Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.

A Westphalian Approach

This is the edited transcript of an excerpt from Lyndon LaRouche’s famous 1999 video, “Storm Over Asia,” where he takes up the matter of war, and how to actually build peace through development. It was shown during Panel 1, “Stopping the Doomsday Clock—The Common Good of the One Humanity,” of the Schiller Institute’s Nov. 22 seminar, “For World Peace—Stop the Danger of Nuclear War: Third Seminar of Political and Social Leaders of the World.” The full proceedings of the conference are available at the Schiller Institute website.

What is the fundamental interest of the United States? Is it to find somebody we call an “enemy,” the way the British do, and go out and say, “Let’s prepare for war against this chosen, designated enemy”? Should we go out and pick out official enemies of the United States, and stage wars with them, simply to have somebody to shoot at, or someone to hate?

Is that our policy?…

We start from scratch and we build an order, which is designed to bring peace.

Now, as a result of that Treaty of Westphalia and the agreement to this principle, we have the emergence of a policy, not a perfect policy, but the emergence of policies which included what became the policies of the United States, what became essentially the policy of community of principle as expressed by Secretary of State John Quincy Adams.

So, when we have adversaries in the world, we don’t go around trying to punish people. We don’t go into countries and spank them, because we don’t like their internal conduct. You don’t do that. Only idiots or warmongers do that. It’s not allowed. Don’t try to legislate morals at the point of a bayonet, of invading or occupying troops. That leads to the worst result.

And when people say, “Well, it’s a terrible crime. We’re morally offended. We’ve got to go in there and straighten these people out,” all you’re doing is you’re spreading war. You’re spreading war that cannot be stopped! Because, now, the people who are going in to do the punishing are the new criminals, and hatred of those criminals will result in people taking reprisals against them! And when they take reprisals, then the people who are the victims of their taking reprisals will become angry, and they will kill, too!

So, the solution to war, as has always been understood by the great strategists of modern European civilization, and also China, is to bring peace!

Now, how do you build peace? Well, certain principles: Do we agree that a sovereign nation-state is a fundamental human right, established by modern European civilization? So the first human right we must agree upon, is the sovereignty of the other nation-state. If we can agree on that, we’ve got a start. If we agree that the purpose of treaty relations is to find mutually beneficial effects: Do we want to promote trade? Do we want to promote the benefits of trade? Do we want to see other nations more secure? More internally secure, with happier people, less likely to get angry and start doing terrible things?

Let’s find a new way. Let’s stop talking about, “we want to fight for this, we want to fight for that, we want to fight against this”—let’s stop that nonsense! Let’s say, what is it that we really need? Can’t we find a way to cooperate, and build peace, and build security, and build cooperation? Can’t we go to others and say, isn’t common justice so much in the interest of us all? Haven’t we learned our lesson? Isn’t it time that we cooperate? Isn’t it time that we build a system which is consistent with the interests of us all, as they tried to do, in the very difficult negotiations which established the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648? That’s what the policy must be.