EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR SUNDAY, MAY 9, 2021

Helga Zepp-LaRouche Keynotes Schiller Institute Conference: We Must Unite To Stop the Rush to Nuclear War

May 8, 2021 (EIRNS)—The historic Schiller Institute Conference today, on “The Moral Collapse of the Trans-Atlantic World Cries Out for a New Paradigm,” brought together leaders of institutions and governments from around the world to address the exceedingly dangerous global strategic crisis: a rush to confrontation between the world’s nuclear powers; a pandemic threatening to expand with a vengeance; mass starvation threatening dozens of millions in Africa and Asia; and a financial bubble of unprecedented scope which is already beginning to fissure. Schiller Institute founder and Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s keynote is excerpted here, and can be viewed in full, with the rest of the conference, on the Schiller Institute website.  EIR is already well along in processing transcripts of the proceedings for the next issues.

Note that the second speaker, Dr. Bouthaina Shaaban, who has served as the Political and Media Advisor to the Syrian Presidency since 2008, said to Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche:

“Thank you very much for your keynote address. I thought while you were talking that I would love to carry this speech and circulate it the world over, because it is the antithesis of what Western colonial powers are doing. And I would like to say to you how I read that you, Helga, and the Schiller Institute look at humanity. You see humanity, see all of us as global brothers and sisters, while the imperial and colonial powers have always treated us or looked at us as second- or third- or fourth- or fifth-class citizens of the world. They continue to do that because they are only interested in looting our resources, and in making money for themselves while depriving our people of our own resources. I think your idea is great.... Thank you, Helga, for inviting me, always. I think this is the time to make the Schiller Institute a leading narrative, your narrative, to be a leading narrative in the world. I think most people everywhere need this, and want this, and are ready to join party with you and work with you for this noble cause you have been embracing for the last 50 years. Thank you very much.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s keynote was titled: “The March of Folly: Can Mankind Still Extinguish the Now-Lit Fuse of Thermonuclear War?” Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche said in part:

“I'm telling you that we are conducting this Schiller Institute conference with an urgent appeal to as many people as possible to help to change the direction in which the political situation is going right now.  Because we are on a course which, in a very short period of time—much shorter than anybody is probably realizing—we are on a course of potential extinction of civilization.  It's not clear where the greater danger comes from: the danger of thermonuclear war, the danger of a pandemic going out of control in combination with a world famine, or with a neo-Malthusian virus which has beset the brains of so many people, where it is not clear if they are more eager to destroy the industrial society or if they are willing instruments to the geopolitical confrontation against Russia and China.

“So, let's start with the danger of thermonuclear war.  And it's not just one trigger point, one strategic crisis.  It is the overall tension between the United States, the so-called Global Britain, NATO, and increasingly also the European Union, with Russia and China, that it's becoming so big that any one of the crises around the globe could become the trigger point.  It could be a crisis with Russia over Ukraine going out of control, or with China over Taiwan.  It is alarming, and it should alarm all of you, that, now, more and more people, even so unlikely ones, like Henry Kissinger—who has been not exactly a friend of our organization, which has everything to do with his infamous NSSM-200 paper which he wrote when he was National Security Advisor in 1974, that he was the enemy and adversary of everything Lyndon LaRouche and his movement stood for.  But even Kissinger is now warning that the tension between the United States and China is becoming so all-engulfing for the whole world, that they could lead to an Armageddon-like military clash, extinguishing mankind ‘in a finite period of time.’  This he said about a week ago.

“Then the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, recently in February, informed the Pentagon that they should change the likelihood of nuclear war from ‘not likely’ to ‘very likely.’ He repeated that in front of the Congress recently. Just two days ago, the New York Times had an article by one Peter Beinart, who said that the Biden policy towards Taiwan is truly reckless, that we are very close to war, mainly because the Democrats have abandoned the One-China policy already last year. Biden is now receiving envoys from Taiwan, as he did for his inauguration. Then, the article quotes Graham Allison, the historian who thinks that a danger of a Thucydides trap exists, by saying that people have to be clear that China would be more willing to go to war than accepting to lose Taiwan. In light of the history of China, this is very likely. 

“If it would come to such a war, given the fact that China has 39 air bases around the region of Taiwan, the United States has only 2, the United States would lose any conventional war, and if it would think of using regional nuclear weapons, the danger is that it would go into an all-out global nuclear war....

“On March 21st, Adm. Philip Davidson, the head of the Indo-Pacific Command, said we must be absolutely prepared to fight and win such a war, should competition turn into conflict.  Then, the U.S. Pacific Fleet commander, Adm. John Aquilino, who will replace Admiral Davidson in his position, said we are much closer to such a war ‘than most think.’  And H.R. McMaster, the former National Security Advisor to Trump basically said the most dangerous time in his view is the period between the Congress of the Chinese Communist Party later this year, and the Winter Olympics in Beijing next year.  So, that is, indeed, very close.  The Taiwan Defense Minister already announced that they will now mass-produce long-range missiles capable of striking deep into the inside of the Chinese mainland.”

Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche then developed, in the same devastating detail, the similar danger of war over Ukraine; the illegal and deadly unilateral sanctions policy of the U.S., pointing especially to Syria and Yemen; the devastating food crisis threatening the death of millions, and the pandemic spike in India, threatening many new mutations. She concluded:

“What is to be done?  There is a solution, but it is important to take all these problems at once. Because when you have a systemic crisis like what I'm describing with these different elements, it is not enough to solve a little of this and a little bit of that crisis, but you have to create a completely different system.  President Putin, in January 2020, called for an urgent meeting of the Permanent Five Members of the UN Security Council.  I think that is what must absolutely happen now.  Such a summit should be called because of the danger of World War III, a pandemic out of control, a world famine, the danger of a blow-out of the financial system, and it must lead to an immediate implementation of the following program:

“Given the pandemic, the only way to stop that and future pandemics, is to create a world health system, which means a modern health system in every single country.  Because if you don't stop the pandemic in even the poorest country on the planet, it will come back; there will be new variants, new strains, which eventually could make obsolete the vaccines which already have been distributed.  So, we are in a race against time.  We should do in every single country, what was done in Wuhan when the pandemic broke out.  Build hospitals!  This can be done with the Army Corps of Engineers, with aid organizations.  In one week, one can build a hospital for 1,000 people.  Then, these modern hospitals need well-educated doctors, nurses.  You need lots of clean water; 2 billion people in the world have no access to clean water.  You need lots of electricity; this cannot be done without infrastructure.  So, the building of a modern health system in every country can and must be the beginning of overcoming the underdevelopment of the developing countries for good.

“We have to have a program of global poverty alleviation, exactly as it was intended by Franklin D. Roosevelt when he called for the Bretton Woods, which was never implemented because of his untimely death.  But now, we need exactly that.  It must start with a global Glass-Steagall banking separation, which then must be followed by the creation of a Hamiltonian national banking system in very country.  We need a credit system, which then can become a New Bretton Woods system.  Then we can finance the extension of the New Silk Road into Southwest Asia. 

“The possibility to overcome the death and starvation in Syria, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, the solution is obvious.  When President Xi Jinping was in Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Egypt in 2015, he offered to extend the New Silk Road into the entire region.  That program—and the Schiller Institute has worked on a comprehensive program for the entire region—can be implemented if, in such a P-5 UN Security Council meeting, it is agreed, and then all the big neighbors of Southwest Asia—Russia, China, India -- all work together, and the United States and European nations agree to cooperate in the reconstruction of this region, which has been destroyed by these endless wars.  Then, naturally, the New Silk Road with this international cooperation, including other countries like Japan, India, South Korea should all be involved in the reconstruction of Africa.

“We have to replace geopolitical confrontation with a crash program cooperation for the development of thermonuclear fusion power, where in the recent period, major breakthroughs have occurred. ... Rather than extending geopolitical confrontation into space, we should have international cooperation to build a village on the Moon, and soon a city on Mars....

“Now, the Hubble Telescope discovered that there are at a minimum 2 trillion galaxies.  I would like you to really put your mind on that thought, and then think how stupid it would be that we, as a human species, who are the only species which can potentially be the immortal species because of our creative reason, that we would destroy ourselves in a thermonuclear destruction.  I think we should have the ambition not to be more stupid than the animals, because there is no animal species which would ever conduct such a behavior.  Thank you.”