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A nation can endure hardship, disagreement, and even bitter factional conflict—and still remain a republic. What it cannot survive is the steady replacement of law with raw force, until “authority” means nothing more than whichever armed agency arrives first. America is now witnessing, in real time, what it looks like when the Executive claims powers the Constitution never granted, while Congress stares, stunned, as if the words on the page were only ceremonial.
And yet something new is breaking through the fog: a real and broad backlash against the accelerating abuses. The expanded ICE deployments, the street clashes, the mistaken arrests, and the deadly raids are no longer being processed as “tough policy,” but as a rupture in the very idea of the republic. When the public can no longer tell whether elections are fair; when domestic “law enforcement” becomes indistinguishable from foreign occupation; when even basic rights of speech are treated as deportable offenses—then the country itself is coming undone.
This is the deeper danger hiding behind the day’s headlines: not only the shock of Minneapolis, nor the unsealed records of students targeted for their protected speech, nor the ongoing threats against Canada’s sovereignty, nor the propaganda drumbeat for war with Iran—but the emergence of a single, unifying principle across them all: might makes right. Abroad, it looks like seizure and intimidation. At home, it looks like a creeping constitutional vacuum filled by federal power grabs.
But there is a limit to a tyrant’s power—not because tyrants restrain themselves, but because reality eventually refuses to cooperate. Stauffacher expresses this in Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell:
Yes! there’s a limit to the tyrant’s power!
When the oppressed looks round in vain for justice,
When his sore burden may no more be borne,
With fearless heart he makes appeal to Heaven,
And thence brings down his everlasting rights
Which there abide, inalienably his,
And indestructible as are the stars.
From the time of the American Revolution, through the War of 1812 and the Civil War, that “tyrant” was the British Empire, which ruled through military might, financial domination, and manipulation.
The question before the United States, entering the 250th anniversary of its founding, is whether we will merely condemn the swamp—endlessly describing the qualities of the mud, the anatomy of the parasites—or grasp the rope being thrown to us: a new paradigm worthy of the republic’s promise, grounded not in simple libertarian protest, but in the best intellectual tradition that shaped America itself: the Leibnizian idea that the purpose of government is the advancement of the general welfare, and the creative powers of the human mind.
That is why the Declaration of January 12 is not a “commentary” on the crisis, but a pathway out: a movement of world citizens, acting to restore international law, pursue international growth on the basis of physical economy, and build genuine development corridors—rather than lurching, outrage by outrage, into a new dark age.
There is a limit to the power of empire. The question is whether we choose, now, to install a new paradigm. Let us create a movement of world citizens!
Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions & comments to questions@schillerinstitute.org or post them in the next live stream. Please share the YouTube link with your friends, acquaintances, and colleagues to increase the reach of the solutions presented by the LaRouche movement.
The egos of those who run Davos annual flight from reality would have you believe that there will be a real, free exchange of ideas there. In reality it is an exercise in control, with fake alternatives presented, all within the containment of the City of London’s imperial geopolitics. Will Donald Trump change that? Let’s see if he will denounce London’s control over the world economy through “financialization”, and embrace cooperation with the BRICS nations, based on the ideas of the American System as advanced by Lyndon LaRouche.
The greatest danger confronting the United States today, and much of the trans-Atlantic world, is not that it lacks resources, talent, or scientific capacity. It is that it no longer believes in the human mind—in the unique power of human beings to discover new physical principles, transform nature, and improve the conditions of life for generations yet unborn.
As Lyndon LaRouche once stated the issue bluntly: Do Americans still believe, in any significant way, that man is different than an animal? He posed this question at a 2004 event honoring Martin Luther King, Jr.:
Our teaching, we don’t teach that. Look at our standard curriculum. … What our education policies are now, nationally, are a crime. You don’t know anything—you learn to pass a test!…
We’re no longer concerned. We don’t believe, as a nation—we don’t believe in developing people! We have become like Rome, ancient Rome, a society of “bread and circuses.” Get your crumbs, and be entertained. …
For example, today, do people work? Is their mentality one of working? Do they believe in work? Do they believe the society gives them the opportunity to work? No. It doesn’t. It gives them the opportunity to get some money. …
The mentality of the country is that if you’re getting lucky, and winning the lottery, and winning at the track, that you’re getting ahead. Even though your industry is collapsing, your farm is gone, the city government can no longer afford to take care of your essential needs: We’ve gone into becoming a gambling society.
We rely on what? Mass entertainment! … Isn’t this something you really should be ashamed of?
We no longer regard human beings as human. We no longer understand what is human.
Against that civilizational decay comes the view of human identity implicit in today’s news report from China: The drive for controlled nuclear fusion is approaching a decisive phase, with major procurements underway and serious industry leaders now projecting net fusion gain and electricity generation by around 2030. Fusion, they insist, is no longer merely a physics experiment—it is becoming an engineering project, with industrial planning, real investment horizons, and the intention to make it economically viable.
This is what a society looks like when it is organized around the future. Not the future of quarterly profits, social-media hysteria, or geopolitical theatrics—but the future of human civilization itself. A nation committed to fusion is a nation committed to the idea that progress is real, that development is possible, and that the dignity of labor and discovery is not a slogan, but a mission.
Will the United States, and other nations of NATO, reclaim the moral and intellectual courage to take on such missions? To build a world defined not by empire and manipulation, but by cooperation in great projects worthy of the human species?
What we see coming from the White House is not leadership. It’s King Lear: a hollowed-out authoritarian demanding loyalty while the kingdom sunders, surrounded by flatterers, prone to tantrums and misjudgments, and confusing spectacle for legitimacy. Martin Luther King was the opposite species: not a performer hunting applause, but a servant of a mission, rooted in the forgotten men and women, measuring power by uplifting the least, and absolutely refusing the cop-out of “going along to get along.” As LaRouche put it: “As a leader … you have to find within yourself the strength not to flinch. Not to compromise.”
We need the moral courage to know that life is a talent, and that the only authority worth having is that which comes with improving the lives of others.
Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions & comments to questions@schillerinstitute.org or post them in the next live stream.
Executive Intelligence Review sponsored an Emergency Roundtable Jan. 12, featuring leading political figures from around the world, which convened online under the theme, “It’s Worse Than You Think: The Strategic Implications of the Attack on Venezuela and How To Bring the World Back from the Brink.” Ten experts, from the Americas, Eurasia and Africa, representing long experience and tested judgment in international affairs, met for nearly three hours, with a live-stream audience averaging 1,200 participants, with translation in English, French, German and Spanish.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Editor-in-Chief of EIR, and founder and leader of the Schiller Institute, welcomed her 10 fellow panelists, saying: “We have assembled here today not to lament the unprecedented situation which can only be described as a threat to the existence of the entire human civilization, but to discuss, analyze, and catapult an international response to restore international law.”
The stern reports and evaluations that followed provided a powerful expression of the shock and disgust around the world at the violent actions of these past weeks, and the role of the United States government in acting with abandon to discard international law.
However, as one speaker said: “we are not here to become more knowledgeable” about the crises, but to confer on galvanizing action to change the situation. Proposals ranged from a “Declaration” to be issued, to consensus that the priority is to mobilize the forces of the Global Majority to discuss new “configurations” to be supported to restore international law and morality. Many confirmed that the UN General Assembly is still a formation of potential positive international impact. The idea was posed to create a “structured international civil organization.”
Several speakers made the point that the cultural and political situation inside the United States is a priority to transform and upgrade. There is a correspondence between the violence underway inside the United States, and the international lawlessness from Washington. As one senior U.S. diplomat stated, now is the time that “America must introspect.”
Zepp-LaRouche summed up at the conclusion of the discussion that an organizing grouping will be formed to formulate priorities and to move on followup action.
The discussion period allowed for several exchanges on how to make this Roundtable of leading figures the basis for a global movement. The proposals discussed were for a UN General Assembly action to stop the U.S. policy; creating a movement of civil society organizations to intervene globally; activate mass movements along the model of Mohandas Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, and Martin Luther King, Jr.; start a movement for the forgiveness of the unpayable debt; to remind Trump that he campaigned against the “Deep State,” but now appears to be run by that same Deep State.
Terming the event, “extremely productive,” Zepp-LaRouche called for everyone to reach out to good institutions and individuals. She noted—not in a religious, but in a humanitarian way—that Pope Leo XIV, on the occasion of the Jubilee year, has backed debt relief, and called for the “coincidence of opposites” way of thinking based on Nicholas of Cusa (15th century), which provides one path for organizing. The necessary elimination of the debt bubble must be controlled—an uncontrolled collapse could cause chaos. We should get this discussion to world leaders and institutions.
Extraordinary Panel
The discussants were truly an extraordinary gathering of expertise and morality, amounting to a Council of Elders. The moderator was Dennis Speed of the Schiller Institute. Presentations were made by the following speakers, in the order given, proceeding after the Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche’s opening:
Naledi Pandor, former South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation;
Zhang Weiwei, Professor of International Relations at Fudan University in Shanghai;
Chas Freeman, former U.S. Ambassador;
Dmitri Trenin, Director and Academic Supervisor of the Institute of World Military Economy and Strategy at the HSE University in Moscow ;
Donald Ramotar, former President of Guyana;
Graf Hans-Christof von Sponeck, former UN Assistant Secretary General;
María de los Ángeles Huerta, former Mexican Congresswoman;
Namit Verma, Indian author and security analyst;
Dennis Small, EIR Ibero-America Editor; and
Lt. Col. Ralph Bosshard (ret., Swiss Army), former military adviser to the OSCE secretary general.
Video archive of the Roundtable will be available, and upcoming issues of the weekly EIR will publish selected transcripts. The following are selected highlights.
Zepp-LaRouche pointed to U.S. President Donald Trump’s recent declaration that he is not bound by international law, but only by his own mind, allowing the “might makes right” actions he is following. Trump’s call for increasing the U.S. defense budget from $1 trillion to $1.5 trillion, together with the military buildup across Europe, demonstrates that we are on a path to global nuclear war. She insisted that we are the only species capable of reason, and thus, can and must act to change this disastrous course. She reviewed her own proposal for “Ten Principles of a New International Security and Development Architecture” and noted that these ideas were contained also in the four global Initiatives of Chinese President Xi Jinping.
She called for a return to the principles of the 1648 Peace of Westphalia, placing the concept of “one humanity” above all, as also in the concept of a “coincidence of opposites” presented by Nicholas of Cusa in the 15th century, as a means of resolving differences by reaching a higher, unified vision. We must reach back to all the great thinkers of our different cultures, such as Confucius, Plato, and Leibniz, to restore a true love for humanity through agape.
Hon. Naledi Pandor addressed the horror expressed around the world at the illegal acts against Venezuela; and she warned that an attack on Cuba would be “a catastrophe.” She is the former South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, and Chair of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, who initiated the South Africa’s motion to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to investigate Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Pandor pointed out that most of the Western nations accept that the West can override the interests of Russia. Developing countries have suffered under colonial rule, which the UN Charter was intended to eliminate, assuring the protection of the vulnerable from the strong. What is occurring now is the “most dangerous abuse of international law since 1948,” she said. The BRICS, the Hague Group (formed by nations of the Global South in January 2025 to defend the ICJ’s investigation of genocide in Palestine), the African Union, and other international organizations “must do more to restore international law,” while civil society organizations must also speak out. The UN must be reformed, so that those who break the rules of the Charter face a court. And individuals, too, must cause “good trouble.”
Prof. Zhang Weiwei expressed his outrage at Trump’s actions in Venezuela, terming it a “dangerous precedent” for the future. He noted that the U.S. had a “long history of reckless invasions,” adding that the new U.S. National Security Strategy granting power to the U.S. over all of the Western Hemisphere is “shortsighted and self-defeating,” which is destroying the country’s “soft power” by carrying out regime-change operations militarily, while using a “value-based humanitarian figleaf.” The U.S. action is destroying the UN Charter, which was “forged by two world wars.” He called for all nations to “unite to save the UN Charter.” He condemned the recent moves in Japan to restore the militaristic policies that had caused such destruction in World War II, insisting that China “will not accept the return of Japanese militarism,” and warned the U.S. and others that the world will not accept the end of the UN Charter.
Chas Freeman, former U.S. Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, expressed support for German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier’s recent denunciation of the U.S. being responsible for a “breakdown of values” and allowing the world to become a “den of thieves.” “My country,” he said, “has followed Israel in the law of the jungle,” acting like a mafia in protection rackets. “We are heading into a New Dark Age,” he warned. The genocide in Gaza, he said, demonstrates that “words won’t fix it” when there are such blatant crimes against humanity. The banning of free speech is a “disastrous misjudgment,” while the media refuse to even report that Russia had reasons for the invasion of Ukraine, or the blatant act of piracy of a Russian ship, or that the U.S. has turned Venezuela into a colony. Now the U.S. is even threatening its allies, pointing to Greenland. On Trump’s “brutal reassertion” of the Monroe Doctrine, he warns that “Venezuela is just an opening move.” In the face of such an “abyss of tyranny,” Freeman said, “rhetoric is not enough—if we can’t convince our governments to respect the Peace of Westphalia, we will perish.” Our rules have failed, and if the UN cannot enforce the peace, we must “find a work-around,” to either “repair or replace it.” Surely, the ambassador concluded, “we can stop this run to nuclear war.”
Dmitri Trenin, Russian military and economic strategist, gave a “bleaker view of the path ahead,” warning against the use of force. In particular, he said that Trump “won’t stop until someone strikes back.” He said that this forum was provoked by the attack on Venezuela, but he asked himself, is this the cause? Rather, he said, look at Iran, at the Israeli and U.S. war on Iran, which shows the worst that this can become. The advent of Trump, said Trenin, changed the priorities of the U.S., but they are still the same policies of the U.S. since World War II. But the “globalist collective West” is no more, now it is Trump’s personal force, while the hegemony of the U.S. is still in force. On Venezuela, he believes it was an “inside job,” as was also true in the Iraq war. What can be done? Trenin proposed that China and Russia must cooperate more, and that Iran must do more to defend itself. Trenin worries that the only protection of states over the past decades was the possession of nuclear weapons.
Donald Ramotar, the former President of Guyana, a neighbor of Venezuela, which has been threatened by Venezuela over contested territory, nonetheless asserted that the kidnapping of President Nicolás Maduro was a “giant step backwards for humanity.” The U.S. is asserting itself a “super colonial power, even against its allies in Europe.” He thinks this is MAGA, mafia style. There is no regard for sovereignty or international law—already seen in Gaza. The immediate target is China and the BRICS, to “push China out of South America and the Caribbean.” The targeting of the BRICS is because the sanctions failed to destroy Russia as intended, and the U.S. fears losing its position as the unipolar power. Those supporting democracy in the U.S. are powerless, and now chaos is breaking out in major U.S. cities. The military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned about has taken over foreign policy, and is now moving on domestic policy. The policy will spark a new global battle for liberation, or nuclear war. The U.S. must mobilize against this madness. Ramotar praised Diane Sare for announcing her campaign for U.S. President.
Graf Hans-Christof von Sponeck from Germany, the former UN Assistant Secretary General, said he had studied and worked in the United States, but that what he sees now is not the “good” U.S. he used to appreciate. He proposes that the UN should activate Article 6 of the UN Charter, which allows for the expulsion of a country which consistently breaches the UN Charter, but added that perhaps the U.S. should have its membership “frozen” first. He also called for an integrated social forum internationally, a civil society institution to act on global policy.
Maria de los Angeles Huerta, a former member of the Mexican Congress warned of a “brutality unmatched threatening 2026,” with Mexico definitely threatened. She described this as the “death rattle of the bankrupt financial system.” In keeping with Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Ten Principles, she proposed: development of the transoceanic rail connection between the Pacific and the Atlantic Ocean and an energy and monetary fund to protect all the countries of Latin America, as well as a security pact as a deterrent to “the new fascist policy of Donald Trump.” She called for support of an “Action Group” designed to find new pathways. She recommended joining in international actions on Jan. 17, when the World Without War group is demonstrating.
Namit Verma, a security expert from New Delhi, India, said that Trump’s actions are “so wild that it shocked the world into seeing the state we are in.” The world is itself responsible, since after World War II there was an agreement to tie the dollar to gold, keeping exchange rates stable, but on Aug 15, 1971, Nixon made a “unilateral declaration ending this policy, and we accepted it.” He said, there have been many more betrayals. Now, America is bankrupt. “Do we need to save a bankrupt Empire?” He said, “pragmatism has become opportunism.” It is time to call the bluff of the U.S. and of Trump.
Dennis Small,EIR Ibero America editor, presented the dimensions of the Western system debt and financial aggregates bubble, standing at $2.4 quadrillion. The system is bankrupt, and even worsening through the crypto bubble and bailouts. This is “Schachtian” economics as Hitler’s central banker Hjalmar Schacht devised it—printing money for mass military buildup to save the bubble and the Empire. One-third of the U.S. budget will be going to Wall Street through military spending and debt service. Thus the world economy is governed by the military ambitions of the Western leaders preparing for a war against Russia. Small referenced LaRouche’s “Four Laws” as the crucial alternative, including a global Glass-Steagall, and new national banks to provide credit, and currency controls for all nations, to allow an economic development drive with vast increased employment in productive jobs. Think of a Global Land-Bridge spanning the world.
Lt. Col. Ralph Bosshard, who served as the military advisor to the OSCE secretary general, said the unilateral attack on Venezuela sent a message to the world that universal law is finished. This is not new, he said, since the 1999 bombing of Yugoslavia without UN approval was already bypassing international law. Now we have nations building military coalitions among the 150 countries which are not already part of military alliances. The talk of a new Monroe Doctrine is absurd, since the original Doctrine was to stop the Spanish and Portuguese colonial powers from undertaking any operations in South America, not to make the U.S. into a colonial power, as is now taking place.
Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions & comments to questions@schillerinstitute.org or post them in the next live stream.
The follow-on continues to the Jan. 3 U.S. attack on Venezuela and abduction of its President Nicolas Maduro and his wife from Caracas. The two were arraigned today on 12 counts before a Federal judge in New York City, each declaring their innocence; the next court action is March 17. Maduro’s Vice President Delcy Rodriguez was sworn in today as Acting President, and has made mild statements about “cooperation” in the context of terror in her nation and the Caribbean. The death count from the U.S.’s Jan. 3 airstrikes and action in Venezuela is reported as 80, with 32 of them being deceased Cuban nationals.
Drilling and conveyance of oil in the nation is now near standstill, because the tank farms, and tankers at anchor, have reached their limit to be able to store any more, given the U.S. blockade of shipping. Later this week, the White House intends to host U.S. oil executives in Miami, Florida, to take over in the name of “rebuilding” in Venezuela.
President Donald Trump indicated last night that Colombia and Mexico are in line for U.S. intervention if Washington so decides, along with the takedown of Cuba. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the same. This evening Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller likewise declared on CNN that, “The United States should have Greenland.”
Trump said that Colombia “is run by a sick man who likes making cocaine and selling it to the United States. And he’s not going to be doing it very long, let me tell you.” He said of Mexico, that “in every single call I have offered troops” to President Claudia Sheinbaum.
This whole situation shows, as described on Jan. 5 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute leader, that the world is in a new, “different phase” of breakdown. She also referred to the continued horror imposed on Gaza, the suppression of free speech in Europe, the operations against Iran, and more, as well as the U.S. being on a rampage in the Western Hemisphere.
On the particular looming danger of the United States placing nuclear-capable, long-range missiles in Germany this year, the International Peace Coalition, initiated by Zepp-LaRouche, released a statement on Jan. 5 for wide circulation and endorsement. Headlined, “International Peace Coalition Statement: Appeal to the American People, To President Trump, and To Congress!” the full text is below.
As of the time of preparation of this bulletin, a classified briefing on U.S. actions in Venezuela is being given, for the first time, by the Trump Administration to the Eight-Plus Congressional leaders of their two chambers, in particular, Armed Services and Intelligence. Many lawmakers are highly critical of Trump’s intervention, but unfortunately, only because Congress wasn’t briefed in advance, nor had it given authorization to the U.S. military buildup, and not because the lawmakers oppose the takeover of Venezuela and other nations.
In dramatic distinction, Diane Sare, twice former U.S. Senate candidate from New York, is providing briefings this week, in the course of organizing for her Jan. 10 kick-off campaign event in New York City for running for President of the United States as a LaRouche Independent.
On the Garland Nixon podcast today, Sare said that the U.S. attack on Venezuela “is an affront to the judgment of the world,” and explained why, and what are the responsibilities of the world to roll back the danger. She said, “I can’t believe you have Congressmen, such as my former Congressman Mike Lawler, saying, ‘This was absolutely required, and of course the President should not have told the Congress.’ That is so far from our Constitution, I find that absolutely astounding.”
Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions & comments to questions@schillerinstitute.org or post them in the next live stream.
The world, as Helga Zepp-LaRouche warned, is “hanging between hope and disaster,” and the outcome depends on whether action replaces inertia.
There are openings. The continued dialogue between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, described by both sides as productive, marks a meaningful path forward toward ending the conflict playing out in Ukraine.
Alongside diplomatic movement forward in this one respect, there are countervailing forces pushing the world toward wider war: U.S. arms transfers to Taiwan, China’s encirclement of the island in response, Europe’s rearmament drive, and preparations to station long-range missiles in Germany that would again place the continent on the nuclear front line. Ukraine’s drone attack on Putin’s residence—made not long after the Trump-Zelenskyy meeting on Dec. 28, was denounced by a self-described “very angry” Trump, as an action that leads away from peace.
Trump’s total support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, including backing up Israel “100%” when it comes to the Gaza peace plan whose implementation it is stalling, is setting Trump up for being convinced to order further strikes on Iran.
Where diplomacy appears, Anglo-NATO forces invested in confrontation move to overwhelm it.
These are not separate crises. Ukraine, Taiwan, and Gaza are symptoms of a single failure—the refusal to replace geopolitics with a security order grounded in development. Without that shift, every ceasefire remains fragile, every negotiation exposed to provocation, every peace merely a reprieve.
Equally decisive is the internal front. The suppression of dissent across Europe and North America takes the form of sanctions on journalists, criminalization of protest, and expanding surveillance. Societies preparing for war silence the very voices needed to change course.
Yet an alternative is visible. Türkiye’s rapid construction of 455,000 homes after the 2023 earthquake demonstrates what is possible when state power is mobilized for life rather than destruction.
What could the hundreds of billions spent on weapons have done, if spent instead on rebuilding cities, expanding infrastructure, and removing the roots of conflict?
Acting to change history’s trajectory now means insisting on a new security and development architecture—making economic reconstruction the measure of security. The door leading to that future is still open. For now.
Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions, comments, and reports to questions@schillerinstitute.org or post them in the next live stream.
Dec. 15, 2025 (EIRNS)—“NATO has definitely outlived its legitimacy. We must urgently replace it with a new security and development architecture which this time must take into account the security and development interests of every single country on the planet,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche told an international gathering of youth on Sunday, Dec. 14. “I think that is absolutely the only way out of this crisis.”
The tension between two simultaneous and opposite trajectories in the world serves to underscore those wise words: On the one hand, we see a world of the Global Majority that is moving to consolidate relationships of cooperation, mutual respect, and win-win agreements for development; and on the other, a completely hysterical freakout from an increasingly irrelevant, yet nuclear-armed, elite class that would do anything to prevent peace in Ukraine—or to stir up a new conflict somewhere else on the globe.
Take the recent flurry of diplomatic activity on the part of the BRICS nations. Within the past week alone, leaders from China, India, Russia, Brazil, Iran, U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, and Jordan have met in various constellations to discuss bolstering bilateral relations, economic development perspectives, and how to strengthen the role of the BRICS and SCO in shaping a stable and prosperous world system.
Contrast that with the E3 Coalition of the Killing leaders, Starmer, Merz, and Macron, who are determined to sabotage efforts to bring peace in Ukraine—no matter the cost. Those three dwarfs convened in Berlin on Dec. 15, joining U.S. and Ukrainian delegations who had just concluded two days of discussions on a possible peace deal, in order to figure out how to, in the words of Russian Senator Vladimir Dzhabarov, “make every effort to stall and torpedo the peace plan,” despite the fact that strategic defeat of Russia—the largest nuclear power on the planet—is impossible.
But even if one conflict is brought to a resolution, as we may be nearing in the case of Ukraine, the crumbling system of geopolitics has still not been abolished, and as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has repeatedly warned, as one crisis is brought toward resolution, expect that other crises will break out. In Iran, fear is mounting that the psychotic Netanyahu government in Israel will use the recent tragic mass murder of Jews in Australia as the pretext for launching new strikes in Iran.
In the Western Hemisphere, which the recent “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine declared to be the U.S. zone of influence, the situation in the Caribbean remains extremely tense: On Friday, Dec. 12 a midair collision just 40 miles from the Venezuelan coast was narrowly avoided by an astute commercial airline pilot who spotted a U.S. Air Force refueling plane flying towards Venezuela without its transponder on, in just enough time to avoid disaster. Elsewhere in Ibero-America, leaders of nations are being installed—through elections or otherwise, and much to the delight of “Narco” Rubio—which promise to weaken or renounce their relationships with China’s Belt and Road Initiative and step into line with the Western financial interests. The Dec. 14 election of Pinochet admirer and ultra-monetarist José Antonio Kast in Chile, along with promises of Bolivia’s Foreign Minister to replace Chinese mining companies in his country with American ones, are recent examples.
But, thankfully, there is no solution other than to change the entire system.
“If you have a world which is in such disarray, you cannot try to solve these problems one by one,” Zepp-LaRouche said in her address to the youth. “Even if they have their historical and factual specificity—each crisis has its own reasons and dynamic—they are all part of this overall development where you have the end of the system of 500 years of colonialism, and the emergence of a new system whereby the countries the Global Majority are trying to create a new, more just system. That conflict is the deeper reason behind all these regional expressions of conflict. Therefore, you have to try to resolve this in totality.”
Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions, comments, and reports to questions@schillerinstitute.org or post them in the next live stream.
Dec. 8, 2025 (EIRNS)—When water turns into ice, there is no change in its chemistry or substance. Nonetheless, the phase change transforms the same material into a new and completely different state. Such is the case today, as the actors on the global stage are confronted with the insanity of today’s reigning policies of war, and—whether consciously or not—are being forced to change.
The most recent spark for this has been the Trump Administration’s new National Security Strategy (NSS), which has effectively declared Europe and NATO enemies of the U.S., not fit for survival into the future. The document’s release four days ago has unleashed unprecedented hysteria from across Europe and could even be the beginning of the end of NATO. There is much that can and should be criticized about the new doctrine, most particularly the fact that it calls for a return to Thrasymachus’ definition of justice as the “advantage of the stronger.” Yet at the same time, it is a complete break with the system which emerged at the end of the Cold War and which has brought the world closer to nuclear war than at any time previously. Therefore, its demise presents an opportunity to create a new system that is more just than its predecessor, and which legitimately takes into account the interests of others.
Former Russian President and currently Deputy Chairman of Russia’s Security Council Dmitry Medvedev noted: “It feels more like an attempt to steer a massive ship that’s been moving in the same direction for ages, just by force of habit, and finally decided to change course. For the first time in many years, Washington is openly talking about restoring ‘strategic stability’ in Eurasia and rebuilding ties with Russia.”
Exemplifying the insanity of the old system, and apparently immune to Trump’s criticism, the “Coalition of the Willing” leaders of the U.K., France, and Germany gathered in London on Dec. 8 with President Zelenskyy of Ukraine to plot their next steps in continuing the war against Russia. However, Trump seems to be losing patience with the antics, and the Europeans are losing almost all support from within their own nations. “I’m a little bit disappointed” with Zelenskyy, Trump said Dec. 7. “Russia’s fine with it … but I’m not sure that Zelenskyy’s fine with it.”
At the same time, warnings are being sounded about an attack on Venezuela. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is reportedly worried that a U.S. attack is imminent, and is working overtime to prevent one from occurring. The U.S. military has reportedly confirmed the deployment of a high-powered radar to Trinidad and Tobago that is within range of Venezuela’s shore. If the neocons in the Trump Administration are successful in initiating an attack, “that would inevitably not just be a war between the U.S and Venezuela,” said Celso Amorim, President Lula da Silva’s chief foreign policy adviser. “It would end up having global involvement.”
In discussion with associates on Dec. 8, Helga Zepp-LaRouche said that the new U.S. NSS and the response to it has created “a moment of utmost break in an order which existed in the post-Cold War period.” Zepp-LaRouche reiterated her call for NATO to be abolished, but not as an isolated step. Instead, we must force the recognition that “this whole effort to create a unipolar world after the end of the Cold War backfired tremendously”; the regime-change wars, the unilateral sanctions, unfair trade relations—all of this caused a blowback within the countries of the Global South, which increasingly saw the West as the enforcers of neocolonialism and China, for example, as offering an opportunity to finally overcome this. “Therefore, the only sensible way the world can get out of this crisis is to stop this narrow-minded thinking of geopolitical self-interest, and replace that thinking, which only leads to new conflicts and potentially even the annihilation of civilization.”
“That is why we should intervene with a concerted effort to catapult the whole debate onto the necessary level of a New Paradigm, of a new security and development architecture which must take into account every country on the planet. Otherwise it will not work.”
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Today in the afternoon U.S. Presidential envoy Steve Witkoff is scheduled to meet in Moscow with President Vladimir Putin, toward confirming terms that can be the basis of settlement of the Ukraine conflict. This follows upon the four-hour meeting yesterday between U.S. leaders, and the Ukrainian delegation—headed by Rustem Umerov, head of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, which took place at Witkoff’s Florida golf and residential club. No definitive break nor resolution has come about for either success or failure of this process of U.S. engagement in talks, but the process is valuable, and reality has a way of intervening.
There is no use-value in prognosticating about exactly when and what may result at any exact time in this diplomatic process, which itself is nevertheless useful, in large part because of the context of reality asserting itself. Ukraine cannot continue with the mortal losses it is suffering in being used by the Western geopolitical interests as a proxy against Russia. That is the reality. Demanding Ukraine continue warfare, when a resolution can be found, is immoral insanity.
On display in Brussels today, at the EU Foreign Affairs Council (Defense) meeting of ministers, was exactly that: immoral insanity. EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy Kaja Kallas gave a mad-woman speech about how Europe must continue to back Ukraine to the hilt, and moreover, continue itself to arm and make ready against Russia. She boasted that Europe has already contributed $187 billion to Ukraine, and must continue such support. She praised the Netherlands for announcing it will build an arms production center in Ukraine. She praised the specific EU war preparation programs, “Defense Readiness Roadmap” and the “Military Mobility Package.”
Chairman of the NATO Military Committee Adm. Giuseppe Cavo Dragone (Italy) went even further. In an interview with London’s Financial Times on Dec. 1, Admiral Dragone said that even a pre-emptive strike against Russia is among the many things NATO is thinking about. Though he said, as a feint, that such a strike “is further away from our normal way of thinking and behavior,” Dragone nevertheless clearly raised the prospect as a favorable option.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche, leader of the Schiller Institute, today denounced this kind of madness among “top European leaders,” reporting, “we are run by madmen.” Characterizing the world situation, she stressed that, “we have a strategic picture of maximum tension, dangers and potentials,” and the situation “requires our intervention.”
The actions of NATO can be described as “institutionalized madness.” NATO Director General Mark Rutte met with Kallas today at the time of the EU Foreign Affairs ministers meeting, supporting her crazed declarations. Moreover, Rutte spoke on Dec. 1 with Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, in a 20-minute call, pledging what amounts to Global NATO expansion. Takaichi’s office afterward issued a read out, reporting: “Takaichi highlighted that the security of the Euro-Atlantic and the Indo-Pacific is inseparable and cooperation between Japan-NATO and NATO-IP4 (Japan, Australia, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea) is strategically important. In response, Secretary-General Rutte supported such views, and both leaders concurred on working together to elevate our cooperative relationship to new heights through concrete cooperation….”
Zepp-LaRouche took the gloves off against NATO in an interview with the China Media Group, broadcast widely on CGTN Dec. 1. She identified the expansion of NATO as the fundamental cause triggering the Ukraine conflict, and then painted the broad picture. “Although NATO claims its original intention was peaceful, after the military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and other countries, NATO’s so-called ‘peaceful conduct’ becomes untenable.”
She pointed to the solution, addressing Europe, but with a point universally applicable. “Overall, I think we need to achieve a transformation in the way of thinking in Europe, because wherever you look, whether it’s Venezuela, the Middle East, or Ukraine, all these conflicts would become much easier to resolve if Western countries could change their mindset, turn to cooperation with Global South countries and the global majority, and return to diplomacy.”
Note, as of the time of preparation of this item, that a White House meeting is underway this evening, commissioned by President Donald Trump to provide him “options” for further action in the Caribbean against Venezuela. The prospects are grim, given the known stance for brute force by the advisers he has assembled.
This is the time to expand interventions of all kinds for reason and diplomacy, not warfare. The weekly International Peace Coalition Meeting, serving international collaboration, is Dec. 5, at 11:00 a.m. (ET).
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What sort of madness would lead people, in the face of the collapse of nearly every single global arms control and verification treaty—today only New START remains, until it too expires in February 2026—to explicitly and publicly propose to further proliferate nuclear weapons to the nations of Germany, Japan, and Canada? To argue that this will “strengthen the global order,” and provide “dependable protection against the threats of regional foes, such as China and Russia”?
The madness of those who speak for the bankrupt London-New York financial Establishment, is who, including their policy mouthpieces, such as Foreign Affairs magazine of the New York Council on Foreign Relations.
What sort of madness would cause them to propose to give nuclear weapons to a Germany which, under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, has announced it is girding for war against Russia within years, at most? To argue for nuclear arms to be under the control of a Takaichi government in Japan, which has just announced it could take military action against China to defend Taiwan?
Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova drew out the implications of such madness: “We know how Japanese militarism ended. It would be good if those politicians who come to govern Japan remember this, understand where irresponsible statements lead, and refrain from making them.”
This is the same madness which is driving London and its European allies apoplectic over U.S. President Donald Trump’s latest effort to return U.S.-Russian negotiations over Ukraine to the approach both sides had agreed upon in the Aug. 15 Trump-Putin summit in Anchorage, Alaska. They are describing those efforts as “nauseating,” “worse than we thought,” and a “nightmare”—all because Trump and Putin have agreed that the issues which caused the war in the first place must be addressed.
It is also the madness behind Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s obsession with overthrowing the Maduro government in Venezuela, in order to embroil the Trump administration in another bloody forever war of exactly the sort he promised to never launch.
All of this is the madness borne of the desperation of the owners of the financially bankrupt system, who are trying to keep their system afloat through wars and economic looting—when it is no longer possible to do so.
“The economy of the United States of America, and also that of the trans-Atlantic political-economic regions of the planet, are, now, under the immediate, mortal danger of a general, physical-economic, chain-reaction breakdown-crisis of that region of this planet as a whole.”
The pathway LaRouche specified leading to the reorganization of the global physical economy around scientific drivers such as fusion energy and space colonization, begins with a return to the 1933 Glass-Steagall law of FDR. This would put the $2 quadrillion in speculative assets today asphyxiating the Western financial system through bankruptcy reorganization, and open the door to issuing productive credit in volumes needed to create physical economic conditions worthy of the dignity of Man—all 8 billion plus of us!
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Yesterday, Nov. 16, the USS Gerald R. Ford, America’s largest aircraft carrier, arrived in the Caribbean. The same day U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a statement declaring the President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro to be the head of a foreign terrorist group, the Cartel de los Soles. This puts two things in place for an imminent attack. U.S. military assets are now at full force posture in the region, including 15,000 troops, 12 destroyers, and multiple fighter jets. The U.S. legalism is now in place, that if the U.S. attacks Venezuela on sea or land, in the name of attacking a foreign terrorist individual or group, Washington will declare its actions lawful. This is based, in particular, on the statutes and practices asserted unilaterally by Washington since 9/11.
True, President Trump told reporters yesterday, that the U.S. “may be having some discussions” with Maduro, and that “Venezuela would like to talk….I’ll talk to anybody. We’ll see what happens.” What is that supposed to mean?
The danger of escalation to military action against Venezuela is of immediate concern, among a number of friction zones and hot conflicts in the world, in which the deepest fault line is the divide between the Global Majority nations, with their drive for infrastructure and economic development, and the Global North alignments of “old empire,” with their demand for dominance, and suppression of development.
EIR is hosting an emergency roundtable Thursday, Nov. 20, on the dangerous situation in the Caribbean, with expert discussion of the strategic and regional situations, including proposed solutions for the area and hemisphere. As the invitation states, “The United States has no reason to fear the BRI [Belt and Road Initiative] and the BRICS, and should instead cooperate with them in building those great projects. This approach could rapidly develop the entire Caribbean Basin region, and stop the real narco-trafficking and related migrant problems that will only be worsened by an attack on Venezuela.”
Schiller Institute leader Helga Zepp-LaRouche today, in reviewing the Caribbean and other crises, encouraged all to mobilize to understand what is taking place, and that there are solutions. “The outcome of all of that remains to be determined by, not least, our energetic intervention to put on a level of reason, which seems to be lacking for the most part, at least concerning Western policies.”
The context in which the face-off in the Caribbean has been whipped up, is that during both the Trump and Biden Administrations, and before, U.S. force and covert actions have moved through country by country in the Western Hemisphere to block economic independence and development, especially when those countries were working with China, and also Russia, on matters of economic and science projects.
In Mexico, for example, an operation was staged against the government on Nov. 15 in Mexico City, when international media used violent actions initiated by a smaller group of masked youth near the end of a “march” billed as an anti-government “Gen Z” protest to generate videos and media accounts worldwide, proclaiming that the youth of Mexico are protesting the failure of the government to take on drug traffickers. What happened was not as portrayed in the press, but rather is a text book ploy organized largely by foreign interests out to destabilize Mexico.
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, however, in her morning press conference two days before the march, provided an expert to give details to the press on the networks responsible. For weeks, social media and other means were deployed, mostly from abroad, centered around the Atlas Foundation and other London-associated, radical networks, which are documented as behind other dirty operations in Central and South America. They were behind the overthrow of Dilma Rousseff and installation of Jair Bolsonaro as President in Brazil, for example. In Venezuela right now, the same networks are promoting Nobel Peace Prize winner Maria Corina Machado as the coming head of the hoped-for U.S. military installed government.
One instance where these dark operations got a setback yesterday, is in the elections in Ecuador. For months, American officials have visited the country, including Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and top U.S. military commanders, pushing the idea that the U.S. should be allowed to open a military base in Ecuador – which is currently prohibited by the Ecuadorian constitution – and otherwise imposing ongoing terms of trade amounting to looting the nation. President Daniel Noboa welcomed the U.S. intervention against Ecuador’s sovereignty, in conformity with his personal oligarchic background. But Ecuador voters yesterday roundly defeated—by over 60%—a measure that would have changed standing law to allow a foreign military base, and they voted down other nation-threatening measures as well.
On the world agenda, reconstruction in Gaza, toward full development throughout the entire Southwest Asia region, is a priority. This evening in the UN Security Council, the U.S.-circulated resolution on Washington’s plan for ongoing administration and rebuilding was passed by 13 to 0, with Russia and China abstaining. In speeches following the vote, the representative of China expressed profound disappointment at the way there has not been collaboration among nations to date, especially on the UN Security Council, but China abstained from voting, in consideration of the fragility in Gaza, and the imperative of maintaining a ceasefire.
Join Helga Zepp-LaRouche in her live dialogue and discuss the issues and solutions that move the world and its people. Send your questions, comments, and reports to questions@schillerinstitute.org or post them in the next live stream.
