The Lead

'Without Evoking Love for Mankind, We Will Not Succeed'

by Megan Dobrodt (EIRNS) — Aug. 11, 2026

At this absolutely decisive moment in human history—at which the nature and very existence of the next centuries of human civilization are being determined—the biggest enemy of humanity is not the “all powerful” Western elites, or the rapacious Wall Street and City of London bankers, nor the warmongers whose insanity raises before the world the specter of nuclear annihilation; the threat greater than all of those is the paralyzing fear that would cause the population to retreat in the face of that terrifying possibility, rather than mobilize to advance the needed solutions at exactly the moment when they can be implemented.

“The status quo is gone,” Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche told colleagues in a discussion on Monday, Aug. 10. “But what will be the new state is not yet determined. It could be very bad, and it could go in a direction of long-term multi-polarity chaos, or in the best case, we succeed in getting it into a new paradigm. And between those options, there is a lot of uncertainty.”

What is certain is that if physical economic reality continues to be ignored—as it has for decades in the collective West—economic conditions will plunge off the cliff. This fact is driving the dynamic of the total strategic crisis, as seen in the financial bubble ready to blow, the worsening real economic conditions, and the inability of the geopolitical elites in the West to continue to wage war.

As a Global Times editorial of Aug. 11 points out, shortages of US munitions now stymying plans for further large-scale bombing of Iran are the natural consequence of a strained and gutted industrial base which is “slowed by fragile supply chains, aging equipment, and vanishing spare parts.” The empire has looted its own ability to wage war.

The effect of ignoring economic reality can also be seen starkly in the shipping crisis in Germany, which is hitting an economy already on the brink: As extreme heat and drought conditions persist and water levels fall extremely low levels, shipping on crucial sections of the Rhine River has ground almost to a halt, threatening a cascade of effects on supply chains to industries. Had the German government listened to the LaRouche movement in Germany, which long advocated the building of the Westerwald-Taunus rail tunnel through the Rhine valley, otherwise stuck freight could be efficiently transported via high-speed rail.

This collapse of the imperial system does not, however, make the situation safer, as was discussed in the starkest terms on Friday, Aug. 7 at the International Peace Coalition (IPC) meeting, at which Zepp-LaRouche warned, “I do not think that the Anglo-American empire will dismantle itself as peacefully [as the Soviet Union]. I think that when they have the feeling that they are at the point of demise,…the danger of the use of nuclear weapons becomes the most acute.”

At the same time as the old order disintegrates, however, a new system of relations between nations is coming into being and must be consolidated in the immediate period. In her 2022 document proposing a new international system of security and development, Zepp-LaRouche proposes that a successful system must be founded on natural law: “In order to overcome the conflicts arising out of quarreling opinions, which is how empires have maintained control over the underlings, the economic, social and political order has to be brought into cohesion with the lawfulness of the physical universe.”

As part of an ongoing mobilization toward just that, the Schiller Institute and the IPC will convene a roundtable discussion on Sept. 4, “An Alternative to War and Looting in the Americas,” to discuss the great infrastructure and other projects that can cement such a new, just world order based on peace through development.

But the question remains: How to overcome the fear?

“So, it comes to the question of elevating people,” Zepp-LaRouche said, “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 more rich and 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.”