This article appears in the July 21, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Schiller Institute Strasbourg Conference
Cooperation with the Global South
on World Development
[Print version of this article]
July 14—The Schiller Institute convened an extraordinary international conference July 8–9 in the historic city of Strasbourg, France, titled “On the Verge of a New World War, European Nations Must Cooperate with the Global South!” Attended by an international audience of over 200, the conference consisted of 5 panels on critical economic, strategic and cultural themes, with 31 speakers from 15 nations. This was the first in-person conference of the Schiller Institute in over three years due to the COVID-19 pandemic. It gave participants a wonderful opportunity to have real, face-to-face discussions!
With the trans-Atlantic financial system teetering on the brink of complete disintegration and Global NATO escalating its drive for war with Russia and China, this conference could not have happened at a more crucial time. Participants—speakers and audience alike—were able to exchange ideas and deliberate in a “dialogue of cultures” on both the causes of the crisis but also, more importantly, solutions. The overall theme of the conference, as expressed in the title, was creating the basis for all nations to cooperate for the purpose of peace through economic development, free from the evils of British geopolitics.
The contrast with other conferences sponsored by the Western “rules-based international order” could not be starker. On July 22–23 President Emmanuel Macron hosted in Paris the “Summit for a New Global Financing Pact,” demanding that nations of the Global South sacrifice their national sovereignty and submit to the “green imperialist” Malthusian agenda of the financial oligarchy under the guise of “fighting climate change.” And on July 11–12 the 2023 NATO Vilnius Summit in Lithuania mandated expanded military force deployment in the Ukraine proxy war against Russia, and expanded force in the Pacific aimed at China, taking the world in the direction of nuclear conflagration.
All 31 of the Strasbourg conference presentations and much of the discussion will be available in full in video and text by the end of July on the Schiller Institute website and the Schiller Institute YouTube channel.
This issue of EIR, in the following pages, provides transcripts of four presentations from the conference, three of which (from Argentina and France) focus on multi-national development planning and projects, in particular on nuclear power, and water. The fourth presentation (from an American) addresses the fact that the United States itself must join in, which means returning to its founding principles.