EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR WEDNESDAY JANUARY 11, 2023

Schiller Institute Conference: ‘What About International Law, Mrs. Merkel?’

Jan. 10, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The Schiller Institute hosted an internet discussion from Germany today, “What About International Law, Mrs. Merkel?” to mobilize international forces to deal with the immediate threat of nuclear annihilation. Experts took up the recent admission by former German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the Minsk Agreements of 2014 and 2015 were a ruse designed to buy time for NATO to arm Ukraine. The discussion centered on the issue of the untrustworthiness of NATO in dealings with Russia and others, and a healthy debate ensued on whether negotiations could even bring peace, or whether the war was to be resolved on the battlefield in Ukraine.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and leader of the Schiller Institute and chair of Bürgerrechtsbewegung Solidarität (Civil Rights Solidarity Movement, BüSo), was joined by Ray McGovern, co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); Scott Ritter, former Marine Corps intelligence and former UN weapons inspector in Iraq; Gen. Dominique Delawarde (ret.), former liaison officer of France with the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas; and Col. Alain Corvez (ret.) of France, advisor on security questions. Stephan Ossenkopp, with the Schiller Institute in Berlin, was the moderator.

Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche opened the discussion with the question of how many seconds are actually left before the Doomsday Clock strikes midnight. Pointing to the fact that Russia can no longer trust the NATO powers, and has decided the crisis in Ukraine should now be resolved on the battlefield, Zepp-LaRouche said that we are now closer to nuclear war, given that NATO has decided that Russia cannot be allowed to win. Answering her earlier question, she asserted that we are now seconds to midnight, and that the offer by the Vatican to mediate between Russia and Ukraine was the best offer on the table. However, without her approach that centered on a new security and development architecture for all nations, rooted in the Ten Principles for a New International Security and Development Architecture that she had presented on Nov. 22, 2022, a durable resolution to the crisis would not work.

Scott Ritter followed Zepp-LaRouche’s presentation with his own assessment that while her proposals would work in what Ritter called a “perfect world,” he had determined that this crisis could now only be resolved by Russia in war, given that the forces behind NATO will only tell lies in negotiations. Ritter went on to say that he has not only lost faith in the political class of the West, but in the general population as well, whom he described as complacent with the simple comforts of life, and tolerant of the sins of their government.

Ritter said that Russia’s only course of action was to defeat Ukraine militarily, forcing Kiev to sign the surrender agreements, or die—just as Japan was forced to do at the end of World War II. He acknowledged the importance of the Vatican in future negotiations—“but not now”—even further arguing that a negotiated settlement now may actually escalate the danger of nuclear war. Furthermore, Ritter said a resolution to the crisis requires the West to abandon the idea of victory, which can now only be achieved through a Russian victory in Ukraine.

Taking up the issue of trust, Ray McGovern then raised the case of former U.S. Ambassador to Russia and present head of the CIA, William Burns’ 2008 cable to Washington titled, “Nyet Means Nyet,” clarifying that NATO expansion would trigger Russia’s red line—clearly indicating that Washington has known that Ukrainian entry into NATO would provoke Russia. McGovern also said that Putin had penned an article, in which he discussed the trust achieved between himself and Obama after the success of Putin’s efforts to convince Syria to dispose of their chemical weapons, but that that trust was destroyed after the U.S. neo-cons orchestrated the 2014 coup d’état in Ukraine.

Turning to Germany, which McGovern views as the fulcrum to resolve the conflict, he asked whether the German leadership would continue to remain silent, just as they did nearly 90 years ago. He cited their silence today on Nord Stream 2. McGovern then showed a picture of his own arrest in Congress, where he challenged the nomination of Gina Haspel to be CIA Director, because of her participation in the CIA torture program, saying that people must take that sort of action now.

Dominique Delawarde then referred to Pompeo’s statement at Texas A&M in April 2019, in which Pompeo remarked when he was CIA Director, “we lied, we cheated, we stole,” as an illustration that there was no basis for trust between the U.S. and Russia. Delawarde went on to state that trust could only be established after the globalist establishment disappeared. He said that Putin must break the dream of the global neocons by “weakening the Western eagle and cutting its wings.” Delawarde said that the collapse of the West can be accelerated by deploying the energy weapon and breaking the monopoly of the dollar system. He finished by saying that only from a position of strength could anything meaningful be attained by Russia in negotiations over Ukraine.

Alain Corvez then spoke about the fact that the Western strategy to weaken Russia economically has failed, and with Russia’s new military strategy in Ukraine, it is becoming apparent that the West cannot win. Corvez said that Russia’s position globally is becoming stronger with the expansion of the BRICS, the SCO, and other multipolar institutions. Because of the sanctions backfiring, Corvez argued that there is now a basis for a political revolt in the West, particularly as the economic conditions worsen due to the sanctions regime against Russia. He argued that with the coming Russian military success in Ukraine over the next months, either a political resolution will be forced, or we face nuclear war. Corvez pointed to Biden’s statements during Zelenskyy’s visit to Washington at the end of last year, where Biden said that providing advanced weapons to Ukraine would end NATO and the EU, arguing that Biden’s statements indicate that the reality that NATO cannot win is apparent to some in Washington.

After the initial presentations, Helga Zepp-LaRouche responded to the various views presented, by noting that she was not surprised by the remarks made by Ritter and Delawarde, given that she has heard similar views by the Russian leadership. However, she stressed that any escalation in the situation could lead to the deployment of nuclear weapons, and that there was no chance for “limited nuclear war,” as some in the West have argued. Zepp-LaRouche argued that the only way forward requires the “coincidence of opposites” approach that takes into consideration the needs of humanity as a whole. We don’t need to win over the Pope, we need to recruit the people of the U.S., Europe, and the Global South to see they are a part of one humanity, and stressed that the solution lies on a different plane than the one presented, as Albert Einstein had said about how to solve seemingly intractable problems.

In the ensuing discussion and Q&A session, the panel took up various aspects of the root of the crisis, with a large portion of that discussion focusing on the cultural decay of the West, which Delawarde referred to as “woke-ism” today. Zepp-LaRouche said that she had written The Hitler Book (1984) as a project to find out what had happened to Germany, given that history books always stopped at World War I. She referred to the work of the CIA-controlled “Congress for Cultural Freedom” (founded in 1950) which attacked Classical culture in Germany, and the West in general, laying the groundwork for dumbing down the population, resulting in the political apathy now seen in the West. McGovern then said that the economic policies of the elite are a revival of colonialism and asked if the elites would bring down the walls, like Samson, to maintain their power.

Zepp-LaRouche ended the program by referring to the immense danger the world now faces. She argued that while some say only a military solution will work, she is committed to creating a massive mobilization to find other options. The only solution that will work is rooted in her call for a new development and security architecture, similar in principle to proposals which Chinese President Xi Jinping has also issued. Zepp-LaRouche called on people to join the mobilization as we drive towards the upcoming Schiller Institute conferences.