EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY, MARCH 18, 2021

A World of Geopolitical Clashes, or Peaceful Cooperation: You Decide!

March 17 , 2021 (EIRNS)—The Schiller Institute conference scheduled for this weekend could not come at a more critical moment. As War Hawks in the West are ramping up their verbal assaults against Russia and China, and engaging in military exercises worldwide, what can be done to assure that these planned provocations can be reversed, and we can bring about peace instead? Leaders of government institutions and prominent individuals will participate in a two-day online conference, engaging in dialogue to offer ideas to reverse the drive for war and the imposition of a global banker’s dictatorship—the “Great Reset”—and to save millions of lives by defeating the pandemic and famine. This was stressed on this morning’s Daily Update by Harley Schlanger, making the point: “This is your opportunity to join in the mobilization to create a New Renaissance, to lift mankind out of the Empire’s death grip.”

A dramatic expression of the emergency condition globally, under the impact of the pandemic and food shortages hitting an already deficient economic base, is the mass dislocation of millions of people on every continent. Refugee experts put the global total of refugees at over 80 million, including in that count those displaced within their home countries as well. These 80 million are a desperate subset of an estimated 830 million people without reliable daily food. In Yemen, ground zero for humanitarian emergencies, over 20 million people are in immediate need of aid. The report given yesterday at the monthly UN Security Council briefing on Yemen by UN Special Envoy for Yemen Martin Griffiths was dire; on top of the famine, warfare has again flared up.

In Africa, there are corridors of migration of people fleeing impossible circumstances. Some go through Libya and across the Mediterranean; others move within the Chad Basin; others seek to reach into Asia via the Horn of Africa—passing through war-torn, already-starving Yemen! In southeastern Africa, in Mozambique, the count of internally displaced people has reached 670,000 since the outbreak in 2017 of terrorism in the north. This week the U.S. Marine Corps sent in counter-terrorism special forces to train Mozambican military specialists over the next two months, to fight the terrorists.

Where are the special forces for health and food security? For electricity, water and sanitation? For development? The only approach to the world-scale multiple crises that will succeed, is the “peace through development” perspective made concrete in many programs issued over the years by economist statesman Lyndon LaRouche. Those programs are now acutely relevant, and especially for the Southwest Asian region, will be presented at this weekend’s conference.

LaRouche’s “Land-Bridge” concept—of corridors of development spanning the globe—is reflected in the Belt and Road Initiative underway by China and collaborating nations. Yesterday, the prospects for this in the Caribbean Basin were praised by President Mohamed Irfaan Ali of Guyana, in a teleconference meeting with President Xi Jinping, who also spoke with Prime Minister Keith Rowley of neighboring Trinidad and Tobago. The impoverishment and dislocation of millions of people in the Americas is increasing drastically. Haiti is in a state of food emergency. In South America, over 5 million Venezuelans are outside their country. At the U.S.-Mexico border, as of this week, 4,200 children and youth—unaccompanied by adults—are in holding centers, after trying to cross the border. The perspective to overcome this, the North American Belt and Road Initiative, or “NABRI,” with additional southern flanks, will be presented on the second day of the March 20-21 conference.

Yet, instead of anything in this positive direction, instead of immediate international collaboration on COVID-19 vaccination and food aid, in particular, we continue to see confrontation. The Anglo-Five Eyes “military-intelligence” complex—at one with the City of London/Wall Street crowd—is deployed overtime for provocation. Yesterday, a report was issued in the U.S. by the Director of National Intelligence, asserting with “high confidence” (i.e., a hot, big lie) that Russia interfered in the U.S. Presidential elections on behalf of Donald Trump, by “denigrating” Biden. The charges are a rehash of stale rubbish from last year, saying that Russia provided disinformation to pro-Trump media, on bad things Joe Biden did in Ukraine, to benefit Trump’s election prospects.

Then this morning, President Biden himself, speaking on ABC News, said that, because of this, Putin will “pay a price” for interfering in the U.S. elections. When the provocateur interviewer George Stephanopoulos asked, “So you know Vladimir Putin. You think he’s a killer?” Biden responded, “Mm-hmm, I do.” He repeated, “You’ll see shortly ... [Putin] is going to pay.”

Russia has now recalled its Ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov, back to Moscow for consultations. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said this afternoon, “The new U.S. Administration took office about two months ago, and the symbolic 100-day mark is not too far away....The most important thing for us is to identify ways of rectifying Russia-U.S. relations, which have been going through hard times, as Washington has, as a matter of fact, brought them to a blind alley. We are interested in preventing an irreversible deterioration in relations, if the Americans become aware of the risks associated with this.”

This latest sobering turn of events occurs on the eve of the important meeting in Anchorage, Alaska tomorrow, between top envoys of the U.S. and China. These developments underscore the importance of attending, and mobilizing others to attend, this weekend’s opportunity to change course. Register for the conference: “World at a Crossroad: Two Months Into the New U.S. Administration,” March 20-21.