EDITORIAL

Pulling Away from the Precipice of Total War

by Dennis Speed

[Print version of this editorial]

May 26—The tyranny of popular opinion, today, says that there is no “credible” threat to the human race posed by the rampant inaction of those governed, in the United States and Europe, by a bodyguard of lies, such as that told by the United States and Great Britain about the Nord Stream Pipeline terrorist action; that there is no threat posed by the Malthusian likes of the present occupants of the throne at Buckingham Palace, or the State Department amateur hour that dominates the Presidential process now in the current Washington, D.C. Administration.

It is, however, the acceptance of the lie, that “snow is black”—“that the war in Ukraine was unprovoked by the illegal overthrow of the democratically elected government of Ukraine in February 2014, and its aftermath”—that could soon doom the entire human race. An interruption in the lies, by vigorously and publicly shouting the truth from the street corners, at county fairs, and in all public places, is the work of true service in the cause of human freedom.

Two instances involving the Schiller institute are examples of what is needed in this moment:

The Ostdeutsches Kuratorium von Verbänden (East German Advisory Board of Associations, OKV), which had organized the high-level Berlin peace conference, “Dialogue Instead of Weapons—Nonpartisan Action Against the War,” of March 27, 2023, has now published a nice paperback book, Dialogue Instead of Weapons, with 38 speeches and contributions, including those of Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who participated in the conference in her capacity as chairwoman of the BüSo (Civil Rights Movement Solidarity) political party in Germany.

In addition to that development, on May 25, the Schiller Institute participated in “The African Union at 60,” a symposium in celebration of the May 25, 1963 founding of the Organization of African Unity, a project that originated with the founders of African independence such as Kwame Nkrumah (1909-1972) of Ghana, the Senegalese physicist and historian Dr. Cheikh Anta Diop (1923-1986), and Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, assassinated by the “International Assassination Bureau” on Jan. 17, 1961, the same day that Dwight Eisenhower gave his “beware the military-industrial complex” Presidential farewell speech.

The Schiller Institute has done many other things as well, and will, in two weeks, hold a symposium on Saturday, June 10, on the 60th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s American University “Peace Speech.”

That June 10 conference, and its emphasis on the assassinated American President’s 1963 mission to save the world from thermonuclear madness, will come none too soon. The world has clearly entered the highest state of strategic destabilization since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and has, arguably, gone past that point. Where is the point of no return? When Russian intelligence officials read in the New York Times May 24 that “American spy agencies see an emerging picture of a loose confederation of Ukrainian units able to conduct limited operations inside and outside Russia, either by using their own personnel, or partners working under their direction,” followed by the not-so-subtle threat, “Some of these missions could have been conducted with little, if any, oversight from Mr. Zelensky,” what must they have concluded? The incalculable “Dr. Strangelove” war-by-miscalculation potential of the present moment becomes frightfully clear.

Mobilize Against the Insanely Irresponsible Policymakers

June 10 must be, not a commemoration, but a mobilization, preceded on Friday June 9 and, where appropriate, the morning of June 10, with “Days of Action,” in which Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Ten Principles for a New International Security and Development Architecture, and her “Urgent Appeal by Citizens and Institutions from All Over the World, Including the U.S., to the (Next) President of the United States!” [see full text below] are the focal-point documents provided for deliberation and distribution.

As forces from around the world—the Vatican, Brazil, China, six African nations led by South Africa—insist that peace is not only possible, but is indispensable to maintaining human civilization, the Schiller Institute’s proposals for a new security and development architecture are increasingly finding themselves being presented, formally and informally, in the arteries, veins, and capillaries of the body politic.

It is our job to stand on the side of voluntarism in history, not on the side of existentialist self-righteous tragic fate. The statement of Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council and former Russian President, that “If it comes to [deliveries of] nuclear weapons [to Ukraine], a preemptive strike will have to be carried out,” as reported May 24 by the Russian news agency TASS, certainly identifies the reality and the character of the insanely foolish and irresponsible behavior of the Anglosphere’s policymakers toward Russia. His assertion that, “This conflict will last for a very long time. For decades, probably. This is a new reality”—which he stated in Vietnam, of all places—unintentionally converges with another evaluation, promulgated by Victoria Nuland, U.S. Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs. At a forum of the Open Ukraine Foundation, moderated by her hand-selected puppet leader Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk, she said:

Even as you plan for the counteroffensive, which we have been working on with you for some 4-5 months, we are already beginning our discussions … about Ukraine’s long-term future … wherever and however this ends—1 year, 6 years, 16 years—we are not doing this again.

Demand the Treaty of Westphalia, Not the Treaty of Versailles

This is a “coincidence of opposites” of the worst, tragic sort. Citizens of the world must demand the ideas of the Treaty of Westphalia, of the Council of Florence, not the ideas of the Treaty of Versailles, as the baseline standard of deliberation, required by responsible governments that would have their populations successfully survive even another year. Millions must come to know those higher ideas. Teaching them, even in this cyber New Dark Age, is our job. To those who might believe that such a pathway is too complex, we are reminded of something that the late Lyndon LaRouche once said in response to a criticism that his writings were “too complicated for the average person to understand.” LaRouche responded, “Well, perhaps the people who think that, are too uncomplicated to survive.”

Besides, why be pessimistic? Aside from the fact that nothing will be accomplished through pessimism, there is a “harmony of interests” that is emerging worldwide. It is present among the 50 nations in attendance at the just concluded Eurasian Economic Forum. This harmony of interests, catalyzed in the form of a “win-win” economic policy originating in the Schiller Institute’s Eurasian Land-Bridge conferences of the 1990s, and then expressed in the 2013 Belt and Road Initiative of China, now in its tenth year, is congruent with The Harmony of Interests: Agricultural, Manufacturing and Commercial, devised by Abraham Lincoln’s economic advisor, Henry Charles Carey. The 19th-Century American System economists, Henry C. Carey and Friedrich List, are today far better known in nations like China, than they are in the United States.

Physical economist Lyndon LaRouche’s far more advanced work in the field of physical economy, particularly in his idea of the world development corridor—what is known as the “World Land-Bridge”—is a fundamental transformation of the already-revolutionary “Transatlantic Railroad” idea of Carey, List and Lincoln, of which the Belt and Road Initiative is an approximation. Russia’s collaboration with the United States on railroads goes back to the 1840s and even earlier; West Point civil engineer George Washington Whistler (1800-1849) built the St. Petersburg-Moscow railway system, the first large-scale Russian railway.

“Win-win diplomacy” is also being pursued. China’s Special Representative for Eurasian Affairs, Li Hui, has gone to Kiev, Warsaw, Berlin, Paris, Brussels and Moscow. South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa and the leaders of Egypt, Republic of the Congo, Senegal, Uganda and Zambia—following Ramaphosa’s phone discussions with Presidents Putin and Zelensky—will journey to Moscow and Kiev as early as June. The Vatican’s peace initiatives have been favorably acknowledged by the Kremlin. A new round of initiatives is expected within days.

In these perilous times, there is a delicate balance—and all our lives hang in that balance—that must be achieved, in order to move from the realm of tragedy, to the realm of hope. Of poet Robert Frost, President Kennedy once remarked:

Because [Robert Frost] knew the midnight as well as the high noon, because he understood the ordeal as well as the triumph of the human spirit, he gave his age strength with which to overcome despair.

As President Franklin Roosevelt’s First Inaugural Address energized America into joint, concerted “action, and action now” to pull away from the Great Depression, so let us, in these next days and hours, use President Kennedy’s American University Commencement Address to remind Americans, this Memorial Day weekend, why government of, by, and for the people gives us the right, and therefore the responsibility, to pull the human race away from the precipice of total war.