EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY, MAY 12, 2022

World War II Can Help Us Prevent World War III

May 11, 2022 (EIRNS)—In his May 9 address to the Victory Day parade in Moscow, commemorating the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a most profound overture to Americans, which went largely unnoticed and unreported in the United States. In recalling the ultimate sacrifice made by 27 million Russians during World War II, and their decisive role in stopping Hitler, Putin also went out of his way to state:

“We are aware that U.S. veterans who wanted to come to the parade in Moscow were actually forbidden to do so. But I want them to know: We are proud of your deeds and your contribution to our common Victory. We honor all soldiers of the allied armies—the Americans, the English, the French, Resistance fighters, brave soldiers and partisans in China—all those who defeated Nazism and militarism.”

In previous years, ordinary Americans and Russians have linked arms with citizens of other countries to march together in May 9 “Immortal Regiment” parades in dozens of cities around the world, in which each person proudly held aloft a large photograph of a father, a brother, an aunt, a grandfather who had given their lives on behalf of that just war against fascism.

Not this year.

Instead, Latvian officials used bulldozers on May 10 to remove flowers left in honor of fallen Soviet soldiers at Riga’s Victory Park; the Russian ambassador to Poland was doused by a blood-like liquid thrown on him by hooligans as he attempted to place a wreath at the cemetery of Soviet soldiers in Warsaw; and Americans were harassed and threatened to not participate in Immortal Regiment ceremonies in this country.

In a May 9 “Open Letter to the American People,” Scott Ritter, a former Marine intelligence officer who served as a UN weapons inspector in Iraq, summarized the profound issue at stake for the current global crisis, as it careens towards a global nuclear confrontation between the U.S./NATO and Russia:

“There was a time when the United States and Soviet Union fought together to overcome the scourge of Nazi Germany and the ideology it espoused. Today, when Russia is locked in a struggle with the progeny of Hitler’s Germany, in the form of the ideological descendants of the Ukrainian nationalist, Stefan Bandera—one would logically expect that the United States to be on Moscow’s side....

“Bandera’s followers fought alongside German Nazis as members of the Waffen SS, slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent civilians, many of them Jewish. By rights, Washington should be ensuring that the hateful cause so many had given their lives and livelihoods to eradicate from Europe never again raised its evil banners on European soil.”

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov had made a similar point in a recent statement explaining Russia’s “Special Military Operation” in Ukraine, wondering aloud if the American, Soviet and other Allied interventions to stop Nazi Germany during World War II were not justified.

Most Americans have forgotten what it means to fight a just war. World War II was in fact the last just war in which Americans fought. Since then, the United States has been plunged, largely by the British, into one colonial war after another—Vietnam, Iraq, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria—each designed to impose a unipolar world order run by the City of London and Wall Street. Each designed, as well, to undermine the moral standing of Americans in their own eyes.

Now a similar, perhaps final, such war has been launched by Global NATO against Russia, using Ukraine as a proxy. The stated intention is to “weaken” and “degrade” Russia in a prolonged bloody war. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines went so far as to tell the Senate Armed Services Committee May 10 that the U.S. was prepared for a long “war of attrition,” and that U.S. intelligence agencies “do not see a viable negotiating path forward, at least in the short term.”

Such a path, of course, does exist. Please read and widely circulate the Schiller Institute’s “The LaRouche Plan for a New International Economic Architecture.” And sign our petition: “Convoke an International Conference To Establish a New Security and Development Architecture for All Nations.”