The evolution of a physical system appears dominated, in the short-term, by its past behavior and by immediately neighboring components of the system. But over longer time scales, broader forces can make their influence known, and, eventually, come to dominate the system’s behavior. Although historical processes are shaped by forces acting on both the short- and the long-term, rescuing ourselves from the deadly contradiction between the dying financial system of the West and the effort to maintain the control that system conferred, requires acting immediately on a long-term perspective.
The trajectory of the world political system does not look promising. Relations between Russia and the U.S. and EU are at a historic low: the U.S. President calls his Russian counterpart a killer; NATO’s raison d’être is to hype the threat of Russia; sanctions continue; and Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine is actively opposed by Brussels bureaucrats, leading to thousands of unnecessary deaths.
The China policy of the U.S. and the EU is no better. U.S. policy, as expressed by military leaders (the Pacific command), government officials (Blinken), and think tanks (most recently, the Council on Foreign Relations), is one of confrontation and containment, designed to secure the unachievable aim of preventing China’s growth, both domestically and internationally. The EU has joined in and sanctioned China over what it claims are massive human rights abuses in Xinjiang. The most cursory comparison of the Chinese approach towards terrorism in Xinjiang, with the U.S.-British-NATO approach towards Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, and Libya, reveals how hollow are those accusations.
The Council on Foreign Relations lets it all hang out. Recognizing that China’s Belt and Road Initiative is “the largest-ever global infrastructure plan, far surpassing the Marshall Plan,” they acknowledge that “China has made investing in infrastructure a high priority. The United States has not,” and that “the United States has no real alternative to offer in high speed rail or 5G.” They complain that China is breaking “rules” that the U.S. has adopted at British urging, such as providing government support for its enterprises to help them do business abroad, constructing coal power plants that produce plant food (carbon dioxide), and offering quick infrastructure financing without onerous environmental and social-impact assessments or stringent demands on repayment.
What can the U.S. do to compete? The CFR proposes destroying the competition, rather than playing a useful role: “informing” countries of the traps they claim are laid by the BRI, slowing BRI projects by pushing for green oversight, and attacking the corruption they imagine is embedded in the Chinese approach.
These approaches are not even wrong; their success would itself be a failure! The self-interest of the people of the world, including the United States, is diametrically opposed to what the Anglo-American financial-intelligence elite wrongly consider to be in their self-interest.
The LaRouche movement, as through the Schiller Institute, has played an absolutely unique, and entirely necessary role over the past half-century in fostering the conditions for a meaningful discussion of political collaboration, economic development and human identity, guided by the economic insights and fierce determination of Lyndon and Helga LaRouche. The active pursuit of the good, and of working with others to achieve it, means establishing government policies that cohere with the growth of the productive powers of labor—both in the immediate term, through capital-intensive development of new productive processes and the laying of more advanced infrastructure platforms—and over the longer term, through government-social support for great breakthroughs in science and technology.
The shocking discovery that comes of impassioned genius, the insight that comes from profound dedication, the recognition of the beauty of the human species that comes from acting to improve it—it is the shared nobility of all human beings, that divine potential, that must be nourished and unleashed to increase physical output and energy use by an order of magnitude over the coming generation or two.
The Schiller Institute conference process is key to discussing, articulating and implementing the needed concepts to shape the future. The trajectory for the human species we must become, is to soar!