April 27—China’s authoritative “Global Times” (GT) featured a discussion of the method of President Xi Jinping’s seemingly mysterious diplomacy. It shocked all the clever analysts, think tanks, and talking heads in the West when the Saudis and Iranians just last month buried the hatchet. Immediately, supposedly intractable hotspots such as Yemen—where many more have died than in the Ukraine conflict—begin to become not so intractable. Again, the Saudis and the Syrians are talking with each other, even though the Saudis for a decade had financed a civil war in Syria—also where many more have died than in the Ukraine conflict. But can Xi perform a semi-miracle with the intractable President Zelenskyy in Ukraine?
GT explains that the history behind the conflict is complex, with many knots, but that they can be identified and dealt with. It requires “enormous political wisdom, patience, and perseverance.” On one level, such an approach seems so naïve—that there is enough to go around for Russia and the Western countries that they don’t have to beat each other down; that there’s no need to make up excuses to change everybody else’s political system. What about that bizarre thinking by which countries have to be drained of their raw materials and their populations’ labor, even their longevity, to buy a bit more time for an international Ponzi scheme? Does Xi really think that leaders of countries can navigate the bumpy road together and get out from underneath such an ‘intractable’ financial bubble?
At its core, Xi’s method coheres with the controversial tenth point of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s “Ten Principles of a New International Security and Development Architecture,” that “man is fundamentally good and capable to infinitely perfect the creativity of his mind and the beauty of his soul…and that all evil is the result of a lack of development, and therefore can be overcome.”
But, yesterday, President Joe Biden arranged for US nuclear-armed submarines to make regular stops at South Korea’s ports, as part of a showdown with North Korea. It’s called “expanded deterrence.” (Does anyone remember that it didn’t take much for North Korea to halt their nuclear weapons program, both with Bill Clinton and Donald Trump? Evidently, treat them as your enemy and you’ll have an enemy.) Yet, Atlantic Council head Fred Kempe just egged Biden on, that he has been flinching on confronting Putin—and Kempe and his establishment friends will destroy Biden’s “presidential legacy” unless he goes with the nuclear chicken game with Russia.
Biden would do well to watch the two-minute video from the former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev. It ends with: “[A]ll this talk that ‘the Russians will never do it,’ or that ‘the Russians are always threatening us with nuclear weapons,’ is worthless. Western analytics, military commands and political leadership must just evaluate our rules and intentions. The commander-in-chief, the president, spoke about this. I’ll say this… as a former president, I know… you must be prepared, that in a certain situation, your hand will not tremble to use it, as cruel and monstrous as that may sound.”
If man is fundamentally good, what has brought the world to this point? If evil is the result of a lack of development, there’s probably a lot of underdevelopment around, that shouldn’t be there. So, take a look at the decrepit transportation systems of the US, the water systems not built, the only city built in the last hundred years, Los Vegas, which is dedicated to gambling, the world’s deserts that have not been irrigated and made green, the known diseases of malaria, cholera, etc., that still murder millions. It was really obvious, all along.
Xi is convinced, with relentless optimism, that the knots of this world can be unraveled. While that’s understandable if your society has spent the last thirty-plus years pulling 800 million people out of serious poverty, still, Americans used to think that way.
So, have respect for the depth of the problems, but have more respect for the beauty and talent of mankind to master those problems.
