EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR SATURDAY FEBRUARY 25, 2023

China Takes World Leadership for Peace Through Development

Feb. 24, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716), the founder of the science of physical economy and the true inspiration for the American Revolution, would have been delighted with yesterday’s announcement: The twelve-point proposal by the government of China, called “China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis,” is a substantial step, by the most powerful economy in the world, toward a dialogue for durable international peace. It is a powerful intellectual contribution to what has been offered by the Vatican and Pope Francis, and by the nation of Brazil. Congruent in all essential respects with Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Ten Principles for a New Strategic and Development Architecture, it is a product, not of geopolitical scheming, but of something far deeper, a quality of thought and culture that Leibniz identified and described in 1697:

“Indeed, it is difficult to describe how beautifully all the laws of the Chinese, in contrast to those of other peoples, are directed to the achievement of public tranquility and the establishment of social order, so that men shall be disrupted in their relations as little as possible. Certainly by their own doing men suffer the greatest evils and in turn inflict them upon each other.... What harm, then, if some nation has found a remedy (for these evils)? Certainly, the Chinese above all others have attained a higher standard.... So great is obedience towards superiors and reverence toward elders, so religious, almost, is the relation of children toward parents, that, for children to contrive anything violent against their parents, even by word, is almost unheard of, and the perpetrator seems to atone for his actions.... Moreover, there is among equals, or those having little obligation to one another, a marvelous respect, and an established order of duties. To us, not enough accustomed to act by reason, and rule, this smacks of servitude; yet among them, where these duties are made natural by use, they are observed gladly.” [Writings on China]

The cultural determinants of a different language culture and nation’s approach to policymaking can sometimes produce, as from the outside, an ability for humanity to see a solution to an apparently insoluble problem in a completely different way, than others are able, or choose to see it. As with solving the problem of doubling the square, posed by Socrates in Plato’s Meno dialogue, once the solution is discovered, it is “completely obvious,” where moments before, it was “completely insoluble.”

For the Anglosphere to emerge out of its seemingly inevitable and unstoppable drive to thermonuclear war, blamed on everyone and everything but itself—as with the Nord Stream pipeline affair—see ourselves, for a moment, as billions around the world, that are not members of the trans-Atlantic “golden billion,” must not only see, but experience us. The systematic murder of nations, called foreign policy; the predatory murder of families, livelihoods and skilled advanced labor, called financial policy; the murder of childhood and imagination called “entertainment culture”; the murder of cognition and creativity called “drug policy” and “educational reform”; the murder of free thought called “cancel culture”; the murder of conscience called “sanctions policy,” all stem from the same culturally-determined terminal disease—that there are too many people, they are a dirty carbon footprint and blight on the Earth, that they do not have the right, “regrettably,” to develop, that someone must be the park ranger for the human race “to save the planet,” because, as the Club of Rome said in 2001, “the real enemy is humanity itself.” “Humanity,” meaning those of Africa, Asia and South America too unenlightened to accept the goal of voluntarily reducing their populations, must be led by the “burdened but responsible” Anglosphere into warfare, even thermonuclear warfare, if “the rule of law” is to prevail over the chaos of the “jungle” that EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warns about is to be kept at bay: “Europe is a garden. We have built a garden.... The rest of the world—and you know this very well, Federica [Mogherini]—is not exactly a garden. Most of the rest of the world is a jungle, and the jungle could invade the garden.”

To this characterization, and the resultant policies, the non-European world has, if sometimes mutely, said, “No, thank you.” Up until now, that is. Section Two of China’s Ukraine proposal says: “The security of a country should not be pursued at the expense of others. The security of a region should not be achieved by strengthening or expanding military blocs. Legitimate security interests, and concerns of all countries must be taken seriously and addressed properly. There is no simple solution to a complex issue. All parties should, following the vision of common, comprehensive, cooperative and sustainable security and bearing in mind the long-term peace and stability of the world, help forge a balanced, effective and sustainable European security architecture. All parties should oppose the pursuit of one’s own security at the cost of others’ security, prevent bloc confrontation, and work together for peace and stability on the Eurasian continent.”

China has proposed that no efficient peace policy can be formulated which does not start from the standpoint of humanity as a whole. China has thus found a sublime way to reverse the policy, premise and practice of “Chinese exclusion” that has been an unspoken axiom of Anglosphere geopolitical practice since the time of the century of humiliation (1839-1949.) Rather than being rageful, or proposing vengeance, or reparations, China’s Xi Jinping has, with multiple proposals, including the Global Development Initiative, the Global Health Initiative and the Global Security Initiative, proposed particular, but universal solutions, as in yesterday’s “China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis” proposal. China has out-thought not only its enemies, but the true enemies of humanity in general, for thermonuclear war, and anyone that attempts it, is the enemy of us all.

China has become the most productive economy on Earth because it has had the courage to change its axioms. Now it has acted courageously to change the axioms of others. The derision with which its proposal has been met, as with the response to the Seymour Hersh exposé of the truth of the Nord Stream bombing, is proof of its effectiveness; several European “gardeners,” and American knuckle-draggers have denounced it, some without even reading it. China’s peace proposal, however, speaks not only to, but for, perhaps 5 billions of the world’s population, perhaps more, and clearly for the majority of humanity which has decided to vacate the Roman arena of Anglo-American military adventurism. No one wants to buy a ticket to that gladiatorial death show any longer.

So, refusing to wait or ask the permission of Europe or the United States, China, the most productive economy on Earth, has stepped into a world-civilizing role, in defiance of the morally senile “Global Britain” and its silly but Lethal Calibans of the United States State Department, the “rude and crude brood” of Sullivans, Prices, and Nulands, “the mad bombers of Foggy Bottom.” The work of Seymour Hersh, and of other Americans involved, as a national arm of the International Schiller Institute in the recent rallies, symposia and interventions, can burst the bubble of cluelessness that, if lifted from the heads of the populations of the trans-Atlantic sector and particularly the United States, can allow truth, temporarily crushed to Earth in that nation, to rise again. This weekend, in many cities of Germany, France, and other nations, the message will be heard: NATO must be dissolved, and a new just international security and development architecture must supplant it, if humanity is to not merely survive, but prosper, in what Leibniz not only proposed, but knew to be this “best of all possible worlds.”