EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR SUNDAY MAY 28, 2023

What Kind of Peace Do We Seek?

May 27, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The one thing you can’t accuse the Russian government of is engaging in subtle diplomacy, with nuanced, hard-to-interpret signals. Consider the urgent warnings and messages delivered over the last 48 hours, all of which have been blithely ignored by Washington and London, and all of which have been blacked out of the major media so that most Americans remain totally ignorant and in a strategic stupor over this Memorial Day weekend—a holiday meant to commemorate those lost in earlier wars—while the clouds of a third, nuclear world war hang darkly over the planet today.

• Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu met on Friday, May 26 with his Belarussian counterpart to work through the specifics of the deployment of Russian tactical nuclear weapons in that country, and stated: “In the circumstances of an extremely sharp escalation of threats and activity of NATO joint nuclear missions, we are compelled to take retaliatory measures in the military-nuclear sphere.” He specifically mentioned “joint ‘nuclear missions’ of NATO countries in Eastern Europe,” including testing the use of nuclear weapon delivery vehicles and improving the U.S. global missile defense system.

• That same day, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a TV interviewer that Washington is “preparing to bring the world to the very brink of World War III” in its confrontation with Russia, accusing the U.S. of thinking falsely that “its self-preservation is ensured by the Atlantic Ocean.”

• And also on Friday, May 26, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued a statement mooting the possibility of breaking diplomatic relations with the U.K. over reports of direct British military involvement in cross-border attacks against Russia. The same statement reported that U.S. diplomats had also been summoned to file a “strong protest” over the “provocative statements” and “unacceptable remarks” by U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, who had made comments giving Ukraine a de facto green light to launch strikes against Russian territory, including Crimea.

Those Russian views of the current situation—whether right or wrong—are strategic factors in their own right, coming as they do from the world’s greatest nuclear power involved in a major conflict with the U.S., and any half-sane American government would take them with the utmost seriousness, factor them in, and address the issues with the Russians. It’s what John Kennedy would have done... and did.

All the more so when what the Russians are warning about is right on the mark. As EIR and the LaRouche movement have thoroughly documented, there is a London-led operational plan underway to provoke a “Crimean Missile Crisis” with Russia, with the publicly stated goal of using threatened, or actual, thermonuclear war to force the Russians to back down.

In addition to its utter moral insanity, this London-Washington policy is running into a series of major obstacles:

1) Their trans-Atlantic financial system is thoroughly bankrupt, and is blowing apart at the seams.

2) The vast majority of the “Global South,” comprising some 85% of the world’s population, has refused to go along with the U.S.-U.K.-NATO wars against Russia and China, the deadly economic sanctions, and the overall speculative and looting policies of the City of London and Wall Street. They are refusing to go down with the sinking financial Titanic.

3) There are growing circles in the United States and Western Europe who are waking up to the imminent danger of nuclear war, and are casting about for answers. Although many do not yet know it, theirs is the voice of President John F. Kennedy, and his historic American University speech of June 10, 1963, in which he too asked:

“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.”

Add your voice: Urgent Appeal by Citizens and Institutions from All Over the World to the (Next) President of the United States!