EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY JANUARY 19, 2023

‘Fostering Cooperation in a Fragmented World’

Jan. 18, 2023, 202 (EIRNS)—That is the headline which China’s CGTN placed on a 14-minute video commentary by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche, posted on Jan. 18 both to news.cgtn.com and also to the CGTN YouTube channel, which has nearly 3 million subscribers worldwide.

In her remarks, Zepp-LaRouche stated:

“While it is very difficult to predict the exact time when the systemic crisis of the neoliberal system will come to a head, it cannot be excluded that the decision to have a complete reorganization of the international financial system could force itself on the agenda in this year of 2023.” She continued: “I think it is therefore quite possible that in the course of 2023 the financial crisis erupts even more dramatically, and that that will be the right moment to put the combination of the Global Security Initiative and the Global Development Initiative [proposed by China’s President Xi Jinping] on the international agenda.”

The week’s events serve to underscore the urgency of the moment described by Zepp-LaRouche. The World Economic Forum has been meeting all week in Davos, Switzerland to hand down the bankers’ marching orders of looting and war to the West’s financial and political Establishment. One of their central messages is the need to provide Ukraine with all of the heavy weapons and other aid needed to ensure a perpetual NATO-led meatgrinder war against Russia—regardless of the cost to Ukraine and all of Europe, and regardless of the skyrocketing danger of triggering nuclear war.

Ukrainian President Zelenskyy addressed the meeting by video, and his wife and U.S. congressmen and Biden administration representatives were there in person to beat the bushes for all the weapons that could be lined up. Even 99-year-old Henry Kissinger sent a video calling for more weapons to be sent to Ukraine, and for Ukraine to eventually be formally admitted to NATO.

On Friday, Jan. 20, the day the WEF closes, newly-expanded Global NATO intends to lock everything in place for the next stage of their aggression against Russia and China, at the third meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group at Ramstein Air Base in Germany. There, defense leaders from nearly 50 countries will gather to receive their marching orders from London and Washington. One critical question is whether or not the German government will finally fully cave in to London and Washington’s demands that they send sophisticated heavy weapons to Ukraine. Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko—a heavyweight boxer by profession—is hopeful. He told AFP that “I hope that it [the Ramstein meeting] will be very good for Ukraine. Unofficially, I have very good and positive signals.”

Russia is both preparing militarily, and also working to organize alternatives to the collapsing Western financial system. Defense Minister Shoigu yesterday announced plans to increase the size of Russia’s standing army from 1.15 million to 1.5 million. And Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a press conference today that Russia is building economic alliances with “countries [that] are developing economically.... Look at China and India (our strategic partners), Turkiye, Brazil, Argentina, Egypt, many countries of the African continent. There, the potential for development ... is enormous. New centers of economic growth are being formed.” Lavrov added: “Within the framework of our contacts through the SCO, BRICS, CIS, EAEU, in cooperation with the associations of Asia, Africa, Latin America, we are trying in every possible way to build new forms of interaction....”

Zepp-LaRouche’s CGTN commentary provided a detailed programmatic roadmap of how to build such “new forms of interaction,” a new international development and security architecture. The Schiller Institute founder concluded by emphasizing the need for a fundamental paradigm shift:

“A great vision is required on how a solution can be put on the table which addresses all the major problems together.... I think that we have reached a point in the history of mankind where we really must get serious about the international order of relations among nations and how we can organize them in such a way that we can self-govern as a species which is gifted with creative reason.”