Schiller Institute Webcast with Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Wednesday, October 4, 2023 (https://youtu.be/lfIBNHDxThQ)
HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello and welcome to our weekly dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and chairwoman of the Schiller Institute. Today is Wednesday, Oct. 4, 2023. I’m Harley Schlanger and I’ll be your host. If you have questions or comments you can send them to questions@schillerinstitute.org.
A lot of what we’ll be discussing today is around the situation of the NATO proxy war in Ukraine against Russia. There have been a number of important developments: The EU and NATO this past week showed their foolish commitment to a continuing war, by having their foreign ministers flock to Kiev and making promises to continue this to be to the end, regardless of the loss of Ukrainian lives, or the wreckage that they’re imposing on their own countries’ economies. In the United States, the Speaker of the House was ousted, in a fight over, underneath everything else was really, his breaking his pledge to stop funding the war in Ukraine, and duplicity on the question of war funding. And we’re seeing changes in Europe, with a deepening split between Ukraine and Poland, an anti-war part in Slovakia getting the most votes in the national election on Saturday, Sept. 30 and a sign of life for the anti-war movement in Germany, where support is growing for a proposal for a negotiated peace that was put forward on Aug. 28, by four very prominent Germans.
So Helga, let’s open with your thoughts on this strategic conjuncture, how you see it, and where you think things are headed?
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, I think it is promising, dangerous, fascinating, and hopeful. I do not want to downplay the war danger, because the situation in Ukraine remains to be a meatgrinder, with the British again and again making efforts to escalate the war, like the recent example of the new British Defense Secretary Grant Shapps who had a wild idea to send the British Navy into the Black Sea to defend Ukrainian vessels, to send British soldiers to Ukraine to train Ukrainians in Ukraine: This was too much for even Prime Minister Sunak, so he made a turnaround, and now Shapps is also tuning down his war rhetoric. But that shows you there is still commitment by the neocons and the British Empire forces to escalate the war.
But while this is going on, we should not let down the defenses for one second, the whole thing is breaking apart. You mentioned the ouster of Kevin McCarthy, the Speaker of the House, now that is a fascinating story, because it was unexpected, it has never happened before. But it was a combination of 7 Republicans and I think 210 (or a large number) of Democrats, and they had a vote of 216-210. But the really interesting story is that what Matt Gaetz, the Republican Congressman, said, as what was behind that: Namely, that the U.S. annual debt is $2 trillion, that the United States has a total debt of $33 trillion and that that is untenable, especially now—and this was important that Gaetz brought this out in the Congress, that there is a massive de-dollarization going on where many countries are just moving out of the dollar, moving to trade in their own national currencies, and that that is now, indeed, becoming a factor.
Because this is not a natural catastrophe, this is a manmade disaster, because this is a blowback. If the United States and the British would not have pushed this NATO war, the six NATO expansions to the East, which finally involved the Maidan coup in Ukraine in 2014, and the following developments, ending up in the war in Ukraine, demanding sanctions against Russia, imposing the weaponization of the dollar by just taking assets of Russia, of Afghanistan, of other countries. Now, all of these policies were, the people who were pushing it thought they could get away with anything, because they are the unipolar world, but the vast majority of the human species looked at that, and said, hey wait a second, if working with the hegemon, with the United States is bringing all of this, and we have to pay the bill, maybe that’s not such a good idea.
So, there was a tremendous blowback. The BRICS—Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa—they developed a tremendous momentum at their August Johannesburg summit, with six new members joining, among them Iran and Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Ethiopia, the United Arab Emirates, and Argentina. And 40 more countries have applied for membership in the next period.
So there is right now a complete reorientation of the world, a new paradigm developing, in response to the effort to impose an unipolar world, when it clearly had no basis any more, and probably never did have. Now, you have the first casualty, so to speak, in the form of this Speaker of the House, who was trying to push through a bill that would have meant, among other things, an ongoing money and weapons flow to Ukraine. And there are a lot of people in the United States who say that is money the United States citizens don’t have any more, who are faced with collapsing infrastructure, who are in a terrible social and cultural crisis in the United States.
All of this is happening very dramatically. And within that, fortunately, there is a growing effort to get a peaceful resolution. You mentioned the paper by these four prominent Germans—I think we discussed it already last week—but I want to reiterate it: This is a paper presented by former Gen. Harald Kujat, who was formerly the highest military in Germany; Horst Teltschik, a top diplomat in the time of the German reunification and longtime president of the Munich Security Conference; Prof. Hajo Funke, a historian from Berlin; and Peter Brandt, the son of Willy Brandt. This paper is circulating widely. The International Peace Coalition which we have initiated, which is growing and quickly expanding, they are mobilized to get it published in as many countries as possible, and we made some breakthroughs: The paper was published and commented on in Italy, France, Switzerland, Mexico, and probably a couple of others. But there are also other people promoting this paper. So there is a growing idea that the war must end through peace negotiations, and this paper contains a very concrete proposal for how that can be done.
That is one major vehicle for those people who really want to stop the danger of World War III, so we will publish the link to their paper again under this webcast, and I’m asking all of you to help to spread it. If you have any means of publication, blog, some platform or a print publication, please reprint it, get people to comment on it, and make it known. Because I think you need a rallying point, and while there has been some criticism, and actually we got some very sharp reactions from people who said it is completely unrealistic because Russia will never go for it, Russia does not trust the West any more—well, that is true. But what Russia thinks is determined by what the West does, and if we can mobilize a significant force for peace in the West, I’m absolutely sure that the attitude of Russia will also change, because I don’t think Russia wants to have World War III. But they don’t want to capitulate to a West which is duplicitous and not honest. But if we mobilize an honest peace movement, I think we have a chance to end this war with diplomacy.
And I think the ouster of McCarthy from his position in the House over these issues should give everybody a tremendous boost, and a sense of optimism, that you can do something to bring down a tyrannical order. So, we should absolutely be optimistic, and keep building the peace movement: The IPC is going to expand, so join us in this effort, and let’s just recognize the fact that the world is changing very rapidly, and there’s absolutely nothing that can put that genie back into the bottle! So therefore, the only reasonable attitude is that we have to get the Western countries to join with the global majority and build a new system, a new paradigm of international relations. And if the Western countries would express that, everything could be solved, because I’m absolutely, 100% certain that the BRICS countries and the countries of the Global South would more than welcome a positive attitude coming from the West.
SCHLANGER: We have a question from our friend, who wanted to know what was the result of the deliberations in the House and Senate last week. He points out that Biden had asked for over $20 billion in new money to be made available for Ukraine; it was reduced then to $6 billion, and then it was taken out completely from the budget, in the bill that went through. But he asks: “Does that mean that they’re not going to spend more money? Or that they’re still going to try and bring it up again?”
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, knowing what the vested interests are that are hanging on that, those of the military industrial complex, I’m sure they will bring it up again. But for the time being, there is an objective bottleneck, and the bottleneck is that not only was that money not approved in this round, but the stockpiles of ammunition in the United States and even in European countries, is running so low, that it risks the national defense requirements of the countries involved. Now that is very interesting, because, in the meantime, Russia, in the one and a half years of war, is actually not faced with such problems. But they have built up their war economy quite efficiently, and I think it is time for the West to realize that they would do much better and act in the interests of their own citizens, if they would stop this focus on military and get the economy going! Because the United States economy is in shambles, infrastructure is collapsing, there are terrible social problems all over the place, and Germany is in a free fall as a result of the sanctions against Russia, the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines, the increase in energy prices which will really explode in the coming fall and winter; almost half of the industry is either folding up, going bankrupt or saying they cannot afford to stay in Germany any longer, and they’re going into foreign countries for investment—either the United States or China; and Germany is faced with a tremendous economic, and also social crisis as a result.
So, it’s really time to rethink, and if the governments that are pushing these policies are unable to rethink, they must be replaced: That is in the Declaration of Independence, and that is actually the fundamental rights of the citizens, because if governments swear when they take office, like in the German case, every minister and chancellor has to take an oath that they will defend the interests of the German people, that they will increase the benefit to them, and prevent them from suffering damage; and if you have governments that are violating that every day, every hour, then maybe these governments should be replaced at the earliest possible time.
SCHLANGER: Helga, following up on this theme, we have a question from Angela from Italy, who quotes something you had said recently, and asks: “What did you mean when you said nations of the Global South, of Latin America, Asia, and Africa, are ‘defiantly unconvinced of the righteousness of the Ukrainian cause’?” And she then says that she thinks that Africans are among the nations strongly supporting Russia. Would you comment on that?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, there was, really, a major effort by American administration officials, EU officials, representatives of various European governments, they were travelling around the world to Latin America, Asia, and Africa, to try to assert maximum pressure on these countries that they should condemn the so-called “Russian aggression,” and join with the so-called “democracies.” That has been a complete failure. The countries of the Global South, in general, except some which were too weak to resist such pressures, basically refused to do that. They insisted that they would take a non-aligned position, and that they do not want to become a pawn in this geopolitical confrontation.
The reason why they are doing that is pretty obvious, because, what is happening in terms of attacks on Russia—by the media, by the politicians—and on China, these countries have experienced something completely different. They have experienced that the so-called West, especially the United States but also the European colonialist powers, all they offered was military kind of cooperation, things relating to training troops, security issues, but no economic development. And then, they look at Russia and China, and they’re offering economic development, infrastructure, ports, airports, nuclear plants; and they say, well, these countries are helping us to overcome underdevelopment, then maybe they are our friends. And especially in some countries, the memory of colonialism is extremely vivid! Also in the fight for independence of the African nations—who was on their side? It was the Soviet Union.
So, in one sense, the recent period has been like a watershed, where a lot of things which were covered under narratives and stories and so forth, it’s now all out in the open: That the countries of the Global South do not want to continue the colonialist system, and who do they associate with that? It’s the U.S., the British, the Europeans.
So, I think we are really experiencing a tremendous change, and if the European countries and the United States want to get back into the confidence of the countries of the Global South, they have to change dramatically. They should admit that they were wrong, that they tried to continue the colonialist system with modern means, through trade regulations, through conditions of credit, through forcing the countries of the Global South to only export their raw materials, not allow them to engage in reprocessing and going up in the production value chain, so that they would get the benefit of their own resources. And they have looked through that: It’s not a secret!
Now, they are moving in the direction of taking the help of especially China, but also Russia and other countries, to improve their production chain, and they have the desire to become middle-income countries in the intermediate term or even short term. And I think that’s such a good thing! And if the people in the North would have any good sense, they would be joyful about it. The United States, after all, led the first anti-colonialist war against the British Empire in 1776, so they should be happy about it, and remember their own anti-colonialist tradition, rather than siding with their former colonialist master, the British Empire!
SCHLANGER: We’re continuing to get a certain amount of skepticism about the possibility for a negotiated settlement. I won’t go through all the questions, but a couple of them, you may or may not want to comment on. From J. in the chatroom, he basically says, “why would Russia negotiate with the West, after all the broken promises?”
Then we have one from J.S. who asks: “How can the anti-war movement in any political party be heard, when people refuse to accept the reality of the situation due to wartime propaganda?”
So if you’d like to comment on either of those, then we can move on to other questions on the BRICS.
