April 16, 2024 (EIRNS)—The West is filled with politicians, strategists et al., who are the definition of “too clever by half.”
Israel has announced that they simply have to strike a second time at Iran—and they assure Washington that won’t trigger a regional war. They simply can’t have Iran, or any of their neighbors, get the idea that when Israel conducts one of its special ops assassinations, the victimized country can strike back at Israel. As you read this, in Washington and Israel, clever fellows are working out how to send such clever messages.
Iran was faced with heightened internal problems if Israel was simply allowed to assassinate Iran’s military leaders in an embassy annex in Syria, and Iran’s leaders are shown to be incapable of getting the UN to hold Israel to account. So, they send a signal to Israel, making sure that Israel and its allies are aware as to when and how they’ll launch drones and missiles. They’ve also taken an action calculated to be below the threshold for a region-wide war.
As this kabuki theater plays out, countries get to grimace and snarl, as animals defending their tribe and their turf—and the old set of relationship rules are preserved or somewhat redefined. Life goes on.
But it doesn’t. Not in a world of nuclear weapons, with too many “leaders” reduced to grunting along the lines of a primate.
Today, China’s President Xi Jinping provided a lesson in how a human being carries out statecraft. Aside from China’s very important discussions today, on the Foreign Minister level, with both Iran and Saudi Arabia, and beyond any “win-win” economic proposals with Germany, Xi addressed his visitor, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, from the top. How does that work?
Xi explained that the world has a beautiful future, but those holding on to a system that is dying pose a great danger, a great challenge. So, China and Germany cannot simply work out what will benefit the two of them. Being the second and third largest economies in the world and, more importantly, being two cultures that have made great contributions to humanity, the two are uniquely situated for, uniquely called upon to, a greater destiny. They must wrap their identities, and their actions, around what necessity dictates—whereby nations benefit from the uplifting and development of all others.
In China’s case, certainly Confucius, and the values and culture stemming from him, help to explain the miraculous ability of China to pull 800 million people out of rather severe poverty, over some 30-plus years. In Germany’s case, certainly the powerful fusion of genius and morality in Beethoven or Schiller is a seemingly miraculous gift, one whose depth remains to be fully realized. Xi maintained today, not that China and Germany should be friendly because that’s a nice thing, but that the accomplishment by a culture of such gifts to humanity is the prime reason China and Germany are not enemies, but capable of having a genuine friendship, capable of uniting for the required historic task today.
Further, China’s Foreign Ministry made Xi’s remarks available in English, also today—as certainly the U.S. has had better days, has once been a “temple of liberty and beacon of hope” to the world—and now is in sore need of hearing from the better angels of its nature. As a unique American leader once said, after the most vicious internal bloodletting the nation has ever endured: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies.… The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”
On April 13, the Schiller Institute conference, a living example of that “from the top” approach, one addressed to humans, was alive and on display: “The Oasis Plan: The LaRouche Solution for Peace Through Development Between Israel and Palestine and for All of Southwest Asia.” As surely as cultures can produce truly unique and creative geniuses, just as surely all of Southwest Asia needs fresh water. And the rest of the world needs for them to have fresh water. By equipping yourself with the fruits of that conference, one might acquire the seasoned optimism to wrench your government out of its deeply entrenched and oh-so-clever games.
