- Chapter 10 -
- Great Projects to Develop the World -
Since 1976, when he first put himself forward as a
candidate for President of the United States, economist
Lyndon LaRouche has stressed that the only way for the
United States to make its way out of deepening economic
depression, is to {build itself out}--to once
again begin investing in Great Projects of
infrastructure, both at home, and abroad. Improving on
plans put forward by others, ranging from close
associates to engineering firms, governments, and
institutions such as the Mitsubishi Research Institute
of Japan, LaRouche has detailed infrastructure
development programs for every corner of the globe.
These range from grand designs for continent-wide
networks of railroads, industrial centers run by
nuclear power, and waterways, to the construction of
new, modern canal links between the great oceans of the
world.
In the fifteen years since LaRouche first put
forward his Great Projects perspective, the lack of
such development projects--coupled with usurious
looting of nations by the Anglo-American financial
establishment--has created a regime of famine, disease,
and death in the developing sector on a scale never
seen before in human history. At the same time, under
the same bankers' austerity conditions, the United
States economy has collapsed to the point that we here
in America are unable to produce the capital goods,
skilled labor, and other inputs needed for these
large-scale infrastructure projects; we must rely on
the productive capabilities of, in particular, our
European allies. One measure of the insanity of the
Bush administration is its allies-bashing trade war
against Japan and West Germany--whose cooperation we
desperately need to reverse the depression.
Why has LaRouche emphasized the importance of
Great Projects, and why are so many of his development
programs focused on the Third World? Great Projects of
infrastructure--waterworks to irrigate, control
flooding or drain swamps, bridges, roads, tunnels,
power plants, etc.--are the most efficient way to
improve and expand an economy, in many cases taking
totally useless land and transforming it into
productive territory, as was done by the irrigation of
California's Imperial Valley.
Sadly, America today is in no position itself to
implement a global recovery program based on Great
Projects. The U.S. economy requires a jump-start from
the highly productive, population-dense ``Productive
Triangle of central Europe, in the same way that the
productive strength of the U.S.A. was essential to
jump-start the economies of Europe and Japan after
World War II. If, as LaRouche has specified, the
Productive Triangle of Europe is freed from the insane
free market shock treatment economics espoused by such
as Harvard University's Jeffrey Sachs, the
implementation of these global development projects is
possible. Under these conditions, the underdeveloped
nations of Asia, Ibero-America, and Africa will become
the new frontier of economic growth, an almost
unlimited opportunity for the creation of vast new
markets for America's capital goods.
Without the Great Projects, the Third World faces
an entirely different future: economic collapse,
famine, disease, and depopulation. As is shown by the
the spread of the killer virus AIDS across Africa, once
unleashed, the Four Horsement of the Apocolypse will
mow down all national borders.
Today, the world stands on the threshhold of a new
era--if we choose the right path. We can take up the
challenge of carrying out great infrastructure projects
and in this way pull this nation out of economic
collapse, or we can let the United States devolve to a
Third World country, with its industrial capacity
ruined and its population resources beaten down in
poverty. These great projects are absolutely necessary
in order to maintain on the globe a human population of
more than 6 billion persons, growing to 12 billion
around the middle of the 21st century. They will serve
as the basis for transforming and uplifting the economy
of the globe, making it possible for a growing
population to live at standards as high or higher than
the United States during the decade that the Apollo
Great Project to put man on the Moon was pumping wealth
into the U.S. economy. The next step will be the
colonization of the Moon, Mars, and beyond. Most
important, the Great Projects will inject optimism and
a vision of progress into a world now dominated by the
cultural and scientific pessimism of the environmental
hoaxsters.
(projects to be illustrated)
1. The European Productive Triangle
A triangular region approximately the size of Japan,
created by a transportation grid connecting Paris,
Berlin, and Vienna, must become the generation point
for Western economic recovery and rapid
industrialization of the Third World. Nuclear power and
mag-lev transportation technologies will be featured.
2. Spiral Arms of the Triangle
Great infrastructure corridors of modern
communications, high-speed railways, canals, and
industrial ``nuplexes,'' will draw a total market area
of 430 million people and thousands of small,
high-technology business, into an economic development
era that will unify eastern and western Europe.
3. Linking Scandinavia to Europe
Scandinavia's 23 million people will be linked to
continental Europe by a new system of bridges, tunnels,
high-speed railways, and modern highways.
4. North American Water and Power Alliance (NAWAPA)
Proposed by California's Parsons Engineering Company in
the 1960s, NAWAPA would provide 180 million acre-feet
of fresh water for agriculture and cities in Canada,
the United States and Mexico. This is the only
long-term solution to the water crisis of the western
United States.
5. New American Railroad
A network of high-speed magnetically levitated trains
to relieve congestion of major highway systems,
especially in the Northeast, and bring the U.S. up to
par with Japanese and German transportation
technologies.
6. Water Projects for Ibero-America
Today caught in the grip of a murderous cholera
epidemic and vulnerable to all water-borne disease, all
of Ibero-America from Mexico to Cape Horn needs fresh
water management and hydroelectric power projects. Four
major projects include: two north-south canals in
Mexico; two canals linking rivers in Brazil to the
Atlantic; the trans-Andean water pumping project in
Peru; and waterworks in the Llanos area of Colombia and
Peru.
7. Rio de la Plata Water Projects
Also designed for water development of Ibero-America is
the complex of projects for utilizing the entire La
Plata River Basin, including improvements of the Parana
River-Paraguay River and connection of that water
system of more than 3,000 kilometers in length, made
fully navigable, to the Amazon system, in part by the
planned Guapore-Paraguay canal. This would make
possible massive irrigation projects in the fertile de
la Plata region.
8. Railway Grid for Ibero-America
To include the completion and improvement of a
trans-continental railway from Rio de Janeiro and Sao
Paolo, to Santa Cruz and La Paz, through the Andes to
the Pacific Ocean, opening up the rich mineral
resources of Bolivia and of the whole region. The goal:
to achieve a continental rail system in South America,
plus a high-performance rail line from Colombia through
Central America to Mexico.
9. The Kra Canal
This project, first proposed on 1793, would connect the
South China Sea with the Indian Ocean. It would relieve
growing congestion at the Straits of Malacca past
Singapore, and create vast industrial development
potential based on construction of deep sea ports at
one or both of the canal outlets.
10. Mekong Cascade
Control of the Mekong River and development of the
Mekong Delta could create a new breadbasket in
Southeast Asia. The Mekong Cascade, an integrated
system of dams and reservoirs, has been studied since
1956. The plan envisions the construction of eight dams
and five major power projects, at a cost of about $20
billion 1990 dollars--approximately 4 percent of the
annual take from the world drug trade.
11. North-South Grand Canal in China
This north-south water diversion project centers on the
modernization of the famous Grand Canal, an ancient
waterway over which grain taxes were once shipped to
the northern imperial capitals from the grain-producing
regions of the South. This canal could now play a major
role in facilitating modern transportation within
China, which has had historic problems with North-South
transit, due to the fact that most of the country's
rivers flow east to west.
12. Sun Yat-sen's Railway System for China
The infrastructure program developed by Dr. Sun Yat-sen
to bring China into the 20th century included
waterways, communications, and energy technologies, but
focused heavily on the development of a national
transportation grid: at least 100,000 miles of
railways, complemented by a million miles of roads.
13. India Water Control Program
The Fusion Energy Foundation developed a continent-wide
30-year program to control and harness India's vast
water resources, with dams, reservoirs, canals,
nuplexes, and hydroelectric plants. It would break the
centuries-old cycle of droughts and floods which has
slowed modernization of agriculture, and quadruple
hydroelectric production of electricity for industry.
14. Oasis Plan for the Mideast
This Great Project includes construction of the ``Peace
Pipeline'' proposed by the Turkish government to pipe
3.5 million cubic meters of fresh water per day from
eastern Turkey down into the thirsty countries of
Syria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia and building
nuclear-powered desalination centers generating
``artificial rivers'' of fresh water for irrigation and
consumption.
15. Dead Sea Canal
Also proposed for the Middle East is engineering and
construction of a canal from the Mediterranean to the
Dead Sea, with nuclear plants and desalination
facilities along the way.
16. Congo Basin-Jongeli Canal
These two major water diversion projects will transform
the face of the African continent: 1) completion of the
Jonglei Canal improving water use of the White Nile; 2)
diversion of water from the Ubangi River in Zaire via
canals, pipes and pump stations to refill Lake Chad and
provide for massive irrigation of the Sahel.
17. Okavango-Zambezi Water Project
A system of pumps, reservoirs, and canals to regulate
southern Africa's water resources, and boost hydropower
production.
18. Africa Rail Network
This plan by the Fusion Energy Foundation would begin
with construction of an east-west line from Djibouti to
Dakar, linked with upgraded and newly contructed
north-south lines across the continent.
19. Second Panama Canal
The Panama Canal is overcrowded and obsolete; it is too
small for today's largest sea-going vessels. A new
sea-level canal is needed. The new canal could generate
sufficient income to pay for itself in no more than 30
years.
----
John Covici
[email protected]
