EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR FRIDAY JUNE 10, 2022

The Time of Imperial Narratives Is Over

June 9, 2022 (EIRNS)—The Summit of the Americas, ending tomorrow in California, was not only a flop, but last evening’s “inaugural” event was a grotesque display of the cultural collapse behind the madness of the U.S./U.K./Global NATO imperium. President Biden and Vice President Harris gave their remarks interspersed between entertainment acts of raucous so-called music, and their message matched. Biden extolled democracy and condemned “Russian unprovoked aggression.” He announced the Partnership for Prosperity, which is a sham. That may not be news, but the Summit of the Americas marks a moment, as the fable goes, where it’s clear for all to see, “the emperor has no clothes.”

The time of imperial narratives is over.

Of the 34 nations of the Americas, only 23, or fewer, sent heads of state or government, and some of the others sent no one at all.

This summit is one more in a series of U.S. and EU staged events and program announcements, only for the purpose of declaring unilateral power, doing nothing of benefit, and flaunting the threat of military might. The summit’s Partnership for Prosperity and related announcements promise funding from private pledges, and no infrastructure or agro-industrial action at all. The May 18 U.S. Ministerial Level World Food Security event at the UN, had representation from only 30 specially invited guests out of the world’s 190-plus nations, and issued a worthless “Plan of Action.” The 2021 U.S. Summit for Democracy was the same thing. In 2023, the U.S. announced last night, it will host a Cities Summit of the Americas.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, whose country was among those not invited to the Los Angeles Summit, spoke out on the U.S. and the general world situation, during his visit yesterday to Turkey, where he met with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

“The U.S. gets caught up in its own aggression,” he said. “Look at what is happening right now with Russia. All the sanctions imposed—more than a thousand economic sanctions against the Russian economy, agriculture, oil and gas—have returned like a boomerang, and today they have returned against the European and American economies, which are creaking with galloping inflation, and they also affected the economies and economic rights of all the countries of the world.”

From Asia comes a contrasting example of foreign relations that actually benefit all involved. The foreign ministers’ meeting June 8 of the China and Central Asia Summit (Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan), called C+C5, made commitments to increase trade (valued in each other’s currencies) and ratified a go-ahead for the long-awaited 325-mile rail line from Xinjiang, through Kyrgyzstan, into Uzbekistan, that will be a central economic corridor in the region, and a span saving a week on China-to-Europe transit. Construction is to start in 2023. It was agreed that the C+C5 Summit will now be held as a regular institution for heads of state in joint work.

The imperial narratives are all crashing. Look at the big narrative that Europe can quickly turn elsewhere from Russia, to get oil and gas supplies, meeting their needs from the Americas, the Persian Gulf, and elsewhere. On June 8, an explosion knocked out the operations at the LNG export facility at Freeport, Texas, which supplies 20% of U.S. LNG exports. There are only six LNG gas export terminals in the U.S., and one under construction. It will take weeks to restore the Freeport plant. The gas price in Europe shot up by 20% in just a few minutes today.

Another imperial narrative, going down fast, is that Russia has caused the global food crisis by holding supplies “hostage” at Ukrainian ports, not allowing the grain ships to leave. However, all along, Ukraine’s mining of harbors and sea lanes was a major factor, and Russia and Turkey have proposed exact plans over the past 36 hours for how to solve this. But Ukraine still refuses to open up its ports.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, referred to the shifting situation in her strategic webcast June 8, noting, “There is a clear division occurring in the world, where many countries are heading toward cooperation, and they make the people who are pushing confrontation really stand out more and more as warmongers.” She welcomed the shift. She expressed her thinking that individuals stepping forward to reject the anti-Russia, anti-China stance “is a growing trend of the times, that the spirit of the Non-Aligned Movement is clearly reawakening, that there are many countries, and entire blocs of countries, that do not want to be drawn into the conflict between the U.S. on the one side, and Europe (one must unfortunately say), and Russia and China on the other side.”

The Schiller Institute conference on June 18-19, “There Can Be No Peace Without the Bankruptcy Reorganization of the Dying Trans-Atlantic Financial System,” and the dialogue surrounding it, are key parts of hastening this world-historic trend, and getting on with the tasks of assuring a future for humanity.