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THE NPT IS DEAD: WE NEED TO GO FOR LARGE-SCALE NUCLEAR ENERGY

Lyndon LaRouche was interviewed by Talksport Radio's James Whale on March 9, 2006. Talksport, which bills itself as "the UK's number one commercial radio station," last interviewed LaRouche on Aug. 1, about Cheney's "Guns of August" nuclear war threat against Iran.

JAMES WHALE: From the U.S., now, we're going to turn our attentions. Lyndon LaRouche from the U.S. political action committee, doesn't quite believe all the hype surrounding the crisis in Iran, which has been making headlines all week. In actual fact, he thinks the whole affair, has been London-orchestrated by this government! I see! That's interesting. And he joins me now.

Lyndon, a very good evening to you.

LYNDON LAROUCHE: Good evening to you.

WHALE: Lyndon, that's an interesting take on the situation. My take from yesterday is this: I'll tell you, then we'll have a chat.

I think Bush is a bit of a bully, I have to say. In fact, I know he's a bit of bully. And, he's just aggravating the situation, to make Iran behave in the way they have been, so that he can go whack them!

LAROUCHE: Well, it's a rather crazy idea on anybody's account, to try to do that. What we're talking about, essentially, is an aerial attack on the territory, by an assortment of forces, coming out places like Offutt Air Force Base in the United States. That's not a "go," yet. But that is what's being talked up from the Cheney side of things.

Now, from my view, that, we've got ourselves into a mess, because Iran had just had an election. They have internal complications which they have to sort out, as people do after any election, and this was the wrong time to push them.

Where, in the meantime, we already had an option, which is an agreement of Russia and China, in this area. And this thing, which ElBaradei of the relevant agency is dealing with, can work. We're very close to a successful conclusion on this. It may take a little more time, a little more patience, a little more talk, because we're dealing with various factions in Iran and you have to take that into account. But we have a safe exit from this, which fortunately is being provided to Europe, in particular, by the intervention of Russia, which actually has the backing of China, essentially on this, in the United Nations aspect.

On our side, on the United States, this is absolutely insane. We already have a mess in Iraq, which is beyond belief. There is no exit from an extension of this conflict to Iran which we could manage. There are some people who are desperate. And I think Mr. Straw, Jack Straw and Company, who've been playing the game of the old Arab Bureau fellow, Bernard Lewis, with this war against Islam thing. The essential thing here, is, when go down to the bottom line, is we are catering to a global war against Iran. Back to the Crusades, or back to the religious warfare of 1492-1648, that sort of thing.

WHALE: But surely, this is being driven by the George Bush religious fervor, don't you think?

LAROUCHE: No, I think the George Bush religious fervor crowd, is also something which is rather synthetic. I'm rather well-acquainted with it. It doesn't make much sense. It's not any kind of religion I want to touch, shall we say.

Rather, it's more Cheney, and we look behind Cheney, because Cheney really is not a giant, an intellectual giant. He's a bit of a thug.

WHALE: But, do you honestly think that Straw is actually more sort of involved in promoting this idea, and trying to make it sound as if it's coming from the Americans? I wouldn't have thought he was bright enough for that.

LAROUCHE: Straw is essentially closer to people who have a better understanding of what the implications are, than many of our people in the United States do. It's that kind of situation.

WHALE: You see, the problem, Lyndon, is, that you are okay over there in the States. We are a lot closer to where all this kicks off, than you lot are.

LAROUCHE: Well, this goes way back to 1763, and the victory of the East India Company in the Seven Years' War. So, there's been a process going on in Europe, ever since. And I don't believe in the short view of history. I think history has—the history of human beings—has a long cultural history, and if you want to understand what's happening today, you sometimes have to look back a couple hundred years into the roots of it.

WHALE: But, I mean, what is happening now, it seems to me to be totally stupid. I mean, we in this country, we have run out of soldiers, for a start.

LAROUCHE: Of course! This is absolutely insane, from the standpoint of the national interest of the United Kingdom, this is something that is not needed.

WHALE: The people of this country will not tolerate this government sending our troops to yet another area of the globe! They won't tolerate it.

LAROUCHE: I don't think they intend to send troops in there. I think this is a sense of making a mess, of an area which is already a mess. You've got the whole area of Southwest Asia, which is about ready to go up in smoke. Some people in Europe are worried about it, because they're looking at it from the standpoint of markets in Asia, as in Germany for example. Other countries which feed on the tit of Germany, are worried because the milk from that German tit is not going to be forthcoming, under this kind of condition.

I think the United Kingdom—I don't know exactly what the internal reactions are in the United Kingdom, of course—but I think it's certainly not in the interests of the United Kingdom to have this sort of mess going on in Asia. It certainly does eliminate all useful options.

WHALE: So, why do you think that the government, or members of the government are then sort of rattling this idea around people?

LAROUCHE: You ought to see the stupidity I deal with, in some of my own government. I'm not surprised to find out that the government of the United Kingdom also has a certain kind of obscene incompetence, running loose in it! [laughing]

WHALE: It's interesting to talk to you, Lyndon. You don't think this is some kind of weird conspiracy theory, you think this just ignorance by certain people.

LAROUCHE: It's ignorance, but it's also—you know, there are some people who think it would be better to have a world without nation-states: It's called globalization. Under this condition now, with the financial weakness of governments, essentially you would have the fellows, the big-money fellows would be taking over, using their property titles which are being switched around with these derivatives and hedge-fund operations, think they can move in. And we have people in the United States, who are exactly for this. We have people on the Continent who are for this. "Let the corporations, or the big financial combines, take over and essentially run the world, and destroy most governments, keep a few, but keep them under control."

WHALE: So, do you think the Christian-Muslim thing is a bit of a red herring?

LAROUCHE: I think it was already a red herring if you look back at the conditions of life, at the time it started under the Crusades. At that time, we had a very pleasant relationship with much of Islam, particularly from the previous period, from the Baghdad Caliphate for example, which was a friend of Europe! We had an excellent situation in the 14th Century, despite the wars going on in Spain: Relations among Christians, Jews, and Moors. So, that there is no intrinsic conflict, as Nicholas of Cusa, the great Cardinal of the 15th Century pointed out, there's no intrinsic conflict between Christianity and Islam on this level. You may have factions who call themselves Christian or Islamic, which are troublesome, but there is no reason to have this kind of religious warfare. We thought we got out of it once, with the Treaty of Westphalia, and there's no sense of getting back to it.

WHALE: So, what do you think, then, the end-game as it were, is going to be? I mean, the Iranians continue to say, "Well, listen we want to explore and maybe develop nuclear energy." I mean, we all have nuclear energy. Hey! We've all got nuclear bombs, to turn around to other countries to say, "We've got them, but you ain't having them!" Seems to me, to be just a little childish.

LAROUCHE: Well, the problem here is, that we are now at a point, where we're going to reverse the past 30 years trend toward curbing nuclear power. We have a vast problem in raw materials, including the reliance on fossil water, which we're running short of. It's a global problem of fossil water. Therefore, we're going to have go to high-temperature gas-cooled nuclear reactors, between the ordinary use of say, 120 to 200 MW, or 800 MW for producing hydrogen-based fuels. We're going to have to synthesize, with the aid of high-density nuclear power, many of the things, including fresh water supplies, that we need as a human species.

Therefore, what the United States did, in this very foolish way with India, was to blow wide open, the question of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which has been kicking around in various forms since the 1950s. We're now at a point, we've opened the jar, and we're now going to have to decide what kind of a nuclear policy we're going to have, which is a change, which allows us to use nuclear power on a large scale, to remedy many of the physical economic problems, which have now become close to desperate, or will become desperate in the coming generation or so.

WHALE: What do you think—okay, moving on from that, you don't believe then there is going to be a crisis with Iran. You can't see that there's going to be another Iraq [overtalk]?

LAROUCHE: It could happen. Because I don't underestimate insanity, and I've seen a lot of it around. There is no good reason for it. And I think at this point, ElBaradei has done his job; they've got negotiations down to the level, at which we're within the area of getting an agreement.

WHALE: So, it's now about saving face for all countries concerned?

LAROUCHE: I think it's madness on the part of some people who want to continue this thing, for their own peculiar reasons. And I think it's foolishness and cowardice on other people—they don't step forward and stop this nonsense, which they ought to know is nonsense.

WHALE: Tell me, just finally, Lyndon, what you see as the final outcome of this ridiculous situation we've got ourselves involved in Iraq?

LAROUCHE: Well, we're looking at something else which is much bigger, which is coming down on us now: It hovers around this Japan business of the carry-trade problem. A blowout of the Japan carry-trade, in one degree or another, will trigger a lot of things which are ready to blow in the financial system. We're looking at one of the biggest potential financial crises in all modern history, and we're going to have to deal with it. And this is a diversion from the fact that we need new forms of cooperation, to reorganize a bankrupt monetary-financial system, and to get economies, physical economies, actually moving again.

WHALE: Isn't that what the Americans used Vietnam for?

LAROUCHE: No. It was another piece of insanity of a similar type. Sometimes people with—sometimes people are crazy, stupid, and malicious, all at the same time. And they get funny ideas about running some kind of an operation. There was no sense, from a strategic standpoint, in getting into the Vietnam War. But we did it. People afterward, in the military, say, "What fools we were! We should have seen how foolish it was from the beginning!"

Well, MacArthur said it was foolish. Eisenhower said it was foolish, at the time, before Kennedy was killed. And we did it anyway. It wasn't because we lacked the knowledge: Don't get into that kind of war! There are other ways of handling the problem—.

WHALE: Do human beings never learn?

LAROUCHE: We have foolish people today. I tell you, in my government, we have some real fools, and we have some real cowards in some of the European governments.

WHALE: Lyndon, give us your website, so people can check out some more of your amusing—

LAROUCHE: It's, well, there are two of them. There's larouchepac—one word [spells it], and that's the usual dot-com thing. And then, I have larouchepub also, which are also available, the same dot-com.

WHALE: Okay. Always nice talking to you, Lyndon. Thank you very much, then, for your time.

LAROUCHE: Have fun.

WHALE: Thanks a lot, bye-bye.

Lyndon LaRouche Political Action Committee, you want to check out his website [spells both websites again, over the air.]