On November 5, Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) convened an extraordinary three-hour press conference bringing together an international group of speakers with scientific, military, intelligence and political backgrounds, all dedicated to the principle stated by President Ronald Reagan in his 1984 State of the Union Address that “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” Speaking to both the people of the United States and Soviet Union, President Reagan continued: “The only value in our two nations possessing nuclear weapons is to make sure they will never be used. But then would it not be better to do away with them entirely?” Indeed, it would. However, 38 years after that momentous statement, the ship of state in the West has been hijacked by geopolitical madmen recklessly steering us towards a thermonuclear war which would bring about the extinction of the human race. Can this insane process be reversed?
The purpose of this press conference, as well as prior and future conferences hosted by EIR and the Schiller Institute, is to demonstrate to the world that there is a movement of sane people in the West not only opposing extinction warfare but proposing positive ideas to bring about a prosperous and harmonious future for current and future generations. Will this movement succeed? As many of the speakers made clear, that will be determined by the willingness of ordinary citizens to quit being spectators sitting on the sidelines and join in the fight. What follows is a brief summary of the opening remarks of each speaker participating in the press conference.
The first speaker, Diane Sare, is currently campaigning for the office of U.S. Senator for New York as a LaRouche independent candidate. Given the blackout of Sare’s campaign by the mainstream media, she began her remarks by referring to a statement she had written asking if the suppression of her campaign was a prelude to nuclear war. She wrote the statement in the context of viewpoints expressed by leaders in the West that Russia cannot win its war with Ukraine when it should be obvious to anyone that Russia cannot afford to lose. She pointed out the farcical candidate’s debate, from which she was excluded, between her two opponents in the Senate race where the Republican criticized the Democrat for not being tough enough on Russia. Sare then used as a metaphor the fairytale by Hans Christian Andersen “The Emperor’s New Clothes” to demonstrate that the purpose of the story was not to expose the vanity and corruption of the emperor, but the corruption of the people of the village who played along with the lie that the emperor had new clothes when they knew very well he was naked. This is similar to the situation today with the recent revelation that then British Prime Minister Liz Truss sent a text message to U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken seconds after the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines “It is done.” The question she posed, given this revelation, is will people be more enlightened than the village people of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytale?
The next speaker, Steven Starr, retired director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program and expert on nuclear war, gave a chilling presentation, which included a powerful slide show, demonstrating conclusively that a thermonuclear war would lead to the extinction of the human race and most animal life on the planet Earth. He explained that the destructive power of thermonuclear weapons today far exceeds those used against Japan in World War II. One warhead detonated over New York City would create a firestorm which would incinerate everything in a 150 square mile radius. Were a missile attack against the United States to be detected, the President would receive a 30-second briefing on the nature of the attack and then have at most a 2- to 3-minute window to decide how to respond! Were a counterattack ordered, missiles would be in the air within two minutes with no way to recall them if the warning turned out to be false. The aftermath of a thermonuclear war would be a nuclear winter with 70% of sunlight being blocked in the Northern Hemisphere and 35% in the Southern Hemisphere for a period of at least ten years, making it impossible to grow crops. This would lead to mass starvation and possible human and animal extinction.
Former U.S. Marine Corps intelligence officer and chief UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter followed with a presentation aimed at shaking people out of their complacency regarding the dangers of nuclear war. He began with the assertion that the majority of American people are ignorant of the reality of nuclear conflict. The son of an Air Force officer stationed in Germany during the Cold War, whose responsibilities included nuclear weapons delivery, Ritter grew up acutely aware that nuclear annihilation could happen at any time. After joining the Marine Corps, he was assigned to a nuclear artillery unit which constantly trained to carry out attacks. He then went on to become a weapons inspector during the 1980s at the height of the dangerous very period where Soviet SS-20 and U.S. Pershing II intermediate missiles could reach targets within seven minutes eliminating any chance for reasoned deliberation on how to respond to an attack. In Ritter’s words, “The 1980’s was all about dodging nuclear Armageddon.” He believes one of the most underappreciated moments in history is when President Reagan signed the INF Treaty with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev because this event saved the world from nuclear suicide. However, with the collapse of the Soviet Union we no longer respect Russia and are now reconstituting intermediate nuclear weapons. Ritter ended his presentation as a warning to those in the West who believe a nuclear war against Russia is winnable by describing the Russian system called the “dead hand.” Were a successful decapitation strike carried out against Moscow, the “dead hand” system would automatically launch communications rockets which would travel across the territory of Russia activating a retaliatory second strike which would mean the end of the world.
French Col. Alain Corvez (ret.), former advisor to the General-in-Commander of the UNIFIL in Lebanon and former international relations advisor to the French Foreign Ministry, began his remarks by expressing gratitude for participating in an event where speakers know what they’re talking about. The problem in his opinion is that leaders in the West know nothing about nuclear war. He recounted Charles de Gaulle’s intention to constitute a nuclear force (“force de frappe”) under the sole control of France strictly for the purpose of nuclear deterrence. De Gaulle was well aware that a nuclear war would result in the deaths of hundreds of millions of people. He questioned whether today’s leaders have any understanding of the fact that a nuclear war cannot be won and that as a consequence the nature of war has been fundamentally changed. Even a war with a small nuclear armed power like North Korea would have unimaginable consequences.
Colonel Richard Black (ret.), U.S. Marine Corps combat veteran, former chief of the Army Criminal Law Division at the Pentagon and former Virginia State Senator, began by stating that we are in a footrace with the globalist demons intent on starting World War III. According to Black, given that there may be a shift away from support for the Ukrainian regime were the outcome of the midterm elections to favor the Republicans, as is highly likely, there is an effort by NATO to accelerate the war. As empirical evidence of this accelerated war drive, Black cites events such as the Sept. 26 Nord Stream pipeline sabotage (including British Prime Minister Liz Truss’s “It is done” text message to Secretary of State Tony Blinken), the Oct. 8 attempt at blowing up of the Crimean Bridge across the Kerch Strait and the foiling by Russian security forces of sabotage attempts deep within Russian territory. Black believes the intention is to “trip up” the Russian leadership causing an overreaction which creates the pretext for a counterattack by NATO. He also pointed to the recent highly unusual surfacing of two U.S. nuclear armed attack submarines as an intended signal to Moscow that NATO has the capability to launch a nuclear ‘Pearl Harbor” at any time. He stated that President Biden has the capability of ending the war at anytime but right now is not listening to the American people but only to the globalists. Black ended his remarks by voicing his opinion that the Schiller Institute is the preeminent voice for peace in the world today and thanked the young “gutsy” Schiller Institute activists for their interventions confronting the warmongers.
