Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, kicked off the 82nd weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) today, wishing everyone a good New Year, “especially a whole New Year, because that is not yet certain.” She reviewed the various zones of military conflict, noting the U.S. is setting up a new military base in Damascus. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov recently said that Russia has received encouraging signals from the pending administration of U.S. President-elect Donald Trump, but it remains to be seen whether they are supported with facts.
Zepp-LaRouche assessed the appointments of the incoming Trump administration, saying they “are very, very mixed.” The first two hopeful strategic signs: the Japanese Foreign Minister visited Beijing and the two nations made a number of constructive agreements, including to foster each other’s classical traditions. Secondly, Russian President Vladimir Putin, after meeting with Slovakian Prime Minister Robert Fico, agreed to have Slovakia as a venue for peace talks with Ukraine.
In Southwest Asia, the new Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) leaders in Syria were all founding members of al-Nusra and related terror organizations. The situation there is a powder keg, with an assortment of factions and states vying for control. The danger is that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “may feel that the wind is in his sails,” and be emboldened to take ever more provocative actions, including against Iran. Israel continues its unspeakable genocide against the children of Gaza, and now has bombed Yemen’s international airport in Sana’a, nearly killing the Director General of the World Health Organization Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Zepp-LaRouche concluded, “Geopolitics is a mental disease; it should be eradicated.”
Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and co-founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), said that Zepp-LaRouche really should be briefing the incoming President of the United States. With the recent revelations by Russian President Vladimir Putin regarding his 2021 meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden, when Biden tried to convince Putin that China was a threat to Russia’s security, McGovern said “These guys really don’t get it,” adding that the word that comes to his mind is the German “Wahnsinn,” an expression which is “stronger than just crazy,” and perfectly describes NATO’s delusions. NATO, he said, combines Wahnsinn with sociopathy, having no empathy. Then U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, when asked in a “60 Minutes” interview about the deaths of half a million children in Iraq due to sanctions, replied, “I think that it is a very hard choice, but the price, we think, the price is worth it.” McGovern concluded, “We’re at a liminal point here.” Hopefully, we will be able to breathe a lot easier in three weeks.
Larry Johnson, retired CIA official and a co-founder of the VIPS, began with “the mess that is Syria,” suggesting that the nation most likely to wind up in control is Türkiye. Turkish President Erdoğan has “climbed into bed with Israel.” HTS leader and former head-chopper Abu Mohammad al-Jolani is being presented as “Mahatma Gandhi with a beard.” But HTS is not in control and not able to make the state function for its inhabitants. There is now a civil war. Israel has been fighting Hamas, a lightly armed guerrilla force, for 14 months and can’t beat it. Yet Israel wants to control part of Syria? The more they extend themselves, the faster they will weaken themselves.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche agreed with McGovern on the topic of Wahnsinn, and with Johnson that a current in Türkiye wants an empire. When she and her husband Lyndon LaRouche met with Turkish President Turgut Özal in the 1980s, she was astonished at the degree to which “Greater Turkey” was on his mind. Johnson replied, “The vanity of Erdoğan is clouding his judgment.” He believes that he’s in a position to restore the Ottoman Empire.
Ray McGovern discussed the delusions that arise when a group of people believe that they are “exceptional.” During the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry dreamt of “aligning the forces in Syria.” Helga Zepp-LaRouche agreed, asserting that exceptionalism leads to geopolitics, “like Germany 80 years ago.” McGovern soberly added, “Chosen people, indispensable people … each case leads to disaster.”
IPC co-moderator Dennis Speed reported on the podcast in the U.S., where an advisor turned critic of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy gave an interview contrasting the “official view” on Putin, that Putin had launched a military aggression against Ukraine, to his own, unofficial view: that Putin is the most pro-Western Russian official in memory. Putin proposed to join NATO, create a joint missile defense, and offered to provide a base for U.S. forces during the initial stage of their war against Afghanistan. Zepp-LaRouche replied that this “unofficial view” is “totally in cohesion with what I have observed over the years.”
