EDITORIAL

The World at a Crossroad

The United States and China share the most important bilateral relationship in the world. The importance of their collaboration was emphasized by the late economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche throughout the last two decades of his life, in which he organized for a new Bretton Woods credit system to be launched by America, China, Russia, and India leading other nations.

As was clear from LaRouche’s goal for this bilateral relationship, it cannot be understood purely in terms of those two nations, and it will not be decided solely by their citizens. It urgently involves the peoples of the entire planet.

With notable exceptions, including some useful impulses by President Trump, the United States since World War II has increasingly come to resemble, and to be controlled by, the British Empire against which it fought a revolution over 200 years ago. The nation of Lincoln—which had demonstrated to the world the power of its American System of economics and a commitment, not to a ruling class, but to the general welfare of its population—is being rotted out from a British-inspired cultural disease.

The illness takes the form of financialization of the economy, degradation of culture, and an assault on the universal principles expressed in the greatest moments of the United States—both past and to come.

The expressed interests of the United States Beltway-Wall Street-Silicon Valley oligarchs are not the interest of the nation, nor of the American people.

Over the last few decades, China has produced economic growth at an extraordinary rate, and was able, by its size and sovereignty, to pursue productive credit policies even against countervailing pressures from the institutions of the decaying Western financial system. Today, it is exporting that growth model, and its engineering and manufacturing output, through a great project it calls the Belt and Road Initiative, which itself was shaped by the advocacy for decades by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, of the Eurasian and World Land-Bridges.

What will be the outcomes of the hours of discussions which were held in Alaska between representatives of the United States and China? That depends on the outcomes of broader decisions—those of a thinking elite of citizenry around the world.

This past weekend the Schiller Institute and ICLC gathered leaders from the United States, China, Russia, Africa, Europe, the Americas, and South Asia for a dialogue on how to meet the existential crisis facing mankind with the idea of “peace through development.”

Lyndon LaRouche, always “looking ahead to the next 50 years,” developed a profound understanding of the inner contours of development, and of the powerful connections among science, culture, and economics. It was demonstrated in his presentation from May 4, 2001, “Winning the Battle for the Common Good,” watched in this past weekend’s Panel 2.

Benefitting from the method he advanced, and with the nations and knowledge represented at this conference, we can create the necessary revolution in human affairs to meet our shared challenges as a human race, and to forge a world worthy of the dignity of man, now and in the future.

The full two-day conference, “Two Months Iinto the New U.S. Administration: The World at a Crossroad,” is viewable here.

We publish in this issue a crucial part of the second panel, “The Strategic Crisis Facing the Human Race,” as well as Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s keynote of the entire conference. Presentations from the other panels will be published in future issues.