A distraught participant in the Oct. 30 meeting of the International Peace Coalition asked the panelists what concrete steps could be taken to prevent a likely all-out attack by the U.S. against Iran in the immediate aftermath of the Nov. 3 U.S. mid-term elections, as President Trump has openly threatened to carry out.

The question is a good one, and the distress more than appropriate. The Trump administration at this time has no viable “off-ramp” from its current trajectory toward blowing up the entire Southwest Asian region, including the very real prospect of escalation into nuclear warfare. Every day that the Netanyahu caretaker government survives in Israel increases the chances that he will stage a “Reichstag Fire” provocation to justify an all-out war against Iran and a continuation of a Netanyahu government in Israel, designed to drag the United States into that war behind him.

To answer our questioner: It is of course important to denounce the imminent danger of escalation against Iran, and to organize protests and demonstrations against it. But to change a trajectory you have to do more than put stones in its path. You have to change the “gravitational pull” that has defined that trajectory in the first place; you have to quickly create a new center of gravity that will begin to pull the United States off its current deadly trajectory.

The planned tri-partite meeting of the presidents of the United States, Russia and China—Trump, Putin and Xi—on the sidelines of the upcoming Nov. 18-19 meeting of APEC, has the potential to be such a game-changer. The American people have to insist on the needed drastic changes, and that the future prospects for the United States, and therefore inclusively for Trump’s presidency, lie entirely in working with China and Russia to help in the construction of a new international security and development architecture.

It’s only that view of the future which offers a way out, an off-ramp, in the present.

A totally different concept of what society can be is already under construction today by the majority of the world’s population. It is not an idea that might be taken up in the distant future; it’s a policy which is being implemented today in nations representing the sizable majority of mankind.

The first-hand reports presented at the IPC meeting give you a direct handle on that process—even if you live in the West, where news about the rest of the world is systematically blacked out. Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche reported from the Global Governance Forum in China, and conveyed the sense of optimism and purpose at that historic gathering. The ideas presented at the Assisi meeting, including the remarks by Pope Leo XIV on how to build an alternative to war, are also critical. Young Schiller Institute organizers in Brazil reported on the wave of optimism which has swept the world because of the Lula victory in their presidential election.

All of these processes of development are contributing to the creation of a world that is in emergence, a world that the United States must join. As Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reported yesterday about the potential of the Trump-Xi-Putin summit: “In all the three capitals, the idea has been received positively…. Of course, in the present situation such a meeting is in high demand.”