Xinhuanet interviews LaRouche

Xinhuanet, the official press agency of the People's Republic of China, conducted the following interview with U.S. statesman Lyndon LaRouche by reporter Zhang Mian on July 27, 2013.     Mike Billington

Xinhuanet interviewed LaRouche on economic and strategic concerns.

QUESTION: Thank you for taking this interview. I would like to start with the NSA surveillance program which was revealed by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers. A few weeks ago, I did an interview with Jeff Steinberg, one of the counter-intelligence experts of EIR. He told me that the U.S. Congress and courts don't do their job, which consequently made this kind of massive surveillance of innocent U.S. citizens possible, and the United States is moving towards a Big Brother dictatorship. So, my question is, if this is really happening in the United States, what is to be done in order to get this country back on track?

LAROUCHE: Well, the situation is as bad as it might be described, but it's not as bad as might be described. It's still a fight. And as in many cases of nations in history, the fight has been in the form of a struggle to change, or improve, the direction of society generally. We're in such a situation right now in the United States.

We have a very serious and increasingly effective movement toward a change in the policy of the United States, which could be realized in the weeks and months immediately ahead. It's at least a chance to succeed. And in many things, as many nations have experienced in their own time, what you do as a nation is, you try to succeed in what is necessarily going to happen, and you struggle for that, even over generations, or successive generations, or in new generations.

And that's where we are now. We have a growing movement in the United States, which is partly a response to the hatred against Wall Street and what Wall Street and the British Empire represent. And that's exactly the way to put it. We have actually a growing movement. It's already significant. It has significant leadership and significant support. Which could possibly cause a complete change in the policy of the United States.

From my standpoint, that change is absolutely necessary. Because the danger is not some minor thing; the danger is an imminent threat of global thermonuclear war. And all the things that are happening which are bad, are really tantamount to the launching of thermonuclear war. And thermonuclear war, if organized on a full scale today, would be the virtual extinction of the human species.

So therefore, we're at the most serious struggle in the entire history of mankind. For the first in human history, it is possible that the human species become extinct. And apart from the other issues which we have to fight for, that is the one which is most prominent.

You'll find, for example: Some people in the United States actually want a war. The President of the United States currently wants a war. I don't know if it's his own opinion, or something shoved on him, but it's what he's expressing. And if that war were to occur, civilization would probably go extinct. Therefore, as General Dempsey of the Joint Chiefs of Staff has emphasized, we must not have that war. And that's where we stand.

And otherwise, the chance is that we could win, that the United States could come back, begin to fight its own issues, which would be beneficial to the world. Europe is in a terrible condition. We're in a less terrible condition than Europe right now. But that's where it stands. I'm committed, and my associates are committed, and this is a realistic commission: we are determined, by all the means available to us, to prevent this from happening.

QUESTION: And, as an economist, you've committed yourself to establish a new world economic order, and you claim that Wall Street is going to collapse, the world economy is going to collapse. So, why do you think that the world economy is in such a mess?

LAROUCHE: Because I know it. I'm an expert in this area, and I will stand up against anybody on that issue. I know, and I know with certainty, that we're in such a situation.

QUESTION: Can you give us some evidence or indication of that?

LAROUCHE: You just take a look at what we're doing in the United States. The United States has been self-destroying itself, since the assassination of President Kennedy. If you actually knew the history in detail of the economy of the United States—the United States economy has been in a long run of decline in its productive powers of labor, and the conditions of life of our people, since the assassination of John F. Kennedy as president. That's the trend.

Now we're come to the end of that process. We've had presidents who are actually pieces of filth, evil, and they are generally under the influence of the Anglo-Dutch influence. The Anglo-Dutch influence is what we recognize as the enemy of the United States, the enemy of civilization. They have been an enemy of this civilization ever since the Anglo-Dutch empire was established at the end of the 17th century, in Europe. And we in the United States were fighting against this, from that period of that century: the Massachusetts Bay Colony, for example, which was crushed by the Anglo-Dutch forces, and the attempt to crush the United States itself.

Then you have the treason inside the United States, with Wall Street and so forth. If Wall Street survives, the world will go to hell. And these are life-and-death issues now.

QUESTION: And we know that you've been pushing the revival of Glass-Steagall for years, so why is the Glass-Steagall act so important, and how will it benefit the U.S. economy, as well as the global economy?

LAROUCHE: Well, anything except Glass-Steagall will be an absolute disaster. The failure to implement Glass-Steagall now, would probably be the end of civilization. Because it would lead immediately to the thermonuclear war threat, which is already —in the Middle East, it's already there. And certain developments in the Middle East could immediately move into an area of that kind of warfare.

But, that's where we stand. And that's where we are. We're at the point, if we cannot get Glass-Steagall through, the United States will disintegrate, and I mean, immediately. The disintegration for this fall is a very probable likelihood. If we win with Glass-Steagall, we win.

But the problem is, most people don't understand what Glass-Steagall represents. Glass-Steagall is actually something which was founded by President Franklin Roosevelt, which was a real re-enactment, and affirmation, of the original Constitution of the United States. Since that time, we in the United States have been largely the victims of the British Empire, and the British Empire is an empire! It's the biggest empire that ever existed on this planet—is the Anglo-Dutch empire. And we're up against it. We're fighting against it.

But if we put Glass-Steagall in, I can assure you, absolutely, if Glass-Steagall is established, I will be able to assure you that our policy will be in a direction which will avoid this warfare, and will end the process of depression which is running throughout the world.

QUESTION: Okay, I understand. And the United States and China have been having a dispute over the trade restrictions. In fact, Chinese investment in the U.S. can arguably benefit the U.S. economy, by stimulating its economic growth and creating more jobs. According to a report issued by a non-profit organization called the Asia Society last year, investment from China has been created more than 10,000 jobs for Americans.

So, within this context, the Obama Administration is still implementing a series of trade restrictions against China. So, I would like to know, how do you evaluate Obama's China policy?

LAROUCHE: Well, it's not really Obama's policy. It's nominally his policy. He's essentially a puppet, and what you've got with the Snowden case, is really a reflection of certain parts in the United States, of what the global reality is. These were, as you know, young people—or, they're still relatively young people—who were working in a very significant role inside the U.S. system. They then realized that they were being used for purposes entirely contrary to their intention. And so therefore Snowden, who's only one of these many people—and they do have special skills—and Snowden has put himself on the line, together with other followers, to destroy what is being done to the United States now, under this current policy of the Obama administration.

However, Obama is not as important as people think he is. He's important because anybody who's made president of the United States, has a certain kind of importance and means of enforcing that sort of view. But the real thing is a group of people, of the type I know, the Wall Street gang in its present form, and the Wall Street gang is an adjunct of the British business, or the British-Dutch empire.

So, the point is, we have to destroy this power. There's no way you can solve it.

Now, as to China itself. China is now inevitably, with the collapse of Europe, which is now coming on fast—and the collapse of the United States, which is coming only slightly slower than Europe—under those conditions, China's economy is going to collapse too. Not as rapidly as Europe or the United States, but rapidly. And therefore, there is no economic solution, unless we defeat this process.

And what we're dealing with potentially, the potential solution is, get rid of the Anglo-Dutch system, a revolt against what's been done to Europe. The euro system. Crush it, get rid of it. Let the nations become nations again. Like what happens in Spain regularly. What happened in Greece. The genocide that is going on in Europe, under the influence of the Anglo-Dutch interests, is immense.

So, therefore, we have to create a new world, a new world which is based on a commitment to high technology, because only by increasing the technological potential of the nations of the planet, can we possibly work our way out of this problem. That could be done. China is potentially a very important part of the world now. Because if China is able to operate within an atmosphere of the world, which is now moving upward, rather than downward, which is hitting China now—the downward trend in Europe and in the United States is hitting China. And China should be doing much more high technology things, but that has to be possible.

We can create, if we win this fight, we can create an agreement among leading nations of the world, to change the general direction of the history of this planet in modern times. And we have to do it. Because we have to increase all kinds of resources which we don't have now, if we're going to maintain mankind on this planet.
QUESTION: And, a few months ago, in May 2013 particularly, China bought 25.2 billion in U.S. Treasury notes and bonds. China's holdings of U.S. federal debt has reached a record $1.3 trillion—that's a really huge amount. So, what is your opinion on this?

LAROUCHE: Well, I think there has to be a technological solution. Presuming we get the kind of agreements which we need, the kinds of agreements among nations—and China is a key nation in this whole process. China has to be an active factor in making the decisions which are going to be required, if we get rid of this problem. And it will mean a change in China's orientation, because China will move into a greater emphasis on high-technology development, than now. And more emphasis on the increase of the productivity of the Chinese labor force.

The idea is to increase the power, per capita, of the China population. And under those conditions, China will have a greater self-independence, which is a very important factor. This is not to depend entirely on exports, but to have a self-increase of the productivity of the labor force of China. And with a higher technology, that can be achieved.

But what's also needed is cooperation among nations to create that effect.

QUESTION: And the next question is on the subject of the Pentagon's Asia rebalance strategy. In 2009, the Pentagon raised the concept of Air Sea Battle, which aims at addressing asymmetrical threats in the Western Pacific. A recent EIR article points out that it is actually a plan of war on China, which may well lead to an arms race between the United States, and could culminate in a thermonuclear war.

So, I would like to know your comments on the Air Sea Battle strategy, and how should the two nations avoid the Thucydides trap.

LAROUCHE: The first thing is that the United States should be an ally of China in this whole proposition. Because if Russia, which is much weaker than China in many respects, and China, and you'll probably find that even Japan, which is not always friendly to China, would also have to go in the same direction, as well as many other parts of the world. Under those conditions, peaceful conditions, we actually will end up with alliances with a number of nations, a large number of nations of the planet, who, knowing that we're on the edge of thermonuclear war—it's not a possibility, it's almost a certainty, that if certain things happen, and certain things don't happen at the same time, then we're going to be in thermonuclear war. And it could be before the end of this year. Could be in November. Could be even in October. We're that close. So, therefore all our actions and our thinking, including my own action, is based the knowledge that we are faced with the immediate threat, in terms of a few weeks or months, of thermonuclear war, full-scale. And very few people in the planet really know how serious thermonuclear war is, how quick it is. It takes one hour and a half to virtually destroy civilization.

QUESTION: So what do you think we should do in order to avoid such a disaster, strategy, I mean, a tragedy?
LAROUCHE: Well, what I'm doing immediately, of course, is leading this particular charge, which is coming with increasing support during the continuing summer of this year, for Glass-Steagall. The passage of Glass-Steagall will do two things: Number one, it will bankrupt Wall Street and London, immediately. In turn, it will also create a market for the increased productivity of the United States.

Now that's going to be a difficult problem, because the ruin of the U.S. economy, which began to hit at about the same time as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, that long wave has hit the United States. So, we have a very much weakened nation, in terms of potential. But, if we as nations are allied, to prevent the Anglo-Dutch intention for general warfare, nuclear warfare, we can come out.

But the important thing is to turn conflict into a source of alliances, on this issue. And that issue will only work if we are actually promoting technologically progressive improvements in productivity.

QUESTION: Well, I think that's it for my questions. Thank you very much, Mr. LaRouche, for joining me.