International Peace Coalition

Report on IPC #142

Feb. 20, 2026 (EIRNS)—The 142nd consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition on Friday,Feb. 20 posed the extreme contrast between the degeneracy of the world into sexual perversion, war fighting and economic looting, and, on the other hand, the purpose of the IPC and the Schiller Institute: lifting humanity into a higher vision of mankind, based on the creative power of man and the placing of humanity itself as the focus of human thought. The extreme danger of President Trump unleashing a war on Iran, and the almost certain expansion of such a war throughout the region or even globally, was a focus of much of the discussion, as well as the impact of the Epstein Class phenomena, expanded with the arrest of the former Prince Andrew, threatening the welcome demise of the British Royal System.

A reference to the Epstein mentality coming from British radicalism was pointed to by reference to Jeremy Bentham, whose defense of pederasty and his defense of usury demonstrated that both of these are based on the same mentality—a degrading of humanity to less than human. This is, indeed, the reality of the Epstein Class, which is not only a cult of sexual perversity, but also a central portion of the global speculative perversion which is bringing down the productive economy of the Western world. Dennis Speed noted that the connection between sexual exploitation and financial speculation and looting are both representative of the “predatory mindset.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche sent in a video which addressed both the danger of war in Iran and the implications of the exposure of the Epstein perversions. She noted the insanity of Marco Rubio, whose speech at the Munich Conference not only compared Beethoven to the Rolling Stones, but also praised the 500 years of colonialism as the great gift of Western Civilization to the history of mankind!

Steven Starr, the director of the University of Missouri’s Clinical Laboratory Science Program, as well as a senior scientist at the Physicians for Social Responsibility, provided a powerful, if frightening, picture of the scope of the pending war with Iran. He began by playing a short video from Scott Ritter describing the massive U.S. military deployment now gathered in the region of Iran. Starr then described the Iranian missile capacity as very advanced, capable of doing massive damage if it is deployed, in response to a U.S. and/or Israeli attack. He noted that Alastair Crooke, the former MI6 officer, had pointed to the fact that China has supplied Iran with a radar system which can identify stealth warplanes, undermining the idea that the U.S. stealth fighter jets could easily take out Iran’s missile defenses. Iran has hundreds of missiles, buried in underground, fortified caves, and missile silos spread all over the country, as well as hypersonic missiles. He also pointed to the Russia-China-Iran security agreement of January 2026. If Iran responds by deploying its missiles against Israel and U.S. military bases, the destruction would be substantial. He noted that the Israeli population is largely concentrated in three major cities, showing a map of such a city showing the impact of a barrage of missiles, literally hitting the entire population. The danger then becomes: Would Israel then decide to deploy its nuclear weapons? He also noted that Iran could potentially take out one of the American aircraft carriers, with 5,000 Americans onboard. Would the U.S. then deploy a nuclear weapon? These are frightening questions, but real possibilities.

Eduardo Gabriel Fernández of Argentina, a graduate of the Advanced Course in National Defense and a member of the Gen. Jorge Edgar Leal Argentine Sovereignty Monitoring Center, described the ongoing destruction of his country under the current President Javier Milei. This is a “planned and deliberate” destruction, he said, destroying the policies implemented by former President Juan Perón (he added that Perón and Lyndon LaRouche were similar thinkers and leaders, although at different times). He said that since the time of the pandemic, production in the country has declined by 60%, with 20,000 businesses closed. Food shortages are severe, with beef output declining by more than half, while bread costs have risen drastically. Extreme poverty has risen to nearly 10%, with a serious problem of malnourishment. Under Milei, the Epstein mentality has taken over from Tavistock, with shock therapy applied. He said this was not the first crisis to hit Argentina, noting earlier dictatorships and the Malvinas War from the U.K. The only solution is a return to sovereignty. He pointed to the Schiller Institute as a guiding force.

Dennis Small, EIR Director for Ibero-America, said that the Argentine crisis is relative to the entire world. It was once, under Perón and also under the two Kirchner presidencies, was a major industrial power, which has been destroyed by the Milei government under the direction of Wall Street. The Jan. 3 U.S. invasion of Venezuela, which EIR declared had marked a global phase change, has been proven to be exactly that, with the adoption of Malthusian genocide. We are now seeing this with the U.S. manipulated coup against Peruvian President José Jerí for the “crime” of cooperating with China in building the Chancay Port and planning a trans-oceanic railroad, and also in the forced “dollarization” of South American countries.

Jose Vega, a member of the Schiller Institute now running for Congress in the Bronx, New York, showed a video he has produced addressing the danger of Israel’s nuclear weapons capacity and the subservience of his election opponent, Rep. Ritchie Torres, to the Zionist Lobby in the U.S. On the threat of war against Iran, he asked: “Where is the Congress?”

Steven Starr was asked about the state of mind impacting the decisions to go to war. He replied that the problem is “hubris.” The U.S. belief that they are the only superpower (the unipolar world), and Israel’s belief that they are the only nuclear power in the region, both lead to the sin of hubris, that they can commit genocide in Gaza and wage war on Iran without resistance.

Karel Vereycken, a member of the Schiller Institute from France and an artist, discussed the dehumanizing taking place across the Western world and the need to “re-humanize.” The Renaissance was driven by governments holding competitions, spurring people to create music, poems, and architectural proposals, and we should do the same—with conferences which solicit original works of art, music, poetry and so forth. He noted that his wife, Christine Bierre, had visited China’s Xinjiang Province shortly after a series of terrorist attacks had taken place, and that the Chinese approach was to provide educational facilities for those drawn into such radical circles, in which they were given lessons in music and painting as a means for uplifting their outlook on life. He warned against the revival of eugenics and genetical engineering by the circles around Epstein, reflecting the eugenics of the Nazis.

Vereycken also read a petition titled “For an Immediate Reactivation of the UN Charter in Support of Multilateralism,” which had been prepared by citizens of France and Belgium to call on Americans to “Say No To War,” and call for a reform of the United Nations, such that each country would have an equal voice, while also providing the right to security and development for all nations.

A listener in Peru asked the question, “What real alternatives exist to the crisis facing civilization today?” Dennis Small asked in his reply: “What do you mean by ‘real’?” If you mean “practical,” then perhaps the answer is no, there is no alternative, and civilization is doomed. The question is, how do you change the population’s axioms of thinking, to break the influence of British radical liberalism, of Bentham, Locke, and Hume? This is the role of Nicholas of Cusa’s “coincidence of opposites,” the existence of a higher plane from which solutions to contradictions exist. It has happened before, he noted, pointing to the Renaissance, the role Lyndon LaRouche played throughout his life, and which the March 2 conference being prepared by the Schiller Institute today will address.

Michael Billington, EIR

Report on IPC #140

Feb. 6, 2026 (EIRNS)—The 140th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition (IPC) on Friday, Feb. 6, took up the question of the latest revelations from the files on the Jeffrey Epstein case, and elevated the discussion to consider how to improve the moral character of humanity as part of the IPC mission to efficiently end the danger of war.

Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche led off by noting that the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty, New START, had expired on the previous day, and it is unclear whether any agreement will replace it. There is a big U.S. Naval armada assembling in the Persian Gulf region, which could presage a strike on Iran and create “unforeseeable consequences.” There is also an “impending Damocles sword” of a general collapse of the financial system. The IPC response includes renewed efforts to re-establish international law, based on the UN Charter, but what is absolutely required is the new global governance system embodied in the Ten Principles put forward by Zepp-LaRouche.

She went on to describe the new environment created by the recent release of additional Epstein files, which she compared to the “Clean Hands” operation in Italy, which was used by the security services to “totally blow up” an existing corrupt system and replace it with an updated version of the same thing. What is actually needed is nothing short of a new Renaissance, and perhaps her proposed global security and development architecture should be updated to include a cultural renewal.

Diane Sare, U.S. independent LaRouche presidential candidate, began by citing the Sept. 2, 1945 remarks by General Douglas MacArthur aboard the USS Missouri after receiving the surrender of Japan, who said that the moral character of humanity must catch up with our incredible advances in science, lest we destroy ourselves with nuclear weapons. She has made three policy proposals:

1.) The United States must declare a doctrine of “no first use” of nuclear weapons, and require that every nuclear-armed nation, including emphatically Israel, must also so declare.

2.) We need a new security and economic development architecture, including a reform of the UN Security Council to reflect the growing influence of the nations of the Global South.

3.) We must join with Russia to build the Bering Strait Tunnel linking Alaska to Siberia, and take up Russia’s Oct. 2011 “Strategic Defense of Earth” proposal to jointly build a system capable of protecting the planet both from missile threats and from threats coming from outer space, such as asteroids.

Sare shared the recent TASS coverage of her presidential campaign, noting her call for a new START Treaty and her association with Lyndon LaRouche, who was widely respected in Russia. She said that people are looking for signs of intelligent life in the United States.

Starting from Scratch on Arms Control

A video presentation by Scott Ritter, former UN weapons inspector, recounted his experience as the first U.S. weapons inspector on the ground in the Soviet Union to implement the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty of Dec. 1987 and his role in the development of onsite inspections, which help to establish mutual trust. Even though the New START Treaty regulating strategic nuclear weapons only ended on Feb. 5, 2026, Ritter said that there have been no inspections related to the treaty since 2022, due to sanctions, and no data exchange since 2023. This means “we’re starting from scratch…. Nobody trusts American negotiators.” The world we live in today is one where the threat of nuclear war is greater than it was at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. “We need a leader, and I believe that leader is Diane Sare,” Ritter concluded.

Garland Nixon, veteran progressive radio and television talk show host, who had spent over 20 years in law enforcement, commented on the release of the Epstein files “through the eyes of an investigator.” He said that we should understand that this is a controlled release, designed to emphasize some things and de-emphasize others, so some level of skepticism is appropriate. He said that the revelations of Epstein’s connections to the British Crown are significant, and validate what the LaRouche movement has said for decades about the British Crown’s perfidious role in global politics.

Zepp-LaRouche, in response, asked Nixon to comment on the analogy of the released Epstein files to the “Clean Hands” operation in Italy. He suggested that the Epstein affair is different, because “once it got out of the bag, they lost control.” Sare added that the question is whether human beings are animals, and if they are not, we must find a way to use the revelations to advance our civilization. Nixon called this “a crisis of legitimacy for the ruling elite,” which shows them to be morally unqualified to lead. “How now do we take advantage of an opportunity,” he asked, to replace a rotten system with an actually better one? Zepp-LaRouche said that we must “shed off oligarchism, because this is what this is all about.”

IPC co-moderator Dennis Speed asked Nixon to comment on the role of his mentor, author and historian Paul Robeson, Jr. (1927-2014). Nixon replied by saying that we must rebuild the legacy of Robeson’s father, the noted actor, singer and activist Paul Robeson (1898-1976), in order to “bring the Black community out of this brainwashed anti-Russian” outlook that has been fostered by the Democratic Party apparatchiks.

Nixon went on to describe how Christine Maxwell, twin sister of Jeffrey Epstein’s partner Ghislaine Maxwell, cofounded in the early 1990s Magellan, one of the first internet search engines. He noted that Christine later founded Chiliad, a data analysis company based in Herndon, VA, whose software was used by the FBI to establish a counterterrorism data warehouse after the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attack.

Zepp-LaRouche observed that, in the present political structure of the Anglosphere, corruption is considered mandatory, because corrupt people can be reliably controlled, and people who are not corrupt are a potential threat to the system. With the Epstein revelations, “the gutter of this whole system comes out in the open.”

A brief excerpt from a video interview with former Guyanese President Donald Ramotar, conducted on Feb. 3 by IPC co-moderator and EIR Ibero-American editor Dennis Small, was featured. Ramotar warns that world opinion has not grasped the significance of the expiration of the New START Treaty; “the consciousness is lagging behind the danger” of nuclear war.

Discussion

A peace activist from Germany returned to the question of a cultural renaissance, sharing her experience of attending an event in Berlin for the Chinese Spring Festival, in which a Chinese tenor movingly sang a Lied by Schubert. She also congratulated Nixon for his work to call attention to the importance of Paul Robeson.

In response to another question, Diane Sare described the American population’s changed response to the question of space exploration as a symptom of cultural decline, optimism supplanted by pessimism.

Zepp-LaRouche said that we must “aim to bring politics and economics into increasing cohesion with the laws of the universe.” When you go to a museum, you see evidence of cultures that did not make it, because they failed to do this. As Nicholas of Cusa emphasized, pleasures of the flesh do not satisfy the human spirit: “you will like the sweetness of truth better than a stuffed goose.”

In response to a participant who called for the impeachment of U.S. President Donald Trump, co-moderator Dennis Small insisted that “the idea of impeaching Donald Trump is insufficiently ambitious … let’s think really big,” by replacing the entire bankrupt system, rather than just focusing on the person in the White House. His view was echoed by Sare, who added that we must give people a positive vision of the future, “an actual human standard.”

A question posed by another participant sparked an extensive discussion of Friedrich Schiller’s conception of man, as opposed to that of Immanuel Kant. Zepp-LaRouche described a singer who sang well, but misbehaved in his personal life. She jokingly urged the singer to reduce the interval between songs to a minimum in order to improve his moral character, underscoring Schiller’s conception of how exposure to beauty can educate the emotions to produce the “beautiful soul.”

In conclusion, Zepp-LaRouche urged that we use “the moment of catharsis”—which we are experiencing with the Epstein event—to launch a new Renaissance. She stressed that “practical” proposals which lack the proper epistemological basis are doomed to fail.

EIR

by EIR staff

The 138^th consecutive meeting of the International Peace Coalition opened with remarks by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and initiator of the International Peace Coalition. She discussed the implications of President Trump’s speech at Davos, during which he made clear his disdain for international law. She deplored his “typical mafioso-like” statements on Iran.

However, she said, the metaphorical glass is half-full, “maybe more than half-full”, in light of the meeting between Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff with Vladimir Putin in Moscow on January 22, 2026, aimed at advancing a U.S.-backed peace plan to end the war in Ukraine.  The meeting was described by the Kremlin as “useful” and “constructive.” What is important is that there is an ongoing dialogue, and the “spirit of Anchorage” has not fallen by the wayside. “If this is continued, it really could shift the balance,” Zepp-LaRouche said.

Russia will provide $1 billion for the reconstruction of Gaza. Putin also joked about the invitation by Trump to join his “Peace Council” with a $1 billion membership fee, saying, “I will pay the one billion, and you can take it out of the frozen assets.” Putin has made the offer to extend the last arms control treaty, START, which is due to expire in a few weeks. There has been no response yet from Trump.

Zepp-LaRouche reviewed some positive initiatives, and praised a new proposal from a French group: a petition to return to the founding charter of the UN, which will be reviewed, edited by IPC participants and brought back for a vote next week.

She was followed by Dr. Ted Postol, MIT Professor Emeritus and one of the world’s leading experts on nuclear weapons.  He analyzed “the mythical idea of Golden Dome,” Trump’s proclaimed plan for anti-missile defense. It involves orbiting satellites with interceptors to catch ICBMs in boost phase. “Implicit in this idea is understanding that the existing ground-based systems have little or no capability,” since they can’t tell the difference between warheads and the hundreds of decoys which are deployed during the descent phase. Orbiting satellites have less than three minutes to intercept in boost phase, when the missile velocity is relatively slow and no decoys have yet been released. Their orbit must be low enough to maximize that window of opportunity, which will cause atmospheric drag and the lifespan of the satellite will only be about six years before it falls to earth. You would need 1100-1200 satellites in orbit to even think about an interception of one ICBM. The system scales 1000 to 1 – for a launch of 100 missiles, 120,000 satellites. You could “punch a hole in the Golden Dome satellite constellation” with an interceptor launched from below, “and your launch would go unopposed.”

Postol expressed his concern that “something is different about Trump in the past few months… something more extreme.” He said that some people have suggested that he may have had a minor stroke. “We have a criminal government right now in control of the United States.”

In response to Postol’s demolition of the Golden Dome scheme, Zepp-LaRouche asked, why is there no one in Trump’s team that will tell him this is unworkable? Postol said that people follow orders, they don’t ask questions. What followed was an exchange about the difference between Lyndon LaRouche’s conception of the Strategic Defense Initiative based on “new physical principles”, as opposed to what Reagan’s program became under the influence of LaRouche’s opponents.

Jens Jorgen Nielsen is the Former Moscow correspondent for the Danish daily Politiken, and an author of books on Russia and Ukraine, as well as being Director of the Russian-Danish Dialogue and assistant professor of communication and cultural differences. He addressed the issue of Trump’s desired annexation of Greenland, stressing that Greenland has its own government and people there are very concerned about the possibility of being occupied by US. Some factions there are calling for immediate independence from Denmark; what would Trump do under those circumstances? Most Danes and Greenlanders were not reassured that U.S. President Donald Trump and NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte reached an agreement over Greenland at the World Economic Forum that did not include them.

A short excerpt was presented from a video interview with Alberto Vizcarra, a leader of the National Front for Saving Mexican Agriculture. He described the dire state of Mexican agriculture, where exports have collapsed due to neoliberal economic policies. He went on to review the past proposals of LaRouche for projects in the mutual interests of Mexico and the US.
Daniel Burke of the Schiller Institute announced a new international youth class series. He called the youth movement a “crucial strategic flank.”

Discussion

There was a further exchange between Zepp-LaRouche and Nielsen on what Nielsen calls a “law-based order” as opposed to a “rules-based order. Zepp-LaRouche suggested that “rules-based order” sounds like it is based on something arbitrary. They agreed that the abrogation of treaties, combined with the possible stationing of medium-range missiles in Europe, puts the world on edge.

One participant asked how we can we organize against ICE. This provoked several responses. Co-moderator Dennis Speed observed that America has long been a plaything of intelligence agencies, particularly British. What is going on in Minnesota is closely tied to the debacles in US foreign policy. To break from the downward spiral, we need action which is not merely non-violent, but which also poses solutions. The other IPC co-moderator, Dennis Small, stated that the only reason immigration is an issue is that US foreign policy has wrecked the economies of our neighbors to the south, causing waves of refugees.

Regular participant John Steinbach noted that nuclear weapons are never defensive in nature, and ABM systems are intended to block retaliation after a first strike.

Returning to the question of Greenland, Dennis Small said that the question of the Arctic is not merely a military one. It is a golden opportunity for international collaboration on economic development.

Zepp-LaRouche commented that Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s speech at Davos has received much favorable attention, but it is a disguised reflection of Chatham House line. She said that he “stated something that was obvious, that rules-based order is a fraud.” However, the he people who are praising him are oblivious to economics, because he was the author of the “reset” policy.

In her concluding remarks, Zepp-LaRouche reported that out of the recent EIR seminar, titled “It’s Worse Than You Think: The Strategic Implications of the Attack on Venezuela and How To Bring the World Back from the Brink,” we have put together a committee that will take responsibility to organize globally for a new paradigm. She announced that it will operate under the slogan, “Citizens of the World Unite.”

Jan. 9, 2026 (EIRNS)—The 136th consecutive weekly meeting of the International Peace Coalition opened with remarks by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute founder and International Peace Coalition initiator. She warned that, in the wake of Donald Trump’s attack on Venezuela, “there is no more international law, and it has been replaced by ‘might makes right’ and the law of the jungle.” She then introduced Dennis Kucinich, former U.S. Congressman from Ohio and former U.S. Presidential candidate. Kucinich said that we are at an inflection point where we will either stand for peace, or watch the world disintegrate around us. He said that in addition to the Venezuela war, the murder of Renee Nicole Good by ICE operatives demonstrates the lawlessness of the Trump administration. This breakdown of order is leading us ever closer to another world war. “We are tiptoeing through the graveyard of history, pretending that a nuclear war can’t happen,” Kucinich said.

Zepp-LaRouche then noted Trump’s announcement that he wants to increase the military budget by 50% to $1.5 trillion, which should be seen in conjunction with the rearmament of Germany and Japan. Both Trump and JD Vance have stated that they want to take Greenland, and the spokeswoman for the Trump administration has statedly plainly that a military option is on the table.

She said it was important not to forget the attempted drone attacks on the residence of Russian President Putin. Europe’s “Coalition of the Willing” wants to station troops in Ukraine after a peace deal, which is “ludicrous” because the potential stationing of NATO troops in Ukraine is what started the war in the first place. She said that the killing of Renee Nicole Good was bad enough, but what was worse was Trump and Vance taking the side of the ICE agent who killed her. “The only tiny element of positive news,” Zepp-LaRouche acknowledged, was the unprecedented public reaction against the sanctions on Swiss Col. Jacques Baud.

Richard Falk is professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor’s Chairman of the Board of Trustees, and former UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories from 2008 to 2014. He analyzed the failure of the postwar framework established in 1945, which allowed the five nations that were winners of the war a privileged position, an unrestricted veto that was not contingent upon international law. There was one rule of law for the winners, and a different one for everyone else, which was “woven into the normative order,” he said. “The Nuremberg and Tokyo trials only held the losers accountable for their crimes.” Trump’s vision for the world is dominated by geopolitics, not the rule of law. The attack on Putin’s residence and the Venezuela intervention were designed to be immune from the restrictions of international law.

Zepp-LaRouche reiterated her view that geopolitics has been the cause of two world wars, and thanked Falk for shedding new light on the problem.

Col. (ret.) Alain Corvez (France), international consultant and former advisor to the French Defense and Interior Ministries, said that there are certain states, particularly the U.S. and Israel, which do not respect the UN Charter, and the Charter is therefore finished. He just returned from Iran, where he saw the unabashed lies of the international media. Life is difficult for the Iranians after 45 years of sanctions, and there are legitimate demonstrations, which the U.S. hopes to harness to make a “color revolution,” which will not succeed.

Prof. Fernando Garzón (Ecuador) is Director of Solidarity with Palestine and former consultant on Defense Policy Strategies. He agreed with Corvez that there are developments in Iran which, like Venezuela, are being misrepresented by the international media.

He described two models: The military operational model which has been increasing, such as in Gaza, and includes the use of AI, typified by Palantir, for military purposes. In Gaza there was a kind of experimentation which is now being applied in Venezuela, not solely by the U.S., but also with coordination with Britain and France.

The second model is governance, where military campaigns are associated with investments. The oil companies had begun to negotiate well in advance of the kidnapping of Maduro. The “Gaza Riviera” scheme, promoted by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and special envoy Steve Witkoff, applies a method where violent military actions are used to impose a business arrangement. An extremely important counterweight to all of this is the BRICS, which is trying to return to a civilized approach.

A snippet was aired of an Interview with Diego Sequera from Venezuela, who said that Americans are suffering economically and fed up with the endless wars. Trump’s oil grab will be financed by taxpayers, not Exxon.

Former Guyanese President Donald Ramotar observed that the Trump administration is trying to destroy the rule of law inside the U.S. itself, using the military domestically under various pretexts. The murder of Renee Nicole Good is one indication. This is contributing to the deterioration in the international situation.

Co-moderator Dennis Small said that the last ten days have seen a phase change, including three major developments: the drone attacks on the President of Russia; the attack on Venezuela and the threats against other nations; and the “cold-blooded assassination” of Renee Good. Small described this as “the Era of Shock and Awe,” the idea that using sheer terror, you can change the way the world functions. They are turning Venezuela, Cuba and others into “Gaza West,” the approach of “complete strangulation.”

U.S. Presidential candidate Diana Sare had announced her candidacy earlier than planned, in response to the Venezuela attack. She said that the CIA was probably involved in the drone attack on Russia’s President, and this was directed at Russia’s ability to respond to a nuclear attack. Russia provided the evidence to the U.S. military. Did Trump fire anyone? No, he went ahead with an attack on Venezuela and seized a Russian tanker.

Small announced that there will be an emergency round table discussion on Monday, Jan. 12 on “How To Bring the World Back from the Brink.”

Discussion

Humanitarian activist Rafed Aljoboury pointed out that the Venezuela attack happened immediately following Netanyahu’s U.S. visit, and asked, why would Iran aid America to suppress the resistance in Iraq? Colonel Corvez replied that the U.S. has always been against Iran. The Iranians did not associate themselves with U.S. in Iraq.

Frequent participant John Steinbach noted that Israel has a long history of acting as a U.S. proxy, collaborating with the worst right-wing regimes and suppressing independence movements all over the world, so this should be understood when we look at Israeli involvement in Venezuela. He asked Professor Falk to compare international law to the so-called “rules-based order.” Falk replied that there is a “geopolitical de facto veto” when we speak of international law.

Small responded to Aljoboury: if we try to go back and re-litigate each dispute among nations, we will lose. We must use the approach of the Treaty of Westphalia. It has always been British geopolitics that has manipulated very real grievances to play divide and rule.

Zepp-LaRouche said that the previously existing order, the attempt to impose a unipolar world, provoked a backlash and now we have chaos. President Putin has called for a new Eurasian Security Architecture, but if you have an order which does not include everyone, it won’t work. She has carefully studied President Xi’s Global Governance Initiative, and approves of it as a starting point for discussion. Her Schiller Institute proposal and the Chinese proposal are the only two universal plans on the table. Either we learn to think of the One Humanity first, or it cannot work.

EIR

Report on the 135th meeting of the International Peace Coalition

The 135th consecutive meeting of the International Peace Coalition on Friday, Jan. 2, 2026, began with remarks by its initiator, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, who forecast that “2026 will be a year of even more dramatic changes.” The “all-dominating new development,” she said, was the Ukrainian attack with 91 drones on the residence of Russian President Putin. If Putin had been killed, the situation could have spiraled toward World War III. The Ukrainian government denied responsibility, and the CIA supported their claim, but then on Jan. 1, Russia presented evidence in the form of well-preserved navigation systems from drones which had been shot down in the course of the attack. These systems revealed the Ukrainian origins of the attack.

The killing in Gaza and the West Bank continues, she reported, as Netanyahu is feted at Mar-a-Lago. The attack on Venezuela could lead to a continent-wide destabilization. The China-Taiwan situation is worsening. Japan and Germany, two of the Axis powers, are re-arming. All of these developments underline the urgent need for a new Security and Development Architecture.

Flirting with Nuclear War

Wolfgang Effenberger is a German journalist and author of Pax Americana (2004) and The Underestimated Power (2022). He warned that the U.S. has upgraded its military command structure in Germany, which heightens the threat to peace. Despite initial assurances from the U.S. that no missile systems will be stationed there, the German government has announced that such systems are, in fact, on the agenda, including the hypersonic missiles known as “Dark Eagle,” if the U.S. manages to develop them in a deployable form. This poses a threat to Russia, not one of deterrence, but of a potential first strike. He described the short flight time of nuclear missiles from Germany to Russia as “a knife to the throat.” If the INF treaty were still in place, these missiles would have been prohibited, but U.S. President Donald Trump walked away from the treaty. At the end of February we will see the end of the last strategic arms limitation treaty, the START. He cited Theodore Postol’s warnings against backing Russia into a corner with nuclear weapons.

Beto Almeida, a Brazilian co-founder of TeleSUR, and a member of the advisory board for the Brazilian Press Association, reviewed the world’s hot spots, with an initial emphasis on the China-Taiwan tensions and the U.S. assault on Venezuela. He then went on to review the history of how NATO promised Russia that it would not expand Eastward, and then promptly broke that promise. He recalled that State Department functionary and neocon icon Victoria Nuland publicly admitted U.S. involvement with the Maidan coup in Ukraine, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel publicly admitted the West’s fraudulent involvement in the Minsk Accords. He decried the cynicism of Ukraine’s denial of involvement in the drone attack on Putin’s residence, calling it terrorism. The narrative in the West is framed in such a way as to make it appear that the threat is coming from Russia, he said, when the reality is that Russia is under attack. Almeida echoed Trump’s reported remarks in a phone call with Putin, “Thank God we didn’t give them Tomahawks.”

Zepp-LaRouche thanked them for their remarks, underscoring the danger of the current brinksmanship, such as the threats by NATO commanders, including General Christopher Donahue, of an attack on Kaliningrad.

IPC co-moderator Dennis Small observed that the attack on Putin’s residence meets the criterion for a nuclear response under Russian strategic doctrine. The attack could not have occurred without U.S. technical support, and Russian commentators are also increasingly pointing to the British role. The Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine of deterrence depended upon a “modicum of sanity,” which is no longer present. NATO leaders have stated explicitly that they think they can win a nuclear exchange.

Almeida described it as significant that Russia, which no longer identifies as a socialist nation, has a working partnership with China that is closer than at any time in the past. The Western nations could also change their paradigm to work with new institutions like the BRICS, rather than clinging to “the unipolar position of destroying everything.”

Proposed Initiatives

Zepp-LaRouche proposed that we should use this session of the IPC to launch several initiatives. She suggested that IPC participants should send a letter to Trump, asking him to “discontinue the policies of the Biden administration” and halt the deployment of strategic weapons in Europe. She also proposed a combined endorsement of Xi Jinping’s Global Government Initiative and Pope Leo’s recommendation of Nicholas of Cusa’s method of the coincidence of opposites, using these two kindred conceptions to raise the level of the discussion globally. Almeida suggested that letters be sent not only to Trump, but also to other leaders from around the planet. During the discussion, this sentiment was echoed by other participants. Dennis Small suggested that anyone who does not precisely agree with the wording of the IPC letter should write their own letter.

Many Germans participated in the discussion. Zepp-LaRouche expressed her disappointment in the failure of the German peace movement to mobilize in sufficient numbers to make a difference. She attributed this failure to factional squabbling, and said that we must redefine the debate from a higher vantage point, which is why she proposes a combined endorsement of Xi’s Global Government Initiative and Pope Leo’s recommendation of Nicholas of Cusa’s method of the coincidence of opposites, to free people from the axiomatic trap of geopolitical dogma.

Economic Issues

Questions came in on economic issues, including one about the exposés of corruption in Ukraine and aid monies going to Ukrainian and U.S. officials as kickbacks, and one about the corruption in the war machine economy. Dennis Small responded by saying, “The biggest corruption in the military budget is the military budget itself.” The military industries in the U.S. are owned by the financial speculators. “You’ve got these categories of pure speculation, which is what is destroying the system.”

Contrasting today’s economy with the highly successful period following the passage of the Glass-Steagall Act, Small said that today we have the inverse of Glass-Steagall: Instead of low interest rates to incentivize production and higher rates to discourage speculation, in today’s economy, we reward speculation and suffocate production.

Almeida added that China’s production-oriented economy is a stabilizing influence globally, while U.S. has promoted a destabilizing orgy of speculation.

In her concluding remarks, Zepp-LaRouche said that she had often asked herself, why was the Age of Reason not implemented at the time of Schiller and Humboldt, when it was so widely discussed? She came to the conclusion that science and technology had not advanced to the point where poverty could be eradicated. The average person must have economic security in order to live a life of reason. Today it is eminently feasible to eliminate poverty; the time is ripe for a New Paradigm. We need “this beautiful vision” and we need to “move with power and energy to implement it.”