MANHATTAN PROJECT DIALOGUE

FDR: The Forgotten Man

The History of LaRouche’s Call for a Four-Power Agreement To Create a New Bretton Woods

by William Wertz

[Print version of this transcript]

This is the edited transcript of William Wertz’ presentation to the Sept. 1, 2018 LaRouche PAC Manhattan Project Dialogue. The full discussion is available at https://youtu.be/zAR6cluVT-o

I want to tell you a forgotten story, the story of the fight of Franklin Roosevelt against imperialism. Imperialism by the British, imperialism by the Dutch, and imperialism by the French. FDR’s vision of the peace after World War II—a peace sabotaged by the British and by their agent, Harry S Truman, who after FDR’s death became President of the United States. This is an urgent topic, because the solution to the problems we’re facing in the world today requires a New Bretton Woods, which Lyndon LaRouche has proposed. LaRouche’s proposal is very much in line with the original conception of Bretton Woods as outlined by Franklin Roosevelt and his aide, Harry Dexter White.

Throughout the decades, particularly after Nixon abandoned the Bretton Woods system on August 15, 1971, LaRouche has fought for a New Bretton Woods system. Nixon took the dollar off the gold reserve standard and introduced a floating exchange rate system—as a sharp break with FDR’s Bretton Woods system. After that occurred, there was a further devolution in the world economy over the succeeding decades, and in particular in the United States’ economy.

That fateful decision on the part of Nixon in 1971 led to an increase in free trade policies globally, an increase in globalization in which industry took advantage of “cheap labor” in Third World nations, exploiting that “cheap labor” instead of carrying out a policy of improving the living standards of workers in the advanced sector nations, and developing the skills and living standards of individuals in the developing sector. This was the period in which the idea of a post-industrial society was introduced. Shortly after Nixon made that fateful decision, in comes the Presidency of Jimmy Carter, a project of David Rockefeller’s Trilateral Commission. A key aspect of the Trilateral Commission policy was the idea of controlled disintegration of the world’s productive economy.

LaRouche has long fought for a restoration of the principles of the Bretton Woods system from his more advanced scientific and economic standpoint. During his Presidential campaign in 1988, he keynoted a conference in January in Andover, Massachusetts, just before the February New Hampshire primary. LaRouche’s campaign that year was called the LaRouche Campaign for a New Bretton Woods—that was what he was fighting for. There was a further emphasis upon this concept, in a speech he delivered in Washington, D.C. in 1998, and then an increased emphasis in 2008. From June 2008 through November 2008, LaRouche delivered a number of speeches and wrote many articles on the necessity for a New Bretton Woods.

LaRouche’s 1988 Presidential Campaign

In 1988, you still had the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact. There were also sovereign nation-states in western Europe. LaRouche proposed in 1988 that the initiating nations for the New Bretton Woods system should be the United States, Japan, and the Western European nations. However, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, things changed.

Europe, for instance, lost its sovereignty with the imposition of the European Union and the Maastricht Treaty. The Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact no longer existed, and there were further, positive developments with respect to China. By 2008, and perhaps even before that, LaRouche’s conception was that there should be a New Bretton Woods system initiated by four powers—the United States, Russia, China, and India. And that these Four Powers had sufficient power to overrule the imperialist policies centered in the City of London. Of course, 2008 was also the year of the financial crisis which hit the world. This was LaRouche’s proposal to solve that crisis.

I want to start out with a few quotes from Lyndon LaRouche from the year 2008. On June 12, 2008, LaRouche wrote a paper, “Free Trade vs. National Interest: The Economic Debate about Russia,” in which he wrote:

What must occur soon . . . must be the formation of an initial organizing committee composed of the governments of the U.S.A., Russia, China, and India, a committee whose agreement to what needs to be adopted as certain common principles of reform, principles which will serve as the needed catalyst for a general, more or less global agreement to a reform committed to certain principles of global cooperation among a majority of the world’s nation-states.

On Nov. 11, 2008, he made a presentation titled, “Only My Reforms Can Save the Planet from a Dark Age.” There he said:

So, if we create this seed crystal, of these four nations, and others who join them, we now can have, any time we decide to do it—if the President of the United States says, to the President of Russia and to the President of China, and to the government of India, and some other countries: ‘Let’s make this agreement!’, the United States has Constitutionally, the Constitutional apparatus and the authority, to do this!

Bretton Woods & Physical Science

On November 24, 2008, he wrote “The Truth of Bretton Woods Lies Within Physical Science,” in which he said:

What President Roosevelt had actually proposed was, in all essential features, an anti-British imperialist, anti-monetarist system. His proposed system excluded any defense of that British Empire’s predatory interest.

The final piece I want to cite was written earlier, on August 20, 2008, under the title, “New Bretton Woods: Russia’s Role in a Recovery.” There he wrote:

Furthermore, while it were desirable that any among Russia, China, India, and other nations would press the United States to initiate the New Bretton Woods reform which I have proposed, it is absolutely indispensable that that reform in international institutions actually be initiated as a proffer from the U.S.A. . . .

Roosevelt intended to use that available economic power to eliminate imperialism from the planet’s forthcoming, post-war history. Roosevelt’s intention, including that expressed by his role in Bretton Woods, was that each nation must have true sovereignty under the needed new reforms, and, at the same time, that all forms of colonialism and its like must be uprooted from the planet. . . .

What President Roosevelt had intended, as I do today . . . is a reform of the world’s economic and related affairs according to a single, commonly adopted great principle, one conceived in the same spirit as the 1648 Peace of Westphalia. . . . It must become a new, refreshed body of anti-monetarist, natural, international law of economy, binding together a system of respectively perfectly sovereign nation-states by a common, universal principle adopted in the likeness of a universal physical principle.”

So, that is what Lyndon LaRouche called for back in 2008, and it’s what we’re calling for today. The United States must play a key role in creating this new system. As he said, it were perhaps indispensable that Russia, China, and India encourage the United States—and in this case, President Trump—to do precisely that.

Standing in the way of this, of course, is the same British Empire which jettisoned Roosevelt’s post-World War II vision of peace throughout the world based on a principle of economic development. It wasn’t totally abandoned, but the intent was to reverse Roosevelt’s policy altogether; particularly his opposition to any form of imperialism, and any form of monetarism. I want to emphasize that Roosevelt’s conception of the post-World War II period actually pre-dated the United States’ entrance into that war after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Before Pearl Harbor, there was the August 9-12 meeting between Roosevelt and Churchill in Canada—four months before Pearl Harbor. That meeting resulted in the Atlantic Charter., which reflects the principles of the Treaty of Westphalia.

The Atlantic Charter

Here are the key aspects of that Atlantic Charter. There were eight points; we’ll focus on five of them:

1. That their countries [The United States and the United Kingdom] seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other;

2. That they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned;

3. That they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereign rights and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them;

4. That they will endeavor, with due respect for their existing obligations, to further the enjoyment of all states, great or small, victor or vanquished, of access, on equal terms, to the trade and to the raw materials of the world which are needed for their economic prosperity;

5. That after the final destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries, and which will afford assurance that all the men in all the lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.

This agreement was forced upon Churchill by Roosevelt as a condition for an alliance of the United States and Great Britain to work together to defeat the Nazis. It was a charter that was abandoned very rapidly after the war, thanks to Churchill; as you can see by the kinds of policies confronting us today. There is no policy of regime-change in the Atlantic Charter. There is a commitment to eliminating want throughout the world. Some of these concepts go to the Four Freedoms that Franklin Roosevelt enunciated in his January 1941 State of the Union speech: freedom of expression, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear.

The Bretton Woods system was, in fact, being formulated even before Pearl Harbor. The first proposal for a Bretton Woods system was drafted the Sunday after Pearl Harbor. This first draft was circulated in January 1942. The United Nations was also a conception of Franklin Roosevelt’s which effectively went into operation, in the process leading into its post-World War II formation, on December 29, 1941, three weeks after Pearl Harbor. There was a draft called the Declaration by United Nations, referring to the Allies as the United Nations. That document, written December 29, 1941 in the White House, was signed by the initiating parties on January 1-2, 1942.

FDR’s Postwar Vision

All of the elements of the post-World War II period were already in motion prior to the United States entering the war. So, what Roosevelt was fighting for, was the peace. He had a conception of the peace which as we will see, was based upon eliminating imperialism. Lyndon LaRouche has made it quite clear that eliminating monetarism and bringing about the economic development of the planet is the basis for cooperation, and for the elimination of imperialism.

Also central, as we will see, to the Bretton Woods conception, was the New Deal. The Bretton Woods system was an effort on the part of Roosevelt to internationalize the New Deal. Another very important factor in this was Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy towards Ibero-America. His Bretton Woods idea was that every place in the world, including Indonesia, will be a neighbor. So, it was an internationalizing of the Good Neighbor Policy.

In U.S. history, obviously this goes back to John Quincy Adams and his conception of a community of interest among a family of sovereign nation-states, which was the basis for the Monroe Doctrine. At any rate, those were some of the key factors feeding into the Bretton Woods and the United Nations conception; both of which were already in motion as what the United States was fighting for when it was forced to enter World War II. What was the objective? It wasn’t just to defeat the enemy. It was to create a New Paradigm.

I will now go through some important passages from Elliott Roosevelt’s book, As He Saw It, written in 1946. This book fully confirms what Lyndon LaRouche understood and expressed when he heard about the death of Franklin Roosevelt during World War II, when he was at that point stationed in India. LaRouche often mentions that when the news came that Roosevelt had died, a number of his fellow soldiers wanted to hear what he thought about it. So, he arranged to meet with them, and expressed his concern that a great man—Franklin Roosevelt—had just passed away; and a small-minded figure, Truman, was now the President of the United States.

FDR Confronts the British Empire

Elliott Roosevelt documents exactly what his father’s interaction with Churchill was during key conferences which Elliott attended at his father’s side, starting out when the Atlantic Charter was proclaimed, but then at other conferences that followed.

I had the opportunity in the late 1970s to meet with Elliott Roosevelt on two occasions; I and my now-late wife Marianna. He had moved to Bellevue, Washington in the late 1970s, and we had just moved out there as well. We had two meetings with him. Unfortunately, by that time, for whatever reason, he had lost the sense of fight for what he had expressed in his 1946 book. His book, fortunately, documents a great wealth of what we need to know today, especially in the fight that we must wage today to defeat the British operations that, as then, are directed at the President and at any relationship between the United States and Russia.

So, in writing his book, Elliott Roosevelt begins:

The decision to write this book was taken more recently and impelled by urgent events. Winston Churchill’s speech at Fulton, Missouri, had a hand in this decision, . . . the growing stockpile of American atom bombs is a compelling factor; all the signs of growing disunity among the leading nations of the world, all the broken promises, all the renascent power politics of greedy and desperate imperialism were my spurs in this undertaking. . . .

And I have seen the promises violated, and the conditions summarily and cynically disregarded, and the structure of peace disavowed. . . . I am writing this, then, to you who agree with me that . . . the path he charted has been most grievously—and deliberately—forsaken.

This is already in 1946. Now, what I want to do is review some of the key material in the book with you. This will give you more of a sense of the quality of President we had in Franklin Roosevelt. It’s a picture of another America, the America which we must re-establish, and which most people throughout the world, let alone people in the United States, don’t know or don’t remember, given what’s happened over the last 70-plus years.

Roosevelt told Elliott, as reported in Elliott’s book,

Churchill told me that he was not his Majesty’s Prime Minister for the purpose of presiding over the dissolution of the British Empire. I think I speak as America’s President when I say that America won’t help England in this war simply so that she will be able to continue to ride roughshod over colonial peoples.

Churchill’s Neck Reddened

Elliott then reports on a discussion between Churchill and his father:

Father started: “Of course,” he remarked with a sly sort of assurance, “of course, after the war, one of the preconditions of any lasting peace will have to be the greatest possible freedom of trade. . . . No artificial barriers. As few favored economic agreements as possible. Opportunities for expansion. Markets open for healthy competition.”

Churchill shifted in his armchair. “The British empire trade agreements,” he began heavily, “are—”

Father broke in. “Yes. Those Empire trade agreements are a case in point. It’s because of them that the people of India and Africa, of all the colonial Near East and Far East, are still as backward as they are.”

Churchill’s neck reddened . . . “Mr. President, England does not propose for a moment to lose its favored position among the British Dominions. The trade that has made England great shall continue, and under conditions prescribed by England’s ministers.”

“You see,” said Father slowly, “it is along in here somewhere that there is likely to be some disagreement between you, Winston, and me.

“I am firmly of the belief that if we are to arrive at a stable peace it must involve the development of backward countries. Backward peoples. How can this be done? It can’t be done, obviously by eighteenth-century methods. Now—”

“Who’s talking eighteenth-century methods?”

“Whichever of your ministers recommends a policy which takes wealth in raw materials out of a colonial country, but which returns nothing to the people of that country in consideration. Twentieth-century methods involve bringing industry to these colonies. Twentieth-century methods include increasing the wealth of a people by increasing their standard of living, by educating them, by bringing them sanitation—by making sure that they get a return for the raw wealth of their community.”

“You mentioned India,” Churchill growled.

“Yes. I can’t believe that we can fight a war against fascist slavery, and at the same time not work to free people all over the world from a backward colonial policy.”

“What about the Philippines?”

“I’m glad you mentioned them. They get their independence, you know, in 1946. And they’ve gotten modern sanitation, modern education; their rate of illiteracy has gone steadily down . . .”

“There can be no tampering with the Empire’s economic agreements.”

“They’re artificial . . .”

“They’re the foundation of our greatness.”

“The peace,” said Father firmly, “cannot include any continued despotism. The structure of the peace demands and will get equality of peoples.”

‘You Are Trying to Do Away with the
British Empire’

In response, Churchill told Roosevelt: “Mr. President, I believe you are trying to do away with the British Empire. Every idea you entertain about the structure of the postwar world demonstrates it.”

Later, during the Casablanca conference, I believe, Roosevelt was even clearer in the discussion directly with his son Elliott. He said:

I’m talking about another war, Elliott. I’m talking about what will happen to our world, if after this war we allow millions of people to slide back into the same semi-slavery!

Don’t think for a moment, Elliott, that Americans would be dying in the Pacific tonight, if it hadn’t been for the shortsighted greed of the French and the British and the Dutch. Shall we allow them to do it all, all over again? Your son will be about the right age, fifteen or twenty years from now.

Then Roosevelt, tired from the day’s proceedings, said to his son:

One sentence, Elliott. Then I’m going to kick you out of here. I’m tired. This is the sentence: When we’ve won the war, I will work with all my might and main to see to it that the United States is not wheedled into the position of accepting any plan that will further France’s imperialistic ambitions, or that will aid or abet the British Empire in its imperial ambitions.

He had further discussions with his son. This is another one that I think is very appropriate. He said:

You see, what the British have done, down through the centuries, historically, is the same thing. They’ve chosen their allies wisely and well. They’ve always been able to come out on top, with the same reactionary grip on the peoples of the world and the markets of the world, through every war they’ve ever been in.

This time, we’re Britain’s ally. And it’s right we should be. But . . . I’ve tried to make it clear to Winston—and the others—that while we’re their allies . . . they must never get the idea that we’re in it just to help them hang on to the archaic, medieval Empire ideas.

American foreign policy after the war must be along the lines of bringing about a realization on the part of the British and the French and the Dutch that the way we have run the Philippines is the only way they can run their colonies.

He’s just said that the Philippines is scheduled to get its independence in 1946.

Just one further quote from Elliott Roosevelt with respect to his father’s comments:

“The biggest thing,” Father commented, “was in making clear to Stalin that the United States and Great Britain were not allied in one common bloc against the Soviet Union. I think we’ve got rid of that idea, once and for all. I hope so. The one thing that could upset the applecart, after the war, is if the world is divided again. Russia against England and us. That’s our big job now, and it’ll be our big job tomorrow, too. . . .”

That’s precisely the predicament that the British have attempted to put us in today, not in respect to the Soviet Union (the Soviet Union collapsed), but this time in respect to Russia. That’s the U.S.-British “special relationship” so-called, in which they manipulate us into conflict with Russia, when in fact, Russian-U.S. collaboration, along with collaboration with China and India, is essential for the world’s peace.

Truman Betrays FDR

Elliott Roosevelt describes more of what happened as the war was being concluded, and immediately after the end of the war. He reports that at Yalta, a conference he did not attend, an agreement was arrived at among the U.S., the Soviets, and the UK, of how to handle the defeat of the Nazis. He reports that that agreement was sent by Moscow to Russia’s top general, but that neither London nor Washington—that is, neither Churchill nor Truman—sent that agreement to General Eisenhower. Eisenhower didn’t know what had been agreed to at Yalta, which created some consternation on the part of the Russians, in particular.

He also reports that there were a number of agreements which Roosevelt had made, based upon his anti-imperialist viewpoint. Roosevelt had a discussion with Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, in which she agreed that the Dutch East Indies (Indonesia) would be granted independence, as was going to occur with the Philippines. As soon as the war was over, British ships brought the Dutch back into the Dutch East Indies. Similarly, in Indochina, British troops brought the French back into Indochina—Vietnam and so forth.

In terms of China, the agreement which Roosevelt had worked out with Chiang Kai-shek was that Chiang and the Kuomintang would join with the Chinese Communists and form a unity government, to be followed by an election. The conditions for that were that the United States would not allow Britain to go back into Hongkong, Shanghai and Canton [Guangzhou], and also that the Soviet Union would agree that it would not take over Manchuria, that Manchuria was part of China.

What happens after Roosevelt’s death and after the war is over? British ships go back into Hongkong, Shanghai, and Canton. The entire agreement was invalidated by the combination of Churchill and Truman.

He also mentions that in 1948, there were cocktail parties in Washington, D.C. in which the discussion was about a preemptive nuclear strike against the Soviet Union before it perfected its own nuclear weaponry. This, of course, was the Bertrand Russell policy.

What you see here is a complete betrayal by Churchill of everything Roosevelt stood for, and a reestablishment of imperialism, British imperialism, Dutch imperialism, French imperialism, in the immediate post-World War II period, totally contrary to the Atlantic Charter, totally contrary to everything that Roosevelt intended.

Churchill after FDR’s Death

That’s very instructive in terms of what we’re dealing with today in terms of the British. It’s the same British who are carrying out a coup against the President of the United States in order to prevent that President from working with Russia, from working with China. That’s the intent. And all of these things, whether it’s the Skripal case, whether it’s false-flag chemical weapons attacks in Syria, whatever the case, it’s all part of the same geopolitical game-plan of the British, of the Anglo-Dutch liberal system.

Now, let’s look at the original Bretton Woods conception. As I said, this was already in motion before Pearl Harbor, and it was an attempt to internationalize the New Deal, internationalize the Good Neighbor Policy, and also the Four Freedoms, particularly the Freedom from Want. The first draft was produced in January 1942: In this draft, Harry Dexter White, who worked on this for President Roosevelt, stated that the goal was to “raise the productivity and hence the standard of living of the peoples of the United Nations.” He also included what are called the “associated nations,” which were those nations, particularly in Ibero-America, which did not declare war on the Axis powers, but which continued to be loyal to the Allies, so they were called “associated nations.”

The draft includes the following:

It is true that rich and powerful countries can for long periods safely and easily ignore the interests of poorer or weaker neighbors or competitors, but by doing so they only imperil the future and reduce the potential of their own level of prosperity. The lesson that must be learned is that prosperous neighbors are the best neighbors; that a higher standard of living in one country begets higher standards in others, and that a high level of trade and business is most easily attained when generously and widely shared.

There you have the Good Neighbor policy.

The same 1942 draft also stated that the chief operations of what is now called the World Bank—originally the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD)—were to involve the “provision of long-term capital for desirable productive projects” that served “directly or indirectly to permanently raise the standard of living of the borrowing country.” According to the January 1942 draft, the Bank could guarantee loans subject to certain conditions: (1) the interest rate of such loans could not be excessive; (2) no more than 80% of the principal and 50% of the interest could be guaranteed; and (3) a loan could not be “for the purpose of repayment of an old loan.”

So, you think about what happened with the IMF and the World Bank after 1971: They lent money to repay old loans, so the money didn’t really even have to go the borrowing country, they could just wire it over to a bank in New York or the City of London—very simple. The country would never see the money. It wasn’t invested in anything productive that could produce new wealth that would allow them to repay any legitimate debt which they had. And of course, the stipulation had been that “interest rates would not be excessive.”

FDR’s Bretton Woods Intentions

The January 1942 draft also defended tariff protection in poorer countries. Harry Dexter White’s March 1942 draft stated that the assumptions that underlie free trade theory were “not valid” and “unreal and unsound.”

The draft memorandum prepared for Roosevelt in May 1942 stressed that one of the purposes of the plan was “to supply the huge volume of capital that will be needed abroad for relief, for reconstruction, and economic development essential for the attainment of world prosperity and higher standards of living.” A September 1943 draft emphasized that “large investment sums will be needed to help raise the very low productive level of countries in the Far East, South America, in the Balkans and the Near East.” In the same draft, he said rising standards of living worldwide would help generate future “political stability and friendly international collaboration.”

That gives you some of the picture. There were other proposals which didn’t make it into the final Bretton Woods, which included a debt restructuring mechanism. There were also proposals for capital controls, all of which are measures which certainly Lyndon LaRouche would support in terms of a New Bretton Woods.

The basic point that I would make here, is that we are in a situation where we suffer the consequence of the coup which took place in the United States following the death of Franklin Roosevelt. And LaRouche, over that entire period of time, into today, has been the most committed individual, to ensure that the United States returns to that perspective that Elliott Roosevelt laid out. And I want to go back to what Elliott Roosevelt writes at the end of his book: “I have come to the question: What can we do, we who are not simply officials in the American government but something far more important, which is to say, American citizens? What can we do to ensure our government’s return to the path that was charted by Franklin Roosevelt?”

And I would maintain that that’s exactly what Lyndon LaRouche has done, as a citizen. He didn’t hold any official position. And that’s also what we are all called upon to do, as citizens, to return to that perspective, which is a perspective which Americans can be proud of, as opposed to many other things which we can’t be proud of, particularly as we’ve come under the influence of the British Empire, and basically serve the purposes of that empire, of the Anglo-Dutch system, against which Roosevelt was completely opposed, and his vision of the post-World War II period was committed to eliminating altogether.

A Second Treaty of Westphalia

I would like to conclude by going through some of the features which are important in terms of what we have to do today. Lyndon LaRouche has emphasized, especially in a peace called “The Coming Eurasian World: Toward a Second Treaty of Westphalia,” that there is an elephant in the honeymoon couple’s bed. In one citation, he points out that the elephant is defecating on that bed, which does not bode well for the duration of that marriage, or the wellbeing of the marriage.

So: What if, Russia, President Putin, President Xi of China, Prime Minister Modi of India, and President Trump of the United States, all, explicitly, publicly express their commitment to ending all forms of imperialism, to ending the Anglo-Dutch liberal system which has dominated the post-World War II period, until the most recent developments which have initiated by China and Russia, India and other nations, as Diane was citing earlier, the One Belt, One Road initiative of the Chinese; the Eurasian Economic Union initiative of Russia; the BRICS; the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank; the BRICS’ New Development Bank. These are institutions which are not controlled—although they’re operating in a universe which is controlled, by this Anglo-Dutch system.

But what if they were all to come forward and say, “this is the common enemy of all humanity,” and we essentially commit our nations and we’re sure other nations will join us in committing ourselves again to the principle of the Atlantic Charter, or the Treaty of Westphalia, the sovereignty of individual nations, cooperation among individual nations. We are committed to a policy of lifting the living standards of all nations in the world. The Chinese have done that in China, they’re committed to doing that in other locations throughout the world. President Trump, very clearly, has an intent to reverse globalization, reverse the damage done by free trade, reverse the policy of post-industrial society, and reindustrialize the United States, creating higher standards of living here. He’s not been fully successful in doing that thus far. He’s made some progress, which shouldn’t be ignored.

But if you’ve got agreement among the nations, these four powers, you could turn the situation around globally. And the key to that is really going back to the principles of the Bretton Woods system: You’ve got to have a situation where you have—Lyndon LaRouche has advocated this repeatedly—fixed exchange rates based upon a gold reserve system.

A Credit Policy

And you have to have a commitment to a credit policy, as opposed to a monetarist policy. You have to extend credit for capital exports, to third world nations—what we call “third world” nations, developing nations, undeveloped nations, however you want to express it. That is in the interest of the advanced-sector nation, as well as the developing sector nations, and this is something that Lyndon LaRouche put forward all the way back at the conference in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1988: It’s a policy of peaceful, technological transfer to the third world, and he makes the point repeatedly, that if you’re doing that, if you gear up our economy, create productive jobs focussing on technology development, for capital goods export, then you’re actually benefitting your own economy even before you’ve been paid for your exports; because you’re creating tremendous turnover in your economy, and by expanding it in that kind of way.

And you’re creating customers in the third world. If you just impose austerity conditions, as the IMF and World Bank do, then you’re basically killing your customer. You’re killing your neighbors, most fundamentally, but in addition, you’re killing your customers, the people who can be a market for your high-technology exports.

So it’s that policy of capital exports, which is absolutely critical. And any agreement among the United States, Russia, China and India, would also involve a commitment—the fundamental commitment is to increase the productive powers in the labor of all nations. That’s really even a higher conception that just increasing the standard of living. It’s not a question of just increasing consumption. It’s a question of increasing the productive powers of the labor force of the total population in all of the respective countries. That goes to Lyndon LaRouche’s conception of the need to increase potential relative population-density.

And, of course, it’s not just a question of capital exports and infrastructure development, but there should also be an agreement for space exploration, working together to colonize and develop space, and higher forms of energy, including fusion power in particular.

Those would be part of such an agreement. And as Lyndon LaRouche emphasized, what you need to do, is have these four national leaders make a commitment to change the direction of the world, in the direction of the good, as Friedrich Schiller said in his Letters on the Aesthetical Education of Man. That’s what you’ve got to do: Change the world by getting it in the direction of the good.

And it must involve the United States: The importance of what I’ve tried to lay out today, is that many in the world do not have this understanding of the United States. They think that the United States is the imperial power, as opposed to the Anglo-Dutch system and the British. It is true that the United States has been in large part taken over by that system, but that’s not the history, it’s not the Constitutional intent of the United States. And we have to restore that Constitutional intention, as Roosevelt expressed it. If you do that, then you can have peace through economic development.

Don’t Play the British Game

If you don’t bring the United States into this combination, if this is not initiated by the United States, then you have precisely the condition which Franklin Roosevelt told his son must be avoided, which is, Britain and us versus Russia. That is the British game plan: You’ve got to prevent that. And there are many people throughout the world who fall into that trap, including people in Russia, out of desperation. Sanctions are being imposed upon Russia; the same kinds of policies which unjustified, are being imposed on other countries.

That is the British policy, and you have to identify it as the British policy, and you can’t give up on the United States. You have to go from the standpoint of a higher strategic flank, grand strategy, which is that you’ve got to win over the United States. If that doesn’t occur, then the world is divided, and that’s what will lead to war, as we see in the machinations of the British in respect to Syria and other locations—Ukraine and so forth, throughout the world.

That is what I want to convey: The need for that Four Power alliance as Lyndon LaRouche has emphasized, which must include the United States, which means we have to change the United States. And we need allies abroad who are committed to changing the United States back to its original Constitutional intent.

Lyndon LaRouche has been committed to this, certainly upon the very news of the death of Roosevelt in April 1945, and he is a citizen who has fought for this policy. And that’s what each of us has to do, as citizens, who have to become informed about the actual history of the United States—one portion of which I’ve tried to give you today—and commit your life to that fight: That’s what Roosevelt did. That’s what Lyndon LaRouche has done.

For Further Reading

Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods: International Development and the Making of the Postwar Order, by Eric Helleiner, Cornell University Press, 2014.

As He Saw It, by Elliott Roosevelt, Duell, Sloan and Pearce, 1946.