“In the case of the actualization of the presently onrushing general monetary-financial blow-out,” Lyndon LaRouche wrote in November 2004, “all of the sundry elements of a complexly integrated world system, including the most notable nations of Asia, would be plunged into chaos in a way most nearly resembling the plunge of Fourteenth Century Europe into its notorious New Dark Age.
“What prevents most among what were presumably well-informed circles of finance and government, from seeing this fact,” LaRouche continued, “is that they are gripped, hysterically, by the fearful delusion that a crash of the type which is now onrushing simply would never happen. In fact, unless certain radical changes of the type I would propose were taken, the crash deemed unthinkable by most today will happen, very soon.”
In the 10 weeks since U.S. President Donald Trump launched the U.S.-Israeli war of aggression against Iran on Feb. 28, which led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, gasoline prices in the U.S. have risen by about 46%. Diesel, the lifeblood of American agriculture, has jumped by 48%.
Now look at Asia. Gas prices in the Philippines (population 118 million) have leapt by 65% in the same time period. In Malaysia (population 36 million), by 55%. And in Pakistan (population 259 million), by 61%.
India (population 1.477 billion), is the third largest oil consumer in the world and imports 87% of its total consumption, with half of that historically coming through the Strait of Hormuz. Despite this extraordinary import dependency, gas prices at the pump have not gone up at all in India—but only because, at the instruction of the government, major state retailers have frozen retail rates, and the government has taken the financial hit instead. That means that India’s $175 billion spent on oil imports in 2025 will rise by at least 50% to about $265 billion in 2026. Small wonder that threats of speculative financial warfare against India are already surfacing, such as the Bloomberg report that “a widening current account deficit will put pressure on the rupee, raise external borrowing needs, and make the economy more vulnerable to global capital outflows.”
India will not suffer such attacks passively. India is this year’s rotating chair of the BRICS grouping of nations, with its 11 members and 10 partner nations, which is committed to building a new, more just global economic system. The BRICS Foreign Ministers are meeting in New Delhi on May 14-15—the same days Trump will be meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hit the nail on the head in a May 12 interview before departing for New Delhi, when asked about the policies coming from Washington and the West:
“They put pressure on everyone, demanding that they should not purchase Russian oil, and this is unfair play. These are colonial, or neocolonial, methods. ‘You shouldn’t purchase cheap Russian oil. You should purchase my expensive oil, and buy expensive LNG from the U.S. We will rule the world by controlling global energy,’” Lavrov said, adding that not all countries “cave in to such pressure.”
One thing that Trump will find out in his summit discussions with Xi Jinping is that China is a country that will not cave in—as he found that Iran also has not caved in. Nor has Russia.
Not caving in is an important first step. The next step then has to be the construction of a global alternative to the current bankrupt system, with its in-built drive for unending wars. That will be the central topic addressed at the May 15 EIR Emergency Roundtable Dialogue, “The Iran War and the ‘Controlled Disintegration’ of the World Economy”.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche told her weekly webcast audience today: “This will be an extremely important meeting … [with] top-level government officials, acting ambassadors, former members of parliament, professors, experts. The focus will be on the effect of the danger of a new world depression coming out of the consequences of the war against Iran.”
She continued: “Because we have to get people not only the right analysis of the problem, but also what the solution is. And that has to be a new security and development architecture, which must take into account the interest of every single country, or it will not work. And I get many responses from people who realize that what they thought was a utopian idea, when I mentioned it the first time four years ago, are now saying, ‘Well, the present order is clearly disintegrating. So this is now the time for this conception.’”
