Subject: Correct Policies for The Clinton-Yeltsin Summit

From: [email-masked] (John Covici)
Date: 29 Mar 93 0:52:47 GMT

March 23, 1993 
   Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. 
   On the Current Strategic Crisis 

   [N.B.: { indicates begin emphasis, } indicates end
emphasis.] 

           - On the Subject of Policy Governing the -
             - Projected Clinton-Yeltsin Summitry -

   This is former presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche
speaking on the twenty-third of March, on the tenth anniversary
of President Reagan's public televised announcement of the
Strategic Defense Initiative. 
   I reference the current crisis in Russia and other states in
the context of the scheduled meeting between Russian President
Boris Yeltsin and U.S. President William Clinton. 

             - The Worst Crisis Facing the World -

   First of all, the thing that must be generally recognized,
as I am happy to note that Secretary of State Warren Christopher
has underscored, publicly at least, is that the current crisis in
Russia, is, by its rather immediate near-term to medium-term
implications, the worst crisis facing the world in general and
the United States--United States foreign policy in particular;
and secondly, that no mere bandaids within the present policy
structures of the United States or International Monetary Fund
can possibly succeed in ameliorating, let alone contributing to
solving, the crisis in Russia. 
   The root of the problem is the absolute disastrous,
catastrophic failure of the Bush and Thatcher administrations in
Britain and the United States to respond intelligently to the
opportunity for building long-term peace represented by the
collapse of what Mr. Winston Churchill once called the Iron
Curtain. 
   Following the events of November 1989, had the United States
and Britain fostered the medium of economic cooperation for
infrastructure and industrial and agricultural development of the
former states of the Warsaw Pact alliance in Eurasia, and had the
United States cooperated, together with France and with Germany
in this effort, we could have no doubt have had the foundations
of long-term peace throughout much of this planet. But the
greatest folly in modern history perhaps was created under the
leadership of Mrs. Thatcher and President George Bush in imposing
upon the Russian and Eastern European economies monetary and
economic policies which must be judged in terms of their effect
to be clinically insane--economic and related policies which have
brought on this crisis in Russia, this potential strategic
crisis, this potential seed of a future general war. 
   I believe that Secretary Christopher's statement captures
some aspects of this and helps by making the situation known to a
broader circle--sounds the alarm, I think, is the appropriate
term. 

         - Attack on Central Europe's Southern Flank -

   In addition, rather than use the potentials of Central
Europe--particularly the French-German axis of economic
cooperation--as a springboard for solving the problems of
reorganization of the economic potential of Eastern Europe and
the former Soviet Union, under the leadership of Mrs. Thatcher's
government, forces throughout Europe and elsewhere, attacked
Germany as a unified Germany as a potential Fourth Reich, and
attacked it as the major geopolitical danger to the interests of
the Anglo-Americans and sought to lure the Gorbachov partner of
the Anglo-Americans, into collaboration with the launching of
British and American assets among the Serbs of Milosevic in
Serbia and in other parts of former Yugoslavia, into a murderous
onslaught upon the member populations of former Yugoslavia. 
   This attack by the Serbian forces under Milosevic of the
southern flank of Central Europe {precludes} any intelligent,
effective assistance to Russia as long as this ulcerating
condition is tolerated. This condition must be removed, the Serbs
must be checked, and the states of the region must return to the
former borders established under the former government of
Yugoslavia--{with no forcible change} in those borders allowed;
negotiated changes, yes; forcible changes, no. But first, there
must be a return to those borders as the starting point for any
negotiation. 
   Secondly, not only are the IMF conditionalities and
proposals of shock therapy, of radical monetarism, radical free
trade, and radical global deregulation an assurance, as long as
they are tolerated, of an explosion of rage within Russia, the
inevitable doom of any regime in Russia which is seen as too
friendly to the Anglo-American chief perpetators of these
economic policies by Russians, but it must be faced that {the
present international monetary structure is doomed in any case;}
and to sacrifice the prospects of peace with Russia, to sacrifice
peaceful stability in Russia, for the sake of this IMF-dominated
structure, is pure insanity. 
   The essence of the problem at the moment is characterized by
the worst bubble in all history, a bubble dominated by the
explosion of trillions of dollars, tens of trillions, scores of
trillions of dollars, of accumulation of trade in so-called
derivatives. 
   If this is tolerated, and if the present forms of
deregulation and free trade upon which this bubble is based
continue to be tolerated, then the entire world will collapse
into the worst depression in modern history, since at least the
fourteenth century in Central Europe. 

   - The Issues On the Table At the Yeltsin-Clinton Summit -

   Therefore, we must be prepared to sacrifice {immediately}
the entire structure of these present IMF-dominated
relationships. Respecting Russia, what is needed is not simply
economic aid. 
   First, we must remove the threat from the southern flank of
Central Europe, in order to make Europe once again the potential
springboard for material aid to the process of reconstruction of
Eastern European states and the former Soviet Union. 
   Secondly, respecting Russia: The debt of Russia must not
simply be reorganized but reorganized in a manner analogous to
the way in which U.S. Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton,
under our President George Washington, reorganized the debt of
the United States during the period 1789 through 1794. 
   The debt must be restructured to be used as the basis for
issuance of credit throughout the former Soviet Union for the
rapid reconstruction of the agriculture, industry, and
infrastructure of Russia and adjoining/cooperating states. Only
in that way can this cancer be tamed and the pyramided debt
turned into an instrument of fostering stability and general
economic recovery. 
   In addition to solving this problem in Yugoslavia. the
United States must be prepared to sacrifice its own commitment to
so-called radical free trade, to radical deregulation, to
de-industrialization at home, in order to put on the table, with
the Russians and others, the proposal as follows. 
   First of all, we must accept the principle of {sovereign}
nation-states as the basis in national political economy for
internal development of states and for economic cooperation among
sovereign states. The idea of denationalization of the world, is
a piece of unworkable lunacy which can only lead to the worst
result. We must restore the principle of {sovereign}
nation-states with {sovereign} national political economies. That
is the basis for all workable monetary-economic agreement; and on
that basis, the current external debt of Russia can be
reorganized in a Hamiltonian fashion. 
   Secondly, we must recognize that the world is in fact in the
throes of a depression now dominated by the largest, most
cancerously expanding financial bubble in all history. This
bubble must be brought under control, and the source of this
disease, the present IMF and related radical monetarist
proposals, such as those associated with former Prime Minister
Margaret Thatcher of Britain, must be extirpated from the
policies of Western nations and the world institutions as an
abomination whose horror and implications are now understood as
one of the greatest errors of the twentieth century. 
   We must return to the kinds of axioms of policy-making in
these matters, which existed prior to the 1970s launching of this
bubble of deregulation, deindustrialization, and radical free
trade. 
   Those are the primary issues which must be put on the table
at any meeting between President Boris Yeltsin and President
Clinton if {real progress} is to be made. 

----
         John Covici
          [email-masked]