Putin and China Set the New Agenda

Following the Aug. 9 St. Petersburg meeting between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Recip Erdogan, high level delegations from both countries are meeting Aug. 11 in a trilateral (foreign, defense and security ministers) working meeting to set a collaborative course for ending the Syrian war. Russia and Turkey plan to expand bilateral trade to $100 billion per year, a three-fold increase over previous peaks. The North-South Corridor project will now engage Russia, Azerbaijan, Turkey and Iran, and will fold into China’s One Belt, One Road project.

The Russia-Turkey partnership will bring greater stability to the entire Caspian Sea, Balkan, Caucasus region, extending the zone of Eurasian security and prosperity further west.

Lyndon LaRouche emphasized on Wednesday that these developments must not be seen as discrete actions. They are part of a new global dynamic, being led by Russia’s Putin and by the Chinese. In the coming weeks, Putin will be hosting the Vladivostok Eastern Economic Forum, which will now be attended by both Japanese Prime Minister Abe and by South Korean President Park. Following the G-20 summit, hosted by China, India will be hosting the annual BRICS leaders summit, which takes place in early October. China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi is in India this week, to further advance those crucial bilateral relations, and Indian Prime Minister Modi spoke by video conference with Russian President Putin on Wednesday, commemorating the opening of the first of five Russian-built nuclear power plants under construction in India, and arranging a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the G-20.

LaRouche cited Putin’s leadership as defining a new direction for global progress. “This is a global process being steered by Putin and China. They have effectively taken charge of a new direction in policy, replacing rivalry with collaboration.” LaRouche noted that this process was fully underway in the middle of 2015, when Putin attended the Chinese celebrations of the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War in Asia. It is now blossoming and leaving behind the pathetic old geopolitical games of Barack Obama, the British and NATO.

The developments in St. Petersburg this week will have a powerful impact in Germany, which is facing economic doom unless the policies of Merkel and Schaeuble are immediately abandoned. Look for dramatic shifts in Germany, which are now urgent. A number of recent studies, published since the fraudulent so-called ECB/EU bank “stress tests” have concluded that Deutsche Bank is doomed, is already a “dead bank walking,” and only the kind of reorganization that has been promoted by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, for weeks, now can save the German economy from ruin. LaRouche has warned repeatedly that the collapse of Deutsche Bank and the destruction of the German economy must be avoided at all costs, because such a collapse will greatly increase the danger of world war.

The Putin-Erdogan developments, including the extension of the China OBOR program into the North-South Corridor running from the Persian Gulf up into Europe, afford the perfect opportunity for Germany to change.

The same is true for the United States, where a tremendous policy battle is underway, beneath the surface of the presidential electoral disaster. The push for Glass Steagall in both party platforms, and the fact that a number of Congressional progressive Democrats and the AFL-CIO have denounced the coup d’etat against Dilma Rouseff in Brazil, in an open letter to John Kerry, are indications that the United States is also ripe for a revolution in policy.

The Schiller Institute has now produced the proceedings of the historic June 2016 Berlin conference, which spelled out the imminent danger of world war but provided the pathway to a new future of peace and prosperity. That report, which defines the policy guidelines for the next American presidency and for a new governing coalition in Germany, is already circulating and is a blueprint for the kind of new policy paradigm that Putin and the Chinese are driving.