The Lead

The Statecraft of Hope

by Dennis Speed (EIRNS) — Oct. 16, 2026

The Statecraft of Hope

Against prevailing political sense-perception, it is indeed possible, as well as necessary, for the power of reason to prevail over the criminal insanity of the Epstein class.  Whether in Brazil, Spain, France, or the United States, where a great idea meets a noble purpose, often embodied in a single individual, sometimes a Pope, sometimes an 87-year old pensioner, the potential for a culture of hope, and therefore a New Security and Development Architecture, is nascent. It must be nurtured. Pope Leo XIV’s gathering in Assisi at the end of October, in pursuit of a dialogue for peace, is a leading example.

Statecraft is not an entertainment. The advancement of humanity out of its centuries of colonialist tragedy, through the join collaboration of nations and civilizations, not hegemonism, cannot be managed by pitchmen, henchmen, yes-men, or hit-men. Statecraft can only be advanced by those that believe that humanity can and must advance, together, “with malice toward none, with charity for all.” Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865), who regularly quoted passages of Shakepeare’s tragedies to his war cabinet, understood statecraft.

President Lincoln knew at that time that the United States had—as it has now, once again—reached a tragic impasse, and could quickly ease to exist. He also knew his nation was a republic, not a democracy. And he knew that the power of Shakespeare’s ideas, combined with the promise of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, could lift people above their tragic axioms, even if the majority of them “democratically” preferred to be tragic. Lincoln knew that the mob, including the lynch mob, is “democratic.” Lincoln proposed a view of humanity “with malice toward none, with charity for all.”

Today, though “legacy media” and the otherwise uninformed deny it, the gathering storm of world war has appeared on the horizon of the clueless Trans-Atlantic world. The wars must end, now,  before humanity ends itself. Young people in that trans-Atlantic world, in Spain, France, Brazil, have better eyesight. They can see the dangerous, immediate future on the horizon, and, though they may not yet know the solution, they know that a solution must be found, or all is lost.

The solution requires a choice between two views of mankind: the human view, and the Hegseth view. Secretary of War “Hegs-death’s” now-rejected proposal to conduct a live-streamed public execution of the former United States Army Major and psychiatrist Nidal Hasan, is at least reminiscent, and may even be intentionally emulative of the lynching parties of the 1920s American South, with their crowds of children, picnic baskets, and people gathered around a mutilated corpse, their smiling pictures turned into postcards. Hegseth is, after all, a “Crusader Knight.”

His spiritual soul-brothers in the City Of London, the “British Crusaders” against Russia, to whom Zelensky has frantically retreated in the aftermath of the Putin-Trump agreement on diesel fuel, have now, at least around the edges, begun to admit that NATO’S proxy war in Ukraine is no longer viable. An article in London’s Daily Telegraph by correspondent Roland Oliphant, called “Why Russia Believes It can Finally Crush Ukraine This Winter” has this subtitle: “Putin has stepped up his attacks on Kiev, making the capital feel like a frontline city, and creating an arms race that the West can’t Match.”   

Others in London are discussing “what we all knew about this,” or should have known. [In an interview called “Boris Johnson Must Answer for Ukraine’s Destruction,"](https://youtu.be/IvOpw_8S9l4?is=7Zg3JLLMIMKhkrN (https://youtu.be/IvOpw_8S9l4?is=7Zg3JLLMIMKhkrN_) conducted by former British diplomat Ian Proud with Mary Dejevsky, former Moscow correspondent for the Times of London, and Commodore Steve Jeremy Royal Navy, the latter pointed out, regarding the incursion of 2022, “it became immediately clear to me that this wasn’t an invasion to take Ukraine. It was obvious from the number of troops. I think we talk about a figure of 190,000 (Russian troops in the Special Military Operation,) but actually I think it’s more like 90,000 troops….And I always felt that the move on Kyiv was what I would call the use of military force to support a diplomatic initiative. So what I think that Putin was trying to do was actually bring Zelenskyy to the negotiating table… [To) then take Ukraine into this war, which was bound to happen on the assumption that the Russians would be weak, was an appalling piece of military analysis. And I think it’s not just Boris Johnson, but I think he no doubt, in my mind, he is a leading figure, and I can sort of imagine that Churchillian sort of sense to him, that this is his opportunity. The truth is, I think, that history will judge him extremely badly and rightly so. “

Trump’s Administration’s recent actions on Ukraine could have come in February/March of 2025. This, however, would have required a break with the British Crown, which did not happen. Why? The footprint of this problem is evidenced by Trump’s choking on releasing what people kept mistakenly referring to as “the Epstein files,’ and should have been referred to as “the Maxwell Epstein files.” The disastrous attack on Iranian nuclear facilities in by the United States, June 21, 2025, over the objections of Trump’s  stunned closest supporters, was a de facto fulfillment of what Britain’s Sir Kim “Flood The Zone” Darroch  had demanded that Trump, who intensely disliked Darroch, [carry out in 2019.] ((https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-7220335/amp/Britains-man-says-Trump-inept-Cables-ambassador-say-dysfunctional.html)

The combination of the two “splendid little wars” have resulted in driving the world to the brink of thermonuclear war. Russian Russian officials make it clear that they see no reason to speak to Europe at all. Yet, in a real sense, durable victory will not be available to the Russians on the battlefield, because no one is safe in a thermonuclear world if economic injustice toward humanity is not addressed and ended, as a joint collaboration among Russia, China, the United States and the BRICS nations.

American leadership, on the level of Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, and Franklin Roosevelt is needed. Something more must now come from the Presidency. At the moment, Independent Presidential candidate Diane Sare is indispensable for that purpose.

A longtime associate of the late economist, statesman. and eight-time Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, Sare knows what LaRouche meant by the following idea from his The Toynbee Factor in British Grand Strategy: “It is not only an error, but the most dangerous error a republic could perpetuate to assume that the immediately apparent conflicts between nations and so forth, necessarily embody in themselves the determining issues of the real conflict in process… It is on this point, our National-ideological self-delusion on this point, the British have had us, have sent us rolling down to the edge of the precipice, during this post war period.”

An American President cannot be bamboozled by British interests into war. One cannot simultaneously be a member, or servant, of the Epstein class, and an effective representative of humanity in the American Presidency. The potential upcoming meetings of Presidents Trump, Putin, and Xi Jinping, require an intervention of statecraft from the streets. [The Ten Principles for A New Security And Development Architecture,](https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/11/30/ten-principles-of-a-new-international-security-and-development-architecture/ ) and the weekly Socratic symposium called the International Peace Coalition are the vehicles for a culture and statecraft of hope that young people all over the planet can adopt to establish the governments of the near-future required if humanity is to survive..

Contents

Collapsing Imperial System

Strategic War Danger

New World Paradigm

Collapsing Imperial System

Harley Schlanger Update

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