EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY JULY 27, 2023
Humanity Says, ‘No More War!’: The Statecraft of Optimism
July 25, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—In defiance of geo-politics, geo-economics, the “rule of law,” systems analysis, artificial intelligence, “technocracy, “ and information theory—the application of any, or all of which, will “zoom and doom” the entire human race to an early, fiery, radioactive death—the Schiller Institute and co-participants in the International Peace Coalition, have chosen not to submit to the tragedy of fiercely held, but wrong axioms about “what is possible” in today’s world organizing process.
The unfolding drama now occurring in St. Petersburg at the Russia-Africa Forum (as well as a completely different meeting called the Economic and Humanitarian Forum), with more than 20 heads of state present, despite harassment from London and Washington, and denunciations from the puppet state of Ukraine, is a triumph over tragedy. The meeting between Brazilian former President Dilma Rousseff, now head of the New Development Bank of the BRICS, and Russian President Vladimir Putin, regarding possible new monetary reorganization measures that may be adopted by several nations over the next months, portends a possible “declaration of economic independence “ of the “global majority.” This can liberate as many as 4 billion people or more on the planet from poverty and insecurity, should the Physical Economy ideas of Lyndon LaRouche become a central topic of discussion among the intelligentsia of these nations.
The fact that the BRICS Information Portal published the first part of the Dennis Small and M.J. Freeman article “Essentials of Physical Economy for a BRICS Transition to a New International Financial System,” means that that process is well under way. Over the next days, topics such as “Nuclear Technologies for the Development of the African Region,” “Space Technologies To Accelerate Economic Development and Improve the Living Standards of the Population,” “Russia-Africa: Partnership for Food Sovereignty,” “Achieving Technological Sovereignty through Industrial Cooperation,” and “New World Order: From the Legacy of Colonialism to Sovereignty and Development,” show where the mind-set of real world is headed. This is, potentially, the “LaRouche New World.” Consider that there are 700 million people in the continent of Africa below the age of 19, and what sort of effect LaRouche writings such as “The Principle of Power,” a 2005 collaboration between LaRouche and his Youth Movement, could have, should the virus of cultural optimism break out in that continent. Goodbye, NSSM-200!
Yes, the “elevation” of “Maidan Mistress” Victoria Nuland to the number two position in the U.S. State Department, even if only temporarily, indicates the MAD intention to plunge the world head-long into Armageddon, Liz Truss-style. Yes, as is pointed out in the headline of a London Telegraph article reviewing the “Oppenheimer” movie, “A Nuclear War Could Wipe Out All of Humanity, and Nobody Seems To Care.” But perhaps that’s because few people in the trans-Atlantic world are any longer as clear about what the idea of humanity means, as those countries assembled right now in St. Petersburg, or in the BRICS 13th National Security Advisors Meeting in Johannesburg. To resurrect the idea of humanity in the “Dejected West,” do what Plato did in his Meno dialogue. We must demonstrate that there exists a higher set of conceptions, which starts with the idea of the One, as in “one humanity,” which are completely incommensurate with the “many” lower-order, tragic, self-destructive conceptions from which people are encouraged to choose. Humanity For Peace, far from being a vacuous “warm and fuzzy” how-can-you-disagree platitude, is the most polemical idea that can be introduced into the cultural Malthusianism—for example, “trans-humanism”—that grips Europe and the United States.
Lyndon LaRouche insisted that it were not only possible, but necessary, using the physical-economic implications of Bernhard Riemann’s revolution in physics, to reintroduce the form of statecraft that Nicholas of Cusa employed to bring about, together with his collaborators, the Italian Renaissance, and to so directly change the “real physical space-time” of the 15th century, that it immediately resulted in the most rapid economic growth in human history up to that point. No one except this association has attempted to specialize in this; it is a unique contribution of Helga Zepp and Lyndon LaRouche to contemporary history.
This is the “development” side of our proposals for a “new security and development architecture,” exemplified by the LaRouche idea of “development corridors”—qualitatively different from “infrastructure development.” Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who rediscovered the significance of Nicholas of Cusa as the father of modern science, and introduced that Cusa, not only to this organization, but to thinkers throughout the world, including in the Vatican, has shaped Cusa’s principle of “Coincidence of Opposites” (Coincidentia Oppositorum) into a contemporary intervention into international policy. This has been done over years through a series of initiatives, the latest of which is the International Peace Coalition.
In an exchange Tuesday with organizer Kynan Thistlethwaite, Presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. was asked to endorse the initiative begun by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, focused currently on an international Day of Remembrance and Action on August 6. Kennedy gave an extensive answer to the question, first saying, “First of all, I love what you said. Thank you for everything that you said. And thank you for advocating for that, because it’s so critical right now,” and concluding, after speaking about President John Kennedy’s 1963 American University speech, by saying, “nobody has talked to Putin for a year. We have no high-level relationship with Russia. We need to be talking to them. We need to do what my uncle said, which is to put ourselves in the shoes of our adversary.” There was loud, spontaneous applause from the 300-person audience in response.
Historical Footnote: In his October 11, 1962 opening remarks to the Second Vatican Council, five days before the beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Pope John XXIII said: “In the daily exercise of our pastoral office, we sometimes have to listen, much to our regret, to voices of persons, who though burning with zeal, are not endowed with much sense of discretion of measure. In this modern time, they see nothing but prevarication and ruin. They say that our era, in comparison with past eras, is getting worse. And they behave as though they had learned nothing from history, which is nonetheless the great teacher of life.... We feel that we must disagree with those prophets of doom, who are always forecasting disaster, as though the end of the world were at hand.” It was because of that optimistic, transcendent mind-set, even in the midst of his contentious reorganization of the Catholic Church in the Second Vatican Council, that John XXIII, like no one else at the time, could enter into an impassioned dialogue with Nikita Khrushchev and JFK, when the end of the world really was at hand.
Just after Kennedy’s October 22 speech describing the blockade, the Pope wrote a message on October 23, followed by a radio broadcast the next day. “We beg all governments not to remain deaf to this cry of humanity. That they do all that is in their power to save peace. They will thus spare the world from the horrors of a war whose terrifying consequences no one can predict. That they continue discussions, as this loyal and open behavior has great value as a witness of everyone’s conscience and before history. Promoting, favoring, accepting conversations, at all levels and in any time, is a rule of wisdom and prudence which attracts the blessings of heaven and earth.” His message appeared the following day in all the major world newspapers, including Pravda. It was reported in The Hill in 2017 in an op-ed by Allen Pietrobon that “Recently declassified U.S. government documents from the time confirm that Soviet Leader Nikita Khrushchev did, in fact, take the Pope’s message to heart. (Norman) Cousins revealed to the White House what Khrushchev had told him during a later private meeting: ‘Pope John’s appeal during the missile crisis had carried considerable weight in his thinking. In fact, [Khrushchev said] it was the first ray of light in the fast-developing darkness.’ ”
But optimism is not the prerogative of popes. Optimism regarding one humanity, and securing the General Welfare of humanity through development, the new name for peace, is in our power, against which the tyranny of pessimism cannot stand.
