This article appears in the October 20, 2023 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Nineteenth International Peace Coalition Meeting
A Powerful Voice Is Needed To Save Mankind
[Print version of this article]
The hatred that is now erupting and escalating must be replaced by love for the other.
Oct. 14—On Friday, October 13, the nineteenth meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) was convened in the midst of an escalating strategic crisis so perilous as to drive even the most passionate optimist into a state of pessimism. Yet this is precisely the reason why Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and leader of the Schiller Institute, initiated the IPC in June of this year.
With 50 years of guidance from her late husband and mentor, the great American statesman and physical economist Lyndon LaRouche, she was able to foresee that the rapid disintegration of the trans-Atlantic financial system would cause the financial oligarchy of the collective West to go for a strategic showdown with Russia and China, potentially leading to thermonuclear war: Thus the necessity of creating the IPC with the intention of bringing together all advocates for peace from around the world as a unified voice powerful enough to save Mankind.
In order to facilitate rapid expansion of the IPC and create what Helga Zepp-LaRouche had characterized as a “big splash,” a new format for the meeting was utilized to great effect: Rather than a “private” invitation-only event, the meeting was “public”; open to any and all. This resulted in over 200 people from all parts of the globe joining in the discussion process. Anastasia Battle of the Schiller Institute, international coordinator of the IPC, and moderator of the meeting, set the tone for the three-hour discussion:
Not everybody here agrees with one another. So we’re going to be able to talk through all these problems that are happening in the world; our intention is to create true peace on the planet. And that’s the utmost, number one, priority.
Indeed, not everyone did agree on this or that particular issue. But what everyone did agree on was the danger of the strategic crisis and the immediate urgency of developing solutions to bring about peace.
The event was divided into two parts: The first, opening remarks by a panel of distinguished speakers; the second, a broader discussion, open to all, of the strategic crisis and peace proposals. Although the Ukraine war crisis has in no way diminished, most of the discussion focused on the potential for recent events in Israel to spark a major conflagration throughout the whole of Southwest Asia (Middle East) possibly escalating to nuclear war. The discussion generated two major peace initiatives, highlighted below.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche was the first panelist to speak, beginning with a strategic overview of ongoing events, primarily in Southwest Asia, but also Ukraine—what she characterized as a “double powder keg”—warning that the situation has the potential to go completely out of control. She then went on to present her thoughts as to what the role of the IPC should be regarding this crisis:
What we have been trying to do from the very beginning of this discussion process, by trying to put together an international peace coalition, was to unite all peace groups with the idea that we have to put all differences aside! We can discuss the issues which divide us later, because the threat to world peace is so enormously big….
Therefore, the demand [for the IPC] to start to seriously discuss how we can arrive at a New International Security and Development Architecture modeled on the Peace of Westphalia, which came to the conclusion that any peace must take into account the interest of the other — that the hatred which is now erupting and escalating must be replaced by love for the other, and as unlikely as that sounds under the present circumstances, it is nevertheless the only way out of this situation.
Mrs. LaRouche then, with the intention of creating the basis for an elevated discussion period, introduced the philosophical principles of mind necessary for thinking through and developing solutions to the current crisis:
The situation therefore is not hopeless. But it does require an effort by all of us to get people to think differently. We must stop thinking about the other as an animal, as an enemy, as a hateful person, as a demon, and replace that with respect for the human dignity of everybody; especially to start thinking in a way to find always the Higher One, in this case the One Humanity which unites us all before the differences and things which separate us. Therefore, the thinking of Nicholas of Cusa, of the coincidentia oppositorum: that the human mind is the only area where you can synthesize that higher magnitude, that higher order where you can overcome geopolitical conflicts of all kinds.
Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst, peace activist, and cofounder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) followed Mrs. LaRouche. Mr. McGovern began his remarks, in reference to the horrific situation in Israel, by stating that the first principle in First Aid is that you must stop the bleeding. Given that “Secretary of State Tony Blinken won’t do it—he’s a waste—we have to do it!”
What Mr. McGovern introduced at this point, which became the basis of a peace initiative highly supported by Mrs. LaRouche and others, was to put pressure on the United Nations to enforce its own resolution, the 1967 UN Resolution 242, passed unanimously in the aftermath of the Arab-Israeli War (Six-Day War), which demanded, among other things, the withdrawal of all Israeli forces from recently occupied territories.
He also recommended people read a March 3, 2008 article in Vanity Fair by David Rose titled “The Gaza Bombshell,” documenting the role that Victoria Nuland, Condoleezza Rice and Dick Cheney played during the George W. Bush administration in creating Hamas to counter the Fatah political party as a way to divide the Palestinian people. He ended by commending the IPC as a group where people can speak openly and freely on how to “stop the bleeding.”
Other panelists included Donald Ramotar, former President of Guyana; Col. Richard Black (ret.), former Virginia State Senator; Prof. Oliver Boyd-Barrett, a strategic affairs analyst; and Rubén Dario Guzzetti, an international affairs expert from Argentina. Each panelist presented his own unique perspective on the strategic crisis.
Diane Sare, independent LaRouche candidate for U.S. Senator from New York, concluded the opening panel with remarks characterizing the current unfolding strategic crisis as the end of an epoch, driven by the collapse of the hyper-inflated two quadrillion dollar financial bubble of derivatives obligations, which can no longer be sustained. The Anglo-Dutch imperialists threatened by this collapse “are like King Canute trying to stop the waves from coming in and, like Zeus, prepared to unleash all hell to stop it,” she said.
According to Mrs. Sare, two crucial events have recently occurred creating an opportunity to bring about a shift away from the current dying system to an entirely new strategic and economic architecture: One, is the status of the Ukraine war. NATO is not winning and cannot win in Ukraine; it is a massive defeat. Two, is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s breaking from the Democratic Party and running for President as an independent. This exposes the corruption and weakness of the Democratic National Committee, which believed it was all-powerful and could control the election process.
In this period of turmoil, our actions, our words, our policies have far more power than we might imagine, giving us the potential to reorganize the entire system. Mrs. Sare concluded by emphasizing the importance of the 10th point of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s “Ten Principles of a New International Security and Development Architecture”:
[T]he innate goodness and perfectibility of humanity has to be our guiding star, our axiomatic assumption as we move to get Mankind out of this seemingly dark age into the new era which is already in large part underway by the majority of the people on this planet.
Solutions to the Crisis
The IPC was initiated by Helga Zepp-LaRouche to facilitate a process of discussion and deliberation among participants for the purpose of generating creative solutions to end the danger of thermonuclear war and bring about a durable, lasting peace for all nations and all peoples. Over the course of the meeting, with more than a dozen people from various parts of the world voicing their concerns and ideas, two very important peace initiatives emerged that will be acted upon in the immediate period ahead.
The first initiative came in response to a question from an African on how to convince certain parties to the war, such as the United States, to come to the negotiating table. In her answer Mrs. LaRouche passionately advocated for the IPC to put out a statement demanding a New Security and Development Architecture—the only proposal in her view currently on the table capable of resolving the economic and strategic crises threatening civilization. If powerful voices, including those of the IPC and nations of the Global South, were in unison to demand negotiations based on this proposal, the potential would be created to get the United States and other nations to the negotiating table.
She cited as an example the four years of negotiations leading up to the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, which ended 150 years of religious wars in Europe, where people realized that if they did not negotiate an end to the war no one would be able to enjoy the victory because they’d all be dead. Today we face a similar situation with the Ukraine and Israeli conflicts which both have the potential to trigger a thermonuclear war.
Mrs. LaRouche further suggested that the IPC promote a series of discussions globally on her proposal for a New Security and Development Architecture—in universities, think tanks and other venues, including an international conference—as an initiative for “powerful minds” to deliberate on the question of whether or not human beings are capable of self-government for the purpose of guaranteeing the long-term survival of the species.
Ray McGovern put forward the second initiative, alluded to above. He addressed directly the immediate dire situation in Israel, with the Israeli Defense Forces ready to launch a ground invasion of Gaza—which would result in genocide against the Palestinians. According to McGovern, to prevent this “you need a tourniquet, not a bandage; you need to stop the bleeding and stop the awful prospect of what happens when genocide begins.”
So how is this to be accomplished? Because the United States is no longer the powerful force it once was—unable to force its will on the rest of the world—Russia, China, the BRICS-Plus and other nations of the Global South should use the UN General Assembly as a mechanism to enforce UN Security Council Resolution 242 to “prevent the bloodbath that would accompany genocide.”
Mrs. LaRouche wholeheartedly welcomed this initiative. She suggested that an online petition in support of Resolution 242 be created and that members of the IPC launch a mobilization to take the Resolution to all the elected officials of their respective nations for endorsement and demand that the United Nations finally enforce the Resolution to prevent the genocide of the Palestinian people. This should be combined with endorsement of a recent statement from Brazil and China demanding an international peace conference to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Economic Development Is the Key to Peace
In her closing remarks, Mrs. LaRouche came back to the necessity of a New Development and Security Architecture to address the needs of all people:
For those of you who have read [the proposal], it does have this whole idea of a new financial and credit system, economic development, uplifting poverty, a health system in every country, universal education in every country. That is what the Middle East needs most. Because the plight of the Palestinians, especially in Gaza but also the West Bank [as well as] Yemen, Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq; all these countries are suffering from an unbelievable poverty!
She described Lyndon LaRouche’s 1975 economic development plan for Southwest Asia called “The Oasis Plan” [see elsewhere in this issue—ed.] based on the idea that peace between the Arabs and the Israelis could only happen if there was joint economic development for all. She recounted how her husband had warned in 1993 that the Oslo Accords would only function if immediate measures were taken to improve the economic conditions of the people through development—measures sabotaged by the World Bank, causing the Accords to fail. She ended by reemphasizing the urgency of her proposal for a New Security and Development Architecture as a viable pathway to peace through economic development.
It can be stated emphatically that the “public” IPC meeting format did in fact create a “big splash,” with a major increase from prior weeks in the number of people participating. Mrs. LaRouche made clear, however, that this process of increasing the size of the IPC must accelerate; “That we really keep expanding, expanding, expanding.” She urged everybody to recruit more organizations and people in the immediate days and weeks ahead because the IPC “must become so powerful that nobody can ignore our voice.”
