EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR TUESDAY FEBRUARY 21, 2023

An Anniversary of War, Or of Peace?

Feb. 20, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The Sunday, February 19 “Rage Against the War Machine” rally at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. rang in—and is already helping to shape—what promises to be a critical week in the world’s dangerous trajectory towards nuclear warfare between Global NATO, and Russia and China. The one-year anniversary of Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine is this Friday, Feb. 24, and Russian President Vladimir Putin will focus on that operation in his annual State of the Nation Address to the Federal Assembly on Tuesday, February 21. Informed observers report that the just-concluded Munich Security Conference on Feb. 19 with its single-minded obsession with escalating Global NATO’s confrontation with both Russia and China, has only hardened Putin’s resolve to stop the West’s announced intention to “contain” and dismember the Russian Federation and remove Putin from government.

On Monday, Feb. 20, Putin was scheduled to receive China’s top diplomat, State Councillor Wang Yi, fresh from his participation in the Munich Security Conference, for broad consultation and coordination between the two strategic allies. Chinese President Xi Jinping will in turn deliver a major policy address on Friday Feb. 24, with China’s new proposal for resolving the Ukraine war. Although the specifics have not been made public, it is likely that it will elaborate on the fundamental principles outlined in China’s Global Strategic Initiate, in particular the need to have a security architecture that takes into consideration the legitimate security interests of all parties—not only in NATO’s surrogate warfare against Russia in Ukraine, but worldwide.

President Xi’s peace initiative is expected to receive widespread support among the nations of the developing sector—much to the chagrin of London and Washington. The London Financial Times yesterday quoted Amrita Narlikar, president and professor at the Hamburg-based German Institute for Global and Area Studies, to express their concern that China is “very clever” at “framing itself as a part of the developing world.... If China were to present its vision as one of a peace dialogue between Russia and Ukraine, and emphasize the global economic costs of a long-drawn war, this would enjoy considerable support in large parts of the global south.” At the Munich Security Conference, the FT complained, the developing sector by and large was not on board with their war plan towards Russia: Third World representatives expressed “much greater preoccupation with issues such as inflation, debt, higher energy prices and food security than with the war in Ukraine.”

Reality notwithstanding, the Global NATO apparatus is acting like they run—as well as own—the entire world, and will take it onward into nuclear confrontation with Russia, like it or not. President Joe Biden was sent into Kiev today for an outdoor photo op with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, to the dramatic backdrop of non-stop air raid sirens, although no Russian attacks were underway at the time—and in fact Russia had been alerted in advance of Biden’s visit to Kiev. Biden told Zelenskyy that another $500 million in military aid was forthcoming, and that the U.S. would keep providing weapons “for long as it takes.”

Next stop will be Poland on Tuesday and Wednesday, where Biden will meet with President Duda, who will urge the U.S., U.K., and France to provide Ukraine with bilateral security arrangements that are the functional equivalent of making it a NATO member—a clear strategic provocation of Russia.

Global NATO is on a fast track for that provocation, by design. As Politico wrote yesterday: “The White House has also told Zelenskyy’s team, per multiple officials, to prepare for the offensive now, as weapons and aid from Washington and Europe flow freely, for fear that backing from Ukraine’s European neighbors could be finite.” They are also worrying that opposition to the war inside the United States is growing as well, and that time is not on their side.

They are right.

This is the strategic dynamic within which to locate the Feb. 19 Washington rally against the war, with its success in bringing together disparate groups from the “left” and the “right” of the political spectrum, who agreed to put their other differences aside in order to join for the most urgent task of all, forestalling nuclear war.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche today characterized that rally as a major victory, a proof of principle that “men can work together if they have a good plan,” as Schiller demonstrated. This development came not a minute too early, she explained, adding that it now must be followed with an organizing drive across the country and worldwide to both educate the population around the cause of the Global NATO war drive and, above all, lay out the policy solutions which Lyndon LaRouche alone has elaborated over the last half-century.

To that end, the Schiller Institute has organized two events this week. On Tuesday at noon EST, there will be a Zoom conference on “Syrian Sanctions Must Be Lifted!” in the aftermath of the earthquake.

And then on Thursday at 1 pm EST, another Zoom conference will be held, this one on “Investigate Nord Stream Revelations: Stop Nuclear World War III!”

The following Saturday, Feb. 25, there will be anti-war demonstration in Berlin and up to 100 other cities in Germany and across Europe.

Zepp-LaRouche commented today that the Feb. 19 Washington rally was

“a very promising development, but we should not at all be complacent. Because, even though the Global NATO forces are becoming increasingly not so global, they are increasingly isolating themselves when the vast majority of the world population is going in a completely different direction, that does not tend to appease them.... So therefore our mobilization with the Open Letter to the Pope has to absolutely be escalated.”

Zepp-LaRouche concluded:

“Our effort to get a new international security and development architecture introduced should be a continuous subject of all interventions. Whatever the form, whether a group of nations make such a proposal of such a conference, or if a group of universities, for example, sponsor the idea. But we need the discussion of what should be the world order after we stop the war danger, because it’s not good enough to just be against the war. The big question is: How can we as a human species give ourselves an order which allows for the cooperation and coexistence of all nations on this planet, to the benefit of all?”