After 20 Years, a New Opportunity
It was approximately 20 years ago this week, that Lyndon LaRouche, as a candidate for the U.S. Presidency, delivered, on Oct. 12, 1988, an extraordinary speech in West Berlin's Kempinski Hotel. LaRouche's presentation was addressed explicitly to the leadership of the then-Soviet Union, of the United States, and of West Germany itself. His core proposal read as follows:
I shall propose the following concrete perspective to my government. We say to Moscow: We will help you. We shall act to establish Food for Peace agreements among the international community, with the included goal that neither the people of the Soviet bloc nor developing nations shall go hungry. In response to our good faith in doing that for you, let us do something which will set an example of what can be done to help solve the economic crisis throughout the Soviet bloc generally.
Let us say that the United States and Western Europe will cooperate to accomplish the successful rebuilding of the economy of Poland. There will be no interference in the political system of government, but only a kind of Marshall Plan aid to rebuild Poland's industry and agriculture. If Germany agrees to this, let a process aimed at the reunification of the economies of Germany begin, and let this be the punctum saliens for Western cooperation in assisting the rebuilding of the economy of Poland.
LaRouche's proposal, like that of the Strategic Defense Initiative which he had devised, and which had been taken up by the Reagan Administration, five years before, was rejected in Moscow, and in Washington. The dramatic collapse of the Soviet system, which occurred approximately one year later, was a result he himself had forecast, should the Soviet leadership reject such a partnership with the West. It is to the eternal discredit of the George Bush, Sr. Administration, that it not only did not respond to that collapse by taking up LaRouche's updated idea of East-West collaboration, the Productive Triangle, and then the Eurasian Land-Bridge, but that it also did its damnedest to hamstring, and prevent Germany from fulfilling its mission to do so.
It is not surprising, therefore, that the disintegration of the Soviet system, is now being followed by the utter collapse of the Anglo-Dutch Liberal system of Western finance, which now imperils the survival of the planet as a whole.
Today, after 20 years of decline and suffering, we once more stand before the opportunity for an alliance for world reconstruction, this time, between the United States and Russia, as the first step to a Four Power agreement, including China and India. Unlike in the period of the late 1980s, the Moscow leadership has signalled its willingness, even eagerness, for collaboration with the United States in rebuilding a new, just world economic order. Proposals such as the Bering Strait tunnel project, a more than century-old idea of linking Eurasia with the Americas, have been put forward by the Putin/Medvedev government repeatedly, despite a level of distinctly nasty rhetoric coming from Washington (and London).
Most importantly, the intellectual powerhouse who has devised the design for the only workable new physical economic system, Lyndon LaRouche, is still on the scene, campaigning for its realization. As in 1988, LaRouche's ideas for a world economic recovery represent the unique hope for avoiding both strategic and economic disaster, in the very short term. This time, we cannot afford to fail.
