March 18, 2025 (EIRNS)—The March 18 call between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump has opened the door to a world that has not been able to exist for at least 35 years, and more likely not since the end of World War II. Many things were discussed between the two leaders, which, if realized, could mean an end to the fighting in Ukraine and a much-needed stepping back from the brink of a direct conflict between nuclear powers. It appears they agreed to start with a ceasefire on strikes against energy infrastructure, and proceed from there as more details are worked out. But everything will depend on what actions are concretely taken, and on how much chaos will be stirred up by the British to sabotage it.
However, both leaders seemed to have a conscious appreciation of the far more important subject of the re-establishment of U.S.-Russia relations, of which the Ukraine conflict is merely a reflection. Both readouts stressed the “huge upside” and the “mutual interest” in normalizing their relationship, which would have an enormously beneficial effect on the whole world and fundamentally change the current paradigm defined by British-imperial geopolitics.
In contrast, European nations are clamoring for war even as the talk of peace increases, apparently scared of nothing more than being freed from their servility to a global “balance of power” doctrine. Germany’s outgoing Bundestag on Tuesday, March 18 voted to uncap its budget and prepare for massive military spending to deter the supposed “Russian threat.” The nations of Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia, and Poland also on Tuesday announced they would be withdrawing from the Ottawa Convention, so as to restart their production of anti-personnel mines in preparation for war with Russia. And on Thursday, March 20, British Prime Minister Starmer will convene a meeting of his “Coalition of the Willing” to further the effort to put NATO troops into Ukraine. Starmer also reportedly called Trump again Monday night on the eve of Trump’s talk with Putin.
Those committed to peace and a new paradigm among nations should be alert to these desperate moves to ignite new rounds of conflict—particularly as violence is again erupting across Southwest Asia. The U.S. has begun a bombing campaign against the Houthis in Yemen, while Israel has torn up the ceasefire agreement with Hamas and fully restarted strikes into Gaza. Reports as of this writing are that over 400 were killed and hundreds more wounded overnight by Israeli strikes. These moves run the risk of erupting into a larger conflict, for example with Iran, and of ensuring that there will never be a break from the endless cycle of violence.
But it’s important to remember that the fear of peace in Europe spans beyond a nation or a supposed action by a nation, and has more to do with an accustomed method of thinking. As former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger told Britain’s Chatham House in 1982, praising the British Empire methods of geopolitics:
“Where Americans have tended to believe that wars were caused by the moral failure of leaders, the British view is that aggression has thrived on opportunity as much as on moral propensity, and must be restrained by some kind of balance of power. Where Americans treated diplomacy as episodic—a series of isolated problems to be solved on their merits—the British have always understood it as an organic historical process requiring constant manipulation to keep it moving in the right direction.”
Kissinger chastised Franklin Roosevelt, who believed that “the postwar era would ‘spell the end of the system of unilateral action, the exclusive alliances, the spheres of influence, the balances of power, and all the other expedients that have been tried for centuries.’” Kissinger ridiculed the “American attitude” that maintains “a faith that historical experience can be transcended, that problems can be solved permanently, that harmony can be the natural state of mankind.” Sooner or later, Kissinger hoped, the U.S. would be “called upon to help preserve the equilibrium—a service rendered gratis by Great Britain….” Therefore, he admitted: “In my White House incarnation, I kept the British Foreign Office better informed and more closely engaged than I did the American State Department.”
Forty-three years later, this imperial system—which has taken over the better nature of the United States and declared an “end of history” over any alternate views worldwide—is now failing magnificently. As the greatest cultural icons in every nation have discovered, there is a natural harmony among mankind, and it is this principle which must now subsume the dying system as the basis for a new security and development architecture that considers the interests of every nation.
This topic will be further taken up in a discussion Wednesday, March 19, at 12 p.m. (EDT) between Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche and former CIA officer Larry Johnson, who has just returned from a trip to Moscow, where he interviewed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
