Vært Matthew Ogden: Det er i dag den 23. marts, 2018, en meget gunstig dato: Det er nemlig 35 års dagen for en meget vigtig dato, som var 23. marts, 1983, hvor præsident Ronald Reagan annoncerede vedtagelsen af det Strategiske Forsvarsinitiativ (SDI; Strategic Defense Initiative). I dag er det et meget passende tidspunkt for at bedømme den stadigt mere presserene nødvendige vedtagelse af en ny sikkerhedsarkitektur for planeten, og den samtidige nye økonomiske arkitektur, som må ledsage den.
Vi befinder os i et meget dramatisk øjeblik i verdenshistorien, og jeg mener, at, hvis vi træder et skridt tilbage og ser på det store billede, så står det klart, at verdensordenen, som vi har kendt den i de seneste 70 år, er i færd med at undergå en total transformation. Og udfaldet af de strategiske kampe, der raser netop nu, både på den nationale scene her i USA, men især på den globale scene; udfaldet af disse strategiske kampe vil afgøre menneskehedes historie i mange generationer fremover.
Med de begivenheder, der har fundet sted i løbet af de seneste tre uger, siden den russiske præsident Vladimir Putin den 1. marts annoncerede, at Rusland havde udviklet en helt ny generation af strategiske våben, baseret på avancerede fysiske [principper], og som er i stand til at gennemtrænge alle kendte forsvarssystemer, har vi set, hvor dramatisk nødvendigt det er, med det presserende i en sådan ny sikkerhedsarkitektur. Ikke én, der bygger på Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD; garanteret gensidig ødelæggelse), men derimod én, der bygger på win-win-overlevelse og økonomisk fremskridt for alle nationer på denne planet; nødvendigheden heraf bliver i stigende grad mere presserende. Jeg vil gerne fremhæve, hvad præsident Putin selv sagde i denne tale 1. marts til den føderale forsamling:
Han sagde:
» … lad os sætte os ved forhandlingsbordet og sammen udtænke et nyt og relevant system for international sikkerhed og bæredygtig udvikling for menneskelig civilisation. … Dette er et vendepunkt for hele verden og for dem, der er villige til, og i stand til, at forandre sig; de, der handler og går fremad, vil tage føringen.«
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/56957
Men, snarere end klart og nøgternt at vurdere denne ændrede, strategiske virkelighed, med denne game-changing tale af Ruslands præsident, og besvare dette tilbud for at forhandle, med hans ord, »et nyt og relevant system for international sikkerhed og bæredygtig udvikling for menneskelig civilisation«, for endelig at bringe denne nihilistiske dødsspiral med stadigt mere dødbringende masseudslettelsesvåben til en afslutning; snarere end at gøre dette, har briterne og deres såkaldte »partnere« i Europa forsøgt at oppiske en generel støtte til en krigskonfrontation mod Rusland ved anvendelse af det, Labour-partiets leder, Jeremy Corbyn, meget korrekt karakteriserede som det, han kaldte »fejlbehæftet efterretning« og »uvederhæftige dossiers« af den type, som blev brugt til at retfærdiggøre invasionen af Irak. Og som Jeremy Corbyn advarede om, så bør vi ikke »affinde os med en ny Kold Krig … og en intolerance over for dissens som under McCarthy-perioden«.
Som Helga Zepp-LaRouche i går understregede i sin internationale webcast, så har briterne og Theresa May, i deres forsøg på at gennemtvinge en sådan krigsprovokation, overspillet deres hånd. Deres metoder og deres mål står nu afsløret for hele verden at se. På trods af Theresa Mays bestræbelser på at presse præsident Trump over i et hjørne, hvor han ikke ville vove at forsøge at tage skridt, der ville gøre det muligt for ham at honorere sin forpligtelse til at forbedre relationerne med Rusland; snarere end at lade sig blive bakket ind i et hjørne, som Helga Zepp-LaRouche sagde, så udmanøvrerede præsident Trump imidlertid hele operationen ved at tage telefonen og ringe til præsident Putin og lykønske ham med genvalget og hans næste periode som Ruslands præsident, og fortsatte med en meget sober diskussion mellem de to statsoverhoveder om nogle af de meget vigtige, fælles bestræbelser og fælles udfordringer, som disse to nationer, USA og Rusland, sammen konfronteres med; og som, hvis vi fik lov at gøre det, vi kunne arbejde sammen om at løse, såsom krisen i Syrien; såsom muligheden for et totalt gennembrud for fred på Koreahalvøen; såsom den igangværende situation i Ukraine; og meget signifikant, såsom at forhindre et nyt våbenkapløb.
Umiddelbart efter denne telefonsamtale, blev pressen, som I kan tænke jer, hysterisk, og Det Hvide Hus’ pressesekretær Sarah Sanders holdt en pressekonference i briefing-værelset i Det Hvide Hus, hvor hun ikke mindre end et halvt dusin gange understregede den absolutte betydning af at opretholde en dialog mellem USA og Rusland på lederskabsniveau, omkring fælles interesser og fælles udfordringer.
Jeg vil afspille nogle eksempler på nogle at disse gentagne udtalelser fra Sarah Sanders på denne pressebriefing i Det Hvide Hus.
Her følger engelsk udskrift af resten af webcastet:
SARAH SANDERS: We want to continue to have a dialogue with
Russia, and continue to talk about some of the shared interests
we have, whether it’s North Korea, Iran, and particularly as the
President noted today, slowing the tensions when it comes to an
arms race, something that is clearly important to both
leaders….
We want to continue to have dialogue so that we can work on
some of the issues that concern both countries, and we’re going
to continue to do that, while also continuing to be tough on a
number of things….
The President once again has maintained that it’s important
for us to have a dialogue with Russia so that we can focus on
some areas of shared interests…
These are conversations that sometimes take place, and
certainly the President finds there to be an importance in having
that dialogue with Russia so that we can talk about some of the
big problems that face the world….
We disagree with the fact that we shouldn’t have
conversations with Russia. There are important topics that we
should be able to discuss, and that is why the President’s going
to continue to have that dialogue.
Again the focus was to talk about areas of shared interests.
We know that we need to continue a dialogue. It’s important for
a lot of the safety and security of people across the globe. We
would like to be able to work with them on things like North
Korea, on Iran, and also both countries shared interest in
lowering the tensions when it comes to an arms race, recognizing
that that’s not the best thing for either country, and so we want
to be able to have those conversations and that was the point of
today’s call…. [end video]
OGDEN: So, that’s a very clear message, obviously. Now, on
the same day, President Trump himself reiterated exactly the same
points in a couple of tweets that he posted, and I would like to
just read you those tweets. He said:
“I called President Putin of Russia to congratulate him on
his election victory (in past, Obama called him also). The Fake
News Media is crazed because they wanted me to excoriate him.
They are wrong! Getting along with Russia (and others) is a good
thing, not a bad thing.”
“They can help solve problems with North Korea, Syria,
Ukraine, ISIS, Iran, and even the coming Arms Race. Bush tried
to get along, but didn’t have the ‘smarts.’ Obama and Clinton
tried, but didn’t have the energy or chemistry (remember RESET).
PEACE THROUGH STRENGTH!” he concludes.
Now of course that final phrase is a quotation directly from
President Ronald Reagan. And this direct reference is a very
timely one, and perhaps is not merely a coincidental one: As I
said, today, March 23rd, is the 35th anniversary of one of the
groundbreaking moments in modern history, and it’s one which
completely reshaped the global, strategic geometry at that time,
and which remains immediately relevant all the way up to the
present day.
That moment, March 23rd, 1983 was representative of a
complete shock, a shock wave which was felt around the world.
This was the surprise announcement by President Ronald Reagan at
the conclusion of a live, national television broadcast which was
an address to the nation, nominally on national security. But
what President Reagan did at the conclusion of that broadcast, to
the surprise of almost all of his leading advisors in the White
House even, was to announce what came to be known as the
Strategic Defense Initiative, or SDI, what President Reagan
called a “vision of the future, which offers hope.”
In the speech, what President Reagan did was that he
committed the United States to a crash program, a crash
scientific program for the development of advanced technologies
which would be based on new physical principles to
(quote/unquote) “free the world from the threat of nuclear war.”
And so, in so doing, President Reagan completely overthrew the
ideology of retaliatory nuclear deterrence through the threat of
instantaneous, total nuclear response in the event of the
detection of a nuclear attack against the territory of the United
States. This was what was so-called Mutually Assured Destruction
(MAD).
President Reagan completely rejected the very premise of
Mutually Assured Destruction and in so doing, Reagan shocked the
world, and truly did change the course of world history. So,
right now, why don’t we wind the clock back 35 years, and listen
to what the world heard on that night, March 23rd, 1983:
My fellow Americans, thank you for sharing your time with me
tonight.
The subject I want to discuss with you, peace and national
security, is both timely and important. Timely, because I’ve
reached a decision which offers a new hope for our children in
the 21st century…
The defense policy of the United States is based on a simple
premise: The United States does not start fights. We will never
be an aggressor. We maintain our strength in order to deter and
defend against aggression — to preserve freedom and peace.
Since the dawn of the atomic age, we’ve sought to reduce the
risk of war by maintaining a strong deterrent and by seeking
genuine arms control. “Deterrence” means simply this: making
sure any adversary who thinks about attacking the United States,
or our allies, or our vital interests, concludes that the risks
to him outweigh any potential gains. Once he understands that, he
won’t attack. We maintain the peace through our strength;
weakness only invites aggression.
This strategy of deterrence has not changed. It still works.
But what it takes to maintain deterrence has changed. It took one
kind of military force to deter an attack when we had far more
nuclear weapons than any other power; it takes another kind now
that the Soviets, for example, have enough accurate and powerful
nuclear weapons to destroy virtually all of our missiles on the
ground. Now, this is not to say that the Soviet Union is planning
to make war on us. Nor do I believe a war is inevitable — quite
the contrary. But what must be recognized is that our security is
based on being prepared to meet all threats.
There was a time when we depended on coastal forts and
artillery batteries, because, with the weaponry of that day, any
attack would have had to come by sea. Well, this is a different
world, and our defenses must be based on recognition and
awareness of the weaponry possessed by other nations in the
nuclear age….
Now, thus far tonight I’ve shared with you my thoughts on
the problems of national security we must face together. My
predecessors in the Oval Office have appeared before you on other
occasions to describe the threat posed by Soviet power and have
proposed steps to address that threat. But since the advent of
nuclear weapons, those steps have been increasingly directed
toward deterrence of aggression through the promise of
retaliation.
This approach to stability through offensive threat has
worked. We and our allies have succeeded in preventing nuclear
war for more than three decades. In recent months, however, my
advisors, including in particular the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have
underscored the necessity to break out of a future that relies
solely on offensive retaliation for our security.
Over the course of these discussions, I’ve become more and
more deeply convinced that the human spirit must be capable of
rising above dealing with other nations and human beings by
threatening their existence. Feeling this way, I believe we must
thoroughly examine every opportunity for reducing tensions and
for introducing greater stability into the strategic calculus on
both sides….
Wouldn’t it be better to save lives than to avenge them? Are
we not capable of demonstrating our peaceful intentions by
applying all our abilities and our ingenuity to achieving a truly
lasting stability? I think we are. Indeed, we must.
After careful consultation with my advisors, including the
Joint Chiefs of Staff, I believe there is a way. Let me share
with you a vision of the future which offers hope. It is that we
embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat
with measures that are defensive. Let us turn to the very
strengths in technology that spawned our great industrial base
and that have given us the quality of life we enjoy today.
What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that
their security did not rest upon the threat of instant U.S.
retaliation to deter a Soviet attack, that we could intercept and
destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own
soil or that of our allies?
I know this is a formidable, technical task, one that may
not be accomplished before the end of this century. Yet, current
technology has attained a level of sophistication where it’s
reasonable for us to begin this effort….
I clearly recognize that defensive systems have limitations
and raise certain problems and ambiguities. If paired with
offensive systems, they can be viewed as fostering an aggressive
policy, and no one wants that. But with these considerations
firmly in mind, I call upon the scientific community in our
country, those who gave us nuclear weapons, to turn their great
talents now to the cause of mankind and world peace, to give us
the means of rendering these nuclear weapons impotent and
obsolete.
Tonight, consistent with our obligations of the ABM treaty
and recognizing the need for closer consultation with our allies,
I’m taking an important first step. I am directing a
comprehensive and intensive effort to define a long-term research
and development program to begin to achieve our ultimate goal of
eliminating the threat posed by strategic nuclear missiles. This
could pave the way for arms control measures to eliminate the
weapons themselves. We seek neither military superiority nor
political advantage. Our only purpose — one all people share —
is to search for ways to reduce the danger of nuclear war.
My fellow Americans, tonight we’re launching an effort which
holds the promise of changing the course of human history. There
will be risks, and results take time. But I believe we can do it.
As we cross this threshold, I ask for your prayers and your
support.
Thank you, good night, and God bless you. [end video]
OGDEN: That was 35 years ago today.
Now, just as a side note, incidentally, President Trump is
not ignorant of this history. In 1999, far before he ever was a
candidate for President, in a an interview with none other than
Wolf Blitzer on CNN, President Trump actually addressed what he
thought of as the necessity for the Strategic Defense Initiative,
but also the necessity for sitting down and having talks to work
out the tensions between the United States and Russia. Here’s
just a quick quote from President Trump. He said:
“As far as nuclear is concerned, this country, us, we need a
shield….”
Wolf Blitzer said, “A Strategic Defense Initiative?”
And Trump affirmed that, saying, “Because Russia is
unstable. We need a missile defense shield. People used to
criticize Reagan, but now it’s very developable. We need a
shield…. We need a change. The ABM Treaty was 1972. Who knew
what technology would develop? We have to sit down with the
Russians and many others.”
So, that was just a side note. That was Nov. 28, 1999. But
as I think you can see, now-President Trump remains committed to
that inclination to sit down with the Russians and many others —
North Korea, for example; and to resolve these nuclear threats.
If you just go back again to that date in 1983, this was 35
years ago. In President Reagan’s own words, he said that what he
announced that night would, indeed, change the course of world
history; and it did. And, it took most of the world completely
by surprise. But, it didn’t come out of nowhere, and this
history is very important for viewers to understand.
Let me just read you a portion of what Lyndon LaRouche had
to say at that time. This is a statement that he issued the
morning following that historic speech, so this is from March 24,
1983. What Mr. LaRouche had to say was the following:
“Only high-level officials of government, or a private
citizen as intimately knowledgeable of details of the
international political and strategic situation as I am
privileged to be, can even begin to foresee the Earth-shaking
impact the President’s television address last night will have
throughout the world…. [T]he words the President spoke last
night can never be put back into the bottle. Most of the world
will soon know, and will never forget that policy announcement.
With those words, the President has changed the course of modern
history.
“Today I am prouder to be an American than I have been since
the first manned landing on the Moon. For the first time in 20
years, a President of the United States has contributed a public
action of great leadership, to give a new basis for hope for
humanity’s future to an agonized and demoralized world. True
greatness in an American President touched President Ronald
Reagan last night; it is a moment of greatness never to be
forgotten.”
So that was Lyndon LaRouche, March 24, 1983. Now, as
LaRouche alluded to in that statement, he was no bystander or
casual observer of the events of that night President Reagan
announced the SDI. In fact, the grand idea behind what Reagan
announced that night, came directly from none other than Lyndon
LaRouche himself. I would like to play for you a brief excerpt
of Mr. LaRouche, in his own words, speaking about the background
to what had shocked the world that night — March 23, 1983. This
is taken from a video that LaRouche PAC published about ten years
ago, back in 2008, on the 25th anniversary of the SDI speech.
The video was titled “A Brief History of Lyndon LaRouche’s SDI.”
So, let’s listen to what Mr. LaRouche had to say in that video.
LYNDON LAROUCHE
: I had been organizing the SDI
operation, including initially from 1977, long before it was
called an SDI. I was the one who said, “We’re going to make a
project of this thing.” So, I adopted this and stated this as my
program in 1979, when I was running as a Presidential candidate.
Then, I had this conservation with Reagan, and then as a
follow-up after he was President, we had a follow-up with various
people in the Reagan circle; including his National Security
Council. I was working with the head of the National Security
Council on this operation, and with people from the CIA and this
and that. I was sworn to this and sworn to that, so I was doing
the whole thing. The SDI was my work, which they liked. And
there was a faction, including the President, who liked it. He
liked it because he was against, he always hated Henry Kissinger;
and he hated Henry Kissinger particularly because of the
so-called “revenge weapons.” The idea that you build super
weapons, and if somebody throws a bomb at you, you obliterate the
planet. That is not considered a good defense, and he was
against that. When he saw from experts that what I was saying
was accepted experts — military and others — and this was
French intelligence, the leadership of the Gaullist faction in
France; this was the leadership of the German military; this was
the leadership of the Italian military, and all over the world.
So, I was the creator of the SDI. Reagan liked it, he adopted
it. I was creating the thing in direct cooperation during the
entire period, with the cooperation of the National Security
Council and the heads of the CIA. People recognized that I was
right; I had the scientific capability and knowledge to do it,
and we were doing it.
OGDEN: So, that’s the story in Lyndon LaRouche’s own words.
That is merely the tip of a very fascinating iceberg. We
encourage you to watch that full video that I cited that that
excerpt was taken from. But also, to visit the page on the
LaRouche PAC website which gives you the full background of this
story. As you can see there, the link is larouchepac.com/sdi.
That gives you this full, historic background. But as you heard
Mr. LaRouche say there in that video clip, this effort on his
part to craft the idea of what then became adopted by the
President of the United States in the form of the SDI, this
effort went all the way back to the mid-1970s. Here’s an image
of a campaign pamphlet which was commissioned by Lyndon LaRouche,
titled “Sputnik of the ’70s: The Science behind the Soviets’ Beam
Weapon.” In this pamphlet, Lyndon LaRouche called for an
international crash program to develop a space-based missile
defense system based on new physical principles. A Manhattan
project-style mission which would provide the economic driver to
fuel global development. The pamphlet proposed .”.. Long-range
economic and scientific collaboration with the Soviet Union,
among other nations, which would eliminate the danger of world
obliteration,” and it emphasized .”.. Tremendous revolutionary
industrial implications available to this nation and the world if
the political will of the United States forces a recommitment to
technological progress in the form of an International
Development Bank and its national concomitant Third National
Bank.”
So, as you can see, Lyndon LaRouche’s idea of this missile
defense system, was always framed around the idea of not
unilateral defense systems, but rather, a joint missile defense
and joint scientific and economic collaboration between the
United States and the Soviet Union. To do so, would be to
unleash the revolutionary industrial and economic implications of
such technological breakthroughs as the basis for a new
international, economic order; something which he had been
involved in all the way back to at least 1971 when he first
issued the proposal for a new International Development Bank —
the so-called IDB. So you can see in LaRouche’s idea, the kernel
of what became the SDI, always had with it a new international
security architecture, overthrowing this entire reign of terror
of Mutually Assured Destruction and revenge weapons. But
concomitantly, a new international economic order, which would be
driven by the revolutionary, unprecedented economic boom that
would come out of the progress associated with such technological
breakthroughs around these new physical principles in the
collaboration of US and Soviet scientists to develop this joint
missile defense to make International Ballistic Missile and
nuclear war impotent and obsolete.
The history is as fascinating as it is extensive. Here is
not the time or the place to go through every single aspect of
this history; but the full background, again as I said is
available on that webpage — larouchepac.com/sdi. But if you
fast forward from that pamphlet “Sputnik of the ’70s” all the way
to the lead-up into the 1980 Presidential campaign in which
Lyndon LaRouche himself was a candidate for President of the
United States. Let’s take a look at a picture here of Lyndon
LaRouche meeting face-to-face with then-candidate Ronald Reagan
at a candidates’ forum that took place in Concord, New Hampshire.
During this face-to-face meeting and in several other
opportunities to interface with the Reagan campaign team, Lyndon
LaRouche presented this idea, in principle and in detail.
Following Reagan’s victory and his election, Lyndon LaRouche and
representatives of his organization, were brought in for meetings
with first the Reagan Presidential transition team, and then with
leading members of the National Security Council and Reagan’s
intelligence community. They discussed LaRouche’s idea for this
new strategic doctrine, and the related scientific and energy
policies that would go along with it. So, Lyndon LaRouche
commissioned numerous reports and campaign pamphlets promoting
this idea. As you can see here, this is from {Fusion}; this is a
special report titled “Directed Energy Beams; A Weapon for
Peace.” Here’s the next one; this is an edition of the
{Executive Intelligence Review} magazine from November 30, 1982.
Again, before the March 23, 1983 announcement of the SDI. This
was titled “Beam Weapons: The Science to Prevent Nuclear War.”
Here’s another one; this is a pamphlet. “How Beam Weapon
Technologies Can Reverse the Depression.” So, all along, this
was always an economic idea from Lyndon LaRouche’s standpoint.
As you can see, being an American at this point, in the years
preceding the 1980 Presidential election and then coming out of
Reagan’s victory, 1980, ’81, ’82, the idea of this Beam Defense
system which would be based on new physical principles, was
associated — including in the popular mind — it was associated
with Lyndon LaRouche. And it had been associated with Lyndon
LaRouche for at least half a decade prior to Reagan’s historic,
groundbreaking speech.
The morning after Reagan’s March 23rd address, the media was
scrambling to try to find experts to interview to explain what it
was that Reagan had presented the night before. Naturally, they
had to turn to representatives of the LaRouche organization.
Here’s a photograph of Paul Gallagher, who was at that time
Executive Director of the Fusion Energy Foundation, appearing on
CBS’ Evening News program on March 24, 1983 — the day following
Reagan’s address — to explain the science behind Reagan’s policy
that had been announced the evening before.
Immediately following Reagan’s address to the nation, Lyndon
LaRouche launched a mass educational campaign to educate the
American people as to what their President had just presented.
He published and commissioned the publication of numerous mass
circulation reports to inform the American people and also
policymakers on the details of how such a program would work.
This image here is an array of different publications that were
issued by the LaRouche movement, supporting Reagan’s announcement
of the Strategic Defense Initiative and detailing the scientific,
the economic, and the military-strategic implications of the
policy. There you can see one pamphlet — “Support the
President’s Strategic Defense Initiative; Kill Missiles, Not
People.”
As should be very clear, Lyndon LaRouche was in a leading
position of authority following this groundbreaking announcement,
and the influence that his ideas had come to wield put him in a
position of real power inside the political structure of the
Presidency of the United States. He used that influence to
launch and to escalate on his campaign to completely reorganize
the entire international economic and strategic architecture of
the planet. Let’s take a look at a document that Lyndon LaRouche
released exactly one year following Reagan’s March 23, 1983
announcement of the SDI program. This was called “The LaRouche
Doctrine: Draft Memorandum of Agreement between the United
States and the USSR.” This was published March 30, 1984. Let me
read you some excerpts from what Lyndon LaRouche published under
this title “The LaRouche Doctrine.” He begins by saying:
“The political foundation for durable peace must be: a) The
unconditional sovereignty of each and all nation-states, and b)
Cooperation among sovereign nation-states to the effect of
promoting unlimited opportunities to participate in the benefits
of technological progress, to the mutual benefit of each and all.
“The most crucial feature of present implementation of such
a policy of durable peace is a profound change in the monetary,
economic, and political relations between the dominant powers and
those relatively subordinated nations often classed as
‘developing nations.’ Unless the inequities lingering in the
aftermath of modern colonialism are progressively remedied, there
can be no durable peace on this planet.
“Insofar as the United States and Soviet Union acknowledge
the progress of the productive powers of labor throughout the
planet to be in the vital strategic interests of each and both,
the two powers are bound to that degree and in that way by a
common interest. This is the kernel of the political and economic
policies of practice indispensable to the fostering of durable
peace between those two powers.
.”.. [T]he general advancement of the productive powers of
labor in all sovereign states, most emphatically so-called
developing nations, requires global emphasis on: a) increasing
globally the percentiles of the labor force employed in
scientific research and related functions of research and
development … b) increasing the absolute and relative scales of
capital-goods production and also
the rate of turnover in capital-goods production; and c)
combining these two factors to accelerate technological progress
in capital-goods outputs.
“Therefore, high rates of export of such capital-goods
output to meet the needs of developing nations are indispensable
for the general development of so-called developing nations: Our
common goal, and our common interest, is promoting both the
general welfare and promoting preconditions of durable peace
between our two powers….
“By supplying increased amounts of high-technology capital
goods to developing nations, the exporting economies foster
increased rates of turnover in their own most advanced
capital-goods sectors of production….
“The importer of such advanced capital goods increases the
productive powers of labor in the economy of the importing
nation. This enables the importing nation to produce its goods at
a lower average social cost, and enables it to provide
better-quality and cheaper goods as goods of payment to the
nations exporting capital goods.
“Not only are the causes of simple humanity and general
peace served by such policies of practice; the arrangement is
equally beneficial to exporting and importing nations….
.”.. [T]he general rate of advancement of the productive
powers of labor is most efficiently promoted by no other policy
of practice.”
Then a little later in the report, he reviews the situation
of strategic tensions between the USSR and the United States. He
says:
“Since the rupture of the wartime alliance between the two
powers, U.S. military policy toward the Soviet Union has passed
through two phases. The first, from the close of the war until a
point beyond the death of Joseph Stalin, was preparation for the
contingency of what was sometimes named ‘preventive nuclear war.’
The second, emerging over the period from the death of Stalin
into the early period of the administration of President John F.
Kennedy, was based on the doctrines of Nuclear Deterrence and
Flexible Response …
“From approximately 1963 until approximately 1977, it might
have appeared, as it appeared to many, that the doctrines of
Nuclear Deterrence and Flexible Response had succeeded in
preserving a state of restive peace, something called ‘détente,’
between the two powers. This appearance was deceptive; during the
period 1977-83, there was an accelerating deterioration in the
military relationships between the two powers….
“Beginning shortly after the inauguration of President Jimmy
Carter, the deterioration of the military situation
accelerated….
“In response to this direction of developments, the U.S.
public figure Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. proposed that both powers
develop, deploy, and agree to develop and deploy ‘strategic’
defensive, anti-ballistic-missile defense based on ‘new physical
principles.’ This proposal was issued publicly by LaRouche
beginning February 1982; he proposed to U.S.A., Western European,
and Soviet representatives that the development and deployment of
such strategic defensive systems be adopted policy, as a means
for escaping from the ‘logic’ of Nuclear Deterrence….
.”.. The true solution must be found in the domain of
politics and economics, and the further shaping of military
relations between the powers must produce military policies by
each coherent with the direction of development of the needed
political and economic solutions….
“On the part of the United States of America, the government
is committed to avoiding all colonial, imperial, or kindred
endeavors in foreign policy, and to establish, instead, a growing
community of principle among fully sovereign nation-states of
this planet. This shall become a community of principle coherent
with the policies of the articles of this draft memorandum. If
any force should endeavor to destroy that community of principle,
or any member of that community of sovereign nations, the United
States will be prepared to defend that community and its members
by means of warfare, should other means prove insufficient. With
respect to the Soviet Union, the government of the United States
offers the Soviet Union cooperation with itself in service of
these principles, and desires that the Soviet Union might enter
fully into participation within that community of principle….
“Under these conditions, provided that all nations share in
development of the frontiers of scientific research, in
laboratories, and in educational institutions, all nations will
be made capable of assimilating efficiently the technological
by-product benefits of the military expenditures on systems
derived from application of ‘new physical principles.’
“To lend force to this policy, the powers agree to establish
new institutions of cooperation between themselves and other
nations in development of these new areas of scientific
breakthrough for application to exploration of space.
“To this purpose, the powers agree to establish at the
earliest possible time institutions for cooperation in scientific
exploration of space, and to also co-sponsor treaty-agreements
protecting national and multinational programs for colonization
of the Moon and Mars.
“At some early time, the powers shall enter into
deliberations, selecting dates for initial manned colonization of
the Moon and Mars, and the establishment of international space
stations on the Moon and in the orbits of Moon and Mars, stations
to be maintained by and in the common interest and use of space
parties of all nations.
“The powers jointly agree upon the adoption of two tasks as
the common interest of mankind, as well as the specific interest
of each of the two powers: 1) The establishment of full economic
equity respecting the conditions of individual life in all
nations of this planet during a period of not more than 50 years;
2) Man’s exploration and colonization of nearby space as the
continuing common objective and interest of mankind during and
beyond the completion of the first task. The adoption of these
two working-goals as the common task and respective interest in
common of the two powers and other cooperating nations,
constitutes the central point of reference for erosion of the
potential political and economic causes of warfare between the
powers.”
That was known as the “LaRouche Doctrine,” published March
30, 1984. As you can see, what Lyndon LaRouche outlined in that
document was the basis for exactly what we’re calling now a new
international economic and strategic architecture. In fact, the
one requires the other. You cannot have a new strategic
architecture without resolving what Lyndon LaRouche characterized
as the root causes behind the conflict between these nations; the
persisting inequalities between nations. And you cannot have the
kind of cooperation needed for the common, mutual economic
development and the application of these groundbreaking new
physical principles and the technologies that are derived from
those, without the establishment of a new international economic
order. Elsewhere in that document, Mr. LaRouche described
exactly how such an economic order must take place; with fixed
exchange rates between currencies, massive credits — both
domestically within countries for the upgrading of the
technological and infrastructure platforms within those nations
— but also, international credit treaty agreements in the form
of what he originally described in 1971 as the International
Development Bank, or the IDB.
As you can see, and I think any astute reader of that
document now, almost 35 years later, that document laid the basis
for what we now see as the so-called “win-win” new economic
paradigm. This idea of the common benefit of all; mutual
cooperation for joint development; the upgrading of the so-called
“developing” nations, which were still suffering under the
effects of colonialism and post-colonial policy. So, when
President Xi Jinping of China speaks about “win-win” economic
development and a new community of nations with a shared destiny,
I think that the echoes couldn’t be more clear of what Lyndon
LaRouche himself was describing at that time in the middle of the
1980s, almost 35 years ago today. When Xi Jinping offers the
United States to join this new “win-win” system, the Belt and
Road Initiative, which is already resolving these persisting
inequalities that the world has been suffering, such as in Africa
or Central and South America. Or, when President Putin offers to
“sit down at the negotiating table and devise together a new and
relevant system of international security and sustainable
development for human civilization,” we should reflect on what
was laid in that document. That LaRouche Doctrine now almost 35
years ago today, in the wake of that history-changing
announcement by President Ronald Reagan, at which he called a
spade a spade. The world could no longer survive under the
dictatorship of Mutually Assured Destruction; that reign of
terror that President Kennedy characterized as the Sword of
Damocles hanging by the slenderest of threads over every man,
woman, and child on this planet, threatening nuclear
annihilation. What Lyndon LaRouche characterized at that moment
as the “LaRouche Doctrine” is the principle behind the new
economic and new security architecture which must be adopted on
this planet today. Not as a recipe, not taking everything
exactly as it was said, because clearly of course, the world has
changed; and we must apply the principles that lay at the root of
exactly what Lyndon LaRouche had in mind when he proposed the
Strategic Defense Initiative and when he proposed the subsequent
LaRouche Doctrine, and apply those to evolve necessarily to fit
the specific conditions of today.
One thing that Lyndon LaRouche alluded to explicitly in that
document, was the need for joint cooperation in the colonization
and exploration of space. In fact, that is the form that the
idea of a revived SDI has actually been taken. The proposal for
not an SDI, but what’s now called an SDE — the Strategic Defense
of Earth — to literally re-tool the strategic nuclear weapons
with these massive payloads that have been accumulated by the
United States, Russia, also other nations — China and India and
other nations. To re-tool those nuclear weapons and also the
delivery systems, these high-power intercontinental ballistic
missiles, and also the new technologies that Russia has just
announced. To re-tool these technologies and have what were
offensive weapons become defensive tools against asteroids and
other threats to planet Earth which we may encounter from outer
space. While this was proposed under that name, the SDE, by
certain individuals inside Russia about five years ago,
coinciding with the 30th anniversary of the original SDI speech.
What this originally actually came out of, had its origins in the
late 1980s and the early 1990s with the scientist Dr. Edward
Teller. Teller was actually one of the leading scientific
advisors of President Reagan in the 1980s around the SDI
initiative, but following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Dr.
Edward Teller travelled to Russia and visited some of the leading
science cities that had been involved in developing nuclear
weapons and their delivery systems. He met with some of the
leading former Soviet scientists, the Russian scientists, and
proposed exactly this. He proposed the idea of the United States
and Russia saying the Cold War is over; let’s now cease this
policy of aiming our nuclear missiles one against the other, and
let’s now aim them against the common threats that mankind as a
whole faces. Especially with the latest news of an asteroid
which poses a credible threat — what’s called a “non-zero
threat” — to the Earth in the foreseeable future, which was
just discussed in the media over the past week, this proposal is
all the more timely and all the more relevant today.
So, what I’d like is to just play an excerpt from Helga
Zepp-LaRouche’s international webcast that she delivered
yesterday. She takes up exactly this idea, so here’s an excerpt
from Helga Zepp-LaRouche.
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE
: I think that the SDI proposal,
which was absolutely not what the media made out of it, calling
it “Star Wars,” and things like that, the SDI proposal of my
husband, Lyndon LaRouche was an absolutely farsighted vision of a
New Paradigm! And if you read the relevant papers about it,
especially the proposed draft for a dialogue among the
superpowers, which was published one year later, which you can
find in the archives or in the newer {EIR}s. This was a vision
where both superpowers would develop together, new physical
principles which would make nuclear weapons obsolete. And I
think what Putin announced on March 1st in terms of new physical
principles applied for new weapons systems, is absolutely is in
this tradition. And Putin also asked, now they have to sit down
and we have to negotiate and put together a new security
architecture, including Russia, the United States, China, and the
Europeans.
This was all envisioned by my husband in this famous SDI
proposal, and it was a very far-reaching to dissolve the blocs,
NATO and the Warsaw Pact, to cooperate instead among sovereign
republics, which is exactly what the New Silk Road dynamic today
represents. And it was also the idea to use a science-driver in
the economy to use the increased productivity of the real economy
for a gigantic technology transfer to the developing sector, in
order to overcome their underdevelopment and poverty.
And this is what we’re seeing today, also, in the
collaboration between China, Russia, and the countries that are
participating in the Belt and Road Initiative.
So I think, in a certain sense, part of this danger of peace
breaking out, that there is right now the very vivid tradition
and actualization of that tradition of the SDI, and I think we
should circulate this proposal by my husband again. I think we
should enlarge it to become the SDE, the Strategic Defense of the
Earth, because it was just discovered that very soon, another big
asteroid is already taking course on the planet Earth. So we need
to move quickly to the common aims of mankind, and all countries
should cooperate and be a shared community for the one future of
humanity.
This is the New Paradigm which I think is so obvious. I
mean, if you look at the long arc of history, we {have} to
overcome geopolitics and we have to move to a kind of cooperation
where we put all our forces together to solve those questions
which are a challenge to all of humanity — nuclear weapons,
poverty, asteroids — there are so many areas where we could
fruitfully cooperate — space exploration is one of them. And I
think we are in a very fascinating moment in history, but we need
more active citizens. So please contact us, work with us, and
let’s together make a better world.
OGDEN: So, that was Helga LaRouche’s call to action, and I
think that’s a perfect concluding point for our webcast today, as
we observe this very auspicious date — March 23rd — the 35th
anniversary of President Reagan’s groundbreaking speech
announcing the Strategic Defense Initiative. Let’s take that
kind of sense of victory and the optimism that indeed, ideas can
change the course of history, and consolidate this New Paradigm;
this new security architecture and new economic architecture for
the planet. The opportunity is greater than it ever has been
before; but the need is ever more dire.
Thank you for joining me, and please stay tuned to larouchepac.com.
