The idea of building a foundation for world peace through world development is not a new one. We can see the first signs of it emerging with the Golden Renaissance of the 14th and 15th Century were the principle of promoting the common good was coming to the foreground. In the 17th century this principle became the foundation for the greatest peace development in history centered on the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia that ended 80 years of devastating wars. The same basic principle was much later reflected again in the 1823 Monroe Doctrine in the USA (see: Adams’ Community Of Principle: The Monroe Doctrine) 

In more modern history the principle was brought forward again at the height of the Cold War, where it became the foundation for a wide platform proposed by the American economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche. Mr. LaRouche issued a proposal in the early to mid-1980s for the nations of the world to join hands to build a worldwide strategic defence platform against nuclear missiles, which he proposed should be built on new physical principles. The development of the system, if the idea had been accepted, would have provided the science and technology driver for uplifting the entire world economy. In addition it would have established a community of principle that would have ended the dangerous division in the world with the nuclear doomsday-clock standing at just minutes before midnight. Lyndon LaRouche had personally invited the Soviets an behalf of President Regan to join his global defense proposal that became officially the SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative. (For more on the subject, see: Meet the man who may have saved your life, and may do it again!) 

At the time when the Soviet representatives rejected the global defense proposal LaRouche had warned them that by pursuing a project of that scale by themselves, working in isolation, the economic burden would be too great for them to shoulder and would collapse their economy in five years. The economic collapse became critical in six years, and shortly thereafter, in 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to be. The Soviet Union was dissolved primarily for reasons of its deepening economic bankruptcy, which some suggest was exploited by the West.

The history of the land-bridge concept

While the Soviet Union still existed LaRouche had issued a new economic development proposal, this time for the joined economic redevelopment of all of Europe, utilizing the core industrial capacity of central Europe that was still a powerful force at this time, with which to upgrade the economies of Europe, including Russia, and then to utilize this mobilized economic engine to enable the economic development of the entire world. 

The idea was put before the world more than a year prior to the Soviet Union shutting itself down. His proposal might have saved the Soviet Union even at this late date. 

The proposal began to take shape in December 1989. At this time "LaRouche commissioned a group of scientists and other specialists from the Schiller Institute to work out an economic program for Europe, known as the 'Productive Triangle.'" A month later, in January 1990: "The Productive Triangle, Paris-Berlin-Vienna: Locomotive for the World Economy was published, in German. This geographical area, a spherical triangle approximately as large as the territory of Japan, encompassing the industrial regions of northern France, western and eastern Germany, and parts of former Czechoslovakia and Austria, was envisioned to serve as a locomotive to restart the collapsing world economy." (see: Chronology: Productive Triangle to Eurasian Land-Bridge ) 

Out of the above background the idea of the Eurasian Land-Bridge Development proposal emerged that was designed to not only bring together the economies of Europe and Asia, but develop the entire continent along the transportation channels that would link together all of Eurasia, and also extend across all of the Americas via a tunnel under the Bering Straight. 

The idea for this large global development was first put formally on the table by Lyndon LaRouche in February, 1997, in his historic report:  

The Eurasian Land-Bridge
Locomotive to world-development
 Lyndon H. LaRouche Jr.
speech transcript, Feb. 5, 1997

The Eurasian Land-Bridge:
The most important strategic question of today.
By Helga Zepp LaRouche Jr.
speech transcript, Feb. 5, 1997

 The Bering Strait Tunnel. 
What are the engineering and financing issues?

The channel is 53 miles wide. The deepest water is about 180 feet deep. There are two islands out in the channel, Big Diomede and Little Diomede,  which make the project easier to build. The longest underwater crossing is 22 miles.  The Bering Strait has better soil conditions for tunnel construction than the English Channel, where a rail tunnel has already been built, indicating that building a tunnel under the Bering Strait is certainly feasible. In fact the tunnel could be readily built.

There is little doubt that this project will be built eventually, because of the economic benefits to be derived from it. The only question that remains at this point is whether we will see it happening in our lifetime, and that depends on whether or not we want to experience the benefits it offers. That alone governs our determination, or the lack of it, to build the project.

It has been called the Iron Silk Road
a global development project of which the Bering Strait Tunnel
is but a small, though vital, part. (PDF)

Great North American Water Development Projects (PDF)

The Global Dimensions of the Eurasian Land-Bridge

also see:

Canada - gateway at the center of the world

The Dec. 2007, Ottawa, Canada, Conference on the Eurasian Land-Bridge 

How is one going to pay for that? 

If we ask the above question we have already closed the door to realizing one of the greatest development potentials in history. We should ask ourselves then, how much is our future worth, even our life? Compared with the many hundreds of billions that the USA alone is spending on waging war for killing people, the construction costs would be rather small. But money isn't the real issue. Money never built anything. People build things. Money can be created and be directed to built the infrastructures society needs in order to provide for itself a more efficient and productive existence. By the resulting industrialization and genuine development (not speculative development) the nation becomes an economic power from which its currency derives its value. Economic development is not a 'cost' item. It creates value. It gives money its value.

The actual inventor of the system of state-directed credit creation in the modern period was the first secretary of the treasury of the U.S.A., Alexander Hamilton. After the victorious American War of Independence, Hamilton was faced with the problem of paying for it. The war had been financed by drawing upon internal and external (mostly private) credit, and the question was asked: When shall we pay all that back, and above all, how? To solve that problem, Hamilton made a brilliant move. He offered the creditors in various European countries to be paid, not in cash, but in Treasury notes issued by the U.S. National Bank. In this way, the creditors of the Old World were invited to participate in the future profits of the U.S. economy--a prospect so genuinely alluring, that almost all of the creditors went along with Hamilton. Indeed, in Europe the word got around that U.S. Treasury bonds were the most profitable paper to be had. This euphoria was absolutely justified, not because this paper had any kind of magical value, but because behind it, or behind the guarantee of the redemption of this paper, there stood a commitment to transform the U.S.A. into the most highly developed manufacturing state of its time. For this goal investments in infrastructure, industry, and agriculture, had priority over all other forms of investment. Out of it, the USA became the richest nation on the planet. Building the Land Bridge Across the Top of The World could have the same effect, enriching not only the USA and Russia in the process, but also all of Eurasia, Africa, and all of the Americas.

Where Do We Get The Money From To Pay For Great Infrastructure Projects?

The Historic  'American System' of Economy

The World Land-Bridge should not be perceived as merely a transportation link across continents for the movement of global resources and products, but should be seen as a transportation lifeline that enables a whole network of economic development centres along its routes, and connecting outward into the interior regions that thereby become a part of a worldwide Productive Engine stretching from the Horn of Africa to the tip of South America.

Two years after the original announcement LaRouche's Eurasian Land-Bridge proposal  was made the topic of the ICLC/Schiller Institute Conference in Reston, Virginia, on Sept. 5, 1999, with the title: The Eurasian Land-Bridge As a Global Strategy Today

In a speech at a conference focused on the Eurasian Land-Bridge proposal LaRouche's wife from Germany, Helga Zepp LaRouche, highlighted the European perspective of the importance of this project for peace through worldwide economic development. She began with these words. "The European/Eurasian Land-Bridge is, no matter what the media say or not, the most important strategic question of today. And, the success of the economic integration of the Eurasian continent, on a very high-level technological basis, will determine the fate of mankind."

Keynote address

PANEL I

The articles and speeches presented on this website, apart from the editorials, were published in the Executive Intelligence Review magazine, and are part of a large collection of works and speeches by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. and other contributors to the EIR magazine. They are grouped together here to illustrate Lyndon LaRouche's authorship of this project and he deep commitment to it, as well as that of his wife, Helga Zepp LaRouche. The speeches are  presented here in a larger type format than in the original. This format was chosen to make them more easily readable with small screen computers and adaptable to projection systems for group meetings.

Building World Peace through World Development.

As Sam Aluko, Professor of Economics, Nigeria, had pointed out (shown above), that "just as a country cannot remain at peace, half-slave and half-free, so the world cannot remain over-developed and under-developed, and hope to have and sustain peace." Building World Peace through World Development is really the only hope we have in a world that is rapidly disintegrating into global financial breakdown, endless war, hopeless poverty, mass starvation, and economic chaos on a scale that reflects the deepening tragedy of the collapse of civilization.

When history repeats itself

People say that we have seen periods of chaos before. They say that history repeats itself, meaning thereby that all the tragedies in history become repeated again and again as if by some higher law. While this endless-seeming repetition is indeed a historically observable pattern, the above statement is not true. The truth is that the tragedies in history are being repeated again and again because the underlying failure has not yet been corrected. Until the underlying failure is corrected, the results of that failure will hit mankind over and over again. In the case of the repeating failures in civilization the underlying cause is mankind's failing to end the rule of empire. Unless the rule of empire ends on this planet, the ongoing "war of empire versus civilization" will continue and its ravishing will continue to escalate in the way that wars always tend to escalate.

History therefore repeats itself not because its endless seeming cycle is a built-in feature of a game. The development of civilization is not a game with built-in regulations that decree a certain outcome. The development of civilization is a process that is built on the discovery of harmonizing universal principles and the mastery in society of an understanding of these principles. If society fails itself in this process, its civilization will fall into chaos and will eventually disintegrate. A civilization can be as just readily lost by society's lack of the mastery of its principles, as a game can be lost when the players repeatedly fail to master the necessary skills.

A civilization is not a gift that the universe bestows on a silver platter. It is the construct of intelligent processes for which the universe merely supplies the underlying principles. The process of applying them is located in the court of mankind. Thus, it is up to us all to take the necessary steps that assure that we won't fail any longer. The dangers are too great for this failing to be allowed to continue. However, the greater tragedy lies not in failing, but in not winning ourselves the kind of renaissance civilization that we are capable of winning as human beings, by which the dangers fall by the wayside. (see: Three Strike-Outs and You're Gone!) 

There is no chronic trend in history

When history repeats itself, it does so not because a chain of historic tragedies bears upon the present. If history repeats itself then it does so, because the historic mistakes are repeated anew each single day. There is no law in the universe, no power, nor principle, that decrees that historic mistakes must be repeated day after day. If they are repeated the mistakes are made anew.

The world-renowned American economist and statesman, Lyndon LaRouche, teaches us by example that we have the capacity as human beings to step out of this historic shadow of self-made tragedies and step into the light of our humanity. His entire life has been devoted to interventions of this kind. After decades of the Cold War and the impending doom of a nuclear holocaust coming ever closer he stood up and said, "hey look, we don't have to go there. We have the capacity as human beings to step out that environment and join hands globally to built ourselves a strategic defence that would make all the missiles obsolete while we develop the whole world economically at the same time with the scientific and technological advances the program would bring about. That's an example of breaking a chronic seeming trend of war, impotence, and poverty by simply stepping into the light of what we can accomplish as human beings.

LaRouche continued making these kinds of proposals. While the Soviet Union was collapsing economically and the West was on the same track, LaRouche proposed that it is possible to step away from this track of economic decay and economic isolation and mobilize the industrial capacity of central Europe into an economic engine to develop the whole world, which became known as his economic triangle proposal. This stepping away from a chronic historic economic practice could have been easily accomplished, by which the whole world would have been uplifted. When this didn't happen and the Soviet Union collapsed LaRouche immediately proposed an even bolder plan for stepping away from old history into a new world of global cooperation and global economic development. From this proposal the Eurasian Land-Bridge concept developed. The proposal could have been easily implemented with the former Soviet nations looking for sovereignty and economic development. 

Unfortunately mankind persisted in making the old historic mistake again and again by supporting the rule of empire in each of the above cases, case after case, time after time. LaRouche, of course kept saying, you fools, you don't have to do this. You can step away from this chronic practice. His New Bretton Woods proposal for a new world-monetary system built on a foundation of national sovereignty and economic justice, is a case in point. He made many such proposals, like his Oasis Plan, his Operation Juarez plan, the NAWAPA plan, which are all proposals that involve a simple stepping away from a chain of historic mistakes that don't have to be repeated.

Unfortunately society continues to repeat its old historic mistakes as if they were a part of a chronic disease, but which in reality are mistakes made anew day after day. LaRouche demonstrates that it is possible to break this chronic seeming pattern and step up to higher ground where the human being is not a slave to traditions, but is free to develop the principles of human civilization.

The shape of the unseen

A policy initiative of the type and the scale of the Eurasian Land-Bridge proposal tends to have multiple layers of benefits. The greatest of these benefits might in fact be realized before the first yard of concrete is poured for the construction of the The Bering Strait Tunnel. A lot of overturning in the makeup of the world must evidently happen before the physical work can begin. A project on this scale cannot possibly succeed, or even begin, unless the rule of empire in the world is brought to a close. If this is the outcome of the policy process then mankind will have won itself a victory that has eluded its grasp for millennia. The benefit from this for mankind would be greater and father reaching than anything yet imagined, so that the physical completion of the project would actually be an anticlimax. Nor can we say that the movement towards this benefit has not yet begun. There are many indications coming to the surface that a movement has begun.

The project has become self-promoting. In the past LaRouche stood behind the project as its driving force, organizing an interest for it around the world. Now the most affected nations have begun organizing themselves around that project. Russia's President Vladmir Putin recently put the Bering Straight Tunnel project on the table, and the Duma allocated 18 billion for infrastructure development leading up to it. It is becoming increasingly evident to many nations the imperial platform of the globally ruling private monetarism (called the market system) has bankrupted the world with its intensifying processes for looting. There is a gradual movement happening towards the proven principles that were historically exemplified by the American System of Economy as a platform for development and for the sovereign unity among nations.

China too, has begun to organize itself around these types of fundamental policy options, the options that are essential for the land-bridge project. On Nov. 24, 2007,  Lyndon LaRouche was invited to the podium at a Chinese initiated conference titled, "Forum on the US-China Relationship and the Peaceful Reunification of China," sponsored by the Institute of Sino-Strategic Studies, in Los Angeles. LaRouche also gave a press conference in Los Angeles on the day prior to the Nov. 24 proceedings. In this press conference he addressed the need to end the rule of empire (the war of empire versus civilization that had ravaged Europe from 1492 to 1648). LaRouche said at the press conference, "all of Europe was torn apart by religious warfare. A great figure, Cardinal Mazarin of France, was able to bring about an agreement among the people who had been killing each other, this was called the 'Peace of Westphalia."' There was one great principle upon which this treaty depended: Each party must work for the benefit of the other. With the same effort, would we look for the complete unification of China. We in the United States and China, who understand this problem, must follow in the footsteps of the Treaty of Westphalia. This will bring peace across the Pacific Ocean, and benefit for us both, all, for generations to come. And those of us who are more conscious of these matters must take the leadership in initiating that proposal toward peace and progress between our peoples." 

During the conference itself LaRouche referred to his international webcast, broadcast from Washington, D.C. on July 25th 2007, where he stated that the present world monetary-financial system has entered the most deadly crisis of recent centuries. He said, "At that time, I emphasized two things about that forecast: that the end of the present world monetary-financial system were inevitable, unless that system were replaced by a new world system during a relatively brief, remaining time available." He said further, "specifically, were the government of the U.S.A. to propose cooperation on a suitable reform, to an initial sponsoring group made up of the governments of the U.S.A., Russia, China, and India, it would be possible to bring the present international crisis under control, and, therefore, to rally a majority of the world's nations to join in measures which would stabilize the world system, and provide the foundation for a general economic recovery."

 Any country with an imperial background would be vehemently opposed to any movement towards global economic development as this runs contrary to the looting interests of the New World Order of private monetarism that exists exclusively for stealing profit from the weak and defenseless. No empire would find a place in a highly developed renaissance world. That is why a project on the scale of the Eurasian Land-Bridge won't get off the ground until 'the war of empire versus civilization' is won on the side on civilization. 

The empire factor is presently the greatest impeding factor that stands in the way of any meaningless world-development and world peace, which the Eurasian Land-Bridge is intended to be an integral part of. By implication this project, or the movement towards it, thereby becomes the world's most potent war-avoidance force that has ever been proposed. It may indeed end the age of empires on this planet with a global modern echo of the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia that established high-level principles for peace. It might be in this arena where we find the project's greatest benefit for mankind, as nothing less is evidently sufficient to cause the empire-nations to lay down their swords, guns, and nuclear weapons in exchange for a chance to live a rich and secure existence on this planet in a New Renaissance World.

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