This article appears in the December 23, 2022 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
To the Mexican Journalists’ Club
Peace Means Respect for the Rights of Others To Develop
[Print version of this article]
Dec.16—At the request of the Mexican Journalists’ Club, Helga Zepp-LaRouche delivered a video presentation, which is being further circulated among Club members and to students and faculty of the University of Mexico City. The University of Mexico City, known as UMC, is a public university established by President López Obrador when he was mayor of Mexico City, and now has about 25,000 students on a number of campuses. The video is now posted (dubbed in Spanish) in the “Leading Developments” category of the website of the Mexican Journalists’ Club under the title, “Peace Means Respect for the Rights of Others to Develop” (reminiscent of Benito Juárez’s famous maxim: “Among individuals, as among nations, respect for the rights of others is peace”).
This is an edited transcript of that presentation. The English-language original video is available here.
Dear Celeste Sáenz de Miera and dear Association of Journalists of Mexico, I’m very happy to speak to you today, and thank you once more for the fact that you have given me the award for “Freedom of Expression.” That means a lot these days, because that freedom of expression is under attack. As a matter of fact, if you look around the world, many countries are trying to control what they call “the narrative.” Just to give you one example, the European Commission just put out guidelines to teachers in the schools, instructing them that they should “pre-bunk” fake news for pupils, meaning that they’re not only supposed to correct what they regard as wrong narratives, fake news, but they’re supposed to inoculate their pupils with the true narrative.
Now, this is an unbelievable assault on the ability of children to learn to think and have judgment on how to differentiate between right and wrong. That is just one of the many examples, where various institutions, intelligence services and others are trying to control the information in the social media. So, freedom of expression is under enormous attack.
This cannot be separated from the fact that we are in probably the most dangerous moment in world history because we are on the verge of a potential World War III, which would be a nuclear war. And if it would ever come to such a horrible event, it would mean the end of civilization. A global nuclear war, it is estimated by scientists, would be followed by a global nuclear winter for about 10 years. Those who don’t die in the first hours would die of starvation in the following years. That is very close, but we are also extremely close, in the more optimistic variant, to a completely new world economic order.
It’s Not About Ukraine
First, let us look at the danger. The reason why we are in such a danger is not over Ukraine; Ukraine is just a pawn. The real issue is that the forces of the present trans-Atlantic financial system want to keep control. They are extremely challenged by the economic rise of China. They are trying to contain Russia and contain China. That has been going on since the end of the Soviet Union. There was then a very hopeful moment—we called it at the time, a “star hour of civilization” [Sternstunde der Menschheit]—because when the Soviet Union collapsed there would have been the chance to establish an international peace order, which would have changed the entire world dynamic.
But as we now know, the Anglo-American forces decided to try to impose a unipolar world, breaking the promises given to [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev that NATO would “not move one inch” to the East. There soon followed five NATO expansions. The present escalation was set into motion with the 2014 coup in Ukraine. People are now not even allowed to discuss that there was a prehistory before the outbreak of war on Feb. 24th of this year.
But now something incredible has happened. Angela Merkel, the former Chancellor of Germany, just gave two unbelievable interviews, one to Der Spiegel and the other to the weekly newspaper, Die Zeit, in which she admitted that she never had an intention to follow through with the Minsk Accord. Thus, she confirmed what former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko had just recently said, namely that Ukraine never intended to implement the Minsk Agreement. Ukraine was using the time to build the Ukrainian military to a NATO standard.
This is very serious because it now means that whenever a Western politician says something, you don’t know what can be believed. Germany and France were supposed to be the guarantors of the Minsk Agreement. They were not doing anything to enforce it. Now it turns out, it was all a charade. President [Vladimir] Putin of Russia recently said that he feels it was a mistake by Russia not to have militarily intervened in the Donbass in 2014. There were hardliners at that time who were pushing for him to do so. Putin decided to move forward with negotiations and believed the promises of Germany and France that there would be a Minsk Agreement.
It means that despite all the attacks on the people who said the Ukraine story is more complicated, and it’s not just Putin who is the evildoer, those people are basically justified now. I think this should be discussed appropriately in the international media.
Playing with Nuclear Annihilation
This situation remains extremely dangerous, because there are some frivolous people in the West, in official military positions, who have been engaging in relatively loose talk about the use of nuclear weapons. Various Russian officials have now said there needs to be a rethinking of the the whole [strategic] doctrine of Russia. The United States has moved a lot of tactical nuclear weapons into Europe—including into Germany. And it only takes a few minutes for ICBMs to hit Russia with their nuclear weapons. Therefore, we are, again, in a situation much like the early 1980s, with the medium-range missile crisis, [with] the Pershing 2 and the SS-20.
At that time, hundreds of thousands of people were in the streets, warning that World War III was extremely close. Now, there are not hundreds of thousands of people demonstrating in the streets. That is a very big problem. The situation is much like the Cuban crisis. The proximity of these nuclear weapons to the territory of Russia is only a few minutes. Just imagine what the United States would say if the Russians or the Chinese would have nuclear weapons along the Mexican-American border.
We are in this incredibly dangerous situation, which is driven by the fact that the financial system of the trans-Atlantic world is coming to a final blowout. The hyperinflation and the impossible situation facing the central banks. If they don’t do anything, and continue quantitative easing, hyperinflation will escalate; if they try to fight inflation with quantitative tightening, they’re threatening the collapse of many indebted firms, and causing capital flight out of the emerging markets. So, they are vacillating, back and forth. There is no solution within the system as now constituted.
This is why I proposed a while ago that we must address this problem in a fundamental way. I suggested a new international security and development architecture, which must take into account the security interest of every single country on the planet. If you don’t do that, it will not work.
The Peace of Westphalia Precedent
The historical reference point for that kind of thinking is the Peace of Westphalia, which ended 150 years of religious war in Europe. And with the Thirty Years’ War [1618-1648], which was the most intense period of warfare, people realized that if they were to continue, there would be nobody left to enjoy the victory. Everybody would be dead. That is a situation comparable to today.
The Peace of Westphalia was extremely important. It established several absolutely important principles, which were the beginning of the international law of peoples.
The first principle that they arrived at, was that for the sake of peace, you have to take into account the interest of the other. This was the principle which was also emphatically stated by one of the greatest Presidents of Mexico, Benito Juárez, who said that peace means respect for the interest of the other, both in respect to other individuals and also in respect to other nations. This is a very important principle.
When you take into account the interest of the other, you can build a peace order. That was the Peace of Westphalia.
If you don’t do that, as in the case of the Versailles Treaty in 1919, despite the complexity of the causes leading to the first World War, Germany was declared to be the primary guilty party. That led to unjust and impossible war reparations payments, which led to the hyperinflation, which led to the depression, which led to World War II. If you are not just in your peace solution, it leads to new wars.
The second principle of the Peace of Westphalia was the idea that, for the sake of peace, each side must forgive the crimes of the other. Because if you keep recounting, “you did this to me, I did this to you,” it will be an eternal loop, and you will not end the war.
The third principle, which was very important, was that in the post-war reconstruction, the role of the state is very important. That led to cameralism, and a whole school of physical economy, which we also have to consider in today’s situation.
Schiller Institute Conference Process
The Schiller Institute has had several conferences on this idea. The list of speakers is quite impressive. Over the last two and a half years, we have been forging an alliance of people who are serious about taking such an approach. I was asked by many of them to draw up what such a new international security and development architecture [should] look like. And while I’m not pretending that I’m the only one who can define that, I made a draft, consisting of 10 Principles, which I think must be respected, if one wants to have such an international peace architecture.
I want to mention those principles to you, and I want to encourage you to actually read the text, because I think it would be incredibly beneficial for the effort to maintain peace and overcome this present war danger, if there would be a discussion in the media, in academia by professors, in parliaments and legislatures by elected officials, and by former elected officials. People from many countries, by contributing to the discussion and debate as to whether humanity can actually give itself principles which make our durable survival possible, can bring us to a peace order.
I’m very optimistic that it can be done because we are the human species. We have creative reason. But it does require a much broader discussion than we alone are able to initiate, and therefore, I want you to look at these principles, and if you agree with them, all the better—republish them. If you have comments, you are welcome: We will soon introduce a sub-page on the Schiller Institute’s website, where we would like to publish any such contributions. I want to tell you what these principles are, at least, in brief form, and please read them extensively.
Ten Principles
The first principle is the principle of sovereignty. It must be implemented by a partnership of perfectly sovereign nation-states. That is not the case in the world today. We have supranational institutions which regularly violate the sovereignty of nations. The case of the European Union shows that this does not function.
The principle of sovereignty was a very important conception which had to be developed. In Europe, before the development of sovereign nation states, you had the Papacy, which is global, and you had the empires, the Roman Empire, and other empires. It took a long time for even the national monarchies to impose their rights against that supranational structure, the Papacy, and the Empire.
It was only in the 15th century, that the first nation-state was established with Louis XI in France, a sovereign nation-state characterized by the fact that the living standard of the people doubled in 20 years. It was not just the elites, the establishment, the nobility, and their privileges which counted, but for the first time, the principle that the common good would be increased through science and technology, and an increase in the urban populations.
Now, during this period, in the 15th century, it was the writings of Nicholas of Cusa, one of mankind’s greatest universal thinkers, who established for the first time, the principles of the sovereign state, in his Concordantia Catholica. And there, he developed, for the first time, that you need a reciprocal legal relationship between the governed and the government. And that is mediated through representatives who are elected, and these representatives are legally responsible, both to the governed and to the government.
So, the representative system is the only way the individual can participate in the government. Because a pure democracy does not function. That was recognized by Plato and by Thucydides, who found that the flip side of democracy is tyranny. Basic democracy does not work. You cannot ask a million people about every decision; it necessarily develops into anarchy and chaos. Then, naturally, a tyrant emerges.
This idea of representative government is extremely important. And it does require educated state citizens. Only educated state citizens can enforce that principle. The calamity faced by many of the democracies in the West, most of which formally have some form of representative government—but they all lack an educated citizenry. One reason, among other things, is because the freedom of expression and freedom of the press has been severely hampered. And it is getting worse.
That is why I’m putting so much emphasis on the principle of sovereignty, because, especially in times of crisis, it is only the sovereign nation-state which can protect the interest of the common good. That is the first principle.
The second principle is ending poverty. Nation-states have to work together to overcome and end poverty. At a moment when, in the words of David Beasley, Executive Director of the UN’s World Food Program, 1.7 billion people are threatened with famine and another 2 billion lack clean water, the basic human rights of billions of people are being deprived in the most obvious way. Poverty is a very severe violation of human rights. The joint collaboration of all nations working together to overcome poverty [is required], as China has demonstrated that it can be done. China has lifted 850 million of its own people out of severe poverty. The Chinese middle class is growing from 400 million people to what is expected to be 600 million very soon. That is something which can be replicated in every single country of the so-called Global South with an international commitment to do so.
The third principle is providing modern health care everywhere. This requires a modern health system in every country on Earth. The COVID pandemic has shown that only those countries that have functioning health systems could protect the lives of their citizens. China, however, was the country which did the most. In the case of the United States, Germany, and other European nations, the privatization of the health sector was the basic reason why they fared so poorly in the fight against COVID. A high-quality, modern health system is also extremely important for longevity. People die prematurely all too frequently, of diseases for which medications do exist. How many people in the developing sector are dying from diseases which could easily be dealt with if a modern health system was there? That’s the third principle.
The fourth principle is access to universal education for every child. Given the fact that we are the creative species, the only known creative species in the universe so far, it is a fundamental right that every human being must be able to develop their creative potential to the fullest. For that, every person needs universal education. Every person needs to have the circumstances in which to acquire the knowledge of universal history, of languages, of natural sciences, of the arts. Without that education, people do not have the chance to fulfill the potential we all have innate within us in the fullest way.
The fifth principle concerns the method of financing all of that. We need a credit system, the entire purpose of which is to accomplish what I just laid out in these first four points, which is, in other words, the common good. Mankind, men and women, have to be the central element of the economy, not the profit maximization of a small elite. One reference point for this is the way the Bretton Woods system was intended to function by President Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR).
I know that many countries in the developing sector don’t like the Bretton Woods system, but they don’t know FDR’s intention. He died at the wrong moment. So, the Bretton Woods that was actually implemented was that of Churchill and Truman, who collaborated to keep the colonialist structure. Franklin D. Roosevelt’s idea of the Bretton Woods, its main purpose, was to overcome poverty and massively increase living standards in the developing sector.
So, that is a reference point, and many countries of the Global South, many institutions such as the BRICS, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Eurasian Economic Union, and other organizations of the Global South are right now already in the process of creating a new credit system, a new international currency; this is actually on the way.
The sixth principle must concern itself with the idea of what this credit system is supposed to do. Namely, to create the precondition for a real development of the Global South, creating basic infrastructure, which enables the expansion and rapid development of industry and agriculture.
For that, the New Silk Road is right now the practical proposal on the table. The Schiller Institute has for a long time worked on proposals for how the New Silk Road can become the World Land-Bridge; connecting eventually all continents with tunnels and bridges, to be a new world economic order, making it possible for all human beings on the planet to have a decent living standard.
The seventh principle—and now we are moving more into the philosophical underpinnings of these more concrete steps—is that geopolitics must be overcome. This is the core idea of a new security architecture. Geopolitics was the underlying reason for the two world wars in the 20th century, and now the danger of a third world war. That is why we should ban nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are so destructive and deadly that they should absolutely not be tolerated. Other weapons of mass destruction should likewise be banned. Through international cooperation, the means must be developed to make nuclear weapons technologically obsolete, as it was originally intended by the proposal which became known as the SDI, suggested by Lyndon LaRouche, and made as an offer to the Soviet Union by President Reagan.
The eighth principle, in order to overcome geopolitics, people have to learn to think in terms of the one humanity; not in terms of nation against nation, blocs of interest groups against other groups, but to think of the one humanity first. Chinese President Xi Jinping has put it in his own words, saying that we have to have “the shared community of the one future of humanity.”
I have suggested that one should apply the thinking of Nicholas of Cusa, who developed his groundbreaking conception of the idea of the Coincidentia Oppositorum—the Coincidence of Opposites—meaning that there is always a higher One which can be conceptualized by human reason, which is above the Many, and which has a higher power than the Many.
Now, if people are to understand that you have to put the one humanity first, then they have to train themselves not to always think, “my interest against your interest.” We come back to the phrase of Benito Juárez, “The interest of the other implies the interest of all others,” meaning the one humanity. So, the philosophical discussion of Nicholas of Cusa about the coincidence of opposites, which is a whole, big subject in itself, is a very useful way to arrive at that.
The ninth principle addresses the depth of conception we must provide to this new security and development architecture. How can we give ourselves principles which are, in a way, unassailable? I’ve thought for a very long time that the only way we will get the world in order eventually is if we apply the lawfulness of the physical universe—which is the reality within which we all live—to the political, economic, and social order on Earth.
This idea is not new. In European philosophy, for example, there was always the idea that there is such a thing as natural law. And natural law is, according to this tradition, given into the order of Creation; it is above the law which is given by man. It is built into the order of Creation. A similar idea may be found in many major cultures. In India, it’s said that on Earth we have to implement the cosmological order; in China, it’s called the Mandate of Heaven, which must guide politics. The idea is basically that we should study the lawfulness of the physical universe. The good thing is that because of modern science, we know more and more about this lawfulness.
For example, the great telescopes, the Hubble Space Telescope and more recently the James Webb Space Telescope, are giving us an incredible insight into how the universe looks. Already, the Hubble Telescope showed us that there are more than 2 trillion galaxies. Wow! I find this absolutely mind-blowing because it gives you a sense that you can study this lawfulness, and you can draw conclusions about our life on Earth when you do that. Naturally, other areas like biophysics or the incredible perspective of thermonuclear fusion science and what that would do if it could be implemented commercially on Earth in terms of raw materials security, in terms of energy security. But also, how the Sun functions, how processes function in controlled plasmas. All of that will give us an insight into the lawfulness of the universe and can guide us in organizing our political life.
The tenth principle is that man is fundamentally good and capable of infinitely perfecting the creativity of his mind and the beauty of his soul and his character. Man is the most advanced geological force in the universe, which demonstrates the lawfulness of the mind and that of the physical universe, which are in correspondence and cohesion. All evil is the result of a lack of development, and therefore can be overcome. This is probably the most important principle, and I’m also sure the most controversial. Man can infinitely self-perfect his creative ability and his character, through studying, through discovery, and through aesthetical education.
That is a very fundamentally optimistic image of man, which not all people share. But I am absolutely convinced that in that point, Nicholas of Cusa was again right. He said that evil is not a self-subsisting thing, but it is the lack of development. I really believe that.
If you give every child the possibility of having a decent home, a loving family, access to the kind of education which optimizes all the potentials embedded in that child, there will be no reason for people to become evil or greedy or nasty or whatever. They will cherish their own creativity more than all things over which we are fighting today.
If you look at the really creative people—for example, read the dialogues between Friedrich Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt, or Albert Einstein and Max Planck—you see that the relationship among human beings can become one, in which one loves the other one because of the creative potential he or she expresses and vice versa. Then you have a really human relationship. I believe that that is absolutely feasible.
Creative Development Everywhere Is Now Possible
The Schiller Institute, which was founded 38 years ago, was named after Fredrich Schiller, because his image of man is so noble that I thought it should have an impact in politics.
Schiller thought that the Age of Reason was about to come, and many of the humanists of the 18th and early 19th centuries thought so as well. I have asked myself many times why was it that that did not happen? Because I cherish the opinions and views of these humanists very highly. I have come to the conclusion that the reason was that science and technology, and industry were not yet developed enough to overcome the poverty of the regions of the world held as colonies. Therefore, it was not even an issue, and the most noble ideas of such people as Leibniz or Schiller were in the realm of ideas, but the material basis did not yet exist.
But now, because of scientific and technological progress, we have the possibility of overcoming poverty for good. There is no reason why one single human being should go hungry or die early because of a lack of medicine.
We can build a world where, if you look at the recent technological breakthroughs in artificial intelligence and digitalization, if these new areas are used for the common good, they will set people free to spend more time on their creative development. Lifelong learning and lifelong research and being creative will become more and more normal.
The idea is to fight for the idea that people see that development is the key to everything.
Development is the name for peace. Development is the name to overcome evil. We are not bound in a Manichean world where evil and good will always co-exist, but we can eventually make into cohesion the life of humanity with the lawfulness of the universe. And therefore, if we act now decisively, we have a very bright future ahead.
I thank you one more time for giving me the opportunity to present these ideas to you. If you find them in any way agreeable, join us and help us to really create the new world economic order worthy of the dignity of mankind.
