EDITORIAL

World Peace Is Hanging by a Thread
A New Security Architecture Is An Existential Issue

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche

[Print version of this editorial]

Jan. 22—After the hectic diplomacy of the past week—Annalena Baerbock, Germany’s new Minister of Foreign Affairs, met with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken in Kiev, then with the foreign ministers of the U.S., France, Great Britain, and Germany in Berlin; Blinken met with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz; and finally Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Blinken met in Geneva—the danger of a world war which could annihilate mankind has not been averted. After the latter meeting, Lavrov stated that he expected to receive a written answer from the U.S. and NATO next week regarding the legally binding security guarantees demanded by Russia, which provide that NATO will not expand further east to Russia’s borders, that Ukraine will not be admitted to NATO, and that no offensive weapons systems will be placed on the Russian border. Blinken referred to further talks with “allies and partners in the coming days,” after which Western concerns and ideas could then be shared with Russia.

No More Room for Compromise

However, if the U.S. position remains the one that Blinken told journalists after his meeting with Lavrov, as reported in RT—namely, that there is no room for compromise on Moscow’s main demand of no expansion of NATO, and that a non-negotiable principle of the U.S. and its allies is that the Ukrainian people have the right “to write their own future”—then the very short fuse threatens to burn very quickly. Indeed, the formulation used by Blinken is just a sophistical way of referring to Ukraine’s entry into NATO, a formulation that is part of the Anglo-American narrative on “Russia’s aggressions.”

But for any honest historian, as well as for anyone who looks at a map, the facts are clear: After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it was not Russia that moved its borders some 1,000 kilometers westward from the border of the then Warsaw Pact, to reach somewhere in France around Lille, but it was NATO that advanced to the east by 1000 km. Thus, it clearly broke the verbal commitments given to Gorbachov by the George H.W. Bush administration, and especially by then Secretary of State James Baker III, that NATO would not move “one inch to the east.”

A closer look shows that the methods used by NATO to add 14 new member states in Eastern and Central Europe and in the Balkans were not always the most subtle. According to the western narrative, it was the “desire for freedom” that pushed these countries into NATO, but the reality is different. After the shock therapy of Jeffrey Sachs was imposed on the former Soviet republics, and the brutal policy of privatization—with no concern for the social consequences—had drastically impoverished the populations of the former nations of COMECON (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance—the economic association of the Soviet states in eastern Europe)—a massive network of NGOs was set up with thick checkbooks, with the aim of effecting a paradigm change in favor of the West.

In 1990, prior to German reunification and during the upheavals in Eastern Europe, this author personally experienced how the first democratic attempts of self-organization by the people in the East were cold-bloodedly smothered and replaced by compliant opportunists, often enough in positions of government. “Corruption is good” became the motto in many places: “then at least we know whom we can trust.” So much for the principle of “letting peoples choose their own future.” The latest example of this just came from the—failed—attempt to bring off a color revolution in Kazakhstan, with the use of “Maidan techniques,” as Vladimir Putin correctly pointed out.

Retired German General Harald Kujat told Deutschlandfunk Radio January 18 that the movement of 100,000 Russian troops closer to the Ukraine border (although many are still hundreds of kilometers away) was not in preparation for a military attack, but rather a threatening backdrop for negotiations. If Putin is now demanding legally binding, written assurances that NATO will neither be extended further eastward to the borders of Russia, nor will it ever accept Ukraine as a member, then this is simply a way of expressing that for Russia a red line has been reached.

Given the fact that there are already 10,000 NATO troops in Ukraine, including some 4,000 U.S. troops; while private mercenary outfits are training Ukrainian military units in eastern Ukraine for false-flag operations; while the UK is supplying offensive lethal weapons to Ukraine; and while U.S. and British warships and fighter jets are provoking incidents in the Black Sea aimed at providing the reconnaissance aircraft with information about Russian military capabilities—what conclusions is Russia supposed to draw from all these and many other policies? In reality, NATO is already operating in Ukraine, but formal NATO membership would definitively confirm that it was no longer possible to defend Russia’s fundamental security interests.

Even as the above-mentioned diplomatic talks were ongoing, the British broadcaster Sky News reported that the UK had deployed 30 members of its “Special Operations Brigade” to Ukraine to train Ukrainian troops on the use of anti-tank weapons that were also being supplied by the British. According to the military spokesman for the Donetsk People’s Republic, more than 460 tons of various lethal weapons, including 2,000 NLAWs (anti-tank missiles), have recently been delivered by nine C17 aircraft to Ukrainian forces stationed on the line of contact with the Donbas—forces which include a considerable number of radical nationalists. Whether these weapons are defensive or offensive in nature depends, as always, on the specific combat situation.

Russia Proposes Security Guarantees to NATO and the U.S.

Shortly after Moscow presented the two draft treaties to the U.S. and NATO on December 17, Putin announced that Russia would respond to their rejection with “appropriate military-technical retaliatory measures.” In a Jan. 15 article in National Interest magazine, David T. Pyne, currently working for the Task Force on National and Homeland Security (a congressional advisory board), cited Brussels-based U.S. analyst Gilbert Doctorow’s interpretation of what these “military-technical retaliatory measures” might entail. Doctorow assumes that it means the additional deployment of Russian nuclear-capable SS-26 Iskander-M short-range missiles to Belarus and Kaliningrad, which would threaten NATO front-line states and eastern Germany. Moreover, the new, nuclear-armed Zirkon sea-launched hypersonic cruise missiles could be stationed off the U.S. coast near Washington. Earlier statements from Russian officials noted that such missiles could destroy the American capital faster than the President could escape on Air Force One.

Therefore, if the U.S. and NATO reject Russia’s demands for security guarantees, there is a real probability that we will have to deal very soon with a double Cuban Missile crisis, but without a John F. Kennedy as U.S. President. Rather, we have a President Biden whom the war hawks in his entourage openly refuse to respect and who “correct” him if he says he does not seek war with Russia.

It should be clear to all thinking persons that in the event of a war waged with nuclear weapons—be it “limited” or not—no one in Germany would survive. For our new Foreign Minister Baerbock, it is obviously not clear, otherwise she would not fall into NATO jargon in such a synchronized manner with “dear Tony” as she just did in the Berlin press conference with Tony Blinken. The Greens have completely morphed into a war party. And if someone begins pondering, like former Defense Minister Mrs. Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, what nuclear options there might be toward Russia, then they should seek therapy against suicidal and homicidal thoughts.

Under such circumstances, Germany’s membership in NATO can no longer be defended. We immediately need a new international security architecture that takes into account the interests of all countries, i.e., explicitly including those of Russia and China. If we have learned anything from history, it is that only those treaties that include the interests of all the states involved, such as the Treaty of Westphalia, can be the basis for lasting peace. Peace treaties that do not do so, such as the Treaty of Versailles, contain the opening salvo for the next war, as we in Germany should have painfully learned. NATO, which unnecessarily excluded Russia from the European house after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and has since increasingly become an offensive alliance, no longer corresponds to Germany’s security interests, but has become the primary threat to Germany’s existence.

We need a new security architecture that overcomes the geopolitics that was responsible for two world wars in the 20th century, and defines the common goals of mankind as its fundamental principle. This includes, first and foremost, the elimination of the primary cause of war, which is the imminent collapse of the transatlantic financial system, and the creation of a new credit system, a New Bretton Woods system, that vanquishes poverty and underdevelopment everywhere in the world.

All peace-loving people in the world are called upon to enter into an open dialogue on this issue.

zepp-larouche@eir.de