PRESS RELEASE
Three World Leaders Intervene Against War and Economic Disintegration
March 14 (EIRNS)—Two leading German figures and a Maryland Democrat, considering a Presidential run, have stepped into the dangerous trans-Atlantic political vacuum to bring about a fundamental shift in the direction of policy, to avert a potential world war and an otherwise imminent collapse of the trans-Atlantic financial system.
Given the magnitude of the current global crisis, and the prominence of their interventions, American statesman Lyndon LaRouche has given his full, unequivocal endorsement to their actions, and has called for a full mobilization of support behind their efforts to avert a global calamity.
On Thursday, March 12, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier delivered a powerful war-avoidance message to a Washington, D.C. audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Steinmeier’s blunt language and his diplomatic, but harsh criticism of the Obama Administration’s plans to provide lethal aid to the Ukraine government, was unprecedented. No recent German Foreign Minister has dared to make such strong and public criticisms of U.S. foreign and national security policy, particularly in such a prominent venue as the CSIS headquarters. Steinmeier had met the previous day with Secretary of State John Kerry and with National Security Advisor Dr. Susan Rice, and no doubt delivered an even more blunt message in those private talks.
Steinmeier began his CSIS talk with a frank assessment of the global crisis, warning: We are facing a multitude of crises around the globe which, to somebody from my generation, seems unprecedented in their density and in their shocking violence.
Turning to the Ukraine crisis, Steinmeier declared:
"We must look beyond this conflict to our future relationship with Moscow. That means we must not cease to engage Russia, using the last existing channels of communication, to explore a potential off-ramp and—for the future—to explore paths to a more cooperative relationship."
Steinmeier explicitly rejected the idea of arming Ukraine, warning that this would only escalate the crisis beyond control:
"I understand that many of you, many experts, are calling for a more rapid—and...therefore military-based solution. ... But, knowing the genesis and the structure of the conflict, the status of the conflict parties and their capacities, it is obvious from my point of view that the discussed alternatives to our approach have the potential of increasing the number of victims, of extending the conflict zone and of transporting the conflict to a next phase of escalation. Perhaps to a point of no return. There is no guarantee that our approach, the Normandy approach, will lead to success. But I am sure that there is no guarantee for success in the alternatives that are being discussed. I am afraid: The contrary is the case."
He later reiterated:
"It might take only days to spark a crisis but it could well take years to resolve it. In diplomacy, even more than in real life, tenacity is a virtue!..." He added: "To us in Europe, Russia will always be our biggest neighbor. ... It is no secret that, as regards to Russia, trust is at its lowest point. But we need to find a new basis for an engagement, even if it takes years or decades."
Steinmeier’s sharp intervention against the Obama Administration arming Ukraine was buttressed by one of Germany’s leading elder statesmen, former Chancellor Helmut Schmidt. In an interview with the mass German tabloid Bild-Zeitung on March 12, Schmidt warned that any further escalation in Ukraine could escalate even into a real hot war. Schmidt then touched on one of the most sensitive issues with Russia: The eastward expansion of the EU and NATO, which he traced all the way back to the original Maastricht Treaty of the early 1990s, which was the basis for the expansion into the territory of the former Warsaw Pact and Soviet Union. "We are not obliged to like Putin’s policy," he told the paper. "But we have to understand it against the background of history and take it seriously."
Lyndon LaRouche emphasized the significance of the intervention of these two prominent German political figures directly into the growing danger of war in the center of Eurasia.
"Their actions can actually change the direction of history at a moment when the immediate issue on the table is war or peace, chaos or recovery."
The same quality of intervention has been launched by former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who has called for the immediate reinstatement of the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, which would break up the too-big-to-fail banks into separate commercial and investment banks. O’Malley, who is considering a run for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination, has been touring the country and giving interviews, all on the theme of Glass-Steagall.
Typical of his powerful intervention was his March 12 interview on MSNBC, in which he told host Joe Scarborough:
"We make the rules. And we can make better rules in order to restore that link between hard work and the opportunity to get ahead Reinstate Glass-Steagall. For 70 years, we prevented banks from gambling with our money, and wrecking our economy and running roughshod over the common good that we share as a people; and having a stable and good economy. Everybody—I mean on both sides of the aisle—I mean, so many people say we should do that, and yet it remains undone. And some people in my own party are holding themselves out as promoting some sort of a Dodd-Frank Lite—‘We don’t want to offend anyone on Wall Street, so let us not talk honestly about how we can rein in this excessive behavior.’
"Because one of the things we haven’t talked about too much, is that for all of the pain from the home foreclosures and the job losses, the concentration of wealth after each of these last two busts on the stock market actually increased! In other words, while other people lost homes, the people at the top came out even further ahead."
Lyndon LaRouche has called for a full mobilization in support of O’Malley’s demand that the Glass-Steagall fight be the defining issue in the upcoming elections. "We are not talking about 2016," LaRouche added. "We need Glass-Steagall now, before the entire trans-Atlantic financial system comes crashing down and we are faced with the immediate threat of global war or a descent into absolute chaos and Hell."
Likewise, the recent actions of German statesmen Steinmeier and Schmidt are the only route to genuine war-avoidance, LaRouche emphasized. "A conflict with Russia, such as that being pushed from inside the Obama White House, is not a limited war. It is general war, leading to thermonuclear war of extinction. It must be stopped, and the Steinmeier and Schmidt interventions can prove to be vital."
