On Friday, Dec. 17, Russia released to the public two draft agreements it had proposed to the United States on Wednesday, Dec. 15: a Russia-U.S. treaty and a Russia-NATO agreement. These documents, written as full and designed to be ready to sign, are designed to address Russia’s security concerns.
These agreements make sense for anyone who wants to assure peace on this planet. Those speaking out against them, rejecting the agreements and dialogue with Russia out of hand, will reveal themselves to be war-mongers.
The release of these documents comes amidst a mounting drive for war, driven, for example, by efforts to incorporate Ukraine into NATO, something Russia has very clearly stated would be crossing a bright, flashing red line. But crazed geopoliticians, intent on maintaining a unipolar world order directed from the British Empire and the United States, are pursuing a policy that ineluctably leads to nuclear warfare that would destroy global civilization.
The documents call for recognizing a principle of “non-interference in the internal affairs” of each other, acknowledge that “direct military clash between them could result in the use of nuclear weapons that would have far-reaching consequences,” reaffirm “that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” and recognize “the need to make every effort to prevent the risk of outbreak of such war among States that possess nuclear weapons.”
The operative part of the U.S.-Russia treaty calls for refraining from taking actions “that could undermine core security interests of the other Party.” Cognizant of the drive for NATO-ization of Ukraine, Article 4 states: “The United States of America shall undertake to prevent further eastward expansion of NATO and deny accession to the Alliance to the States of the former U.S.S.R.,” and “The United States of America shall not establish military bases in the territory of the States of the former U.S.S.R. that are not members of NATO, use their infrastructure for any military activities or develop bilateral military cooperation with them.” It goes on to state that the Parties (the U.S. and Russia) will not take military actions outside their own borders that threaten each other’s national security, or fly bombers or sail warships outside of their territorial waters in ways that would threaten each other. On the U.S.’s expansion of its nuclear weapons to include those stored in such locations of Germany, the treaty states, “The Parties shall refrain from deploying nuclear weapons outside their national territories and return such weapons already deployed … to their national territories.”
The Russia-NATO agreement states that “The Parties reaffirm that they do not consider each other as adversaries.” It essentially calls for rolling back NATO to its 1997 status (at the time of the signing of the Founding Act of Mutual Relations between Russia and NATO), and insists that NATO “shall not conduct any military activity on the territory of Ukraine as well as other States in the Eastern Europe, in the South Caucasus and in Central Asia.” It also calls for all Parties to agree not to conduct “military exercises or other military activities above the brigade level” within a certain range of the borders of NATO and Russia and its military allies.
The conditions describe a reasonable state of affairs among allies, and reads like a peace treaty recognizing that the Cold War ended decades ago.
A development and peace plan is also desperately needed In Afghanistan, where a two-decade U.S.-NATO military adventure ended just months ago. The Organization of Islamic Cooperation is holding a two-day extraordinary meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan, on the subject of developing a humanitarian and development perspective for Afghanistan, where millions of people face starvation and disease due to two decades of warfare and ongoing economic sanctions and the withholding of billions of dollars of central bank reserves.
There is a potential for this conference to conclude with a broad aid and reconstruction/development proposal for Afghanistan, which the nation sorely needs. Schiller Institute Founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche and Schiller Institute Activist Hussein Askary appeared on Pakistani PTV World’s coverage of the OIC ministerial on Friday to discuss their views of the potential for the event.
Zepp-LaRouche denounced the failure of the West to take human responsibility for the situation it has created in Afghanistan, and decried the withholding of billions of dollars of the Afghani people’s funds as shameful. Money is withheld based on the excuse that the Taliban mistreats women and children, but look at the devastating conditions created by economic warfare! She promoted the Schiller Institute’s Operation Ibn Sina as a path forward in creating a health and development path forward for Afghanistan, a proposal that could be incorporated by the OIC in its final resolutions. She appealed to the entire world to choose the side of humanity over barbarism.
In fact, the crisis presents an opportunity, to those willing to do good, to overcome geopolitics through a commitment to a higher principle. If the United States could be induced to make a positive contribution, this would be of absolute world historical importance in shifting the world paradigm: “I think the whole destiny of mankind is concentrated like a laser in what happens in Afghanistan,” she said. It must become an issue of the whole world. Is humanity fit to survive? “In one sense, I think the fate of Afghanistan and the fate of humanity are more closely connected than most people can imagine.”
Askary further developed these themes, laying the blame for the current situation in Afghanistan not on the Taliban, but on 20 years of destructive Western policy. He concluded with an optimistic note on the power of truth over lies: Although narratives may appear to have a certain power, it is reality that ultimately has the upper hand. (Their remarks are transcribed for this briefing.)
Reality is asserting itself in Europe, where EU deliberations on its energy sector broke down due to the inherently enormous physical costs of an energy “transition” asserting themselves. Although its use has been marketed as a warm and fuzzy pleasant act of benignant goodness, “green” energy’s intermittent nature and extremely low energy density mean that non-nuclear attempts at decarbonization will unavoidably be extremely expensive. Poland and the Czech Republic want to totally jettison the EU’s CO₂ Emissions Trading System, while ideological lunatics in Austria cheer the potential to remove nuclear from the EU’s “Taxonomy” list of “green” power sources. But ideology will not heat your home, and wishful thinking will not propel your bus or car.
The Malthusian worldview of limited resources, overpopulation, and geopolitics is a narrative: both false and devastating to those foolish enough not to overcome it. Will we choose to allow the reality of the anti-entropic nature of the universe and the limitless perfectibility of our beautiful species to inspire us to achieve great things, under a paradigm of economic, scientific, and cultural growth?