Scarcely six weeks into 2026, a profound shift in the global military-strategic situation is fully underway and is being openly discussed as such in Washington, Moscow, and other world capitals. The U.S. Under Secretary of War for Policy, Elbridge Colby, was blunt in his Feb. 12 speech to NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels: “We are now living through a period of profound strategic change,” he said; “power politics has returned, and military force is again being employed at a large scale.”
High-level Russian officials have been clear-eyed about what is underway. Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov warned earlier this week that the global strategic situation is undergoing “severe turbulence,” and that “force has become” the main instrument of Washington’s foreign policy, with the Trump administration doing “what seemed unthinkable a year ago.” Political analyst Alexander Asafov, a member of the Russian Public Chamber, commented to Sputnik on Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s recent stern remarks in the State Duma, noting that the old architecture of international security “has effectively become a thing of the past,” and that US plans to expand its nuclear arsenal “could be viewed as a direct threat to both Russia’s security and global stability.”
In her remarks to the 141st consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition, Helga Zepp-LaRouche summarized recent developments leading up to this crisis:
“What one can expect is a huge rearmament worldwide, and there are signs that the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command is intending to add additional warheads to the Minuteman ICBMs. They want to re-nuclearize the entire B-52 bomber fleet, which had been de-nuclearized during the New START Treaty. They also want to MIRV—putting many warheads on—the 400 Minuteman III ICBM force. So, they want to convert the entire B-52 fleet into a dual-capable long-range strike platform.”
Furthermore, she added, “an article in the New York Times by David Sanger [warns] that the United States wants to deploy many more nuclear weapons, modernize its entire nuclear fleet, and also likely go to some kind of nuclear testing. This article insinuates that the Trump administration wants to abandon the postulate of strategic nuclear parity.”
The same shift into Schachtian economics of massive military build-up is also underway in Europe. Zepp-LaRouche reminded listeners that “still on schedule is the deployment of U.S. medium-range missiles in Germany this year; it could happen at any moment. To which, the Russians have already responded very strongly: Deputy Foreign Minister Grushko said this will lead to similar counter deployments by Russia. Given the fact that the Russians have all these new weapons systems—from the Oreshnik to the Burevestnik and others—one can only speculate what that will be.”
Meanwhile in the west, Zepp-LaRouche stated, “the unbelievable scope of the Epstein scandal” has exposed for the world to see “the moral depravity and sordidness of this system which tolerates this—the mindset of those who then condone what’s going on in Gaza, and who are playing risky games not only potentially involving nuclear weapons, but also allowing a (financial) bubble to accumulate because of massive speculation which could blow up the whole Western system and with it much of the world economy, also bringing enormous potential hardships to millions of people.”
The extreme danger of the crisis, combined with the moral depravity of the Establishment, cries out for political action by citizens of all nations. “It’s very clear that when the establishments are failing in the way they clearly are doing now,” Zepp-LaRouche asserted, “it does require that citizens of every state not only become patriots or reinforce their being a patriot, but to also assume the role of being world citizens to ensure that civilization will not crash against the wall, but that we establish a New Paradigm which puts forward an ideal of man as a creative human being, as the creative species. And that the beauty of the human creative mind is what is put up front, and in so doing, create a renaissance causing a dialogue of the best traditions of all civilizations.
“Therefore, we are now working to put together a big conference on March 2. We want to invite all of you to participate in this, because the idea of an international movement of world citizens to fight for the dignity of man and the beauty of the character of man is what is called for by all of these events.”
