EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2021
Creating an Opportunity from Calamity: Developing a Catalyst for a New Paradigm
Dec. 2, 2021 (EIRNS)—Russia and China are flanked to the west and the east by the threat of military conflict in the flashpoints of Ukraine and Taiwan. Warnings of an allegedly impending attack upon Ukraine by Russia are used as an excuse by NATO leaders to push for stationing troops and strategic weapons in Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin has made it clear that this would absolutely cross a red line for Russia. And the statement yesterday by former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that Japan and the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily in the case of an invasion by the Chinese mainland was met with extremely forceful condemnation from the P.R.C.
On Nov. 30, Putin explained the threat posed to his country: “The Russian Federation also has certain apprehensions regarding the large-scale military exercises held near its border, including unscheduled ones, like the recent Black Sea drills during which strategic bombers, which are known to carry precision and possibly even nuclear weapons, made flights within 20 km of our border.” With NATO expanding towards Russia over the last 20 years, including the placement of supposedly defensive BMD systems in Poland and Romania, with equipment also capable of launching Tomahawk and other missiles, Putin warned that an absolute red line comes from missile threats in Ukraine. “I will repeat this once again that the issue concerns the possible deployment in the territory of Ukraine of strike systems with the flight time of 7-10 minutes to Moscow, or 5 minutes in the case of hypersonic systems....
“So, what should we do? We would need to create similar systems to be used against those who are threatening us.... We would need to create similar systems to be used against those who are threatening us. ... [W]e have held successful tests, and early next year we will put a new sea-launched hypersonic missile with a maximum speed of Mach 9 on combat duty. The flight time to those who issue orders will also be 5 minutes....
“Why are we doing this?”
Putin asked. “The creation of such threats for us is the red line.”
Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told the OSCE Foreign Ministers meeting in Stockholm that NATO’s involvement in Russia’s immediate vicinity (most notably Ukraine) would “have the most serious consequences and will force [Moscow] to take retaliatory measures.” The monster of armed conflict within Europe has returned.
At his Dec. 1 briefing China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin reminded Japan’s former Prime Minister Abe: “Taiwan is China’s sacred territory, where no external interference shall be tolerated. During its [1895-1945] colonial rule over Taiwan for half a century, Japan committed innumerable crimes, over which it has grave historical responsibilities to the Chinese people. No one should underestimate the strong resolve, determination and capability of the Chinese people to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Those who dare to pursue the old path of militarism and challenge our bottom line will find themselves on a collision course with the Chinese people!”
And it’s not solely war! The ideological drive that seeks to use the threat of military conflict to destabilize development and control the growth and sovereignty of nations independent of the Anglo-American slime mold is the same force promoting the explicitly Malthusian agenda of the Great Reset. A pandemic is running wild across much of the world, with vaccines unavailable in sufficient quantities to meet the demands and needs of lesser developed countries. But instead of solving the problem, and developing an in-depth health infrastructure, the world is told it must mobilize tens or even a hundred trillion dollars of investment to prevent relatively minor changes in the climate. Such an anti-human paradigm requires urgently to be replaced with a new paradigm of growth and development.
The deadly Covid pandemic itself provides an opportunity. By shining a light on our extreme lack of unpreparedness, both against emerging viruses and in terms of health infrastructure overall, it points the way to using the need to have modern, advancing health care for all people, as a driver for shaping infrastructural, industrial, educational, and cultural development overall.
Join the Schiller Institute this Saturday, at 1 p.m. EST for a discussion of how the full development of health infrastructure can serve as a driver to sweep away anti-human Malthusianism and geopolitics, replacing it with an approach coherent with the dignity of each human individual.
