The Lead

Good Intentions Are Not Enough To Avoid War—Only True Statecraft Is

by Stewart Battle (EIRNS) — Mar. 12, 2025

March 12, 2025 (EIRNS)—The March 11 meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia between Ukrainian and American representatives, where a 30-day ceasefire was agreed to, has shifted the world’s attention yet again. But who is actually doing the shifting? Reports now abound that, after Tuesday’s agreement, “the ball is in Russia’s court.” Former British Prime Minister and notorious anti-peace fanatic Boris Johnson said March 12: “The Ukrainians have proved that they can make peace. Now it is up to the Kremlin to sign up to the Trump plan—or face the consequences. If Putin refuses we will know that he is not serious about peace and never was.”

This theme was echoed by many of the worst trans-Atlantic war hawks over the course of the past two days, obsessively repeating that Putin is now cornered and must accept the ceasefire proposal dictated to Moscow. Coming on the heels of Ukraine’s enormous drone attack Monday night, which Russia labelled a terrorist attack and vowed to retaliate, as well as Russia’s historic rout in Kursk which has eliminated Ukraine’s only battlefield gains in years, this seems unlikely at best. President Putin’s visit to newly-liberated areas in Kursk on Wednesday, dressed in full military garb, is a clear message in this regard.

President Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff is now on his way to Moscow to meet with Putin, assuredly to discuss this topic. In the meantime, National Security Advisor Mike Waltz reportedly spoke with his counterpart in Russia on Wednesday about the proposal. Waltz also confirmed that the U.S. has restarted military and intelligence assistance to Ukraine following the latter’s agreement to the proposal.

This veritable tornado of activity is enough to confuse anyone. But what do we actually know about the situation and its context? The Trump Administration’s stated intention to normalize relations with Russia has freaked out the defenders of today’s unipolar order, who have sought for years to keep the world’s great powers divided. As a result, they have gone into a full mobilization to derail Trump’s efforts. As the BBC reported March 12: “over the past week there has been a concerted European effort, led by Sir Keir Starmer, to get the U.S. and Ukraine back in good favor,” and to instead “ensure that it is now Russia that is in the spotlight.” Whether or not this played a role in the Jeddah ceasefire proposal, you can be sure the British are engaged in massive levels of manipulation aimed at keeping themselves in the passenger seat, with at least one hand on the wheel.

Does Donald Trump, whose actions are often counterproductive and contradictory, understand these matters? Are his good intentions sufficient to navigate through the obstacle course that appears to have been set up for him in Ukraine? We don’t know. But we must understand them, and act accordingly to shape a presidency that has clearly shown it has the potential to overthrow the old axioms of this failed system.

Luckily for humanity, some do possess a strategic understanding of this situation. As Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service wrote in a report released March 10, the British see U.S.-Russia dialogue as a “threat to its interests” which, if not stopped, will “lead to the failure of the British strategy of ‘containing’ Moscow.” It concludes: “As we can see, London today, just as it did on the eve of both world wars of the last century, acts as the main ‘instigator’ of the global conflict. … It’s time to expose them and send a clear message to the treacherous Albion and its elites: you’re not going to succeed.”

Another voice of reason today is that of the LaRouche movement, and its rigorous definition of which axioms can successfully replace the axioms of this dying system. As Helga Zepp-LaRouche said in her weekly webcast: “[T]he only way you can get order into this very quickly evolving situation … is to move to a completely New Paradigm: Namely, the idea that you have to have a new security and development architecture which addresses all of these problems at once, by creating a new system in which everybody has their interests taken care of. And the most for that, obviously, is the Peace of Westphalia of 1648 … where the war parties agreed on principles first, and then proceeded to hammer out the details. And I think such an approach is absolutely what is needed today.”

Europe’s recent plunge into war-mania represents an immediate danger to the world that must be addressed if this situation is to be resolved. The Schiller Institute statement, “Instead of Rearming for the Great War, We Need to Create a Global Security Architecture!” is the cutting edge in this regard, and should be circulated and endorsed widely.