The 135th consecutive meeting of the International Peace Coalition began with remarks by its initiator, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who forecast that “2026 will be a year of even more dramatic changes.” The “all-dominating new development,” she said, was the attack with 91 drones on the residence of Russian President Putin. If Putin had been killed, the situation could have spiraled toward World War III. The Ukrainian government denied responsibility, and the CIA supported their claim, but then on January 1, Russia presented evidence in the form of well-preserved navigation systems from drones which had been shot down in the course of the attack. These systems revealed the Ukrainian origins of the attack.
The killing in Gaza and the West Bank continues, she reported, as Netanyahu is feted at Mar-a-Lago. The attack on Venezuela could lead to a continent-wide destabilization. The China-Taiwan situation is worsening. Japan and Germany, two of the Axis powers, are re-arming. All of these developments underline the urgent need for a new [[Security and Development Architecture.]][[https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/11/30/ten-principles-of-a-new-international-security-and-development-architecture/]]
Flirting with Nuclear War
Wolfgang Effenberger is a German journalist and author of Pax Americana (2004) and The Underestimated Power (2022). He warned that the US has upgraded its military command structure in Germany, which heightens the threat to peace. Despite initial assurances from the US that no missile systems will be stationed there, the German government has announced that such systems are in fact on the agenda, including the hypersonic missiles known as “Dark Eagle,” if the US manages to develop them in a deployable form. This poses a threat to Russia, not one of deterrence, but of a potential first strike. He described the short flight time of nuclear missiles from German to Russia as “a knife to the throat.” If the INF treaty were still in place, these missiles would have been prohibited, but Trump walked away from the treaty. At the end of February we will see the end of the last strategic arms limitation treaty, the START. He cited Theodore Postol’s warnings against backing Russia into a corner with nuclear weapons.
Beto Almeida, a Brazilian co-founder of TeleSUR, and a member of the advisory board for the Brazilian Press Association, reviewed the world’s hot spots, with an initial emphasis on the China-Taiwan tensions and the US assault on Venezuela. He then went on to review the history of how NATO promised Russia that it would not expand eastward, and then promptly broke the promise. He recalled that State Department functionary and neocon icon Victoria Nuland publicly admitted US involvement with the Maidan coup in Ukraine, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly admitted the West’s fraudulent involvement in the Minsk Accords. He decried the cynicism of Ukraine’s denial of involvement in the drone attack on Putin’s residence, calling it terrorism. The narrative in the West is framed in such a way as to make it appear that the threat is coming from Russia, he said, when the reality is that Russia is under attack. Almeida echoed Donald Trump’s reported remarks in a phone call with Putin, “Thank God we didn’t give them Tomahawks.”
Zepp-LaRouche thanked them for their remarks, underscoring the danger of the current brinksmanship, such as the threats by NATO commanders, including General Christopher Donahue, of an attack on Kaliningrad.
IPC co-moderator Dennis Small observed that the attack on Putin’s residence meets the criteria for a nuclear response under Russian strategic doctrine. The attack could not have occurred without US technical support, and Russian commentators are also increasingly pointing to the British role. The Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine of deterrence depended upon a “modicum of sanity” which is no longer present. NATO leaders have stated explicitly that they think they can win a nuclear exchange.
Almeida described it as significant that Russia, which no longer identifies as a socialist nation, has a working partnership with China that is closer than at any time in the past. The Western nations could also change their paradigm to work with new institutions like the BRICS, rather than clinging to “the unipolar position of destroying everything.”
