EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY JANUARY 5, 2023

Is Global NATO About To Make This a Two-Front Shooting War?

Jan. 4, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Even as sensible souls around the world struggle to find a way to bring an end to the war in Ukraine and with it the imminent danger of nuclear warfare between superpowers—and the aggressive 30-year eastward march of NATO right up to Russia’s doorstep which intentionally provoked the current crisis—Global NATO is intent on opening a second, eastern front in that war, against both Russia and China.

That, for all intents and purposes, is the 2023 New Year’s resolution of the financial Establishment that is running policy out of London and Washington. The radical about-face in Japan’s 65-year defense doctrine and posture, adopted in late December 2022, is a linchpin of that policy.

On Jan. 3, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko gave an interview to TASS warning that Japan has “embark[ed] on a track of fast-tracked militarization” which, coupled with changes in their military doctrine, is “creating an attack potential” which Russia considers “as a serious challenge to the security of our country and the Asia-Pacific Region as a whole. We warn that if this practice continues, we will be forced to take proportionate counter-measures in order to block military threats to Russia,” Rudenko stated bluntly.

A day earlier, on Monday Jan. 2, rabid neocon John Bolton—Trump’s National Security Adviser in 2018-2019—wrote an op-ed in the London Daily Telegraph in which he railed against all the supposedly “pro-Russian” softies inside NATO (France’s Macron, Germany’s Scholz, and of course Turkiye’s Erdogan), in order to then present the Japan gambit for Global NATO:

“By comparison, Japan recently announced that it will more than double its defense budget in the next five years to achieve NATO’s 2% target, and in so doing will become the world’s third largest military, after the U.S. and China. It’s the kind of performance that reinforces former Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar’s proposal, made over 15 years ago, to take NATO global, starting by admitting countries like Japan, Australia, Singapore and Israel.”

Nor is Japan-Russia the only flash point in the Asian theater. There are the continual provocations against China around Taiwan. And South Korea’s President Yoon Suk-yeol told an interviewer that the U.S. and South Korea were discussing possible joint exercises using U.S. nuclear assets in response to the rising threats from North Korea. Even though this was quickly denied by President Biden, this was an extraordinary escalation of the tension and the stakes in the region.

Well-informed European sources have told EIR that they expect 2023 to be the year of a sharp escalation of the West’s anti-China crusade, with Global NATO becoming a reality in that process—confirming the analysis presented above.

And yet, as 2023 gets under way, the solution to the crisis is also at hand. The approach being taken by the leaders of the Philippines and China in their Jan. 3-5 summit in Beijing, of promoting win-win development as the framework in which to resolve existing conflicts between the countries, points in the right direction. And the full conceptual basis for the required new international security and development architecture has been presented and is under widening public deliberation, in response to Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Ten Principles.

Zepp-LaRouche addressed these principles in the conclusion of her Jan. 4 weekly webcast, emphasizing “the divine nature of humans. The Pope who just died, Pope Benedict, formerly Cardinal Ratzinger, has written a lot about the divine nature of Man, which is reflected in great classical music. That Divine Nature has destined us to be the spacefaring species. We should really remind ourselves of our creative potential which is unique to us as human beings—at least we have not found any other species in the universe, as of now, which has similar creative capabilities.... So, I’m quite confident that that is the trend of the times, and I think we should look at this present year 2023 with joy and energy to implement these designs and have a peaceful word.”

In that spirit, we invite you to join the organizing activities of the LaRouche movement to make this a reality:

• Sign the Open Letter to Pope Francis from Political and Social Leaders: Support Call for Immediate Peace Negotiations:

• Jan. 8 at 2 p.m. EST: Participate in Diane Sare’s online policy discussion, “Can Nuclear War Be Avoided? Only If the U.S.A. Becomes Trustworthy,” with Scott Ritter, Col. Richard Black, Steve Starr, Helga Zepp-LaRouche and others. RSVP for the Zoom link.

• Jan. 10 at 11 a.m. EST: Join an internet discussion “Do You Care about International Law, Frau Merkel?” with Ray McGovern, Scott Ritter, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, General Dominique Delawarde (ret.), Colonel Alain Corvez (ret.), and others.

• Jan. 14 at 10 a.m. EST: “To Stop NATO’s World War, Dismantle the ‘JFK International Assassination Bureau,’ ” Garland Nixon, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Ray McGovern.

• Early February: Schiller Institute conference “Ten Principles for Organizing a New International Security and Development Architecture.”