EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY MARCH 9, 2023

Citizens of the World, Unite! Without the Development of All Nations, There Can Be No Lasting Peace for the Planet

March 8, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The Schiller Institute released the following Conference Invitation today:

What: Fifth international Schiller Institute conference “Stop the Danger of Nuclear War Now”

When: April 15, 2023; 10 a.m.-5 p.m. ET

Where: Zoom and YouTube, with Spanish, French, and German interpretation

A little bit more than one year after the war in Ukraine, which had in reality already started in 2014, escalated with the Russian military operation, it is very clear that the real issue is not Ukraine. It is a proxy war between the U.S., Great Britain and NATO, on the one side, and Russia on the other—with a conflict with China also looming. The real issue is that the nations of the Global South are trying to shed the colonial order, this time for good, and they have now become the Global Majority.

From the outset, the Schiller Institute has insisted in a number of conferences, beginning on April 9, 2022, that the only solution to this crisis would be the establishment of a new global security and development architecture, which takes into account the security interest of every single country on the planet. This view is shared by more and more forces in the world. The latest example of this is the Chinese 12-point proposal for peace in Ukraine, “China’s Position on the Political Settlement of the Ukraine Crisis.”

Five months ago, the Schiller Institute launched the current round of international conferences of “Political and Social Leaders of the World: Stop the Danger of Nuclear War Now” on Oct. 7, 2022, the world has changed dramatically. There is a “tectonic shift” underway in world politics, in which the nations of the Global South are rising up against the unipolar world order of wars and of deadly financial looting by Wall Street and City of London financial interests.

The center of gravity of world developments has now shifted to that Global Majority. Contrary to propaganda in the Western mass media, it is not Russia and China that are isolated. It is the policies of the West that are no longer being accepted by the majority of the world’s population. China’s 12-point peace proposal for Ukraine is now under wide discussion. It dovetails with the Pope’s offer for the Vatican to be a venue for negotiations, with no preconditions; with Brazilian President Lula’s proposal for a “peace club” of a number of nations of the South to help find a negotiated solution to the war; and with numerous other proposals internationally.

Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has welcomed the Chinese proposal, and offered her own elaboration of Ten Principles that should underlie a new international security and development architecture as a discussion document in that direction.

The fact that the Global NATO nations, led by the United Kingdom and the United States, rejected China’s peace proposal out of hand, almost before they finished reading it, exposes the fact that their actual policy, as they themselves have stated publicly, is to dismember and contain Russia and China—up to and including a nuclear showdown with those nuclear powers.

Any country that balks at going along with that unipolar policy, is now being threatened with the “Nord Stream” treatment. The coverup of responsibility in that case means that actual military attacks on civilian infrastructure are now fair game anywhere in the world.

Driving the entire war danger is the systemic breakdown crisis of the trans-Atlantic system, with its $2 quadrillion in unpayable financial assets. The policy of dramatic increases in interest rates being rammed through by the U.S. Federal Reserve means imminent bankruptcy and economic and social disintegration in the nations of the South.

This is why the fight to stop the danger of nuclear war, and the fight to end colonialism once and for all, are the same fight. They will be won together, or lost together. And if the Western powers continue on their current course, then nuclear war becomes increasingly probable. If we do not change, we shall reap what we have sown, and we will probably not even be around to tell the sorry tale to our children and grandchildren.

Today, it is abundantly clear that the security of Russia and Ukraine are indissolubly linked. Only Russia can guarantee Ukraine’s security, and Ukraine can help guarantee Russia’s, among other things by establishing its neutrality as part of a negotiated settlement to the conflict.

On Nov. 17, 2022, organizers of the “Stop the Danger of Nuclear War Now” conferences issued a Declaration and call to action, which we reaffirm at this time:

“We recognize and emphasize that Russia, like the United States, NATO, Ukraine and all countries, has legitimate security concerns which must be taken into account and become one of the cornerstones of the new security architecture. A return to the successful principles of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia—respect for sovereignty, commitment to the good of the other, and forgiveness of debts that make true economic development impossible—is the kind of architecture we seek today.

“The common good of the One Humanity is the obligatory premise for the good of each and every nation. In that way, among all the nations of the world we will be able to help build an organization of citizens in collective global action, and establish ourselves that way as a force to influence the international policy debate.

“We call on people of good will around the world—notwithstanding our diverse and natural differences—to participate in this process of deliberation and search for peaceful solutions, including a thorough examination of the alternative economic policies to replace speculation, which has generated so much poverty and suffering, with a system of production and progress to meet the needs of a growing world population.”