The Lead

A Week To Make Good History

by Dennis Speed (EIRNS) — Oct. 19, 2024

This next week of our lives may be one of the most decisive that humanity will have ever lived. There is the upcoming BRICS conference in Kazan, Russia, from October 22-24, and which will be attended by leaders of 24 countries, as well as UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and at least 26 other countries that have applied for membership; there is the International Monetary Fund Conference in Washington, happening at the exact same time (Oct. 21-26); there is the meeting hosted by LaRouche independent candidates Jose Vega and Diane Sare on October 26, “Build a Chorus of Peace Against the Ghouls of War;” and there are events, as of yet unknown, which will certainly unfold over the next seven days.

Will there be Israeli strikes against Iran/Lebanon/Gaza/Syria? Will we see the shutdown of other news agencies, as Sputnik was shut down October 15? Will there be an announcement that Ukraine intends to “go it alone and develop a nuclear weapon,” which Ukraine now claims itself to be capable of doing? Will there be decisive actions or proposals on Gaza, Ukraine, or economic reform from the Global South, made in the context of the BRICS meeting?

The naïve might state that “the pace of events seems to have radically increased.” History is, however, not driven by events, but by principle. That is why it is often so puzzling to “practical people,” and to opportunists. In fact, what is occurring now, in our time, is a fundamental shift, whose footprints Russian President Vladimir Putin pointed to in remarks he made to the BRICS Business Forum today prior to the opening of the BRICS conference. “The [BRICS] association’s total GDP exceeds$60 trillion, and its overall share in global GDP easily surpasses that of the so-called G7, and it continues to grow. … In 2023, our group of countries accounted for 37.4% while the G7 [accounted] for 29.3%. The gap is increasing and will continue to grow; this is inevitable. This trend is absolutely logical.”

This means that, for the first time in 500 years, the nations that Henry Kissinger once declared do not make history—"History is not made in the South,” he once notoriously declared—are now physically, as, or more powerful than the G7 nations, consisting of Canada, Japan, Germany, Italy, France, United Kingdom, and the United States. In terms of their capabilities of production, and therefore of their potential relative population density, the Global South have a greater potential at this moment than those of the trans-Atlantic sector. It is still true, that were the trans-Atlantic sector to undergo a fundamental reversal of its imperial axioms, a moral “bootleggers’ turn,” so to speak, it might return to a leading position in the world—Sadly for all concerned, there seems to be no danger of that occurring whatsoever, at least not on the part of the ruling forces.

The necessary human outlook, however, to revive the trans-Atlantic economies, is present, and publicly so, in the independent candidacies of U.S. Senate candidate Diane Sare in New York, U.S. Congressional candidate Jose Vega in the Bronx (CD15), and a few other national independent races now working to end the threat of thermonuclear war. That is not to imply, however, that United States politics, and its elections per se are the most decisive factor. As Helga Zepp-LaRouche observed in her remarks to the 72nd consecutive Friday meeting of the International Peace Coalition:

“The real reason this is coming to a head is not just in the timetable of the U.S. election … but obviously also because the financial system of the trans-Atlantic world is in terrible shape. They want to prevent by all means the emergence of a new system; but that is exactly what is happening. The former vice president of the New Development Bank Paulo Nogueira Batista, just again in an interview said that the IMF is unreformable…. Therefore, Nogueira is insisting that a new international financial architecture is needed; a new reserve currency….”

Although the agreement among the BRICS nations is not, by any means, unanimous on such matters, the very fact that the discussion of creating a new serious alternative to the IMF will take place, exactly at the time that the International Monetary Fund will be meeting in Washington, D.C., reveals the two different notions of human progress that are in contention—and actually at work in Ukraine and in Southwest Asia. Yet, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has pointed out especially in her Ten Principles for a New International Security and Development Architecture, there is no way for a new world system to emerge, which does not successfully incorporate the population of the trans-Atlantic sector. The Malthusian outlook expressed in the population wars in Southwest Asia, Ukraine, and in periodic interruptions, such as the destruction of Libya, must be defeated in the NATO sphere.

Negative population growth rates, which characterize every country in that sector, are the footprint of the despair and nihilism that the culture of unipolarity has produced. In contrast, consider the optimism of the answer, given by candidate Diane Sare, to a question from a reporter for the Indian publication, the South Asian Herald: “Rather than developing advanced technology for war, we should collaborate with nations like India, which has a very bold space program, and is graduating thousands of engineers and scientists…. I remember so vividly when India was working on one of the Mars orbits, how everyone was so excited. There was tremendous optimism. It brings people together, and it ennobles people, it creates a kind of love of mankind, and I think this is what we urgently need to restore in the United States.”

Yes, there is genocide in Gaza. Yes, assassination as a mode of replacement for diplomacy is now a general and accepted practice. Yes, Ukraine’s Zelenskyy, the mad clown, now threatens to “go rogue” and build a nuclear weapon. But that does not mean that we need to allow this evil outlook to be ours, or allow it to oppress the world. The solution-driven diplomacy of the Ten Principles is the most revolutionary approach available, requiring that the idea that humanity is fundamentally good, and the source of wealth, be embraced as the only efficient basis for peace.