Zepp-LaRouche Urges Non-Aligned Movement: Use Your Power to Defeat Geopolitics and Colonialism

Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche participated online on Nov. 11 in a week-long international conference in Indonesia on the Non-Aligned Movement’s international struggle for global peace, justice and prosperity, in the 66 years since its founding at the Bandung Conference. Running from Nov. 7-13 in four Indonesian cities, the conference, titled “Bandung-Belgrade-Havana in Global History and Perspective: What Dreams, What Challenges, What Projects for a Global Future”, ended in Bali, two days before the opening of the G20 summit on the island.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in her address, stressed that the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) is “probably the most important force on the planet” at this time to put an end to geopolitics, and it is by stopping geopolitics that the world can avoid a thermonuclear world war, which would annihilate civilization.

Representing over 6.5 billion of the world’s 8 billion people, between its member and observer states, the NAM clearly represents the majority of the world, she pointed out. Furthermore, its history gives it the authority to intervene globally now. The Non-Aligned was founded in 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, by leading nations of Africa and Asia determined to end colonialism that refused to be forced into belonging to a “bloc”, and that is still the issue today, she said.

The fundamental conflict in the world, in her view, is not between so-called democracies and so-called autocracies, but rather between those forces in the world “who want to maintain the colonial order”, i.e., the neoliberal financial system which is in its final phase of collapse now, and those countries, especially of the Global South, that fight for “their right for economic development.”

In that light, she proposed that a group of Non-Aligned nations act together at the G20 meeting to “put on the table the need to have an immediate reorganization of the world financial system which is bankrupt”. And if the G20 fails to take that up, which is likely, then the NAM “must find a soon-to-be-created opportunity to put this on the agenda”, for example by calling for an emergency UN General Assembly or other forms of action. “But you have to raise your voice, because we have an incredible danger right now to all civilization.”

Many other participants in this conference expressed the revolutionary mood spreading across the Global South, as the imperial “rules based order” collapses, and efforts are stepped up to build a more just economic order. While some argued that the developing sector should forget the West, and proceed on its own to build a non-dollar system, Helga Zepp-LaRouche insisted that the seeds of war will grow in any system based on blocs that is not inclusive. Therefore the NAM should help Western nations to understand that it is also in their interest to bring about a new international architecture fostering economic development for all.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche also contributed a lengthy article to a book that was specially produced for this conference.