EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY, DECEMBER 9, 2021

Four Minutes to Midnight: Just How Close Are We to Thermonuclear War?

Dec. 8, 2021 (EIRNS)—Both President Joe Biden and President Vladimir Putin made public comments today about the actual content of their summit discussion yesterday. Biden announced that he is working on a further meeting to address Russia’s red-line concerns regarding Ukraine and NATO. “The positive news is that, thus far, our teams have been in constant contact,” Biden said, adding that he hoped to announce by Dec. 10 that there would be a meeting in short order involving Russia, the U.S., and at least four major NATO allies, to address “Russia’s concerns relative to NATO,” and to try to “bring down the temperature along the Eastern Front.”

President Putin today again explained what those red-line concerns are: “It would be criminal inaction on our side to spinelessly watch all that’s taking place” in Ukraine, he said, and continuing: “We have a right to provide for our own safety. U.S./NATO weapons are the issue.” As Putin has repeatedly explained, the encroachment of NATO up to Russia’s very borders over the last 20 years, and now the explicit threat of having Ukraine join NATO or otherwise have American and NATO troops on its territory, makes Moscow indefensible—other than by the use of hypersonic nuclear weapons. Each side would then have nuclear weapons within 5-minutes flight time from the other, Putin pointed out.

Or would it be four minutes?

Right after yesterday’s summit, Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov told the press that Biden said to Putin at their summit that he would discuss NATO’s eastward expansion with his Alliance colleagues. That appears to have been born out by Biden’s own comments today.

But on Washington’s side, the lies are coming fast and thick—signaling the enormous danger of war that not only still exists, but is growing by the hour. The war party has moved to entirely take control of strategic policy out of Biden’s hands, and to immediately escalate the provocations against both Russia and China to the snapping point. Secretary of State Tony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan participated in the summit with Putin, acting like Biden’s chaperones the whole time, while Putin sat alone. Blinken and Sullivan then emerged from that meeting to immediately run to the press to issue statements about what had supposedly happened at the summit—making zero mention of the planned meeting to address Russia’s concerns.

Instead, Sullivan said that Biden read Putin the Riot Act. Blinken was chillingly clear in delivering threats and warnings to both Russia and China, blaming them for the Ukraine and Taiwan crises, respectively, and threatening a blistering U.S. response to any military moves those countries might make. Blinken was particularly brazen about the Establishment’s gambit in pulling out of Afghanistan, actually arguing that the American people do still have “an appetite ... to re-engage overseas if necessary”—i.e., launch more perennial wars, only this time directly against Russia and China, exactly as Lyndon LaRouche had warned all along was the true strategic intention behind the Libya, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, etc. provocations.

If there is no significant opposition in the U.S. to such a war between the superpowers, then it will happen, Helga Zepp-LaRouche warned today. The Ukraine crisis is far from over, and the London-led war party is on a rampage, as can be seen in Blinken’s threats against both Russia and China and his explicit intent to starve Afghanistan into submission—a Nuremberg crime if ever there was one. Will Americans just look the other way while a sitting Senator, Robert Wicker of Mississippi, states on national TV that “I would not rule out American troops on the ground” in Ukraine, and that the U.S. also shouldn’t “rule out first-use nuclear action” to deter Russia?

Zepp-LaRouche further warned that, if this goes any further, the countries in Europe where nuclear weapons are stationed will shortly cease to exist. On both sides of the Atlantic, it should begin to dawn on people what the existence of hypersonic weapons actually means.

In her weekly webcast today, Zepp-LaRouche summarized the situation and issued a call to action:

“My assessment [of the summit] is that we are still sitting on a powder keg of potential nuclear war.... I think this is all extremely dangerous and we urgently need a new security architecture in Europe and in Eurasia which rules out the possible danger of a nuclear war.... Hopefully reason will prevail and this incredibly dangerous situation can be turned into something else.”

She reminded listeners of her proposed Operation Ibn Sina, in which the world’s major powers would join efforts to stop the looming mass deaths in Afghanistan, and provide that country with a modern health system, adequate food, and the infrastructure needed to make that possible.

“Under conditions of a pandemic—which not only has health implications, but is a complete threat to the economy, as we see in many countries—the only way you can address the most urgent issues facing humanity is to say: We have to concentrate on the common aims of mankind, namely to defeat this pandemic, and we have to work together internationally. This would be a step in the direction of overcoming this insane, extremely dangerous geopolitical confrontation.”

Zepp-LaRouche urged listeners to mobilize with the Schiller Institute to stop the danger of nuclear war. “And cooperate with us on Operation Ibn Sina, because it is a step towards defusing an otherwise extremely dangerous situation.”