Zepp-LaRouche: Western Strategy Called into Question More than Ever

Opening the Schiller Institute round table on Afghanistan on Aug. 21, Helga Zepp-LaRouche insisted that the key to stabilizing the situation there is rapid economic development and thus the perspective of building a promising future free of war. “Afghanistan is among the ten poorest countries in the world already, it’s been hit by a terrible drought. One in three people in Afghanistan is food insecure. Then we have a pandemic, naturally. So, the worst thing that could happen is that some smart people –or not so smart people –in the West think in terms of financial warfare, saying, ‘OK, the military option is out, because you can’t win in Afghanistan. That has been proven by the British, the Soviets, and now NATO. So, why don’t we use financial warfare?’”

It is already now the case that the United States has frozen the assets of the Afghani central bank held in the Federal Reserve and other American financial institutions, which amount to over $9 billion. As for the European Union, it cut off all development aid and government assistance on Aug. 17, pending “clarification of the situation”, after Germany had taken the same decision as concerns national development aid. In such a fragile situation, if the West were to decide to foment “a military uprising combined with financial warfare”, in the hope of creating chaos and somehow forcing the Taliban to leave power, “this would be the biggest foolishness you can possibly think of.”

The only one to improve the situation, in Zepp-LaRouche’s view, is to offer aid to Afghanistan, to the new government that will emerge from the ongoing talks, and avoid geopolitical gambles. During the discussion, she stressed that does not mean writing “a blank check” for the Taliban or blindly trusting promises that have been made, “Obviously, the Taliban’s feet have to be held to the fire.” But to effect a political change, economic development and the prospect of regional integration in the Belt and Road Initiative, for example, need to be provided. Rather than engaging in ideological debates, or analyzing the meaning of this or that word, she said, there are real and very serious problems to be solved, including by the Taliban.

Beyond Afghanistan, Helga Zepp-LaRouche noted that the current crisis is “a reflection of a very deep-seated problem in the way the West has been conducting these endless wars –Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya, the list is very long.”

Western leaders need to seriously reflect whether this policy is viable, or whether the defeat in Afghanistan is not rather the Mene Tekel for Western civilization, meaning the writing on the wall of its own demise, such as described by Heinrich Heine in his poem on Belshazzar.

Is it not high time, Zepp-LaRouche asked in concluding her opening remarks, “to change the axiomatic assumptions about Russia, about China, about the Belt and Road Initiative? Because the offer to cooperate is still there, from the Chinese it’s there, from the Russians it’s there. So, I think we are really in an incredibly dramatic situation, just as we discussed it three weeks ago, but in the meantime, events have proven that our discussion was absolutely prescient.”