ON EARTH AND IN SPACE

Law of the Jungle or Law of Nations:
Where is the World Heading?

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

[Print version of this article]

Aug. 22—We are now seeing a multitude of events which—seemingly independent of one another—together are creating the dynamics, the ambience, of a prewar period. The crucial question is whether the human species has the moral resources within itself to abandon its current path in international politics, before it inevitably leads to a new world war.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is clearly on the warpath, and certainly believes that the “will to power” will be sufficient to lure all other nations into a confrontation against Russia and China including, if need be, through the extraterritorial application of U.S. sanctions against Iran and all countries that do not give in to Pompeo’s projection of U.S. arbitrariness. It’s really quite astonishing: Last week the UN Security Council rejected a U.S. resolution to reinstate sanctions against Iran under a clause of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). Russia and China voted against, France, Germany, Great Britain, and eight other states abstained. Only the USA and the Dominican Republic voted for it. The case was thus clear-cut.

But that did not prevent Pompeo from submitting a letter to the UN Security Council one week later, expressing his expectation that the sanctions against Iran, and all states that have trade relations of any kind with Iran, will automatically come into force again after 30 days, affecting primarily Russia and China, but also European and other states. The foreign ministries of Russia and China made it clear in their comments that Pompeo’s notions are absurd, in view of the fact that the JCPOA treaty was put into effect by UN Resolution 2231 and is therefore applicable international law, while the U.S. unilaterally withdrew from this treaty on May 8, 2018.

To invoke a treaty from which one has withdrawn, indeed expresses an alarming degree of delusion. The Foreign Ministers of France, Germany and Great Britain also indicated that they found Pompeo’s push to be incompatible with their own support for the JCPOA treaty. Pompeo’s argument that Iran failed to adhere to the agreed terms of the nuclear deal is also transparent, for the whole world knows that Iran only began to increase its reserves of enriched uranium in response to the American exit. Pompeo’s triumphant remarks in an interview on August 19 with Special Report correspondent Bret Baier, that Iran is no longer able to buy Russian air defense systems and Chinese tanks, makes it clear the real purpose is confrontation with Russia and China.

While President Trump has repeatedly emphasized and demonstrated that he actually wants to improve relations with Russia and work out a new nuclear disarmament agreement, Pompeo’s policy towards Iran is identical to that of Trump’s dismissed security advisor, John Bolton, about whom Trump had recently tweeted, “If I had listened to him, we would be in World War Six by now.” There are good reasons to believe that World War Six will not happen, because humanity would in all likelihood not survive the Third.

Trump’s Anti-War Intentions

Regarding Trump’s intended withdrawal of U.S. troops from Syria, which the Pentagon had repeatedly, skillfully obstructed, Trump had repeatedly complained that he was an “island of one” with regard to this intention—that is, that he was completely alone in this policy. He is President, but his policies have been largely undermined by ongoing coup attempts since before he assumed office in January 2017, and by the collusion of the secret service structures with the British secret service, from the time of the Bush and Obama administrations.

Anyone who heard the appalling speech at the Democratic National Convention by former U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell—who, according to his closest associates in 2003, knew that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction when he gave his infamous speech at the UN—would become uncomfortable recalling the policy of the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower warned against at the end of his term: endless wars of intervention, confrontation with Russia, and now the attempt to contain a rising China.

That this geopolitically motivated policy of confrontation is to be continued even into space, was made clear in the remarks of the new commander of the U.S. Space Command, Army General James Dickinson, who declared in an August 20 ceremony on the occasion of his installation:

To be clear, our objective is to deter a conflict from beginning in, or extending to space and to enable our nation to compete in space from a position of strength. However, should deterrence fail, our imperative is clear: we will win. To do so, we will require a space warfighting culture that permeates our entire command....

My pledge to you is that my focus as the commander will be on developing, nurturing, and embracing a space warfighting culture.

So an area in which the common goals of humanity—such as the development of outer space—could be realized, and in which a new era of cooperation of all nations could begin, is to be poisoned by the same Cold War mentality that is already poisoning international relations!

The Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), a department in the U.S. Department of Defense whose job it is to make technological innovations in the civil sector available to the U.S. military as quickly as possible, has just published a report, “State of the Space Industrial Base Report 2020,” in which the objective was clearly defined: The Moon and space travel in general belong to the domain of American dominance, and China in particular should be prevented from defining international rules for the presence of mankind in space.

The Space Portfolio Director at the DIU, Brigadier General Steven Butow, specified precisely what that means:

As space activities expand beyond geosynchronous orbit, the first nation to establish transportation infrastructure and logistics capabilities serving GEO (geosynchronous equatorial orbit) and cislunar space will have superior ability to exercise control of cislunar space and in particular the Lagrange points and the resources of the Moon.

The control of hydrogen and oxygen as fuel is the key to the commercial use of space, and that’s where the U.S. could use public-private partnerships to its advantage, Gen. Butow said.

The Interests of All Humanity

If history can teach us one thing, it is that only actual peace treaties that take into account the interests of all parties, such as the Peace of Westphalia, lead to peace, while treaties based on the geopolitical subjection of the enemy, such as for example the Versailles Treaty, lead to new wars. For example, if there is to be a lasting peace in Southwest Asia, then it must take into account the security interests of Iran as well as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians. And this period of barbarism can be overcome only if all of this region’s major neighbors, such as Russia, China and India, and of course the USA and the European states, cooperate in the economic development of the countries that have been destroyed by senseless and endless wars that have cost millions of lives.

The idea of a “culture of space warfare” is just perverse. It is the projection of narrow-minded geopolitics—that caused two world wars and endless suffering in the 20th century—into space and into the future of humanity. What visionary minds like Hermann Oberth, Krafft Ehricke and Lyndon LaRouche saw as the “extraterrestrial imperative,” as the chance of transforming humanity to a higher level of culture—in which scientists and astronauts of all nations and cultures jointly explore and overcome the great unknown, the challenges of the universe—is subjected to the same depraved logic of profit that has brought the world to the brink of the abyss, where we stand today.

Maria Zakharova, spokeswoman for the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in reaction to the publication of the U.S. space doctrine, said that the clearly aggressive orientation of American space policy shows the intention to achieve total dominance in space, whereas peaceful exploration of space remains a priority for Russia, and an arms race in space must be prevented. The talks of the Russian-American space working group that began in Vienna on July 27 confirmed Russia’s readiness to discuss all topics of space activities in this bilateral format.

While negotiations and diplomatic initiatives are enormously important, what is existentially necessary is the grand vision of how humanity can move from the current state of barbarism into a new era of an inspiring renaissance of great ideas worthy of humanity. The idea of an international lunar village, an international city on Mars, and joint interstellar space travel throughout our galaxy, and at some point beyond our galaxy—this is not for small-minded people, but for the Mahatmas of history.

zepp-larouche@eir.de, Twitter: @ZeppLaRouche