EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR WEDNESDAY JANUARY 25, 2023
Negotiate As If All Life Depends On It
Jan. 24, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Under enormous pressure from the U.S. and other NATO members, Germany has made a decision that dramatically heightens the danger of the rapid, irreversible expansion of the conflict currently geographically centered on Ukraine. Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany has relented to demands, and will send its Leopard 2 battle tanks to Ukraine, and allow other nations to export Leopard 2 tanks in their possession as well. By providing these to a regime that seeks the conquest of Crimea, Germany is once again loosing its tanks upon Russia. Could Russia possibly fail to respond?
Fyodor Lukyanov, the research director of the Valdai International Discussion Club, told TASS that Russia will not only threaten to retaliate, but will actually do so. “Strikes on supply routes and warehouses will follow. If we continue to condone such supplies, then the last fears in the West will disappear: ‘What’s the point of being cautious, if Russia does not retaliate?’ ”
Boris Johnson was just in Kiev, keeping the locals in line and pushing the narrative that Russia will chicken out, that it would not use its nuclear arsenal to defend itself against the dismemberment of its sovereign territory. Recall the RUSI policy proposal to use a threatened showdown over Crimea to force Russia to back down and surrender.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius reiterated on Jan. 24 that “NATO should not become a party to the war.” It’s becoming too late for that.
Not content with a world in which the U.S. is confronting only one major nuclear power, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is reportedly planning to visit Taiwan this spring, with the Pentagon already making preparations for the necessary logistics. Such a visit would meet a Chinese response at least as strong as that which came with Nancy Pelosi’s Aug. 2-3, 2022 descent, at which time China engaged in “massive military drills around the island of Taiwan, including a long-range live fire drill in the Taiwan Straits,” reported Global Times, and instituted bans on the import of certain goods from Taiwan.
It is in this context that the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists updated its Doomsday Clock for 2023, setting it now at 90 seconds to midnight—10 seconds closer than last year’s 100 seconds—and, by its own account, “the closest to global catastrophe it has ever been.”
In light of the 2022 announcement, Helga Zepp-LaRouche had issued a statement on Feb. 6, titled, “100 Seconds to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock: We Need a New Security Architecture!” Zepp-LaRouche began by noting that the five nuclear weapons powers, that are also the permanent members of the UN Security Council, had just affirmed that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” in a joint statement on Jan. 3, 2022. She then said that the U.S. Strategic Command, nonetheless, launched their Global Lightning exercise, designed to test the readiness of U.S. nuclear forces, only a few weeks after that joint statement at the United Nations. That exercise was supposed to simulate an “extended” nuclear war, prompting Helga Zepp-LaRouche to ask:
“Who would be able to survive such a prolonged nuclear war? The few people who can nest in deep underground bunkers? It makes the morbid fantasies of Dr. Strangelove look like a child’s birthday party.”
In her statement, Zepp-LaRouche said that these nuclear exercises were not directed solely at Russia, but at China as well. She referred to the fact that on Feb. 4, 2022 Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping had just issued their “Joint Declaration of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on International Relations Entering a New Era and Global Sustainable Development,” which she described as calling for “replacing geopolitical confrontation with economic cooperation as the basis for a common security policy.”
Zepp-LaRouche concluded her 2022 statement by calling for the creation of “an international security architecture that encompasses the security interests of all states on Earth,” based on the “principles of the Peace of Westphalia.”
While the group behind the Doomsday Clock lays responsibility for the conflict almost entirely on Russia, it does call for negotiations: “Finding a path to serious peace negotiations could go a long way toward reducing the risk of escalation. In this time of unprecedented global danger, concerted action is required, and every second counts.”
Indeed, every second counts, but the only path forward now is the adoption of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Ten Principles for a New International Security and Development Architecture.
Join the Schiller Institute’s February 4 conference, “The Age of Reason or the Annihilation of Humanity?” and review Zepp-LaRouche’s 2022 statement.
