“Where Is Israel Heading, When the Only Horizon Its Leaders Offer Is War?” asked the editorial in Israeli daily Haaretz. The same could be said of the leaders of every nation of today’s entire trans-Atlantic world, with a few notable exceptions. Indonesia’s President-Elect Prabowo Subianto recently pointed out that “We are witnessing heightened tensions, with global defense and strategy experts suggesting that we are on the brink of World War III…. History has shown that when powers seek to impose their will, wars erupt unexpectedly, as seen in World War I and II…. Thankfully, Indonesia has a strong tradition of non-alignment, and we will continue to uphold that position.”
A correct outlook, no doubt, and importantly espoused by the leader of the fourth-largest nation in the world. Yet, “here’s the rub.” Once thermonuclear war begins—and it begins with the first nuclear bomb deployed—it won’t matter whether you are aligned or non-aligned, whether you are “left wing” or “right wing,” or, indeed, whether you are “poor” or “rich.” The only way to survive a thermonuclear war, is to prevent it.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche began Friday’s 70th meeting of the International Peace Coalition by saying, “I think everybody on this call probably shares the feeling that the events are cascading more quickly towards a potential nuclear war than our efforts so far have been able to slow them down or even reverse them. If people have a more optimistic view, please go ahead and tell me.” No one could, in fact, offer a more optimistic view. That is not because “there is nothing that can be done,” but because what is required, has yet to be done by us.
It is necessary to face the truth: To get out of this situation requires that we change the axioms that constrain our behavior. This is not an introspective process, though introspection may be required. It is a deeply social, “interventionist” process, disruptive to the comfort zones and “safe spaces” of everyday life.
Why, for example, do the American people allow themselves to be, not governed, but herded, by a non-elected “bureaucratic fascist” war regime, possessed of lethal police-state power—a regime that, for example, ordered the assassination of journalist Julian Assange? In his first public statement since the end of his five-year incarceration in June of 2024, delivered in Strasbourg, France on Oct. 1 to the Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE), Assange said: “It is now a matter of public record, that under Pompeo’s explicit direction, the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me within the Ecuadorian embassy in London and authorize going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks, and the planting of false information. My wife and my infant son were also targeted.”
Even more chilling were these words of Assange: “I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today after years of incarceration because I pled guilty to journalism.”
Is what Assange said correct? Is journalism—the right to investigate, discover, know and publish the truth—now, in effect, against the law, in the United States, and the entire trans-Atlantic world? Does merely telling the truth, or even thinking the truth, risk assassination? Before one answers that question, pose another: How much are we willing to personally risk, to prevent the world from going to thermonuclear war, which can kill us all, either directly, or through collateral effects? Then, pose another question: In Gaza, and soon to be in Israel, citizens and combatants are now indistinguishable. Is this our future? Where are we all heading, when the only horizon our leaders offer is war?
In Peru this past week, a horizon other than destruction, death and war, was proposed. The Oct. 3 conference, “The BRICS: Development Strategies and Cooperation Mechanisms in the Multipolar World,” co-sponsored by the Schiller Institute of Peru and attended by 500 people, heard representatives from Brazil, India, Germany, Egypt, Italy, Russia and the host nation, among others, outline a truly human future for the whole human race. The founder of the Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche opened her address to the meeting:
“The tension in world affairs has never been stronger in human history: On the one side the genocide happening in front of the eyes of the world public and the terrifying threat of the possible extinction of mankind in a global nuclear war; and on the other side, the concrete perspective for the creation of a new economic system, where the aspiration of the Global South nations for development, prosperity and a fulfilled life for all of its citizens is about to come true. This tension characterizes the end of the epoch of colonialism, which started about 500 years ago, and is now about to end—one way or another.”
How this five centuries epoch of history ends, is up to us—should we choose it to be. In every age of every century, and every millennium of humanity’s existence, the number of fools that have merely ruled mankind has far exceeded the number of wise women and men that have truly governed. In a post-thermonuclear age, we can no longer afford that. We can no longer afford wars, including “splendid little wars.”
Instead, the durable self-government of humanity requires “beautiful souls,” for whom “the benefit of the other,” not government by assassination, is the basis for policy and decision-making. Self-government of a nation requires principled statecraft, which means that the people must know and be educated to know what a principle is. A principle is not a program; it is not a “policy.”
In this moving battle situation, Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Ten Principles for a New International Security and Development Architecture can provide the bedrock conceptions, respecting man and nature, which, if mastered, can illuminate the path from war and certain self-destruction to obtain peace through economic development. That horizon, not the horizon of final war, is the destination of true leadership.
