Saudi-Iranian Shock Shows
the Culture of the Silk Road
Is the Path to Peace

by Dennis Speed

[Print version of this editorial]

March 10—The Global Security Initiative, announced by China in 2022, delivered an important victory to humanity on March 10, with the announcement, from Beijing, of the resumption of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Representatives of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran made the announcement that they would reestablish diplomatic relations two months from now. This was done, as the Saudi Press Agency official statement put it, “in response to the noble initiative of His Excellency President Xi Jinping, President of the People’s Republic of China, of China’s support for developing good neighborly relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

Consider the role of the United States in Iran from the CIA-orchestrated coup in 1953 until 1979. Consider the relationship between the United States and Saudi Arabia, from the end of World War Two until now. Then, think more deeply about the colonial relationship of the British Empire to both Iran and Arabia, over centuries, and over the period since especially the 1916 Sykes-Picot Treaty.

What has just happened to the Anglosphere’s geopolitical “Great Game”?

To understand the strategic realm in which this success is actually located—the “complex domain” of universal history—we refer to Lyndon LaRouche’s 1983 proposal, “Saudi Arabia in the Year 2023, Part 1: Overcoming 1,000 Years of Looting and Subjugation of the Arab World.” It stated,

During the reign of Caliph Harun Al-Rashid, at Baghdad, Mesopotamia is estimated to have supported a population of 30 or more million souls, ten million more than today. At that time the Caliphate was the most advanced culture in the world, in respect to scientific knowledge…. As the Roman Empire collapsed of its own moral decay, to the west, the great Gupta renaissance had arisen in India to the east…. [I]t was Al-Farabi, who returned to Europe the well-tempered, 12-tone, octave musical scale, and chiefly Ibn Sina who gave Europe medicine and much of its impetus for rigorous scientific knowledge, as the case of England’s Roger Bacon of the 13th century illustrates. To speak of Arab culture today, or to speak, more broadly, of Islamic culture, we must include the fact of the Arab renaissance of now more than 1,000 years ago.

One cannot expect State Department cretins like “cookie monster” Victoria Nuland, or the offal of the once-not-only-evil-but-competent British Civil Service, to understand LaRouche’s strategic point, which an Arnold Toynbee would have recognized immediately. The diplomacy of durable regional security requires that Indian, Persian, Arab and, differently Islamic cultural heritage must be, not only understood and valued, but mobilized as the creative substrate and basis for, not merely regional peace, but progress and prosperity.

The 5,000-year-old Chinese civilization, today possessed of the most productive economy in the world, and a leadership that has acted worldwide, for a decade, on its proposal of win-win cooperation, has just proven that, indeed, a “Coincidence of Opposites” can be achieved in even the most difficult of circumstances. This is a proof of principle for what can be done worldwide. That includes conducting diplomacy in the Russia/NATO conflict, misnamed “the Ukraine conflict,” as was indicated in the Chinese 12-point peace proposal, issued Feb. 24, titled, “China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis.”

The forces of the international Schiller Institute are intervening in many nations, particularly in the Anglosphere’s France, Germany, the Netherlands, Greece, and the United States, in what is beginning to take shape as an authentic “mass strike process.” This does not merely refer to rallies, demonstrations and elections, but a palpable change in social consciousness that suddenly sweeps the world “like a force of nature.”

Economist Rosa Luxemburg, in 1906, wrote,

[T]he mass strike is not artificially “made,” not “decided” at random, not “propagated,” but that it is an historical phenomenon, which, at a given moment, results from social conditions with historical inevitability.

The intelligence of mankind seems, of a sudden, to become greater, when and where it is successfully engaged by those who have prepared for that moment. The most alert, who tend to be young people, are satisfied only with “frontier thinking,” profound ideas that demand a re-thinking of the very purpose of life itself.

The Schiller Institute international conference held March 11, titled, “To End Colonialism: A Mission for All Youth,” featured many such young people whose self-assigned mission is to initiate a worldwide permanent Socratic dialogue among thousands of their contemporaries. [See a report on it elsewhere in this issue.] In this way, by mastering the Socratic method of Cusa, Leibniz, Gauss, Riemann, and of LaRouche, they will be intellectually armed to assault and overthrow the “Empire of the Mind” with which the culturally decadent high priesthood of academia has enmeshed them, but cannot hold them.

We are now seeing the potential for such a process, even as the world faces thermonuclear war. The multiple appearances of Schiller Institute representatives, led by Helga Zepp-LaRouche herself, founder and leader of the Institute, in various media outlets in China, the United States, and social media, as well as the many interviews done with Diane Sare, Independent U.S. Senate candidate for New York, have, in the past few days, successfully put into circulation the truth about the Ukraine war—namely, that its real intention is the dismemberment of Russia.

The intent of carving up Russia—not just weakening or “containing” it, has been openly discussed by geopolitical networks for years, including, for example, by the U.S. Commission for Security and Cooperation in Europe. A Bloomberg News article June 1, 2022, headlined “Is Breaking Up Russia the Only Way To End Its Imperialism?” is typical. José Vega, representing The LaRouche Organization, has been exposing this “destroy Russia” strategy in media appearances, including on the One America News network and the Jimmy Dore show. EIR News Service is currently preparing a dossier with documentation of this deadly policy.

Standing in total contrast is the new diplomacy initiative March 10 by the joint China-Iran-Saudi Arabia announcement. It derives from the same method of thinking as that inherent in the “pre-mass strike” intervention process that is now creating an incipient solidarity among the populations of the Trans-Atlantic sector against war and for economic development. Look at it from another perspective, in the form of the “deep-cleaning antiseptic of truth” that Seymour Hersh provided the world through his Nord Stream pipeline exposé. The truth-effect keeps spreading, and will keep spreading, with our assistance, and with every lie that is told about what obviously happened.

The ridicule to which the enemies of humanity are now being submitted, as they try to convince the world that “Moby Dick blew up the pipeline,” is the necessary antidote to their persistent lies about nearly everything. Humor neutralizes the lies that have driven the captive populations of the Anglosphere nations to the psychological point, either of insanity, or to an even more insane point: moral indifference.

When people read the “Nord Stream pipe-dream” story in the newspapers, including the very New York Times where Seymour Hersh was once a reporter, claiming that reinforced steel pipelines encased in concrete, sitting at a depth of 260–360 feet (80–100 meters) in the Baltic Sea, were booby-trapped with, not one, but four explosive charges, and this was done by two divers from a 5-man and 1-woman yacht team, financed by a shadowy Ukrainian oligarch, to be much later detonated by remote control—even the most dedicated users find themselves asking whether it might be time to reverse marijuana legalization.

Speaking of sobering up, the just-announced bankruptcy of Silicon Valley Bank, preceded by San Diego’s Signature Bank, means that, as with the precursor tremors that antedate an earthquake, the savvy should demand the shutdown of speculative commodities markets and Samuel Bankman-Fried-like scams. As a wise man once said, “You can only kick a can down the road so many times before it becomes a bucket.”

On the Schiller Institute campaign regarding lifting the Syrian “Caesar sanctions” and removing American troops from their illegal occupation of that nation, H.Con.Res. 21, introduced by Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL) in February, calling for American troops to be withdrawn from Syria, was defeated March 8. Note, however, that there were 103 Congressmen and Congresswomen that voted for it. Unlike with the disgraceful resolution to uphold the murderous Caesar sanctions, passed Feb. 27, before the H.Con.Res. 21 vote and opposed by only 2 members of the entire House, the Gaetz resolution was even supported by Robert Ford, Ambassador to Syria under Barack Obama, obviously no political ally of Gaetz.

Ambassador Ford said, “We owe our soldiers serving there in harm’s way, a serious debate about whether their mission is, in fact, achievable.” On sanctions, Ford said, “I would say it’s disingenuous for those who justify the sanctions to say that they don’t harm ordinary Syrians living in government-controlled territories. They obviously do.”

Allies of the Schiller Institute, specifically those involved in the Feb. 19 Rage Against the War Machine Rally, have announced “Operation War-Hawk Down,” a campaign to remove those House members from political office who voted for both the sanctions and for maintaining American troops in Syria.

It were well to consider replacing them, and to repopulate American politics with independently-thinking persons concerned about the fate of humanity. Patriots who also consider themselves world-citizens of one humanity should take a moment to reflect upon what China has done with Saudi Arabia and Iran, and not only desire but seek to do likewise.