The Lead

A Just and Lasting Peace

by Megan Dobrodt (EIRNS) — Oct. 07, 2026

“The task of our time [is to] stop geopolitics,” Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche urged at the end of her weekly webcast of Oct. 7. “This is an idea which must be…put into some kind of garbage pile and never be taken out again. We must have a different paradigm. We are the one human species, and we have to learn to live together…. We have to make that step or we will not exist.”

That must be the focus given to the growing mass ferment that has broken out among the hundreds of thousands of students, farmers, fishermen, and many other people besides who have taken to the streets over the past several days in Spain, France, Italy, Brazil, and beyond, protesting the policies which are diverting resources away from the livelihood of the population to fill the coffers of war and rearmament.

“It would be very, very easy…to solve this all, if the West would give up its arrogance of geopolitical domination of a unipolar world,” Zepp-LaRouche said. “And if the countries of the West would just agree to a partnership with the countries of the Global South on an equal level, every problem could be solved very easily.”

The vapid arrogance of geopolitics was on full display in the spectacle of little Marco Rubio, speaking in front of the Acropolis on Wednesday. “Today, we find ourselves at a crossroads. Because the next decade and the decisions we make will write the story of the next century. The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy and servitude and decline… We choose the unapologetic pursuit of national power….”

Hanging over that unabashed and foolish brutishness, however, is the reality of the rotted out economic conditions of nations of the West—the result of decades of geopolitical looting and of propping up the financial bubble that facilitated it. With diesel prices skyrocketing in the wake of the Iran war debacle, many farmers in Europe and the U.S. warn that this season’s planting may not occur, because it will only put farmers further into debt. Add to this that for the third time in four years, Europe is heading into a winter energy crisis, having abandoned cheap Russian LNG and shut down many coal-fired and nuclear plants.

Such is the insanity of the end-phase of an unlawful system.

So, how do we ensure that humanity doesn’t go down along with it? We must have a positive concept of building the peace. Take the efforts by Zepp-LaRouche, and by Pope Leo XIV and others in the Vatican, to supplant the false doctrine of a “just war” with the higher concept of a “disarmed and disarming peace,” an urgent task in the face of potential nuclear confrontation. An Oct. 6 article by Prof. Luigi Franco Pizzolato in L’Osservatore Romano, the official daily of the Holy See, challenges the view that the doctrine of “just war” is rooted in St. Augustine. “Augustine observes,” writes Pizzolato, “that throughout the history of the world…just war is a condition that, strictly speaking, does not exist, because in the real world, even a just war is both an effect and a cause of sin and serves to disguise it. For more than a thousand years, the Roman state expanded its dominion precisely by invoking the principle of ‘just war.’”

On Oct. 27, 40 years after Pope John Paul II invited representatives of all world religions to Assisi, Italy for a World Day of Prayer for Peace, Pope Leo will travel to Assisi to lead the signing of an appeal for peace alongside 80 other religious leaders. This intersects the appeal issued seven months ago by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who called on Pope Leo to intervene to prevent an escalation of the unprovoked war against Iran into the “irreparable abyss” of a global nuclear war, and, in the spirit of Nicholas of Cusa’s “De Pace Fidei,” for “all religious leaders of the world, as well as all people of good faith, believers and non-believers alike, to step forward in defense of peace.”

Pulling humanity together into a higher mission for the good—a positive conception of the future—is how we can avoid tragedy in this perilous moment. Speaking to tens of thousands of youth in his visits to Spain and France in recent months—perhaps some of the same youth now mobilizing in the streets—Leo asserted that the young people must lead by taking on a mission for the good: “It is not enough merely to shun evil: We must choose the good…. Choosing the good is the proper act of freedom, by which it is realized, refined and matured.”

The International Youth Movement of the Schiller Institute issued a letter of support to the students in Brazil, marching in support of President Lula, which puts solution front and center: “For Brazil, the Global South, and humanity to prosper, we need a new international security and development architecture, one that will be win-win for all participants—and a permanent end to the austerity and attacks on sovereignty that Wall Street and the City of London are imposing everywhere.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche is calling on all citizens of goodwill—you, our readers, most emphatically included—to join this urgent effort. You can start by participating in and bringing as many people as possible to this Friday’s meeting of the International Peace Coalition.

”[Whether] we end up in World War III and possible annihilation of the entire civilization, or if we can get the road to a peaceful solution,” Zepp-LaRouche said, “depends to a very large extent on the number of people intervening for the second option I just mentioned. So, I can only call on everybody listening to join us and become a force for good.”

Contents

LaRouche movement

New World Paradigm

U.S. and Canada

Strategic War Danger

Collapsing Imperial System

Harley Schlanger Update

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