This article appears in the April 16, 2021 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Forging a U.S.-China Alliance
To Develop the Americas
[Print version of this article]
April 10—During Panel 2 of the Schiller Institute’s March 20-21 “World at a Crossroad” conference, “The Strategic Crisis Facing Humanity,” a set of four presentations was made, jointly focused on the need for the United States and China to work together to bring a surge of economic development to the Americas, North and South. Two speakers from Mexico, one from Argentina, and one from the United States addressed the special opportunities that were emerging around the close working relationship of the Presidents of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, and Argentina, Alberto Fernández. EIR publishes those four presentations in this Conference Section.
One of the results of that dialogue was an April 10 policy statement issued by the Schiller Institute for wide circulation in the Spanish-speaking Americas and beyond. Under the headline “President Alberto Fernández to China; Ibero-America to Mars!” the statement begins:
The upcoming May 2021 trip to China by Argentine President Alberto Fernández, in which he is scheduled to sign a Memorandum of Understanding with China on the Belt and Road Initiative—the global infrastructure project involving nearly 150 nations—presents a unique strategic opportunity.
1. All of Ibero-America can take a giant step toward finally breaking out of the straitjacket of financial looting by the dying London/Wall Street system, and join instead with the Belt and Road, sometimes called the New Silk Road, and its high-tech, science-driver approach to development.
2. An Argentina-Mexico axis can emerge to propose a game-changing policy in the Western Hemisphere: that China and the United States jointly work on developing the Mexican-Central American region in particular, and also all of Ibero-America, by cooperative efforts around extending the BRI into the region. Such development is the way—the only way—to stop the drug trade, stop desperate migration, stop the gangs, stop the poverty, and stop the COVID-19 pandemic.
“But is it possible?” people will ask skeptically…. “Can we really get the United States and China to cooperate in the development of Mexico and all the Americas, instead of heading towards confrontation and war which only serves the Establishment’s geopolitical interests?” Yes—if the United States returns to its senses, and to the policies of its greatest sons: Washington, Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon LaRouche. The current breakdown crisis of the Western financial system has now made that possibility a necessity—if the U.S. itself is to survive Wall Street’s unavoidable demise.
The statement continues:
Argentine President Fernández should be entrusted with a mission on behalf of all of Ibero-America during his upcoming trip to China. In addition to the package of Argentine infrastructure projects that he is already planning to discuss with China’s President Xi Jinping—which importantly includes nuclear energy—Fernández should propose regional great development projects as well, especially in the field of space. Specifically, he should propose establishing two polytechnic institutes, or institutes for space science educational activity: one in Argentina and one in Mexico—perhaps in the city of Querétaro near Mexico City. These two centers will serve as centers of international scientific cooperation, and as poles of educational and technological progress required to bring the entire continent into this kind of high-technology space development. They will be centers of the emerging New Space Silk Road.
The Schiller Institute statement concludes:
President Alberto Fernández’s upcoming trip to China can become the first step in Ibero-America’s participation in mankind’s mission to Mars.
Initiatives towards great power cooperation are also coming from the Mexican side. Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced on April 6 that, on instructions of President López Obrador, he is preparing visits to Moscow, New Delhi, Beijing, and Washington. The official agenda of the trips is vaccines, but in today’s global crisis, this “vaccine diplomacy” could well open many possibilities for broader discussions, including along the lines to be taken up during the Fernández visit to China a month from now. Ebrard stated that, while he is not planning to go to Argentina in the immediate future, the first lots of vaccines from the AstraZeneca plant now operating in Mexico, as a result of a Mexican-Argentine agreement, will be available by the end of April. That initiative, he said, is a model of the kind of cooperation that is needed to address the COVID crisis.
