This article appears in the May 13, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
September 10, 1999
LaRouche in 1999:
Britain Lit the War Against Russia
[Print version of this article]
Editor’s Note: This exchange was first published in EIR Vol. 26, No. 42, Oct. 22, 1999, pp. 41-45.
May 8, 2022—This memorandum was first published in EIR under the title, “The Strategic Implications of Dagestan.” Mr. LaRouche was responding then to written questions submitted from Russia asking him to address the causes of the rekindled insurgency in the Russian North Caucasus. The relevance of his thinking for today’s escalating strategic crisis can not be overemphasized. —ed.
LaRouche’s memorandum was published in issue No. 12 of the periodical Rossiyskoye Analiticheskoye Obozreniye (Russian Analytical Review) in mid-October 1999. On Oct. 1, 1999, the weekly Ekonomicheskaya Gazeta previewed LaRouche’s forthcoming memorandum, in an article by Prof. Taras Muranivsky, headlined “Britain Lit the War in Dagestan.”
“In the kaleidoscope of evaluations of the Dagestan events,” wrote Muranivsky, “superficial factors are usually emphasized: Chechen banditry, or so-called ‘Arab fundamentalism.’ A qualitatively different and, in our view, well-grounded approach to this problem is that of the well-known American economist, politician, and candidate for the U.S. Presidency in the year 2000 from the independent wing of the Democratic Party, Lyndon LaRouche.”
In general, the responses here should be read against the background of a featured report, “Brzezinski Plays Britain’s ‘Great Game’ in Central Asia,” as that feature appeared in the September 10, 1999 edition of Executive Intelligence Review.
1. What is happening in Dagestan?
LaRouche: This operation against today’s Russia, in Dagestan, is modelled in form, and political methods, upon the British monarchy’s Nineteenth-Century “Great Game” run in both Transcaucasia and Central Asia. It employs many of the same elements, methods, and theaters of operations, which the British Empire used continuously against Russia, from the days of Bentham and Palmerston, into the early years of the Soviet Union. The principal difference between then and now, is the emphasis on petroleum and natural gas, as also other mineral resources of the region.
2. What are the reasons for the conflict?
LaRouche: The present operations represent a continuation of the Thatcher-Bush decision of 1989-1991, to destroy the Soviet Union, and loot and dismember Russia into a state of helplessness. This is being done under the central direction of the British monarchy, but with the complicity of other nations, including elements associated with Presidential candidates Bush and Gore inside the U.S.A. The timing of the present phase of these operations reflects the highly advanced state of the presently ongoing process of disintegration of the world’s present financial system. It was by no coincidence that Russia’s mid-August 1998 default, itself a symptom of a threatened October 1998 meltdown of the world’s financial system, coincided in time with the launching of a series of Anglo-American military adventures, beginning with the bombing of Sudan, the later reopening of warfare against Iraq, and the London-directed NATO assault on Yugoslavia. The attack on Yugoslavia was the intended stepping-stone for unleashing irregular warfare and related operations, using “Iran-Contra” methods, throughout all of Central Asia and Transcaucasia.
3. What basic forces are at enmity in the conflict?
LaRouche: The collapse of the Soviet Union, and the worsening economic and social conditions throughout the region since, have fostered a deepening cultural pessimism among the populations. This aggravated mood of cultural pessimism, and a collapsing influence of the governments in Moscow and Kiev, has created the tinder of ancient ethnic and religious warfare which the British-led Anglo-American forces have ignited. The relevant types of agents are highly visible in considerable numbers throughout the relevant regions of the Transcaucasus and Central Asia, all the way to the India-Pakistan border.
The kinds of local enmities being exploited by the meddlers are historic. They are of a type which can be uprooted only through several generations of successful development of the conditions of life. Even then, experience with similar ethnic and religious conflicts around the world shows, that these types of enmities remain capable of rather sudden re-eruption, even after two or three generations of relatively peaceful relations among the relevant groups.
4. Why, in your opinion, has the intrusion of Chechen fighters on the territory of Dagestan become possible? What has hindered the present conflict?
LaRouche: We have seen the pattern of developments leading into this since the warfare in Nagorno-Karabakh. The intent by the London-directed Anglo-American circles was clear in 1992-1993. Only certain preliminary stagings, and waiting for an opportune moment, delayed the assault until after the completion of the preliminary step, the recent NATO war against Yugoslavia. Strategically, we must view that Balkan war as the natural stepping-stone toward pan-Turkic-based general destabilization throughout both the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. I see no mystery in any of the developments relevant to that presently ongoing succession of developments.
Also to be considered, is the attrition within the former Soviet military capabilities of Russia. Also to be considered is the Moscow government’s obvious reasons for hesitating to take either the actions, or preparations for action, which would greatly displease Russia’s foreign IMF and other creditors.
This aggravated mood of cultural pessimism, and a collapsing influence of the governments in Moscow and Kiev, has created the tinder of ancient ethnic and religious warfare which the British-led Anglo-American forces have ignited. …The kinds of local enmities being exploited by the meddlers are historic. They are of a type which can be uprooted only through several generations of successful development of the conditions of life.
5. What has been brought to the Caucasus by A. Lebed and the Khasavyurt agreement?
LaRouche: In my estimation from a distance, time was bought, but no durable solution was obtained. The future problem should have been foreseen, and correspondingly appropriate measures taken. Apparently, those measures were not taken, and, under the conditions then prevailing, the government in Moscow was not likely to take needed measures which would have been displeasing to Russia’s relevant creditors.
6. Do you feel that there is a presence of anti-Russian forces in the Caucasus? Which states have increased their influence in the Caucasus?
LaRouche: This anti-Russia influence from outside the region is beyond doubt. It is primarily the influence of the British monarchy. This includes the British monarchy’s control over Windsor-ruled Commonwealth states such as Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Antigua, but also features traditional British monarchy assets of Wall Street finance, such as the circles gathered around the candidacy of Texas Governor George W. Bush and also Vice-President Al Gore. The principal trails of this influence are the London-dominated international petroleum cartel and the same pattern of international drug-trafficking which then-Vice-President George Bush and the late Sir Jimmy Goldsmith, among others, used to fund the 1980s Afghanistan war.
7. Do you think it is possible to assign NATO troops a peace-keeping initiative in the Caucasus?
LaRouche: NATO troops in the Caucasus would be a doubtful undertaking. First, the only available forces are nominally Turkish NATO troops. NATO troops from continental Europe simply do not exist in the quantities and logistical support needed for a theater of such complexities as the Transcaucasus represents. The events associated with the recent earthquake in Turkey have shown Turkish forces ill-suited to such an undertaking. Also, since such deployments would become a direct military threat to the existence of Russia, Russia would be provoked by such foreign interventions into taking steps which are implicitly available to it, but which the Russian state has been unwilling to muster until now.
Thus, there is a significant degree of bluff in the threat to deploy such NATO forces, especially given the effects of the skyrocketing world financial crisis’ impact on Europe and the United States’ budgets. However, one must not overlook the factor of gross incompetence and bluff among most leading banking, corporate, and political circles of both Europe and the U.S.A. Never underestimate the factor of strategic miscalculation which the incompetence of a military-political command might produce.
This pattern of growing incompetence, is a very important strategic consideration, so I shall comment on it at this point.
If one reflects on experience with the business and political leadership in the U.S.A. and western Europe since the assassination of President Kennedy, there has been an appalling decline in the quality of leading officials and their immediate subordinates in all categories of banking, business, and government, especially since the middle of the 1970s, with accelerating deterioration in the competence of leading officials in these categories since 1982. The kinds of corporate industrial leadership which made the U.S.A. an impressive economic and military power no longer exists, either in the U.S.A. itself, or in western Europe. Generally speaking, it must be assumed that most banking, corporate, and political leadership whose age is under 60-65 years of age is simply incompetent, irrational ideologues, not competent officials of their craft.
This incompetence among the majority of such strata of leadership creates an awesome potential for fatal miscalculation. The case of NATO SACEUR commander Wesley Clark, and the virtual lunacy of Britain’s Prime Minister Blair, Robin Cook, et al., illustrates the nature, if not the scope of the risk involved.
8. Do you suppose any connection between the following events: Yugoslavia-Dagestan; Dagestan-Kyrgyzstan-Karachayevo-Cherkessiya; scandal with corruption of Russian headquarters-Dagestan?
LaRouche: Excepting the matter of the corruption scandal in Russia, all are part of one and the same strategic operation against Russia.
9. What is the influence and role of Islam in Dagestan and in the Caucasus as a whole today and hereafter? Do you consider the so-called “Islamic fundamentalism” as reality? Is there any difference between civilizational Islam and Islamic fundamentalism, or does it exist only at the level of declarations?
LaRouche: “Islamic fundamentalism” as Zbigniew Brzezinski and his subordinate Samuel P. Huntington define it, was a creation of the Bentham-Palmerston British Foreign Office operations against Nineteenth-Century Russia. The adoption of this by U.S. figures such as Henry A. Kissinger, [Zbigniew] Brzezinski, and [Samuel] Huntington, was a product of the influence of the British Foreign Office’s Arab Bureau, featuring such post-World War II officials of the Bureau as Sir John Bagot Glubb Pasha, and Bernard Lewis. Brzezinski’s and Huntington’s role in pushing this “Islamic fundamentalism” game dates from the period of the 1975 Kyoto meeting of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission, and Huntington’s production of his Crisis in Democracy paper, the paper which has been the origin of the founding of the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy (NED), Huntington’s 1993 The Clash of Civilizations, and Brzezinski’s own book, The Grand Chessboard.
As to the reality of the Brzezinski-Huntington notion of “Islamic fundamentalism,” both persons are utterly insincere rascals. They are not supporting a cause of “Islamic fundamentalism,” they are exploiting it as strategic cannon-fodder.
Admittedly, British Foreign Office advocates of “Islamic fundamentalism” profess to trace it to the teachings of the Turkic opposition, associated with Al Ghazali, the opposition to the great Baghdad Caliphate of al Mamoun and Haroun al Rashid. However, the movements associated with al-Afghani, Blunt, et al., like the use of London’s International B’nai B’rith to create the Young Turk government and other exotic Foreign Office concoctions of that same period—it is essentially a modern concoction, totally contrary to the deep-rooted ecumenical affinities among the monotheistic, Mosaic, Hebrew, Christian, and Muslim faiths. In the hands of a Brzezinski, Huntington, et al., the induced phenomenon has much more in common with the existentialist teachings of Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, with Heidegger’s follower Jean-Paul Sartre, and Sartre’s Frantz Fanon, than with anything else.
Unfortunately, although the legitimacy of that sort of “Islamic fundamentalism” is doubtful, once that belief has been induced, and whipped up into a state of murderous hatred, the induced belief takes on a life of its own.
10. What is the role of mass media in the Dagestan conflict? How, in your opinion, are those events illuminated in the mass media, and what are the shortcomings of such coverage?
LaRouche: So far, the mass media in Europe and the U.S.A. have not developed a clear propaganda-line specifically addressed to the intrusion into Dagestan. The trend, however, is that which we see in mass-media coverage of Kosovo, East Timor, and elsewhere. The hegemonic line, as expressed by Vice-President Al Gore and Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, is to push for the break-up of existing sovereign nation-states, creating micro-states wherever possible. The production of such micro-states, is a part of the process of eradicating the sovereign nation-state’s existence in any part of this planet.
The resulting tendency is, and will be, to foster sympathy and actions in aid of any band of alleged insurgents which is engaged in efforts toward the fragmentation of existing nation-states. To this purpose, the relevant mass media will, as customary for them, lie without limit.
11. What script of events do the Chechen rebels try to impose to the Russian side?
LaRouche: The British Foreign Office will, as usual, have two or more options for their overall strategic operations against Russia in the Transcaucasus and Central Asia. Its preferred option is that Russia disintegrate into a collection of micro-states. However, if Russia were to succeed in defeating the first option, the Foreign Office would then prefer to have Russia ruled by an “authoritarian” ruler, that ruler operating on friendly terms with London, but against the U.S.A. and China.
Otherwise, the Chechen forces engaged in Dagestan are simply British assets, and merely one of many elements deployed throughout the entire region of the Transcaucasus and Central Asia.
12. Your prognosis of the development of further events?
LaRouche: The dominant feature of the present global strategic situation is the ongoing process of disintegration of the world’s present financial system. Once this fact became obvious to relevant Anglo-American and other circles, in the 1998 aftermath of the so-called “Asia crisis” of 1997, there was a thorough-going shift in the general strategy of London and others.
This shift has three features:
a) To prevent China, Russia, and India from becoming a cooperating bloc of Asian nations, rallying other nations to the bloc. Such a bloc would strengthen Asia’s ability to outlive the shocks of a general, global financial collapse, and would represent a powerful power-bloc for determining whatever new world monetary, financial, and economic order would emerge from amid the rubble of the disintegration of the recent IMF system. Thus, an acceleration of the destabilization of Asia was launched during the Summer and early Autumn of 1998.
b) To engage in a temporary effort to delay the inevitable disintegration of the present world financial system, thus affording the leading financial interests an opportunity to get out from their risky financial holdings, and into the kinds of assets, such as raw-materials holdings, which would be functional assets even after the financial system itself had disintegrated.
c) There is an ongoing orgy of bank officials stealing from their own banks, for the benefit of their friends. This is typified by various forms of global asset-grabs. The current panic-like traffic in transnational mergers and acquisitions, reflects nothing so much as that process of looting the physical assets to be had through these kinds of operations.
To facilitate that three-fold process, the world’s central bankers, including the U.S. Federal Reserve System, are being looted by their officers, such as the U.S.A.’s Alan Greenspan and the Bank of England’s Eddie George. Meanwhile, in the mass of financial traders and related cases, the state of mind is chiefly, as former [German] Chancellor [Helmut] Schmidt and others have described this publicly, virtual or actual psychosis.
Generally, therefore, Russia is faced with the challenge of developing means and programs for securing the survival of not only the Russian nation’s functioning integrity, but that of the states of the Transcaucasus and Central Asia.
13. What should be the policy of the Russian government today in the Caucasus so that the Caucasus is not transformed into Kosovo-2?
LaRouche: The answer must be found in a combination of military and economic-developmental measures. The ability to hold territory peacefully, with the support of the citizens there, depends upon a demonstration of Russia’s intent and ability to contribute to a significant improvement in the conditions of life in those states.
Precisely what the foolish NATO refused to do for the general development of the Balkan region after the end of the bombing, must be the core of the strategic security policy for the Transcaucasus. Necessary military security actions are workable, provided that Russia is able to mobilize enough of its presently idled, surviving economic potential, for growth programs which include urgently needed and substantial self-help assistance to the economically desolate regions of the Transcaucasus.
14. What should be the principles of multinational policy in Dagestan (in particular) and in Russia (as a whole)?
LaRouche: The Soviet Union built itself up, under its industrialization program, after the terrible effects and after-effects of civil war and foreign invasions. That and similar lessons from the histories of Russia and other parts of the world, show that it is virtually always possible, to proceed with rebuilding from even terrible conditions.
Russia still has tremendous economic potential, although presently largely wasted potential. If the leadership of Russia were to adopt the perception that it is the target of an ongoing war, by forces intent upon the nation’s actual or virtual destruction, the will could be found to mobilize existing resources for a general reconstruction program. Since the threat is not only to Russia and the former states of the Soviet Union generally, but also to many other nations of Eurasia, including China and India, the potential for a reconstruction effort, even from relatively poor nations, is enormous.
I would emphasize the well-known point of military strategy. One does not win wars; one must win the outcome of the war. What one does in preparation for post-war victory in securing the peace, does much to predetermine the degree of possibility for even a simply military victory.
15. What should Russian diplomacy do in the present circumstance with respect to Western and hostile Near and Middle Eastern states, desiring to expand a zone of military operations?
LaRouche: Russia’s enemy is not the states which express such adversary postures. The enemy is the oligarchical system typified by the forces centered around such financial interests as those which control the City of London and Wall Street. This oligarchical interest expresses itself overtly today as a supranational imperial force, a force determined to eliminate the sovereignty of all existing nation-states—including that of the U.S.A. itself (!), and to establish a global system of world government, a new Pax Romana, consistent with so-called “globalization.”
The fight must be to free nation-states from the political grip of those forces which are pushing desperately to establish world-government rule by forces centered in the Anglo-Dutch monarchy, forces which include those U.S. Wall Street institutions, such as the U.S. Federal Reserve System, set up in their present form, by Britain’s King Edward VII, under President Theodore Roosevelt. (Edward’s assets included those agents of his banker Cassel such as Schiff, Harriman, Warburg, et al.)
I would emphasize the well-known point of military strategy. One does not win wars; one must win the outcome of the war. What one does in preparation for post-war victory in securing the peace, does much to predetermine the degree of possibility for even a simply military victory.
It is essential to free oneself from the misleading belief, that the attack is coming from a rallying of nation-states as such. One should think in more appropriate terms of historical reference, not of nation-states, but of the legions and auxiliaries of the Roman Empire, or of the Achaemenid Empire shattered by Alexander the Great. One should think of a mass, not of sovereign nation-states, but mere puppet-states, mere auxiliaries of a single supranational power centered in the British monarchical oligarchy.
Viewing matters in that corrected way, victory against such a foe lies only in turning the patriots of nation-states against the oligarchical power which presently controls their nations’ policy.
A case in point is to be recognized in the role of the late Sir Jimmy Goldsmith, among other British agents, in running the Pakistan side of the continuing war in Afghanistan. Admittedly, it was U.S. President Carter’s Zbigniew Brzezinski who prepared the U.S. role in that war, but it was a fellow-member of Carter’s Trilateral Commission, George Bush, who as Vice-President with special powers, set up the Iran-Contra operation, through Britain. This was done, then as now, through British agents participating in Bush’s Iran-Contra operation, such as Goldsmith, which, like Bush’s International Republican Institute, is a key part of the Great Game against Russia today.
The simplest way to bring these and related facts into focus, is to examine the bitter conflicts between the war-time allies President Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Especially notable today are their differences respecting the post-war world. With the untimely death of Roosevelt, Churchill’s policy prevailed, more and more, especially after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
As the case of the recent war against Yugoslavia illustrates the point, one can not deal with the present situation in simply military terms. One must proceed from a higher political standpoint. One must stage the political fight on the issue of defense of the rights of nations to the benefits of full political and economic sovereignty of true nation-states. One must make the possibility of true economic sovereignty credible to nations which are being looted and otherwise ruined by the presently ongoing processes of globalization, a globalization conducted by an incurably bankrupt present world financial and monetary system.
The challenge is to outflank the imperial adversary on the political-economic flank.
16. How should the information policy of Russia (including, at the international level) be designed with respect to the events in Dagestan?
LaRouche: The true, global nature of the present-day form of Britain’s old “Great Game” must be stressed. One should not permit the issue to be misrepresented as a Dagestan issue. To play into a debate about the so-called local issues of Dagestan, would be tragic error. We all know that the war is a global, regional conflict, centered in all of the Transcaucasus and Central Asia, and including London’s direction of the conflict which the Pakistan military has launched against India. Never let the enemy set the political agenda.
In all this, the most crucial feature of the global situation, is the onrushing, inevitable, and hopeless financial bankruptcy of the present world monetary system. That is the terrain on which the strategic conflicts are being fought; it is the way in which that terrain is exploited, which will determine the outcome of the conflict between nation-states and supranationalism.
