April 4, 2025 (EIRNS)—When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. appeared on ABC News’ “Issues and Answers” program on June 18, 1967—one week after the conclusion of the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War—he was asked on his views, as a Nobel Peace Prize winner, on the difficult situation in the region. King responded:
“I think first that we must work passionately and unrelentingly through the United Nations to try to grapple with this years-old problem in the Middle East. I would hope that the Middle East will not become an arena for power politics, whether we refer to Soviet Russia here, or the United States of America. We have got to achieve peace in the Middle East and in the Middle East achieving peace means two things.
“Peace for Israel means security,” he continued. "The world and all people of good will must respect the territorial integrity of Israel. We must see Israel’s right to exist and always go out of the way to protect that right to exist. … We must see what Israel has done for the world. It is a marvelous demonstration of what people together in unity and with determination, rugged determination, can do in transforming almost a desert into an oasis.
“But the other side is this, that peace in the Middle East means something else,” he added.
“It means for the Arabs development. After all, the Arab world is … a part of that third world of poverty and illiteracy and disease, and it is time now to have a Marshall Plan for the Middle East. I think this is going to be finally the only answer. So long as people are poor, so long as they find themselves on the outskirts of hope, they are going to make intemperate remarks. They are going to keep the war psychosis alive. And what we need to do now is to go all out to develop the underdeveloped, and we must see that there is a grave refugee problem that the Arabs have on their hands and the United Nations through all of the nations of the world must grapple very constructively and forthrightly with these problems.” [Emphases added.]
Dr. King’s assassination 57 years ago, coming amid other assassinations around the world, stole from the United States a leader morally qualified to be President.
The present situation in Southwest Asia demands solutions, which must be of a global character. The NATO-Russia war in Ukraine demands resolution, which similarly requires a global change of paradigm. Resolving tensions across the Taiwan Strait is not only a local matter, because the conflict is driven by a larger process.
The LaRouche Oasis Plan presents the coordinated development perspective for Southwest Asia that can change it from being a cockpit for geopolitical brawls into a central locus of development and coordination among three continents.
President Trump’s inclinations toward reaching a peaceful resolution of the war in Ukraine pits him against the British, who demand that the fighting continue. A recent round of firings of national security staff could bode well.
“The only way for Taiwan to peacefully secure its freedom is to somehow reconcile with China,” wrote a former government minister of Taiwan. How much easier will this reconciliation be, if NATO-land ceases to consider China a threat?
The collapse of the financial system, perhaps hastened by Trump’s announcement of bizarre tariffs that are certainly not reciprocal, brings the world to a decision point.
Let us take King’s advice, and “go all out to develop the underdeveloped.”
