INVITATION: Schiller Institute International Conference, May 24-25, 2025
A Beautiful Vision for Humanity in Times of Great Turbulence!
The strategic situation is presently undergoing not one, but several tectonic changes. These changes are effectively burying the unipolar order that emerged after World War II, and then again in a new form, after the end of the Cold War. Francis Fukuyama’s thesis of the “end of history,” by which he meant world domination by the Western liberal model of democracy, turned out to be one of the most short-lived “eras” in history.
Following President Donald Trump’s return to the White House, the trans-Atlantic relationship very quickly shattered, with a deafening burst of noise. “The U.S. is now the enemy of the West,” screamed London’s Financial Times, in a front-page article which concluded: “The West is dead.” The special relationship between the U.S. and the U.K., which was the pillar of the unipolar order, has been broken, never to be restored.
It is now coming to light that the pro-EU forces in Europe were allied with the very same “deep state,” sometimes called the “permanent bureaucracy,” under attack by the Trump administration. Vice President J.D. Vance’s remarks at the Munich Security Conference about the lack of democratic practices in Europe struck a raw nerve in the European “permanent bureaucracy.”
If President Trump succeeds in not only ending the Ukraine war, but also permanently banning the species-threatening use of nuclear weapons, through a process of cooperation and dialogue with Russia and China, he will deserve a place on Mount Rushmore. This would mean nothing less than replacing the practice of geopolitical confrontation against the BRICS states and the Global South with cooperation for the mutual benefit of all.
The second tectonic change is marked by the process in which the nations of the Global South are presently overcoming 500 years of colonialism with the help of China and moving to become middle-level income countries in the near term. Instead of regarding this development as a threat, European nations and the United States should happily welcome the elimination of grinding poverty for billions of people now being liberated to achieve their full potential. The only way the danger of global nuclear war and the subsequent annihilation of the human species can be overcome, is by cooperation with the Global Majority.
The conference will also reflect on the life work of Lyndon LaRouche. The LaRouche Legacy Foundation (LLF) will present ample evidence that Lyndon LaRouche, as early as the 1960s, had forecast the present crisis of the liberal system with astounding accuracy. If the world had listened to LaRouche’s analysis, and his warning of Nixon’s destruction of the old Bretton Woods system, by the introduction of floating exchange rates, the world would never have entered the present existential crisis—a crisis characterized by a zooming speculative financial bubble, collapsing physical economy, and an unquenchable drive for war and the Schachtian militarization of the economy associated with it.
The scientific method of LaRouche’s physical economy is most closely approximated today by China, which is why that country is so enormously successful, a success which can be replicated by any nation that chooses to do so.
The major challenge facing the world as a whole, is to finally create a just, new world economic order, and to apply the concept of peace through development. At the conference, there will be an important discussion of the campaign by the Schiller Institute to put the Oasis plan, first proposed by LaRouche in 1975, on the agenda for all of Southwest Asia. There will be a special focus on a development plan for the African continent in line with the African Union’s Agenda 2063, which shares the spirit of the Oasis Plan.
We need to catapult the entire world out of the present misery of geopolitical confrontation, out of the barbaric conception that everything is a zero-sum game, and that one always needs an enemy. We have reached a moment in history in which we absolutely need to reach a new paradigm that proceeds from the idea of the one humanity first, and then brings into cohesion the interests of all nations with that of the one humanity. We must create a new era in human history, based on completely new axioms, not those of the old order which has just imploded. For that, we need a new global security and development architecture that takes into account the existential interest of every single nation on the planet. It is the quality of a degraded, or a sublime character of culture, which determines how we think. The needed new paradigm requires that we replace the present ignorance, indifference and outright chauvinism with respect to other cultures, with curiosity, interest, knowledge and even love for the different cultures of the planet. The Schiller Institute conference will feature a dialogue of cultures and civilizations, whereby the uniqueness, as well as the universal principles uniting art, will be brought forth.
Mankind is at its most important branching point ever. If we continue as barbarians, we will suffer the fate of the dinosaurs and troglodytes. But we also have hope because man is capable of the limitless perfection of his reason and beauty of character. This must inform our vision of the future.
Saturday, May 24, 10 a.m. EDT
Panel One: Strategic Challenges and the Emerging New Order
Panel Two: The Beauty of the Diversity of Cultures
Panel Three: The Role of Youth in Shaping a New World Economic Order
Sunday, May 25, 9 a.m. EDT
Panel One: LaRouche Legacy Foundation on the Actuality of LaRouche’s Ideas
Panel Two: The Development of Africa as the Joint Mission of Humanity
Panel Three: The Industrial Revolution 4.0, Space, Fusion and AI
