The Lead
On the 81st Anniversary of Hiroshima, We Are Closer to a Global Nuclear War than Any Time in History
by Dennis Small (EIRNS) — Aug. 07, 2026
The American economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche was incessantly slandered and vilified for holding “apocalyptic views” on the dangers facing humanity. Today, 50 years later, what LaRouche warned about is front and center reality on the strategic stage: the twin dangers of onrushing nuclear war, encouraged by the active promotion in London and Washington of the possibility of waging “tactical” nuclear warfare; and full-scale Malthusian genocide being unleashed by the deliberate “controlled disintegration” of the global physical economy. The London-centered financial Establishment is carrying this out, as LaRouche repeatedly warned, to try to keep their collapsing financial system afloat, or at least in control, through wars and speculative binges.
On the economy: We see the renewed, open advocacy of reducing the world’s population by 4 billion people. We witness the continuing physical-economic devastation on the oil and grain fronts as a result of the London-Washington wars of aggression on Iran and Russia, and the resulting closures of the geopolitical “chokepoints” of the straits of Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb – with Gibraltar next in their sights. And it is becoming increasingly probable that the same imperial interests will provoke a major “incident” in the Malacca Strait and surrounding waters of the South China Sea, designed to blow up China’s essential trade routes and its economy, as the London Economist has merrily suggested.
And on the war danger: “It is a reality that, only 81 years after the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we would have to state that we are closer to a global nuclear war than at any time in history, and that includes the Cuban Missile Crisis,” Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche warned on Aug. 7 at the 166th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition.
“The various reasons for this include that not one arms control treaty is still in existence,” she continued. “International trust among all the different parties, even among so-called allies, is zero or worse than zero. We have a situation where the old order clearly doesn’t exist anymore. And now you have a report… that the Pentagon is considering writing a new nuclear doctrine, whereby the nuclear posture would be moving away from deterrence, closer to the option of nuclear war fighting… We are looking at an absolute possibility of an increase in nuclear proliferation right now…
“But there is another dimension behind it,” Zepp-LaRouche explained, “and that is that, on the level of the political control of all of these policies, the world, or at least the trans-Atlantic world, is sitting on an unpayable bubble of debt of more than $2 quadrillion… There is still another dimension behind the crisis, and that is what we have been saying for a very long time, and that is the Malthusian factor in the international financial system. And this goes back to Malthus, it goes back to the whole creation of the Club of Rome and the ecology movement worldwide.”
What, then, to do about the onrushing crises of which Lyndon LaRouche warned? That was the subject of deliberation at the IPC meeting, and Zepp-LaRouche’s summary in her closing remarks:
“The question is, what can we do under the circumstances? The main problem we have is that the masses of people in the collective West, which is not so collective anymore, are either complacent, indifferent, just not informed, or too fearful to act. So we have to do something which catalyzes emotion in those people.”
What we must evoke, she continued, is “this internal better quality of Man where Man is the living image of God, imago viva Dei… evoke that absolutely precious element within each human being, which separates us from all other creatures. People can love their pets, and there’s something very beautiful in pets, but it is only the human being who is in the image of God, the Creator, which makes us creative. And that is what is so precious…
“So, it comes down to the question of elevating people, ennobling people, appealing to that which makes them participate in the eternal chain of human generations, where each of us has the absolute obligation to contribute something to make the next generations live richer lives, better in wisdom, in creativity, in having access to the beauty of this universe, than the previous generations.
“We have to appeal to that love for mankind. I believe that without evoking love for mankind, we will not succeed.”
Zepp-LaRouche concluded by calling for a mobilization to circulate the open letter to Archbishop Wester calling on him to “urge Pope Leo XIV to call a peace conference to stop nuclear war.”
“I can only ask all of the participants and listeners of this discussion to take this letter to Archbishop Wester and get it around,” Zepp-LaRouche said.
Contents
Strategic War Danger
- U.S. Strategic Command Increases the Likelihood of Nuclear War (↓)
- Chinese, Russian Experts Warn that Use of Tactical Nukes Is a ‘Path to Self-Destruction’ (↓)
- Ritter: 'There Will Be No Victors in a Nuclear War' (↓)
- Türkiye, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan Sign Defense Pact (↓)
New World Paradigm
Collapsing Imperial System
- Shipping through Hormuz and Bab-el-Mandeb Straits Plummets (↓)
- The War on Iran Is Like Nord Stream 2.0 for Germany and Italy (↓)
- Placing Ankle Bracelets on Haitian Migrants Is 'Shackling,' 'Slavery,' and 'Nazism’ (↓)
- Brits Float Radical Libertarian as their 'Spoiler' in Brazil's Presidential Elections (↓)
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