The following is a slightly edited version of the remarks delivered by Dennis Small, EIR’s Ibero-American Editor, to the Jan. 12, 2026 EIR Emergency Roundtable “It’s Worse Than You Think: The Strategic Implications of the Attack on Venezuela and How To Bring the World Back from the Brink.”
DENNIS SMALL: So, where is the system’s Achilles’ heel? We’ve certainly described and discussed many of the problems so far today, but that issue defines scientifically the way to a solution. I would propose that there are actually two Achilles’ heels. Perhaps the most fundamental one is the very concept of man underlying this current imperial system and the savagery we’re seeing. But I leave that to further discussion and elaboration in the discussion period around what Helga Zepp-LaRouche discussed earlier with her Ten Principles.
The other Achilles’ heel of the system—and note that I did not say “of the United States,” but of the global financial system—is the financial system which is about to blow apart into smithereens. I’m going to make use of some graphics which I prepared for today with some new numbers. As a matter of fact, it turns out that the Bank for International Settlements recently published new numbers going through the first half of 2025.
[Fig. 1]
Total world financial aggregates now total approximately $2.4 quadrillion. Quadrillion. That’s a 2 followed by 15 zeros. Back in 2008, when we had the financial blowout, it was only 1.6 quadrillion. We’ve seen a 53% increase in this cancerous speculative bubble over this period of time. All of the policies that were implemented to address this crisis have only made it worse. The vast expansion of quantitative easing, the crypto bubble—which is now moving forward very nicely, thank you very much—more quantitative easing coming with what’s planned after Fed Chair Jerome Powell departs.
Furthermore, what we have going on in Europe and in the United States is a shift into what is known as Schachtian economics. Schachtian economics is named for Hjalmar Schacht, the central banker of Adolf Hitler. Schacht was imposed on Germany by London bankers, in order to implement these policies, which are straightforward: massive military buildup for the purpose of wars of conquest and submission, and the imposition of depopulation and genocide to maintain the financial bubble.
Now, people are aware, we’ve heard discussion of Donald Trump’s proposal, the latest one, not the earlier one. His earlier proposal, he told us he was going to cut the U.S. military budget in half. Well, he got that wrong. He actually now plans to increase it from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion. So, here’s an indication [Fig. 2].
[Fig. 2]
These numbers are not exact, but they’re pretty close and give you the idea. In 2025, the entire U.S. government budget was about $7 trillion. Of that, $1 trillion, or 14%, went to interest payments on the government debt. Another $1 trillion is the military budget. Trump now proposes that for 2026, the budget for the military will rise to $1.5 trillion. So, what we’re looking at is that over a third of the entire budget of the United States will go to either the military or to interest payments.
Why do I include these two categories together? Because the military budget for the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower spoke of is actually not a military-industrial complex anymore. It is a military-industrial-financial complex.
[Fig. 3]
As Fig. 3 shows, every major military contractor is run by the banks of Wall Street and the City of London. Lockheed Martin: Its number one stockholder is State Street, followed by BlackRock. You’ve all heard of BlackRock. Raytheon: Vanguard Group and Capital Group. Northrop Grumman: State Street and Capital Group. Read on: Vanguard Group, State Street. Longview, Vanguard Group, BlackRock, Vanguard Group. And these financial holding companies or institutions control vast sums of money. In the case of BlackRock, it’s over $9 trillion. And in the case of Vanguard Group, it’s another $7.6 trillion. Just the ones indicated here manage close to $23 trillion in assets. So, the military-industrial-financial complex is part of the apparatus for the Schachtian reorganization of the global economy for the purpose of doing exactly what Adolf Hitler did to maintain a financial bubble, in that case coming off the Versailles Treaty. Today it is this $2.4 quadrillion bubble.
Now, it is this, I would argue, that is what is ultimately behind the perennial wars. It is behind the genocide we’ve seen in Gaza. And it will be behind, if we allow it to happen, the exact same policies that we saw with Auschwitz implemented today. We are already beginning to see the first signs of this. I think that you are going to see this precisely in the actual intentions of what is behind the Venezuela operation. I’ll come back to the real intentions there in a moment, because it is certainly not drugs, and it is only secondarily oil. The ultimate purpose of this Venezuela operation, as has been mentioned by other speakers today including President Ramotar, is to expel from Latin America and the Caribbean any alternative to this bankrupt Western financial system, which is to say China and the Belt and Road Initiative.
What we are seeing now around Venezuela is the intended financial warfare not just against Venezuela. We’re seeing it also against Iran, bankrupting their currencies, driving the conditions for a social revolt to go along with the intended military actions against them.
Venezuela was, until about a year or two ago, the main supplier of oil to Cuba. No longer. Mexico is now the main supplier of Cuba to oil. Cuba needs to import about 100,000 barrels of oil per day. It is not getting that. And Mexico has just been told in no uncertain terms by Secretary of State Marco Rubio—the man whose presidential ambitions stand in inverse square proportion to his stature, both moral and physical—that Mexico had better follow along with the genocidal blockade of Cuba, and any other nation that chooses to rebel, or they will get the same treatment. They’ll get the Venezuela treatment.
So, what is our flank in all of this? Why is the bankrupt international financial bubble the key flank? Because you cannot take the military issue on directly. There are two countries that can provide some leeway around the military question. They are Russia and China, because they can provide a certain amount of dissuasive force. We’ve seen that in the case of Russia with the Oreshnik hypersonic missile, and China has enormous capabilities as well. In both of these cases, they possess the credible threat to the global financial empire of nuclear retaliation if they escalate against Russia and China. In other words, this is the Kissingerian doctrine of Mutual and Assured Destruction, or MAD. But this only functions if there is a modicum of sanity in the West. That modicum of sanity is rapidly disappearing.
Merely escalating with more Mutual and Assured Destruction is not going to work.
