Vi befinder os midt i en kamp for USA’s sjæl. »Hvorhen, USA: Ny Silkevej, eller Atomkrig?« LaRouche PAC Internationale Webcast, 28. april, 2017

Vi befinder os midt i en kamp for USA’s sjæl, for det amerikanske præsidentskabs sjæl. Vi ser denne kamp blive mere intens over spørgsmålet, »Hvorhen, USA?«, med den titel, som Helga Zepp-LaRouche gav den nylige Schiller Institut-konference i New York City – »Hvorhen, USA: Ny Silkevej, eller Atomkrig?«. Der er i løbet af den seneste måned, siden det meget ukloge angreb, som Trump-administrationen beordrede mod Syrien, sket det, at det er kommet offentligt frem, at der rent faktisk finder et britiskanført kup sted i USA imod Trump-administrationen. Indholdet er de løgne, de fabrikerede efterretninger, der er kommet fra britisk efterretning og er blevet bulldozet hen over præsident Trump; meget på samme måde, som Tony Blair brugte løgnene om maseødelæggelsesvåben i 2003 for at bringe USA ind i Irakkrigen.

Vi må bruge det bedste fra alle kulturer og skabe en virkelig universel renæssance!

Vært Matthew Ogden: God aften; det er 28. april, 2017; jeg er Matthew Ogden; velkommen til vores LPAC webcast fredag aften, her på larouchepac.com. Med os i studiet i dag har vi en særlig gæst, Mike Billington fra Executive Intelligence Review (EIR), som vi har inviteret i dag pga. af den aktuelle, strategiske situations ekstraordinære natur.

Vi står naturligvis blot to uger fra det meget betydningsfulde Bælt & Vej-topmøde, der finder sted i Beijing, Kina, den 14. og 15. maj; og det er altså præcis to uger fra i morgen. Flere dusin statsoverhoveder fra lande i hele verden har bekræftet deres deltagelse. Som vi har rapporteret, så er den russiske præsident Putin inviteret som æresgæst til at deltage i Bælt & Vej-topmødet. Vi fortsætter vores kampagne for at opfordre præsident Donald Trump til at deltage i dette topmøde, som særlig gæst; og for at bruge det som hans mulighed for at gengælde præsident Xi Jinpings tilbud om, at USA kan gå med i det nye paradigme for udvikling og fred, som repræsenteres af Bælt & Vej, eller den Nye Silkevej.

Men dette var ikke et enestående tilfælde for Irak i 2003, eller for Syrien i 2017. Dette er den måde, hvorpå briterne har spillet deres imperiespil i det ene årti efter det andet; de har brugt USA som deres dumme kæmpe, med det formål, fortsat at holde verden opdelt. Denne del-og-hersk-strategi har været en britisk imperiestrategi i århundreder, og tiden er inde til, at USA bliver intelligent og siger, »Det er slut! Vi vil ikke lade os bruge på denne måde; og vi vil tage imod det Nye Paradigme med ’win-win’-samarbejde«. Briterne og deres rejsekammerater i USA har sandelig været meget ligefremme i deres forsøg på at destabilisere og vælte Trump-administrationen, fordi de var meget bange for, at han ville gennemføre, hvad han har sagt. Ikke flere regimeskift; ikke flere imperialistiske krige, og vi vil samarbejde med Rusland og med Kina. Det sidste var lidt mere komplekst, men det om Rusland var meget klart. Men som vi ved, så har præsident Trump og præsident Xi Jinping fra Kina, siden topmødet med præsident Xi, haft meget tætte, personlige relationer og har regelmæssigt haft samtaler. Denne kommunikationskanal er afgørende, især med det brændpunkt, som nu er vokset frem direkte på Kinas grænse, i tilfældet Nordkorea.

Vi vil bruge tilfældet Nordkorea som en case study, men i sammenhæng med denne meget bredere opfattelse af opgøret over, hvilket system, der i fremtiden vil styre verden: det imperialistiske del-og-hersk, eller et nyt ’win-win’-paradigme for fred og udvikling. I denne sammenhæng har vores gæst her i dag, Mike Billington, netop udgivet en ny artikel, som er en meget vigtig artikel, I bør læse . Den er meget klar. Den har den provokerende titel og stiller spørgsmålet, »Hvorfor er Korea ikke allerede genforenet?«.

(Artiklen findes i EIR’s seneste nummer, men er kun tilgængelig for abonnenter. Andre artikler kan læses gratis – se knappen EIR på vores hjemmeside. Du kan henvende dig til vores kontor mht. at tegne abonnement på EIR, tlf. 35 43 00 33 – red.)

Hermed giver jeg ordet til Mike og lader ham gennemgå lidt af indholdet, de aktuelle udviklinger, og så spørgsmålet, som han fremlægger i sin artikel:

(engelsk):

MICHAEL BILLINGTON: Thank you, Matt. In fact, the purpose
of this article was to show that the answer to that question is
that there is {no} legitimate reason that Korea is not peaceful
and at least on the way to reunification already. I’ll review
some of that material here. But let me start. There were some
extraordinary developments today; so let me give a short update
on the crisis. It has to be noted that this is a very serious
crisis, in the sense that were something like what happened with
Syria, where Trump was — as Matthew said — lied to coerced into
carrying out an attack against Syria for absolutely no reason; on
totally false intelligence. Were that to happen in Korea, this
would not be like an attack on an airbase in Syria. This would
lead to a total disaster throughout all of East Asia and perhaps
even global nuclear war. Whether or not they could take out
North Korea’s nuclear capacities, North Korea — as I’m sure
people know, because it’s all over the press — they have massive
conventional capacity. Their armaments lie a total of 30 miles
from the capital [of South Korea] Seoul, this beautiful,
developed, advanced city; which could be just absolutely wiped
out if there were a war. And they could possibly attack even
Japan, let alone US bases within South Korea; so this would be a
move of insanity. The Japanese and the South Koreans know this
very well. I should point out that our friends in South Korea
note that there is no panic in South Korea; because they’ve been
through these kinds of things before, and they simply assume that
nobody is crazy enough to launch a preemptive attack on North
Korea.
But, because of what happened in Syria, a lot of people —
including all of us — were very concerned that the British might
pull off another stunt and get Trump to go with this. What
happened today is extremely important. Trump himself did an
interview with Reuters, in which he said on North Korea, “We’d
love to solve things diplomatically, but it’s very difficult.
But Xi Jinping is playing a crucial role in this. I believe he’s
trying very hard. I know he would like to be able to do
something. Perhaps it’s possible that he can’t, but I think he’d
like to be able to do something.” Then, most extraordinarily, he
said about Kim Jung-Un, the leader in North Korea and grandson of
the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-Sung, he said, “He’s 27 years
old. His father dies; he took over a regime. So, say what you
want, that’s not easy; especially at that age. Now I’m not
giving him credit, or not giving him credit. I’m just saying
it’s a very hard thing to do. As to whether or not he’s
rational, I have no opinion, but I hope he’s rational.” So, this
is useful. He then returned again to the fact that he has very
good personal relations with Xi Jinping: “I feel that he’s doing
everything in his power to help us with a big situation. I
wouldn’t want to be causing difficulty right now for him; and I
certainly would want to speak to him first before taking any
action.” Very useful.
Then Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who chaired a meeting
at the UN Security Council this morning of ministers, taking the
place of that wacky lady we have in there right now speaking for
the US too often. But Tillerson was not wacky; not at all. He
was very clear in his presentation to the UN Security Council.
He said, “For too long, the international community has been
reactive in addressing North Korea. Those days must come to an
end. Failing to act now on the most pressing security issue in
the world may bring catastrophic consequences.” Now, what does
he mean to act now? The press headlines all over the world are
“Trump and Tillerson Are Threatening War on North Korea; They
Want To Act Now. It’s the End of Strategic Patience”, which was
the policy of Obama. But keep in mind, “strategic patience” was
not being patient; it was saying “We will not talk to North
Korea. We refuse to talk to North Korea; we simply sit back and
constantly increase the sanctions, increase the military build-up
around their border until they do what we say.” Which, of
course, they won’t do as long as they’re being threatened.
So, the question is, what does it mean to act now? Does it
not mean, let’s get back to talks, let’s negotiate. What the
President said about Kim Jung-Un is a very serious comment.
Here’s somebody who’s in a difficult position.
Then, Tillerson said the following: “Our goal is not regime
change. Nor do we desire to threaten the North Korean people, or
destabilize the Asia-Pacific region. Since 1995, the US has
provided $1.3 billion in aid to North Korea; and we look forward
to resuming our contributions once the country dismantles its
weapons program.” Now that 1995 is a reference to something
called the Agreed Framework, which I’m going to mention when I go
through some of the history on this.
Even more powerful, Tillerson — in an interview with NPR
before he went into the UN Security Council — said the
following: “You know, if you listen to the North Koreans, their
reason for having nuclear weapons is that they believe it is
their only pathway to secure the ongoing existence of their
regime. We hope to convince them that you do not these weapons
to secure the existence of your regime. We do not seek a
collapse of the regime. We do seek an accelerated reunification
of the peninsula; we seek a de-nuclearized peninsula, and China
shares this goal with us.”
Now these are very positive steps; and they refute the
British headlines and the {Washington Post} and {New York Times}
headlines that say “Get ready. We’re going to have a war in
Korea.” So, this I think is extremely important. Let me go
through a bit, some of the history of this; because even in my
reviewing to write this article, I was a bit astonished at how
close we were, twice before, to having a peaceful relationship in
the Korean peninsula and potentially even being reunified or
being on the course to reunification.
The key point, I think, is that the British assets in the
White House over the last 16 years — Bush and Cheney, and then
Obama, who served the British purpose of keeping the world
divided East and West, as Matthew was pointing out. The key to
doing that was making sure the US did not have good relations
with Russia, and making sure the US did not have good relations
with China. They used the South China Sea, they used Ukraine,
they used Syria; all of these really had nothing to do with the
South China Sea or Ukraine or Syria. They had to do with
preventing any potential for the US and Russia to work together,
and the US and China to work together. This is empire; that’s
the way empire works to keep the world divided, especially the
East-West divide.
Let’s go back to what Tillerson was referring to in 1995.
What happened was that the North Koreans were part of the UN
Non-Proliferation Treaty and non-nuclear development agreements;
that they wouldn’t develop nuclear weapons. Then in the early
’90s, the IAEA — the International Atomic Energy Agency —
believed that they were using small test reactor at Yongbyon. It
was a graphite-moderated reactor which produces plutonium as a
side-product of producing energy. So, they believed that they
were hiding the plutonium being produced at the Yongbyon plant
and using it produce weapons. This led to a very serious crisis.
The Clinton administration and their Defense Secretary at the
time, William Perry — and I’ll mention Perry a couple of times
here — were very seriously considering a strategic take-out of
the Yongbyon plant. Would that have been as serious as now? I
don’t think so, but it would have been very serious. What
happened is quite interesting. Former President Jimmy Carter
went to North Korea — supposedly on his own; I’m sure this was
very carefully worked out with President Clinton. But he went on
his own; he met with Kim Il-Sung who was still alive at that
time, the original head of North Korea. Out of that meeting,
[they] came to an agreement that they would, through
negotiations, come up with an agreement to solve the crisis;
which they did. It was called the Agreed Framework of 1994.
This was quite extraordinary. The North Koreans agreed to
dismantle the Yongbyon nuclear plant and to stop construction on
two other plants that also were graphite and could produce
plutonium. In exchange, the US built a nuclear plant for North
Korea. The US and the South Koreans were, and they began — they
didn’t get very far — to build a large 1000-megawatt nuclear
plant; but it was going to be a light water reactor that didn’t
produce fuel for nuclear weapons. It was a safer form of a
nuclear plant. In the meantime, they did provide oil, until they
got the nuclear plant going, for heating.
They agreed to start negotiations toward a peace agreement.
The US and North Korea are officially still at war. After the
Korean War, there was not a peace agreement, but just an
armistice to stop the fighting. Officially, there is no peace
agreement; we do not have normal relations with North Korea.
We’re actually in a state of war with North Korea. Clearly, the
North Koreans want to have a normal relationship with the US, not
to be constantly threatened. It was agreed that that would
happen. This was moving forward quite well; it was slow, there
were problems. The US didn’t live up to all its agreements; but
it was moving forward.
Then, extremely importantly, in 1998, Kim Dae-jung was
elected President of South Korea. Kim Dae-jung was a very
interesting character; he had been a very strong opponent of the
military regimes in South Korea. He had been thrown in jail
several times, and there was a point where he was about to be
executed; the US intervened and saved his life at that time. By
1998 things had changed; there was more of a move towards getting
away from military regimes. They weren’t exactly dictatorships;
they were elected, but they were military regimes. Kim Dae-jung
was elected. He immediately began to not only democratize
domestic policies, but he set up something called the Sunshine
Policy, which was we will work with North Korea on development;
on opening up economic collaboration as the basis over the long
term to establish peace between us and long-term reunification.
So, Kim Dae-jung was in power. William Perry, the Defense
Secretary — he had left being Defense Secretary by that time —
but in a recent article on his history in all of this, said that
towards the end of the Clinton administration, they were working
to take that agreement even further. To have the North basically
swear that they were giving up all weapons programs, in exchange
for having a peace agreement and setting up normal relations
between the two countries. It was so close that they had
actually planned a Presidential visit to North Korea; that
Clinton would visit North Korea.
Unfortunately, as William Perry points out, the Clinton
administration ran out; and Bush and Cheney came in. You may
remember that the Defense Secretary under Bush and Cheney was
Colin Powell, a general; a fairly wise gentleman. He, in his
first press conference, said we intend to engage with North
Korea, and pick up where Clinton left off. Very important. The
{next day}, Bush — with Cheney behind him and Paul Wolfowitz
around — said “There will be no engagement with North Korea.
They’re a dictatorship.” Sounds familiar, right? Dictators.
“We will not talk to them. There will be no engagement.” And
Colin Powell was basically put in his place, and the whole
process began to fall apart; at least in terms of the US working,
collaborating, and playing a key role in collaboration with North
and South Korea, and Russia and China and Japan.
In any case, Kim Dae-jung and the others — Russia, China,
Japan, North Korea, South Korea — continued the process. They
basically said OK, that’s what Bush and Cheney are saying; but
this is the future lives of our country and really of the world.
They moved forward. Kim Dae-jung, by 2002, was successful in
setting up an extraordinary process. I should mention here that
Lyndon LaRouche’s ideas through that period — 2000-2002 — were
all over South Korea. One of our members, Kathy Wolfe, was going
back and forth; she was meeting with people in the government,
around the government, cultural people in South Korea. You may
remember that 1992 was when Lyndon LaRouche first came up with
the idea at the time of the fall of Soviet Union, that we should
build a New Silk Road; we should have a Silk Road which would
bridge Europe, Russia, China, and bring them together around a
development process by building the New Silk Road — what the
Chinese called the Eurasian Land-Bridge.
So, Kim Dae-jung, the South Korean President, built a
process he called the Iron Silk Road. I can assure you there was
an influence there; that term didn’t come out of nowhere.
LaRouche had always said that the New Silk Road should go from
Busan to Rotterdam. Busan is at the southern tip of South Korea.
In other words, it had to go through North Korea, through Russia,
and also through China into Europe. So, this idea of the Iron
Silk Road was taking shape. It was taking shape so much — put
that first map on [Fig. 1]. This is the map. The plan was to
reconstruct two rail lines from South Korea into North Korea,
which of course had been shut down. There was an armed
Demilitarized Zone [DMZ] with fences on either side; and a no
man’s land in between. The idea was to build rail connections as
you can see on the map. One of them going through the West, that
would go up through Pyongyang and then into China. One that
would head out towards the West and go up towards Russia into
Vladivostok and hit the trans-Siberian railway in both
directions, actually.
Indeed, they began this process. Kim Dae-jung went to the
North and met with Kim Jong-Il, who was the son of Kim Il-Sung;
who was in power. Kim Il-Sung literally died the year they
signed the Agreed Framework; but his son continued it. They made
this process; they built this process up. By 2002, they
literally opened up the Demilitarized Zone fences in both of
those spots. Both the North-South and the [inaud; 21:43]; they
cut the DMZ fences. Soldiers from both the North and South went
into the DMZ and began clearing the mines that were all over the
place in the DMZ. They reconstructed the rail line between the
two countries. In 2002 [Fig. 2] you had the extraordinary event
of a railroad going across the DMZ; going from South Korea into
North Korea. Symbolic, because there had to be a lot of
construction on the rail lines to make them connect all the way
through. But as you can see here, they had a big banner in the
front; the Reunification of the Koreas. This was an
extraordinary event, which we reported in {EIR} at some length;
these pictures were in those articles back in 2002.
It wasn’t just the railroads. At the same time, Kim
Dae-jung began an industrial park in North Korea — the Kaesong
Industrial Park. This was across the border in North Korea with
South Korean companies setting up factories in the North with
North Korean labor. This grew to the point where recently there
were 123 South Korean companies working in the North. This was
obviously in the direction of setting up collaboration between
the South Korean industry and the skilled but very poor workforce
in the North. So, this was proceeding forward.
They also set up six party talks. You’ve probably heard of
the Six Party Talks. This was where Russia, China, Japan, North
and South Korea, and the United States began a series of talks to
try to regroup from the failure, the collapse, the shutdown by
Bush and Cheney of the Agreed Framework. These meetings began.
I won’t go through the details of what happened; it’s tedious,
because every opportunity that Bush and Cheney had to say that
the North Koreans were cheating, the North Koreans are lying; you
can’t trust these vicious dictators. Every opportunity they had
to sabotage forward direction; there were some positive
agreements made. If you read the history of it from the US
press, it’ll say the North Koreans reneged. Well, it wasn’t that
way. It was sabotage by Bush and Cheney every chance they got.
It went into the Obama administration and Obama continued
sabotaging it every chance he got.
So eventually, these fell apart under Obama. Obama then
began this so-called “strategic patience”; which meant no talks,
build up your military, impose sanctions. They might have said
that the purpose was that they expected the North Korean regime
to collapse; but that wasn’t it at all. Bush and Cheney and
Obama {wanted} North Korea to build nuclear weapons. Now why
would somebody be so insane as to want North Korea to have
nuclear weapons? First of all, they knew that they wouldn’t use
them, or they’d be blown off the face of the map. William
Perry, in his recent article, said the North Korean regime is
reckless, but they’re not crazy; they’re not suicidal. If they
were to use a nuclear weapon preemptively, they know that the
country would be obliterated overnight and their leadership
entirely killed. They’re not crazy. But why would the West want
them to have nuclear weapons? Because the target is not North
Korea; it’s China. As long as you have this bugaboo of North
Korea threatening the world with their nuclear weapons, you can
go ahead and build up a massive force around China, the way they
were in Europe where they’re building anti-ballistic missiles and
moving NATO right up to the Russian border. Sending troops,
tanks, planes right up to the Russian border. And in Asia doing
the same thing, supposedly to counter North Korea.
Most people have read about what’s going on with these THAAD
missiles. Literally just a couple of days ago, they actually set
up the THAAD missiles in South Korea; claiming that these are
needed for the defense of South Korea against the North. THAAD
— this is Terminal High Altitude missiles. North Korea is 30
miles from Seoul; they don’t need to send 8 ICBMs up into space
and back down onto Seoul. The THAAD is useless against North
Korea; it may be useless in general. But it’s a threat to China
and to Russia, because with that you have the X-band radar, which
sees deep into Chinese territory and Russian Far East territory.
Which thereby gives them an advantage in a potential first
strike, where they could take out — they fantasize — they could
take out the counterstrike capacity of China. The Chinese and
Russians are saying this destroys the balance; we’re going to
have to put something together to counter this.
The other thing to point out is the obvious fact that North
Korea sees very clearly what happened to Iraq; what happened to
Libya. Two countries that voluntarily gave up their nuclear
weapons program with all kinds of praise and promises from the
West, although they lied about Iraq. But as soon as they did,
their nation was bombed back to the Stone Age, their leaders
killed, and their country turned over to warring terrorist
forces.
So, the North Koreans are not crazy! And they’re aware
that, were they to give up their nuclear weapons program
preemptively, they’d probably get the same regime change
statement. Which is why it’s so important Tillerson is saying we
are not going for regime change; which is what Trump had said
throughout the campaign — that they weren’t going to have regime
change. They also see that the targetting of China, they’re
aware of this, is part and parcel of this operation. You should
point out that the Obama administration had this TPP — this
Trans-Pacific Partnership — which was also a part of the attempt
to isolate China. It didn’t work; largely because the countries
there recognized that this was an attack on China, and they
absolutely depend upon and appreciate the infrastructure
development coming from China through the New Silk Road the New
Maritime Silk Road.
That’s where this stood. And the last thing I’ll bring up
here is that the last administration in South Korea — Park
Geun-hye; I’m sure that everybody has seen that she was recently
impeached and thrown out of office. The impeachment was upheld
by the Constitutional Court, and there’s now an election which is
taking place in less than two weeks on May 9; which makes it all
the more absurd that the US deployed this THAAD missile system,
literally few days before an election in which the candidates are
both against the THAAD missile system. They rushed this in, in
order to make it — hopefully, they think — make it impossible
to be reversed. But we’ll see. It was a foolish move by the US
to ram this through.
But in any case, Park Geun-hye started her administration —
this is the daughter of Park Chung-hee, who was the brilliant
leader who brought Korea out from being one of the poorest
nations on Earth to being one of the great industrial, nuclear
power producing and exporting countries in the world. His
daughter, Park Geun-hye, was elected President. But
unfortunately, she was elected mostly on her name. However, she
began her administration with what she called the Eurasian
Vision. This was, in fact, part of the New Silk Road process.
She saw working with Russia, China, and Japan, that Korea
belonged to Eurasia; which obviously meant that it had to work
through North Korea. Officially, the regime in the South under
her and her predecessor were not allowed to have relations with
North Korea, except for the Kaesong Industrial Park. But, Park
Geun-hye allowed three major South Korean companies — Hyundai
Merchant Marine, which is their biggest ship company; KoRail,
which is their state rail company; and POSCO, a huge steel
company — to have a consortium with Russia and North Korea.
Literally, a consortium; a business agreement where the Russians
rebuilt a port in the north of North Korea; rebuilt the railroad
from Vladivostok down to that port. They were shipping Russian
coal into North Korea, where it was picked up by a South Korean
Hyundai ship; shipped to the South, put on South Korean rail and
shipped to a South Korean steel mills. This was, again like the
Kaesong, it was a model for the kind of collaboration which could
lead towards long-term economic progress and development and
trust; and lead towards a reunification.
Then, without going into details, the North Koreans tested I
think it was the fourth of their nuclear tests. Everybody knew
it was going to happen for the reasons I said. They’re not going
to give this up unless they can get an honest pledge that there’s
not going to be a war, a regime change against them. They did;
and unfortunately, Park Geun-hye who was weak, capitulated
entirely to Obama. She shut everything down; shut down even the
Kaesong Industrial Plant which had been up for 15 years, which
killed their own industries. Shut down the [inaud; 31:25]
process of the rail, and basically cut off all ties to the North
all together on behalf of Obama, on behalf of a war against
China. Despite the fact that in 2015, she had gone to Beijing on
the 70th anniversary of World War II’s victory against the
Japanese and the Germans. She’d gone there and stood on the
podium with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin; the three of them
standing together, honoring the war victory. Then she comes back
and basically pulls the plug on the whole thing.
She wasn’t impeached because of that; she was impeached
because of a corruption case within South Korea. But I’m certain
to this led to the loss of any trust in her; that she’d
undermined her own industries; that she’d capitulated to an
American policy, that she was going ahead with this THAAD
deployment. She lost the industry, she lost the left factions
that were about to win the election, the more liberal side. So,
this was a real disaster for South Korea, and potentially for the
world.
Now, we have Trump; we have Xi Jinping; we have Abe in Japan
working very closely with Putin. And we’re going to have a new
regime in South Korea. I won’t go into exactly who these guys
are; but in general, both the leading candidates want to work
with Russia and China and want to open up better relations with
the North. So, you have the geometry. If Trump goes with the
Silk Road process, you have a geometry which is going to end this
last British outpost of destabilization and instability — this
North Korea monster. The monster issue; it’s not that North
Korea is a monster. But this has served the British imperial
purpose of keeping the US at a point of conflict with Russia and
China. If we can solve that, then all of Asia is now unified,
except for the North Korea issue. With the election in the
Philippines of Duterte, his rejection of the war policy in the
South China Sea, it basically united all the Southeast Asian
countries; all ten of them are now united around working with
China. Not cutting off ties to the US, but working with China.
So, you have tremendous potential; and it’s all really
coming down to the next very short period. Weeks, months at
most. A lot of this is going to be determined in the very near
term. As LaRouche has always insisted, to look at any particular
crisis — like the North Korean crisis — you have to look at it
in the context of the entire world; and certainly in the context
of the Eurasian potential of the New Silk Road. I think there’s
every reason to be confident that some sort of talks are being
discussed privately; not just threats. That this is going to
move forward in the context of the Silk Road. As Matthew
mentioned, if Trump were to go to this meeting on May 14 and 15,
Abe would probably then go from Japan; and there’s no question
that we would have a peace process that would be almost
unstoppable, no matter what the British claim they’re going to
unleash.
So, this is a very great moment in history. A dangerous,
but potentially great optimism is in hand.

OGDEN: And you can tell that the British are definitely
very anxious of what could be lurking around the corner for the
future of their divide and conquer strategy. I know we were
talking before the show, Mike, about the very appropriate and
incisive statements that were made by the Russian representative
at that meeting at the United Nations Security Council. Here’s
the quote. This is the Russian Deputy Permanent Representative
to the UN, Vladimir Safronkov, and he turned to Matthew Rycroft,
who is the British Permanent Representative at the United Nations
Security Council, and he said the following: “The essence is,
and everyone in the United Nations knows this very well, is that
you are afraid. You have been losing sleep over the fact that we
might be working together with the United States; cooperating
with the United States. That is your fear. You are doing
everything to make sure that this kind of cooperation be
undermined.”

BILLINGTON: This has had a tremendous impact, because
people know that LaRouche has argued all the last 50 years, that
the problem is the British Empire. Almost nobody of stature has
ever acknowledged that continuing role of the British Empire
until this, really.
I learned today that Ambassador Rycroft, who was a close
ally and advisor to Tony Blair, and was one of the authors of the
“dodgy dossier” which started the Iraq War in the first place. I
learned today from our friends in England, that Rycroft was
meeting today with the head of the White Helmets; the terrorist
so-called “humanitarian” group that works with al-Qaeda and
al-Nusra, and who provided the fake evidence of Assad carrying
out a chemical weapons attack. So, this is confirmation that
this open collaboration with a terrorist organization funded by
the British, and functioning to try to start a war in Syria for
which we can and must prevent that in league with this overall
fight to bring about the New Silk Road, not a new war.

OGDEN: Let me end with this, and I’ll let you respond to
it. I think as everybody knows, a very significant personality
in Korea and that area of the world, was the great US General
Douglas MacArthur. In the aftermath of the original Korean War,
Douglas MacArthur came back to the United States, and he reported
back to Congress. This is a quote from MacArthur’s speech to a
Joint Session of Congress in 1951. I think it gets directly at
the much broader point that Helga and Lyndon LaRouche have been
making at the present time about what is really at stake, and
what is necessary if we’re going to move civilization into a new
paradigm of survival. This is what Douglas MacArthur said:
“Military alliances, balances of power, leagues of nations,
all in turn fail; leaving the only path to be by way of the
crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of war now blocks out
this alternative. We have had our last chance. If we will not
devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be
at our door. The problem, basically, is theological and involves
a spiritual recrudescence and improvement of human character that
will synchronize with our almost matchless advances in science,
art, literature, and all material and cultural developments of
the past 2000 years. It must be of the spirit if we are to save
the flesh.”
So Mike, you were one of the speakers at the conference the
Schiller Institute sponsored in New York City two weeks ago. The
subject of that conference was not only the diplomatic and
strategic cooperation which is necessary between the United
States and China right now, the United States joining the New
Silk Road and the Belt and Road Initiative. It was also a
dialogue of civilizations; a dialogue of the greatest parts of
these two great cultures — European culture and Chinese culture.
In a form where Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in a really profound way,
stretching across generations, across centuries, across millennia
really put the great German poet, the revolutionary poet and
philosopher Friedrich Schiller in dialogue with the poet and
philosopher who really is the basis of all of modern Chinese
civilization — Confucius. That dialogue she set up between
Friedrich Schiller and Confucius, speaking to each other across
the span of millennia and across literally two sides of the
world, created the kind of image of mankind, the possibility of a
mankind which could emerge if we were to finally put an end to
this imperial system of dividing the East and the West and
bringing these two great cultures into a dialogue with each
other.
So, you presented at that conference, and maybe just in that
context

BILLINGTON: Those are available now. The new {EIR} that
came out today has Helga’s speech and a speech by Patrick Ho, who
is a very good friend of ours from China, from Hong Kong, who is
campaigning all over the world for the New Silk Road. It’s three
conferences now that we’ve done together. He gave a presentation
then on Confucian thought and Western thought; but in that
presentation, he showed a very serious problem which I had
addressed over my long years of sabbatical leave in prison, where
I studied extensively the Chinese culture and the relationship
between Confucian culture and the Western Christian Renaissance.
Patrick didn’t take up that challenge for this speech; so he gave
a speech which fell prey to exactly what I then spoke about.
That speech is also in the {EIR} this week; or you can watch it
on the Schiller Institute website. It’s very important, because
what I learned in studying this, is what the British set about —
as they do in every colony that they took over — in profiling
the backward tendencies within that culture and then grasping
those backwards tendencies that want to stay primitive, stay
backwards; and defining those to be the natural ideology of that
country.
In the case of China, they recognized that Confucianism was
a very great threat to their ability to control and keep China
backwards; because it’s a vision like Platonism in the West. And
as Helga had brilliantly shown, like the Renaissance thinking in
Europe that professed progress. It valued the mind of the
individual as that which made him human; it’s the creative power
of the human mind. Against that, the British said no, no,
Confucianism is keeping you backwards because it’s formal and
it’s structured. You have to go back to the roots of Taoism,
which basically tells the peasant that he’s a happy peasant; he’s
happy not knowing about science and technology. Stay backwards.
Or the so-called “legalist” ideology which was punishment and
reward; you treat people like animals. You punish or reward them
like you do a dog, to make them do what you want them to do.
The unfortunate reality is that the British deployed their
top guns — especially Bertrand Russell — into China; especially
when Sun Yat-sen came along promoting the American System. They
sent Bertrand Russell in to poison that system; to denounce
Confucianism; to promote the happy peasant and the Taoist
ideology. Unfortunately, this was deeply ingrained into the
Chinese culture, so that even today, Xi Jinping, who is fighting
to bring that country forward, is faced with this kind of thought
in China. And, what they presented to the Chinese as “Western
thought” so-called, was not Leibniz and Schiller and Nicholas of
Cusa; the people who gave us the Renaissance, who gave rise to
modern science. But rather, they said, “We, the British,
defeated you because we have wealth and power. How do we have
wealth and power? It’s that we believe in Darwinism, social
Darwinism; that the strong must crush the weak. That’s the way
you get strong. So, if you want to be strong, then you should be
like us and believe that Western thought — i.e., British
empirical anti-human thought — is what you should aspire to.
I won’t go into more details, but I encourage you to read
it; because these are fundamental debates. This question of how
can we create a renaissance, which crosses every great culture;
because every great culture has great moments and bad moments,
bad tendencies. Weak tendencies, and strong tendencies which
honor the human creative power; the other which tries to keep
people enslaved as master and slave. We have to pull out the
best of every culture throughout the world. Islam; Judaism;
Christianity; Confucianism; the Muslim tradition of the Baghdad
Caliphate. All of these are there — the Indian Gupta period.
We can pull these together and have a Renaissance which is not
this part of the world as opposed to that part of the world; but
is truly universal. Of man with a common aim for mankind as
Helga likes to say.
This is within our grasp; this could truly be the end of war
for all mankind. People say, “Oh, that’s naïve; because human
nature is war-like.” Well, {human nature} is not; human nature
is creative. It’s the bestial imposition of this backward
ideology on peoples which leads to wars. If we had a true,
global renaissance based on science and technology, great culture
and great music, there’s no reason to think we could not end the
scourge of war once and for all; as that beautiful quote from
Douglas MacArthur — which I’d never heard — clearly indicates.
These are philosophic and theological issues; but they’re in our
grasp today. This is what the LaRouche Movement has been about
since its inception; and it’s now literally within our grasp.

OGDEN: Thank you very much, Mike. This material is
available; Mike’s article is going to be published. This is in
the {Executive Intelligence Review}, and it will be made
available through LaRouche PAC as well. As Mike said, all of the
proceedings of that Schiller Institute conference in New York are
also available. LaRouche PAC also made a video a couple of years
ago on the question of the reunification of Korea and some of
these initiatives from the 1990s and these reunification efforts.
So, we’ll make that video also available; it will be linked in
the description of this video. But I think that’s a wonderful
discussion; and it’s extraordinarily valuable for people to have
this view, this depth of background. But also this vision of
what is possible. Douglas MacArthur’s point that in essence this
is a spiritual, this is a theological question. Will mankind
come to know himself as a creative species? Will we change the
way that man views himself, which is what is necessary if we are
to survive? The vehicle for doing that is this type of “win-win”
development projects; that’s the true name of peace. So, I think
we have a wonderful microcosm in what we just used as a case
study in Korea; but this type of thinking is what is so urgently
necessary for the entire world. That’s absolutely the value of
what the LaRouche Movement has done over the last several
decades, and continues to represent on this planet today.
So thank you, Mike. And thank you all for tuning in, and
please stay tuned to larouchepac.com.