‘Short Road to Hell, or Daring To Have a Sublime View of Mankind; The Need To Have an Extended Oasis Plan for Southwest Asia’: Zepp-LaRouche to April 6 Emergency EIR Roundtable
April 8—The following are the remarks of Helga-Zepp LaRouche, founder and chairwoman of the Schiller Institute and editor-in-chief of EIR. Subheads have been added.
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Dear honorable participants, ladies and gentlemen, friends of the Schiller Institute from around the world, the title of my speech is “Short Road to Hell, or Daring to Have a Sublime View of Mankind; The Need to Have an Extended Oasis Plan for Southwest Asia.” It could very well be that the present generations of the human species lack the moral fiber to avoid our self-annihilation in a global thermonuclear war, because that danger does exist in the short term. If you don’t find a solution to the war started by the United States and Israel as an unprovoked war of aggression against Iran five weeks into the war, it is clear that none of the goals defined by the United States side have been accomplished.
Despite repeated assassinations of leading Iranian officials and negotiators, there has been no regime change. The population of Iran, on the contrary, is rallying behind the government more than ever. Neither the nuclear research facilities nor the ballistic missile systems have been dismantled. The Strait of Hormuz, which was open before, is now closed for all hostile parties. The consequences for the world economy are already traumatic, and it could become catastrophic if the war should extend for more weeks. Already now, millions of poor people and many businesses suffer from increased energy prices. The interruption in fertilizer supplies could turn into mass starvation. The plunge into a global depression almost certainly will trigger a blow-out of the totally over-indebted global financial system of $2.4 quadrillion. But also many features of the international system are in disarray.
The business model of the Gulf States’ ambitious roles in international trade and finance, luxurious lifestyles for the elites protected by American military bases, is in shambles. The collective West is not so collective anymore; NATO fizzles. The entire post-Cold War architecture is crumbling, with the Global South determined to end 500 years of colonialism for good. The old order is disintegrating; the shape of the new one still is in question. The biggest casualty, however, threatens to be our humanity. A martial language, “Bombing Iran back into the Stone Age where they belong; no quarter, no mercy for our enemies.” These are the comments of many which have been called forth, from American as well as international legal experts, questioning the violation of international law and the code of war.
The Church Intervenes to Evoke Humanity
Cardinal Cupich of Chicago appeals to the conscience, protesting a video on the official “X” account of the White House, which combines scenes of action movies with the actual material from the war against Iran. The words of Pope Leo XIV on this Easter during his Urbi et Orbi address have been a clear message unmistakably against the perpetrators of today’s dangerous war in Southwest Asia, “Let those who have weapons lay them down. Let those who have the power to unleash war choose peace. Not peace imposed by force, but through dialogue. Not with the desire to dominate others, but to encounter them.”
Where is this supposed to end? As we will hear in the course of this Zoom meeting, the non-proliferation system may be almost irreversibly destroyed. Many nations are concluding that the only way of averting an attack is the possession of nuclear weapons. The disappearance of international law in favor of a complete return of the principle of “might makes right,” and if we even get there, and not end up in the delusion that some chosen people can outlive a thermonuclear Armageddon.
Now, the countries of the world can either adopt what we are proposing now or go all the way and let the war play out with the option of the use of nuclear weapons. There is still a chance to make a decision for the first option. So what we wish to propose is a radically different approach, one which does not extend the present political trajectories of the different political forces in a linear way into the near future, but looks at Southwest Asia from the standpoint of how it could look in 20, 50, or 100 years from now.
The View from Space of Our One World
Today, while the Artemis astronauts are flying for the first time 4,000 miles beyond the Moon, which will take human beings to the farthest distance in space ever, is a wonderful moment to reflect that soon we will combine the different Artemis, Roscosmos, Chang’e, Tianwen, and other nations’ space missions, into one of the international community, because it will have dawned on us that the challenges of interstellar space travel in a universe of more than 2 trillion galaxies are far too big for just one nation. Looking at our planet from the standpoint of the universe at large, we see not geopolitical conflict, we see only the common interest of the one humanity to progress.
By that time, it will be regarded as self-evident that we will have applied to that region of Southwest Asia all available technologies to transform the desert into green landscapes with canals and artificial lakes, large-scale forests, farms, and markets. By that time, the present level of AI, quantum computing, and ocean farming will look like technology fossils from an early age. The developed fusion economy will have eliminated the fight for the control of oil and gas, as well as the basic needs of the world population for a long time.
So, taking the view of our descendants as our own perspective, the intellectuals, scientists, and engineers from the different countries of Southwest Asia, from India to the Mediterranean, from the Caucasus to the Gulf states, should take that region as a whole and determine which development corridors are the most suitable, given the geographic realities, to transform it into a fully developed land.
Making the Desert Bloom
Given that almost all of the region is an expanding desert, the creation of new water sources is a priority, based on different components ranging from a canal system from the Mediterranean to the Dead Sea, desalination of large amounts of ocean water with the aid of peaceful nuclear energy, accessing aquifers, using space technology to locate underground lakes, ionization of the moisture of the atmosphere, etc.
China has already transformed large territories like Xinjiang and the Northeast from deserts into well-to-do economic territories and has offered its assistance. The Five-Sea Strategy of Syrian President Assad of 2004, connecting the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Caspian Sea, and the Black Sea, is still a valid conception for an infrastructure network integrating waterways, fast train systems, and highways as main transport arteries within development corridors around which energy distribution and communication systems can be installed, to create site conditions for investment in new cities, industrial parks, and development zones. Much of the lines are obvious since the times of the ancient Silk Road. Others will be developed due to breakthroughs in technology.
New Rail/Development Corridors
Here are some of the many more possible examples. One such corridor can connect Tehran via Baghdad, Amman to Aqaba, then to the Sharm El-Sheikh to Cairo, which is partially underway. The Iran-Iraq-Syria railway link is in its early planning stages, but the full Baghdad-Amman-Cairo corridor is not yet operational. This route crosses the Euphrates River, where ancient trade routes can be transformed into modern corridors from the port of Basra in Iraq, at the Persian Gulf, onward further northwest to Aleppo. Of this, 51 kilometers are built. This is now the Iraq Development Road, a $17 billion high-speed rail and highway project from Basra to the Turkish border near Aleppo. The first phase is supposed to be operational by 2031. Existing rail lines should be modernized into fast-train systems and integrated with highways, and energy distribution, communication systems. This is in process.
Syria and Iraq are actively rehabilitating and modernizing existing lines through full integration. This could be sped up if prioritized. The land route to India connecting the Iranian rail network to Zahedan on the Iran-Pakistan border is online. The freight service between Zahedan in Iran and Quetta in Pakistan has restarted. The Chabahar-Zahedan railway is near completion as of 2026. Other lines go from Deir ez-Zor to Tadmor [Palmyra] to Damascus and Beirut. This is in process.
Post-civil war rehabilitation of the Syrian railway is underway, including the Damascus to Deir ez-Zor line. The Beirut connection remains politically challenging but is under discussion. Another north-south link is from Syria to the industrial zones of the Suez Canal; this is in planning. Syria and Egypt have had preliminary talks, but no active construction yet. Another south railway goes from Damascus to Mecca and Medina. A revival of the historic Hejaz railway was agreed upon by Turkiye, Syria, and Jordan in September 2025. Reconstruction is planned, but not yet begun. A tunnel under the Bab el-Mandeb Strait from Djibouti to the Arab Peninsula is not yet under construction, funding not yet planned, but it could be decided. Links to Europe, the Black Sea, and Russia are partially in place. Existing rail and ferry links via Turkiye to Europe are operational; however, sanctions have impacted the Russian connection.
In 20, 30, 50 years from now, the integrated infrastructure of all of Southwest Asia could look as dense as the greater Bay Area of China around Shenzhen, Guangdong, and Zhuhai. If all the nations of Southwest Asia would agree on such a development perspective, it would also be in the real interest of the United States and European nations, since it would define a perspective of joint prosperity rather than the perils of a looming world war. It would guarantee the existence of Israel as well, which cannot possibly count on its own security if it is surrounded by neighbors who have been, generation after generation, governed by hate.
The Rising Power of the Global Majority
It is also clear that the countries of the Global Majority must have the strongest voice in determining the future of the world order, since the use of nuclear weapons would destroy them as well, albeit maybe a few weeks later, as Indonesian President Sukarno warned already, at the Asia-African Conference in Bandung in 1955. As he emphasized then, the countries of the Global South may be politically and economically relatively still weaker, but together they represent a moral authority to raise their voice for peace in the world.
As the destiny of the entire human species is at stake in this present conflict, the countries of the Global South—and they have become much stronger since—must take an active role in the determination of its outcome. The international community must combine a common development perspective, which must include the Extended Oasis Plan, as well as the Africa Plan for 2063, as well as other components of the World Land-Bridge perspective presented by the Schiller Institute in 2014. It must be combined with a dialogue of civilizations, which must bring forward the best tradition of all cultures and civilizations, because such an approach will demonstrate that the torch of progress of all of mankind was passed over the millennia from one civilization to the other; from Ethiopia to China to Persia to India and Mesopotamia, from the land of the thousand cities, to Egypt, and finally Greece, and eventually the Americas. A dialogue of all these cultural contributions will make clear to all people living on Earth the tremendous richness which lies in the unity in diversity, that while we all share the ability to discover universal principles in science and art which are valid for all of humanity, that the diversity is actually an enrichment which makes all more culturally prosperous and clearly is the intention of the Creator.
The Awesome Power of the Human Mind
If one looks at the longer arc of human development, which is actually only a shorter span in the development of our universe, it is clear that the theory of the Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky is proven correct. Namely, that the power of the noösphere is continuously increasing relative to the power of the inorganic and the biosphere; meaning that the role of creative reason as a geological force is expanding in evolution. From that perspective, we as the human species are now challenged to apply the new paradigm residing out of the increased significance of the noösphere, to the way we organize our affairs politically and economically among ourselves. This requires that we change the axioms of our thinking about the image of man and the role of man in the universe accordingly, which means that we have to put the interest of the one humanity first before we define all other national and cultural interests, in affinity with the interest of mankind as a whole.
In all of classical literature, what separates the tragic outcome of drama from the ability to determine a solution on a higher level than the one on which the conflict arose, is the ability of the main actors to elevate their thinking to the level of the sublime, that quality of mind which is associated with creative mentation, with agapē, with love for mankind. The sublime mind does not seek personal advantage or pleasure, but connects his identity with the fate of all of humanity, not only in the present, but for all future generations to come. Nobody can deny that it is the takeover of the liberal paradigm in Western civilization, that notion that everything is allowed, everything goes, which went along with the cancellation of our Classical heritage, which led to the disappearance of the sublime in our thinking. It can be revived, but only if we will do so as a willful act. This is the test I spoke of—if we have the moral fiber as a species to survive.
Therefore, what we are proposing here is not some arbitrary utopian proposal, but a very concrete, albeit not pragmatic way to create a future for humanity. Thank you.
Q&A on Cusa
DENNIS SPEED: Helga, you have spoken about the methods of diplomacy of Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa. Certainly everyone here is aware of something called the Epstein class. It is a term that has now become widely used and is referring to practices which cannot be characterized by anything other than Satanic, except perhaps pre-Satanic, pagan in their own characterization. In this context, there seems to be an attempt to use a kind of anti-Christian view of Christianity, characteristic of the Crusades, for example, to justify the unjustifiable.
So Helga, the question that I’m going to pose, rather than pose all these individual ones to you is, what is it you mean by this diplomacy, this method of coincidence of opposites, of bringing together, obviously, people who have differences, divergent views? And why are you referring to this figure, who is apparently a Catholic figure, but not referring to him as a religious figure at all, in that way, but as someone whose method of diplomacy and approach is the one that we need now?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, because I think we as a human species are differentiated from all other forms of life on the planet, and also the only species known in the entire universe so far. In other words, there may be other intelligent beings somewhere in the 2 trillion galaxies, but they have not yet contacted us, so we are the only known species gifted with reason. And that is a quality which enables us to always find a solution on a higher level than the level at which the conflict arose.
Now, that is a way of thinking which, for the first time, was introduced by Nicolaus of Kues, and it was quite significant when he came up with this idea. Nicolaus of Kues was naturally a cardinal. He was sort of the foreign minister of the church at his time, and he was a great thinker. He was the towering mind of the 15th Century. He discovered modern science. He developed the arguments for the sovereign nation-state by the government that is only legitimate with the consent of the governed. He developed for the first time the representative system of government, and so forth.
The Coincidence of Opposites
He is not adequately known, but he is at least as important as Confucius, Plato, Leibniz, and other towering, leading thinkers of universal history. So, when he traveled to Byzantium to bring the delegation of the Orthodox Christian Church to the Council of Florence, he dialogued with great leaders like Bessarion, Plethon, who were the leading Platonists of the time. And he, in this travel on the ocean, which took several weeks, discovered a method of thinking which he called the Coincidence of Opposites—Coincidentia Oppositorum. He naturally arrived at that idea through a theological reflection, namely that the oneness of God, of the Creator, of Allah, of the Creator of all the universe, is of a higher quality than all its creation. And he basically developed this as a method of thinking whereby human creativity can always synthesize that higher power of thinking as basically being in the image of God.
Now, that method was also applied by him after the takeover of Constantinople in 1453 by the Muslims, which caused a big crisis in the West. People thought this was a terrible sort of clash of civilizations of the time. But he developed out of that a very beautiful Socratic dialogue in which 17 representatives of nations and religions all go to God and say, we are all fighting in Your name, we are killing each other in Your name. Can You help us develop a method for how we can stop doing that? And then God said, you are all philosophers in your religion, in your nation, and as philosophers you can recognize there is only one truth. So then the 17 representatives said, yes, we understand, but still, there’s so much blood which was already spilled in fighting, can You help us some more? So then God answers them and says, you are all philosophers and you can see the difference between the prophets and the one God, and the message of the one God as being interpreted by the different prophets. So finally, they all agree that there is one truth which creative reason can recognize, and all the philosophers can accomplish that.
So when I first encountered that dialogue many years ago, I actually went to see if such a method exists in other great religions and cultures. And indeed, you find in every great religion that same idea. For example, in India, it’s in the Song of Creation, which belongs to the Rigveda writings, and you know, the idea that there is this one truth emanating, coming from this one Creation. And similar ideas exist in every culture around the world; and I think we as human beings have to recognize that we are one, and that we have a cosmological order. In India, you call it cosmology, in Europe you call it natural law, which means there is a lawfulness within the Creation which we can recognize through our creative reason. And I think we have reached in the course of universal history that moment where we must make that intellectual jump, so to speak, to identify ourselves with the one humanity first. Because we have reached for the first time a situation where because of nuclear weapons, because of the internet, because of pandemics, we are sitting in one boat. And either we solve our problems together, or we may annihilate ourselves. So this is the big challenge in front of all of us. And I think the method of the Coincidence of Opposites gives us the possibility to absolutely make that jump.
We Can Work Together for the Benefit of All
And I tried to do that in my initial remarks by referring to the fact that just today is the day where astronauts are for the first time, as part of the Artemis travel, reaching 4,000 miles beyond the Moon. This is an historic first. And if you project that kind of development with India, China, Russia having extremely advanced space programs, if you want to survive as a human species in 100 years, either we will have resolved this present conflict and work together on space travel, that we have developed villages on the Moon, that we are on to creating a city on Mars, that we will have thermonuclear fusion as fuel for interstellar travel, and that we will have to make the jump to think about the one humanity, or we will never exist.
And I think we are in that particular transformation of history, where I’m quite confident that the human mind is capable of thinking in this way, in other words, to start to solve the problems in the present from a perspective of the future, and not work our way up from one conflict to the next. But that we look at the solution 100 years from now first, and in that way gain the conceptual power to address the problems in the present in a much different way.