SCHILLER INSTITUTE CONFERENCE
Thursday, May 26, 2022

U.S. and European Military and Security Experts Warn:
The Insanity of Politicians Threatens Nuclear War

This is the edited transcript of the opening remarks to the May 26 Schiller Institute Conference, “The Insanity of Politicians Threatens Nuclear War,” which includes two important selections from Lyndon LaRouche (1922-2019). The video of the entire conference is available here.

Dennis Speed (moderator): Welcome to all around the world who are joining us for today’s Schiller Institute online conference, “U.S. and European Military and Security Experts Warn: The Insanity of Politicians Threatens Nuclear War.”

We’re told in various popular media and by various politicians that the battle in today’s world is between the autocracies versus the democracies. That’s sort of a way of saying “the good guys versus the bad guys.” We don’t agree with this characterization at all, and the economist and statesman, and cofounder of the Schiller Institute Lyndon LaRouche, always said, “When confronted with two bad choices, always choose the third.” Therefore we offer you, from Lyndon LaRouche’s 1997 document, “NATO in Caesar’s Foolish Footsteps,” a positive conception of the idea of the nation-state, the republic, as a higher idea, which does not deal with the mere form of government. In that document LaRouche said:

The development of the term ‘republic’ has nothing to do with elections, parliaments, or such differentia. The notion of ‘republic’ is associated with the notion of natural law as knowable to man in a self-perfecting way. In other words, that humanity, and specific nations of humanity, have proper fundamental interests and obligations as wholes, interests and obligations which exist independently of aggregates of individuals taken one at a time. The state as a whole has a real, knowable interest and obligation which stands above the relatively heteronomic perceptions of interest by any of its citizens.

However, that general interest of the state as a whole is, if properly known, the essential basis for satisfying the interests of its individuals. Thus, in the crudest sort of illustration, an economy in a depression can not satisfy the material requirements of even a majority of its individual citizens. There is no equitable division of a pie which taken as a whole is insufficient to keep all the would-be sharers alive.

In the course of his career, Lyndon LaRouche was known for his ability to bring great clarity to questions which were apparently very, very complex. And what we’re going to do, is to indicate to you how he answered questions, particularly considering war. In 1996, there was an exchange he had with a member of the audience at a Schiller Institute conference, about Lebanon. It was a very complex situation involving many different factors. And what he tried to do was to give the person, and the audience, a way of thinking about not Lebanon, not the conflict, not the area called the Middle East, but how to take the idea of the world as a whole, and then arrive at a strategic conception.

Lyndon LaRouche: (via video): You have to understand what’s going on here, because you can’t explain it, which is what people in Lebanon and so forth try to do, is explain it in terms of a nation-state, when that is not the controlling feature. Nor is it just Syria, nor is it Israel. What you have, remember, go back to 1945, April 12, 1945. That’s where all these things begin to become clear, because if you don’t put this in context, it isn’t clear. Remember, the genius of Riemannian physical geometry, is that you recognize that no event, contains its own cause. No local phase-space, contains its own characteristics. You have to define what is the kind of physical space-time, universal space-time; then you find the characteristics. Then, and only then can you understand.

This may seem like mathematics or mathematical physics, but it happens to be that everything is the same. Man’s relationship to the universe is governed by certain laws. In science there is no division between social behavior, mathematical physical behavior, the cognitive processes of the human mind, and anything else. So we have to get the fundamentals, in order to understand particulars. It is common practice to say, “Let’s look at the particular, and examine each particular question, try to answer those questions, then add the thing up and we get the world.” On the contrary, especially now, you have to start from the world as a whole…. [end video]

—Video from the Q&A following Mr. LaRouche’s keynote address to the Schiller Institute Conference, Aug. 31, 1996.

Speed: “Start from the world as a whole.” That’s been the approach of the Schiller Institute from its inception in 1984, and specifically, it’s been the distinctive contribution of its founder.

We’re now going to hear from the founder of the Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche. Helga, good morning.