EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR MONDAY JUNE 26, 2023

Treat History as Science—Not ‘The Sport of Destiny’

June 25, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—“Those who look only at trees, and cannot see the forest, will give birth to a generation of saplings.” It is most important, as the past 72 hours of current history have shown, to, in this rapidly changing circumstance, “not be caught below the level of events,” as the late Schiller Institute founding member and thinker, Fred Wills, used to say. Several “analysts,” including Stephen Hall, current head of Russia Operations at the CIA, spouted off yesterday, hopefully, manically, about the imminent demise of Vladimir Putin. “In my view, if the siloviki—the senior intelligence, security and military folks—make the assessment that OK, this has gotten too crazy, then Putin’s done.”

We should avoid foolishness, as should, also, Hall and other dim denizens of the State Department. In fact, the circumstance may be precisely the opposite of what Hall has said, or it may be entirely different. The occurrences of the past 72 hours cannot be evaluated as though they were a “team sports” event. Any intelligence assessment that does not, for example, take into consideration the significance of the February 4, 2022 “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era” in evaluating what has transpired over the past 72 hours, will misestimate the international terrain—not the “geopolitical” terrain, but the ideational terrain—in which these developments are playing out.

We illustrate. In Section Three of that document, it reads: “3: The sides reaffirm their strong, mutual support for the protection of their core interests, state sovereignty and territorial integrity, and oppose interference by external forces in their internal affairs. The Russian side reaffirms its support for the One-China principle, confirms that Taiwan is an inalienable part of China, and opposes any forms of independence of Taiwan. Russia and China stand against attempts by external forces to undermine security and stability in their common adjacent regions, intend to counter interference by outside forces in the internal affairs of sovereign countries under any pretext, oppose color revolutions, and will increase cooperation in the aforementioned areas.... “ How might such policy-considerations as these figure in what transpires between Russia and China, in the next days and weeks? How might that affect other nations? Not taking this into account, puts one in the category of “amateur hour” in today’s cauldron of current history.

In a brief discussion with Helga Zepp-LaRouche yesterday, she emphasized that “current events” including those unfolding in Russia in the past 72 hours, are mere footprints that express the earth-shaking nature of the period of turbulence and instability into which the world has entered. What dramatic shifts might be expected to occur in the trans-Atlantic world, for example, were the international monetary system to collapse in the next days or weeks—as it well might—in the middle of the mad attempt to destabilize Russia that is presently underway? Could that provoke the Anglosphere to launch or escalate to thermonuclear war? Were another epidemic, perhaps even more virulent than that of 2020-2022, to arise in one of the many nations being destabilized worldwide, are we in better, or worse shape to confront it, than we were three years ago?

Humanity truly hangs by a slender thread, and that thread is cooperation of the entire human race for the promotion of the General Welfare of all of us, and of posterity. That is the substance of the Zepp-LaRouche Ten Principles for a New International Security and Development Architecture and the several subsequent initiatives taken over the past year derived from that proposal. The latest of those initiatives, the International Peace Coalition, is now launching a six-week mobilization, in the aftermath of the Schiller Institute’s successful campaign to place American President John F. Kennedy’s American University “Peace Speech” into wide circulation and discussion. His nephew Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. last week in New Hampshire opposed the present U.S. policy in Ukraine in the name of that very speech, which he referred to as “the most important speech my uncle ever gave.”

In “History As Science: America 2000,” composed in prison in 1993, Lyndon LaRouche said: “The tradewinds of policy-shaping have been blowing in the wrong direction too long. They are blowing stronger than at any time since the eve of the last great war in Europe. Could such stubborn trends be changed so late in the voyage? That is the reason to fear; that is the source of our danger.

“What are the means for bringing about such an early and rapid reversal of decades-old trends in public opinion? That question, posed in these terms, should point us to a subject-matter best described as the science of history. Pagan Rome rotted into moral self-extinction when the fans of the sports arena became the political parties of government, just as the sterile fanaticism of televised mass-spectator sports rots out the political morality of U.S. public opinion today. Such specific, culturally determining factors are among the leading topics of today’s urgently needed, applied science of history.”

Those inspired by LaRouche to become involved, as a profession, in the practice of changing history, know that Tragedy is not the inevitable result of unforeseeable circumstances, but the failure to courageously look within, and discover that “insight” required to reverse that which only seemed inevitable, to solve what only seemed insoluble. “Our problems are manmade—therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.” The science of durable human survival demands, now, that those words of President Kennedy’s American University speech are the starting point for a choice not to be tragic, but to rather grow the insight and courage required to forecast and create the future.