The Lead

Regardless of the Outcome of the U.S. Elections…

by Dennis Small (EIRNS) — Oct. 30, 2024

We are one week after the historic Oct. 22-24 BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia, and less than one week before the Nov. 5 U.S. elections. In the remaining days before that election, the world stands a good chance of being brought to the brink of superpower thermonuclear warfare in two different theaters, and action must be taken now to prevent that, by working with the Global Majority to create a new paradigm of security and development for all. Voting, alone, will not do it.

First, Southwest Asia: There are discussions underway—both in public and behind the screen—of a possible follow-up strike by Israel against Iran, with or without an intervening Iranian retaliation against the first strike, this time attacking major economic infrastructure (such as oil fields) and possibly even Iran’s well-protected nuclear program. Herzi Halevi, the Chief of the General Staff of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) told air force pilots on Oct. 29 that Iran could be hit “with capabilities that we did not even use this time … and the places that we spared this time.” Neocon warmongers in the U.S. are egging Israel on, such as former U.S. Army intelligence officer Jon Sweet writing in The Hill on Oct. 30 that “Israel needs a sustained air campaign to set conditions for the defeat of the Islamic Republic of Iran,” and that “Friday’s airstrikes were likely just a beginning.… Israel is one step closer to removing the head from the Iranian hydra.”

Second, Ukraine: Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) announced that a Ukrainian sabotage and reconnaissance group, which included mercenaries, unsuccessfully had tried to break through the Russian border in Bryansk Region on Oct. 27. The FSB report included images of some of the mercenaries, including a tattoo on the upper arm of one of them showing an angel holding a rifle, with a banner reading “Ranger” and “2d Bn"—apparently a reference to the 2nd Battalion of the U.S. Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment. On Oct. 30, the Russian news agency Sputnik cited a security specialist who concluded that the actual goal of the attack on Bryansk “was to prepare the ground for a further, larger-scale attempt, including by NATO forces, to penetrate this Russian region.” The widespread media promotion of the story that thousands of North Korean troops were being trained in Russia and would soon be deployed against Ukraine, has already created the fact-free justification for such a planned NATO escalation directly against Russia.

Regardless of the outcome of the U.S. election, this reality of the short-term prospect of thermonuclear war will be on the world’s agenda. But so will the outcome of the Kazan summit of the BRICS, which placed at the center of the world’s agenda the urgent call of the Global Majority for building a new international security and development architecture—with an open invitation to cooperative nations of the EU and even NATO to join in that effort.

As Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated in her Oct. 30 weekly Dialogue webcast:

“The Kazan meeting offers a new system of relations among nations based on the five principles of peaceful coexistence.… That is naturally also embedded in the UN Charter. If the West would stick to the UN Charter, they would have no problem in associating themselves with it.

“What stands in the way are the remnants of geopolitics, which come from the time of empire, especially the British Empire. It is notorious that they always like to manipulate states—allying with the weaker state against the stronger state, or causing some kind of map which would give room for manipulation of borders and ethnic conflicts. And then naturally this idea of geopolitics was emphatically reiterated in the Wolfowitz Doctrine at the end of the Cold War, whereby the neocons basically said that there must be a unipolar world dominated by the U.S., and that no group or country or nation or group of nations should ever be permitted to surpass the U.S. in terms of economic, political or military power….

“This led to an enormous blowback, because the idea that you can export the liberal model of democracy, what Fukuyama called the End of History, which basically meant that you would export the neoliberal economic model, the liberal cultural model, export the Western conception of democracy and human rights to all of these countries around the globe—that led to a gigantic blowback….

“This is why you now have a relatively loose association of states, who are not forming a bloc, and they are very emphatic that they are not competing with NATO or the EU in terms of bloc-building. They say they are open for everybody to join, including NATO members. So, this would be a perfect opportunity to say: Let’s just put this confrontation … let’s put the scheme of black and white aside, and just recognize that it’s a good thing that the world is made up of so many nations and cultures and traditions. And let’s find an MO through common development so that we can all live peacefully on this one planet.…

“That was the overwhelming intention at the Kazan BRICS meeting.… There were 4.7 billion people represented, and with it 57% of the world population. Now that’s clearly the Global Majority already right there. And these countries are now proceeding to try to build a new economic system which will overcome poverty and underdevelopment for all of them….

“It’s really a chance for humanity to avoid a disaster of going into nuclear war which would end all life on the planet—if we can join this new situation in time.”