EDITORIAL

How To Know What Peace To Seek

June 12—Saying, “It appears that your anti-war effort is very one-sided…. It seems to completely justify Putin’s aggression,” a questioner with a definite Ukrainian view of events asked the Schiller Institute the following questions during its June 10 seminar titled, “The World Needs JFK’s Vision of Peace.” Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche responded.

Questioner: [the questions were read by moderator Dennis Speed] After reading your conference literature, my questions are: Why don’t you direct your criticisms and cries to Mr. Putin? Is it your view that he is a victim of the West? And, who is funding and supporting you financially?

Helga Zepp-LaRouche: I was asked by another interviewer, a few days ago, what I would say about the accusation that I am a Putinversteher—this is a German word which means, someone who understands Putin. I think Ray [McGovern] said at one point that one should understand Putin, because if you don’t understand him then you have a wrong evaluation.

I think that the question reflects a minimum of 30 years of distortion of history…. I am not an observer of history. I take with pride that my late husband and I, and our whole movement, we were trying to influence the development of history.

Lyndon LaRouche prognosed in 1984, that the Soviet Union would collapse if they would stay with their then existing rejection of a peace proposal he had made: the SDI, or what became known as the SDI when it was adopted by President Reagan on the 23rd of March, 1983. And he predicted that if the Soviets would remain on that course, they would collapse in five years. Now, that was pretty close to what happened.

Now, he also suggested in [19]88, that the Comecon was facing a terminal crisis, and that German reunification would happen soon, and that Berlin should be the capital. It happened exactly one year later; and because we had worked on a reconstruction program for the period after this would happen, we were on the scene. When the [Berlin] Wall came down, we were the only force that had a policy for what to do. Namely, we suggested the transformation of the Warsaw Pact countries (or, the Comecon countries) with Western, modern technologies—which [program] we called the Productive Triangle Paris-Berlin-Vienna.

And that proposal, while it was well received by German industrialists and others, because of the geopolitical opposition it did not become realized. But, when the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, we extended that [program], and we called it the Eurasian Land-Bridge. Now that proposal, today, is very much in affinity with what China is doing with the Belt and Road Initiative.

This is a long and complicated story. The only reason why I mention it, is because what we are saying is not some tea-leaf reading from newspapers, but we have been on the scene. We knew first-hand, because we talked to relevant people—not only in Poland, but in East Germany, in Czechia (in Czechoslovakia)—so when we are saying certain things, this is based on the authority of being time-witnesses.

And from that standpoint, I can say absolutely clearly, that the promises by NATO, “not to move one inch to the east” were broken; NATO has moved 1,000 kilometers to the east; they are still moving east, in the form of “global NATO.” And that is what is the cause of this [current] disaster.

We were also on the scene—because we had an interest in developing the Eurasian Land-Bridge—during the Maidan coup in 2014 [in Ukraine—ed.]. We followed it every day. We knew what happened with [U.S. State Department official] Victoria Nuland. We listened to her strange tape with [U.S.] Ambassador Pyatt. We heard what she thought about the EU, which I don’t want to repeat here, because I’m a lady.

So, I think that your question reflects a complete bias being fed by the media for, I don’t know how long. But I can only assure you: You’d better read up on your history.