International Peace Coalition’s Fourth Meeting Charts Path to New Paradigm

On Friday, June 30, the International Peace Coalition (IPC) held its fourth meeting with approximately 60 organizers from Argentina, Germany, Guinea, Nicaragua, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK, the United States, and other nations participating in the proceedings. The meeting could be best characterized as a strategy session on how to expand the IPC through various means of direct action such as street organizing, social media, political interventions, and classes, with the goal of not only preventing the immediate threat of global thermonuclear war but laying the foundation for a durable peace—a New Paradigm.

Moderated by Anastasia Battle of the Schiller Institute, the meeting began with a very concise strategic overview by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder and leader of the Schiller Institute and initiator of the IPC, outlining the heightened danger of war between Russia and NATO in the wake of the mutiny by Yevgeny Prigozhin and his Wagner mercenaries against the Kremlin. Apparently Western intelligence agencies had advance knowledge of the event—an event which could have led potentially to chaos in the largest nuclear power—but made no effort to alert the Russian leadership. Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche contrasted this to the support President Putin had offered to the Bush administration after the 9/11 attack. Would it really be preferable to have the strongest nuclear power fall into chaos with potentially catastrophic consequences?

She also pointed out that there are now voices in Russia such as Prof. Sergey Karaganov, head of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, who are calling for the use of tactical nuclear weapons. Karaganov’s colleague, Prof. Dmitri Trenin, at the same time is warning that Western elites have lost the fear of nuclear weapons, and with that the sense of the consequences of their policies. Zepp-LaRouche then laid out the root cause of the conflict—a geopolitical showdown between two systems: one system—the unipolar system—which clearly has gone under, and the rise of a new system represented by the nations of the Global South asserting in a very legitimate way their right to economic development.

This was demonstrated recently at the June 22–23 Summit for a New Global Financing Pact hosted by President Emmanuel Macron in France, where President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa asserted that if the West is serious about helping the nations of Africa, it should finance the Inga Dam project in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which would bring electricity to 12 to 15 countries. Africa currently has 600 million people without electricity. Zepp-LaRouche ended her opening remarks by emphasizing the urgent necessity of a New Security and Development Architecture which allows the development of all countries on the planet as the only means to address the current disarray.

Much of the ensuing discussion centered on IPC plans for a peace rally at the United Nations scheduled for August 6, the 78th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. A flier will be produced for the event as well as a unique website listing all of the participating groups. Plans are also in the works for sister events everywhere possible both leading up to and on the day of the event.

A suggestion was made that the IPC should strive to get at least one person from every country in the world to make a video in support of the peace rally, which could be posted on the website. Several participants highlighted the importance of bringing more young people into the peace process through campus organizing and other means. There were also many useful suggestions of various social media platforms that could be used for expanded outreach, and suggestions of numerous peace groups that should be contacted for networking purposes. Generally participants were very enthusiastic about the opportunity to strategize with like-minded people on concrete actions necessary to bring about a lasting peace.

Rev. Dr. Terri Strong proposed that the IPC draft a policy paper—to be presented to world leaders—detailing the detrimental effects of massive spending on military ventures, thereby draining money and other resources away from social programs which would benefit their own populations. The example of Germany was mentioned where, because of budget cuts, the healthcare system is in a state of collapse. Were a fraction of military expenditures used instead for healthcare, this problem could be resolved. It was decided that a social policy paper be drafted specific to the needs of each country in the form of a petition to be presented to the leaders of these various nations.

Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche ended the discussion by answering a question posed to her about gun violence in the United States. She made the point that violence in the small and violence in the large are interconnected. The U.S. currently experiences a mass shooting every fourteen hours, which is insane. But where does this come from? She then went through the history of how the U.S. military used various methods to break down the natural resistance humans have to using weapons to kill other humans, ultimately resulting in point-and-shoot video games which were subsequently marketed to the general public—including children who are now being turned into mass killing machines.

Her solution—totally coherent with the goals of the IPC—is to launch a campaign among schools, churches, teachers, parents, etc. to start a mass movement centered on the idea that the basis of humanity is love. President John F. Kennedy’s June 10, 1963 “Peace Speech” should be used as a pedagogical device along with aesthetical education to help people discover the true nature of what it means to be human. This is necessary to move civilization to a New Paradigm of international relations, without which we will not succeed in keeping humanity alive.