{"id":89169,"date":"2022-07-12T22:20:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-13T02:20:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/?p=89169"},"modified":"2022-07-15T18:27:21","modified_gmt":"2022-07-15T22:27:21","slug":"dr-clifford-kiracofe-the-moneylenders-in-the-temple-or-sovereign-states","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/blog\/2022\/07\/12\/dr-clifford-kiracofe-the-moneylenders-in-the-temple-or-sovereign-states\/","title":{"rendered":"Interview: Dr. Clifford Kiracofe \u2014 The Moneylenders in the Temple, Or Sovereign States?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Dr. Clifford Kiracofe: The Moneylenders in the Temple, Or Sovereign States?\" width=\"860\" height=\"484\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wvCrFzNPOTA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Mike Billington of Executive Intelligence Review interviews Dr. Clifford Kiracofe, former Senior Staff Member, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; President, Washington Institute for Peace and Development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Mike Billington:<\/strong> Greetings! This is Mike Billington. I\u2019m with <em>Executive Intelligence Review<\/em>, the Schiller Institute, and The LaRouche Organization. I\u2019m here today with Dr. Clifford Kiracofe. Cliff served as a senior staff member on the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations during the 1980s. He\u2019s taught in universities in the United States and China, and is a prolific writer on historical, strategic, and economic issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thank you, Cliff, for being with us today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Dr. Kiracofe:<\/strong> Thanks, Mike, for inviting me. I\u2019m very happy to be here with you today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>U.S. Imperialism and the Rise of the Security State<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington:<\/strong> In 2005 and 2006, you gave several presentations at Schiller Institute conferences in Germany as well as in the U.S., several on the theme of U.S. imperialism and the rise of the national security state, and generally on the emergence of a fascist tendency within the United States. This was the time after the 9\/11 attack\u2014the Patriot Act, the beginning of the endless wars in Afghanistan and Iraq under George Bush and Dick Cheney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What is your view of that era today?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Dr. Kiracofe:<\/strong> That was very significant. 9\/11, of course, changed everything. 9\/11 provided a pretext for increasing the national security state, if you will, here in the United States and a clampdown on liberty, and an interference with our constitutional rights. 9\/11 was really a key. I can certainly remember and visualize the attack on the Twin Towers. That stunned America. Using that horrible event, the powers that be took advantage of public outrage and fear and continued the construction of the national security state left over from the Cold War\u2014the original Cold War from 1945 to, say, 1988, \u201989, when President Reagan and General Secretary Gorbachev kind of ended the Cold War. 9\/11 revamped and provided context for this national security state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That was 15 years ago. In recent years, you have an addition of the surveillance state, which is actually manipulated by so-called \u201cSilicon Valley people.\u201d You have the social media, etc., all falling under the national security state\u2019s cognitive warfare, propaganda, etc. In answer to your question, I think that early period 2001, 2005, 6 has set the stage for the last 20 years of increasing this national security state here at home and globally, actually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>\u2018Liberal Democracy\u2019 and the Rules-Based Order<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington:<\/strong> I noticed in looking over your presentations that even then you rejected the idea of the \u201cunipolar world\u201d which had been promoted by [Vice-President Dick] Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz, and the neoconservatives\u2014the so-called Wolfowitz Doctrine, which claimed that we had reached the end of history, as Francis Fukuyama put it, that liberal democracy was the proven doctrine for all nations for all time to come.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In your view, what did they really mean by this term, \u201cliberal democracy,\u201d which we still hear all the time today as the justification for the Western \u201crules-based order?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Dr. Kiracofe:<\/strong> If you look carefully back at that era, you\u2019ll see among the neoconservatives one outspoken intellectual, Mike Ledeen, who talked about universal fascism. The concept was early Mussolini, that is to say, fascism without anti-Semitism, which Mussolini later introduced into Italian fascism. For Mike Ledeen and the neocons, this kind of regime is one they\u2019re comfortable with. Looking at the intellectual roots of the neoconservatives, really what you\u2019re looking at is what was called Revisionist Zionism. These people are all from the Truman Cold War era mentality and the Revisionist Zionism of Vladimir Jabotinsky. Jabotinsky favored a Mussolini style politics, and, at base, a Nietzschean approach to politics.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When they use the term \u201cliberal democracy,\u201d well, that sounds great. It sounds excellent until you realize that what they really mean is quite the opposite, more of a regimented society, etc. It\u2019s this use of language, twisting language around. Of course, liberal democracy would be great, but that\u2019s not what\u2019s in their mind. And of course, here in the United States, we have a constitutional republic. Our democracy is based on a Constitution, and it\u2019s republican in nature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington:<\/strong> There\u2019s no difference these days between the neocons who run the Republican Party and the so-called neolibs who run the Democratic Party when it comes to asserting the right to use military force against any government which does not follow their \u201crules-based order,\u201d as they define the rules. The endless wars in the Middle East were unprovoked and were supporting the terrorists against sovereign governments, rather than fighting them. You\u2019ve made the point that the U.S. lost all of these wars while causing massive destruction and death and mass migration. The UN Charter following World War II was very clear. It forbid the use of military force unless attacked and also forbid the use of unilateral sanctions for economic or strategic purposes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How do you think the U.S. government has gotten away with such overt criminal acts against international law?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Dr. Kiracofe:<\/strong> Well, Washington just plows ahead and does what it wants\u2014the so-called \u201cblob,\u201d or the \u201cinside-the-Beltway\u201d people. Both political parties have been \u201cneocon-ized,\u201d if you wish. Actually, the neoconservatives started in the Democratic Party under Truman in the Cold War atmosphere. Nowadays the neoconservative, bellicose, aggressive line is shared to a great degree by both political parties in Washington, and in Congress. In terms of interventionism, again, both parties are involved\u2014the neoconservative policy network, the liberal interventionists that you mentioned, the so-called human rights people, human rights interventionists. It\u2019s a disregard for international law, that is to say, traditional international law based on the concept of sovereign states, and also based on the concept of non-interference in the internal affairs of sovereign states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This international legal concept goes back even as early as 1555 to the Peace of Augsburg, and then 1648 to the well-known Peace of Westphalia. These principles of non-interference in the internal affairs of other countries is a 500-year-old principle, although it has not, of course, been followed all those years. The United States since World War II is a prime example of what we would call \u201cinterventionist politics.\u201d Its foreign interventions are supported by both parties, or a majority of both parties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When it comes to major wars, as opposed to the covert <em>coups d\u2019\u00e9tat<\/em> and all sorts of covert actions, we certainly didn\u2019t win Korea, we didn\u2019t win Vietnam, we didn\u2019t win Iraq, and an ignominious withdrawal from Afghanistan, etc. And of course, we\u2019re not going to \u201cwin\u201d the proxy war the U.S. started with Russia in Ukraine. We have a lot of violence going on and displaced persons deaths, etc., owing to this interventionism, or what we could call imperialism by the United States and its Western allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I would point out that the NATO alliance, we need to remember, is the U.S., Canada, plus Western European countries. It\u2019s really the product of a U.S. or a transatlantic oligarchy, rather than an individual United States or an individual Germany or France or England or something. It\u2019s this transatlantic oligarchy that is controlling NATO as a tool of policy, as an enforcement tool of policy, and is controlling the European Union as a political tool. So, when we talk about \u201cU.S. imperialism,\u201d which is one way to look at it, we also should bear in mind the sort of transatlantic oligarchy which is subservient to, we could say, a certain plutocracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Roles of the City of London and Wall Street<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington:<\/strong> How do you see the role of the City of London and Wall Street in the governance of this transatlantic oligarchy?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Dr. Kiracofe:<\/strong> That\u2019s the core of it. Of course, the City of London is a very ancient setup, going back many centuries, I think maybe to the 13th century or a little later, but at least 500, 600 years, going back that far. The Bank of England was started as a private monopoly in the late 1600s, 1690s. That whole private banking and banking nexus there in what is called The City. That\u2019s the British component of it. And then we have the American side in Wall Street, you could say a parallel universe, or a parallel and cooperating financial mechanism with the British.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Anglo-Dutch banking financial networks, and then the New York linkages, New York commercial banks, investment banks are all kind of interlinked. Each has offices in the other countries\u2014the New York banks have offices in London and the London banks have offices in New York, etc. You\u2019re looking at the central banks and the cooperation of central banks to manipulate the money supply, credit and interest rates, and things along those lines\u2014I would say a misuse. The British Bank of England was nationalized after World War II. The American Federal Reserve, so-called, is still held by commercial banks. The American Federal Reserve isn\u2019t really \u201cfederal\u201d when you look at it closely. Also, there\u2019s a problem of so-called independence of central banks. The central bank should certainly be under the control of the Treasury, not independent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The United States Fed is not under the control of the Treasury and is only nominally under control of Congress, which is too supine to reform it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finance capitalism, of course, is the root, the foundation of modern Western imperialism. And Professor Hobson in England, way back in the early 1900s, wrote about it, analyzed it. A number of American economists back in the early 1900s, following Hobson and other analysts, economists, noted this problem of what they used to call \u201cnational imperialism.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For example, in World War I, you had the British imperialism, French imperialism, Russian imperialism, German imperialism\u2014it was a clash of these national imperialisms. After World War II, we seem to have more of what we might call globalist imperialism. That is to say that the competing national imperialisms of the World War I era, even World War II, something changed. After World War II, you had kind of a globalist, a group or a global oligarchy or plutocracy running the imperialist game. And, of course, being the most powerful country after World War II, the U.S. became an instrument for projecting military power or other sorts of power where necessary, to enforce, let\u2019s say, global finance capitalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, the U.S. becomes a sheriff for Wall Street and The City. The British of course give the Americans a lot of ideas because the Americans don\u2019t have so much experience as the British do. So a lot of U.S. policies are actually British policies that the British basically \u201csuggest\u201d to the United States, and then the United States goes forward with that\u2014anti-Russian stuff, and all of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington:<\/strong> Well, also financial policies, in the sense that the historic American system of Hamiltonian economics had the government directing the credit policy, not the Fed or the private banking system. And essentially, after the assassination of President Kennedy, this British model of banking systematically came in and generally took over the financial system. And all you hear since then is \u201cthe independence of the Fed\u2014we must protect the independence of the Fed,\u201d which, of course, is the independence of private bankers, not government policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Federal Reserve Bank Is Not Federal<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Dr. Kiracofe:<\/strong> Right. When the Federal Reserve was set up in 1913, the ownership of the Fed actually was the shareholders, and shareholders were the participating big banks. They just put the word \u201cfederal\u201d on it. It\u2019s a private bank, in essence. As I said earlier, it actually should be under the authority of the Treasury Department and the Secretary of the Treasury, which would be a cabinet official, with the President.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Fed was set up by Congress. Congress has the power to create the Fed and Congress has the power to dissolve the Fed or put new legislation forward, to audit the Fed, to change how it works, etc. The Fed is a creature of Congress. However, as you well point out, the idea that the Fed should be \u201cindependent\u201d\u2014what does that mean? Independent from Congress? What does that mean? Independent from the people of the United States who vote for their Congresspersons and senators? I mean, what is an \u201cindependent American central bank?\u201d Who owns it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you take a look carefully during the Jacksonian period of the central bank, you do find that there are foreign shareholders of our own central bank. The issue then is, okay, let\u2019s nationalize the Federal Central Bank, and let\u2019s put it under the authority of the Treasury Department, Secretary of the Treasury, who, of course, is subject to his President and his President is subject to election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Therefore, we certainly don\u2019t need an independent Fed. We need a Fed under political control. You may say, well, the different politicians are going to have different ideas. Well, fine, that\u2019s democracy. Let\u2019s have a vote in the Senate. Let\u2019s have a vote in the House about the management issues when it comes to the central bank. While it this sort of \u201chigh priest\u201d who would be the head of the central bank, why let that high priest make all the policies without regulation, without oversight?&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Banking Committee and appropriate committees in the House and Senate are supposed to exercise oversight, but they just write a blank check. The high priests and priestesses in the central bank\u2014you can think about Delphi and ancient Babylon and all those ancient times when all the money, the gold and silver, was kept by the priesthood in the temples. These high priests of the Federal Reserve are independent and not subject to democratic control. My personal view is that we need to federalize the Fed and bring it under democratic control of Congress who have the authority and the responsibility of oversight. Look at the interest rates today. Look at the Fed policy. It\u2019s a disaster. It\u2019s wrecking the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Roots of Fascist Ideology in Ukraine<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington:<\/strong> Thank you. You mentioned the Ukraine situation. Let me go back to that. It\u2019s widely recognized now, I don\u2019t think they can hide it any longer, that the U.S. and the U.K. have been openly sponsoring and arming neo-Nazi brigades within Ukraine, within the Ukraine military and within the government. I know you know a great deal about how the fascist institutions from World War II, the Nazi and fascist institutions, that these were sustained by Western interests in Europe since the time of World War II. What can you say about how that was done?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Dr. Kiracofe:<\/strong> First of all, let\u2019s go back a little bit into the 1920s and 1930s when we have various forms of fascism developing, and we have that particularly virulent anti-Semitic strain of fascism developing, of course, in Germany. But then Mussolini shifts over and becomes also anti-Semitic in his later period, after 1937 or so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The racial roots of this go back into what used to be called \u201ceugenics\u201d and \u201cracial anthropology\u201d as scientific, so-called, subjects of study. So, eugenics, racial anthropology, which even goes back into the late 1880s, [Gen. Gustav] Ratzenhofer in Austria and the others. That sets the stage for that era of fascism that we supposedly defeated in World War II.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But we have a persistence of the ideology, racist ideologies or racialist ideologies of the racial anthropologists and the eugenics people and the anti-Semites and all of that. We have that persisting in various quarters in Europe. Europe was not de-Nazified. I mean, in theory Germany was de-Nazified, but really the ideology, that pernicious ideology, racialist ideologies, were never fully extinguished. They persisted under the table, you could say, and even protected under democratic institutions, which allow a variety of thought. Although the Nazi thought is pernicious, but still it survived, and particularly in Eastern Europe and parts of Germany.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When we look at the Ukraine situation, we need to take a look at the historical background. First of all, the word \u201cUkraine\u201d translates to \u201cborderland.\u201d The present geographic space of Ukraine, the present borders are like a Frankenstein monster. Bits and pieces of territory were added to create Ukraine. During World War I, 1918, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, where the German general staff made a deal with Lenin, and Russia dropped out of the war. In return, Ukraine was \u201ccreated.\u201d Various parts of the former Russian empire were broken off, and Lenin gives the whole southern and eastern portion of Novorossiya, historic Novorussiya, to so-called Ukraine in 1922. After World War II, Stalin gives little portions of what\u2019s now in western Ukraine to Ukraine, former Polish Galicia\u2014there are two million Poles that live in Ukraine. These are all involved in what is the present-day boundaries of Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, Ukraine is a mishmash, an agglomeration of various pieces of real estate and ethnic and religious groups. The western part is Roman Catholic. The Novorossiya area is generally Russian Orthodox. So, you have within Ukraine ethnic as well as religious divisions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Stepan Bandera\u2019s Nazi Network, Then and Now<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the 1920s, \u201930s, \u201940s, etc., particularly in the western portion of Ukraine near Lvov, the western portion of what is today called Ukraine, you have the rise of Nazi organizations, various Ukrainian organizations that worked with the German state, the Nazi German state, with the Abwehr [military-intelligence] in particular, the military and others. This is where the Stepan Bandera faction comes from. The Stepan Bandera political faction today is the dominant political faction in Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, what about this guy? Bandera was a Nazi agent. He worked with the Germans in World War II. His organization was responsible for murdering Jews and Poles and Ukrainians, etc., liquidating them, over 100,000 or so. The Bandera operations in World War II were directed by Nazi Germany as he was their tool.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the conclusion of World War II, the Nazi German intelligence network under General Reinhard Gehlen was recruited by the West, by the United States, etc., to fold into post-World War II Western intelligence services to fight communism, that is to say Russian communism or Soviet communism, Soviet bloc communism. Folded into NATO, for example, are the Western intelligence services, for example, former Nazi military and intelligence officials. With the idea of fighting communism\u2014use the Nazis to fight the communists\u2014that kind of an idea. In that, you had different operations created in Europe, like the so-called Gladio operation, which left a \u201cstay behind\u201d network of basically Nazi, ideological types in place, undercover in Europe, to fight against the so-called Soviet threat, and so on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">How does this persist? It starts in the 1920s and 1930s. World War II does not de-Nazify Europe, really. And then after World War II, these extremist networks are used by the West, by the U.S. and Germany and Britain and France, etc. against the Soviet Union. In 1991 the Soviet Union broke up and the Warsaw Pact ended. You now have the Russian Federation, of which Russia is the major part, and then all these bits and pieces of what was the Soviet Empire, which was inherited from part of the Tsarist empire. The Baltic states were freed up and Ukraine became independent. The Central Asian countries, the five \u201cStans,\u201d became independent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">With reference to Ukraine, these old Bandera networks still existed. Some of the elderly people in it and then their children and grandchildren adhered to that form of Ukrainian nationalism that existed particularly in the Lvov area, in the western Roman Catholic zone of Ukraine. There, the ethnic concept, like that of Adolf Hitler, was ethnically anti-Russian. They are Slavs, that\u2019s true. But the Ukrainian racial anthropology made a distinction between themselves as superior to the Russian ethnic people who were, in German terms, the <em>untermenschen<\/em>, or the lower-down people. That distinction in Ukraine was maintained in the \u201950s and \u201960s, and by these extremist groups.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In recent years, since 1991, Western intelligence services, the United States, Britain, Germany in particular, were using earlier\u20141950s era anti-communist networks. They were used to impose the <em>coup d\u2019\u00e9tat<\/em> in 2014, the so-called Maidan coup, that put in power these really extremist people. Before the Maidan coup we could say that the governments were pro-Western, more liberal, Yushchenko and all, more liberal, pro-Western. But after the 2014 <em>coup<\/em>, [President Petro] Poroshenko and then [President Volodymyr] Zelensky came to power. Very right-wing nationalists and neo-Nazi networks have real power in the parliament and in the government, the nomenklatura, the apparatus of government, the bureaucracy, and also in the military.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s what we\u2019re facing right now in Ukraine. The Ukrainian situation, the tragic war that we see now, could have been avoided by the West pressuring Ukraine to adopt the Minsk-II formula, which was from 2015. The Minsk-II formula simply called for more autonomy for the ethnic Russian speakers, ethnic Russians in the south and east, former Novorossiya. But neither France nor Germany, nor the United States, nor any other of the Western countries would help facilitate Minsk-II. That being the case, the Western countries, and also NATO, built up the Ukrainian military, and backed the new right-wing regimes in Ukraine. I mean, Zelensky is a fascist, and Poroshenko was too. It\u2019s very simple. Ukraine was built up as a proxy, NATO\u2019s proxy, U.S. proxy, against Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, of course, this was part of the Zbigniew Brzezinski formula, as discussed in his book, <em>The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives<\/em>. Brzezinski was the guy who invented these \u201ccolor revolutions,\u201d for the country of Georgia, for the country of Ukraine, etc. This is really Brzezinski\u2019s legacy in a direct way, this Ukraine war, because Brzezinski specifically wanted to target Ukraine as a proxy against Russia. Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State under President Clinton, was a former student and prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Brzezinski.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Without going into even further length about the situation, right now, the Russians are advancing and Ukraine will be partitioned if the Russian advance sticks, and Russia will get back what Lenin gave to Ukraine\u2014that is traditional Novorossiya in the south and east. There\u2019ll be a Ukrainian rump state. And then the question is going to be, is Poland going to want to grab a little bit of Galicia back, or what about Hungary, etc.? The ultimate shape, the geographic space of Ukraine is yet to be determined. Certainly the U.S. and any military professional knows that the Russians are winning. But the propaganda has to be the other way around, that \u201cthe Ukrainians are winning,\u201d \u201cthe brave Zelensky,\u201d etc. In fact, on the ground it certainly appears to be that the Russians are winning and ultimately will partition Ukraine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The Ideologists of Fascism<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington:<\/strong> Let me let me ask you about the ideology behind fascism. As I\u2019m sure you know, as a university professor for years, the likes of Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, of the jurist Carl Schmitt, these people are taught as among the great philosophers and jurists of our age in American universities. And yet they were the ideologues who really gave rise to German Nazism. How do you see this?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Dr. Kiracofe:<\/strong> It\u2019s a tragedy, of course. Instead of teaching Nietzsche and Heidegger and Schmidt and all those guys, we should be teaching James Madison and George Washington and Thomas Jefferson and [Alexander] Hamilton. You know, our own intellectual tradition. What we\u2019ve done is adopted the European intellectual tradition, which has nothing to do with the United States in these characters, and that has proliferated in American education. I will say that in particular, what\u2019s been devastating has been, I think, the Frankfurt School of German intellectuals who came to the United States in the 1930s and set up shop at Columbia University.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Frankfurt School is \u201ccritical theory,\u201d a mixture of neo-Marxism and neo-Freudianism. But what people don\u2019t quite catch is that the Frankfurt School, really, is fundamentally based on Sergey Nechayev, the Russian anarchist. Nechayev\u2019s doctrine was one of pure destruction, and that goes well with Nietzsche, of course. But Nechayev\u2019s doctrine was destruction. The Frankfurt School\u2019s entire program was the destruction of Western culture, and thus politics. So, in destroying culture, you destroy politics. That\u2019s the Frankfurt School approach. I remember very well a university campus in the 1960s when I was a student undergrad. You had these Frankfurt school professors becoming so famous\u2014Herbert Marcuse, for one, and a whole host of others. Marcuse and the Frankfurt School people were dominating campuses from California all the way to New England.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you take a look at their ideology, it\u2019s a brilliant strategy to destroy. They make no proposals as to what to build. Their role is to destroy. It\u2019s so funny, that the Frankfurt School itself was a creation of the Soviet intelligence services, the NKVD. Felix Dzerzhinsky himself worked with [Theodor] Adorno, directly, to fund and put together the Frankfurt School. And there was a close linkage then between the Frankfurt School and Moscow Center, and the Frankfurt School and the Comintern, the Communist International. In Russia, you had [Karl] Radek and some of the others who were linked in to helping support the Frankfurt School in Frankfurt, Germany, this group of neo-Marxist intellectuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, what about Nietzsche? What we find about Nietzsche, the trend in the late 19th century, particularly in Germany, there was, I would say, a revival, you could call it, or a wave of Nietzschean thought. Nietzsche became very, very influential in the 1880s, 1890s. At the same time, this strong Nietzschean impulse was linked, you could say, to the Charles Darwin people, the Herbert Spencer people. So, you had kind of a convergence of Nietzsche, and this social Darwinism or however you want to phrase it\u2014survival of the fittest, that philosophy. That was a driving force in Germany as well as in England, etc.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There was a transformation into the military ideology, particularly by Gen. Gustav Ratzenhofer of Austria, who blended this Nietzschean stuff with this racial stuff, \u201csurvival of the fittest\u201d stuff of Darwin and Spencer. Ratzenhofer I think in certain circles was influential. And let\u2019s remember, Hitler wasn\u2019t a German at all. Hitler was an Austrian. I think Gen. Ratzenhofer\u2019s ideas provided a real basis for Hitler and that type of militarized Nietzschean thought and action. So, yes, you\u2019ve identified Nietzsche. It\u2019s very important. And when we look at what used to be called militarism, the rise of militarism in Europe in the 19th century, towards the end of the 19th century, that militarism was very much colored by Nietzschean, the \u201cSuperman,\u201d and Nietzschean thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, we fought World War I and tried after that with the League of Nations, and then World War II and tried after that with the United Nations, to try to stem or stop or block or eliminate this virulent militarism that was tearing the world up. It includes, of course, Japanese militarism\u2014I\u2019m not letting them off the hook either, Mr. Abe. But this militarism was kept going in the United States after World War II, as President Ike Eisenhower said, by the military-industrial complex.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Behind \u2018Neoconservatism\u2019 Is Nietzschean Thought<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What is the leading intellectual policy network for that? The neoconservatives. The point you made on philosophy driving thought in the United States\u2014yes: Nietzsche, and also Heidegger, but in particular the Frankfurt School. Then we see the neocons pushing it. In the academic world, which has been completely wrecked by the Frankfurt School, higher education\u2014not to mention K through 12\u2014in higher education, in international relations theory, international relations scholars, we see the so-called \u201crealists.\u201d Well, what is this \u201crealist\u201d stuff? The \u201crealists,\u201d in academics and in policy in Washington, believe in the philosophies of Nietzsche, and Thomas Hobbes. You didn\u2019t mention Leo Strauss, but Leo Strauss is in there as a purveyor of Nietzschean thought. Hans Morgenthau, another purveyor of Nietzschean thought. So, in the National Security Network in the United States, we have Nietzschean thought, Hobbesian thought, German realpolitik thought, Machtpolitik thought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">By the way, Friedrich Meinecke\u2019s critique of realpolitik is really good, his book on Machiavellianism, <em>Die Idee der<\/em> <em>Staatsr\u00e4son<\/em>, is a very important book on all this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Permeating Washington, D.C. today, sitting in various offices in the Pentagon and State Department and Congress, etc., there\u2019s this national security thinking based on Hobbes. Well, the United States is not based on Hobbes\u2014more Locke than Hobbes. What you point out about Nietzschean thought, is that it\u2019s not just confined to the world of ivory tower intellectuals. No. Variations of Nietzschean thought are present in the policy making circles in Washington, D.C. Our imperialism, our interventionism, is a Nietzschean idea, that the United States should be the hegemon of the world, should dominate the world: so-called \u201cFull-Spectrum Dominance.\u201d&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">All this stuff that you see coming out of the Pentagon in their national security reports every couple of years, or national strategy reports out of the White House. It has this Nietzschean flavor to it. The National Security Council\u2019s NSC 68, 1951\u2014which is a very famous document\u2014set the stage for the militarization of American foreign policy. You could say, the \u201cNietzscheanization\u201d of American foreign policy.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hobbesianization. Certainly, American foreign policy that the Founding Fathers intended, as in George Washington\u2019s farewell address, has nothing to do with Nietzsche, or Heidegger, or Leo Strauss or Carl Smith who was Strauss\u2019 teacher. What\u2019s happened is, this European fascism, this strain of European fascism and philosophy, has come into the United States and spread to the higher education, and then spreads into decision makers in Washington. They have what we can call roughly a Cold War mindset, a Nietzschean mindset, a zero-sum mindset.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>U.S. Foreign Policy as \u2018Great Power Confrontations\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington:<\/strong> We had another shift in strategy during the Barack Obama and Donald Trump administrations, when our national security doctrines declared that terrorism was not our key problem, but rather we now have \u201cgreat power confrontation\u201d and that Russia and China were identified as our competitors, actually saying that they were our enemies, that they were aggressive, they were trying to take the world away from America\u2019s unipolar leadership and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And yet, just last week, we had a conference in Beijing of the BRICS countries\u2014Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa\u2014along with 13 other leading developing sector countries. They absolutely united, totally, in denouncing the idea of these \u201cblocs,\u201d of the East versus the West\u2014what the Biden administration likes to call the \u201cdemocracies versus the autocracies.\u201d Instead, they called for international unity to deal with the actual global crisis that we\u2019re facing\u2014a perfect storm, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche calls it\u2014the danger of a global nuclear war, the hyperinflationary collapse of the entire dollar-based Western system, mass famine spreading in an unprecedented scope globally. And yet the Biden administration and the media continue to say that Russia is isolated internationally, and that even China is isolated internationally, despite this reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, what is the actual situation now in terms of the emergence of this new phenomenon in China, Russia, India?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Dr. Kiracofe:<\/strong> You\u2019ve identified that really well, the BRICS grouping. What we\u2019re seeing is these different groupings\u2014we have ASEAN [The Association of Southeast Asian Nations] in the Pacific, etc.\u2014around common interests, which boil down to economic and social development and cooperation. So here we have this concept of \u201cpeace and development,\u201d or development meaning economic and social, scientific, technological development of humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m an American and I\u2019m really outraged at, not just the Biden administration; it\u2019s the entire U.S. establishment, the foreign policy establishment. They\u2019ve completely divorced themselves from, let\u2019s say, George Washington\u2019s farewell address, or you could take Jefferson or Hamilton or Madison or Monroe or Abraham Lincoln, any of the Founding Fathers, astute statesmen of our past. They have taken American idealism, and have created the absolute opposite: the American imperial hegemon, a kind of Frankenstein monster roaming around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As an American, I reject that. I think it\u2019s an alien idea to us, to our culture, our country, our people. This alien idea is imposed by the establishment, the so-called \u201ctransatlantic oligarchy,\u201d submissive to a certain plutocracy of finance. What we\u2019re seeing now in the world is a natural reaction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>International Relations 101<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even if you took International Relations 101\u2014which I used to teach in political science classes\u2014you would see the concept of countries getting together to balance against the hegemon. In Europe, Louis Quatorze, Louis the 14th, wanted to be the ruler of Europe. Well, a coalition was put together to block that. Then you had Napoleon. He wanted to dominate Europe and be the hegemon of Europe. Well, you have a coalition that comes together and then blocks Napoleon. And you\u2019ve got Hitler doing the same thing, wanting to be the dictator of Europe, etc. And again, a coalition comes together and defeats Hitler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, the pattern, at least in Western history, which is what we\u2019re talking about here, is coalitions coming together to block a hegemon. Now, let\u2019s apply that to the world today, because the United States has entered into this completely un-American hegemonic role, which is\u2014let\u2019s face it, it\u2019s Wall Street, it\u2019s The City, we were talking about that earlier. Who\u2019s really behind American imperialism? Well, Wall Street, of course, and The City. Who\u2019s behind the military-industrial complex? Well, of course, it\u2019s Wall Street. They make the loans to the companies. This is what we call finance capitalism combining with militarism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At any rate, the BRICS countries are now trying their best to coordinate their policies toward economic and social development of their people. And this includes health and all sorts of categories of social and economic development. China and Russia\u2014and Putin in particular\u2014have emphasized the role of BRICS, the emerging role of BRICS in the international system. The international system is changing, from what?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, let\u2019s take a look backward. After World War II, the international system was two blocs, the Western bloc vs. the communist bloc. The Communist bloc was the Soviet Union and China basically, and their satellites. Two blocs, the West vs. the East. Then in 1991, the Soviet Union dissolves and the Warsaw Pact, its military alliance dissolves. That left the U.S. with choices to make. Back then, some of us argued: \u201cHey, now it\u2019s time to take a breather. Now it\u2019s time to prepare for the eventual emergence of a multipolar world. And if we take a breather, retrench our economy, get our own economic and social development going because we\u2019re at peace. We can adjust to the inevitable ineluctable arrival process of multipolarity.\u201d Some call it polycentrism, some call it pluralism. Along with that, you would have re-emphasized the United Nations as a central point for peace and development and international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Of course, the United States has done just the opposite. We\u2019ve done everything we can to destroy the United Nations, to wreck its mission, to destroy international law.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now that the world economy, more and more countries, have reached an economic level sufficient to sustain their independence and sovereignty, particularly when protected or led by China and Russia, you\u2019re starting to see a Global South emerging, with BRICS part of that. And you\u2019re starting to see this Western bloc of, let\u2019s be frank, white people in the U.S. and Canada and Europe. So, you\u2019ve got this this radical militarized Atlantic community of white people vs. the rest of the world. That\u2019s what\u2019s going on.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Democracies vs. Autocracies: The New \u2018Cold War\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It\u2019s a tragedy. It\u2019s a disgrace that the U.S. establishment has supported and promotes this kind of a bloc system or bifurcation system of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 2005, the U.S. establishment elite, the foreign policy elite, met in a series of meetings. Princeton University hosted. It was to figure out an update to the Cold War. \u201cHow do we update our Cold War policy? China is rising, Russia is coming back, we\u2019re mired down in the Middle East with the Iraq war. How do we update the Cold War?\u201d That was the question. A new international situation, a new international balance of power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The bottom line of that 2005 elite\u2019s decision, was the idea of \u201cdemocracies vs. autocracies.\u201d Well, that just updates the language of the old Cold War, which was the West vs. the East, the Free world West vs. the Communist East. So, this bloc idea, just updated with a little different rhetoric, different language. Democracies vs. autocracies. That\u2019s 2005. That was carried forward. Remember, in 2008 we had the election of Barack Obama, so that was reached just before the election in 2008, that elite consensus, was carried forward by Obama.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Who was the Secretary of State? Hillary Clinton. Who is Hillary\u2019s chief adviser? A gal who had been involved in this whole update of U.S. foreign policy, Anne-Marie Slaughter, who was Director of Policy Planning over at the State Department. Basically the U.S. elite, so-called elite, such as it is, decided to update the Cold War to take into consideration the rise of China and the return of Russia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Still, the concept of containment from the old Cold War was applied to the new Cold War. That is to say: beef up NATO in Europe to block Russia, and strengthen the alliance with Japan and other alliances in Asia to block China. Therefore, we have this idea of encirclement of the Eurasian landmass from the European side, and from Japan on the Pacific side. That was already 2005 and carried into the Obama administration. We can remember Mrs. Clinton talked about\u2014she didn\u2019t call it the Quad, but she discussed in 2011 and 2010, as they were two years into the Obama administration\u2014having India, Japan, the United States, and Australia, joining together against China. So, that \u201cQuad,\u201d as it was later called, Four Countries. Hillary was already talking about that in 2010 and 2011.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Here we are in 2022. Let\u2019s think about this. You and I are both old enough to remember the 1970s. We were in college then, grad school. Back in 1972, Nixon did two things: the opening to China and a detente with Russia, easing relations. Fifty years ago, half a century ago, a Republican, no less, a conservative Republican administration, no less, was seeking ways to ameliorate relations with Russia and China. This was bipartisan because later in the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter, we can well remember, sort of finalized the Nixon opening to China and achieved a normalization, you could say, of relations with China. Late 1978,\u201979. Here we are, 50 years ago, attempting to have better relations with Russia and China. And bipartisan, Nixon and Jimmy Carter, both Democrats and Republicans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Let\u2019s fast forward. Here we are today, or since 2005, with the rebirth of the Cold War stuff, back in the 1950s, with Sen. Joe McCarthy! If you say something nice about Putin or President Xi, you\u2019re automatically a commie lover or a panda bear lover or a Russia bear lover or whatever you want to call it. You have this McCarthyism going on right now against anyone who favors a responsible and reasonable policy toward other major powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There are only two paths symbolized on the back of a dollar bill, on which we have the great seal of America, where the bald eagle is clutching an olive branch in its right talon and 13 arrows in its left. Now, in foreign policy, that\u2019s your choice. You\u2019re either going to have peace with the olive branch or you can have war with the arrows. And right now, instead of the peace-seeking that Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter and others had, now we\u2019ve got a neocon-ized Congress and a neocon-ized administration. Antony Blinken. Victoria Nuland. I mean, come on. A neocon-ized administration, fully backed by the military-industrial complex and the Pentagon. People may not know it or understand it, but it\u2019s working overtime on war planning against China, using Taiwan as the pretext.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019re a little diverted right now with Ukraine. That\u2019s true. But what\u2019s really going on in the Pentagon behind the scenes is war planning against China over Taiwan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In 50 years, we have gone from attempting to ameliorate, reduce tensions with potential adversaries, Russia and China, to the exact opposite. We are now in a confrontational mode with Russia and with China, and both of those countries are much stronger by far than they were in 1972, or \u201978 or \u201979. Russia and China are formidable powers. And the world is changing. The international system is changing to multipolarity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>The BRICS Alternative to the Hegemon<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s what gives space for the BRICS that you mentioned, a group of countries who don\u2019t want to live under an American hegemony\u2014it\u2019s not really U.S., it\u2019s a NATO hegemony, the hegemony of the transatlantic oligarchy, or London and Washington, however you want to phrase it. Countries that are in the Global South, as it\u2019s called, who don\u2019t want to be under this system, and who want to be independent, in the sense that they\u2019d like to choose their own political system, their own economic development growth system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It may not be a pure Western model, but they\u2019d like to be able to choose their own path to development, to political development, economic development, social development, and not be bothered by the hegemonic policies of the NATO countries. NATO is expanding globally, so let\u2019s also remember that. NATO\u2019s not just for Europe anymore. NATO has been for 30 years reaching into Central Asia, the Afghan war, Libya in Africa, and also incorporating Japan and New Zealand as partners. NATO has been globalized and NATO is the control mechanism of the transatlantic oligarchy and plutocracy that I was mentioning before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, it\u2019s certainly no surprise that BRICS is being featured now as an alternative grouping, and other countries can join it. Saudi Arabia might like to join. Argentina has inquired about joining. Brazil is a member, so why not Argentina? I think Mexico would be a great addition. Indonesia, fantastic addition. BRICS, which is particularly emphasized by the Russians, by Putin, but also by China. BRICS has great possibilities in terms of forming a community oriented toward economic and social development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think it\u2019s going to expand. That\u2019s why they\u2019re starting now, in the last year or so, to talk about BRICS-Plus, plus other members. Who? as we just said, there are a range of members in the Global South that would be great additions to BRICS. And BRICS can certainly learn from the experience of China and its development model, which has been so successful, and from Russia, which has been successful in staving off Western sanctions. BRICS has a lot of potential as a cooperative grouping with a shared future. The key there is cooperation, solidarity, human development, peace. Those are the BRICS watchwords. That\u2019s what BRICS is aiming at.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>A New Bretton Woods System<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington: <\/strong>As you know, Cliff, the Schiller Institute has held a series of international conferences under Helga Zepp-LaRouche\u2019s direction and leadership, focused on the idea that we have to find a way to get the U.S. and the European countries not to go to war with Russia and China, but to sit down with Russia and China and deal with the actual extreme crisis facing mankind, with the collapse of the dollar based system, the threat of nuclear war, the pandemics, famine, and so forth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019re now circulating a petition calling for an <em>ad hoc<\/em> committee for a new Bretton Woods system, basically insisting that what\u2019s driving the war is the economic breakdown of the West, and that the decision by some in the West that rather than putting their own system through reorganization, they\u2019d rather go out and destroy Russia and China, so there would be no opposition to their continued hegemony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The danger that Helga Zepp-LaRouche has identified is that this new system, which we\u2019ve just discussed around the BRICS and the BRICS-Plus, if it remains only the non-Western countries, and there are still the two blocs, two financial systems, it\u2019s going to aggravate the danger of war rather than alleviate that danger. The question that we are addressing with the petition and with our organizing is, how do we bring the United States to see its actual self interest in being part of the Belt and Road, the New Silk Road, the new BRICS-Plus\u2014to join in a policy for peace through development.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What do you think? You\u2019ve been involved in American politics most of your life. What must be done to bring the U.S. to its senses and to join with this positive effort?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Dr. Kiracofe:<\/strong> Well, I think Helga and the Schiller Institute really are leading the charge here intellectually on the issue. What we\u2019re seeing currently is this bifurcation process, the two blocs, a Western bloc and a, let\u2019s say, Global South bloc. It\u2019s fine that the Global South develops and creates itself into a bloc, or builds solidarity among its members. But, Helga was quite right that, eventually, who knows when, but eventually, we must have an understanding on a global level, which is what the United Nations is all about. We should have an understanding at the global level on an international economy, a global economy that works for everyone\u2014a global international system that works for everyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We\u2019re all humans. This is the human race which is at stake here. It\u2019s true that for the moment, maybe for the next few years, we\u2019re going to see this bifurcation into blocs. That\u2019s true. We see it now. It\u2019s a natural reaction against the hegemon\u2014the United States and Western Europe, the transatlantic oligarchy and plutocracy. This is normal, but we have to look ahead. How do we look ahead? We do exactly what Franklin Roosevelt did during World War II. We look ahead to the aftermath of the conflict. We plan ahead. That\u2019s why President Roosevelt, who was very astute in international economic matters, called for the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. That\u2019s a year or so prior to victory in Europe and victory in Japan. So, a year before, while we were still fighting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>International Cooperation to Resolve the Coming \u2018Economic Hurricane\u2019<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We knew by 1944 that we were going to win, that the Allies were going to win. But President Roosevelt wanted to start planning ahead because obviously, after a world war, there\u2019s going to be global economic chaos. Similar today, just as you as you just pointed out, we\u2019re headed into a situation\u2014we\u2019re already in it\u2014but we\u2019re headed into a more serious situation of global economic chaos. Hyperinflation. We can have a depression. We could have a depression that lasts 5\u201310 years. I mean, a serious global depression, a real one, like in the 1930s or worse\u2014famine, as you just pointed out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What we need to do is, we need to do exactly the model that our American leadership under Roosevelt\u2014which was bipartisan, by the way, he had some Republicans in his cabinet\u2014in a bipartisan manner, we should accept the fact that a new Bretton Woods arrangement is needed. There\u2019s going to be this kind of non-Western Global South bloc with its own currency in some shape or form, and there\u2019ll be the U.S. dollar, and there\u2019ll be others, the euro, etc. So, in answer to your question: adopt the Roosevelt model during World War II. Plan ahead. Plan to get us out of this chaos because we\u2019re headed into chaos. Even Jamie Dimon, the head of JP Morgan-Chase Bank,&nbsp; said \u201can economic hurricane\u201d is coming.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now here\u2019s a famous Wall Street fellow saying an economic hurricane is coming. The Bank of England has been saying the same thing in its reports over the last several weeks: a hurricane is coming. So, now is the time, exactly as Schiller Institute has proposed, to be thinking about, or pre-thinking, about the post-storm, after this storm, after the hurricane. We need to get a global new Bretton Woods, that would relate to essentially\u2014there\u2019s a lot of different things there, but it would relate essentially to the issue of the currencies, which are all going to be bouncing all over the place.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The original Bretton Woods \u2013 and this is an important point here &#8212; the original Bretton Woods had the exchange rates of the currencies fixed. How were they fixed? They were fixed by the agreement between sovereign states. Aha! Here you have what we would call economic diplomacy. And you have the representatives of sovereign states agree on fixed exchange rates, and how to fix the level. That was destroyed in the 1970s when you had so-called \u201cfloating\u201d rates. Floating rates are determined by who? By currency traders in the big banks. I myself had some friends who were currency traders in New York and London. At one time I took a visit to New York and they said, \u201cHey, come on into our shop here, spend an hour or two with us while we\u2019re trading currencies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So, here I am sitting in a major international bank in New York City in their currency trading room. These guys are moving currencies. You know, $50 million here, $100 million there. Buy, sell, buy, sell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well, no, floating rates have nothing to do with sovereign countries. They turn over the valuation of the currencies to the private banking industry. My suggestion would be that in the New Bretton Woods, we return to the idea that sovereign states determine the rates of exchange, through economic diplomacy around the negotiating table.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">If you take a look at the money clause in our own Constitution [Art. I, Sec. 8, Clause 5], Congress coins the money and regulates the values thereof, and of foreign money. Congress has the power to say, \u201cGee, you know, I think the pound sterling isn\u2019t worth a $1.20. I think the euro isn\u2019t worth $1.02 nowadays. I think the euro is worth $0.98.\u201d It\u2019s the power of the sovereign to determine and regulate the value of money, and of foreign money that the sovereign is exchanging. Not the moneylenders in the temple\u2014we know the biblical story. That\u2019s the issue: is it going to be the moneylenders in the temple, or is it going to be sovereign states? That\u2019s something that needs to be addressed when we\u2019re thinking about structuring a new Bretton Woods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I understand that the thinking of Sergey Glazyev, whom I\u2019ve met, a fascinating person in Russia, and his colleagues at the Russian Academy of Sciences, have been working on concepts involving a basket of currencies for , o however one would create a monetary instrument, and value it. I think they are working on a concept, for BRICS or BRICS-Plus, of some kind of a monetary unit that would be based on commodities or based on something tangible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\"><p>We should remember, and this is not often thought about, money is the creation of the sovereign. Let\u2019s go back, way back. The Byzantine Empire. Who creates the Byzantine money? The king, the emperor. It\u2019s his money. And the value is what he says it is. Why? Because he\u2019s a sovereign. Take a look at the different kingdoms in Europe, in the old medieval period and renaissance. Who coins the money? The king, or the city if it\u2019s an independent city state. What\u2019s the value? What they say it is. What\u2019s the exchange value? What they say it is. What the sovereign says it is. Sovereign money is a legal creation by the sovereign. Lead can be money, copper can be money, gold can be money, leather can be money, paper can be money. The value of that object is what the sovereign says it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That\u2019s why I think Glazyev and his team at the Russian Academy of Sciences are trying to figure out how to create something that has value that they can identify, a number or quantity, or how to indicate that value\u2014One euro, or one \u201cBRICS-o.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I think we need to look ahead. The model for me is Roosevelt\u2019s Bretton Woods, and economic diplomacy by sovereign states. I think that\u2019s the key principle. The numbers and all that stuff, that\u2019s just a matter of negotiation. The key is getting the countries, the sovereign states, together at a conference like Bretton Woods, and have economic diplomacy\u2014negotiate and have economic diplomacy. Let your technical people figure out the exchange rates and all of that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But the key principle here is international cooperation to stabilize the international economic situation, the world economy. We\u2019re going to go through the hurricane, so we\u2019re going to learn again, like we did in the 1930s. We\u2019re going to go right through that again, it appears. So, we should prepare now. It was a great idea for the Schiller Institute to call for preparing for a new Bretton Woods. Will the U.S. join?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Well,&nbsp; eventually you\u2019re going to have to. The U.S. cannot be out of it forever. The two blocs cannot exist forever. 100 years? No. 50 years? No. 25 years? Maybe. 20 years? Maybe. Five years? Yeah. But at some point, there\u2019s going to have to be international cooperation on all this, on the dollar system. The use of the American dollar or the Treasury bills as your reserve, that\u2019s going to go out the window. There is a de-dollarization going on right now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">You\u2019re going to enter into a new monetary system, and whether you have two separate monetary systems for a while, at some point, you\u2019re going to need to have agreement among all the trading countries, all the countries engaged in international commerce. You\u2019ll have different types of additional reserve currencies. That, again, gets you into the whole issue, a separate issue, of the organization or reorganization of central banks. And that\u2019s a that\u2019s a whole other issue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Aside from a monetary conference, there\u2019s the issue of central banks. I think the proper concept there broadly for international finance\u2014finance, banking\u2014should serve industry, like a servant. What we have today is the inverse of that. Industry is serving finance, it\u2019s the slave of finance. Finance is at the top of the pyramid. That\u2019s based on debt, usury and other typical methods of the financial community. Central banks are going to have to be rethought as well. And the relationship between central banks is going to have to be rethought.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Billington:<\/strong> Thank you, Cliff. Of course, the Hamiltonian idea is for national banking as opposed to central banking. National banking being run by elected representatives rather than private banks, is one of the ideas that we\u2019re fighting to introduce through what we call LaRouche\u2019s Four Laws. Well, let us hope that your idea of bringing about this Bretton Woods conference, together with what the Schiller Institute is doing with the petition. I encourage everybody who\u2019s watching this to sign. Go to www.schillerinstitute.com and sign that petition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But let us make sure that this happens before certain Mad Men walk ourselves into a nuclear war. The urgency of making this happen is something that is now before the human race. I think people recognize that this is a turning point in history one way or the other, and that these same approaches as you\u2019ve laid out, and as we\u2019ve been fighting for, are successful. Thank you very much. We will definitely be circulating these ideas and your work here along with the rest of our mobilization. I want to thank you for participating in this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Dr. Kiracofe:<\/strong> Thank you, Mike, for inviting me. And best wishes to all of our viewers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mike Billington of Executive Intelligence Review interviews Dr. Clifford Kiracofe, former Senior Staff Member, U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations; President, Washington Institute for Peace and Development. Mike Billington: Greetings! This is Mike Billington. I\u2019m with Executive Intelligence Review, the Schiller Institute, and The LaRouche Organization. I\u2019m here today with Dr. Clifford Kiracofe. Cliff served [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":89201,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[842],"class_list":["post-89169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-allgemein","tag-lang-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89169"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89321,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89169\/revisions\/89321"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/89201"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}