Transitioning From A ‘Rules-Based Order’ to a Polyphonic World

As Helga Zepp-LaRouche has emphasized throughout the week, people all across the world should be very, very happy about what is emerging from the just-concluded Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit in Tianjin, China.

If you include the expanded SCO and the BRICS+ members, these two organizations now represent a total of 38 countries. Of these, 8 are in both groupings, whose combined population is about 6 billion people. That’s 75% of the world. Various speeches given, including those by Vladimir Putin, Xi Jinping, Narendra Modi, and many others, spoke about the forward dynamic for progress of humanity emerging from a commitment among these nations to economic development, cooperation, and a new concordance—a community of principle in which every nation is treated equally.

The aspirations now being realized in this forward momentum towards a new world economic order were first enunciated in the post-war years of the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Bandung Conference of Asian and African states, which was held April 18-24, 1955, had promoted the aims of what was then called “the Third World” of “non-aligned nations” to end colonialism. This was, unfortunately, largely opposed by the United States, particularly its Dulles-dominated State Department, a position in complete contradiction with the 1776 American Declaration of Independence. That document upholds the right of {all} nations to promote “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” against any empire which subverts those sacred values.

Today, as in 1955, the nations of the BRICS+ and the SCO are not “an anti-western coalition.” The U.S. should not treat them as such, but should instead remember its founding principles, and approach all nations with an effort toward mutual respect and understanding. This is the only basis to avoid civilization-ending wars, and create a new security and development architecture, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has consistently insisted.

Speakers: Mike Billington and Robert Hux