by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, November 5, 2022 (from Neue Solidarität No. 45, Nov. 10, 2022, https://www.solidaritaet.com/neuesol/2022/45/index.php )
Germany is in acute danger in two respects: we are now losing just about everything that we built up in the economy over the decades since the Second World War, and we face the grave danger of becoming the theater of war in a global nuclear war. Far from having a government that takes seriously its oath of office to protect the German people from harm, the ruling coalition includes at least two ministers who actively support these policies, which are clearly diametrically opposed to our country’s fundamental interests.
In the coming weeks and months, millions of people in Germany are threatened with poverty, hundreds of thousands of businesses will face bankruptcy. Vladimir Putin is not to blame for this, contrary to what the barrage in the mass media would have us believe, but rather the fact that Germany could become the country that suffers the greatest collateral damage from a geopolitical confrontation between the United States and the United Kingdom on the one hand, and Russia and China on the other. Ukraine in all this is but a pawn, that can be sacrificed.
In reality, China has achieved unprecedented economic growth in the last 40 years, with 850 million Chinese being freed from poverty—that is ten times more people than now live in Germany—and with the emergence of a well-to-do middle class of some 400 million, a figure which will soon hit 600 million, and thus be twice as large as the entire U.S. population. China’s rise was an inspiration for all of Asia and for the altogether 150 developing countries , that are cooperating with China on the Silk Road Initiative—not because China has imperial ambitions, but because, for the first time, they have the chance to break out of the legacy of colonialism, poverty and under-development.
In contrast, the “West” did not use the systemic crisis of 2008 to eliminate the underlying cause of it—the casino economy—but activated the printing press, and has since pumped many trillions in QE into the system, which, together with other factors such as the boomerang effect of the sanctions against Russia, has led to hyperinflation.
In other words, the neoliberal system is hopelessly bankrupt, and that is precisely why the China’s and the BRI’s system, which is based on real economic growth and the Belt and Road Initiative, is considered a “systemic rival.”
Germany’s prosperity over recent decades has been based to a significant degree on cheap energy from Russia and a growing export market in China. If the complete break in relations with Russia were now followed by decoupling from China, as promoted by the U.S., the U.K. and their advocates in Germany, it would amount to the deindustrialization of the country.
Moreover, although one is hardly allowed now, on pain of imprisonment, to say that history did not begin on February 24, it is not Putin who threatens to deploy nuclear weapons. Putin and the Russian government have merely confirmed Russia’s official nuclear doctrine, which provides for the use of nuclear weapons in the event that Russia’s territorial existence is threatened.
In contrast, according to the U.S. Arms Control Association, it is the Biden administration that has not fulfilled Biden’s 2020 pledge to make clear that the sole purpose of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack on the United States or its allies. Instead, it reaffirmed the Obama administration’s version of nuclear doctrine, which leaves it an open question whether nuclear weapons can be used not only in response to a nuclear attack, but also in response to non-nuclear threats.
As a result of this ambiguity, loose talk about the first use of nuclear weapons, such as by U.S. Senator Wicker of Mississippi or in an October 27 article in the Council on Foreign Relations magazine, Foreign Affairs, has increased enormously. Under the headline, “Could America Win a New World War? What It Would Take To Defeat China and Russia,” the article argues for massive rearmament to enable the U.S. to wage war simultaneously in Europe and the Pacific.
(https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/could-america-win-new-world-war )
On the same day, the Biden Administration released the National Defense Strategy, which for the first time includes the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and the Missile Defense Review. This doctrine represents a significant change in U.S. policy on the first use of nuclear weapons, and it deliberately leaves open the question of when the U.S. would use nuclear weapons preemptively, including in response to a non-nuclear threat. That significantly lowers the threshold for nuclear war, according to nuclear disarmament expert Scott Ritter.
