BRITISH MONARCHY’S STRATEGY

Goad Russia to the Nuclear Brink, Decouple and Provoke China

by Gretchen Small

[Print version of this editorial]

May 21—Two items published within this past week from well-known bastions of British imperialism should shake you to your core.

First: The proposal by the Deputy Director General of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Malcolm Chalmers, that an eyeball-to-eyeball nuclear showdown between the United States and Russia over Crimea—a “Cuban Missile Crisis on steroids,” as he called it —could make it “easier” to settle the Russia-Ukraine war.

Chalmers outlines how that showdown can be brought about. He suggests that Ukraine, emboldened by NATO’s strategy of “boiling the Russian frog”—handing over increasingly sophisticated weapons in ever greater amounts to that country—could then move to recover Crimea as it has desired since 2014. Russia could consider that an existential threat, pushing Vladimir Putin into putting Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert and threatening to use them. “It would be a moment of extreme peril,” Chalmers chortles, but “precisely because of the peril inherent in such a situation, a nuclear crisis of this sort could make it easier for leaders to make difficult compromises.”

You do not believe any policymaker could be so insane? Read Chalmers’s May 20 article, “This War Still Presents Nuclear Risks—Especially in Relation to Crimea,” for yourself. As you read it, consider the fact that RUSI has been the British Crown’s principal defense think tank since it was founded in 1831 by the Duke of Wellington. This is no marginal outfit that no one listens to. RUSI “has been at the centre of policymaking and thinking on defence and security from the rise of the British Empire to its transformation and dissolution [sic], through both World Wars and the Cold War,” it brags of itself.

Now look at the Henry Jackson Society (HJS) of London’s earlier report outlining a strategy to use the infamous “Five Eyes” alliance of UK, U.S., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, as the instrument to force through the economic decoupling of the West from China. This rabidly anti-Russia, anti-China neo-con think tank is run by British intelligence, through, among others, former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove (of “Russiagate” infamy), who was one of the founders of the HJS and is one of its principals today.

Such an attempt to decouple China from the international system would certainly detonate the equivalent of an “economic nuclear bomb” upon the world economy. China is not just the world’s largest trading power. It currently is generating the highest rate of scientific-technological development on the planet, a productive power which developing sector nations depend upon through the Belt and Road Initiative, to escape from poverty, just as China lifted 800 million of its own people out of poverty through development.

For the western nations to cut off their own access to this innovative society would be another case of self-destruction, as has already been proven in regard to the sanctions on Russia. Vladimir Putin, speaking to his cabinet on May 16, noted that Europe’s intentional cutoff of energy resources from Russia, at the same time that they were imposing extreme energy cutbacks on themselves due to an exaggerated view of climate change, was in effect “an economic auto-da-fé,” like that of the satanic Inquisition launched in the 15th Century. Putin added: “Suicide is, of course, an internal affair of European countries.”

Like the RUSI proposal to provoke a nuclear confrontation with Russia over Crimea, the HJS recommends building up ties with Taiwan, leading to its separation from China. China has made abundantly clear, that it will respond with overwhelming military force to any attempt to split Taiwan off from the nation of China.

The HJS strategy is the premise of President Joe Biden’s visit to South Korea and Japan from May 20-24, to further this confrontation with China and to bring the presence of NATO into Asia. He unveiled a grandiose “Indo-Pacific Economic Framework” (IPEF), whose intent, according to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, is to assure that “democracies and open societies of the world stand together to shape the rules of the road…. We think that message will be heard everywhere. We think it will be heard in Beijing.” Fifty-two U.S. Senators—a bi-partisan majority—sent Biden off on his trip with instructions that Taiwan be incorporated as one of the “countries” participating in the IPEF.

This is madness, and it must stop. Three months ago, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche proposed the only workable alternative to economic and military nuclear destruction: the convening of an international conference, where all nations of the world come together as equals to reach an agreement upon the principles by which to found a new international security and development architecture, to secure peace, as the Treaty of Westphalia ended the 150 years of war in 1648. On June 18-19, the Schiller Institute will hold another in the series of major international conferences it has organized for people from all over the world to discuss together how to bring this Westphalian system into being.

Helga Zepp LaRouche’s husband and political partner, American statesman Lyndon LaRouche long advocated the same. In a Sept. 6, 2006 webcast, he explained why “there is no alternative to a Westphalian peace”:

Man is not an animal. Therefore, the fundamental interest of man lies in that kind of behavior which is not that of an animal: the behavior of creating something, the search for immortality, the search for the rising above bestiality, the search for progress and benefit.

So, therefore, what you give people is, you give them the benefit to improve themselves. You promote their improvement, their self-improvement, and that’s the basis for your agreement. The alternative to a Westphalian approach is a Hobbesian approach, which leads to eternal conflict…. Westphalia worked for one reason: because of a leadership, an initiative, to end a war that nobody could end….

We’ve come to a period in world history—look, we’re at the end of war! You can no longer conduct war on this planet! You may have to defend yourself in a war-like manner, but you don’t use war as an instrument of policy! Which is what is being done by the British and by the United States—the use of war as a policy matter! …

Can pure destruction, which is the only mode of warfare which is possible now, can that be a source of victory, a source of a victorious interest? You can never do it. So therefore, the only policy, is the policy of mutual interest, the Westphalian policy. The Westphalian policy is a matter of the natural moral law.