- Chapter 9 -


- `Jumpstart' for the U.S.A. for the `Productive Triangle' -

  {This outline of LaRouche's ``Productive
Triangle'' plan was presented by his German associate,
Ralf Schauerhammmer of the Fusion Energy Foundation, at
a March 1-2, 1991 conference in Bonn.}
  The concept of the ``Productive Triangle'' was
published at the end of 1989 by the American politician
and economist Lyndon H. LaRouche--directly after the
successful revolutions in the Eastern European
countries concluded--and submitted by a work group at
the beginning of 1990 in a well worked-out form. The
essential features of this report have in the meantime
appeared in every major language, and been circulated
among specialists.
  The ``European Productive Triangle'' proposal
(named for the Paris-Berlin-Vienna triangle which forms
the industrial and economic core of Europe) is to meet
the great challenge of the freeing of more than 20
nations from communism, with a new Marshall Plan on a
bigger scale. It is a plan to {rebuild the economic
infrastructure of the whole continent}--transport,
communications, electric power--with the most modern
technologies; in the process reconnecting western and
eastern Europe which were split apart by the Iron
Curtain for 50 years under the Yalta agreements.
  Before I present a summary of the essential points
of the concept of the Productive Triangle, I would like
to present the cornerstones on which this concept is
constructed, since that is the only way to understand
why this concept has been, through the present day, the
only realistic and practically realizable proposal for
the future of Europe.
  I would also like to do that because various
proposals that have taken up parts of the Productive
Triangle--the proposal of Deutsche Bank chief economist
Norbert Walter; or the proposal of the Thuringian prime
minister, Joseph Duchac--show that the authors have not
taken these conceptual cornerstones seriously enough,
or have not sufficiently understood them.
  These cornerstones are:
    1) The concept of the Productive Triangle is
intended as an intervention into the world economy. In
this connection, it should be noted that a) the command
economy of currently existing socialism has ruined the
national economies subject to it; b) the march into the
``post-industrial society'' in the West has brought
most national economies of ``the free market'' to the
brink of collapse; and c) the physical existence of the
nations of the developing sector is threatened through
the so-called debt crisis.
    2) Given a realistic evaluation of the existing
physical potential of all national economies, only a
Europe working together in a Productive Triangle,
together with Japan and some emergent developing
countries, can pull the world economy out of this
precarious condition.
    3) The investments proposed for the Productive
Triangle presume that the principles of ``physical
economy'' will again be considered. These are the
principles that in the last century made America into
the leading nation economically.
    4) The backbone of the policy of the Productive
Triangle is investments in infrastructure. Only on this
foundation can the productive mid-range of industry
come into existence. Along with the energy sector--here
the irrational anti-nuclear policy must finally be
stopped--the transportation sector is of decisive
importance.

              - Paris-Berlin-Vienna -
  Consideration alone of the population density and
the heavily populated regions of Europe allows us to
identify the topology of the Productive Triangle. It is
characterized by an area in the center--the Triangle
Paris-Berlin-Vienna--with linear regions going out from
there--which we call, borrowing from the structure of
galaxies, ``spiral arms,'' that reach throughout all of
Europe to North Africa and the Soviet Union.
  The core is the curved triangle with apexes in
Paris, Berlin, and Vienna. The northern side runs from
Paris through the steel region near Charleroi, through
the Ruhr region to Braunschweig to Berlin. The southern
side runs from Paris through the
Metz-Nancy-Saarbru@aucken region through
Stuttgart-Munich to Vienna. The eastern side of the
triangle stretches from Vienna through Prague and
northern Bohemia through Dresden to Berlin.
  The area of this triangle is approximately 320,000
square kilometers--almost exactly the area of Japan.
Even now, by global standards, it has the greatest
density of industrial infrastructure and the highest
standard of education and culture. The most dense and
productive areas of northern France, Belgium, and what
was formerly West Germany are part of the Triangle, as
are what was formerly East Germany, western
Czechoslovakia, and northern Austria.
  Today, almost 92 million human beings live in this
core region, which gives an average population density
of 288 humans per square kilometer. Also characteristic
of this region is that half of these 92 million human
beings live in the immediate commuter-belt around the
ten large industrial areas of the region.
  Important infrastructural corridors radiate out
from this central Triangle in all directions. We can
give as an example the axis Paris-Berlin-Warsaw, which
branches a) to Ukraine (Kiev-Charkov); b) to White
Russia (Minsk and then to Moscow); and c) to Lithuania,
Latvia, and Estonia (through Leningrad). A further
``spiral arm'' stretches from the region of
Chemnitz-Dresden-Prague through Breslau to the triangle
of Katowice-Ostrav-Krakow and further to the Ukraine.
  Another development arm reaches through all of
Italy to Sicily and North Africa, and another, from
Lille in France to Metz-Nancy to Strasbourg and from
there to Lyon and Marseilles along the Mediterranean
coast to Spain. From there, it can be continued through
Barcelona to Tarifa across the Straits of Gibraltar to
North Africa.
  Corresponding spiral arms spread out in western
and northern directions.
  Altogether, the spiral arms encompass a region of
1.07 million square kilometers--three times the area of
the center. The total region has a population equal to
that of the United States, but in only one-seventh the
area.

                     - Canals -
  Central Europe, with the river system of the
Seine, the Rhine, the Elbe, the Oder, and the Weichsel
in a south-north direction, as well as the Danube in a
west-east direction, has a unique ``fundamental
structure'' for a shipping network. A northern
east-west channel connection from the Rhine to the
Weichsel in large part exists, and the Main-Danube
canal, which will soon be finished, will complete the
link from Rotterdam to Odessa. Along with making these
rivers navigable for freighters of the
{Europa} class--that is, those which carry up
to 1,600 tons of freight--the establishment of
connections from the Oder and Wichsel to Danube, and
from the Seine and Rho@afne to the Rhine, are the most
important preconditions for a European inland
navigation system for the next century.
  I would now like to make clear, using a concrete
example, how important the question of a transportation
network is, a fact that is always forgotten in the
calculation of profitability and utilization of
individual sections of the network. A firm in the
vicinity of Regensburg was forced--since the
Main-Danube canal is not finished, and the unit was too
large for surface transportation--to send a boiler unit
to be delivered to Ludwigshafen down the Danube,
through the Strait of Gibraltar to Rotterdam, and from
there up the Rhine to its destination. Freight costs
were 500,000 deutschemarks [$295,000]; after completion
of the canal, the freight costs will be less than
one-tenth that.

       - A European Rapid Train Corporation -
  If we consider the different transportation
technologies, with regard to their potential flow
density, we recognize that the backbone of the
transportation infrastructure of the Productive
Triangle can only be created by means of a high-speed
rail network. The Trade and Industry Council of the
state of Baden-Wu@aurttemberg has just published a
report on new rail construction proposals, in which
they take this back to the mid-nineteenth century:
``Practically, the work of Friedrich List and Heinrich
Harkort, who in their time introduced a German rail
network optimal for conditions then, must today be
repeated for Bahn 2000 on a European scale.''
  Incidentally, the rapid development of the railway
network in List's time, in a politically completely
fragmented Germany, proves how the continually cited
technical, juridical, or economic barriers that will
supposedly hinder the buildup of a modern
transportation system in Europe can very probably be
overcome.
  For the Productive Triangle, we propose the
creation of a European Rapid Train Corporation that
will construct and operate a completely new high-speed
rail network. This network will then set the standards
by which national rail corporations and transportation
firms can orient themselves. If we go about the matter
in that way--and not, as previously, by considering
integration as strictly the closing of gaps between
various national projects--then it will be possible to
make development leaps in the practical realization of
the high-speed network. Especially in Eastern Europe,
there is the option to not first bring specific rail
lines up to a standard that was attained in the 1980s
in the West, but rather to immediately embark on the
technologies of the next century. Concretely, that
means immediate investments in magnetic levitation rail
lines to achieve speeds of 180 mph or more, rather than
construction of rail lines for 100 mph speeds.
  Therefore, we propose the following:
  1) Formation of a European Rapid Train
Corporation, in which national rail corporations,
airline corporations, and private firms can
participate.
  2) Construction of a completely new high-speed
network 7,200 kilometers long, of which 4,500
kilometers must be constructed as a first priority.
  3) Separation of passenger and freight transport
in the network.
  4) Establishment of the goal of 500 kilometers per
hour speeds for passenger transportation on the
European-wide network, with connections to airports and
commuter traffic of large population centers.
  5) Containerization of high-speed freight
transportation, with use of standardized cars for
``piggyback'' truck-train transportation.
  6) Construction of a European research institute
for rapid transportation (the proposed site is
Dresden).

           - Reconnecting East and West -
  The most important high-speed lines will run along
the development corridors already sketched, in which
the development of east-west connections will receive
particular importance for historical reasons: 1) The
north east-west corridor: Paris-Lille-Ruhr
region-Berlin-Warsaw (with a spur from the Ruhr to
Erfurt-Dresden, on to Krakow). 2) The central East-West
corridor: Paris-Metz-Frankfurt-Dresden-Krakow. 3) The
southern East-West corridor:
Karlsruhe-Munich-Vienna-Budapest-Belgrade. 4) Important
north-south corridors are, for example:
Hamburg-Berlin-Dresden-Prague-Vienna;
Hamburg-Stuttgart-Milan; London-Paris-Marseilles.
  High speeds on railroads are meaningless if time
is lost because of long waiting and switching times.
For that reason, new loading depots will be necessary
for high-speed transportation in which, upon the
arrival of trains, the appropriate loading palettes are
so arranged that they can be coupled to the cars to be
loaded or unloaded as the train comes in. The loading
process will then be done perpendicularly to the
direction of travel, and will be done simultaneously
for all cars, which will enable the unloading of the
entire train to take hardly longer than that of a
single car. Easily steerable mag-lev technology is
especially appropriate for these loading lines.
  For passenger transportation, an attractive
alternative to the still sharply increasing individual
transportation can only be offered by general
{separation} of freight and passenger transport
and with new technologies such as mag-lev technology.
Mag-lev transportation attains its importance not only
because of higher final speed, which is of primary
importance in the spiral arms of the Triangle, but
primarily through its travel dynamics, which has a
special importance for the shaping of the network in
densely populated areas. We must consider, for example,
that important stations there will lie on the average
only 90 miles from one another, but often only 35 to 50
miles. If the number of transfers for individual
passengers is kept small, that promotes not only rapid,
but also dynamic travel. In this connection, it is
interesting that the Transrapid 07 (Magnetically
Levitated Train now being tested) covers a stretch of
100 miles more rapidly than the high-speed ``ICE''
train, even while making a stop at the halfway point.
  Previously, the importance of mag-lev rail has
been misunderstood, just as the importance of
high-speed transportation generally was 25 years ago.
The development of high-speed locomotives began in
Japan with the Shinkansen that went into operation in
1964 on the Tokyo-Osaka line. In Europe, it was still
another decade before this concept was seriously taken
up, since there were doubts about its economic
feasibility. The Shinkansen reaches a speed of 220
kmph, and covers the 513 km line in 169 minutes. Daily,
130 trains run, with 10-minute intervals maintained
during rush hours. With $5.2 billion revenue and $2.2
billion in expenses per year, the Shinkansen is the
most profitable rail operations in the world. In Japan,
a mag-lev line from Tokyo to Osaka is already planned
for the year 2000 that should reduce travel time by
75-90 minutes, reaching a speed of 500 kmph. It is
certain that, with the new ``Mag-lev Shinkansen,''
today's 200 million travelers per year can be doubled.
  As an example of how new mag-lev routes can even
be sensibly tied to existing plans for the construction
of the ICE network, we have proposed a mag-lev line
from Berlin to Frankfurt, with connections to the new
ICE north-south connection of Hamburg-Munich, a
proposal that has already been taken up politically.
  With regard to the transportation infrastructure
of Europe's future, I would like to state in closing
that, within the concentrated regions as we will find
them in the core of the Productive Triangle, a
transportation system can only be practically realized
if it makes possible extremely high transportation
flows, as we have proposed, through integration in
``transport pipelines'' on streets, rails, mag-lev
lines, and, possibly, energy transport arteries.

                     - Energy -
  The second essential infrastructural pillar of the
Productive Triangle is energy supply. The energy supply
of the future will strengthen the trend toward
increased use of electricity. All future technologies,
such as laser, plasma processes, direct reduction
processes, industrial heating, and so forth, point in
this direction. Merely for the replacement of the
economically totally unfeasible facilities in Eastern
Europe and Soviet nuclear reactors of the
Chernobyl-type, as well as for an urgent emergency
program for Italy, a capacity of 84 gigawatts is
necessary.
  That makes one thing clear: Without a renaissance
of nuclear energy, it won't work! The momentary trend
toward noble gas installations, with low investment
costs but higher operational costs, will prove to be an
economic boomerang in a few years.
  The importance of the nuclear energy question goes
far beyond this purely economic question. An example
was established in the campaigns, fueled with conscious
lies, against nuclear energy that even today frighten
away major investments in great projects. If, however,
industry cannot trust political perspectives to be
stable enough that investments in long-term
infrastructural projects--for example, nuclear
power--do not become too risky, then that will be the
death blow for every industrial area.
  The renaissance for nuclear energy means also,
however, that we must learn from the errors of the
past. The decisive error with nuclear technology was
that, although its special advantage of being
universally applicable, which makes it independent of
geographical conditions and occurrence of raw
materials, was certainly constantly emphasized, the
development of the technology did not do justice to
that, and was too much limited to use in industrial
states. From the standpoint of world energy supply,
small, inherently safe units make sense, in which
connection it should be considered that 25 years ago
``small'' units of around 500 megawatts were considered
to be large power plants, even in the industrial
nations.
  The high-temperature reactor in this connection is
particularly suitable. This reactor type, however,
primarily makes possible the introduction of nuclear
energy into the heating market. Of course, in the
Productive Triangle alone, there will be an additional
need for nuclear plant capacities, merely in the
electricity sector, of 135 GW(e) if we set as a target
to secure 70% of the need for electricity through
nuclear power--as France did in reaction to the oil
crisis of the 1970s. But it is only through the
incorporation of nuclear process-steam and
process-heating that the universal character of nuclear
technology become clear. Today, hardly any politician
wants to hear anything about that; if, however, we wish
to protect the responsibility of the Productive
Triangle as the locomotive for the world economy, we
must state this simple truth.
  A further advantage of the high-temperature
reactor is that its prestressed concrete construction
is possible without the complex knowhow for large
reactor pressure containers. That means that countries
of the Southern Hemisphere could build this reactor
type within the foreseeable future. Ultimately,
complete units can be built in centers of production in
the Productive Triangle and then shipped to developing
countries on pontoons. Because of the special fuel
element construction, which uses no metal, but rather
ceramic material, the safety reserves of the reactor
are large, and the demands on maintenance personnel
reduced.
  Without nuclear technology, no practical energy
infrastructure can be realized in the Productive
Triangle. Let me tell it like it is. At a time on Earth
in which, every 11 seconds, a child dies who could be
saved with food or medicine that costs a few dollars,
it is immoral to give out millions of dollars for the
``decontamination'' of supposedly radioactive powdered
milk, whose radioactivity is far below that of the
fertilizer that day in and day out we spread on our
fields.
  These infrastructural measures are the basis for
the construction of productive, mid-size industrial
firms, whose central importance to the national economy
will discussed further.
  A massive expansion of investment goods export
will accompany the realization of the Productive
Triangle. This transformation of the investment areas
will lead to a clear shift in the structure of
employment, with 5% of those employed in the near
future being involved in research and development. The
service sector will decline in importance, while
research and development will increase. Flexible,
mid-size industrial firms will play the key role in
this high-tech market, firms that can especially
quickly adapt to, employ, and disseminate new
technologies.
  I have presented the elements of the fundamental
structure of the Productive Triangle. To breathe life
into this politically and economically is the greatest
task that stands before us. Unfortunately, it must be
said that a year has just been wasted in relative
inactivity. May a stimulus go forth from this
conference that will change the situation as quickly as
possible.


----
        John Covici
         [email protected]

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