The Leadership Needed to Avert the Danger of War

On January 22, as the real danger of war over Ukraine between the U.S. and its NATO allies against Russia continued into its second month, with diplomacy thus far falling short of a resolution, the Schiller Institute (SI) convened an online forum during which the speakers provided an in-depth understanding of the crisis and the solutions “from the top”.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche provided a crisp analysis of how the present architecture is the product of geopolitics, ignoring the lesson of history that geopolitics is a doctrine of imperial domination and war. She contrasted the Versailles Treaty at the end of the First World War, which imposed unjust dictates on Germany and led to the disaster we know, to the principles of the Peace of Westphalia, which ended the destruction of the Thirty Years’ War, by reaching an agreement that peace depends on taking into account the benefit of the other. This approach today, she emphasized, would require taking into account Russia’s demand for legally-binding treaties guaranteeing its security.

The case for this approach was amplified in an address by the Deputy Ambassador for the Russian Mission to the United Nations, Dmitry Polyanskiy (cf. excerpts below).

He was followed by Harley Schlanger of the LaRouche Organization, who detailed the bloody results which originated from the arrogance of the claim that the U.S. and NATO, as “victors” in the Cold War, have the right to enforce a “Rules-Based Order.” The wars and regime change coups since the end of the Cold War against Panama, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Libya and Syria were followed by the coup in Ukraine in 2014, the ultimate target of which is Russia. Today, trans-Atlantic officials are trying to rally behind a confrontation in Ukraine, to save their “unipolar world order.”

EIR Economics Editor, Paul Gallagher, then described the destruction of the international financial system, beginning in 1971 with the decoupling of the dollar from gold, and leading to a banking system based on speculation rather than production. Richard Black, the Schiller Institute representative to the UN, concluded the presentations by the need to seek that which unites us globally rather than to adopt policies which divide us. A rich discussion followed, all of which can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o32znt4i_zE. The proceedings will also be published in an upcoming issue of EIR.