EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR FRIDAY, DECEMBER 31, 2021
The Common Aims of Mankind Demand To End the Ukraine Standoff: Collaborate!
Dec. 30, 2021 (EIRNS)—As Presidents Biden and Putin spoke for reportedly 50 minutes by phone on Dec. 29, with war-hawks throughout the NATO countries’ governments and think-tanks demanding complete NATO encirclement of Russia, the problem these two leaders should be talking about was expressed in a headline that NBC News slapped on a Reuters wire: “With Famine Looming over Afghanistan, Millions Struggle for Every Meal.”
What does it profit the United States if it gain the encirclement of Russia and China with bases and missiles, and completely lose its soul by letting hundreds of millions die of starvation and pandemic? The sanest experts are warning: Even as you reach for that encirclement and impossible military superiority, you are likely triggering a war which will go nuclear and destroy civilization!
Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche has repeated again on Dec. 29 in addressing a commemorative event: President Joe Biden should accept the draft treaty proposed by President Vladimir Putin and agree that Ukraine, on Russia’s border and part of it for centuries, will not join NATO. Long-time CIA analyst and co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity Ray McGovern, agreed. And on “The Critical Hour” radio broadcast Dec. 27, McGovern brought out that no media or officials are mentioning that 10,000 of the Russian troops who had moved closer to Ukraine in November have now been withdrawn back away from it, and called this a critical part of a negotiation that should be leading to a resolution of the standoff in January. Danish Russia expert Jens Jørgen Nielsen, in an interview with the Schiller Institute in Denmark today, said he would tell Biden, “It is wise for you to engage with Putin, because the alternative is war.” And Luftwaffe Gen. Harald Kujat (ret.), former Chief of Staff of the German Bundeswehr (2000-2002) and Chairman of the NATO Military Committee (2002-2005), said in a radio interview today, that security of the NATO nations will be improved if Ukraine is not admitted.
But this is not merely a discussion of “strategy,” but of the common aims of humanity, for which the United States was a powerful and leading force.
On October 12, 1988 Lyndon LaRouche, after five years of “strategic” crisis in which he had forecast the dissolution of the Soviet Union while others forecast it would invade Western Europe, went to then-West Berlin and publicly proposed a “Food for Peace” solution, in which the Western nations would develop the agriculture of Poland so that it could feed itself, and the Soviet Union would accept the reunification of Germany, with Berlin resuming its role as the capital. No one else thought these possible, but they occurred then; and promises were made to Mikhail Gorbachev that unified Germany would be the most eastern NATO state; promises then broken by NATO to lead to today’s U.S.-Russia standoff. LaRouche widened his proposals in another “Food for Peace” conference in Chicago, on Dec. 10, 1988—“Who will give us this day our daily bread?” he asked, on behalf of hundreds of millions, just weeks before he was imprisoned.
Now, a modern healthcare system must be built in Afghanistan; its financial reserves released from U.S. sanctions; and food aid and food production made possible. President Putin proposed this as well, during the current negotiations with the Biden Administration, on Dec. 23. This is a matter for American, Russian, and Chinese collaboration for the common welfare of mankind, or millions will starve in the war-racked destruction of that country.
Therefore, accept the non-alignment of Ukraine. Take the path out of this potentially thermonuclear standoff into collaboration against pandemic and famine; on to the exploration and colonization of space; on to the development of nuclear power and fusion energy technologies. Those should be the missions of great powers, not to encircle and intimidate each other until the irreversible, unsurvivable war breaks out.
• Editor’s Note: EIR Daily Alert will skip publishing on New Year’s Day (for Sunday, Jan. 2, 2022). The first two issues in 2022 will appear on Saturday, Jan. 1 and Monday, Jan. 3.
