ANASTASIA BATTLE: My name is Anastasia Battle. Thank you for joining us. I will be your moderator. This is the International Peace Coalition, we have people from over 50 countries who have come to these meetings over the last 66 weeks, which we have done consecutively in coordinating all of our efforts as a peace movement around the world. I have my two co-moderators, Dennis Speed and Dennis Small. Just to give you a sense of how this forum operates, we have a general opening of speakers, relevant experts, officials who are going to give a presentation today, and then we’ll have a general discussion.
The reason we created this forum 66 weeks ago was to unite the international peace movement; to bring people together above their ideologies, above their differences, and to say we have to create true peace now, or we’re facing thermonuclear World War III. A year ago, I thought that was as close as we possibly could be; I never would have imagined where we are today. I’ll open it up for Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who is the founder of the Schiller Institute and the initiator of the International Peace Coalition. Please go ahead, Helga.
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: First of all, I greet all of you. I’m very thankful that today we have quite a number of extremely important experts, because it is so urgent to bring scientific clarity into the strategic debate. We are clearly not only in the middle of two actual regional wars, but in a prewar situation which is dominated by information warfare by the attempt to control the narrative. We see many extremely worrying examples that the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press are being suppressed. The result of all of that is that the population for the most part is in a state of confusion.
We are all extremely worried that the situation in Ukraine is spinning out of control. Today there is the Ramstein-Ukraine Contact Group meeting. President Zelenskyy is there, and he is demanding that more long-range missiles should be given to Ukraine with the permission to strike deep inside the territory of Russia, because supposedly the goal is still to “inflict strategic defeat” on Russia, which given the fact that it’s the largest nuclear power is practically impossible without causing the destruction of the whole world. Defense Secretary Austin immediately answered Zelenskyy saying “I share your urgency. We will do everything we can.”
While the situation in Donbass is looking quite grim for the Ukrainians—the Russians are gaining control rapidly; the situation in Kursk also is not tenable. More and more drones and missiles are being sent inside Russia. Yesterday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova made a very strong attack, saying that London is behind the drone attacks inside Russia; and that it is London that is relentlessly striving to escalate the conflict. Then, she gave a long list of examples where that has been the case in the last several years. She also reminded people that on May 6th this year, the Russian Foreign Ministry had put out a warning that any British military facility and equipment on Ukrainian territory and beyond will be hit if this is not stopping. On the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum, Zakharova also said the Europeans do not understand what they are being dragged into by the U.S., by the Anglo-Saxons.
On July 29th, Biden signed an amendment to the U.S.-British mutual defense agreement from 1958. This new agreement removes the expiration date because there was a provision that this agreement had to be renewed every ten years. Malcolm Chalmers, the Deputy Director General of the British think tank RUSI said this is very good, because now one doesn’t have to worry about changing administrations anymore, because obviously this way the idea is to make this agreement permanent or “Trump-proof.”
What is it that the Europeans are being dragged into? To find the truth is a bit like peeling an onion. Let me peel one layer: At the end of August, the New York Times reported that Biden had already signed in March a new U.S. nuclear doctrine, which is completely secret and supposedly doesn’t even exist in electronic form; only a handful of printed copies to very selective people have been given out. It says, according to the New York Times that the United States has to prepare for a three-front confrontation against Russia, China, and North Korea. Then, a couple of months later, after March, in July at the NATO summit, German Chancellor Scholz just nonchalantly announced the U.S. made the decision to put, starting in 2026, U.S. middle-range missiles into Germany, and that that is a good decision. No debate in the Bundestag, no public debate in Germany, no discussion with European allies, unlike in 1979 when the NATO retool fitting decision was made and there was a broad discussion in the public among the allies. Four allies shared the decision together with Germany. Obviously, if the U.S. puts missiles into Germany, it affects the security interests of all allies.
In a discussion with military experts, I found out in the last several days that the decision to put these missiles in Germany in 2026 was not made at the sidelines of the NATO summit, or even in bilateral discussions before. The decision already was made in 2021; namely that it is part of the advanced U.S. national system; and therefore, no discussion with the allies is necessary. What this does is very obvious: It makes Germany the strategic staging ground for a confrontation between the two most powerful nuclear powers, and now of a potential clash between Global NATO and Russia, China, and North Korea.
Let me quickly look at how we got there. In December 2017, the U.S. put out the U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) under the leadership of H.R. McMaster, who was the National Security Advisor at that time. In this document, for the first time, Russia and China were named as geopolitical rivals. This happened exactly four years after Xi Jinping announced the New Silk Road in 2013, which had started to take on projects of development in many developing countries. This document doesn’t say that explicitly, but demands a rethinking of the policy, and says that the integration of China into the WTO was a mistake, and that it was necessary for the U.S. to reassert military dominance. Shortly afterwards, on January 19, 2018, the Pentagon put out the National Defense Strategy (NDS), which I think is still classified to the present day. It demands the deterrence to be upgraded in three regions—the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Near East—and to modernize all weapons systems, including the nuclear ones. One month later, on February 3, 2018, they published the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which called for the modernization of the triad, including the stationing of low-yield nuclear bombs on Trident submarines and other places.
Now, one month later, on March 1, 2018, President Putin announced the new nuclear systems Russia had developed—the hypersonic missiles, the Avangard, the hypersonic cruise missile Kinzhal which can go Mach-20 speed and has very high maneuverability, and various other underwater drones and laser weapons. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. announced the updated U.S. space doctrine, and the commander of the U.S. Space Command at that time, James Dickinson [not actually head of U.S. Space Command until 2020], said “We will try to avoid conflict, but if it fails, we will win warfare in space.”
Now all of this was closely coordinated with the British. British Defense Minister Mark Lancaster said, “The policy of NSS, NDS, and NPR are also the policy of the British government.” That included Obama’s pivot to Asia, and then about three years ago, this whole policy was upgraded by calling for a network of regional partners and allies. AUKUS was created, which first was just the United States, Great Britain, and Australia, then the Quad system including Japan, South Korea, India, and now there is talk about New Zealand joining that. More and more the idea of Global NATO came to the forefront. There was a meeting between von der Leyen and Stoltenberg saying that the EU and NATO are now fully integrated and will work together.
So NATO is clearly the bridge for how Europe is being dragged into the coming conflict by the United States with China—or, that’s supposed to be the plan. And Germany, in a typical anticipatory obedience several weeks ago, participated in a Pacific maneuver. German Defense Minister Pistorius was running around in Hawaii, proudly proclaiming that the two little ships Germany had contributed to these war maneuvers. So, this is fully in preparation. Two days ago, Chancellor Scholz visited Todendorf, where the IRIS-T air defense system was shown; and he said publicly—and it was transmitted by the German TV—"Russia cancelled the INF Treaty.” Now that is part of the narrative; it is absolutely not true. The INF Treaty, which in large part was the result of the large demonstrations at the beginning of the 1980s where in the end, a million people took to the streets to protest against the middle-range missiles being deployed—the SS-20 and the Pershing II. This was efficient, until February 5, 2005, under the INF Treaty, all U.S. and Russian systems belonging to this category were destroyed. What was helpful was a unique verification system which not only could verify the existence of the systems, but also their construction and even the design in the offices where the design engineers were drawing up these plans. That treaty expired in 2015. The United States waited four more years, and in February 2019, with six months lead time, the U.S. ended the INF Treaty on August 1, 2019. One day later, on August 2, 2019, Russia said if a treaty which only has two partners, if one side cancels, there’s no point to keep it, but we keep a moratorium, which I think they are still keeping to the present day, not to put such missiles into place ever since.
The second mistake or lie of whatever you want to call it Scholz pronounced in Todendorf was that such missiles would also be deployed in Kaliningrad. Since Berlin is only 530 km away, they could hit Berlin. He clearly was talking about the Iskander missiles, which have a range below 500 km. How they could hit Berlin 530 km away, you need a special arithmetic to come to this conclusion. This is going on all the time.
There is a very simple way of solving this. Both sides should reinstitute the verification regime which functioned so well for the whole time of the INF Treaty.
I want to stop here, because I just wanted to say that this is not something which happened because of the Ukraine war or anything in the recent period. The plan to contain the rise of China I think that that is visible at least since 2017. Therefore, I think we have to have urgently a strategic debate; an inclusive debate of what kind of security system do we really need in order to preserve the existence of all of our nations. Thank you.
During the Discussion:
DENNIS SPEED: We’ve had an extensive discussion about the question of the present danger and how we got here. There have been many different presentations, different aspects. And particularly our European guests, Prof. Dr. Wilfried Schreiber from Germany, and Lt. Col. Ralph Bosshard of Switzerland, have given real insight into what this looks like from the standpoint of people outside of the United States, which is an extremely important element. I’ll just ask you, to get us started, because we had a video from you we did not show; we wanted to wait to see if we got you. Could you just give, from the vantage point of your experience—because you were there; you were at the time of the fall of the Wall and then coming in during the Reagan administration and negotiating that situation. Why is it that we have betrayed that understanding, and what has it meant for the world that the United States did not do what you and others attempted to do at that time?
AMBASSADOR JACK MATLOCK: If you’re speaking of the pledge not to expand NATO to the East, yes, I would say that my Secretary of State, Mr. Baker, and the German Foreign Minister, the British Prime Minister all gave assurances to Gorbachev that if he would approve the merger of the two German states—that is the merger of German Democratic Republic into West Germany—that there would be no expansion of NATO. At one point, Secretary of Baker actually said, assuming there is no expansion of NATO, not one inch, wouldn’t it be better to have a united Germany in NATO? And Gorbachev answered, well, obviously any expansion is not permissible. But, he went to say that he could understand the reason we might want to keep NATO even with a united Germany.
Now, when it came to writing the treaties, this was not included in the formal treaties. These were, I would say, diplomatic promises. I would say that this promise was given on the background of a prior statement by the first President Bush, who agreed in his meeting with Gorbachev in Malta that if the Soviet Union pledged not to use force in Eastern Europe to prevent political change—that is, the democratization—and President Bush pledged that we would not take advantage of the democratization. So, the background was pretty clear that Gorbachev felt he had assurances there would be no more expansion of NATO.
When the formal agreement was made, there was made an exception for the territory of the former East Germany in that although it was allowed to be part of NATO, but there could be no foreign troops or nuclear weapons stationed there. That was formally in the treaty.
Now, let me just add that for Russia, the problem has not been so much the expansion of NATO. That is, the fact that the United States would in effect guarantee the security. What they have been most opposed to—and this was pointed out to us in the 1990s—was the stationing of American or other Western bases in these countries. So, we have to remember that President Putin actually did not object to the initial expansion of NATO—well, he was not Prime Minister then—but the additional expansion to the three Baltic countries, when that was proposed, he was in New York at a meeting of the Council on Foreign Relations I believe it was. I asked him directly what he thought about the expansion of NATO in the three Baltic states. He said he felt that was unnecessary, but as long as there were no bases, he had no objection.
So, the problem has been the combination. Then at the same time, it was very clear that there would be a difference in Moscow’s attitude toward NATO; you might say the countries in Eastern Europe and the Baltic states and those that were former Soviet republics and recognized as Soviet republics by the United States and others. So, the idea of expanding NATO into say Georgia, Ukraine, or Belarus would have been a red line I think for any Russian President. And I must say that the Russian government did respect the borders that were agreed upon until the question of NATO expansion began, and the attempts by the Western powers certain ones to interfere in the politics of Ukraine. This was something that anyone who understands the history of this, which is very complex, would understand that that was going to be resisted by the Russians.
None of this means that what has happened has been good, or that I would agree that it should have happened. But I think what we need to understand is that the expansion of NATO, and particularly the bases—and in this case it was the bases that were planned in Poland and Romania for anti-ballistic missiles. It turned out that although these were defensive weapons, they could easily be converted to offensive weapons. So, it was understandable that the Russian leader would be quite opposed. And yet, we went ahead, and after progressively withdrawing from virtually every arms control agreement that we had negotiated in the 1980s and early ’90s, we began to try to influence the Ukrainian government and to offer NATO membership.
So, I think that this was a complete reversal of the diplomacy we used in the Cold War, and to end the nuclear threats to Europe….
JOSE VEGA: First of all, I wanted to extend my thanks to Prof. Postol and Col. Wilkerson. I want to thank both of you for your presentations, as well as the rest of the panel. I’d also like to acknowledge that a lot of the people on this call are not just spectators and listeners, but activists and organizers. I myself have been doing this for ten years; I’ve been associated with the Schiller Institute for ten years, and now I’m a Congressional candidate running here in the Bronx. I’m proud to say I see lots of names on the attendee list who I know are also organizers and activists. I pray that people who listen to these presentations will move and act on this.
I’d like to ask something for the panel to comment on, but especially I’d like to hear from Prof. Postol and Col. Wilkerson, and of course Helga. When Daniel Ellsberg saw that the U.S. was threatening war with China over Taiwan in 2021, he posted online classified documents originally copied in the 1970s that showed that the U.S. military planners pushed for nuclear strikes on mainland China as early as 1958. These were plans that Ellsberg himself was a part of, as he admitted in an interview with CBS. This was supposed to go beyond just China; they wanted to hit every city in the Soviet Union, and every city in China. There was no plan that did not also involve annihilating the Chinese population. They were ready to commit 100 holocausts and get rid of the then-600 million Chinese. I want to contrast that with what we recently found out in the last few weeks that Biden back in March had ordered, or had plans to be ready for a nuclear confrontation between China and Russia.
But more importantly, I want to ask why do we know about these kinds of plans, and why do they get released or leaked to the public? Is there someone in the State Department with a conscience, who is begging the American population to intervene in some way? Is there anyone at all who makes decisions like this about going to war with a conscience? And assuming there is somebody in the House or in the State Department with a conscience, what is it they expect the American people to do?
COL. LARRY WILKERSON: At the end of Dan’s life—and let me parenthetically add, I think Dan was one of the greatest heroes in the second part of the 20th century and first part of the 21st century. Dan and I had a lot of conversations. As a matter of fact, I was somewhat instrumental in working with Paul Jay in Canada who is making the, I think, definitive documentary on Dan and on nuclear weapons. Hopefully, it will be out soon; it’s costing a lot more than Paul envisioned. But I think it’s going to be extremely powerful when it does come out.
Dan and I had some of these conversations about some of the revelations that you just pointed out. One of the things I tried to temper—if that’s the right word—his anxieties with was that the U.S. military in its war-planning divisions plans for all manner of contingencies. It plans for things that you would probably not believe. For example, it plans for war with Britain; it plans for war with Germany; it plans for war with almost every country in the world with a capacity to do some harm to the United States. These plans are not firm plans that are—as we say today in modern terminology tip-fitted (time, phase, force, and deployment data); in other words, ready for execution. They’re just the plans that militaries all around the world I suspect do, but certainly the United States does. We’re the only country in the world that divides the world up into fiefdoms, and puts a four-star general or admiral in charge of each fiefdom. I don’t think there’s any empire in human history that’s done that. We are also the only country in the world that has 800 overseas bases. China and Russia, for example, together don’t even have 80.
All this planning sometimes gets leaked, and it gets leaked in various ways. It might be a Julian Assange, it might be another journalist. And when it comes out, it looks dramatically dangerous. It even looks insane in terms of the empire. And sometimes I would be the first one to admit it probably is insane. But a lot of the things that happen with regard to China and Russia in terms of war-planning that have somehow leaked out afterwards, that Dan was referring to, were things that were not contemplated by the leadership for execution. They were simply contemplated by the military planners for the contingency that one of the leaders hopefully both of the leaders at that time, because we have two—the Secretary of Defense and the President—in the civilian chain of command would ask to be implemented or would ask to taken off the shelf and dusted off and possibly implemented.
A lot of the things that Dan was looking at, and a lot of the things that others have looked at since, were of that nature. I don’t think there was anyone other than maybe a Gen. Curtis LeMay or some other absolutely insane military officer who contemplated implementing them; they were simply doing their jobs. For example, there was a plan—and Dan and I talked about this—there was a plan for dropping nuclear weapons on Korea right after the Chinese had intervened. 400,000-some odd volunteers and we were thoroughly routed. People in Washington were talking about abandoning the peninsula; seriously talking about it. General MacArthur put forth the provision to drop nuclear weapons all across the main axis east-to-west in North Korea, and therefore no more forces could pour down because it would be too radioactive. Well, that was a plan, that was a suggestion by the commander of the entire theater. It wasn’t even looked at seriously by the civilians, at least the record doesn’t reflect it was looked at seriously by the civilians. So, this is some of the warp and woof of military planning, especially when you have a military as vast and capable as that of the empire. The civilians who later discover what they were “planning.” It’s not necessarily as bad as it might look, although in its aggregate you might say, “I wish I weren’t an empire.” Because this is what empires do; they plan to fight everybody in the world at one time or another, or anyone with the capacity and possible intentions to do harm to them all the time.
That takes on its own life. And I daresay that those like Gen. Wes Clark, who told me— and I saw some of the signs of this myself, before I was prohibited to go to the Pentagon by Donald Rumsfeld, the then-Secretary of Defense. We had plans for going after Syria; we had plans for going after Iran; we had plans for going into Lebanon; we had plans for the entire Levant. I think, and I think General Clark would back me up on this—former NATO commander—we were going to implement those plans if Iraq went really easily in 2003. We were going to go to Syria, we were going to go to Iran, we were going to go to Lebanon; we were going to take the whole Levant. Did we execute those plans? No, because in this case, I think the primary reason was Iraq was not an easy target; and it still is roiling with problems because of what we did. As I think you said, it was an illegal war. One of the first things Kofi Annan said was that this was an illegal war. Which makes the comments that Tony Blinken made the other day about the sanctity of borders and everything the height of hypocrisy. Because we started the violation of the sanctity of borders in the modern age with Iraq in 2003.
Anyway, Dan was a great guy: He was a hero. Some of the stories Dan told me about what he did in the height of the early nuclear situation were just—he drove a Jeep out through the wire out in Nevada, with another man in the Jeep with him. He drove a Jeep through that wire and out to Ground Zero, to prevent Ronald Reagan from doing a nuclear test that day. He went out to the test site in a Jeep with one other person—that’s all there was. And he stopped that demonstration: He stopped that nuclear detonation. He was an American hero par excellence.
PROF. TED POSTOL: I think first of all I’d like to say that I agree with everything that Colonel Wilkerson said. But I have a somewhat different view of this, because I don’t have the benefit of being a soldier. But I do have the benefit of being trained as a scientist. I also had the great privilege of working very closely with a lot of great soldiers when I was in the Pentagon, so I have a glimpse into that world, although I would not claim the kind of expertise these very skilled and capable soldiers who I worked with have.
But one of the things I would say is different about nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons planning is that there is problem conceptualizing the true capabilities and effects of these weapons if you don’t have special training, and you don’t put in special effort to understand what is actually going on; in other words, the physical effects. So, I want to be clear that there are a lot of people who say, “I’m a scientist, I know.” Nonsense; they don’t know. But if you are a scientist and you’re trained as one and you seriously do some work, you should have a reasonable grasp of the effects of these weapons. I was involved in nuclear planning; I had oversight responsibilities, so I could see things being done. And what struck me was that the planning process was a very ritualized process. People would have these little circular keys and you put them over a target and you move it around a bit, and maybe you can adjust the nuclear detonation point. But they really did not know what the true effects of the weapons were, because they weren’t trained to know these effects. They were soldiers; they were brought in from being highly-skilled tank operators, pilots, navigators, ship commanders. But their training really did not include any details of nuclear weapons.
I used to give a talk, I used to joke, I’ll give people a sense of my black humor. I used to give a talk, I called my “Shake and Bake” talk, which was a very deadpan, detailed description of the effects of nuclear weapons. I would give it when I was at Stanford. It was a big class where I gave some of the lectures. I would get students writing me notes after the classes that they had nightmares after that class. And of course, quite frankly, to be honest with you, I was glad. I wasn’t trying to overstate, I was trying to very candidly, and in a way that was easy to understand, show people what the effects of nuclear weapons would be if they were used. It was a talk I put great effort into. But one of the phenomena I experienced several times were young soldiers who happened to be in the audience—they were probably visiting these military exchange programs—coming up after the talk and saying to me, “I didn’t want to do anything like this. That’s criminal. This is against my oath as an officer to not murder people arbitrarily. I’m horrified by what you’re showing. I just want you to know I would never knowingly be involved in this.” And it was an interesting experience for me, because at this point I was already at Stanford, but I had been involved in the nuclear war planning, and had observed how this rote way it was being done, this ritualized way it was being done. And I realized that these were soldiers who were simply doing what they were told to do, without enough of a technical background to explain to them the full consequences of what they were doing. They were just put in a job to do this. And they had very strong moral and ethical standards, as many of the soldiers I have been lucky enough to work with had. But they had no idea what was really going on.
And I think that is the case with nuclear war planning in general. I think that the fact that Dan made these plans known was a courageous thing to do. And I think those plans would have been executed as they were planned if a series of events created a situation where a decision was made to use nuclear weapons. I wrote a paper that caused a lot of trouble—fortunately—which is what I hoped to do. It was given at a National Academy of Medicine symposium in Washington; which was a good forum, because it was covered by the international press. I called it “Casualties from Super Fires from Nuclear Attacks on Cities.” What the paper did—it’s still available from the National Academy of Sciences for those who want it, or I could make it available to your people. What it showed is that fires produced by the flash of a nuclear weapon—nuclear weapons are not big explosive devices. An explosion never reaches a temperature above about 5,000° Kelvin. A nuclear weapon initially has a temperature of 100 million degrees Kelvin, and it creates this fireball that’s so hot, it’s hotter than the surface of the Sun for fractions of second, and sets fires for an enormous range. If you have a city of 200 or 400 or 500 square miles simultaneously on fire, you’re going to see an environment like Dresden, but more intense. Because all this heat from combustion causes an up-flow of air, and an in-flow of cool air from around. And you have hurricane force winds on the street that are above the temperature of boiling water. Nobody survives that; nothing survives that. So, you would have city fires on hundreds of square miles at a time; and that is not included in the war planning. I had a long discussion with Dan about this one time, when I was in Germany, in fact, where this phenomenon was not even included. He was unaware of it until I wrote this paper.
It’s still not included in American war planning, so four or five times more people would be killed immediately from these nuclear weapons—not that it would matter, because there would be secondary effects that would be enormous. But they don’t even get the basic physical effects right in this planning. So, it’s a very dangerous situation. And of course, the nature of nuclear war-planning is that it’s very secret. It’s very hard to get access to this planning process. Civilians really don’t get any of it. Civilians who are in charge at the Pentagon, whom I met were largely, what I would call, not very sophisticated political scientists, who were committed to repeating in a monkey-like fashion arguments that made no sense; that were completely unrelated to the realities of what would actually happen if you used these nuclear weapons. It’s a frightening situation, at least from my perspective, because the people who are in charge of this whole planning process have no idea—none at all—about what they’re doing.
So, there’s this extra feature that Lawrence didn’t include in his discussion, because the soldiers aren’t aware of this because the system is unaware of it. So, it doesn’t educate the soldiers to these effects. You take a soldier and you give him a munition. That soldier knows what that munition will and will not do; they’re trained very well. They have extraordinarily sophisticated understanding of what they’re doing. With nuclear weapons, you can’t assume anything; so there’s this layer of I’ll call it illusion that’s associated with the whole planning process that’s extraordinarily dangerous.
WILKERSON: I just want to say one thing. As far as I know, we still operate on the principle of civilian control of the military. Second, and I say that with some guarded cynicism, because I’ve seen things different in the last few years. But my experience with 31 years in the military was, I was more frightened of the civilian leaders than I was of my military bosses.
POSTOL: Me, too. I was never frightened of the soldiers I worked with.
WILKERSON: And Joe Biden just gives me the creeps, frankly.
POSTOL: Yeah, I think he’s a criminal.
WILKERSON: The fact that he transitioned from the nuclear posture that was to what’s happening now is just unbelievable.
POSTOL: This war he started in Ukraine? He initialized it. We tried and convicted people at the Nuremberg Trials for knowingly starting a war of choice; that was part of the charges brought against them. What’s different here?
WILKERSON: I agree.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Very briefly. As far as I know, Daniel Ellsberg, in one of the last interviews he gave before he passed away, had called on people in the Pentagon to report about what the actual discussion is about the use of nuclear weapons. I think maybe we should repeat his request.
Closing Remarks:
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I can only hope that the program we produce today will be distributed widely around the world. I would appeal to all of you to help do that, using all lists and channels and platforms you have. Because I think if we would be able to get an audience of let’s say tens of millions of people, I think it would make a difference. So, I’m asking you to help to do that.
I think also the need to go into the streets rapidly is also important. We have the Sept. 26th, what you said Anastasia, on Sept. 28th Scott Ritter rally, Rage Against the War rally, the October 3rd big demonstration planned in Berlin—this is the national day of unification—and a lot of groups are calling for it. But I just think we need to really organize everybody to make the governments understand that they cannot do what they wish over the heads of the people. In the 1980s, this did help to contribute a lot to an environment in which the INF Treaty was made possible.
However, I think that that is not good enough. Because the underlying reason of the conflict is on the one side, the pending threatening collapse of the trans-Atlantic system sitting on the $33 trillion of U.S. debt, but furthermore, $2 quadrillion outstanding in derivatives which could be detonating at any moment. Then secondly, that the real cause and the change in the strategic doctrines in the U.S. which was then accompanied by a uniform blasting of Russia and China by all the trans-Atlantic think tanks, which really started in 2017. The reason being the rise of China and the rise of the BRI, where China extended the Chinese economic model to other developing countries. For four years, the West did not notice that; we followed this very clearly. As some of you may know, the Eurasian Land-Bridge was our design for a peace order in 1991 when the Soviet Union collapsed. A lot of what China is doing now is in affinity with what my late husband and our movement did for half a century.
Therefore, you don’t solve the problem by just making a new defense treaty or disarmament treaty or any such thing. You have to address the root causes; which means you have to have a change in the paradigm. I think we can become friends again with not only the Russians but also every other country in the world or people in the world if we consider that we are the one humanity. Whatever historical, ethnic and other divisions may separate us, we must make the jump to first think about the interests of humanity as a whole, and then go to our national interests. In a certain sense, it’s the opposite of America First. America second, or American in line with humanity first. I think that mental jump has to be made.
I think we need to address the conflict that President Ramotar said, the world is falling into two blocs. That should not happen. We have to have a situation where the United States and European nations stop this geopolitical nonsense and say we cooperate with the Global Majority. If the countries of the Global South are now finally after 600 years of colonialism intending to build their own system which allows for their economic development; we should not fight it, we should support it. If you want to deal with the migrant crisis at the border between Mexico and the United States, or if you don’t want the Mediterranean turning into a mass grave, then help to create 2-3 billion productive jobs in Africa, Latin America, and Asia. All the people will happily build their own economy and overcome poverty, which is a violation of human rights if I ever have seen one. If you are poor, if you are trying to have one meal a day, and you don’t know if you have one for tomorrow, your human rights are violated because you are being deprived of the most important thing which makes us human, which is our creative potential, which we can only unfold and develop if we have the basic material needs to do so.
Therefore, I have proposed that we need a new security and development architecture which addresses the interests of all people on the planet, all nations. And I have proposed Ten Principles which could be the ingredient for the beginning of a discussion of how such an architecture could look like. What Suzanne Schwartz said fits perfectly in there, and I think we should really move towards solutions. Because if we only protest the negative, it will not be sufficient. We have to come up with constructive resolutions. Therefore, help us build the IPC; join us with triple or ten times as many people next week; and keep organizing with this program. Thank you.