Dual Power Situation in Today’s World — Which Path Will the U.S. Take?

The 2018 BRICS Summit can be usefully compared to the Bandung Conference of Asian and African nations in Indonesia in 1955, the first time the formerly colonized nations met without the colonial masters present. The difference, today, is that the BRICS now represents not only the majority of the world’s population, but also nearly half of the world economy, and by far most of the growth in the world economy.

The developments at the BRICS Forum last week, and the many bilateral and multilateral meetings on the sidelines among leaders of the nations and institutions of the “Global South,” demonstrated the new paradigm which already exists in the world today. Governed not by any nation, but by the concept and spirit of the New Silk Road, initiated by Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2013, nearly all the nations of Asia, Africa and Ibero-America — generally described as “developing nations” — have joined together to transform the world through development, just as China, in a few short decades, has placed itself in the leadership worldwide in most categories of infrastructure development, and in many categories of industry and scientific research, while lifting 700 million people out of poverty.

A major result of the BRICS Summit was the dedication to lift all of Africa, finally, out from under the state of poverty and under-development imposed upon it by the colonial powers. India and China pledged to work together to bring their scientific and technological experience to the so-called Dark Continent. Russia pledged to “light up Africa” with energy development, spearheaded by nuclear power, available to all, “built from scratch,” to provide electricity to the 600 million Africans still living in the dark.

The other center this dual power situation, in the West, is in a crisis of historical proportions. The European Union is crumbling, both politically and, in several countries, economically. The Western financial system is a speculative bubble about to burst. The summit between the new Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte and President Trump on Monday has sent terror into the oligarchs of the EU, who are warning that the new U.S.-Italian “axis” will disrupt the leadership of Germany and France, whose leaders are increasing discredited within their own nations and across the EU. Recall that Conte supported Trump’s intervention at the June G7 Summit, where Trump informed those leaders of the old paradigm that their association was essentially irrelevant if Russia were not at the table.

The question then remains — which way will the United States go? Trump has insisted that the U.S. must be friends of Russia and China, that there must be no more “regime change” wars, and that he wants to restore the collapsing industrial infrastructure in the nation. Can he do it?

Kesha Rogers, the candidate for Congress in Texas endorsed by the LaRouche Political Action Committee, has issued a statement, “China’s Approach to Africa Shows Us How We Can End Poverty in the U.S.A.” She states that the U.S. “suffers from extreme rates of poverty, suicide, drug abuse, a decline in basic economic infrastructure, and a lack of savings and funding for the future. During the past 30 years while the U.S.A. has been in accelerated physical economic collapse, China has built an economic miracle for poverty alleviation, lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty with targeted projects and strategies that address the unique problems of each town. This hasn’t just worked in China, but all across the world, most notably in Africa. The rapid development of the physical economy, through building rail development corridors, and modernizing ports, is now undoing the deliberate policies of colonialism, wars, and economic ruin, of the British Empire.”

This, she concludes, is the model Americans must follow: “This model being implemented in Africa today with the help of China and the BRICS nations, must be adopted in the United States to transform our neglected communities ruined by criminal negligence into bread baskets of economic growth and prosperity.” This is the means, she writes, to achieve the goals set by President Trump, who has “dedicated himself to restoring and expanding the decayed U.S. infrastructure, and increasing positive relations with Russia and China as well as other leading nations around the world.”

Rogers has another plan as well, addressing the new, positive relationship between President Trump and President-elect López Obrador in Mexico. Since Trump has declared that NAFTA must be replaced with a totally new trade agreement, we should not call the new plan the North American Free Trade Agreement, but the North American Belt and Road Initiative, NABRI. In this way. the U.S. can fully participate with China and the other 100 nations in the Belt and Road Initiative in the development of Mexico, and all of Ibero-America, as well as the United States itself. And, as Trump and López Obrador both agree, by creating economic development, jobs and hope for the future, the refugee crisis can be resolved, and the drug cartels which now essentially control Mexico can be defeated.

It is this cooperation between what LaRouche calls the “Four Powers” of Russia, China, India and the U.S., with the other sovereign states which wish to join, which can end the power of Empire in the world once and for all, and bring about a new paradigm for mankind.