The Lead

Have We Just Witnessed Our ‘Sarajevo Moment’ in the Run-Up to World War III?

by Dennis Small (EIRNS) — May. 15, 2024

“We are on the verge of civil war,” Slovak Interior Minister Matúš Šutaj Eštok warned gravely late Wednesday, May 15, after an attempted assassination of Prime Minister Robert Fico earlier today left him fighting for his life. “The gunman shot five times … the first information we have is that this was a politically motivated act,” Eštok stated, adding that the 71-year-old gunman decided to attack Fico following the April 6 presidential elections, which were won by Fico’s colleague Peter Pellegrini.

But civil war in Slovakia is the least of it. The broader questions are: Who was actually behind the brazen hit against Fico? And is this our “Sarajevo Moment”—the June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, in Sarajevo, which was the spark which led to the outbreak of the First World War?

The conditions are otherwise ripe for World War III to break out, with London and Washington gunning for a head-on confrontation with both China and Russia. British media coverage of the Fico attack promptly delivered the actual strategic message: Anyone smeared as “pro-Russian” for opposing NATO’s war against Russia in Ukraine, is now fair game. The British conservative daily The Telegraph, for example, headlined their story: “How Fico Turned Slovakia into One of Russia’s Only Allies.” Financial Times doubled down on their earlier analysis that “Peter Pellegrini has been elected President of Slovakia, consolidating the grip of the ruling coalition led by Robert Fico and tilting the country further towards Russia.”

The point will not be lost on the governments of Hungary, Slovenia, the Czech Republic and other NATO members that are raising objections to the endless (and losing) war against Russia in Ukraine. The next NATO summit will be held July 9-11 in Washington, D.C.

“The next six months will be extremely dangerous on all fronts,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated during her May 15 weekly dialogue webcast, citing the Fico attack as one example, because the entire trans-Atlantic system is in the throes of a breakdown collapse. But it is also a period of tremendous opportunities, she argued, as the majority of the world’s nations and people are moving rapidly towards a new international security and development architecture. The Oct. 22-24 BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia will be a critical inflection point in that process.

A key part of that second dynamic is a two-day summit in Beijing between President Vladimir Putin of Russia and President Xi Jinping of China, which begins on May 16. In a May 15 written interview with Xinhua, Putin emphasized the “unprecedented level of strategic partnership between our two countries,” and said they would be cooperating further in high-tech industries such as space exploration and nuclear energy, including “across-the-board adoption of scientific advances, new technologies and innovations” to drive labor productivity forward.

This approach, which is now being adopted by the majority of Mankind, leads to the death of the imperial system itself—and London knows it. A May 15 article in Financial Times warned that Putin and Xi are up to no good: At their summit, they will “brainstorm” over how to “fine-tune a financial infrastructure that can be used by other nations seeking an antidote to Washington’s weaponization of the greenback.”

The clinical insanity factor dominating most Western governments must be removed from positions of power before world war is irreversible, and its purveyors given proper medical attention in (secured) psychiatric treatment centers. How else to describe the likes of Sen. Lindsey Graham, who urged the Israeli government to give Gaza “the Hiroshima treatment"? What of British Foreign Minister David Cameron who glibly instructed Ukraine to use the long-range missiles provided by Britain to attack deep into Russia, and the American Secretary of State Tony Blinken who said essentially the same thing? Or Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who stated bluntly “We are fighting human animals and we are acting accordingly”? And how about Sen. Roger Wicker, who proposed on Fox News some years ago that the U.S. “rain destruction ... on Russia military capability,” and suggested that nuclear weapons could be used as well?

And what shall we say of the people who allow proponents of such views to remain as their anointed political leaders?