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This article appears in the September 11, 2020 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

December 31, 1997
Aide-Memoire

ON COMMAND IN WAR-FIGHTING

The Principle of the Strategic Flank

[Print version of this article]

The following, marked “Personal Memorandum,” by Mr. LaRouche, is being published here for the first time.

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The Death of Paulus Aemilius at the Battle of Cannae, painted by John Trumbull, 1773.

In the present succession of moments of crisis, when the command initiatives of the higher levels of the U.S. Executive are crucial for the future of civilization, it is urgent that the true meaning, rather than the popular misreading of the “principle of the flank” be appreciated, especially among those who must be concerned for the effectiveness of the U.S. Executive’s initiatives in the present domain of strategic financial, monetary, and economic war-fighting.

I believe this aide-memoire will be useful in the right hands.

I have recently reactivated my earlier references to this crucial correction of the usual misreading, as a matter of cautioning our associates against catering to self-deluding preoccupation with the subject of submitting “suggestions,” prospective legislation, and “programs,” for consideration by relevant authorities.

On this account, I have, recently, once more, contrasted the blunders of “young” Moltke in World War I, with the 1792-1793 achievements of Lazare Carnot. I have adopted the emphasis placed by one of our collaborators, upon Frederick the Great’s (Prussia) turning the Austrian command’s attempt at a “classical Cannae” flanking operation into a rout of a nominally superior Austrian force. Here, I prefer to reference a study which I presume may be found, conveniently, in the Library of Congress: Generalfeldmarschall Graf von Schlieffen: Die taktisch-strategischen Aufgaben aus den Jahren 1891-1905, E. S. Mittler u. Sohn, Berlin, 1937. I shall refer to the work of von Schlieffen, but shall develop my argument for the present moments’ strategic situation afresh, as the difference in predicates makes necessary.

The principle to be emphasized, may be summed up: After all else is said and done, the essential strategic flanks are those which the commander of one force correctly detects within the mind of the opposing commander. Thus, the foolish Roman commanders, by concentrating their forces, to form an irresistible “ram,” created a flank against themselves, in the mind of Hannibal. Hannibal’s achievement that day, was not to discover a tactical principle of geometry of force-deployments; Hannibal’s achievement was to recognize the vulnerable flank lodged within self-deluded minds of the over-confident Roman commanders. Even when he possesses overwhelming advantage in forces and firepower, as the Romans did that day, the set-piece warrior (who, like just another bureaucrat, but in military harness, seeks to cover his reputation by sticking to a textbook solution), is, frequently, eminently defeatable by a reasonably well-served, less intellectually constipated, more creative, opposing commander.

Both photos: E. Bieber Studio
Left: Alfred von Schlieffen, in 1906; right: Helmuth von Moltke the Younger, in 1906.

The relevance of the Schlieffen case, is, that had the German command not made stubbornly willful, informed violations of the principles of Schlieffen’s plan for a four-nation aggression against Germany (Britain, France, Belgium, Russia), there is no credible doubt on the available record, that Germany would have won World War I during the opening weeks of the clash of arms. The failure to achieve that victory was entirely the result of a fatal command failure in the top echelons of Germany’s political command. Hence, the misconduct conducted by “young” Moltke, admittedly under the pressure of the political command, makes a perfect contrast to Lazare Carnot’s outstanding role as “Organizer of Victory,” at a moment of France’s ostensibly assured imminent defeat and dismemberment by invading armies of virtually all the other powers of Europe.

Thus, I have frequently presented the contrast of “young Moltke” to the case of Carnot’s leadership, to demonstrate the truth, that strategic flanks exist principally in the minds of the opposing individual commanders of the opposing forces, not in the principles of geography as such. The principle of the strategic flank is more of a political principle, than a military principle as such; as such, it applies equally to what we, during the mid-1980s, defined as “irregular warfare.” It applies, with full force, to the current U.S. struggle for survival in the currently escalating, global, systemic, financial-monetary crisis.

Schlieffen, Moltke, and Carnot

With consummate thoroughness, von Schlieffen had prepared what would have been assured early victory by German forces in 1914, had the weak-minded nephew of Britain’s Edward VII, the German Kaiser, not lacked the nerve to stick to the conceptual design underlying “the Schlieffen Plan,” or had “young Moltke” shown the Entschlossenheit to impel the Kaiser to give way to reason.

By playing commander of each and all sides, in turn, during the relevant staff studies (as the referenced text documents this in heavily diagrammed detail), Schlieffen identified the relevant crucial elements of strategic blindness in the minds of the British, French, and Russian command. Had the “Plan” been executed as designed, without the temporizing which actually occurred, the war would have ended by early Autumn, with France defeated, Britain expelled from the continent, and Russia hastening in search of an early and hopefully generous peace at German hands.

The essence of the “Plan” was the exploitation of a potentially exploitable, crucial vulnerability, inhering in the virtually congenital, cultural weakness in the separate and collective mentalities of the respective British, French, and Russian commands—unfortunately, also a fatal disposition inhering in the Kaiser’s own mentality, and, most emphatically, the kindred, stubborn idiocy of that Austro-Hungarian Kaiser, whose paw, like the paw of Czar Nicholas II, was trapped in an Anglo-French Balkans “monkey-trap.” In short, it was the oligarchical legacy of the Vienna Congress’s “Holy Alliance,” which doomed continental Europe to suffer the protracted war and its sequelae.

Had Germany’s republican tradition, which the Schlieffen Plan represented, and upon which Germany’s strategic potential depended, not been subordinated to the idiocy of the three Caesars of Austria, Russia, and Germany, Germany would have ended the war quickly, decisively, as Schlieffen outlined. (Indeed, but for the combined idiocies of the Romanov and Hapsburg “Caesars” of the moment, the guilty party, the Anglo-French Entente Cordiale, could not have forced the war upon Germany. The German Kaiser was the least guilty of all the nominal heads of state in this affair, less guilty, in fact, than the U.S. White House’s disgusting Ku Klux Klan buff, President Woodrow Wilson.)

Lazare Carnot, in a portrait by Louis François Lejeune, 1843.

The case of Carnot, which has been addressed by Pierre Beaudry and me, earlier this year, illuminates the same principle with somewhat different points of emphasis.

In the tradition of Scharnhorst, Schlieffen relied upon the well-trained civilian military reserves, which gave the German military forces that depth of strength, the which was greatly, and foolishly underestimated by the British and French warmakers. However, where the operations laid out by the Schlieffen Plan begin with highly trained, well-equipped forces, with relatively excellent logistics, Carnot’s initial problem was the use of virtually untrained recruits and a large ration of military commanders who were, for various reasons, unqualified for their assigned missions. Where the Schlieffen Plan relied upon the level of industrial technology available in the world at the time of outset of war, Carnot transformed the French military forces technologically during the stunningly brief period of his command, introducing the machine-tool design principle into the conduct of warfare for the first time.

Thus, as the Kaiser snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, Carnot snatched victory from the jaws of certain defeat. There are significant differences between Schlieffen’s address to the problem before him, and Carnot’s; yet, underlying both outcomes, is a common strategic principle of the human mind.

Precisely the same class of potential advantage adduced, in one way, by Schlieffen, and, in another form, by Carnot, is to be sought in the minds of the enemies of the U.S.A. in the present global financial-monetary-economic crisis. On the darker side, there is also the looming shadow of threatened defeat, should the wisdom of the combat commander be polluted with failure of nerve, and the all-too-customary, legendary, ultimately suicidal “small compromises,” induced by means of a loss of nerve fomented from within the bureaucratized political processes of the national command, bring our nation to ruin.

For the present case, I have recently identified the most important of the present-day enemies’ implicit strategic vulnerabilities within my “Wells of Doom” article and “Truthfulness versus ‘mere Factualness’.” [See the article, “Truthful, or merely ‘Factual’?.”] However, I think it necessary to draw out here, and underline with great emphasis, some of the underlying historical implications of those treatments, as I proceed to do now.

Strategy & History

The principle of the strategic flank reflects the very essence of the willful role of the individual in the making of history. No individual ever willfully made history, in the meaningful sense of that term, except by expressing the principle of the strategic flank. On that account, we must now interpolate some provocative observations to clarify the meaning of terms.

The relatively rare candid observer of public opinion, shakes his head sadly: The prevalence of a whorish lust for popularity prompts certain romantic idiots to delude themselves, that any sports figure who gains a moment or two of celebrity in the modern entertainment arena, has thereby “made history.” Modern history has been efficient in making and unmaking prominent political figures, but virtually none of them, even the most celebrated, has actually made history in the sense that, for example, President Abraham Lincoln did. With very rare exceptions, such as President Franklin Roosevelt, General Douglas MacArthur, Konrad Adenauer, and, for a moment, President Charles de Gaulle, few among the prominent statesmen of this century who have occupied office during important events, actually “made” the history over which they are credited with presiding. To credit them with “making history,” is like congratulating one of the surviving passengers for the train-wreck from which he is being extricated by emergency crews.

President Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated the principle of the strategic flank in his political leadership. Here, he is addressing the American people in one of his famous “fireside chats” from the White House.

Make history? What is history, that it might be made? Could we impart to the creature featured in a dog or horse show, a sense that he or she has made history? Could that winning dog or horse, impart a sense of such a historical event to other members of the same species? History is peculiar to the human species, and pertains to aspects of human behavior for which nothing comparable is to be found among any other perceptible species of existence.

Let us test this conception. “Does the universe have a history?” If so, where do we find this history. Someone might point to the Sun, and say, “What you think you see as the Sun, is something which happened about ninety minutes ago.” Or, broader observations may be made in looking up to a clear night’s sky, where the distance which visible light has travelled, from distant stars and galaxies, is measured in millions, to hundreds of millions of years, or more. Where does “history” exist in this stellar universe? The answer is the same: history, including the history of any species, or of astronomical objects, exists solely within the individual human mind.

There, within the refinement of this area of inquiry, the principle of the strategic flank is situated.

The distinction of the human species, apart from, and above all others, is the developable cognitive processes of the individual human mind, by means of which the individual person variously originates and replicates the act of original, valid discovery of new principles of the universe. By means of adding such discovered, valid principles to the repertoire of human judgment and practice, mankind has increased its potential relative population-density, otherwise described as our species’ per-capita power over the universe which we inhabit.

These principles, so discovered, are called by Plato, et al., “ideas,” and are so distinguished from the inferior class of conceptions which are known either as mere sense-perceptions, or as deductive constructs based upon mere sense-perceptions. The process by means of which changes in the characteristics of the human condition are ordered through such ideas, is the proper significance applicable to the term “history.”

The primary characteristic of history is the increase of mankind’s per-capita power over the universe, as accomplished by means of the discovery, replication, and practice of ideas. By derivation, we include under “history,” those efforts, such as so-called neo-Malthusian practices associated with the tradition of the Roman Emperor Diocletian’s imperial code, which have the effect of tending to prevent, or reverse mankind’s increase of our species’ per-capita power over the universe.

It is within history so defined, that the principle of the strategic flank is situated.

The general class of ideas has two phases. On the one side, there are, 1.) validated physical principles of the universe. On the other side, 2.) validated principles inherent to the processes of individual cognition, by means of which valid principles of the universe are newly discovered, or such discoveries replicated. To situate the principle of the strategic flank, the distinction and the functional interdependency of the two classes of ideas must be considered.

Top left: Portrait by Johann Friedrich Wentzel; top right: Portrait by Christian Albrecht Jensen
Clockwise from top left: Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716), Carl Friedrich Gauss (1777-1855), Bernhard Riemann (1826-1866).

Validated physical principles are expressed as “dimensions” and Leibnizian “universal characteristics” of Riemannian forms of a series of physical-space-time manifolds. First, each addition of a new such “dimension” has two characteristic types of predominant effects: a manifold of “n” degrees is superseded by a manifold of “n+1,” or relatively higher degrees. (A degeneration is treated as an asymmetrical parody of a case of progress, but in reverse.)

Second, as if independent of the simple number of dimensions added, each higher-order Riemannian physical-space-time manifold, has a specific Gauss-Riemann, identifying form of non-constant curvature in the infinitesimally small, the which is the Leibnizian “universal characteristic” of that species of manifold, as Leibniz’s published writings on this subject, during the 1680s and 1690s, defined this principle of non-constant curvature in the infinitesimally small to be the ontological principle (e.g., Monadology) of the infinitesimal, in his calculus.

The principles of cognition are of a higher order of potency than the principles of physics. Although the principle of the strategic flank takes physical principles’ efficiency into account, the primary focus is upon the higher order of principles, those of the domain of cognition as such. On that account a summary review of the pertinent, distinctive characteristics of the cognitive process as such, is required here.

The Social Expression of Cognition

As a matter of summary review. Viewed from the physical economist’s view of the principle of machine-tool design, those cognitive processes engaged for a validated discovery of a new physical principle, are best apprehended for comprehension by representing them in terms of a four-step process, as we have done in other locations. We begin this necessary interpolation with a restatement of that four-step process. The process begins with the recognition of a true ontological paradox within the experimental domain of application of what have been adopted as valid physical principles. The term “ontological paradox” is employed here as the predicament of the character Parmenides’ persisting failures, in Plato’s Parmenides, provides the relevant Classical paradigm for functional definition of the term “ontological paradox.”

For the case of physical principle, we have to consider, on the one side, a presumed ordering of existences within the physical domain, this a belief which is ostensibly required by the relevant experimental evidence. On the other side, we are confronted by the existence of a state in nature, which is implicitly prohibited by that, ostensibly experimentally well-grounded belief; but, this implicitly prohibited state is shown to exist as actuality by ostensibly experimentally well-grounded evidence. The conflict thus implicitly attributable to the domain of the experimental evidence, constitutes an ontological paradox. The crux of the matter is, that no formal solution to such a paradox could be found within the province of existing belief, such as an existing mathematical physics.

The solution to such paradoxes can not be obtained within the domain of any medium of communication. The relevant difficulty, is that modes of communication, which must be, by their nature, a mode of sense-perceptible representations, operate on the basis of sense-perception. (Hence, the very notion of a “statistical information theory” is a pure hoax from the outset.) Although we refer to ideas, which are not themselves objects of sense-perception, by words and phrases, the referents for those words and phrases (in such uses of language) do not refer to sense-perceptible objects, but rather to mental objects, which, although physically efficient principles, have no representable form within the domain of sense-perception. These ideas exist only within the minds of the speaker and hearer, not within the domain accessible to the senses; in communication, we use words and phrases to reference such purely mental objects, objects which have no sensible referents in sense-perception.

The discussion of ideas, therefore, depends absolutely on the ability of the speaker and hearer to be certain that they are referencing approximately identical mental objects, objects which exist only outside the domain of sense-perception, only within the cognitive processes of the human mind.

So, in a class of bright students, confronted with a relevant ontological paradox, a student raises his hand, to announce, “I have an idea!” Thus, if the student is correct, we have passed from Step One of the cognitive process, the rigorous definition of an ontological paradox, into Step Two, the totally internal, sovereign cognitive processes of the individual student, one by one. The process by means of which a valid idea is generated, as a solution to the ontological paradox, is not susceptible of representation in forms accessible to any mode of communication.

However, such ideas lead to proposed representations of the way in which a principled solution for the relevant ontological paradox may be demonstrated. “If my idea is right, then, we could....” That is, we could manipulate nature in a certain way, with the result that nature would show us the efficient presence of a corrective principle corresponding to both a solution for the ontological paradox, and an expression of what the student, who has raised his hand, termed, “My idea.” Thus, in these terms, the efficiency of the idea is representable in sensory terms, even though the process of generating that idea, within Step Two, remains beyond the reach of sensory representation. So, we have representable Step Three.

Finally, we must produce the rigorously defined experimental test of principle, perhaps by a series of successive approximations: Step Four. This process is representable.

Those who have shared the experience of passing through Steps One through Four, including the sovereign experience of Step Two (“in parallel”), now have shared comprehension of an idea which has been demonstrated fully to be an efficient operating principle of the universe, a principle which governs otherwise inexplicable behavior among sense-perceptions. Those who have shared this Four-Step experience successfully—either as original discoverers, or who, as students, replicated the mental experience of the original discoverers—now recognize that discovered idea, that principle, by referencing those communicable terms which we have come to adopt as pointing toward the cognitive experience of the Four-Step generation of a valid principle of nature.

The problems centered in the sensorially invisible act of Step Two, force our attention to a class of problems of a higher order than any heretofore broadly accepted notion of “physical principles” has come to include. How do we coordinate action in terms of Step Two of the respective individual cognition processes of separate individual persons? In other words, how do we effect an efficient form of social relations in terms of ideas as such; how are separate persons enabled to respond in a coordinate, cognitive way, with effective common-action solutions for problems, in the case that no previously established body of agreed belief provides such a common solution?

The solution for this latter problem exists. It is that which has come to be known by what was recently virtually banned from Germany by measures including the so-called “Brandt reforms” in education: Classical humanist education of the type associated with the name of “Humboldt” reforms, or Schiller-Humboldt principles of aesthetical education. The education of the young in any civilized society is based on the same principle central to the “Humboldt Reforms.”

In an effective Classical-humanist education, the students do not learn. Instead of today’s generally imposed educational policies, fortunate students relive the original act of discovery of a valid principle of Classical scientific knowledge, and of Classical art-forms. Thus, instead of merely learning to pass multiple-choice-questionnaire examinations, as trained animals do, these students are human; they know what they are talking about, as most of today’s recently successful secondary and university graduates do not.

The repeated reenactment of the Four-Step process, for geometry, for physical studies, for Classical art-forms (don’t waste, corrupt, and ruin the students’ mind on “popular” rubbish), affords the student in well-managed classes under Classically-trained teachers, an often repeated sharing of the Four-Step cognitive experience. This Classical-humanist mode of repeated experience, is indispensable for the production of quality human adolescents and adults.

Left: Johannes Kepler (1751-1630); right: Gaspard Monge (1746-1818)

Obviously, such education can not pick ideas at random as if out of a grab-bag. There is a certain order in humanity’s discovery of relatively valid new principles. This is well illustrated by study of mathematics and mathematical physical science from the vantage-point of the evolution of geometry, from the Archaic Egypt type, through Classical Greece and Hellenistic culture, into the modern non-Euclidean geometries of (actually) Nicholas of Cusa, Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Kepler, Leibniz, Monge, Gauss, Riemann, et al. (Gauss’s Disquisitiones Arithmeticae illustrates this point.)

Similarly, we have the emergence of the superior forms of Classical art, by the times of sculptors Scopas and Praxiteles, from the earlier, inferior, archaic forms of Egypt and Greece. Thus, a Classical-humanist education has the form of a student’s reliving the discovery of successive layers of ideas; the student, so educated, becomes a morally superior type of personality, a “world-historical personality,” a person who is a living embodiment, in exemplary degree, of the history of human ideas over spans of millennia. The contrast with the morally inferior popular type of educational product streaming from the Orwellian “support group” brainwashing of today, the post-modernist existentialist type of ahistorically disposed cultural relativist, is to be emphasized.

Society: The Work of ‘Angels’

As I had occasion, once again, to set forth the moral imperative for the person of conscience in these troubled times: The proper function of society, is the production of human ‘angels.’ Some Russian guests at our conference and seminar, in Germany recently, were taken by surprise, but curious, and amused, at such an unfamiliar view of the matter. Restated here, this is a pedagogical view of the human individual which offers the best vantage-point for insight into the principle of the strategic flank.

“I am an angel?” retorts the astonished child.

“You were not told what your mission is. That, you will have to discover for yourself.”

“You mean, like wings?” the child elects to play the game.

“No wings. No special powers except those any human being can develop.”

“Then, what could I do?”

“It is angels just like you who keep the entire human race from being destroyed.”

“What happens to me?”

“You die, like any mere mortal.” “Oh.”

“But, you die happy.”

“Happy?”

“I am not talking about pleasure. For that, you might see the other guy,” gesturing downward, meaningfully.

“Oh.”

“You will be filled with joy, because, if you do your mission, you know you were a real angel, because you were needed. Your life was necessary.”

What can we do for our “little angels” of that sort? We can develop them as “world-historical” personalities, who embody both the work of the past, and the hope of mankind’s future. They come, thus educated, from many generations of education in the past history of ideas, and, also, represent the interests of future humanity, our posterity which can not yet speak for itself, to minister to the present on behalf of humanity as a whole. Thus, in that sense, are they angels.

Right now, the recruiting offices are open around the clock; with the big war looming now, our legions of angels are urgently in need of recruits. Warrior angels make the best strategists, by the way; it is a talent which goes with the profession.

The object of justified warfare is not a mercenary’s way of carrying out whatever orders are issued by those who pay him. The object of justified warfare, is a much higher calling: to win for the interest and sake of future humanity, and to win in a way which serves the proper objectives of future humanity.

Win what?

The goal of classical education is to develop personalities “who embody both the work of the past, and the hope of the future.” Shown, Praxiteles’ sculpture of Hermes and the Infant Dionysos.

The characteristic of the good, is development. This features development in the sense associated with an anti-entropic ordering of a series of human scientific and technological progress, as describable by a Riemannian physical-space-time manifold. Yet, there is something not inconsistent with such progress, something which subsumes such progress, but which is qualitatively higher: The ordering of social relations in a way which corresponds to the nature of man as expressed by Step Two of the Four-Step process described. It is improvement of social relations as defined in those terms of reference, which is crucial. This is what is exceptionally well embodied in the designs of our Federal constitutional republic, as supplied by such as Gottfried Leibniz by way of such as Benjamin Franklin, or President Abraham Lincoln:

1. The equality of all persons, and the sacredness of each individual human life, by virtue of nothing different than that developable quality of creative cognition expressed as Step Two of the Four-Step process. There is no distinction among persons because of so-called “racial” or “ethnic” origins—indeed, the term “race” should be banned as disallowed for reference to any human being by any action of government or law otherwise.

2. The right of all persons to participate in development of those cognitive potentials in terms of science and Classical art-forms.

3. The primary obligation of society to govern its affairs to such effect that each person is afforded access to those productive and other roles in society’s life, which are consistent with the nature of the individual by virtue of endowment with that cognitive quality, and which are consistent with the development of that quality in the individual.

4. The duty to free mankind from such wicked relics of mankind’s ignoble past as the reduction of entire peoples or individual persons to the sub-human status of slaves, serfs, or worse, and the degradation of nations by subjugation to such evil relics of a bestialized past as inherently usurious forms of parasites such as landed aristocracies and financier oligarchies.

5. Above all, the precedence of truth and justice based upon truth, both for mankind as a whole, and each person, this at the expense of offense to any opinion, institution, or mere procedure which might tend to bar the way to open utterance of truth, and to prompt and thorough natural justice for its own sake.

Implications

Look at recent developments in the ongoing global financial collapse against the foregoing background.

The refusal of the U.S.A. and others, to commit public resources of nations to “bailing-out” financial creditors of South Korea (and, implicitly, other rapidly upcoming cases), confronted the class of bankers with a Hobson’s choice: roll over the debts, at the price of creditors becoming bankrupt themselves, should the debtor default. In Europe, New York, and Tokyo, the music played a merry tune between Christmas and New Year’s day, and the dancers—however badly—danced, even without the presence of Secretary [of State Madeleine] Albright to lead them in these festivities.

Next week, the presently hegemonic faction in Japan might not choose to dance. That could mean consequences leading toward renaming Japan “East Korea” soon afterward.

And, so on....

How like a classic military flanking situation’s end-game!

As if to indicate, freshly [now, in December 1997], the way in which Gaussian non-constant curvature-in-the-small functions as Kepler-Leibniz characteristica universalis, the South Korea situation contains all of the typical elements of the unfolding global crisis. The strategic flanks of the larger process are reflected in that specific case.

The objectives of financial-crisis warfare feature the following.

First, the resources of the South Korean nation, must be insulated from the threatened insolvency of the banks. Second, the banks must be insulated against the financial distress which speculation has brought upon non-banking corporate interests. Third, the threatened insolvency of virtually every leading corporate interest, must not set off a spiral of increasing industrial unemployment, and therefore the IMF’s cut-back in the real economy must be nullified and otherwise frustrated. Fourth, there can be no solution, as long as speculative financial markets are permitted to set the current prices of national currencies and of related national assets. The pervasive issue posed by the outright lunacy of Michel Camdessus’ (“Cam-Dessous”?) IMF, is the fact, that the IMF proposals drop South Korea’s economy hopelessly below a definable economic break-even-point on import-export trade-accounts.

Nations must produce sufficient hard-commodity exports to cover the costs of their essential hard-community imports. For example, in the South Korea case, where the shift from individual unit housing to high-rise packing-cases has accelerated the degree of import dependence for the nation’s essential food-supplies, the IMF program means galloping hunger, and rapid explosion of industrial unemployment toward and above the critical 1,000,000 mark.

This situation is potentially even much more explosive in Japan, and throughout non-China, East and Southeast Asia. It represents a rather near-term critical strategic threat to China, too. The conditions radiating from this kind of deterioration, into western continental Europe, and touching Ibero-America and the former Soviet bloc, mean a global explosion of incalculable scope, in the near future, probably during 1998, unless this IMF lunacy is crushed now, probably within the month of January. This is end-game time; tolerable alternatives no longer exist.

Thus, viewing this as a survey of the terrain of the battlefield and forces deployed, we should recognize the idiocy of proposing a “program” for this situation. As with the Christmas-New Year’s bankers’ dance, forces will be moved, chiefly, not because they are won over by programmatic arguments, but because they are terrified of the consequences of accepting the conditions forced upon them by unfolding circumstances. The conditions and forces are displayed; the issue is how to play them.

The play must be premised upon an intended end-result, not a programmatic design. The necessary end-result, is to utilize the internal dynamic of the systemic collapse, to orchestrate a series of stimulus-response behaviors, during which the adversaries maneuver themselves, by their own energy, their own perceived vulnerabilities, into the very ultimate positions they wish to avoid. The greatest single advantage of the U.S.A. in this situation, is the rapid emergence of a clear, urgent mutual interest among the U.S.A., China, and a bloc of nations intersecting coincidence with a virtual political war against London, now centered in de facto partnership on this between Iran and Egypt. Under conditions of generalized panic, the correlation of forces and field of battle can be rapidly transformed into one favorable to preemptive action by a group of nations centered around the U.S.A. and China.

What we must end up with is a New Bretton Woods echoing in large degree the anti-Winston Churchill, post-war intent of President Franklin Roosevelt’s American reconstruction of an empire-free world. This would never be brought about by waiting for a democratic choice; it can only be brought about through exploiting the strategic flanking opportunities offered by the ongoing explosion of the worst crisis in more than five centuries of world history.

The governing consideration is the choice of conception of the nature of man, and of man’s relationship to the universe, on whose behalf one fights under crises such as this. Without such a clear image of man, accordingly, I doubt that any nation’s leadership has the ability to lead the way out of this present crisis alive.

In the instances of Aristotle’s enemy, Alexander the Great counselled by the Platonic Academy of Athens, Lazare Carnot, Generals Grant and Sherman, Schlieffen, and General MacArthur’s command in the Pacific, we have examples of the best military leadership. Alexander’s unmatched victory outside Arbela, was a great step forward for humanity, even though those who, like Aristotle, sought his death, ruined much of what might have been, had Alexander not been poisoned. Carnot’s victories were premised upon the commitment to do a great good, not only for France, but for humanity. Sherman, perhaps the greatest master of the flank in modern history, and Grant, were committed to a great good for all humanity.

Schlieffen represented the highest level of civilization in Europe, features integral to his plan for victory over the moral degenerates who ruled Britain and had gained control over France; the root of Germany’s tragedy was the moral degeneration of a Germany corrupted by the decadent influence of theosophy-anthroposophy in the highest ranking political—and, also, military circles.

U.S. Army/AP
Gen. Douglas MacArthur, in his command in the Pacific, was a master of the military flank. Here, he is shown returning to the Philippines, October 20, 1944.

MacArthur, who, with Roosevelt’s backing, and that of Australia’s [Prime Minister John] Curtin, won the Pacific War with no credit due to Truman’s two atomic bombs or the useless slaughter of both Americans and Japanese introduced both by some of MacArthur’s political opponents in the Navy command and a corrupt, libelous U.S. mass news media, was a leader of exceptional moral stature, not merely military skills per se.

It is the commitment to good, which must be viewed as an essential resource both of intellect and moral will, in seeking the choice of strategic flanks to be exploited for what must be the oncoming historic victory of the U.S.A. in this present conflict against humanity’s London-centered foes.

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