July 13—During an interview with Russian news site Lenta.ru, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made the sobering point that the deployment of Western F-16’s into Ukraine will be perceived by Russia as a “nuclear threat.” “We have informed the nuclear powers,” Lavrov said, “that Russia cannot ignore the ability of these aircraft to carry nuclear weapons. No amount of assurances will help here.” It is known that F-16’s can be equipped to carry B-61 gravity nuclear bombs, yet a distant observer, namely Russia, will have no way of discerning whether or not one is so armed. “In the course of combat operations,” Lavrov continued, “our servicemen are not going to sort out whether each particular aircraft of this type is equipped to deliver nuclear weapons or not. We will regard the very fact that the Ukrainian armed forces have such systems as a threat from the West in the nuclear sphere.”
What does this mean, you might ask? It means you must do everything in your capacity to activate a peace movement in the United States and Europe right now—the lives of everyone around you will likely depend on it. Western and NATO governments have created a situation identical to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, where the slightest miscommunication, or miscalculation, could trigger a global, civilization-ending war. And if you think this is an exaggeration, and that “they’ll never let that happen,” think again. This is their explicit policy, as has been stated repeatedly: Stop worrying about Putin’s “red lines”—push the envelope and call his “bluff.”
At the same time, the alleged “united” Western alliance is looking more and more absurd by the day. Despite the fact that the NATO summit in Vilnius, Lithuania, concluded with heavy security and economic guarantees for Ukraine, it wasn’t without a fair amount of footwork to keep open brawls from breaking out. The Ukrainians reportedly infuriated many at the NATO summit with their insults that NATO’s failure to grant Ukraine membership shows they are “absurd” and “lacking political will.” Consider also the news that Ukraine’s sponsors cannot reach an agreement on how to repair the vaunted Leopard battle tanks from Germany—equipment previously seen as a game-changer for Ukraine on the battlefield. No one can agree on who should pay for it, so the tanks sit there, unusable.
As Lyndon LaRouche long insisted, the danger of war comes from the collapse of the Western nations’ economic/financial systems. As Biden said himself recently in an interview with CNN, the decision to deploy cluster bombs to Ukraine was not made simply out of a crazed obsession to destroy Russia (though this is certainly true), but rather because the U.S. cannot keep up with needed production rates and has run out of regular ammunition. However that little nugget of truth slipped out we may never know, but it is serving to ignite new opposition to the immorality of the current policy of war, showing the lie to the so-called thriving Western “democracies” versus the weak and desperate “autocracies.”
Mankind is at a crossroads such as it has never experienced before, the resolution of which cannot be extrapolated from any previous political or historical period. There may be similarities, or metaphorical correlatives, but there is nothing to ground oneself upon, so as to ride through the tumult of today. Only assertions of principle—as applied and fought for by courageous leaders of today’s new peace movement—will work to usher the nations of the world into a new paradigm. This is the importance of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s “Ten Principles” for today, as stated, for example, in her tenth point: “The basic assumption for the new paradigm is, that man is fundamentally good and capable to infinitely perfect the creativity of his mind and the beauty of his soul.” This principle is the basis for optimism—and of creating peace—even among widely-differing peoples and nations.
So, therefore, become such a courageous leader. And join the peace movement!
