EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY JULY 13, 2023
An Inflection Point in History
July 12, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—We are at the end of an era, and the dawning of a new epoch for human civilization.
But we also stand at the edge of the abyss: Anglo-American NATO is unwilling to release its hegemony, and is choosing policies that will lead, inevitably, to war with Russia, China, or both. Catastrophic war. Unsurvivable war.
The humiliating weakness of the Anglo-American alliance is on full display with the disgraceful decision by the Biden administration to send cluster munitions to Ukraine. These weapons, decades old and worse for the wear, would release their “clusters” of mini-weapons, with an expected failure rate that would leave tens or hundreds of thousands of tiny explosives littering the fields of the conflict areas, making agriculture hazardous or impossible for years.
Why send weapons that are banned by a treaty signed by 120 nations (although not the U.S.)? Simple. The supposedly mighty West—whose leaders have boasted that sanctions are “crippling” Russia—can’t produce enough ammunition! There are no more normal 155mm shells available, and these cluster munition shells are compatible with the same artillery currently in use by Ukraine.
So much for claiming the mantle of moral authority in the comic-book-like battle between “democracies” and “autocracies”!
Some hope that from the conflict between the old order and the new centers of meaningful decision-making in the Global South, the latter will emerge victorious. But the true victory for humanity is a joint victory. Rather than new poles of power, a new system of relations is demanded.
Consider remarks by the Russian Foreign Minister, speaking to a publication in Indonesia, where he is attending the East Asia Summit and an ASEAN meeting:
“Western egocentrism and disregard for the interests of the Global South and Global East encourage the latter to look for alternative cooperation formats across all areas. The seizure of Russian gold and currency reserves in the United States and Europe have led the international community to realize that no one is immune from expropriation of tangible assets that are kept in Western jurisdictions.
“Everyone can see that new globally meaningful decision-making centers are strengthening their positions in Eurasia, the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America,”
the diplomat emphasized.
While “de-dollarization” is real and is happening at an increasing speed, the replacement for the internationalized Anglo-American dollar system is not the Chinese renminbi, the Russian ruble, or even gold. What is required is a commitment to a new form of relations among nations, including a transformed United States and NATO. The world is providing a wake-up call—can we rouse the sleeping morality, the slumbering potential of NATO-land?
Rather than attempts to eliminate Russia from the map, that world will witness the elimination of poverty, through increasing the productive powers of labor, throwing off the Malthusian yoke of green ideology, and investing in our nurturing, synthetic environment of higher infrastructure platforms.
See that future! The Grand Inga hydroelectric complex provides power to tens of millions of productive Africans. An updated North American Water and Power Alliance brings ample water to parched regions of the U.S. and Mexico. The Central Asian Republics see hydrological upgrades, for navigation and agriculture both. Lake Chad is refilled by the Transaqua inter-basin water transfer system. And nuclear fusion makes desalination possible on an agricultural scale. The mysteries of dark matter reveal themselves to the power of human reason; breakthroughs in biology unleash fundamental improvements in controlling infectious disease; and the hopeful sounds and sights of classical composition delight the mind, by surpassing the senses.
This is the world that future humanity demands of us, today.
