This article appears in the September 20, 2024 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
[Print version of this article]
Peeling the Onion: How Europe Lost Europe to NATO and Brought Us All to the Nuclear Brink
Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche gave the following strategic portrayal at the Sept. 6, 2024 online meeting of the International Peace Coalition.
I’m very thankful that today we have quite a number of extremely important experts, because it is so urgent to bring scientific clarity into the strategic debate. We are clearly not only in the middle of two actual regional wars, but in a prewar situation which is dominated by information warfare, by the attempt to control “the narrative.” We see many extremely worrying examples that the freedom of speech and the freedom of the press are being suppressed. The result of all of that is that the population, for the most part, is in a state of confusion.
We are all extremely worried that the situation in Ukraine is spinning out of control. Today there is the Ramstein-Ukraine Contact Group meeting. [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelensky is there, and he is demanding that more long-range missiles should be given to Ukraine with the permission to strike deep inside the territory of Russia, because, supposedly, the goal is still to “inflict strategic defeat” on Russia—which, given the fact that it’s the largest nuclear power, is practically impossible without causing the destruction of the whole world. [U.S.] Defense Secretary [Lloyd] Austin immediately answered Zelensky, saying, I share your urgency. We will do everything we can.
The situation in Donbass is looking quite grim for the Ukrainians: The Russians are gaining control rapidly; the situation in Kursk also is not tenable. More and more drones and missiles are being sent inside Russia. Yesterday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman [Maria] Zakharova made a very strong attack, saying that London is behind the drone attacks inside Russia, and that it is London that is relentlessly striving to escalate the conflict. Then, she gave a long list of examples where that has been the case in the last several years. She also reminded people that on May 6 this year, the Russian Foreign Ministry had put out a warning that any British military facility and equipment on Ukrainian territory and beyond will be hit if this is not stopping. On the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum [in Vladivostock], Zakharova also said the Europeans do not understand what they are being dragged into by the U.S., by the Anglo-Saxons.
On July 29, [U.S. President Joe] Biden signed an amendment to the U.S.-British Mutual Defense Agreement from 1958. This new agreement removes the expiration date, because there was a provision that this agreement had to be renewed every ten years. Malcolm Chalmers, the Deputy Director General of the British think tank RUSI [Royal United Services Institute], said this is very good, because now one doesn’t have to worry about changing administrations anymore, because, obviously, this way the idea is to make this agreement permanent, or “Trump-proof.”
To Find the Truth
What is it that the Europeans are being dragged into? To find the truth is a bit like peeling an onion. Let me peel one layer: At the end of August, the New York Times reported that Biden had already signed, in March, a new U.S. nuclear doctrine, which is completely secret and supposedly doesn’t even exist in electronic form; only a handful of printed copies to very selective people have been given out. It says, according to the New York Times, that the United States has to prepare for a three-front confrontation against Russia, China, and North Korea. Then, a couple of months later, after March, in July at the NATO summit, German Chancellor [Olaf] Scholz just nonchalantly announced that the U.S. had made the decision to put, starting in 2026, U.S. middle-range missiles into Germany, and that that is a good decision. No debate in the Bundestag, no public debate in Germany, no discussion with European allies, unlike in 1979, when the NATO Double-Track Decision was made and there was a broad discussion in the public among the allies. Four allies shared the decision together with Germany. Obviously, if the U.S. puts missiles into Germany, it affects the security interests of all allies.
In a discussion with military experts, I found out in the last several days that the decision to put these missiles in Germany in 2026 was not made at the sidelines of the NATO summit, or even in bilateral discussions before. The decision already was made in 2021; namely that it is part of the advanced U.S. national system; and therefore, no discussion with the allies is necessary. What this does is very obvious: It makes Germany the strategic staging ground for a confrontation between the two most powerful nuclear powers, and now of a potential clash between Global NATO and Russia, China, and North Korea.
In 2017
Let me quickly look at how we got there. In December 2017, the U.S. put out the U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) under the leadership of H.R. McMaster, who was the National Security Advisor at that time. In this document, for the first time, Russia and China were named as geopolitical rivals [to the U.S.]. This happened exactly four years after Xi Jinping announced the New Silk Road in 2013, which had started to take on projects of development in many developing countries. This document doesn’t say that explicitly, but demands a rethinking of the policy, and says that the integration of China into the World Trade Organization was a mistake, and that it was necessary for the U.S. to reassert military dominance. Shortly afterwards, on January 19, 2018, the Pentagon put out the National Defense Strategy (NDS), which I think is still classified to the present day. It demands the deterrence to be upgraded in three regions—the Indo-Pacific, Europe, and the Near East—and to modernize all weapons systems, including the nuclear ones. One month later, on February 3, 2018, they published the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), which called for the modernization of the triad, including the stationing of low-yield nuclear missiles on Trident submarines and other places.
Now, one month later, on March 1, 2018, [Russian] President [Vladimir] Putin announced the new nuclear systems Russia had developed—the hypersonic missiles: the Avangard, the hypersonic cruise missile Kinzhal, which can go Mach-20 speed and has very high maneuverability, and various underwater drones and laser weapons. Shortly thereafter, the U.S. announced the updated U.S. space doctrine, and the commander of the U.S. Space Command, James Dickinson, said that the U.S. will try to avoid conflict, but if it fails, we will win warfare in space.
Now, all of this was closely coordinated with the British. British Defense Minister Mark Lancaster said that the policies of the NSS, NDS, and NPR are also the policies of the British government. That included [former U.S. President Barack] Obama’s Pivot to Asia. Then, about three years ago, this whole policy was upgraded by calling for a network of regional partners and allies. AUKUS was created, which first was just the United States, Great Britain, and Australia; then the Quad system [Quadrilateral Security Dialogue], including Japan, South Korea, India; and now there is talk about New Zealand joining that. More and more, the idea of Global NATO came to the forefront. There was a meeting between [European Commission President Ursula] von der Leyen and [NATO Secretary General Jens] Stoltenberg saying that the EU and NATO are now fully integrated and will work together.
Global NATO
So, NATO is clearly the bridge for how Europe is being dragged by the United States into the coming conflict with China—or, that’s supposed to be the plan. And Germany, in a typical anticipatory obedience several weeks ago, participated in a Pacific maneuver [RIMPAC]. German Defense Minister [Boris] Pistorius was running around in Hawaii, proudly proclaiming the two little ships Germany had contributed to these war maneuvers. So, this is fully in preparation. Two days ago, [German] Chancellor Scholz visited Todendorf, where the IRIS-T air defense system was shown; and he said publicly—and it was transmitted by the German TV—“Russia cancelled the INF Treaty.” Now, that is part of the narrative; it is absolutely not true. The INF Treaty, which in large part was the result of the large demonstrations at the beginning of the 1980s where, in the end, a million people took to the streets to protest against the middle-range missiles being deployed—the [Soviet] SS-20 and the [U.S.] Pershing II. This was efficient, until February 5, 2005: Under the INF Treaty, all U.S. and Russian systems belonging to this category were destroyed. What was helpful was a unique verification system which not only could verify the existence of the systems, but also their construction and even the design in the offices where the design engineers were drawing up these plans. That treaty expired in 2015. The United States waited four more years, and in February 2019, with six months’ lead time, the U.S. ended the INF Treaty on August 1, 2019. One day later, on August 2, 2019, Russia said, in a treaty which only has two partners, if one side cancels, there’s no point to keep it, but we [will] keep a moratorium, which I think they are still keeping to the present day, not to put such missiles into place ever since.
The second mistake—or lie, or whatever you want to call it—Scholz pronounced in Todendorf, was that such missiles would also be deployed [by Russia] in Kaliningrad. Since Berlin is only 530 km away, they could hit Berlin. He clearly was talking about the Iskander missiles, which have a range below 500 km. How they could hit Berlin 530 km away, you need a special arithmetic to come to this conclusion. This is going on all the time.
There is a very simple way of solving this. Both sides should reinstitute the verification regime which functioned so well for the whole time of the INF Treaty.
I want to stop here, because I just wanted to say that this is not something which happened because of the Ukraine war or anything in the recent period. The plan to contain the rise of China, I think that that is visible at least since 2017. Therefore, I think we have to have urgently a strategic debate; an inclusive debate of what kind of security system do we really need in order to preserve the existence of all of our nations. Thank you.
