National Interest Publishes Call for U.S.-Russia Summit To Address War Danger

Sept. 17, 2020 (EIRNS)—Four prominent international attorneys with extensive experience in U.S.-Soviet and U.S.-Russian affairs, penned a lengthy article, entitled, “The Number One Priority in Setting a New Course with Putin’s Russia,” in the Sept. 13 issue of National Interest, which calls for an urgent U.S.-Russia summit on arms negotiations, as the two nations “stand on the brink of abandoning six decades of arms control agreements and accelerating the creation of new and more terrifying doomsday weapons.” The National Interest on June 18 ran Russian President Vladimir Putin’s extensive historical article on the origins of World War II.

Although their proposal is for a 2021 meeting between Putin and whoever wins the U.S. Presidential election; and although it is misleadingly “even-handed” in its argument that “both major political parties downplay, and hardly prioritize, the importance of avoiding this catastrophic collision course with Russia”—ignoring the fact that President Donald Trump is on the public record repeatedly stating that arms reduction talks are probably the single most important issue on the world’s agenda—the article is nonetheless useful. It clearly reflects heightened concern among informed policy-making circles in the U.S., a concern being stirred into action by the LaRouche movement’s intense activity around the recent statements of Col. Richard Black (ret.) and former NSA specialists William Binney and Kirk Wiebe. And it is consistent in some of its features with the widely publicized call by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche for an immediate summit of the UN’s P-5 leaders to address the totality of the global crisis before us.

The article has seven specific proposals, some with greater merit than others, including:

“1. Extend—without seeking new conditions—the New START treaty which expires on February 5, 2021....

“4. Western sanctions on Russia should be lifted in a manner calibrated to restoring peace in Ukraine....

“5. Diplomatic relations between the United States and Russia should be restored to normalcy as soon as possible....

“6. Embrace Mikhail Gorbachev’s entreaty that our leaders ‘return to sanity’ and initiate a ‘full-scale summit on the entire range of issues’ between our nations....

“7. This summit should serve as a forum for announcing new economic and trust-building overtures.... Possible areas of collaboration include (i) joint development of a new Arctic trade route;... (iii) undertaking serious and well funded U.S.-Russia health care projects, including in Russia’s provinces and in U.S. rural areas; (iv) new student and academic exchange programs; (v) joint space exploration; and (vi) reinvigorating U.S.-Russia trade and business organization.”