EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR WEDNESDAY JANUARY 4, 2023

Demonstrating That Seeking ‘Mutual Benefit’ Can Forge Peace

Jan. 3, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Over Jan. 3-5, the Presidents of China and the Philippines will be meeting in Beijing to discuss various proposals for cooperation on areas of common interest and benefit, including agriculture, energy, infrastructure, and trade. Before leaving for China, Philippine President Ferdinand Romualdez Marcos, Jr. spoke of his hope that the improvement of their relations can bring “numerous prospects and abundant opportunities for peace and development to the peoples of both our countries.” Chinese official statements have been equally optimistic.

The two countries have a bilateral maritime border dispute, which has been a source of real tension. For years, NATO countries have been sticking their snouts into the dispute, trying to turn it into another point of global geopolitical conflict. Here again, Britain and the U.S. have taken the lead.

What is the approach China and the Philippines have adopted? That of seeking agreement on higher ground, building up trust through common endeavors. “The issues between our two countries are problems that do not belong between two friends such as Philippines and China. We will seek to resolve those issues to the mutual benefit of our two countries,” President Marcos said before leaving.

China’s Global Times daily wrote similarly on Jan. 3, that “after repeated negotiations, China and the Philippines have found a way to achieve mutual benefit and win-win results, that is, to open their hearts and conduct candid exchanges and dialogue.”

Contrast that principle of seeking “mutual benefit” with the latest ravings coming out of London, with the intent to drive the world to the brink of nuclear war.

On New Year’s Day, no less, the New York Times published an opinion column by one Nigel Gould-Davies, a former British diplomat who is now Senior Fellow for Russia and Eurasia at the International Institute for Security Studies (IISS), and editor of the Strategic Survey 2022: The Annual Assessment of Geopolitics published annually by that British thinktank. His piece, “Putin Has No Red Lines,” is a call for the West, and the United States in particular, to go for maximum confrontation with Russia. The West must drop its remaining hesitations on sending every advanced weapon system needed into Ukraine, ignore what Russia asserts as interests which it considers necessary to ensure its national existence (“redlines”) and give up its silly fear of an escalation towards nuclear war, he insists.

The authority he cites for such madness is none other than the preeminent imperialist of the 19th century, the Lord Palmerston who ran British Empire foreign policy as Foreign Secretary and then Prime Minister for decades.

Palmerston’s principles are the core philosophy of the oligarchic system: that nations, and individuals, are like beasts, driven only by egotistical self-interest, greed, competition, “looking out for number one.” The core assumption is that no common interest exists between any nation or peoples—and, by God, if any persons or nations assert their common humanity, they must be crushed!

That oligarchical belief, that man is essentially evil, is at the heart of geopolitics. That is the core principle which must be overturned, if the conflicts and wars now spreading across the globe are to be ended before we all blow ourselves up.

Think about it. And then go read, or re-read the Ten Principles for a New Security and Development Architecture Schiller Institute founder and head Helga Zepp-LaRouche has put out for discussion all over the world. Especially the tenth:

“The basic assumption for the new paradigm is, that man is fundamentally good and capable to infinitely perfect the creativity of his mind and the beauty of his soul, and being the most advanced geological force in the universe, which proves that the lawfulness of the mind and that of the physical universe are in correspondence and cohesion, and that all evil is the result of a lack of development, and therefore can be overcome.”