A Forty-Year Fight for a
New World Economic Order
by Matthew Ogden
For over four decades, Lyndon LaRouche has provided the intellectual and political leadership in the fight for a new international economic order for the planet, for the purpose of ending the historic imperial control by monetarism and unleashing mankind’s creative powers as a species.
The profound impact of LaRouche’s intellectual leadership is clearly reflected in the current actions being taken by the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa) and others to create a new global financial architecture and strategic alliance among nations, with the recent establishment of the New Development Bank and related developments. The July 15-16, 2014 BRICS summit in Fortaleza, Brazil was a turning point in this process, as EIR has reported at length.
The LaRouche movement in the United States has campaigned throughout this 40-year period for this country to return to its American System tradition, as enunciated by President John Quincy Adams and others, and join the fight for a global community of sovereign nations in the interests of all: a new, just world economic order. These U.S. initiatives have notably included the call for Russian-American cooperation in the Strategic Defense Initiative; a New Bretton Woods financial system; the reinstatement of the Glass-Steagall Law to destroy the Wall Street monetarist faction; the Homeowners and Bank Protection Act of 2007; and such development projects as the North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA).
A partial timeline of LaRouche’s role in leading the fight for a new world economic order, with an emphasis on international initiatives, is chronicled below. The chronology is based on a more extensive version at larouchepac.com, http://larouchepac.com/new-economic-order which has many links to excellent documentary material, including the original articles, speeches, and videos.
The 1970s
LaRouche Calls for International Development Bank -
At press conferences in April 1975 in Bonn, Germany and Milan, Italy, LaRouche presents his plan for “the immediate establishment of an International Development Bank as an agreement among the three principal world sectors—the industrialized capitalist sector, the so-called developing sector, and socialist countries.” He specifies that the immediate concentration of the investment thus made possible should be industrial development and expanded food production worldwide.
LaRouche predicts that the present, or then-existing, international monetary system of the IMF, would inevitably go bankrupt, and should be replaced by a different credit-creating institution, namely, an International Development Bank (IDB), to facilitate long-term, low-interest credit for capital investment and capital-goods transfer from the industrialized sector to the so-called developing sector, in order to overcome the underdevelopment of Africa, Latin America, and large parts of Asia.
LaRouche issues a policy document for international circulation titled “IDB: How the International Development Bank Will Work,” in which he writes that two immediate, interconnected actions are imperative:
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The declaration of a commitment to sweeping reorganization of the world monetary system, involving an orderly process of debt moratoria and the establishment of an institution such as the proposed International Development Bank (IDB).
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Immediate commitment to enact, within each national sector of the capitalist world, these measures of emergency financial-reorganization legislation required to facilitate immediate economic recovery in conjunction with IDB efforts.
Non-Aligned Movement Endorses
New International Economic Order
Within months, 85 nations, representing 2 billion people, meet in Colombo, Sri Lanka for the Fifth Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement and issue a unanimous declaration calling for a new international economic order on Aug. 19, 1976, identical in many regards to LaRouche’s proposals spelled out in his policy document from the preceding year.
The declaration endorses both the establishment of a new international monetary and financial system to replace the International Monetary Fund and provide capital for Third World development through the creation of a Bank of the Developing Countries, as well as a debt moratorium for the least developed countries whose outstanding debts at the time made economic development for those nations impossible. The heads of state of the Non-Aligned nations declare that this summit represented:
“... a new step for the establishment of the new world economic order, and in particular, the essential element of such a new order, a new monetary and financial system.”
In her keynote address to the summit, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Sirimavo Bandaranaike endorses the establishment of a development bank for the Third World:
“The developing countries are consistently denied the true value of their output by the vagaries of the international market and the manipulations of international finance. The developed countries have shaped the international financial system to suit their interests. Should we in the developing world sustain such a system? Should we not, instead attempt to develop a system all our own? ... One area of great promise, would be the establishment of a commercial bank—a Bank for the Third World—the bank of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This would not be another non-aligned solidarity fund. It would be a genuine commercial bank and a truly multinational enterprise.”
Guyana’s Wills Calls for International
Development Bank at UN
Immediately following the Colombo Summit, the Foreign Minister of Guyana, Frederick Wills, addresses the United Nations General Assembly in New York, on Sept. 27, 1976, and calls for a new international economic order through the creation of an international development bank and a debt moratorium for the developing world. Wills declares that “there can be no meaningful economic advance without the implementation of the New International Economic Order.”
Wills asserts:
“The IMF and the Bretton Woods monetary system must give way to alternative structures like international development banks.... The crippling problem of debt and the servicing of debt has assumed a special urgency. Developing countries cannot afford to depart from their basic and fundamental demand made in Colombo earlier this year calling for measures of cancellation, rescheduling, and the declaration of moratoria. We cannot afford to mortgage the future of unborn generations to the obligations of burdensome capital repayments and crushing debt servicing. The time has come for a debt moratorium.”
LaRouche: U.S. Must Integrate Itself into the IDB
As a Presidential candidate for the U.S. Labor Party in 1976, LaRouche celebrates the historic decisions made by the Non-Aligned Movement at the Colombo Summit saying:
“We have succeeded in mobilizing 85 countries and 2 billion people around our program. That is what I have worked for all my life. Our small organization has accomplished what many termed impossible. We must use our victory at Colombo to organize the American working class behind our program. They want to do something, but the average person lacks the sense of how to fight. Colombo changes this prescription. Colombo has shown these forces what can be done on a world scale with a cadre of a handful of people.... The United States will have to integrate itself into the International Development Bank (IDB).”
LaRouche Situates India’s Role in
New International Economic Order
In an EIR Special Report titled “The Struggle for Indian Freedom: A New Program,” LaRouche states that India can lead the Non-Aligned Movement in declaring a debt moratorium as a “strategic weapon,” as well as establishing the International Development Bank:
“The first contribution India must make in this battle is to lead the developing countries, in concert with leading Third World nations, in a declaration of moratoria on the payment of all debt to the bankrupt monetarist institutions of the IMF-World Bank and their aid consortia. The freezing of unpayable debts to the monetarists is not only morally imperative but is the strategic weapon we must wield to open the way to the establishment of a new monetary system. As the 1975 programmatic document, ‘The International Development Bank,’ proposed, the central task of a New World Economic Order is to facilitate the greatest possible flow of technologies and industrial processes from the advanced sector into the developing sector.”
Indira Gandhi’s Interview to EIR
In 1978, the year before her stunning comeback victory as Prime Minister of India, Indira Gandhi gives the first of several interviews to EIR. In the interview, conducted at her home in New Delhi, Mrs. Gandhi strongly defends a return to the non-aligned foreign policy of her father Jawaharlal Nehru, and insists that only a policy of aggressive government support for investment in science and technology can save India from crushing poverty:
“Science and technology, this is essential to fight poverty. It is ridiculous to say that you can solve rural problems without science and without industry; you simply can’t. In our scheme of things, there is no conflict between agriculture and industry; they complement one another.”
In another interview with EIR following her victory in the 1980 elections, Mrs. Gandhi elaborates on her development policy:
“India is a developing country, and development has been rather uneven. It is obvious that where there is industry, it is much easier for that area to grow and for people to get more jobs. We have a program for developing backward areas and we have made progress in it.... We have to encourage investment to increase production, we have to build up the distribution system for essential commodities.... We have to take up again the special programs for the poorest and weaker sections of the population.”
Program for the Industrialization of Africa
The Fusion Energy Foundation, an international association of scientists co-founded by LaRouche, holds an international conference in Paris in June 1979 titled “The Industrialization of Africa” on the subject of a New International Economic Order as the indispensable precondition for the development of the African continent.
The 1980s
Forty-Year Plan for the Industrialization of India
LaRouche releases a program to transform India into an industrial superpower, at a conference on May 5-6, 1980 in Frankfurt, Germany, sponsored by EIR and the Fusion Energy Foundation. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi sends greetings to the conference:
“Since 1947 India has made considerable progress in science and technology. The world now recognizes the versatility and capability of our industries. Our aim is to make our country self-reliant.... It is appropriate to assess our progress now and to look into the future. My good wishes to the conference on India’s industrial development being held by the European Fusion Foundation and the EIR.”
LaRouches Meet with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
In April 1982, Lyndon and Helga LaRouche travel to India where they meet with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi for the first time, along with several members of Parliament, leading scientists, industrialists and economists. While in New Delhi, LaRouche addresses the Indian Council of World Affairs, as well as the Institute for Defense Studies and Analysis, and the Jawaharlal Nehru University School of International Studies. LaRouche then travels to Bombay to tour the Bhabha Atomic Research Center.
LaRouche’s speech to the Indian Council on World Affairs is titled “A New Approach to North-South Relations” in which he states that the program adopted at the Non-Aligned summit in Colombo must be the model for achieving a new world economic order, and declares:
“I propose that the developing nations, and the spokesmen of them, make a unilateral statement to this effect: that there will be international cooperation on East-West/North-South development interrelatedly; that conditions of political stability and peace be premised upon the mutual self-interests of the parties in promoting economic development.”
LaRouche Meets with Mexican President López Portillo
Immediately after returning from his meeting with Indira Gandhi in India, LaRouche travels to Mexico City to meet with President José López Portillo on May 27, 1982. At a press conference at the Presidential palace Los Piños following the meeting, LaRouche proposes that the nations of Ibero-America unite to deploy a “debt bomb” against the City of London to force a restructuring of the world economic system as the means to usher in the New International Economic Order. Multiple leading Latin American newspapers publish stories on May 28 covering LaRouche’s proposal.
LaRouche Issues ‘Operation Juárez’
Proposal for South America
In the aftermath of his meeting with President López Portillo, LaRouche issues a major policy document titled Operation Juárez, on Aug. 2, 1982, in which he elaborates his original proposal for an International Development Bank in the context of the debt crisis facing South America. LaRouche proposes that the nations of Ibero-America use their collective strategic leverage as debtor-nations to unite in a common bloc and unilaterally declare a restructuring of their debts and the establishment of a new monetary order.
The formation of an international development bank among these nations, he writes, would serve
“as a coordinating agency for planning investments and trade-expansion among the member-republics. This bank will soon become one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world.... The Ibero-American continent could rapidly emerge as a leading economic power of the world, an economic super-power.”
López Portillo Demands New
International Economic Order at UN
In August 1982, Mexican President José López Portillo acts on LaRouche’s proposals as contained in Operation Juárez by adopting credit controls on Mexico’s currency, nationalizing the banking system, and announcing a debt moratorium on Mexican debt. On Oct. 1, 1982, he addresses the UN General Assembly, where he declares:
“The most constant concern and activity of Mexico in the international arena, is the transition to a New Economic Order.... It is imperative that the New International Economic Order establish a link between refinancing the development of countries that suffer capital flight, and the capital that has fled.... Let us not continue in this vicious circle: it could be the beginning of a new medieval Dark Age, without the possibility of a Renaissance....”
LaRouche in Rome:
‘The Theory of the New World Economic Order’
LaRouche delivers a speech on Oct. 20, 1982 in Rome titled “The Theory of the New World Economic Order” in which he says, “I shall summarize the scientific basis for the establishment of a New World Economic Order.” LaRouche states:
“My chief personal role in the effort to establish a just new world economic order has been to apply my special skills as an economist to design policy-structures of economic and monetary policies.”
LaRouche elaborates the scientific theory behind his Operation Juárez proposal, specifying “potential relative population density” as the necessary measure for the performance of economies, and states:
“We define economic science as a study of the manner in which the use of technological progress maintains and increases this potential relative population density.”
Founding Conference of the Club of Life
With simultaneous founding conferences in Rome and Wiesbaden, West Germany Oct. 20-22, 1982, joined by supporting conferences in nine cities of the Americas, the Club of Life was born, as proposed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, to galvanize a counterpole of optimism throughout the world to the rampant neo-Malthusian ideology being fostered by organizations such as the Club of Rome More than 1,000 people attend, including some 400 in Rome, despite efforts by the U.S. Embassy to discourage participation.
Attendees included the embassies of Colombia and Guatemala to the Vatican; the embassies of Senegal, Venezuela, and Vietnam to Italy; the Italian Foreign Ministry; cultural and trade union groups; and large student delegations. There were also economists, anti-Malthusian activists, journalists, scientists, and industrialists.
Zepp-LaRouche sounds the theme of the events with her keynote in Wiesbaden, “On the Urgent Necessity to Create a Just New World Order.” Lyndon LaRouche follows with a presentation on the economic theory behind the New World Economic Order, noting especially the process underway since the Malvinas War in lbero-America, towards forced debt renegotiation.
Indira Gandhi Hosts Non-Aligned:
‘New Economic Order or Nuclear War’
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi hosts the 7th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in New Delhi, March 1983, where she warns, “Humankind is balancing on the brink of the collapse of the world economic system and annihilation through nuclear war,” and calls for the convening of “an international conference on money and finance for development.” She specifies that such a conference “should suggest comprehensive reforms of the international monetary system to facilitate the mobilization of developmental finance for investment in vital areas of food, energy and industrial development.” Mrs. Gandhi also calls for “a major debt restructuring exercise,” stating that the “debt problem of developing countries has assumed an unprecedented dimension.” She appeals to the 100 heads of state present to seize the “marvelous opportunity” before them, saying:
“The eyes of the world are upon us. Let us decide here to usher in a New International Economic Order, to call for an International Conference on Money and Finance for Development.”
The “New Delhi Appeal” which is adopted by the 100 world leaders present, representing almost half of humanity, echoes Indira Gandhi’s warnings of “the threat of a worldwide nuclear catastrophe” as well as her demands for an international conference on finance for development:
“A thoroughgoing restructuring of the existing international economic order through a process of global negotiations is necessary. Non-aligned countries are committed to strive for the establishment of the New International Economic Order based on justice and equality. We propose the immediate convening of an international conference on money and finance for development, with universal participation, and a comprehensive restructuring of the international monetary and financial system.”
LaRouche’s call for debtor-nations to unite and unilaterally declare a restructuring of their debts, as specified in his Operation Juárez, pervades the debate at the summit, and is raised by the President of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, who calls for the establishment of “a common organization of debtor countries” to conduct “joint efforts and actions that would induce the creditors to seriously consider the necessity of a new international economic order.” Ultimately, the Economic Declaration of the summit states:
“It is essential to secure a cancellation of the external debt owed to developed countries.”
Reagan Announces Strategic Defense Initiative
On March 23, 1983, President Ronald Reagan shocks the world by announcing the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), calling on the scientific community to “turn their great talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace; to give us the means of rendering nuclear weapons impotent and obsolete.”
The policy unveiled in this historic announcement had been discussed for months in back-channel negotiations with Soviet representatives, which Lyndon LaRouche conducted personally at the behest of leading members of Reagan’s national security team.
LaRouche began calling for economic and scientific collaboration with the Soviet Union in the mid-1970s to develop new physical principles for space-based missile defense systems as a driver for global development.
LaRouche had proposed beginning in 1977, in a pamphlet titled “Sputnik of the Seventies,” that an international crash program to develop such a system would provide the economic driver to fuel global development. The pamphlet proposed “long-range economic and scientific collaboration with the Soviet Union among other nations, which will eliminate the danger of world obliteration,” and emphasized the
“tremendous revolutionary industrial implications available to this nation and the world if the political will of the United States forces a recommitment to technological progress in the form of an International Development Bank (IDB) and its national concomitant, the Third National Bank.”
On March 24, LaRouche greets Reagan’s announcement:
“There is, at last, hope that the thermonuclear nightmare will be ended during the remainder of this decade.... The words the President spoke last night can never be put back into the bottle. Most of the world will soon know, and will never forget that policy announcement. With those words, the President has changed the course of modern history. Today I am prouder to be an American than I have been since the first manned landing on the Moon. For the first time in 20 years, a President of the United States has contributed a public action of great leadership, to give a new basis for hope to humanity’s future to an agonized and demoralized world. True greatness in an American President touched President Ronald Reagan last night; it is a moment of greatness never to be forgotten.”
LaRouches Meet With Indira Gandhi for Second Time
On July 13, 1983, as part of a tour of several nations in Asia, Lyndon and Helga LaRouche have their second meeting with Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Ten days later, Mrs. Gandhi inaugurates a new heavy-water nuclear reactor at Kalpakkam, saying:
“Our science, particularly nuclear science, is dedicated to development, the achievement of freedom from want, and the provision of essentials and an honorable life for the masses. We are to make the deserts bloom.”
In the weeks following, LaRouche issues an EIR Special Report titled “A 50-Year Development Policy for the Indian-Pacific Oceans Basin,” proposing three projects for the development of the Pacific region: 1) a canal through the Kra Isthmus of Thailand, 2) a new sea-level canal across the Panamanian Isthmus, and 3) the expansion and improvement of the Suez Canal. LaRouche writes that the preconditions for developing the Pacific Basin are the “required reforms of the international monetary system specified in Operation Juárez” which would create
“a new international economic order not inconsistent with the monetary and economic policies of the American System. The paradigm for a republican monetary order is the statement of policies set forth in U.S. Treasury Secretary Hamilton’s famous Reports to the Congress, on credit, a national bank, and manufactures.”
LaRouche Addresses Conference in Bangkok on Kra Canal
LaRouche travels to Thailand in October 1983 to address the first of several conferences in Bangkok on building the Kra Canal, jointly sponsored by EIR, the Fusion Energy Foundation, and the Thai Ministry of Communications. This conference is followed by another in October 1984 for which LaRouche writes a policy paper titled “The Pivotal Role of Thailand in the Economic Development of Southeast Asia” in which he states:
“The prospect of establishing a sea-level waterway through the Isthmus of Thailand, ought to be seen not only as an important development of basic economic infrastructure both for Thailand and the cooperating nations of the region; this proposed canal should also be seen as a keystone, around which might be constructed a healthy and balanced development of needed basic infrastructure in a more general way.”
LaRouche Visits Argentina, Meets President Alfonsín
LaRouche visits Buenos Aires the week of June 24-30, 1984, for discussions with representatives of the major political parties in Congress, the trade union movement, the scientific and cultural communities, and the Armed Forces, culminating in a meeting with President Raúl Alfonsín on June 28. The visit comes at a time when Argentina is under fierce pressure from its foreign creditors to submit to the austerity conditionalities of the IMF. He was invited by several private institutions whose leaders thought it urgent that his policy recommendations, elaborated in the August 1982 document Operation Juárez, and his evaluation of the world financial and strategic crisis, be widely disseminated in their country.
The trip occurs 10 days after Ibero-American debtor nations met in Cartagena, Colombia, to coordinate their approach to the continent’s debt crisis; and as the Alfonsín government approached another end-of-quarter cliffhanger, in which it had to choose between paying $460 million in back interest payments, or seeing creditor banks declare its foreign debt to be non-performing.
In a press conference following his meeting with the Argentine President, LaRouche announces that were he elected President of the United States, he would aid Argentina
“with justice and equality, to overcome the crisis unleashed by its foreign debt.”
Schiller Institute Founded,
Adopts Declaration of Inalienable Rights of Man
Helga Zepp-LaRouche founds an international strategic and cultural organization, the Schiller Institute, named after the German “Poet of Freedom,” Friedrich Schiller, at conferences in July 1984 in Arlington, Va., and in September 1984 in Wiesbaden, Germany. In describing the purpose of the Schiller Institute, Zepp-LaRouche states:
“Let us enter into the solemn pledge to work to end for all time every form of imperialism, and that means above all that we must bring about a just world order that will make possible the urgently necessary development of the Southern Hemisphere.”
The Schiller Institute adopts “The Declaration of the Inalienable Rights of Man” as its founding document, based on the U.S. Declaration of Independence, at a conference in Richmond, Va., on Nov. 24, 1984. The document asserts:
“The history of the present International Financial Institutions is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States; They have refused their Assent to our plans of development, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good; They have forbidden their Banks to engage in business of immediate and pressing importance for us, and in equal terms; They have dictated to us terms of trade and relations of currency, that have relinquished our Rights as Equals in the World Community, a Right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only; They have overthrown legitimate governments repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness their invasions on rights of the people; They have endeavored to prevent the necessary population increase for industrialization of these States....
“We, therefore, the Representatives of the Peoples of the World, do solemnly declare... that all human beings on this planet have inalienable rights, which guarantee them life, freedom, material conditions worthy of man, and the right to develop fully all potentialities of their intellect and their souls. That therefore a change in the present monetary and economic order is necessary and urgent, to establish justice among the peoples of the world....”
Call for an ‘Indira Gandhi Memorial Summit’
For a New Economic Order
On Jan. 15, 1985, Helga Zepp-LaRouche addresses a 10,000-person “March for the Inalienable Rights of Man” in Washington, D.C. organized by the Schiller Institute in honor of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, to call for the convening of an Indira Gandhi Memorial Summit between debtor and creditor nations “to implement a rapid program for massive debt renegotiation for a new, just world economic order.”
Program for ‘The Integration of Ibero-America’
In 1986, the LaRouche movement publishes a book-length special report in Spanish, La Integración lbero-Americana, as an elaboration of LaRouche’s Operation Juárez, specifying great projects for the development of the continent, including the construction of a interoceanic sea-level “Second Panama Canal.”
The introduction states:
“During the Malvinas War, in May 1982, U.S. economist Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. traveled to Mexico to meet with President José López Portillo and other important political leaders. Some of them asked him to write out his proposal for dealing with the problem of the foreign debt. Three months later, the historic essay Operation Juárez was published, in which LaRouche takes up the old integrationist idea, and poses the necessity of immediately forming a Debtors’ Club and an Ibero-American Common Market.... This book intends as its primary purpose to contribute to the realization of that longed-for integration, demonstrating both the feasibility and the conceptual grounding for the Ibero-American Common Market. Its more detailed elaboration will be the task of that successful integrationist movement that we also seek to awaken and consolidate.”
LaRouche in Bretton Woods:
‘A New International Economic Order’
The Schiller Institute sponsors a conference in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire titled “A New Just World Economic Order: Development Is the Name for Peace” on Jan. 30-31, 1988. In attendance is Frederick Wills, former Foreign Minister of Guyana, who delivers a speech titled “The History of the Fight for the New World Economic Order” relating how he first became acquainted with Lyndon LaRouche and his idea for an International Development Bank. Wills declares:
“It is time to return to the fundamental appreciation that money and monetary systems are the servants of humanity.”
LaRouche in Berlin Forecasts Reunification of Germany
On Oct. 12, 1988, LaRouche addresses a press conference in West Berlin “on the subject of prospects for the reunification of Germany,” asserting that “the world has now entered into what most agree is the end of an era. The state of the world as we have known it during the postwar period is ended.” LaRouche states: “The economy of the Soviet bloc is a terrible, and worsening, failure.... The Soviet bloc economy as a whole has reached the critical point, that, in its present form, it will continue to slide downhill from here on.” Therefore, “the time has come for early steps toward the re-unification of Germany, with the obvious prospect that Berlin might resume its role as the capital.”
LaRouche elaborates a program for the cooperative development of Eastern Europe as an engine for creating a new economic system:
“Let us say that the United States and Western Europe will cooperate to accomplish the successful rebuilding of the economy of Poland. There will be no interference in the political system of government, but only a kind of Marshall Plan aid to rebuild Poland’s industry and agriculture. If Germany agrees to this, let a process aimed at the reunification of the economies of Germany begin, and let this be the punctum saliens for Western cooperation in assisting the rebuilding of the economy of Poland.”
‘Productive Triangle’ Development Plan for Europe
LaRouche commissions a policy study in 1989 to elaborate his proposals from the previous year to use the modernization of Eastern Europe as the “locomotive” for the economic development of Eurasia. The concept takes the form of the “Productive Triangle” linking together Paris, Berlin, and Vienna through high-speed rail, thus creating an integrated, high-density 320,000 km2 industrial development zone, spiraling out into eastern Europe via transport, energy, and communication development corridors.
The 1990s
Helga LaRouche Campaigns for ‘Productive Triangle’
Special reports on the “Productive Triangle” program are published in every major European language, and Helga Zepp-LaRouche launches an aggressive speaking tour throughout Europe, addressing conferences in numerous capitals including in many Warsaw Pact and other Soviet countries that are newly gaining their independence, including Hungary and Poland. Representatives of the Schiller Institute host seminars on LaRouche’s program across Eastern Europe, including in Czechoslovakia, Belarus, and Ukraine, as well as nearly every country in Western Europe.
Zepp-LaRouche issues a statement on July 18, 1990, in which she says that Germany has the opportunity to function as the locomotive for the world economy, both of the East and “above all for the development of the Southern Hemisphere,” finally rising to the moral challenge of realizing a new, just world economic order:
“Germany, the heart of Europe, must be the locomotive which raises the economic development of the whole of Europe to a qualitatively new level. The program of the ‘Productive Triangle,’ proposed by the U.S. economic scientist LaRouche, is the crucial key to this. A high-speed rail system will not only connect the Paris-Berlin-Vienna triangle, but, simultaneously, will enclose a region with the greatest immediate growth potential, as far as industrial and labor capacities are concerned. The rapid expansion of infrastructure and, especially of a productive Mittelstand in industry and agriculture can initiate a new economic miracle here, which, through new industrial corridors, will soon be able to reach the whole of Eastern Europe, the not-so-developed regions of Western Europe, and also the Soviet Union. The great expanse of Europe, with the ‘Productive Triangle’ as its core, will make possible such a great increase in productivity and in the output of capital goods, that it will function as the locomotive for the world economy—not only for the infrastructure and industrial development of the East, but above all for the development of the Southern Hemisphere....”
Productive Triangle: Cornerstone of New Economic Order
In March 1991, the Schiller Institute convenes a conference in Berlin on the “Productive Triangle” program, attended by representatives from a number of newly independent Eastern European nations and not quite yet independent republics of the Soviet Union, including Hungary, including Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Armenia, Bulgaria, and Croatia. In a message to the conference, LaRouche calls for “a sphere of cooperation for mutual benefit among sovereign states” to united Eurasia.
The conference adopts a “Berlin Declaration,” which calls for the nations of Europe to seize the “unique historical opportunity” presented by the end of the disappearance of the Iron Curtain, and states:
“We strive for a just, new economic order, which secures peace, in that all peoples are given the same opportunities for economic and social development. For, development is the name for peace.”
LaRouche elaborates the Productive Triangle proposal in a policy paper in EIR, May 10, 1991, “For the Economic Development of Eastern Europe,” in which he counterposes his “Productive Triangle” program for development to the shock therapy policy being implemented in Eastern Europe, which he asserts is merely a different form of “primitive accumulation” that brought down the Soviet state.
Productive Triangle Concept
Extended to ‘Eurasian Land-Bridge’
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, LaRouche expands the concept of the “Productive Triangle” to include the former Soviet territories in Russia and central Asia, stretching all the way to the Pacific coastlines of China and Russia. This proposal, which becomes known as the “Eurasian Land-Bridge,” concentrates on three “development corridors” spanning the Eurasian continent: a northern route via the Trans-Siberian Railroad to Vladivostok; central routes through Ukraine-Russia-the Caucasus-Iran or Russia-Kazakhstan, Central Asia, and China; and southern route from Western Europe through Turkey and Iran, and on to China via Central Asia or India. This plan would economically integrate the Eurasian continent, maximizing the productive potential of its territory and peoples for the common benefit of all, and resolving the artificially imposed strategic divisions among the great powers through the promotion of development in their mutual interest.
EIR publishes a study, July 17, 1992, elaborating this “integrated Eurasian development network stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific,” stressing that it will serve as the centerpiece and foundation for creating “an alliance of nations committed to a common programmatic perspective for establishing a just world economic order.” This new economic and monetary order would be comprised of a “community of interest among sovereign nations committed to rapid economic development” to replace the failed financial systems of both East and West, bridging the rich and diverse cultures of the Eurasian continent and ending the legacy of the geopolitical “Great Game” policy of perpetual war.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche states that the world is experiencing the opportunity for “the beginning of a new more hopeful time and the emergence of a new, just world economic order” and issues a call for a peaceful revolution to establish an “International Coalition for Peace and Development.”
Russian Edition of LaRouche’s
Economics Textbook Released
The Schiller Institute sponsors its first-ever conference in Moscow, on Oct. 30-31, 1992, to announce the release of a Russian-language edition of LaRouche’s textbook on physical economy, So, You Wish To Learn All About Economics? With Russia undergoing the disastrous effects of the IMF “shock therapy” policy, the conference is titled “Alternative Approaches to Economic Reform,” focusing on LaRouche’s proposals for a rapid reconstruction of the Russian economy by means of the Productive Triangle/Eurasian Land-Bridge program. The conference, held at the Russian State Humanitarian University, is attended by over 50 people representing leading political and academic institutions, and is co-chaired by Prof. Taras Muranivsky, rector of the Ukrainian University in Moscow. Muranivsky delivers a speech on “establishing a new economic theory” based on LaRouche’s science of physical economy.
In the foreword to the Russian-language publication of his text, LaRouche writes:
“The Russian edition of this textbook appears at the moment the greatest financial bubble in history is collapsing upon us. If we fail to take appropriate corrective action soon, this collapse could become the worst economic disaster in European history. Out of the wreckage of that monetary collapse, a new form of national economy must be constructed.”
LaRouches Visits Moscow for the First Time
In April 1994, Lyndon and Helga LaRouche travel to Russia for a week of meetings and speaking engagements. Lyndon LaRouche’s first public event is a lecture sponsored by the Economic Academy of the Ministry of Economics of the Russian Federation on April 25, where he states:
“The problems in Russia are a reflection not of conditions internal to Russia, but the reflection of a collapse in the world economy.... What is going to happen, without question, is a general total breakdown collapse of the global financial system.... If there is an agreement on principles of sound economy, then there can be an agreement among states to reestablish, in a very short period of time, a new world financial and monetary system to replace the old one, while we put the old one into bankruptcy.”
LaRouche also addresses seminars at three institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences: the Institute on Scientific Information on Social Science (INION), the Institute of Oriental Studies, and the Africa Institute. At the INION, he stresses that the Russian intelligentsia must understand the collapse of the Soviet system was merely one part of a global process of collapse, caused by a general failure to abide by the fundamental laws of physical economics, which would doom the free-market system of the West as well:
“You get a reflection of a failure to comprehend this problem, and a belief that the disease which is called free trade, is the superior alternative to communism. So instead of bowing to the statue of Karl Marx, you are now supposed to bow to the statues of Adam Smith and Ricardo. This tends to create an instinctive lack of appreciation for the fact that the entire global system is now about to collapse.”
Additionally, LaRouche is hosted by Dr. Pobisk Kuznetsov at a gathering of the “Prezident” group of approximately 60 scientists. Following LaRouche’s visit, Kuznetsov publishes a report in the journal Rossiya 2010, in which he calls for a new unit of measurement to be applied to physical economics, which he proposes be called “the larouche,” or “La” for short:
“Let us introduce the physical magnitude of ‘a larouche,’ designated by La, which gives the number of persons who can be fed from 1 square kilometer, or 100 hectares, during one year. Our base magnitude of area is 1 square kilometer or 100 hectares. This base value of area is necessary, in order to bring all existing world food statistics to a single basis. The figures cited above... correspond to ’potential relative population density,’ introduced by LaRouche.... We share LaRouche’s view that the magnitude of potential relative population density can serve as an indicator of ‘intellectual culture,’ but taking into account the quite diverse values for farv (photochemically active radiation per vegetative period), we shall compare not simply 100 hectares, but 100 hectares for a given local farv value.”
Upon his return to Washington, LaRouche gives a report on his trip to a meeting of diplomats and press, where he repeats what he had stated at the Ministry of Economics in Moscow:
“Have no doubt that the present global financial and monetary system is not only going to collapse, but is going to go into an absolute breakdown collapse, unless various governments, including the U.S. government, were to put the present monetary system into bankruptcy. That would stop the collapse, and nothing else will stop it. Therefore, intelligent governments will consider nothing serious, except to make preparations for this collapse and to organize quickly a recovery of a new financial system and a new monetary order the instant the collapse occurs.”
