This article appears in the April 19, 2024 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
International Peace Coalition Meeting
Overcoming the Tragedy of Geopolitics
[Print version of this article]
If I stopped to think about what is going on in each part of the world, I would only have time to cry. Therefore, I have to do something to act.
April 12—One day before the Schiller Institute’s historic Oasis Plan conference, the International Peace Coalition (IPC) convened its 45th consecutive meeting, a remarkable but also crucial accomplishment, given the precarious state of world affairs. A major theme of the meeting was why a new paradigm of peace through development is the only means of resolving major geopolitical flash points, which could very quickly ignite World War III—with a particular focus on the Ukraine war, Southwest Asia, and growing tensions in the South China Sea.
This week’s featured speakers included:
• Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder, Schiller Institute
• Dr. George Koo, retired business consultant specializing in U.S.-China Trade, and Chairman, Burlingame Foundation
• Rubén Guzzetti, Argentine Institute for Geopolitical Studies (IADEG)
• Coleen Rowley, former FBI special agent and whistleblower
• Ray McGovern, former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute and co-founder of the IPC, began the proceedings with a strategic briefing on the very dangerous developments concerning the escalating showdown between the U.S./UK and their various satellites on one side, and Russia/China/Iran on the other. The most “acute and urgent” threat is that of war between Israel and Iran, driven by Israel’s April 1 missile attack against the Iranian embassy in Damascus, Syria. This could rapidly escalate to global war.
Zepp-LaRouche called on IPC participants to go all out mobilizing for the Oasis Plan conference, which could not come at a timelier moment. She said,
Unless we get to what we have been discussing from the very beginning, the new paradigm—where we overcome geopolitics with an architecture for security and development which includes all countries of the planet—the theatres of the potential wars will just shift from one crisis spot to the next…. So that should fuel our efforts to really fight for a peace solution which must be just, for all sides. Because the lesson from the Peace of Westphalia is that unless it is just, and takes into account the interests of all, it cannot work.
The next speaker, Dr. George Koo, focused on developments in the “Pacific arena.” He reported on the very positive development of former Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou’s recent visit to mainland China with a youth delegation. After an excellent meeting with President Xi Jinping in Beijing, Xi said, “After all, the future of Taiwan and the mainland will be up to the young generation…. Ma Ying-jeou will be welcome to bring another group anytime.” He contrasted this visit with U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen’s recent trip to Beijing, during which she had criticized China for its “overcapacity.” According to Koo, this is an admission by the U.S. that it can no longer compete with China. He warned against the United States using its “loyal lap dogs”—Japan, South Korea, and the Philippines—as proxies against China. Like President Putin, President Xi does not bluff and will take active measures to protect China’s national sovereignty.
Rubén Guzzetti began his remarks by expressing the IADEG’s full solidarity with the Schiller Institute, and support for its initiatives against the “onslaught of Western powers, which is leading us into a dead end.” He then proceeded to report on the history of Western efforts to subjugate the peoples of South America, starting with the 1806–07 British invasion and occupation of Buenos Aires. This intensified after World War II with the consolidation of the United States as the “new Western empire.” Today, the estimate is that the U.S. and UK have 77 military bases in South America. The election of Javier Milei as President of Argentina has further opened the door for U.S./NATO subversion of the continent. But the IADEG has a plan to fight this government, and will be holding a national mobilization on May 9.
Coleen Rowley, a former FBI agent, legal expert, and whistle blower, reported that she will be participating in the Freedom Flotilla Coalition, in which volunteers will be sailing relief ships laden with 5,500 tons of food and medicine to the shores of Gaza to provide aid for the Palestinians. She asked all IPC participants to do everything possible to spread news of the Freedom Flotilla. Even though relief workers have been killed, in the aftermath of the ICJ’s ruling against Israel, maximum publicity surrounding the Flotilla’s mission may succeed in causing Israel to back off. However, in the past, besides outright murder, Israel had taken people engaged in this type of relief effort prisoner, a risk Rowley and her fellow volunteers are willing to take: “If we can end the siege of Gaza, that could be a first step towards peaceful development in the rest of the world.” Helga Zepp-LaRouche pledged that she would make sure that news of the Flotilla will be circulated every day internationally to focus the eyes of the world on this courageous initiative.
Ray McGovern, following Rowley, asked: Why does President Joe Biden “insist on challenging the rest of the world, including two major nuclear powers?” Biden himself answered that question during a recent interview on the U.S. television program 60 Minutes: When asked if he thought it would be unwise to get involved in a two-front war, he said, “We’re the United States of America, the most powerful country in the history of the world!”—madness, according to McGovern. He asked that everyone hope and pray that his good friend Coleen Rowley and the Flotilla expedition succeed in getting the food and medicine into Gaza.
Dennis Small of the Schiller Institute opened the discussion with the news flash that the Embassy of South Africa in Mexico had just posted an invitation for the Oasis Plan conference to both their Facebook and X social media accounts. The Ambassador of South Africa to Mexico, H.E. Beryl Rose Sisulu, will be speaking at the conference.
Bolivar Télles, a leader of the Central American and Caribbean Critical Thought organization in Nicaragua, reported on his nation’s case against Germany before the ICJ, accusing Berlin of violating the Genocide Convention by providing Israel with military support. Germany has emphatically denied these charges.
Zepp-LaRouche, referring to the report by Télles, characterized the German government’s harsh rejection of the charges as “tragic.” Germany does not bear sole responsibility for the Holocaust, she said, detailing international support for Hitler. “Collective guilt” is being used as a means of manipulating the German people into supporting Israel, no matter what. With the growing recognition throughout the Global South of the genocide against the Palestinians, if Germany, along with the U.S. and EU, continues its support for Israel’s mass murder of civilians, Germany will be isolated from the rest of the world. This is a tragedy, because a new economic system will not function without the U.S. and Europe: “It creates the seed of a geopolitical catastrophe.”
This can be changed, she concluded, “because we have the overwhelming majority of the people of the world at our side.” In reference to the Oasis Plan conference, she said it is the “starting point of a real revolution” to usher in the new era of “peace through development, because nothing else will solve the problem.”
