ANASTASIA BATTLE: Welcome everyone. This is the International Peace Coalition. My name is Anastasia Battle; I’ll be your moderator today along with Dennis Small and Dennis Speed, my co-moderators. This is the 69th consecutive meeting of the IPC. We created this forum to bring together people of many different ideologies, many different religions and nations, in order to unite humanity to create true peace. There’s been too much division amongst various peace organizations, and if we actually want to stop thermonuclear war, which is what we’re on the verge of right now as we’re talking, we need to unite all of humanity to make this happen. So, thank you again for joining us. We’re broadcasting over multiple platforms right now.
We have speakers who will make beginning presentations for the first hour or so, and then we’ll have a general discussion period with members of the audience; people who are part of the Zoom meeting. If you’d like to be part of the Zoom meeting to discuss with the speakers, you must register for this event. You’ll find that link in the description of the YouTube channel. If you’re on a different platform—not YouTube or Rumble—please go to schillerinstitute.com, and it will be the first item on the website, and register there.
Thank you all for joining us at this prescient moment to bring all of our forces together. I’d like to have Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder of the Schiller Institute and the initiator of the International Peace Coalition, start us off. Please go ahead, Helga.
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Hello to all of you. I think we are in an extremely dangerous situation which has many elements to it. But I think maybe the most obvious one—even if it may not be the worst one—is the change which occurred in the last several days in the Russian nuclear doctrine. Obviously in reaction to the ongoing steps by NATO in the context of the Ukrainian war and more and more talk about the need to put Ukraine in control of long-range missiles, allowing them to strike deep into the territory of Russia, which was the subject of discussion in a meeting between British Prime Minister Starmer and Biden on Sept. 13th. Starmer had come with a list of targets such missiles should be targetted on in Russia. Now, at that point, President Biden did not sign on to this, and it seems there is a huge brawl in the background of the Biden administration where the Pentagon is trying to restrain the situation. Because as many times, the military are more acutely aware of the consequences of certain actions than the so-called civilians. It seems that at least for the time being, the State Department have lost this battle, so Biden has not yet allowed the Ukrainians to use American missiles for such strikes deep into the territory of Russia. This was also reiterated by [White House National Security Communications Advisor] Kirby yesterday, so nevertheless, it seems that the Russian government does not trust that this statement by Biden is carved in stone, because nevertheless President Putin announced a couple of days ago a change in the nuclear doctrine of Russia; which so far was that Russia would use nuclear weapons only if the territory of the Russian Federation would be threatened. Now this has changed by saying if there would be a massive aerospace attack coming from a non-nuclear country—a large number of drones, missiles, cyber attacks—and if such a non-nuclear country would be backed by a nuclear power, they would regard this as a joint attack, and therefore preserve the right to use nuclear weapons against the aggressor.
This is very clearly a signal, if there can be any signal, to stop this extremely dangerous path towards Armageddon; I don’t know what else people need. However, it seems that the Western media are again just treating that as “Oh, Putin is threatening with nuclear weapons once again,” while totally underplaying the absolute difference in the nuclear doctrine by Russia, which has just been adopted. It seems that also President Zelenskyy, who is in the United States in the context of the UN General Assembly, somehow continued to talk as if such a change had not been made. When he met with a bipartisan group of Senators, presenting his so-called “victory plan,” it was not very clear how that victory would be achieved, given the dramatic losses of Ukraine on the battlefield. Essentially what became public from that meeting was that Zelenskyy is demanding more F-16s and the right to use the Anglo-American long-range missiles for deep strikes into Russian territory. According to Zelenskyy, this guarantee would then force Russia to the negotiating table at the latest by next year. That way, the war would end swiftly. But again, it’s as if the change in the nuclear doctrine did not happen.
That is a situation which is obviously extremely dangerous, because it’s not just that if the Pentagon thinks they have the situation under control that is one thing. But how quickly a mistake could happen, a misjudgment, a human error, a technical failure, a misreading of the situation. So, we should be super alarmed about this situation. But unfortunately this is not the only one.
The other one naturally is what is happening in the Middle East, where since a couple of days, the Israeli attacks on Lebanon and Hezbollah have started with already a significant number of casualties. And with the possibility and all preparation having been done for a ground invasion of the Israeli armed forces into Lebanon. Netanyahu, who also has arrived in the United States for the UN General Assembly, according to various reports, privately hinted that he may agree to the U.S.-French proposal to have a 21-day ceasefire, but publicly he said exactly the opposite. He said that Israel will strike Hezbollah with full force, and not stop until the goal is achieved; resonating the horrible happenings in Gaza so far.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the United States must take steps so that the situation is being prevented from spilling out of control. But naturally, if there is a full assault with the aim to wipe out Hezbollah, the aim is obviously to draw Iran into the conflict. If that happens, practically all stops potentially are out, and if it would come to the use of nuclear weapons in the Middle East, this would be even more dangerous than the immediate situation in Ukraine. We were talking to some military sources in Europe, who actually were warning that they regard the immediate danger of the use of nuclear weapons for hire in the Middle East as more dangerous than the Ukraine situation. Obviously, this is another extremely tense and super-dangerous situation.
Unfortunately again, not the only one, because the real crisis, or the geopolitical confrontation between the United States and China is the other extremely worrisome aspect. Under Secretary of State Kurt Campbell a couple of days ago testified before the House Foreign Affairs Committee, where he made a speech which is quite incredible; basically because it could not be more amazing how a geopolitical spectacle blinds people from seeing what is actually going on. What Campbell said is that China is the greatest threat in the history of the United States ever; that it pales in comparison to the threats of the Cold War. And that the threat from China is not just military, but technology and the impact of China in the Global South. He also said that much harsher measures are required also from the Europeans against China. And he lamented that the focus on Ukraine and the Middle East is hindering the full-fledged focus on China and the Indo-Pacific.
I want to say this. The whole line that China is a threat to the United States is a lie, which must not stand. Because China—and the history of China is the proof of it—is not an aggressive country; it does not try to replace the United States as the hegemon. It’s not an imperialistic orientation. China is doing what is the absolute right of every sovereign country on the planet—it is developing its own people; it’s developing science and technology; and it is helping the Global South to overcome the remnants of colonialism. It has an incredible success, because contrary to the NATO narrative which people have to believe or else they have to face all kinds of threats, fines and various negative things; China is relatively unspectacularly helping countries in Africa, in Latin America, and in Asia to develop, to overcome poverty and under-development by providing them with infrastructure, industry, agriculture, helping them with education, with health, all kinds of things. And as a result, naturally, many countries of the Global South regard China and the BRICS as their friends. I can just say I came back from a trip to Shandong, where I participated last week in the International Peace day, which was organized in Shandong with a large group of people from all over the world. It was a mixture between celebrations of various accomplishments—we visited a lot of factories, farms. I can only say I was in China for the first time in 1971; that was in the middle of the Cultural Revolution. The difference between the poverty in 1971—which I saw firsthand and I don’t need any books and secondary sources—I have been in China repeatedly since then. I have seen with my own eyes what a gigantic civilizational contribution China has made by applying science and technology to their own economy and now providing it as an aid to developing countries. I have seen how representatives of these countries are relating to China; regarding it as a friend. So, the whole idea that China is a threat is just not true. It would be extremely easy to resolve this whole situation if the West—starting with the United States and European countries—would stop this geopolitical confrontation and respond to the Chinese version of my proposal to have a new security and development architecture. Because China has promoted a Global Security Initiative, a Global Development Initiative, and a Global Civilizational Initiative; which is just another way of saying that we need a new security and development architecture and a Renaissance of the dialogue of civilizations. They formulated differently, but it’s exactly what we have been promoting as the way out of this crisis. If the West would say “We cooperate, we stop the fight for supremacy. We agree that the world is a multi-polar world and we move from confrontation to cooperation,” all these conflicts would virtually evaporate overnight. Because if the large powers—the United States and China and by the same token, Russia—would enter such a mode of cooperation, all regional conflicts would be immediately extremely manageable. So, the way out is very clear. And I can only say the International Peace Coalition is mobilizing to educate people that there is a way out. The threat is enormous; it is breathtaking. But the way out of this situation would be relatively easy.
Now, let me just mention one last aspect of this picture. That is that right now, you have a very broad effort, especially in Germany, by NATO and certain Bundeswehr circles, to basically prepare the population for the coming war with NATO. As Lt. Gen. Alexander Sollfrank, who is the head of the NATO Joint Support and Enabling Command, is just putting out daily, people have to be prepared for the transport of large numbers of wounded from the Eastern front back to European countries. Pistorius, the German Defense Minister, wants to make the German society “war ready”; preaching the same thing that the war with Russia is inevitable at the latest by 2029; and that all institutions of Germany must be prepared for the coming war, including the Red Cross learning how to transport these large numbers of wounded people. This is absolute psychosis. We have to get the population away from this sort of brainwashing, because this can easily become a self-fulfilling prophecy.
