The Lead
To Avoid Catastrophe, Get Off Your High Horse and Cooperate!
by Megan Dobrodt (EIRNS) — Jun. 24, 2026
“I’ve been saying for a long time that the only way the West will survive and avoid catastrophe,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche told her international webcast audience on June 24, “is to convince the West to stop geopolitical confrontation and cooperate with Global Majority.”
“The problem,” she continued, “is really that we are still ruled in the form of an empire. People think the British Empire vanished after the Second World War, but… it’s the apparatus of central banks, of insurance companies, reinsurance companies, huge mega-billionaires and corporations controlled by a very small clique of people. And unless we change that system, by going back to Glass-Steagall, by going back to an economic system aimed at the common good of the people, this will get worse and worse… I know that, while there are many good people in many countries, the structures are those which Pope John Paul II had famously called at the end of the Cold War, the ‘structures of sin.’”
Few voices have echoed this sentiment more forcefully in recent months than Pope Leo XIV, whose remarks and writings, Zepp-LaRouche argued, constitute “an indispensable voice if mankind is supposed to avoid a nuclear catastrophe.”
Noting, in his June 22 speech to the World Food Program in Rome, that the world feeds conflict more readily than it does people, Pope Leo asked, “What configuration of the global order is capable of producing, reproducing and… normalizing such conditions?”
The growing gulf between the dying geopolitical world order—and its ongoing crimes—and an emerging, more just system, has been a central topic of discussion in a number of fora over the recent days and weeks, as leaders from China, Russia and elsewhere in the Global Majority meet to discuss the global strategic situation.
At the 12th annual Primakov Readings forum in Moscow on June 23, Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov described the “so-called collective West” as “doing everything it can to replace the international order that was established after World War II with its own order based on the rules it has created… Why do the Westerners need this?... To maintain dominance in politics, economics, technology, and other areas that is slipping away from them. To maintain control over the flows of international trade, value chains, and natural resources…”
As if to prove Ushakov’s point, little Marco Rubio slapped more sanctions on an already suffering Cuba, while the US military provided the Philippines with four maritime drones as part of the US buildup against China.
“While the law of the jungle may prevail temporarily,” Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told the BRICS Security Forum in New Delhi on Tuesday, “it is not sustainable.”
Helga LaRouche has called for building a “world movement of world citizens who fight for development as the new name for peace…. We need to have better people. People have to become more elevated, and they have to become more human again, and not tolerate structures of sin. And that can only be accomplished through a world movement of world citizens.”
Zepp-LaRouche will be leading a discussion of the International Peace Coalition on Friday, June 26—join that discussion—and has called for the urgent circulation of her statement, “Urgent Appeal from Pope Leo XIV: ‘Stop! Repent! Before It’s Too Late!’ The New Name for Peace Is Development!”
Pope Leo put out a call to action in his encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, one which is identical in principle with those of Zepp-LaRouche and with Chinese President Xi Jinping’s four initiatives:
“[T)he civilization of love is no naïve utopia, but a demanding project, which consists in translating charity into structures of justice, giving institutional form to fraternity and regarding others—whether individuals or peoples—as allies necessary for building the common good. As the Encyclical Letter Fratelli tutti reminded us, only this social love is capable of becoming a culture and a norm, and thereby of bringing about a stable international order, transforming mere armed coexistence into a community with a shared future.”
The question before the West is whether we will answer that call—or continue clinging to a collapsing geopolitical order. As Zepp-LaRouche put it, “Get off your high horse and cooperate!”
Contents
Strategic War Danger
- Iranian, Pakistani Presidents Meet in Islamabad (↓)
- Strait of Hormuz Crossings Reportedly Triple (↓)
- Over 40 Former Israeli Leaders Demand an End to ‘Jewish Terror’ in West Bank (↓)
- Hegseth Attends Laser Demonstration in Premature Drumbeat for Golden Dome (↓)
- UN Study: Israel Deliberately Targeted Children in Gaza, Killing Over 20,000 (↓)
Collapsing Imperial System
New World Paradigm
- Wang Yi Meets with Indian and Russian Leaders at BRICS Forum (↓)
- Wang Yi: The ‘Law of the Jungle’ Cannot Be Sustained (↓)
- Putin to Military Graduates: The West No Longer Hides Their Plans for War on Russia (↓)
U.S. and Canada
Harley Schlanger Update
Watch The Daily Update with Harley Schlanger, a short video update available every weekday morning from The LaRouche Organization.
