EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY, MARCH 17 , 2022

Can the City of London and Wall Street Win the Economic World War They Have Launched?

March 16, 2022 (EIRNS)—Lyndon LaRouche once commented: My enemies can’t defeat me, because I never stop fighting. It were advisable to consider the question posed in the above headline from that voluntarist standpoint.

Over the last 24-48 hours, the British attempted to escalate their world war on both the economic and military fronts. March 16 was the day on which an $117 million interest payment came due on foreign-held Russian government bonds—the first such payment since the U.S. and NATO imposed extreme sanctions on Russia, including stealing (“freezing”) about $300 billion in Russian assets held in American banks. Reasonably, the Russian government ordered the interest payment to be made in rubles, suggesting that the ball was now in the U.S. court to free up some of the stolen money to allow those rubles to be converted into dollars and other hard currencies. At the end of the day, those assets were not unfrozen, and a 30-day grace period now begins, after which Russia will presumably be declared in formal default. That is intended to guarantee, as the bloodthirsty London Guardian announced, that “a full-blown collapse is almost inevitable” in Russia.

But not everyone in the British Establishment is quite so sanguine about their course of action. Some are worried that their war on Russia might cause the entire trans-Atlantic financial system to collapse. Others among them see the handwriting on the wall more clearly, and they understand that that collapse is unavoidable, but they are desperate at the prospect that their system will come crashing down before Russia and China can be forced to submit and surrender. The Financial Times warned its readers: “Be under no illusion. Russians will not be the only ones to suffer under Russian sanctions. The world should remember Lehman and brace for a global financial and economic shock.”

RT also reported that the scorched-earth sanctions were already disrupting the key Belt and Road rail routes between China and Europe—a central British objective—but that this is also having an unstoppable effect on the West itself, and could set off “an earthquake like never seen before,” after which “the global movement of goods and services will never be the same again.”

On the political-military front, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress—after doing the same with the British House of Commons on March 8 and the Canadian Parliament on March 15—and he did everything in his power to get the United States to plunge headlong into a direct confrontation with Russia. Zelenskyy said he would like Ukraine to be allowed to join NATO (and thus be protected under its Article 5 clause), but absent that, he called for the creation of “an alliance of responsible countries that will have the strength and ability to immediately stop conflicts and provide all necessary assistance within 24 hours”—in other words, NATO without NATO. He also demanded the U.S. set up a no-fly zone over Ukraine—“that would constitute an act of war against Russia,” the EU’s top general, Claudio Graziano, warned—but absent that, he demanded a large increase in advanced military aid from the West.

Shortly after Zelenskyy had finished his address, President Biden obliged by announcing a new $800 million aid package for Ukraine.

As the dangers escalate on all fronts, more and more voices around the world are being raised in an effort to stop the Doomsday Clock before it strikes midnight. Many are well intentioned and insightful, and are helping to mobilize political forces to that task. But none address the underlying cause of the crisis—the breakdown of the entire trans-Atlantic system—let alone provide a programmatic economic policy solution. And yet it is a fact that peace can only be achieved by drastically reshaping the world economic system; and it is equally a fact that the body of work provided by Lyndon LaRouche on that subject is the only available solution.

And so all of those voices, and thousands of others, should join the Schiller Institute’s call for a conference on a new international security and development architecture, built around LaRouche Four Laws of durable economic survival.