Destruction, from The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole (1836)
EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 5, 2023
Sept. 4, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The fight is clearly on for a new world system, one that will determine the direction of the world for the coming decades and beyond. While some of this may be playing out more explicitly on the surface, such as the U.S.-Russia proxy war and its footprint in Ukraine, the deeper elements which have actually been at play for decades are beginning to become more evident than ever before.
This has accelerated following the amazing response to the BRICS-Plus Summit in South Africa in August, when six new members were accepted and dozens more have expressed their interest in joining. The factions in the West that see this as a threat to their control over the world are reacting, and are beginning to respond in various ways. It will undoubtedly be the case at the Sept. 9-10 G20 Summit in New Delhi this weekend.
One place it can be seen is the obsession over the loyalty to the green death ideology, something that nations of the Global South are increasingly resistant to. The United Arab Emirates will be hosting this year’s COP28 Climate Change Conference, and have angered many in the U.S. and Europe by appointing the CEO of the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company as president of the conference. The U.A.E. (and added as a new member of the BRICS) has refused to give up developing its fossil fuel reserves, the same type of refusal that we have seen across the developing sector, that instead insist on their right to alleviate poverty first.
The hypocrisy is astounding and blatant. While Germany and Europe experience the disintegration of their economy—in large part due to the adoption of “renewable energy” and the rejection of fossil fuels—they foist conferences on Africans, telling them they must invest in the same green energy. Or take the case of food: While the West says Russia is starving the world because it suspended the Black Sea Grain Initiative—actually caused by Western sanctions against Russian shipping—farmers in the Netherlands are being told they pollute too much and must stop farming forever!
Another place this is showing up is the case of Argentina, which on one hand has been the victim of immense looting by the IMF and Wall Street, and on the other hand has just joined the BRICS, providing a concretely different path. All indications point to an escalation by the trans-Atlantic financial empire to crush Argentina and not let it make an escape to a different policy—and by doing so make it an example to any other nation which would try to break from the grasp of their “rules-based order.” The Schiller Institute has just released a nine-step program for Argentina to sever this parasitical system for good, and is available for immediate distribution internationally.
Lyndon LaRouche, a longtime champion for the policies of physical economic development and an opponent of the types of murderous “bankers’ arithmetic” being employed against Argentina, often spoke about the nature of the IMF’s policies and how its evils were perpetrated under the cover of “credibility” by the leading economists of the day.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, speaking in an interview about the upcoming G20 Summit, went to the core of such flawed thinking, and addressed the true nature of economics: The “GDP-centric view of the world is now changing to a human-centric one,” Modi said, and added that the change occurring today is akin to the change in era following the end of World War II. Modi continued: “For a long time, India was perceived as a nation of over 1 billion hungry stomachs. But now, India is being seen as a nation of over 1 billion aspirational minds, more than 2 billion skilled hands, and hundreds of millions of young people.”
If this kind of thinking can find the proper leadership today, then the world has a pathway out of the current crisis and into a new era. If not, we face the colossal danger of the death of today’s neoliberal system, which will not go as peacefully as did the Soviet Union.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche remarked in conversation with associates Monday:
“The next period will be full of dramatic turns and changes. Because what happens today in Argentina could happen tomorrow in Germany, maybe not in terms of the banking system but in terms of the industry. And I think there will be many of what Friedrich Schiller would call punctum saliens, there will become several points where it is absolutely possible to catapult the whole strategic situation to a different plane. So the period ahead is not going to be linear and therefore all linear thinking should be banned from all of us. Because the idea of projecting what you know from the past into the future is not going to help you.
“We should go for the idea of winning this battle, because the alternative is not acceptable.”