EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY FEBRUARY 2, 2023

Many Now Warn of Nuclear War; Few Provide a Solution

Feb. 1, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—What passes for strategic thinking in the trans-Atlantic policy Establishment has about as much merit, and morality, as the drug policy just adopted by His Majesty King Charles’s government in British Columbia, Canada: simply legalize “personal doses” of all drugs—heroin, fentanyl, cocaine, you name it—and be done with it. Carolyn Bennett, Canada’s federal minister of mental health and addictions, praised the move as “a monumental shift in drug policy that favors fostering trusting and supportive relationships in health and social services over further criminalization.”

What that is going to mean is that, instead of 1 person in 100 dying of overdoses of illegal drugs, you’ll have 10 in 100 dying of overdoses of legal drugs. Progress—as far as the British Malthusians are concerned.

Now turn to the bigger strategic picture. What we’re hearing from the British government and many in Washington on how to deal with Russia and the looming danger of nuclear war, is a variant of the old saw about how to cook a frog: If you try to throw it in boiling water, it’ll jump right out. Put it in cold water and then gradually increase the temperature until the water is boiling, and the frog will procrastinate until it is cooked. So, the line from London goes like this: “Russia always claims the West is crossing their red lines, but they never act on it—it’s all a bluff. We sent Abrams and Leopard tanks, and they didn’t respond. Next we’ll send F-16 fighter jets, and they won’t respond. Then we will urge Ukraine to attack Crimea and, you’ll see, they won’t respond. There’s no real danger of a nuclear war.”

And so, we have former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson telling an Atlantic Council audience today: “We should provide the weapons they (Ukraine) need, including fighter jets, missiles, etc. ... There are no conceivable grounds for delay.” The head of Ukrainian military intelligence Maj. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov, dismissed the idea of Russia using nuclear weapons, even if their territory (Crimea) is attacked, saying “it’s a scare tactic.... Sorry, but it’s not going to happen. Carrying out a nuclear strike will result in not just a military defeat for Russia but the collapse of Russia.” And Christopher Heusgen, the former Security and Foreign Policy adviser to then German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and currently the head of the Munich Security Conference, also urged that fighter jets be sent to Kiev, arguing that there’s no risk because Russia will never use nuclear weapons.

Some in the British policy Establishment are even prepared to openly declare war on Russia, in the conviction that they won’t dare respond. The head of the U.K. Defense Committee of the House of Commons, Tobias Ellwood, pronounced on Jan. 30: “We are now at war in Europe, we need to move to a war footing.... We need to face Russia directly rather than leaving Ukraine to do all the work.”

The psychosis may be widespread in the West, but fortunately it is not universal. Consider the latest remarks of Pierre de Gaulle, the grandson of France’s famous ex-President, General Charles de Gaulle, who warned that sending “ever more powerful weapons, and weapons of greater range” to Ukraine has raised the risk of World War III. “This is the abyss on the edge of which we are standing,” de Gaulle stated; “the time is ripe to make peace, to reason with the Americans and to reach a stable, firm and lasting peace with Russia ... (for which) it is necessary to provide Russia with serious guarantees.”

Global leadership is also coming from Brazilian President Lula, who has called for a “club” of nations—such as China, India, Indonesia and Brazil—to help broker a peace deal in Ukraine. This is a proposal, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche emphasized today, that is fully complementary to the offer by Pope Francis for the Vatican to serve as a venue for negotiations, with no preconditions.

“All of the forces who are fighting for a peaceful solution,” Zepp-LaRouche stated in her weekly webcast, “should get together. There should not be competition among them because, between the initiative of President Lula and the Pope and also what President Erdogan is doing from Türkiye, these should all be lasered into one effort to try to stop this war.”

Zepp-LaRouche also pointed to the significance of Pope Francis’s current trip to the Democratic Republic of the Congo—currently number one in the world for the number of people (24 million) suffering poverty—where he condemned “the forgotten genocide” that has taken place in that country over the past 30 years, and “terrible forms of exploitation, unworthy of humanity.” The Pope then warned the modern neo-colonial looters: “Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Hands off Africa! Stop choking Africa: It is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered.” Instead, he told the people of the D.R.C.: “You, all of you, are infinitely more precious than any treasure found in this fruitful soil.”

Zepp-LaRouche presented the broad significance of these developments in her weekly webcast: “There is an epochal change underway, and that is that the countries of the Global South are fighting against the old colonialism, and they are not intending to participate in the old games of the geopolitical forces of the West.” She added: “If you don’t address the larger picture, what is wrong with our present international order, I don’t think you can solve the problem fundamentally. Which is why I have proposed a new global security and development architecture, and 10 underlying principles on which it must be based,” as the required solution. This will be the central agenda of the Feb. 4 international conference of the Schiller Institute.