche declared, "we can put flesh and bone on the idea of the 'benefit of the other.' Let us take the most impoverished areas of the globe, starting with Africa, and build high-speed rail, nuclear power plants, modern water management systems. It may take us several generations to fully realize the benefits of these plans, but these kinds of efforts, starting with the bankruptcy reorganization of the present Anglo-Dutch Liberal system of globalization, free trade, speculation, and Malthusian genocide, embody the very essence of the Westphalian principle. Let us waste no time."
