During the Dec. 20 meeting of the International Peace Coalition, a discussion ensued between Prof. Steven Starr and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in which Zepp-LaRouche asked if there weren’t war-planners in the U.S. who imagine that a “limited” war with Russia could be fought on European soil, and that therefore it is assumed that Europeans would become “collateral damage” in order to maintain U.S. hegemony. Starr responded in the affirmative, adding that “the hubris is so immense in Washington, they think they’re invulnerable. They think they can make Russia back down.” Zepp-LaRouche added that the logical consequence of this, therefore, is: “if Europe wants to survive, we should get the hell out of NATO as quickly as we can.”
Is it any wonder, then, why the global architecture is changing? Chad has now become the most recent nation to eject France from its long-standing military base there, following a string of other African countries over the past two years. Further, new polls in Europe show the overwhelming rejection by the public to the policies being implemented by their governments. In Italy, 71% now believe that the EU is breaking down, while 66% think that the West, and the U.S. in particular, is responsible for the conflicts in Ukraine and in the Middle East. Whose interests are these policies in anyways?
Meanwhile in Syria, it has now been reported by The Telegraph that the U.S. knew about, and likely was also was involved in the Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham offensive against Bashar al-Assad. A U.S.-backed militia was briefed by U.S. Special Forces shortly before the attack and told: “Everything is about to change. This is your moment.… Get ready.” An article today in the Washington Post also makes clear the intention behind the war party’s actions in Southwest Asia. The fall of Assad “signals the demise of the ideology of anti-Western, anti-Israel resistance,” the author writes, and references another article in Foreign Affairs which claims this opens up the establishment of “an Israeli order in the Middle East.”
In addition to the mounting danger of a full-blown war against Russia, Israel’s aggressive actions in Southwest Asia risks pulling the U.S. and others into a war against Iran. Douglas Macgregor and James Carden, in a Dec. 17 article published in the American Conservative, warn the incoming Trump administration against this, saying that Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu intends to embroil the U.S. in a conflict which will make American disengagement from the region impossible. After laying that out, along with a convincing argument of why it would only lead to disaster and the likely eruption into a global conflict, the authors then make a far more important point: America must adapt to the new “multipolar world” using a method different from war and geopolitics. “The principal aim of U.S. foreign policy planners ought to be the adaptation of the American economy and military establishment to the multipolar world and the development of new markets, not new enemies,” they write. “New thinking in defense and foreign policy should rank diplomacy and peaceful cooperation first over the use of military power.”
Such words seem almost alien in the dark cave that has become Western political and popular discourse. Yet that must change if mankind is to survive, and Western nations must again discover that spirit which had once made them great. Zepp-LaRouche, in today’s IPC meeting, insisted that it would actually be quite easy to rebuild trust among so-called adversarial nations, “if you would talk to them like equals, like partners, like friends.” Can we not find the courage, or the wisdom, in light of the potential extinction of the human race, and take that tiny step?
Indeed, Russia’s implementation of new hypersonic missiles, including emphatically its most recent Oreshnik missile, is not an aggressive escalation but is rather meant to restore the “balance of power”—a balance which had been degraded following the U.S.’ unilateral withdrawal of the ABM Treaty in 2002 and its subsequent installation of ABM systems in numerous countries surrounding Russia. These new weapons cannot be stopped by any existing Western defensive systems. This has not restored the trust that should be the true bulwark against war, however it has at least reemphasized the nearly-forgotten truth that “nuclear war can not be won and should never be fought.” The simple recognition of that reality would go a long way today.
Citizens must act today to impart this type of wisdom and courage to our elected and other leaders. During this holiday period, contact your elected officials and demand they act to stop the catastrophic march toward World War III. Visit them in their districts—or at their homes even—and demand they take responsibility for the role for which they were elected. A good start is to add their names to HR 10218 if they are in the U.S., or generally to halt the use of long-range Western missiles in Russian territory.
