EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR WEDNESDAY MARCH 29, 2023

The Trans-Atlantic Must Shift Radically

March 28, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The United States is hosting its second “Submit for Democracy” event, drawing ridicule for the composition of its guest list, the overwhelming hypocrisy permeating the discussions, and the wild contortions required to present the word “democracy” as meaning, in the words of Lewis Carroll in his Through the Looking Glass, “just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.” Samantha Power will lecture attendees on the “rule of law.” Antony Blinken will hold an event with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to explain why the war must go on (expressing this sentiment through the rejection of any actual means of achieving peace). Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco spoke about efforts to prevent the more than 100 million U.S. users of TikTok from continuing to communicate via the platform. An event on the internet will claim that democracies must “stand against the misuse of technology to repress, control, divide, and disenfranchise”—as the Twitter Files have shown the U.S. to have done. The Netherlands, a member of the European Union that has banned Russian media RT and Sputnik, will lead an event on how “freedom of expression and media freedom are a precondition for a well-functioning democracy and a free society.”

Meanwhile, the annual Boao Forum for Asia is taking place over March 28-31 in China’s lush Hainan province, fully open for the first time since the pre-Covid meeting four years ago. Some 2,000 attendees have come from 50 countries, including the 29 nations that officially convene the event. Australia’s assistant trade minister is attending, in the first visit of an Australian minister since 2016. The prime ministers of Singapore, Malaysia, Spain and Côte d’Ivoire are all present by invitation. Today’s event focused on industry, entrepreneurship, and the Belt and Road Initiative. Over the coming few days, economic development, health cooperation, global energy supplies, and geopolitics are on the agenda.

Forty U.S. Syria “experts,” including former government officials, have penned a letter warning of the terrors that may ensue from the flurry of increasing diplomatic recognition of and engagement with Syria in West Asia. Such normalization “erodes the international community’s capacity to shape a political process aimed at meaningfully resolving the crisis,” they lament, as they recognize that their ambition of imposing a new government on Syria is faltering.

The old system no longer works, and the Global Majority sees too many new opportunities to desire to maintain an allegiance to what has become a rotten trans-Atlantic policy consensus. We see an awareness of this within the trans-Atlantic world as well, in the sustained French protests and city-state of Berlin’s rejection of a suicidal green policy.

As nuclear World War III looms, the United States and other NATO nations must radically shift their course, for the sake of peace and the survival of mankind.

Build for the Schiller Institute’s April 15-16 conference “Without the Development of All Nations, There Can Be No Lasting Peace for the Planet.”