SCHILLER INSTITUTE PRESS RELEASE
Prominent Leaders Call for U.S.,
Europe To Collaborate with BRICS
Dec. 26—The following release was issued on Dec. 17 by the U.S. Schiller Institute, under the title, "Prominent Leaders Back Resolution Calling for U.S. and Europe To Reject Geopolitics and Collaborate with the BRICS." As of this date, there are more than 150 prominent signers.
Dec. 17—A grouping of more than 100 prominent politicians, businessmen, academics, scientists, and artists from 20 countries have publicly endorsed a resolution calling on the U.S. and Europe to collaborate with the BRICS nations in the interest of peace and economic development. The resolution, sponsored by the Schiller Institute, was issued in response to the offer of China's President Xi Jinping for the United States to join China's New Silk Road development program, and abandon the policies of confrontation with particularly Russia and China.
The prominent signers are joined by more than 1,000 ordinary citizens from these and other nations, who urgently want their governments to abandon the policies of confrontation and collaborate with the BRICS countries, based on the Treaty of Westphalia's principle of the benefit of the other. The Schiller Institute intends to continue to garner support for the resolution from intellectual leaders and ordinary citizens alike, to create a mass movement for economic development and peace.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, said,
"The idea of collaboration with Xi Jinping's offer to cooperate with the New Silk Road is the most important peace initiative to get the world away from the edge of confrontation and war. Collaboration on this initiative is a fantastic perspective for mankind. I am calling on all people to distribute this resolution and help us get more support for it."
The list of signatures of the prominent signers.
The Petition
In today's nuclear age, the consequences of a geopolitical policy of confrontation with Russia and China can only be the thermonuclear extinction of the human race. Therefore, every effort must be made to cooperate to solve the multiple crises facing humanity.
The BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have united to pursue a policy of economic development not just for their individual countries, but for the benefit of the people of all nations. To that end, they have created a New Development Bank to invest billions in necessary development projects.
China recently initiated the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), joined by over 20 Asian nations as founding members, and has set up a Silk Road Development Fund.
At the APEC [Asia-Pacific Economic] Conference in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping invited President Obama to join the efforts of China and other Asian nations, including Russia, in the development of the New Silk Road.
These initiatives are not geopolitical in nature. Contrary to the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) advocated by Obama, which excludes Russia and China, the BRICS-related initiatives including the Chinese proposed Free Trade Area of the Asian Pacific (FTAAP), are inclusive. They are based on the concept expressed by the late Pope Paul VI that the "new name of peace is development." Thus, in Australia at the recent G-20 meeting, both Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke of the twin goals of achieving global peace and ending poverty through economic development.
There is no problem in the world that cannot be solved by such an approach, and conversely, no problem that will be solved without it.
Such cooperation among the U.S., Russia, China, South Africa, and India, among other nations, is necessary to defeat the Ebola pandemic in Africa.
The terrorist threat represented by ISIS and al-Qaeda is aimed equally at Russia, China, and India, as well as the U.S. and Europe. It can only be defeated through a new security architecture based on cooperation.
The policy of conducting "color revolutions" under the pretext of democracy, represents a policy of war, even if that term is not used, because its aim is to topple governments with the aid of foreign money. It has to stop. The campaign to impose sanctions on Russia for its opposition to such "color revolutions," and to a Nazi coup in Ukraine, is only exacerbating the global crisis. An approach based on mutual cooperation to achieve the common ends of mankind throughout Eurasia and beyond, would instead create the basis for global peace.
While the U.S. has abandoned the Kennedy space program, the Chinese are committed to a lunar program focused on the exploitation of helium-3 for the purpose of generating unlimited fusion energy. With collaboration between the U.S., Europe, Russia, China, and India, among other nations, man could finally realize Johannes Kepler's vision of mastery of the laws of the Solar System for the benefit of man.
Only such an approach would restore the United States and Europe to their original purpose as expressed in the European Renaissance and the American Revolution, a purpose which the U.S. and Europe have increasingly abandoned, and the rest of the world has now adopted and is now urging them to re-adopt.
We therefore call upon the U.S. and Europe to abandon the suicidal geopolitical policies of the past which led to the two previous world wars, and are leading to a third, and to build a future for all humanity by re-adopting the principle of the Treaty of Westphalia, by basing foreign policy on the principle of the "benefit of the other," which ended the Thirty Years War in Europe, and on John Quincy Adams' concept of a "community of principle among sovereign nation-states."
That is the only course coherent with the true nature of man as the only creative species. Any other course is based on a concept of man as an animal, and leads to human extinction. As patriots of our own nations, and as citizens of the world, we call on our fellow citizens and the leaders of our nations to have the courage to break the current cycle of escalating bestiality, by accepting the generous offer to collaborate with the BRICS.
