The Schiller Institute will hold a dialogue among leading officials on August 21, at Noon EDT, on "What Just Happened in Afghanistan?" 

It is past time that we face the reality that continuing to make decisions based on 19th century imperial geopolitical doctrines and neoliberal economics leads inevitably to disaster. There is an alternative, which is to cooperate with other nations in junking the presently disintegrating world monetary system, and launching an era of mutually beneficial development projects. Instead of seeking new wars, for the benefit of the Military Industrial Complex, we can demonstrate, by joining with China, Russia and Afghanistan's neighbors, that Development is the New Name of Peace.

Afghanistan can become stable, and its enormous potential for growth can be leveraged to the benefit of Afghans and the world at large, through helping to shape a new paradigm on this planet.

As many of us sit stunned by the condition of our country and the world, we must be at least asking ourselves how it got so bad. How have we allowed such a drastic plunge both culturally and economically? What's the driving force of destruction? As we search, we will undoubtedly confront the hypothesis of evil, or at least apathy.

This week's Midwest Meeting featured Denise Ham and Carl Osgood. They looked at Dante Alighieri and his commitment to lift the people of Italy out of the cultural depravity surrounding them through the development of a unified language and the concept of a modern nation-state dedicated to the general welfare, such as the US once was. Tune in for a journey through Dante's Commedia, traveling from Hell to Heaven, to help grasp what will be necessary of us all in a moment such as ours - one equally gripped by both hope and despair. 

Two weeks before the fall of Kabul, the Schiller Institute presented a dialogue on how the U.S./NATO failure in Afghanistan can be turned into the basis for a New Paradigm of peace and development for the world.  Events since then have shown how prescient the speakers were, especially in emphasizing that there is no military solution to end the "endless" wars.  While the war hawks yearn for more war and unresolvable conflicts -- and the booty they can steal for their corporate war machine -- it's time for them to shut up, and get out of the way.  This Saturday, August 21, the Schiller Institute will sponsor a follow-up event,  on how to replace the era of failed regime change wars, with one of mutually beneficial cooperation.  You can watch the event here.

With nearly all policymakers and strategic analysts in the trans-Atlantic sector of the world in a clueless state of utter chaos and hysteria over the developments in Afghanistan, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche today convoked an urgent international seminar for this coming Saturday, August 21 to pursue the only available solution to the crisis: peace through development. The seminar will continue the prescient discussion held by the Schiller Institute on July 31, with many of the same panelists, as well as new ones.

Aug. 17 — In an article for Affari Italiani, Italian economist and China expert Michele Geraci blasted the Western failure on Afghanistan and explained that China will now adopt a peace-through-development approach.

All the so-called Western values have evaporated overnight in Afghanistan, Geraci wrote. And this goes not only for the U.S., but for NATO, the EU, and Europe as well, as this is seen as “an indistinguishable whole” in Asia and globally. 

As the usual lying media, intelligence and military officials, and politicians debate "Who Lost Afghanistan?", the people of the U.S. and the E.U. must demand full accountability for those responsible for the Afghan debacle. This  begins with a commitment to end the idea of imposing a unilateral Rules-Based Order backed by U.S. and NATO military force.  We must never again demand that nations surrender their sovereignty to that order.  And it should include a commitment to aid the government that is constituted there in a process of economic development, with full cooperation among Afghanistan's neighbors, along with Russia, China and the U.S.  It is not adequate for American officials to admit "We didn't have the foggiest idea" of what we were doing there -- we must overcome the damage by doing what should have been done years ago, recognizing that peace comes from development, not war.

The dramatic developments surrounding the Taliban takeover of Kabul expose the failure of this regime-change war, and the previous ones since WWII. The war was wrong from the beginning, as the continuing investigation by the 9/11 families into who was responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks are uncovering, and as Lyndon LaRouche warned that day, but more needs to be done. And there was never a viable war plan.

The most important lesson from the chaotic retreat of U.S. and NATO forces from Afghanistan is that we must end the era in which geopolitics determines foreign policy. The present nervous uncertainty surrounding Afghanistan is not simply the result of an intelligence failure, of Trump's negotiations with Taliban, or a mistaken decision by Biden: It is the result of the domination of U.S. and western thinking, for the last fifty-plus years, by the intentionally deadly principles of British imperial geopolitics! Will we use the crushing defeat of geopolitics as an opportunity to reject the axioms of a global imperial power, and replace them with the prospect of cooperation for development, which is the true legacy of the American revolution?

For more details on what is now possible, contact us to order from the Executive Intelligence Review, “Will Afghanistan Trigger a Paradigm Change?”

PDF of this statement

Contrary to President Joe Biden’s self-justification today—“Our mission has never been nation-building” in Afghanistan—there is no conceivable reason for the military and military engineering forces of a major nation to stay in an underdeveloped country for such a long period of time unless they are on a mission to help build that nation, help it industrialize with the infrastructure for sustained economic development. What did the United States military forces under General MacArthur do for a decade and a half in Japan after World War II, if not to at least assist in relaunching the modern industrialization of that country after the disaster of war? What about assistance in South Korea’s building itself as an industrial power after war?