EDITORIAL

The New Strategic Architecture Requires U.S.-Russia-China Cooperation

by Michael O. Billington

[Print version of this editorial]

Feb. 4—Heated exchanges between Russian officials and neo-con and neo-lib officials and media in the U.S., continue to exacerbate tensions between the two nuclear superpowers. Helga Zepp-LaRouche addressed these tensions today, noting that the world needs a new strategic architecture, but that it cannot work unless a common economic and cultural mission is adopted, and geopolitics rejected. If the West joins the New Silk Road paradigm, then, and only then, will the new strategic architecture work.

President Putin and Foreign Minister Lavrov have insisted that Russia will not engage in an arms race, but, within the existing defense budget, will respond to President Trump’s withdrawal from the INF treaty “with military-technical means.” This is how Russia responded to President G.W. Bush’s withdrawal from the ABM treaty—mobilizing the scientific and technical capacities of the nation to create weapons which could circumvent the ABM systems which the U.S. was placing around Russia’s borders. Indeed, on March 1 last year, Putin revealed the successful development of a nuclear submarine torpedo, a hypersonic glide vehicle launched from an ICBM, and a hypersonic missile launched from a MiG 31 interceptor, among others weapons, all aimed at neutralizing the potential which the U.S. intended to achieve with its enhanced ABM system—i.e., to deny the U.S. a “first strike” capacity in which our ABM system would thwart a Russian nuclear response.

We must not make the mistake of opposing the Russian development of these new technologies, nor opposing the U.S. development of the new technologies required for the new missile defense systems announced Feb. 1 by President Trump. Rather, we must encourage such expansion of human knowledge, but insist that it be done in collaboration with Russia, and also with China, and, most important, that the new technologies be jointly applied to civilian needs as well.

As long ago as 1977, EIR issued a document titled “From Detente to Entente—A U.S. Policy For the SALT Talks,” the Strategic Arms Limitations Treaty talks. Reviewing the efforts of some imperial-thinking forces to adopt an arms agreement which restricted technological development in frontier areas of human knowledge, the EIR document concluded: “The U.S. should not embark on the futile course of attempting to banish innovation from arms development. Instead, an international agreement (or a sequence of such agreements) for nuclear energy development should prominently contain a clause providing for far-reaching scientific collaboration, exchange of information, and actual joint research and development efforts, especially in the various areas of fusion research.”

This was the seed crystal for Lyndon LaRouche’s proposal to President Ronald Reagan for a space-based anti-missile system to be developed jointly by the U.S. and the USSR—an idea which Reagan adopted under the name Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). The basic concept is even more valid, and more urgent, today, with the added necessity that the space-based systems be made capable of diverting asteroids threatening the Earth—a proposal issued to the U.S. by Dmitri Rogozin (now head of the Russian space program, working closely with NASA chief Jim Bridenstine) in 2011 under the name Strategic Defense of Earth (SDE). With Trump now mandating a new space-based missile defense system, it is essential that this program, pushing ahead on the frontiers of scientific knowledge and capacities, be carried out internationally and applied also to the economic development of mankind as a whole.

Is this a Utopian dream? The British, whose intention is to preserve the Empire through the geopolitical division of East and West, and those in the UK and the U.S. frantically trying to bring down President Trump through Russiagate lies, would have us believe so. Recall what President Trump said on Feb. 1 while announcing his plan for missile defense:

We stand ready to engage with Russia on arms control negotiations that meet these criteria, and, importantly, once that is done, develop, perhaps for the first time ever, an outstanding relationship on economic, trade, political, and military levels. This would be a fantastic thing for Russia and the United States, and would also be great for the world.

We are in a moment known as a punctum saliens, a jumping-off point, in which the leap could either be forward to a new Renaissance, or backwards into a new Dark Age. The spirit of the New Silk Road has created the context in which many nations around the world —potentially all nations—are working together towards achieving the common aims of all peoples through scientific and technological progress. This requires that President Trump be liberated from the treasonous Russiagate scam in order to realize his best intentions, to rebuild the United States and contribute to global development.

Our task is to bring the American people to embrace as a ONE, the totality of LaRouche’s program: the Four Laws, the New Silk Road, the SDI and SDE, and the New Bretton Woods. This answers their fears and gives them the optimism required to act on their true humanity.