General

International Peace Coalition #71

Today’s 71st consecutive weekly online meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) began with an overview presented by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, founder of the Schiller Institute, reminding participants that two regional crises have the potential to escalate to nuclear war. She speculated that a “private démarche” from Putin may have caused Biden to stop short of giving his blessing to Ukrainian missile strikes into Russia. Russia’s concerns “not to have offensive weapons systems immediately at their border” have not been addressed. As the Ukraine war is rapidly coming to an end, NATO must decide whether to offer an acceptable peace formula to Russia, or to escalate.

She said that the world is waiting to see how Israel will retaliate against Iran; Israel cannot attack Iran’s underground nuclear facilities, as suggested by former President Donald Trump, without the use of nuclear weapons.

Interview with Mahathir bin Mohamad

EIR Editorial Board member Mike Billington introduced an excerpt from his Oct. 6 video interview with 99-year-old former Prime Minister of Malaysia Mahathir bin Mohamad, describing how, during the Asian Crisis of the 1990s, Mahathir successfully defended his nation against the IMF, hedge funds, and George Soros, using currency controls. He said that this, of course, infuriated the financial oligarchs.

Mahathir described how the U.S. is trying to get the ASEAN countries to confront China. Countries of the Global South are being pressured to take sides in an East-West bloc confrontation, but they want a stable world where they can grow with trade; dividing the world into blocs is counterproductive. We would prefer to solve problems with the United Nations, but since that isn’t working due to vetoes in the Security Council, BRICS is necessary. When a country is recalcitrant like Israel, the world must take action.

Billington recalled how the Wall Street Journal Asia said Mahathir was influenced by Lyndon LaRouche in his opposition to Soros. Mahathir responded that “it was Soros who was responsible for changing the values of currencies.” Soros predicted that Mahathir would destroy Malaysia’s economy, but the exchange controls were a success.

Southwest Asia: Injecting Fear

Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, promised to continue to “inject fear,” because, “The world is not a safer place than it was the last time I spoke.” If present policies continue, nuclear war is inevitable, he said. He then shocked the participants, saying that Iran is now a nuclear power. They have the technology required to make a simple nuclear weapon, and the Iranian parliament has recommended that Iran withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). “Iran is putting the world on notice that it has nuclear-weapons capability.”

He examined some of the implications of this development. Iran is now a member of BRICS—if Israel attacks, how will Russia respond? “Russia will have Iran’s back.” Ritter agreed with Zepp-LaRouche’s assessment that you can’t attack their facilities without using nuclear weapons, so candidate Trump is de facto encouraging Israel to launch a nuclear strike against Iran. The U.S. vote on Nov. 5 matters, but only if we can get candidates to “walk away” from the use of nuclear weapons.

Zepp-LaRouche responded: “Scott, you succeeded to scare me to death.” Ritter clarified that Iran has not formally declared that it has a nuclear weapon, but if they withdraw from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, they could develop a weapon in “less than a week.” He added that “This is a problem of Israel’s own making,” and “the last thing the U.S. wants is for Israel’s nuclear weapons to be discussed in the UN Security Council.” Ritter asked, why did the U.S. UN Ambassador reverse position on two UN resolutions regarding Gaza? Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has disregarded President Joe Biden’s advice, and now Biden is making him pay a price. But the U.S. seems to have lost the ability to pressure Israel.

Bassam El Hachem, executive committee member of Independents for Lebanon, presented a Lebanese perspective that behind Iran, you have powers such as Russia and China, and behind Israel you have the United States. Following the Oct. 7, 2023 attacks, there was intensive media manipulation with false tales of mass rapes and killing of children. He estimated that there have been 150,000 victims of Israel’s reprisals, but after one year, they have achieved none of their goals. In both Gaza and Lebanon, they are simply carrying out an extermination war under the guise of a military operation. Western leaders rushed to Israel to embrace Netanyahu, permitting him to carry out all sorts of atrocities, while repeating that Israel has the right to defend itself.

El Hachem disagreed on one point with Ritter: The U.S. is not incapable of restraining Israel, they are complicit. In 1993 an historic agreement was signed, the Oslo Accords, including the agreement for a Palestinian state. Two years later, on Nov. 4, 1995, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated, and the main culprit was Netanyahu. Last July the Knesset declared the Palestinian state to be null and void, and then passed the “Nation-State” law, formalizing apartheid. They intend to expel Palestinians into Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon. All of these elements were in the background to the Oct. 7, 2023 attack.

Layla Elabed, co-founder and co-director of the Uncommitted National Movement, described her role as a leader of the “Listen to Michigan” project. In Michigan they won over 10% of the primary vote, not just from Arab-American or Muslim-American voters. It spread to Minnesota, Washington and Wisconsin. They had 30 anti-war delegates to the Democratic National Convention. However, the Harris campaign has signaled that they are willing to lose the state of Michigan and sacrifice the youth vote, in order to continue supporting Israeli genocide. Nonetheless, Elabed’s group has made a political assessment that the best way to influence policy is to oppose Trump and permit Harris to take the White House, without endorsing Harris.

Discussion

During the discussion period, Zepp-LaRouche warned against fixating on the U.S. elections, saying that “we have to completely change the entire collective West.”

Independent Congressional candidate in the Bronx Jose Vega (CD15) urged participants to carry out public interventions like the ones he and his colleagues have done. He asked, how can individuals be confident that it will make a difference? Zepp-LaRouche responded with a distich from German poet Friedrich Schiller, “Always strive for completion, and if you can’t be complete in yourself, become part of something that is complete.” She said that the IPC provides the vehicle required: “It’s better that people have sleepless nights and start to think.”

One participant brought up again the problem of the UN being paralyzed by the veto power of the permanent UN Security Council members. Zepp-LaRouche said that we need to mobilize the citizenry in every nation. A number of participants described their efforts to do this. One man from a pro-Palestine organization in Costa Rica read a proclamation from his group, comparing the genocide in Gaza to the Holocaust. A representative of Veterans For Peace read a letter issued by his organization which calls for an investigation of U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken for lying to Congress and other misdeeds.

In conclusion, Helga Zepp-LaRouche asserted that Scott Ritter’s assessment is either 100% correct or in the upper 90% range, and agreed with moderator Dennis Speed that the Nov. 5 U.S. election will not be important if we are all dead by then. Therefore, we must continue to mobilize with the IPC.

The 66th consecutive online weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) today featured a uniquely high-powered senior group of scientific, military and political experts in dialogue, all addressing different facets of the insanity of those leaders in the U.S. and Europe who have committed themselves to what Col. Larry Wilkerson aptly described as the suicidal policy of “Cry Havoc, and Letting Slip the Dogs of War.”

Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche opened the session, warning that “the goal is to inflict strategic defeat on Russia,” which, given Russia’s status as a nuclear superpower, is impossible without initiating nuclear war. She emphasized the role of the British, citing recent statements by Russian government spokeswoman Maria Zakharova that London is behind the drone attacks and the constant escalation in the Ukraine war. President Biden submitted to Congress an amendment to the U.S.-British mutual defense agreement of 1958, to make it permanent, ending the requirement for renewal every ten years, to make the arrangement “Trump-proof.”

She reminded participants of Biden’s new nuclear weapons doctrine, which is so secret that apparently no electronic version exists. In discussions with military experts, we have learned that the decision to station missiles in Germany was actually worked out in 2021. Trump’s National Security Strategy (NSS) of 2017 proclaimed for the first time that Russia and China are geopolitical rivals and was followed in 2018 by a National Defense Strategy (NDS) to modernize nuclear weapons. In response, Russia announced the introduction of new weapons systems, including hypersonic missiles. In 2022, the U.S. Nuclear Policy Review stated that the U.S. can use nuclear weapons to “defend its vital interests.” British Defense Secretary Mark Lancaster proclaimed the same for the British government. Germany, in typical anticipatory obedience, embraced recent U.S. policy changes.

In August 2019 the U.S. withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty. Zepp-LaRouche proposed that both sides must reinstitute the verification regime.

Dr. Ted Postol, MIT Professor Emeritus and one of the world’s leading experts on nuclear weapons, then characterized recent U.S. upgrading of nuclear weapons systems as “prompt preemptive strike forces.” The U.S. has, at great cost, produced “super fuse” weapons, designed to preemptively destroy silo-based missiles. One would only pursue this approach if planning to fight and win a nuclear war, an extraordinarily delusional mindset. A Russian military officer would be forced to conclude that the U.S. intends to attack.

Col. Larry Wilkerson, who was chief of staff to then-U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, followed, recalling discussions with Powell about the 2002 National Security Strategy, about which Wilkerson warned, “We’re at the peak of the mountain, and if we see anyone stirring at the bottom … we will kill it…. We are going to get sucked into something that is initially conventional … once we start losing—which we will,” we will resort to nuclear weapons.

He is now hearing high-ranking military officers talk about the utility of nuclear weapons for the first time since the Cold War, which are very lucrative for defense contractors. In 1991-92, when both the U.S. and Russia were destroying nuclear weapons, he saw that it “scared the bejesus” out of the leaders of the military-industrial complex.

Colonel Prof. Dr. Wilfried Schreiber (ret.), Senior Research Fellow at the WeltTrends Institute for International Politics in Potsdam, who was born in Dresden, reported that according to military historians, Dresden was intended to be one of the first targets for a U.S. nuclear bomb. The war ended before that could happen. The threat of nuclear war has now re-emerged, hotter than ever before. Germany is taking on greater risk than any other country by stationing missile systems. If you follow military logic, the places where these advanced systems are stationed are the most important targets. The unilateral decision by the Chancellor to accept these missiles means that German democracy has failed.

Lt. Col. Ralph Bosshard (ret.) of the Swiss Armed Forces, a consultant on military-strategic affairs, contrasted the decision by Biden and Scholz to station missiles in Germany to what Chancellor Helmut Schmidt did in 1979, agreeing to station Pershing II missiles—but also pursuing negotiations which led to the INF Treaty. Biden and Scholz will station without negotiating. Bosshard said that what he calls “decapitation strikes,” like the “shock and awe” campaign in Iraq, have weakened the UN Charter. “NATO is nothing more than a safe harbor, behind which Western powers pursue their geopolitical ambitions…. Europe should learn its lesson and not chain its destiny unconditionally to the global players.”

Zepp-LaRouche was moved by the remarks of her countryman, Professor Schreiber, saying that he “touched what is in the hearts of many people in Germany,” and that in the time of thermonuclear weapons, war has become so barbaric that it must be outlawed.

New York Congressional candidate Jose Vega asked Colonel Wilkerson whether someone in the State Department or other agencies could play the same role as Daniel Ellsberg, who exposed plans to use nuclear weapons against China. Wilkerson responded that Ellsberg “was a hero par excellence.” He added that the U.S. is “the only country in the world that divides the world in fiefdoms, and puts a four-star general in charge of each fiefdom.” We had plans to invade countries throughout the Levant, if Iraq had been a pushover. Secretary of State Blinken’s remarks about the sanctity of borders are the height of hypocrisy.

Postol added that nuclear war planning is done in a ritualized way, by people who have no real knowledge of the actual physical effects of nuclear weapons. The side effects, such as massive firestorms, are not included in planning. “They don’t even get the basic physical effects right,” he said. In response, Wilkerson said, “My experience from 31 years of military service is that I am more frightened of the civilian leaders than the military,” to which Postol replied, “Me, too!”

Ambassador Jack Matlock, a scholar of Russian history and culture, who was President Reagan’s choice in 1987 for the crucial post of ambassador to the Soviet Union, reviewed what followed the demise of the U.S.S.R. Secretary of State James Baker and his counterparts gave assurances to Gorbachev that there would be no expansion of NATO—not one inch. But for Russia, the problem is not NATO expansion, but the stationing of American or NATO bases in these countries. The decision of Western powers to interfere in the politics of Ukraine was also particularly provocative.

Donald Ramotar, former President of Guyana, professed his admiration for Matlock, and asked: How much of this situation would you attribute to the deterioration of leadership in the West? Matlock replied that a big problem has been the preference for military solutions to all problems. Ramotar went on to say that the world is presently divided into two blocs: the former colonial powers trying to maintain their domination, and the Global South. He endorsed Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche’s proposed Council of Reason to break out of this trap.

In conclusion, Zepp-LaRouche asked participants to widely share what had been discussed at the meeting, and to take to the streets in the upcoming demonstrations. She urged the U.S. to “stop the geopolitical nonsense,” and collaborate with the Global South. “Move toward solutions, because if we only protest the negative, it will not be sufficient.”