Are the neocons in control of the Biden administration, and who follow London’s policy directives obediently, really crazy enough to try to provoke or launch a nuclear war against Russia or China? You may have asked yourself that question, perhaps repeatedly, over the course of the closing months of 2024, or heard it from your incredulous friends and family.
It was the first question that host Harley Schlanger asked Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche during her Dec. 26 weekly Dialogue webcast. You can listen to her answer here.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov took up that same existential question with total seriousness in his Dec. 25 interview with Russia’s “60 Minutes” TV show. He began by reminding listeners that Russians “firmly adhere to the principle … [that] there can be no victors in a nuclear war, thus it should never be instigated.” He said that all discussion about the possibility of fighting and winning a nuclear war has come from the West, such as former British Prime Minister Liz Truss’s famous remarks that she was ready to press the nuclear button without flinching. And Lavrov added: “Recently, Pentagon generals have openly deliberated on the potential for ‘limited nuclear strikes’ with the Russian Federation, with the intention to ensure they emerge victorious from such an ‘exchange.’”
He then delivered a clear message: “I would caution against testing our patience and resolve to defend our legitimate national interests by all available means…. We trust that those with ears will listen and those with minds will comprehend.”
The Biden administration clearly has neither attribute. In a Dec. 25 statement, the White House announced that more missiles, including the ATACMS long-range missiles that only NATO personnel are able to launch on behalf of Kiev, were being shipped to Ukraine. Russia has repeatedly asserted that they consider the use of ATACMS to be a NATO act of war against them, and they punctuated that message with a field demonstration of the new Oreshnik hypersonic missile system on Nov. 21.
Nor does the Netanyahu government display even a glimmer of being able to hear or think. While continuing to butcher innocent women and children in Gaza daily, Israel has now seized territory in fractured Syria and established military bases to defend that invasion. And former Defense Minister Gallant is openly calling for Netanyahu’s Israel and Biden’s U.S. to jointly attack the Houthis in Yemen, and then turn on Iran—now. The next 25 days before the Jan. 20 inauguration of Trump may well witness such an attack on Iran’s nuclear program—which, to be effective, will have to be carried out with nuclear weapons.
Are they really that crazy?
Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated in her Dec. 26 webcast: “The oligarchy sees that their system is clearly crumbling. And while the new system in the form of the BRICS-Plus, the SCO, the EAEU, ASEAN, and such countries are all trying to build a new system. If that new system is against the U.S., or cooperates with the U.S., is not [in the hands] of those countries: it’s entirely the attitude of the U.S. and European nations. Because if they would stretch out their hand and say, ‘Let’s cooperate,’ the whole world would be full of relief and do so.
“We will go into this extremely dangerous period, where something could happen,” Zepp-LaRouche stated. “That we are in this area at all shows that the Western Establishment—it is hair-raising—they seem to be completely unable to review their policies, to realize that they aren’t functioning, and to start a discussion expressing a willingness to correct them. But you don’t see any sign of that.
“And I think that is the reason why we have never been in such mortal danger as now, and why people really must express their absolute determination to fight for peace as they have never done before.”
