The opening days of August marked the 81st year since the 1945 mass deaths from the U.S. atomic bombs dropped in Hiroshima (Aug. 6) and Nagasaki (Aug. 9,) during which anniversary week this year, the annual U.S. Strategic Command’s “Strategic Deterrence” conference took place in Nebraska, discussing present-day use of nuclear weapons.
USSTRATCOM commander Adm. Richard Correll briefed the media Aug. 7 in Dr. Strangelove parlance that, you have to think in terms of “expanding options” available to the president, and providing the “decision space for any conceivable escalation scenario.” He said, “I think about it much more broadly than our nuclear capability….[I]t is from our exquisite non-kinetic capability to our conventional capability, to, if you would envision, some kind of limited nuclear exchange to high-end escalation.” The various theater needs, he explained, require a “diversity” of platforms and launchers, while also creating “ambiguity” for the other side about what is actually in the region.
Thus, the four-star admiral spoke in line with the dissociated conference remarks of the so-called expert military theorist, Elbridge Colby, Defense Department Under Secretary for Policy. Colby spoke to the event on how the United States needs more “rational nuclear weapons options.”
There are no “rational” uses of nuclear weapons. In the nuclear age, diplomacy is the only sane response to conflict and differences, which billions of people in the world understand, but are in mortal threat from the continuation in positions of power of the extended Epstein Class.
This dangerous situation underscores the history-making importance of such platforms and initiatives as associated with the International Peace Coalition, established in June 2022, by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, to further collaboration among all of good will, toward peace and mutual-interest development. At yesterday’s IPC meeting, the 166th such weekly online gatherings, two expert weapons experts spoke on the dangers in the strategic situation, Dr. Ted Postol, M.I.T. emeritus, and Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, and U.S. Marines officer.
The [emergency initiative]( https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2026/08/05/schiller-institute-and-international-peace-coalition-press-release/) launched in late July, jointly sponsored by the IPC, the Schiller Institute, and others, in particular American activist Jack Gilroy, toward the offices of Pope Leo XIV holding a peace conference for urgent action to reverse world warfare, is gaining increasing momentum. It is a “Letter to Archbishop John Wester to Urge Pope Leo XIV to Call a Peace Conference to Stop Nuclear War, Signed by Prominent Peace Organisations and Activists.” Today it was in circulation at a conclave in Italy. In the United States, on Aug. 6, Consortium News [published its text]( https://consortiumnews.com/2026/08/06/hiroshima-an-appeal-to-pope-leo-on-nuclear-war/), and signators, under the headline, “Hiroshima 81: An Appeal to Pope Leo on Nuclear War.”
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, speaking at an international symposium in Munich Aug. 4, spoke at one point on the topic of the absence of diplomacy in Europe, which same point is true of Washington, of course. “Throughout the world, but especially among the nations of the Global South, it is observed with dismay that diplomacy as a method of conflict resolution has apparently disappeared in Europe. Instead, the desired outcome of their current policy seems to be a zero-sum game in which only one side can emerge victorious, while the supposed adversary must suffer a ‘strategic defeat,’ even though the only possible consequence of such a policy is that everyone loses. Some in Europe are now painfully realizing that, in a world governed by the law of the jungle, where might makes right, we will not be among the winners.”
Combine the threat of exercising a nuclear “option,” with the absence of diplomacy, and obliteration of civilization is assured. Nevertheless, the U.S. Senate yesterday jumped ahead in this direction, by passing with an 86-11 vote, the infamous bill for extreme sanctions on third party nations associated with trade with Russia, sponsored by the late warmonger Sen. Lindsey Graham. (Action by the House of Representatives awaits its return to session in September). The bill, titled, “The Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026,” allows the U.S. to impose tariffs up to 100% on leading purchasers of Russian natural gas or oil, and other measures.
The Senate vote was accompanied by a volley of media and Capitol Hill charges that Russia must be financially beaten down, because it is bent on attacking, even invading, Europe very soon. This is the same narrative-fraud deployed in Europe to rationalize the re-armament madness.
Among the current voices sounding against the lies, and the danger of eschewing diplomacy is Brig. Gen. (ret.) Erich Vad, security adviser to former Chancellor Angela Merkel. He has been giving interviews, denouncing in detail how the political debate in Germany concerns only warfare, with no discussion of diplomatic resolution with Russia. He points out that he speaks as a military strategist, not a pacifist.
The urgent mobilization for diplomacy and sanity requires every person, and every kind of initiative.
