Now Here's a Policy We Can Live With | EIRNS

by Dennis Small (EIRNS) — President Vladimir Putin at the session of the Collective Security Council of the CSTO in an expanded format. Credit: kremin.ru

Let’s engage in a “thought experiment” of the sort Albert Einstein made famous, to test out hypothetical scenarios that can point us to the truth we are seeking.

Russian President Vladimir Putin told a summit meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) states in Bishkek on Sept. 27 that, as part of Russia’s chairmanship of the CSTO in 2026, “the Russian side would like to propose holding an international expert forum on the creation of an equal and indivisible security architecture in Eurasia before the 2026 CSTO summit in Moscow. We intend to invite not only the delegations of the member states but also representatives of friendly countries and multilateral organizations and integration associations.”

Is there any fundamental reason that the United States should not be one such friendly country? Doesn’t an “equal and indivisible security architecture”—where all sovereign nations have the right to security, and that the security of one nation cannot be gained at the expense of another—sound like America’s intention after the defeat of fascism in World War II? Isn’t that a policy we can live with?

Or take the case of the “Initiative on Cooperation Supporting Modernization in Africa,” signed on Nov. 24 by Chinese Prime Minister Li Qiang and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, which recognizes modernization as “a common pursuit and an inalienable right of all countries of the world.” The document calls on all nations to join in “contributing to the economic, social and technological transformation of the African Continent.”

Is there some overriding reason that the United States should not join in that effort, to help bring modernization to Africa’s 1.5 billion people? After all, access to development, like security, must be equal and indivisible. Wouldn’t that approach go a long way to putting an end to illegal migration and drug-running across the Global South? Isn’t that, too, a policy we can live with?

So what is the obstacle, what’s the political roadblock to doing what obviously makes sense and is in the interest of the United States and the entire world? Have you ever heard of Wall Street and the City of London?

It’s the obstacle that Lyndon LaRouche proposed to remove by his Four Laws, beginning with a return to the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which banished financial speculation from the U.S. banking system. Such a global Glass-Steagall, or banking separation, is all the more urgently needed today.

In an Aug. 24, 2011 webcast, Lyndon LaRouche stated:

“We’re on the verge of a crash, all except the last piece where somebody pulls a piece out, and the whole thing comes tumbling down. Or else, there’s an alternative, which might be enacted in the meantime. The meantime is in any case a fairly short meantime, and everything is set, right now, to go … the present threat of a general breakdown crisis of, first of all, the trans-Atlantic system. That is what’s coming on immediately; such a breakdown in that system would mean the Asian system as well, would go tumbling down, after the trans-Atlantic system had tumbled first, and we’re on the verge of that right now.”

LaRouche spelled out how Glass-Steagall would work:

“The powers ascribed to the original version of Glass-Steagall—that is, by Franklin Roosevelt’s Administration—must be applied, and there must be a division of the assets in question, between two categories: On the one hand, you will have the category which belongs to the merchant banking sector and similar kinds of finances. The entirety of the claims against the United States, due to that sector, will be assigned to that sector, and removed as liabilities from the list of liabilities of the government section and the regular banking section. That division of assets and liabilities will define the situation which confronts us at that point.

“Now, the key part of this thing, is that the amount of credit which will survive the purge of this system of debts, is unfortunately rather small. Therefore, it is not possible to simply use Glass-Steagall in the simple way, by continuing the present national currency system. You have to go to a credit system, as implicitly defined by Alexander Hamilton when he was Treasury Secretary, and in forming that aspect of the Federal Constitution. So therefore, that division will define a section of the debts that will go to the merchant banking sector and similar sectors—the gambling sector—they are on their own; they get not a penny of bailout!”