EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR FRIDAY MAY 19, 2023

JFK vs. Dr. Strangelove

May 18, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—Italy is finally committing to the Messina Bridge, linking Sicily with mainland Italy with the longest single-span suspended bridge in the world. Russia just produced the largest grain harvest in its history. Today, China’s President Xi Jinping just had five bilateral summit meetings in one day, with the heads of state of the Central Asia Republics. They were meeting in the original Silk Road city of Xi’an. In every one of the meetings, Global Times reports, the central topic was the Belt and Road centerpiece of massive infrastructure projects.

Ten years ago, when Xi began his Presidency, he introduced his Belt and Road policy in a speech in Kazakhstan. It had grown out of China’s experience in bringing, at that time, over 700 million Chinese out of extreme poverty, over the preceding three decades.

Ten years ago, Ukraine’s elected President Viktor Yanukovych travelled to Beijing to meet with Xi Jinping and sign initial contracts with the Belt and Road projects. His government was overthrown in a violent coup within three months.

Yesterday, Ukrinform, Ukraine’s National News Agency, featured the bizarre announcement to the West that May 16 was a turning point in history, which Kiev proved by shooting down six of Russia’s hypersonic Kinzhal missiles fired at it, that Russia is a paper tiger, that Russia has no weapons to be afraid of, and that, “Gunga-din!” it is the moment to charge at Russia with every thing the West has. “So if anyone in the Western world was still afraid of Russian weapons, now they should finally realize that there is nothing to be afraid of. And if anyone in the United States still doubted whether to give Ukraine the latest weapons, they have also received an answer,” they quoted an economist as saying.

Ukrinform ran with this lead, even though the U.S. had quietly signalled Kiev that they understood the Kinzhal indeed had hit their Patriot anti-missile system in Kiev.

If that were not bad enough, the economist ends his remarks by explaining to Ukraine’s money-obsessed Western “allies” how much can be made by using Ukraine as the testing ground: “Each delivery of several billion dollars worth of weapons to Ukraine will bring hundreds of billions of dollars worth of orders for American arms corporations in the future. European manufacturers also see this. And so they are also motivated to push their government to provide Ukraine with more and more modern weapons. Which will destroy the remaining myths about the power of Russian weapons.”

Just because Kiev is volunteering to play Slim Pickens doesn’t mean the U.S. has to be Dr. Strangelove. The timely call by the Schiller Institute features John F. Kennedy’s famous June 10, 1963 American University commencement speech, as a reminder of what an American President can be one “who can see the best tradition in every nation, including Russia and China, as the basis for mutual trust and the basis for peace.” JFK confronted the original Dr. Strangelove, a young, berserker Henry Kissinger, and his associates, and rose to the occasion:

“What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on Earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women—not merely peace in our time but peace for all time.”