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Live Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche

The following is an edited transcript of the March 8 edition of the weekly webcast on YouTube and Facebook, “Dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche.” For the first time, it was livestreamed. Several hundred viewers joined from a number of European countries as well as the U.S., and questions reflected international concerns.

Harley Schlanger: Hello, welcome again to our weekly dialogue with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder and leader of the Schiller Institute. Today, we will be introducing a new feature. By doing a livestream, you’ll have an opportunity to communicate directly with Mrs. LaRouche with your questions and ideas that can enable you to be an active part of the discussion.

Helga, let’s start with you. There have been a lot of important developments. Why don’t you begin with your overview of what you see as the most important of these?

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: I greet all of you, and welcome you, and invite you to ask as many questions as you want to. Let me just highlight a couple of things which I think are really the decisive changes in the situation.

This morning, the big story was in the New York Times, that all of a sudden the culprits of the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage have been found. Supposedly, a pro-Ukrainian group which rented a yacht and then did it with six people—two divers, two assistant divers, a captain, and a female doctor. And supposedly they did that all by themselves. If you remember, when the actual sabotage occurred, there was a lot of discussion about how that part of the Baltic Sea is the most controlled, most surveilled, that it was completely impossible for the Russians to get there in a secret way without being noticed. Now, that makes this belated story already very questionable.

But then, this morning in Germany, all of a sudden, several journalists “outed” themselves, from First Channel TV in Germany, Southwest Radio (SWR), and Die Zeit magazine. Supposedly, they have been investigating for a long time the research, the investigation of the Attorney General investigating [the sabotage], and they found that this yacht supposedly went from the seaport of Rostock, that it was rented by a firm with its headquarters in Poland and owned by two Ukrainians.

Now, this is all extremely ominous. Seymour Hersh revealed his investigation at the beginning of February. The story has caused waves internationally. The story can no longer be pushed under the rug. Seymour Hersh has been interviewed on international media several times, including Chinese TV. [Former long-time leading CIA analyst] Ray McGovern was on CGTN. It has been picked up around the world. That has put enormous pressure on German Chancellor Scholz. Scholz had been in the press conference with President Biden on Feb. 7, 2022, where Biden made his famous pronouncement that if the Russians invade Ukraine, “there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.” Then, when a reporter asked Scholz, who was standing beside Biden, what does this mean, what are you saying, given the fact that this is a German pipeline built by Russia, Scholz said, with a sheepish smile, “We are doing everything together,” and stressed “together.” So, that has raised the question, did they blow up the pipeline together? Then in March, Scholz went in a very unusual visit to the United States without an entourage, without press corps. On March 3, he had a one-hour, closed-door “four eyes only” meeting with Biden; this was supposedly very secret, and nothing was revealed. And then just a few days later, the media comes back with this new story.

Now, I think this is putting the likelihood that this is a CYA story, that this is damage control, but very poorly. And I think Seymour Hersh, in the interview with CGTN, actually quite fittingly quoted Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “The Purloined Letter,” which is the short story where the police can’t find a stolen letter by searching the apartment, and the letter is actually openly in a frame, hanging on the wall. But since these police can’t think outside the box, they don’t get it. I think this is a similar thing. Because Hersh said, “How come that this is such a big story, and President Biden is so powerful, why did he not just order his intelligence community to investigate this whole affair and find the culprits?”—which supposedly (naturally), are the Russians. It’s a very strange affair, and I think it definitely is increasing the pressure to have an international investigation, which must include Russia, because otherwise, this will not go away. If it stays like that, I think the cover-up may turn out to be more devastating than the actual crime.

So, I want to leave it at that, and maybe you have some more questions pertaining to that, but I think this is not going away. And I think if it’s not clarified, it is tremendously erosive for the future of NATO, because if it turns out that it was the United States in collaboration with Norway, as Hersh says, then, what do you need enemies for, if you have friends like that? What does it mean for Germany? Germany has already egg on its face—at least the government—because people are saying, “What’s wrong with the German government that they let themselves be treated this way?” The German economy in the meantime is having incredible difficulties. We are facing a deindustrialization, and the energy prices are a very large part of it. So, that is one thing I wanted to mention.

Who Wants To Carve Up Russia?

The other thing which I think is really very important, is that the situation with the Ukraine war is getting more dangerous by the day. There are more and more experts who are warning that if no solution is found, this may escalate into World War III. The fact that people like Victoria Nuland, of fame from the 2014 Maidan coup—we should not forget her role in that—is egging on the Ukrainians, saying, “If you want to take Crimea, that’s fine. We are totally behind it.”

Now, that is a red line for Russia. The situation is extremely dangerous. The military situation on the ground is a grinding up of the Ukrainian population, and as of now, it is very difficult to see who can win militarily. Because Russia cannot afford to lose. Ukraine will definitely not win. Russia cannot lose, because they are a nuclear power. So, the recent proposal by the Chinese, who made a 12-point peace proposal, including such demands as respect for sovereignty, territorial integrity, and many other proposals, which all make a lot of sense. This proposal was appreciated by a lot of people in the Global South. The Chinese proposal is welcomed by Russia as a starting point of discussion. It was immediately rejected by Biden, who said it’s irrational. It’s rejected by the EU Commission. The question is, why would there not be an effort on the side of the West to start to end a war, which will only continue at the absolute sacrifice of the Ukrainian people?

I was thinking about it, and writing an article last week. I thought, “Why is it that the West is not responding to any reasonable proposal?” The Pope has made another one, which we are backing and organizing for. Why are they not doing that? I was rereading a lot of old reports and so forth, and I came across again what we had published at the time, but which in the present light gains a new importance: That is, that since quite some time—actually, one can go back to Brzezinski and his plans for Russia—but in the recent period, there were a whole bunch of discussions among others from the so-called U.S. Helsinki Commission in the Congress, proposing so-called “decolonization” of Russia. Meaning that Russia should not continue to exist as one coherent state, the Russian Federation, but it should be cut into many states, maybe 10 states. And there were a whole bunch of other international conferences, in Gdansk in Poland, in Warsaw, in and in Prague. Just as recently as December, there was a conference in Washington organized by the Jamestown Foundation and the Hudson Institute, which had the same subject, basically saying that Russia should be split up into many different states. And in June 2022, Lech Wałęsa, former President of Poland, also said that Russia should be cut down to only be 50 million people instead of 144 million as it is now, and it should be cut into different states.

Now, one has to keep that in mind. If you only look at day-to-day politics, people sometimes forget these long arcs of history. Putin and Lavrov, and some other Russian officials in the meantime, have always said that the aim is to dismantle Russia. That was always pushed aside as paranoia or just propaganda. If you think about it, that has been on the table. That is one of the reasons why Putin in December 2021 demanded legally binding security guarantees that Ukraine would not join NATO, that offensive weapons systems would not be put at the border of Russia. And he demanded an answer from the U.S. and NATO. And no answer was given to the core questions. There were only some offers of arms negotiations.

Now, it turns out—at least that’s what Seymour Hersh said—that the preparations for the Nord Stream pipelines sabotage started nine months before the September 2022 explosions. That puts it long before what is always termed to be an “unprovoked aggression” by Russia.

So, the whole story is obviously much, much more complicated. And you can be sure that Russian intelligence would absolutely be aware of such discussions and conferences, and who knows what else, to dismantle Russia. That is why Putin several times, and Shoigu and Lavrov said under what conditions Russia would use nuclear weapons, namely, when the existence of Russia would be at stake.

All of that is, naturally, always ironed out of the narrative in the media, and therefore I think it’s very important that we take a fresh look at this whole thing, that we look back at the chronology of what actually happened. These conferences—Jamestown Foundation conference, the U.S. Helsinki Commission conference—these are in the public domain, so this is not something which is a matter of opinion, but everybody can look and check it.

A New World Alignment for Humanity

I think this is very important, because there is another development, which I only can touch upon here, and we can deepen it later. And that is the fact that what is occurring right now is, indeed, a tectonic shift in the strategic realignment. That in response to all of this, the Global South—which by now is the Global Majority; it’s the vast majority of countries in Africa, in Latin America, in Asia—that want to basically create a new system. Because of the weaponization of the dollar—the U.S. confiscated $300 billion from Russia, $10 billion from Afghanistan, and various sums from other countries—these countries are now de-dollarizing. This is the majority of the human species. Apparently, two dozen countries have applied for membership in the BRICS+. The BRICS already, before this happened had a higher GDP than the G7. There is clearly a complete realignment. There are tremendous changes: For example, at the 2023 “Two Sessions” national meetings now ongoing in Beijing, there has been a complete change in the Chinese tone.

There is now open discussion that the United States is trying to contain China, to prevent its rise, and that there is an effort to expand NATO into the Pacific.

We are moving into a different alignment. We have to have a discussion of how we get out of this [crisis]. I have proposed that we urgently need to have a new international security architecture and development architecture, which takes into account the interests of every single country on the planet. I have proposed Ten Principles for how such a new architecture could be organized. And I think it is extremely urgent that we have an international discussion posing the questions: Is the human species capable of avoiding World War III—which this time would be nuclear with no human survivors? Can we give ourselves an order which allows for the survival and well-being of all nations on this planet? That is what I would like to encourage you to discuss in this program and others to come, and in the upcoming new Schiller conference on April 15.

There is some food for thought here, and I’m very interested to hear your questions.

Schlanger: Helga, there are a lot of questions. This is our weekly webcast with Helga Zepp-LaRouche, and for the first time we’re livestreaming. So, if we can’t get to all of your questions—and I can tell you now, we’re not going to—keep them coming, because we will answer them.

Helga, given what you just said in the introduction, there were two or three questions on the same basic topic, but I’ll take this one: “How can we bring Russia and Ukraine together to negotiate as quickly as possible?”

Zepp-LaRouche: Given the fact that Ukraine is not really its own master, but it’s really the U.S., the British, and NATO running this war for quite some time—long before the Russian intervention occurred in February 2022—there needs to be pressure on the NATO nations and on the United States. That is one of the reasons why we are supporting the offer made by Pope Francis some months ago for using the venue of the Vatican as a neutral place, where negotiations without preconditions can start. I know that at this point, Russia doesn’t want to do that, because they say, why should we trust anybody in the West, after even former German Chancellor Merkel and Hollande, the former President of France, and former President of Ukraine Poroshenko admitted that they never meant for the Minsk process to be serious, but [that] they only engaged in it to gain time, to arm and build up the military in Ukraine. So, the Russians right now are not inclined to trust anybody in the West. The Ukrainians cannot really act, because they’re not their own actor. So I think the only way, how we can get this resolved, is, we have to have an international chorus of forces, who say: “This leads to World War III, if it is not stopped. Therefore it is automatically a question of every person on the planet.” That is why we need a world movement of world citizens—that is actually what the Schiller Institute has started to promote since last October—and we need voices to say, “We demand that such negotiations take place” —to create an international environment to make this happen.

Now, if all the countries of the Global South would basically say that, and they have expressed that view, already, by refusing to condemn the Russian invasion. They don’t buy the story that this was an unprovoked war. At the recent G20 Finance Ministers’ meeting in India, the majority of these countries did not condemn Russia, because they don’t agree with this narrative. The beginning peace movement turned out for the demonstration on Feb. 19 in Washington. Then there was the 50,000-person demonstration in Berlin on Feb. 25, the very large demonstrations in France—yesterday there were more than 1.5 million out in the streets, mostly against the pension reform, but also a large part of that for peace. There were also demonstrations in Italy. I think if all of these people, the peace demonstrations in Europe, in the United States, and elsewhere, and the countries of the Global South would all join in, and say, “We demand that this war stop; we demand negotiations; the Ukrainian people are the victims, and we think that only if we move to a new paradigm of cooperation can this problem be solved,” then we can create an environment which will make it very difficult to keep this war going.

Schlanger: Helga, here’s a question for you from John Tayor, who starts by saying he applauds your 10-point program inspired by the Treaty of Westphalia. But, he said that he thinks an 11th point is necessary, because he thinks people in the West, in the leadership, are scared that they’ll be prosecuted once the war ends, and that they would be under attack because of their role in promoting the war. He asks: “Could there be an 11th point on your proposal, that would be a point of forgiveness, absolution, or atonement?”

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, that is definitely worth considering. Obviously, there is a Nuremberg Statute, if you prepare a war of aggression, that that represents a Nuremberg crime, so that is one consideration. But then, if you look at the Peace of Westphalia, which ended 150 years of religious war in Europe, because everybody realized that there would be nobody left if the war would continue. They came up with principles, and one of the major principles, apart from the fact that any peace proposal has to take into account the interests of the other, was the idea that, for the sake of peace, the crimes of the one side or the other have to be forgiven. And I think that not only applies for war crimes on the one side or the other, but one could possibly consider what you are saying. But, I don’t want to answer that question so lightly, because I have to give it some deep thought. But there are these two options, the Nuremberg Tribunal and the Peace of Westphalia approach, and I promise you, I will give it some more thought, and open it also for discussion among other people.

Schlanger: Here’s another question: “What is the attitude of the people of Germany toward the push for heavy sanctions against China, and the anti-China policy?”

Zepp-LaRouche: It’s very complicated, because there is right now an east-west division of views in Germany. Many people in the eastern part of Germany, because of the history of the G.D.R., do not buy the complete demonization of Russia. People in the western part of Germany are more influenced by the Western media.

Concerning China, it is more complicated, because I think, until there was a shift in the attitude by the security services in the United States and other NATO countries, starting about 2017-2018, the general picture of people of China was much, much more positive. The initial discussion of the New Silk Road, which became known as the Belt and Road Initiative, was actually very enthusiastic. But then, you had a permanent bombardment by the mass media, starting to portray China as “autocratic,” and a “dictatorship,” and all of this—which is absolutely not true. I have been in China many times, starting in 1971, and the trajectory of development in China is what most people in the West would only dream about! They have performed an economic miracle, lifting 850 million people out of poverty. China has offered its miracle model in the Belt and Road Initiative form to developing countries, which started to see, for the first time, the chance to overcome poverty and underdevelopment.

So, the Chinese model is something one should study. And if you do that, you find that the economic model, especially concerning the financial system, is much closer to the American System of economy of Alexander Hamilton, than, let’s say, the present City of London or Wall Street model.

So, I think the people of Germany are not really united. The people who have knowledge of China, who have travelled there, who have done business, who have a Chinese spouse, all of these people have an extremely positive image of China. And I know of many such people. But, naturally, if you only listen to the mainstream media, and you get it every day, and so forth, then it’s much harder.

So, I think it’s not decided, at all. But I think in Germany, I would say, maybe half of the people are still sleeping, but there is a growing revolt of people who really realize, “Hey, wait a second, this whole thing does not function. And the present policies do not represent the self-interest of the German people.” And I think that will become stronger and stronger, especially if you also help us to mobilize people.

Schlanger: Helga, here’s a question from Mathew in Dublin, Ireland. He says: “As an EU citizen, why is the main country in our union,” referring to the United Kingdom, Great Britain, “so obsessed with maintaining U.S. hegemony, rather than cooperation and multipolarity?”

Zepp-LaRouche: Well, that’s a good question! I think the only way how to explain it, is if you understand the principle of oligarchy. Because up to the 15th Century, all countries, at least in Europe and beyond were oligarchies, which means a system where you have a small oligarchical elite, which organizes everything according to their privileges, and to keep the mass of the population as underdeveloped as possible, because that makes it easier to rule.

Now, there have been new developments: The modern nation-state developed. You had states which were devoted to the common good. But I would say, the British Empire, for example, which still exists—I think it’s a big illusion to think that the British Empire has stopped: It continues to exist, in a modern form. I would say that the financial institutions of the City of London, of Wall Street, they are what you would call the present British Empire, including its control in some of the Commonwealth countries. And I think the elite of that empire, in the United States, I would say it’s the mixture of Wall Street and the military-industrial complex—or what Ray McGovern calls the MICIMATT, the military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academia-think tank complex—but the majority of the people, I think that they’re normal people. And if I would not believe that the normal people are generally good, I would have given up hope a very long time ago. So, I think right now, we have to really get the normal people and those in the institutions who represent the interests of those people, to help us to mobilize the population before it is too late.

Schlanger: Helga, we’re running short on time, but I have another question for you, from Jack Gilroy, who’s been working with us on the “Rage Against the War Machine” demonstration and other activities. And he writes, that “There’s a need to engage Generation Z in the nonviolent fight against the dominant system of militarism.” And he suggested using Earth Day this coming November, to “expose the merchants of death, the military, investment bankers and so on, who are a threat to the planet.” What do you think about this generational question and his idea?

Zepp-LaRouche: I know that you are also working with Pax Christi, and I think that’s extremely important that we get people to understand what are the laws of the universe, what is the actual mission that man has. And you can discuss it in religious terms—that’s why the 10th of my Ten Principles said that we have to proceed from the assumption that man is good, by nature. That has been the most controversial point. But if you look at all the great religions, Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and some of the other religions, or other philosophies, the good ones always proceed from the idea that man is fundamentally good, and that all evil comes from a lack of development.

Now, that is a very important entry point, because also concerning the Earth, man is not just an animal: Man is fundamentally different from all other creatures, because we have the gift of creative reason, which enables us to discover, again and again, universal principles of the Creation, of the physical universe: And that is why, with modern science, we are now in a position more and more, to attune, to bring into accordance our political, economic, and social life on Earth, with the laws of Creation. And I think that that is a tremendous challenge, but I think, in the past, we could only discuss it philosophically. In European history, it was called natural law, that there is a higher law than that given by man. But [in] natural law, today, we have natural science, we can study what is this law given in the Creation. For example, when we develop thermonuclear fusion, we are imitating the fusion process on the Sun. Now, that is a law of the universe. So we can gain energy security for the entire human species, once we get commercial fusion power, which is looking not so far away any more, given the recent breakthroughs we have been making—we are replicating something which is taking place as a natural process on the Sun. And that’s just one example, what I mean by saying, we have to attune our activity on the planet, with the laws of Creation or the physical universe.

I could give you many other examples, where discoveries, what we make, for example, in space science, or in space travel; new knowledge we gain from the James Webb Space Telescope, for example, about the actual condition of our physical universe, which consists of many, many trillions of galaxies! Now, I find this always the most mind-boggling idea, but with modern science, with the Hubble Telescope, with the James Webb Telescope, we can now actually look, with scientific rigor, at what is our universe. And we can draw conclusions from that for our existence on the planet.

So, there is no reason to be pessimistic. I think if we get out of this present danger, which is an existential danger to all of humanity, but there’s also, on the horizon, a new paradigm, where, if we make that shift that we get all nations to cooperate, rather than to go for confrontation, it’s already visible that we are in the beginning of a new epoch of civilization: And that is a very joyful perspective.

Schlanger: Thank you for that answer, Helga. We’re just about out of time, and maybe I’ll just take the privilege of answering the final two questions. One person asks, “Can we have an international conference to organize around these principles?” Well, we’ve been doing that. Watch the Schiller Institute website to see what our next event will be.

And then someone asks: “How about an international party around these principles?”

Join the Schiller Institute. Help us build this movement that Helga just described, that is the movement for a new paradigm.

So, Helga, thanks for joining us, today. Do you have any final words?

Zepp-LaRouche: Yes. I’m happy that there are more questions than we could answer. I will for sure try to incorporate them in my next live program next week, and if there are very urgent ones, we can also communicate in the meantime in a written form. So please keep this dialogue going: I think it’s very important to engage as many people as possible. And become active with us.

Schlanger: So, keep the questions coming in at questions@schillerinstitute.org Thank you for joining us today, and we’ll see you again next week.

Zepp-LaRouche: Till next week.