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The Lead

How, Then, Shall We Defeat the ‘Beast-Man’ Unleashed Upon the Planet?

by Dennis Small (EIRNS) — Oct. 18, 2023

It is hard to imagine a starker contrast than that offered by the Third Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation now underway in China, which is organizing optimistic plans for further, large-scale infrastructure projects encircling the planet, on the one hand; and the devastation and destruction of infrastructure and human life, horrendously exemplified by the deadly strike on the hospital in Gaza on Oct. 17, on the other.

Behind these two diametrically opposed policies—one of development, the other of destruction—lie two opposite concepts of Man. Only one will survive the current breakdown crisis sweeping the planet. And if it is the one today dominant in the West—that of Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan and his “war of every man against every man”—our species will likely disappear shortly thereafter in a nuclear war.

Take the “Beast-Man” image of Man conveyed in an op-ed by former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett in the Oct. 17 London Economist, in which he announced that Israel will have “no choice but to launch a war of unprecedented magnitude.” Israel’s survival, he asserted, depends on “unleashing fear in the hearts of our enemies.” Or presidential candidate Donald Trump’s call, in a Newsweek op-ed, for eye-for-an-eye vengeance and targeting—like fellow presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. a few days earlier—of Iran and China for being responsible for the crisis, a preposterous claim apparently fed to both camps by the Wall Street and City of London financial Establishment.

But China is not the cause of the crisis; they are proposing a solution based on a totally different concept of Man, a view that recognizes, as President Xi Jinping put it in his keynote address to the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, that “we should all treat each other as friends and partners, respect and support each other, and help each other succeed.… Global modernization should be pursued to enhance peaceful development and mutually beneficial cooperation and bring prosperity to all.” This is the same view expressed by the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended a 150-year period of religious warfare across Europe and laid the basis for the age of sovereign, developing nation-states.

In her Oct. 18 weekly dialogue webcast, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche underscored the significance of the required Westphalian approach:

“I would like to remind people that one big lesson of the Peace of Westphalia, after 150 years of religious war and after 4 years of tedious negotiations, before it came to a solution, was the recognition that a peace solution always requires that one takes into account the interest of the other. And when you somehow try to create a situation, where you say, `No, one side is absolutely right,’ then you preclude a peace!”

This is the approach, she insisted, that must be applied today. “If you want to end this, then you have to apply the principle of the interest of the other.… Anything else, anything which encourages either the one side or the other to keep up the fight, I think, is threatening that this thing goes completely out of control, leading to a world war: And that would be the end of everything.”

Zepp-LaRouche elaborated: “Any continuation of policies which are based on revenge and hatred, will breed more of that! And the only way you can break out of it, is you have to drastically apply the principle of the Peace of Westphalia…. As a principle of foreign policy, hatred has to be replaced by love.… Love in this case, would mean to create the economic conditions for the other side to have a decent, fulfilled life…. And wise people on all sides are being called upon to act on that basis.”

Even a summary review of key global developments over the last 48 hours indicates why immediate action is required:

• Biden visited Israel and gave full support to Netanyahu’s extermination war.

• The White House is reportedly about to ask Congress for an additional $100 billion to wage wars in Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan, and against immigrants on the Mexican border.

• Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen announced that the U.S. government can and would finance those wars, if called upon to do so.

• The Biden administration just secretly sent long-range ATACMS missiles to Ukraine, with which to attack deep in Russian territory.

• The U.S. has two aircraft carrier groups in the Eastern Mediterranean; 2,000 rapid deployment force troops on two other ships in the same area; and another 2,000 soldiers in the region placed on alert for possible deployment.

“Is the United States and NATO now preparing for full-scale confrontation with Russia and China?” Zepp-LaRouche asked today. Is World War III in fact already underway?

Zepp-LaRouche concluded: “Anybody, who wants to have peace and prevent the escalation of this crisis, should really join hands with us to put on the table our three proposals:

“First, all movements, all people, all individuals around the world, should support the initiative which came originally from China, then was backed by Brazil’s President Lula, to have an immediate peace conference for Southwest Asia, to stop the crisis through negotiations.

“Then, the economic substance must be put in such a conference, which is what my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, already wrote about in 1975, when he called for an `Oasis Plan’ for the Middle East: Meaning that you have to create lots of new fresh water, make the desert bloom, to create the kind of economic development for all the countries and all the peoples of the region, as the absolute necessary precondition for a peace in Southwest Asia.

“And then, thirdly, that the resolution which was adopted, actually several times by the United Nations Security Council, Resolution 242, must be implemented. And naturally, there needs to be a two-state solution—Palestine must have an independent state—as part of this process.”