Dec. 14—A former head of state from a Third World nation commented, in conversation with a Schiller Institute representative over the last 24 hours, that the already scary strategic situation has become “dangerously frightening” in the last few weeks. She added that what was most frightening was not the escalation of threats against Russia from Global NATO; nor even the more-than-sobering remarks by Vladimir Putin to a Bishkek press conference, where he spoke about the U.S. nuclear policy of preventive or disarming nuclear strikes: “Regarding a disarming strike, perhaps we should think about using the achievements of our U.S. partners and their ideas about how to ensure their own security. We are just thinking about this.”
What is even more frightening and dangerous, she noted accurately, is the fact that there has been no substantive public response from policymaking layers in the West to the actual import of Putin’s comments. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin dismissed them as standard Russian “saber rattling.” British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak repeated that Russia-Ukraine negotiations could only be held after Russia totally withdrew its military forces from the Donbass and even Crimea—i.e., never. And mainstream media report, if they mention the Bishkek comments at all, have simply misrepresented what Putin said as “once again threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons against Ukraine.”
Putin said nothing of the sort, nor has any top Russian government official ever said anything of the sort. What Putin did say was far more sobering: “The United States has a theory and even practice. They have the concept of a preventive strike in their strategy and other policy documents. We do not. Our strategy talks about a retaliatory strike.” He explained that the U.S. policy has gone way beyond mere doctrine, as the NATO use of Ukraine to place nuclear capabilities on Russia’s very doorstep proves. “There were plans to deliver a preventive disarming strike with hypersonic weapons. The United States does not have these weapons,” Putin explained, although they are working on it.
He then dropped the other shoe: “But we do.”
Washington’s response? They leaked plans to send sophisticated Patriot missile systems to Ukraine on short order, to which Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov responded that, if true, these would “certainly” be legitimate targets once they arrive in Ukraine.
Earlier in November, two nuclear-equipped submarines—one American, one British—ostentatiously surfaced in the Atlantic Ocean, unusually revealing their location for the world to see, in order to deliver an unmistakable message to Russia (and China): “The United States and the United Kingdom have a long-standing agreement of cooperation in the development and deployment of strategic weapons and supporting system,” the Pentagon officially pronounced. Since it is widely recognized that the British have played by far the most aggressive, leading role in driving the Ukraine war into a full-blown strategic showdown between Global NATO and Russia, such a statement from the U.S. Department of Defense is particularly “dangerously frightening.”
It is past time for Americans and Europeans to speak out and demand that negotiations between Ukraine and Russia be held immediately and without preconditions—as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has done in her dramatic “One Step Away from the Nuclear Annihilation of Mankind!” and as will be discussed in EIR’s emergency symposium: “Peace on Earth, or Humanity’s Doom? The Case for Negotiations,” to be held this Saturday, Dec. 17 at 11 a.m. EST.
Moreover, it is past time for Mankind to conceive an entirely new international security and development architecture, where the security interests of all nations are taken into account, and which is built on the concepts presented in Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s “Ten Principles,” as she elaborated them in a Dec. 13 address to Mexican journalists titled “Peace Means Respect for the Rights of Others to Develop.”
