Helga Zepp-LaRouche

The Age of Reason or the
Annihilation of Humanity?

The following statement by Helga Zepp-LaRouche was released Feb. 16 internationally and is being circulated as a leaflet to the thousands of people attending rallies calling for peace negotiations.

The reckless sending of ever more and ever more heavy weapons into Ukraine must stop instantly. The “narrative,” that there are no red lines, that “Ukraine must win,” and that “Russia must be ruined” is insane. The strongest nuclear power on earth, Russia, can not lose the war, but we all can lose together. Any escalation, such as an attack on Crimea, or strikes into the territory of Russia, are completely mad. The idea of a “winnable” limited regional nuclear war, will mean thermonuclear war on a global scale in the short-term. This would be followed by many years of nuclear winter, which would be the end of life on earth. That is what the warhawks are playing with!

This war is not about Ukraine. The Ukrainian people are being ground down in a proxy war for geopolitical purposes, and we are not “helping” them, by prolonging this grinding war to the last Ukrainian. This war reflects the fact that we are in an epochal change, that we are at the end of the era of colonial suppression and the countries of the Global South are now demanding their innate right for development. The effort to maintain the unipolar world is futile, because it no longer exists. The old order, which neither follows rules, nor is in order, is trying to prevent a change in the status quo, which protects the rights of the billionaires, but neglects the billions of people who suffer from scarcity.

There is now an attempt by this so-called rules-based order, to establish Global NATO through an interconnected network of military treaties including the NATO-EU agreement, AUKUS (Australia-United Kingdom-United States partnership), and the UK-Japan “Reciprocal Access Agreement,” which is looking more and more like a march towards a global showdown with Russia and China, whose rise is seen as an existential threat. According to Evan Ellis, the U.S. Army War College’s resident expert on Ibero-American-Chinese relations, there will be an inevitable war with China over Taiwan no later than 2025 and that war will be global.

Seymour Hersh Revelations Reverberate

In the midst of this escalation, Seymour Hersh has dropped a bombshell by presenting the results of his investigation of the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines: that it was done by the United States. He describes how the secret U.S. planning for blowing up the Nord Stream pipelines started more than nine months earlier, and that there was a big debate inside the intelligence community whether or not to do it, given the potential for a gigantic blowback. In a press conference with German Chancellor Scholz on Feb. 7, 2022, President Biden told the gathered media that if Russia were to move into Ukraine, the United States had ways to make sure the Nord Stream pipeline would be stopped from functioning. And Chancellor Scholz stood there, like a little boy, without saying a mumbling word then—and to the present day. And Germany is being deindustrialized as a result.

There must be immediately an international investigation into the allegations of Hersh, with the participation of Russia. Because if it is true, that the U.S. and Norway sabotaged the pipeline, the implications are momentous. What does Germany need enemies for, with friends like this? If Hersh’s charges are true, this could very well mean the end of NATO.

We have to end the war danger by stopping the supply of weapons to Ukraine.

We must undertake all efforts to find a diplomatic solution. With the admissions by former German Chancellor Merkel and former French President Hollande that they never intended to let the Minsk Agreement succeed, trust in international relations with these nations and their allies has been ruined. Therefore all efforts must be made to support the offer of Pope Francis to use the venue of the Vatican to conduct unconditional negotiations between Russia and Ukraine. And if Brazilian President Lula forms a peace group of nations of the Global South, that should be added to support the efforts by Pope Francis.

But beyond these immediate steps, we absolutely have to overcome geopolitics, which led to two world wars in the 20th Century. We have to realize a new international security and development architecture, which takes into account the security interests of every single country on the planet—a lesson we should have learned from the Peace of Westphalia—and we have to realize that there can be no peace without development.

Principles for a Durable Peace

We have to discuss the principles upon which the future order of humanity can be built, in order to be able to self-govern ourselves. The future world order must guarantee the life and creative potential of every person on the planet, and therefore must eliminate hunger, poverty, and underdevelopment. We need to conceptualize and create institutions that can realize these goals. There are many useful historic reference points for the construction of such a just new order, such as FDR’s original intentions for the Bretton Woods System to massively increase the living standard of the countries of the Global South, as well as the UN Charter. There are China’s proposals for the GSI, the Global Security Initiative, and the GDI, the Global Development Initiative.

We have clearly reached a crossroads in human history, where we either self-destruct in a global nuclear war, or we realize our potential as the only known creative species in the universe so far, and therefore find a solution which overcomes the present conflicts by establishing a higher level of reason. A good example of that method of thinking was presented to the world in the 15th Century by Nicholas of Cusa with his “Coincidentia Oppositorum,” the Coincidence of Opposites, which proceeds from the understanding that the One has a higher power than the Many.

It is high time that we bring the political, economic, and social order on Earth into cohesion with the actual physical laws of the universe, which will also give rise to an unbounded optimism about the creative lawfulness which underlies creation. If we change our thinking in this way, we can shape our future in ways few people have an inkling of today.

We will soon use thermonuclear fusion power commercially and solve energy scarcity; we will cooperate with the nations of Africa in fulfilling Africa’s promise as the continent of the future; we will cooperate on international space science and travel; we will increase longevity by discovering cures for many diseases; and we will create a new cultural renaissance to celebrate the creativity of our species, just to name a few of the many wonderful things we will be able to do.

ADD your name to the “Open Letter to Pope Francis from Political and Social Leaders: We Support Your Call for Immediate Peace Negotiations.”

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