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Feb. 14—The Biden Administration, with a very bad misjudgment of the real condition of Afghanistan after 20 years of NATO’s war there, made a rushed pull-out and then moved to seize all the country’s cash and punish its people with no food, medical care or shelter in the dead of winter. It never even told America’s NATO “allies” what it was doing. It’s leaving a country destroyed.Can the Biden White House now be allowed to make an even worse disaster in Europe—even a nuclear disaster—in a crisis, the “Ukraine crisis,” which could set off a war to destroy humanity itself? The more and more angry and aggressive bluffing of Russia by the Biden Administration over Ukraine has brought us closer to nuclear war than we have ever been since October 1962, when the whole world was terrified by the Cuban Missiles Crisis. One possibility is that Biden and his dubious national security team is looking for a victory to sell at home, by telling us Russia will invade Ukraine next week, tomorrow, any minute … and then when Russia does not invade, telling us Biden’s threat of crushing economic punishment stopped Putin. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said this was the “elaborate charade” yesterday on Twitter. Former U.S. Ambassador to Moscow Jack Matlock put out the idea in a column today, writing for the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in her own way, hinted at it Sunday on “ABC This Week”: “If we were not threatening the sanctions and the rest, it would guarantee that Putin would invade…. So, if Russia doesn’t invade, it’s not that he never intended to. It’s just that the sanctions worked.” But we cannot rest on hope that this is political fakery. The Biden White House is punishing Afghanistan incompetently, but with a vengeance. It wants to punish Russia and destroy its economy. Senior White House officials said it in a background press briefing Jan. 25: The goal is “hit Putin’s strategic ambitions to industrialize his economy quite hard…. Undercut Putin’s aspirations to exert influence on the world stage.” The officials vowed, “we’re talking about denying to Russia downstream products that are critical to its own ambitions to develop high-tech capabilities in aerospace and defense, lasers and sensors, maritime, AI, robotics, quantum, etc. … And so, as we build this effort with our allies and partners, we’re willing to work with any country in order to deny Russia an input that it needs to diversify its economy.” With that goal, Biden’s team—which had “everything under control” in Afghanistan—is daring Russian President Putin to go to war. It is squeezing Ukraine’s President Zelensky so hard that he feels compelled to contradict every Russian invasion forecast that London and Washington make. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, in her widely read analysis Feb. 6, said “We Are 100 Seconds to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock: We Need a New Security Architecture.” Two European bankers put out a call for France to block Ukraine’s entry to NATO and leave the NATO strategic command, now, anything to stop the march toward war. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz went to Ukraine today to say, “The issue of [Ukraine’s] membership in the alliance [NATO] is not on the agenda,” so Russia should stop worrying about it. But the NATO weaponry America is pouring into Ukraine and around it is unprecedented: Ukraine’s Defense Minister admits it now has far more anti-tank missiles than Russian tank targets. We all need to mobilize ourselves, not to “watch and wait,” as most were scared into doing in October 1962. There is no John F. Kennedy here to solve this. The solution is to compel more breaks toward negotiation, and to attack the cause, the threat of hyperinflationary collapse which the Biden Administration and Federal Reserve have done so much to bring on themselves and us. Our next D-Day is Saturday, Feb. 19, the Schiller Institute’s all-day conference with the message of Helga Zepp-LaRouche’s Feb. 6 article: We need a new security architecture, one based on economic recovery and development. Register for the conference and organize others.

Feb. 14—In a long and very direct address today on the American Committee for U.S.-Russian Accord’s “ACURA Viewpoint,” the last U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock (1987-92) presents the entire history, which led from the end of the Cold War to the present obvious threat of superpower hot war. Matlock begins by saying he “cannot dismiss the suspicion that we are witnessing an elaborate charade” by Biden to “prevent” a non-existent Russian invasion of Ukraine. And later he notes that Biden campaigned for President in 2008 on the line, “I will stand up to Vladimir Putin,” a particularly absurd posture at that time, but most of his piece is tracing the mistakes of U.S. and NATO policy which turned Russia from virtual NATO ally to adversary in what could become an all-out nuclear war.First, ignorance around nuclear weapons. Matlock admits that as a Moscow embassy staffer in 1962, he translated Khrushchev’s messages to JFK in the Cuban Missiles Crisis, and he and his colleagues were unaware of the actual nature of the settlement of that crisis, and would have cheered for American bombing of Russian sites in Cuba—which would have been fatal to several major cities including Washington, D.C.: “It is quite dangerous to get involved in military confrontations with countries with nuclear weapons.” But for the most part, the hubris of “we won the Cold War,” against which both Pope John Paul II and Lyndon LaRouche warned. Matlock quotes his own testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1997 when the Clinton Administration proposed the expansion of NATO: “I consider the Administration’s recommendation to take new members into NATO at this time misguided. If it should be approved by the United States Senate, it may well go down in history as the most profound strategic blunder made since the end of the Cold War. Far from improving the security of the United States, its Allies, and the nations that wish to enter the Alliance, it could well encourage a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat to this nation since the Soviet Union collapsed.” Matlock proposes a "common sense" approach: "What President Putin is demanding, an end to NATO expansion and creation of a security structure in Europe that insures Russia’s security along with that of others is eminently reasonable. He is not demanding the exit of any NATO member and he is threatening none. By any pragmatic, common sense standard it is in the interest of the United States to promote peace, not conflict. To try to detach Ukraine from Russian influence—the avowed aim of those who agitated for the “color revolutions”—was a fool’s errand, and a dangerous one. Have we so soon forgotten the lesson of the Cuban Missile Crisis? Now, to say that approving Putin’s demands is in the objective interest of the United States does not mean that it will be easy to do. The leaders of both the Democratic and Republican parties have developed such a Russophobic stance (a story requiring a separate study) that it will take great political skill to navigate the treacherous political waters and achieve a rational outcome. President Biden has made it clear that the United States will not intervene with its own troops if Russia invades Ukraine. So why move them into Eastern Europe? Just to show hawks in Congress that he is standing firm? For what? Nobody is threatening Poland or Bulgaria except waves of refugees fleeing Syria, Afghanistan and the desiccated areas of the African savannah. So what is the 82nd Airborne supposed to do?"

Feb. 13—The question of what will happen next, and when, in the contrived confrontation by the NATO bloc against Russia in Europe, remains hanging in the air and very dangerous. More counter forces of sanity are speaking out, but a decisive break is urgent.Over the weekend, U.S. spokesmen continued their drumroll of assertions against Russian aggression, and their bogus charge that Russia will attack Ukraine, in statements by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking from Hawaii, by National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, and by Pentagon spokesman John Kirby. They were militantly vague on when and how. Sullivan on CNN this morning said, on the time frame of a Russian attack, that we are “in the window,” and it could be “any day now,” or otherwise “after the Olympics” which end on Feb. 20. Sullivan said that Russia can be expected to stage a false-flag incident, because, for among other reasons, it is just “consistent with the Russian playbook” to do that kind of thing. No evidence is needed. Assessing the situation, Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche said today that the “ambiguity of potential false flags will remain, until someone cuts through this…. We need a decisive break.” Former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) spoke out strongly over the weekend, exposing those behind the insane war drive against Russia. She tweeted out a 4-minute clip from her appearance on Fox News Saturday evening, with a tweet explaining how “Biden can very easily prevent a war with Russia by guaranteeing that Ukraine will not become a member of NATO.” On TV, she charged that “Biden and military leaders actually want Russia to invade Ukraine. Why would they do so? It gives Biden the excuse to levy draconian sanctions … and it cements the Cold War in place…. The military-industrial complex is the one that benefits from this; they clearly control the Biden Administration; warmongers on both sides in Washington who have been drumming up these tensions.” There is also an increasing activation and prominence of anti-war groups in the U.S. Besides the NATO focus on confrontation over Ukraine, the global NATO mobilization in the Indo-Pacific is in full swing. After the ministerial QUAD meeting in Australia this past week, the White House issued a 19-page document, “Indo-Pacific Strategy of the United States.” Blinken plugged its world supremacy point of view yesterday, speaking from Honolulu, where he met with foreign ministers of Japan and South Korea. Blinken said that, “In the meeting that the three of us had, we discussed the threat that Russia’s aggression poses—not only to Ukraine, but to the entire international rules-based order, which has provided a foundation for decades of shared security and prosperity, for our people here in this region and, again, around the globe.” He said of his fellow ministers that, “we agreed to stick together in our response to Russia.” It is against his triumphalism that certain opposition viewpoints stand out, which are coming from establishment figures in Europe. On Feb. 11, the French weekly Marianne carried an article headlined, “NATO Exit: Urgency Absolute,” which urges that France leave NATO. That “will signal Europe’s independence from American exceptionalism, the renewal of multilateralism, the emergence of a multipolar world….” It is by German economist Peter Dittus, former Secretary General of the Bank for International Settlements, and former Deputy Governor of the Banque de France Hervé Hannoun, former BIS Deputy Managing Director. Today, a warning is sounded by Russian policy expert Fyodor Lukyanov, “How the World Sleepwalked into Another Cuban Missile Crisis.” In his article in RT, after stressing the current danger over the Ukraine confrontation, he advises that, “The best-case scenario would be the same as during the Cuban Missile Crisis. At some point, both sides would recognize the grave danger posed by further escalation and start direct substantive negotiations in order to work out the fundamentals of mutual guarantees.” The Saturday Feb. 19 Schiller Institute online international conference is a critical contribution toward the “decisive break” we need, to stop the mad mobilization toward collapse and war. Register and spread the word. It is on Feb. 19, 10 a.m. (EST): “100 Seconds to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock: We Need a New Security Architecture!”

Feb.12—The Chickenhawks running the Biden Administration—Tony Blinken and Jake Sullivan—have declared that their psychotic plan to unleash the well-armed and well-trained Nazi militia in Ukraine against the Donbas is set to be implemented in the coming week. While Blinken and Sullivan say that a “Russian invasion of Ukraine can come at any moment,” unnamed sources in the White House and in NATO have informed the media that this will take place precisely on Wednesday, Feb. 16. The plan, they failed to report, is to provoke a response from the Russian military to defend their compatriots among the Ukrainian citizens in the Donbas from this Nazi assault, which will then be declared the much-anticipated “Russian invasion.” This, they imagine, will detonate either the West’s “nuclear sanctions” option, which they believe will destroy Russia (but which will do far greater damage to the Anglo-American allies in Europe), or they will go straight to military warfare. Given that the U.S. has just completed a nuclear war-fighting exercise “Global Lightning,” based on the insane, utopian fantasy that a prolonged nuclear war could be fought and won, the human race is facing an existential question—do we have the moral fitness to survive?Two former directors of the Bank for International Settlements, one French and one German, released an extraordinary document on Feb. 11 (see below) calling for France to leave NATO, asserting that NATO is now led by American “expansionists” who are prepared to sacrifice Europe, and perhaps the world, to maintain their past glory as the world’s unipolar controller of all things economic and strategic. (While they blame this entirely on American control of NATO, they do at least acknowledge the British hand: that it is the “alliance with adventurism of the Anglo-Saxons.”) These are not “anti-war activists”—these are rather French and German leaders of the establishment. They assert that the clearly “unprecedented brainwashing conducted by the United States and NATO on the theme of the ‘imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine’” may well “go down in history as an episode of disinformation along the lines of the fabricated intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction in 2003.” The antics of NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, they add, is reminiscent of the “famous Orwellian inversion: ‘Peace Is War.’” The full document is being circulated in several languages by EIR and the Schiller Institute. What could drive supposedly educated people like Blinken and Sullivan to such madness? The truth of the matter is increasingly clear, both to governments and to a growing plurality of the citizens of the trans-Atlantic nations: The Western world is entering a Dark Age, while most of the rest of the world is being motivated by a new force, represented by the extraordinary Feb. 4 declaration by Russia and China: “On the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development.” The document declares the end of the toleration by the world’s nations of unipolar control over the economy and security of the world. The “rules-based order” manufactured by the “only superpower,” which was invented to replace the principles of peaceful coexistence in the UN Charter, will no longer be acknowledged. As the Feb. 4 document states: “The world is going through momentous changes, and humanity is entering a new era of rapid development and profound transformation. It sees the development of such processes and phenomena as multipolarity, economic globalization, the advent of information society, cultural diversity, transformation of the global governance architecture and world order; there is increasing interrelation and interdependence between the States; a trend has emerged towards redistribution of power in the world; and the international community is showing a growing demand for the leadership aiming at peaceful and gradual development.” The human race has today been called upon by history and by the Creator to respond to this moment of truth, to answer the question posed above: Do we have the moral fitness to survive? Will we call upon all nations, and all the diverse cultures of humanity, to join together in this “New Era” of peace through development, or will the remnants of the failed era of empire and geopolitics bring the world to a fiery end? The Schiller Institute, following the conference on the humanitarian disaster in Afghanistan, co-sponsored by the Russian International Affairs Council on Thursday Feb. 10, will hold a full day conference on Saturday, Feb. 19th, on the theme that “A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” The invitation to the conference is here: Please register, and circulate the invitation widely.

In an op-ed published on Feb. 11, 2022, by the French “souverainist” weekly Marianne, Peter Dittus and Hervé Hannoun, argue in favor of a French exit from the integrated command of NATO. The German economist Peter Dittus is the former secretary general of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), while Frenchman Hannoun is its deputy director general. We reprint it here in full:“Faced with the Ukrainian Crisis, France’s NATO-EXIT Is an Absolute Emergency” Breaking with the policy of non-alignment followed by de Gaulle, Giscard and Mitterrand for 43 years, France once again became a member of the integrated military command of NATO in 2009, without the French people having been consulted by referendum. The current Ukrainian crisis reveals the serious perils to which France is exposed by being attached to a defensive collective security organization under the command of the United States that has become expansionist. Since November 2021, the French, like other peoples of the West, have been subjected to an unprecedented mental conditioning conducted by the United States and NATO on the theme of the “imminent Russian invasion of Ukraine,” which may go down in history as an episode of disinformation along the lines of the fabricated intelligence on Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction in 2003. What is the reality? Millions of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the two self-proclaimed Donbas people’s republics live under sporadic firing and shelling by the Ukrainian army against separatist forces. The concentration of Russian troops on Ukraine’s borders is obviously aimed at dissuading Kiev from attempting to regain direct control of the enclaves of Donetsk and Luhansk by force. NATO’s successful disinformation on Ukraine has consisted in presenting Putin’s moral obligation to defend these Russian-speaking populations—which Ukraine wants to progressively deprive of the right to speak their language—as a prelude to the total annexation of Ukraine by Russia. The Myth of an ‘Imminent Russian Invasion’ NATO manages to pass off a concentration of Russian troops ready to come to the rescue of Russian-speaking Ukrainians in the Donbas as an “imminent Russian invasion” of the whole of Ukraine, including Odessa, Kharkiv and Kiev. An insane invasion that in reality Russia completely rules out … unless it is pushed into it by a possible prior Ukrainian attack on the Donbas. The only war that NATO seems to be winning is the one of information. We show in our book [OTANexit: Urgence Absolue, Peter Dittus and Hervé Hannoun, Jan. 16, 2022] the striking German propaganda map in the weekly Bild of December 4, 2021, giving an imaginary detailed plan of the “imminent Russian invasion.” The role of propaganda is terrifying, because of the charge of hatred generated by the lies on both sides. On the NATO side, the aggressive and bellicose discourse of Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is irresistibly reminiscent of the famous Orwellian inversion: “Peace Is War.” And If France Had the Solution? Paris must avoid the military spiral into which the United States and NATO want to drag it. In the coming weeks, it must not allow itself to be involved in a war in Eastern Europe that is not its own. France has already agreed to deploy hundreds of men in a NATO battle group in Estonia. On January 1, it took the lead in the NATO Rapid Response Force, which includes at least 7,700 French soldiers. President Macron has just announced the possible dispatch of 1,000 French troops to Romania under the NATO banner on the “Eastern flank,” in the Black Sea region. The military escalation is dangerous. For the security of the French people, it is necessary to exclude committing the French army under the banner of NATO in a war in Ukraine or Belarus. On the other hand, France has a diplomatic weapon to resolve the serious crisis between NATO and Russia. The detonator of this crisis was the stubbornness of Jens Stoltenberg and the Americans to pursue since 2018 a creeping process of accession of Ukraine to NATO, called “open door policy,” seen by Russia as a threat to its security. To put an end to the current confrontation, President Macron should simply declare solemnly in the name of France that his country will oppose any request from Ukraine to join NATO. As decisions on membership of the Alliance require unanimity, France can exercise a veto. In doing so, the President would be in line with the commitments he made during his 2017 presidential campaign not to support NATO’s expansion to Ukraine. It would be an elegant way out of the crisis. Alas, the French President, during his visit to Moscow and then to Kiev on February 7 and 8, 2022, did not consider this simple solution because French diplomacy did not oppose in the NATO bodies the mad “open door policy” to the membership of Ukraine and Georgia in NATO. On the other hand, France supports NATO and the G7 in their demand for the return of Crimea to Ukraine, knowing full well that it cannot be done without a war, possibly nuclear. American Subordination At the time of the (Maastricht) 1992 referendum on the EU treaty, no one could have imagined that this great project of Mitterrand and Kohl for peace would be deviated from, from 1998 onward, by the American geopolitical project to take de facto control of the European common defense and security policy. This was due to the simultaneous enlargement of the EU and NATO to ten Eastern European countries between 1991 and 2007, and also to President Sarkozy’s decision, with far-reaching consequences, to abandon in 2008 the Gaullist strategic position of refusing to participate in NATO’s integrated military command. From the moment that 21 of the 27 EU countries, including France, became full members of NATO, the initial spirit of Maastricht was betrayed, because “Europe for peace” was inevitably going to be thwarted by the interference of the United States, with its own geopolitical objectives, in the common European defense and security policy. In reality, there can be no independent French or European defense within the current framework of participation in the integrated military command of NATO by France and 21 other European Union states. The concept of “European strategic autonomy” within NATO is an illusion, given the control of the United States over this Alliance. The EU seeks to hide this fundamental flaw behind a vague concept: the “strategic compass.” The fundamental incompatibility between the U.S.-controlled NATO and an independent French or European defense does not prevent our leaders from defending the thesis of complementarity between the EU and NATO in terms of defense, as summarized on December 11, 2021 by the French Minister of Foreign Affairs: “We are keen for the EU and NATO to complement and reinforce each other in order to contribute to strengthening security and defense in Europe. This is the meaning of the strategic compass that will be adopted during the French Presidency of the EU Council.” Defense: The Impasse of ‘At the Same Time’ The EU’s “strategic compass” is above all an effort to provide a conceptual framework for the false idea that “European strategic autonomy” in relation to the United States is compatible with the NATO membership of the vast majority of EU member states. This complementarity between NATO and the EU, the “at the same time” applied to defense, is an illusion. The fussy logic of national independence has given way to the vague and misleading concept of strategic autonomy and the search for interdependence and interoperability with our “allies.” Beyond the immediate crisis surrounding Ukraine, the [French] presidential elections of April 10 and 24 must allow for a decision on the question of NATO. All those who reject NATO’s march towards the war that is brewing on the Eastern borders of the EU have a unique opportunity, with the presidential election of 2022, to send a simple and clear message of peace to the leaders of our country, in one word: NATO-EXIT (Otanexit). It is a question of ensuring that a candidate for peace is elected President, who is committed to putting an end to France’s alignment with NATO. One can think that the outgoing President will want to avoid a debate in the presidential campaign on the question of our military alliances in NATO: alliance with the adventurism of the Anglo-Saxons, whose arrogance was revealed by the Australian submarine affair, unnatural alliance with Islamist Turkey, alliance with Polish nationalism, and tomorrow perhaps, alliance with a Germany that could use NATO as a springboard for its remilitarization, or even alliance with Kosovo against Serbia. This list alone allows us to measure the risks of a collective security system comprising 30 heterogeneous nations, and dominated by one of them. An Unconstitutional ‘Defense Union’ On January 7, 2022, in a joint press conference with President Macron in Paris, the President of the European Commission allowed herself a federalist statement that exceeded her prerogatives: “We agree that we need a real defense union.” In the presence of President Macron, she spoke of adding a “Defense Union” to the Economic and Monetary Union in the future, without taking into account the fact that this statement is contrary to the French Constitution, which is based on national independence, national sovereignty and national defense. It is necessary to oppose the stealthy European federalism that is currently being practiced, which cannot replace a federalism that is democratically accepted—or rejected—by referendum, according to the procedure followed in 1992 by François Mitterrand for the transfer of monetary sovereignty provided for in the Maastricht Treaty. The French people must reject the concept of defense union under the banner of NATO that Ursula von der Leyen wants to impose on them. France’s current alignment with NATO, through its participation in the integrated military command under American leadership, is a strategic dead end for a country with a universal vocation like France. Today, this country has a historic role to play in stopping the march towards war in Europe initiated by the NATO sleepwalkers. France’s exit from NATO, which will mark the end of the alignment of France’s foreign security policy with the United States, will have an immense impact on the world. It will signal Europe’s independence from American exceptionalism, the renewal of multilateralism, the emergence of a multipolar world and the rapid demise of the obsolete NATO framework. France will then rediscover its universal vocation, contributing to the global balance for peace, and playing, thanks to its rediscovered impartiality, a role of synthesis within the P5, the concert of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (the United States, the United Kingdom, China, Russia, and France), a P5 whose composition must be maintained and whose role as regulator of world peace must be enhanced.

Feb. 11 -- Since the latest escalation of accusations against Vladimir Putin and Russia began in late November 2021, triggered by claims that he is preparing an invasion of Ukraine, one constant has been the role played by Chatham House and the Atlantic Council (AC) in beating the drums for war. The two institutions are close allies among the Anglo-American think tanks, and have been at the forefront in promoting narratives building tensions between U.S.-NATO forces and Russia. They each run frequent webinars, in which "Associate Fellows" join with former ambassadors and retired military to spin tales of "imminently expected" Russian incursions, which find their way into U.S. and British foreign office briefings about the need for unity to deter the fiendish Russians. These online events are backed by articles, citing these "experts", along with the "anonymous" sources so beloved by fanatic War Hawks.

The follow-on continues along important lines of action furthered in China last weekend, when national delegations from many continents met on development initiatives, at the time that Russia and China announced their strategic document, “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development.” In this spirit, yesterday’s international webinar co-hosted by the Schiller Institute and Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) on the subject, “The Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan—Toward a Long-Term Solution”— took the dialogue on strategy to the highest level of the question of mission for humanity.The war bloc faction is beating the drums at a roar. U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan today gave a White House harum-scarum briefing that Russia may invade Ukraine “in a very swift time frame,” and Americans should depart Ukraine within 24 to 48 hours. President Biden had a secure-video meeting with trans-Atlantic leaders today, including heads of state and agency directors of Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Italy, Poland, Romania, NATO, the EU and others. He will speak by phone to President Vladimir Putin tomorrow morning. The Kremlin reports that this call was set at Biden’s request. Sullivan’s remarks were replete with “possibles” and “maybes,” but no evidence that a Russian attack is set. “It may well happen soon.” Reports are that Britain and Denmark have likewise called for their nationals to exit Ukraine. This is the situation—both acutely promising and acutely dangerous—at the time of the third anniversary of the passing of Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr., February 12, 2019, whose historic contribution of brilliant creativity and profound love for humanity are a living legacy of inspiration for our work today. The LaRouche Organization Manhattan Project is broadcasting a special, commemorative program on Saturday, at 2 pm (EST), titled, “On the Third Anniversary of Lyndon LaRouche’s Passing: Why the World Needs the LaRouche Method of Discovery.” Among the initiatives regarding the Afghanistan crisis, there are multiple meetings now set for March, including the March 22 ministerial meeting in Islamabad, Pakistan of the Organization for Islamic Cooperation, and a mid-month UN-hosted event on humanitarian aid. Near the end of March the six neighboring nations to Afghanistan will meet in China, including the Afghan’s acting foreign minister. During the month, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev will visit Islamabad to meet with Prime Minister Imran Khan. On Feb. 6, ministers from Uzbekistan and Pakistan conferred in person in Beijing, including meeting with Chinese counterparts, on major Afghanistan projects to benefit all Eurasia. They conferred on the Trans-Afghan Railroad, and the Uzbek-Pakistan Transit and Trade Agreement (UPTTA), which would connect to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, and generally interconnect with the continental Belt and Road Initiative and Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). They also conferred on immediate humanitarian aid to Afghanistan, some of which arrives by Uzbek rail. Meantime, the need is desperate for multi-nation, full-scale emergency aid—medical, food, fuel, water, and shelter from the winter cold, plus agriculture inputs for spring planting. This week in Switzerland, a delegation of the Taliban government met with relief agencies, such as Doctors Without Borders, under the rubric of the Geneva Call group. In the U.S., testimony on the emergency was given Feb. 9 at a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Afghanistan, by the head of the International Relief Committee, calling for stepped-up action. This morning, the U.S. made extensive reference to this humanitarian crisis, announcing its disposition of the $7 billion (of the total of nearly $10 billion) of Afghanistan national assets frozen in the Federal Reserve Bank of New York since last August. (The remainder is frozen in Germany, Switzerland, and the U.A.E.). By Presidential Executive Order signed today, $3.5 billion are to be lined up to go as donated aid for the Afghan public, but outside any Taliban government channels; leaving $3.5 billion to be lined up for eventual settlement of multiple lawsuits by victims of 9/11. Notwithstanding the benefit of aid, this is a glaring act of override of the principle of national sovereignty, in which, in particular, Afghanistan needs its rightful assets to shore up its banking functions, currency and to resume economic functioning. No nation is sovereign without this, and now the U.S. has decreed against it. Former Afghanistan Finance Minister Kaylid Payenda denounced it this morning, as “morally and ethically wrong” and one which will have “long-term consequences, not just in the region, but globally.” This action will show “what sort of ally the U.S. is perceived to be in the future” and Ukraine should be watching. This U.S. imperialistic “administrative” act is in line with the war policy now pushed to the extreme in Europe against Russia, and in the Indo-Pacific against China as well. U.S. Secretary of State Tony Blinken is in Australia, where a statement was issued today by the QUAD—U.S., Australia, Japan, India—with chest-beating rhetoric about joint commitment to vanquish any nation (not named) in the Indo-Pacific, that offends the “rules-based order.” Translated: Obey whatever the U.S./U.K./Global NATO bloc demands. This must stop. Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Schiller Institute President, underscored the significance of the role of every citizen, everywhere, and of the institution of the Schiller Institute, in her weekly strategic webcast today, to organize for the dialogue and mobilization for the right policies “to guarantee the long-term survival of our humankind.” As she said about the historic Russia-China Feb. 4 summit statement, “I think it is shaking things up for good.”

In commemoration of Lyndon LaRouche's passing on February 12, 2019, we invite you to meet, or reacquaint yourself with the mind and the personality of one of the greatest geniuses of the last 100 years. Genius without beauty is not genius at all. Join our LaRouche marathon, and bring your friends young and old alike.

Feb. 10—Pentagon spokesman John Kirby announced yesterday that Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin has picked billionaire environmentalist “Mussolini Mike” Bloomberg to chair the Defense Innovation Board. Kirby said that Austin had nominated Bloomberg to “leverage his experience and strategic insights on innovation, business and public service.” Kirby added that Bloomberg will bring “a wealth of experience in technology innovation, business and government to the Defense Innovation Board.”“His leadership will be critical to ensuring the department has access to the best and brightest minds in science, technology and innovation through the team of diverse experts that he will lead as chair of that board,” Kirby said. “And obviously the secretary is very grateful that Mr. Bloomberg was willing to take on this additional responsibility and very grateful that he’s willing to serve in that capacity,” he continued. The Hill notes that the Defense Innovation Board is an advisory board that was established in 2016 to provide the department with recommendations on emerging technologies and innovative approaches to development. In other words, it was created as part of then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work’s Third Offset Strategy to “leverage” Silicon Valley into making the U.S. military technologically superior to Russia and China. “Innovation and adaptability are absolutely critical at any large organization, and there is no organization bigger or more complex than the Department of Defense,” Bloomberg said in a statement. “I’m honored to work with Secretary Austin, Deputy Secretary [Kathleen] Hicks, other senior Defense Department leaders and innovators from government and business to help bring new ideas and outside perspective that can help protect Americans and our values, interests, and allies around the world.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated today that the agreement released following the summit between President Putin and President Xi last week was extremely important, and has shaken things up in a positive way. The two leaders reasserted the concept of peaceful coexistence, which includes non-interference in other nations' affairs, reflecting the principles of the Bandung conference. Coming at the time of the ramping up of tensions between NATO and Russia, it is shaping the potential for a new international geometry, which requires a discussion of a new security architecture.President Macron's meeting with Putin pushed things in that direction, and other smaller countries are speaking out -- for example, Pakistan's President Imran Khan. She is hopeful about what might come from Germany, but agreed with Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, that Germany remains a "U.S. protectorate." The other major development she highlighted was the Schiller Institute-RIAC seminar yesterday addressing achieving a solution to the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. She described the announcement by President Biden that the U.S. will release funds frozen by the U.S. which belong to Afghanistan, which can be used to purchase food, medicine, etc., is a "step forward", but what is required to fully overcome the crisis there is the cooperation of all major powers, with the regional powers, to fully integrate the country into the regional economy.

Patrick Lawrence, one of the few honest journalists in the U.S., together with economist Marshall Auerback, published a piece in Scrum on Wednesday that identifies the extraordinary joint statement by Presidents Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin on Feb. 4, in the same manner that Helga Zepp-LaRouche and EIR have stated and the British Empire’s Daily Telegraph admitted negatively—a new era, an era without geopolitics, has emerged, based on the respect for all humanity’s right to security and development. As Lawrence and Auerback put it in their title: “The World Just Turned—Ukraine and the Putin-Xi Statement.”Some quotes from this important article: “[W]e are living it and cannot see it historically without great effort. But we are living through a passage of the 21st century whose long-term significance is hard to overstate. The future is arriving, to put the point another way. Who would have guessed it would come to us by way of the ongoing morass in Ukraine? “On the ground, the crisis in Ukraine sharpens by the day. This is the point of Washington’s incessant efforts to provoke Russia into an incursion that will justify a proxy war on the part of the U.S. and those few allies hawkish enough to follow its lead into the cesspit of corruption and crypto—Nazism on the Russian Federation’s southwestern border. “But on the ground is not where to look if we want to understand this long-festering crisis and its likely outcome—not as of last week. When Presidents Putin and Xi issued a declaration of mutual solidarity as the Winter Olympics opened in Beijing last Friday, all changed, changed utterly. What the Russian and Chinese leaders had to say in 5,300 words puts the mess in Ukraine in a fundamentally new perspective. What happens there will stand as a mile marker and nothing more on the way to a global order most of humanity has awaited throughout the postwar decades—all seven of them. “This is immensely positive.” They describe the Joint Statement (published in full in this week’s EIR) as a “document of historic magnitude.” comparing it with the joint statement at the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia, of the formerly colonized nations, declaring the principles of freedom, sovereignty, the right to development, and respect for all nations. Xi and Putin fully backed Russia’s call for a new security architecture which, following the OSCE, insists that one nation’s security can not be at the expense of another. But the Xi-Putin statement is universal, they write: “Now what might have been resolved by way of a new settlement on European and Russian security has become a question of a genuinely new global order. This is what happened in Beijing last week. Secretary of State Blinken, his spokesman, Ned Price, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, the Pentagon, the intelligence apparatus, the NATO leadership in Brussels: None of these appears capable of addressing this new reality.” The authors point to an emerging “Eastward diplomatic démarche French President Emmanuel Macron is currently leading, compared to an”American campaign of propaganda and disinformation that is almost certainly the match of anything marshaled during the Cold War," pointing to the absurd, unsubstantiated accusations flowing from the White House and the State Department on a daily basis about Russian dirty deeds. The two gleefully reference AP’s Matt Lee’s showdown with State Department spokesman Ned Price, in which Lee referred to wild stories as “unhinged conspiracy theories, in Alex Jones territory.” The authors point to the color revolution in Ukraine in 2014 as the “first major misstep” of the unipolar world’s hubris. Putin, they note, quickly called the referendum in Crimea, arranged a $400 billion natural gas deal with China, and launched a “global hands-across-the-water tour of Latin America, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East to begin expanding relationships with non—Western nations.” Now, Xi and Putin have “submitted nearly 40 times since the Kiev coup. What began on the economic and trade side now has political and military dimensions.” The Xi-Putin statement, they write, “is a bilateral statement announcing a new world order altogether, with an attendant aspiration to advance sustainable economic strategies worldwide.” They quote from the statement, that “a trend has emerged towards redistribution of power in the world; and the international community is showing a growing demand for leadership aiming at peaceful and gradual development”; they also note the statement’s attack on “certain states” who are, the statement says, “flouting democracy and go against the spirit and true values of democracy. Such attempts at hegemony pose serious threats to global and regional peace and stability and undermine the stability of the world order.” The two authors conclude by pointing to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence which Zhou Enlai signed with India, which were then incorporated into the 10-point declaration at the 1955 Bandung conference. They print all 10 points verbatim, adding: "We quote them in full because it is instructive to read them next to the Joint Statement. They are historical ballast. They remind us that there is nothing very strange or outré, and certainly nothing overly ambitious, about the world Putin and Xi envision: It is the world two-thirds of U.N. member nations and more than half of humanity desired before the Cold War buried their postwar hopes and aspirations. The Russian and Chinese leaders have just demonstrated that these hopes and aspirations were never extinguished. Maybe it is as simple as this. “Hardly do Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping propose an easily, swiftly completed project. (And hardly will a solution of the Ukraine crisis prove easy or swift.) Great movements in history never work that way. And that is what Putin and Xi have just described.”

Feb. 10—As further confirmation of EIR’s documentation that it is the economic crisis which is driving the rush to war with Russia and China, the Norwegian Central Bank announced on Feb. 4 that the new head of the nation’s Central Bank will be the current NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, one of the most belligerent of the Western leaders preparing for war with Russia and China. Stoltenberg finishes his term as NATO chief on October 1, and will switch over to his new job as central banker, where he will undoubtedly continue his mobilization for war. He will also be in charge of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund—$1.4 trillion. Stoltenberg was the leader of Norway’s Labor Party, was Norwegian prime minister from 2000-01 and 2005-13 before becoming NATO chief the following year. He has also been finance minister and energy minister. Reuters reports that former finance minister Siv Jensen, in office from 2013 to 2020, last month urged Stoltenberg to withdraw from the process, arguing that his appointment would damage the central bank’s credibility and reputation. The deputy head of Norway’s main opposition Conservative Party, Tina Bru, had also argued against Stoltenberg’s candidacy, calling it unwise to appoint him.

The pathetic attempt by UK Foreign Minister Truss to imitate her model, Margaret Thatcher, in her confrontation with her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, fell flat, as she came off looking like an ill-prepared buffoon. At the same time, the French and Germans saw in a Normandy Four meeting in Berlin, that the Russians are right, that it is Ukraine -- NOT Russia -- that is blocking the fulfillment of the Minsk Accords. And the EU's version of a Green Build Back Better plan was hit by a blow from Senegal's President, who said Africans are more concerned about having electricity than in meeting the COP 26 agreement's demands on hydrocarbons.

The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and the Schiller Institute (SI) will be convening a seminar on Thursday, February 10, 2022 at 8 AM EST on the topic, “The Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan: Toward a Long-term Solution."Among the topics to be addressed by a panel of six speakers will be:: What are the causes of the Afghan humanitarian crisis What are the geopolitical implications of a failed state in Afghanistan What is needed to reverse the immediate threat of mass starvation and refugee problems A long-term solution to the humanitarian crisis: the role of the global powers Opening and closing statements will be presented by Dr. Andrey Kortunov, Director General of RIAC, and Helga Zepp-LaRouche, chairwoman of the SI Additional speakers will include:Ivan Safranchuk, Director at the Center for Eurasian Studies of MGIMO UniversityTemur Umarov, Fellow at the Carnegie Moscow CenterJim Jatras, U.S. diplomat, former advisor to U.S. Senate Republican leadershipGraham Fuller, 25 year career as a CIA operations officer, author Questions may be submitted to questions@schillerinstitute.org

Feb. 9—“The world is currently in an incredibly dangerous situation, with a Cold War that threatens to become a hot war at any moment,” Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated in an interview on Pakistan PTV World’s “Views on News” broadcast today. We are the proverbial 100 seconds away from the midnight of a nuclear catastrophe, a war danger that is playing out around the extreme tensions around Ukraine. The United Kingdom and the United States are putting massive pressure on Europe to fully join the drive to push Russia into a strategic corner and launch scorched-earth economic sanctions and attacks on that country. But, as of this moment, Europe is not fully on board—as can be seen in German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s trip to Washington, and especially French President Emmanuel Macron’s six-hour discussion in Moscow with Russian President Putin. They are increasingly aware that the current policies of confrontation, driven by the breakdown of the trans-Atlantic financial system, cannot continue, or they will succeed in blowing up the entire world.But we are also witnessing the beginnings of a gigantic international political and economic realignment as well. “I think we should not underestimate the incredibly historic meeting which took place between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin during the Olympics, where they concluded a new strategic partnership which is a new model for international relationships,” Zepp-LaRouche stated. What this reflects is the fact that the unipolar world is over, and countries around the world—from Pakistan to Argentina to Hungary—are responding to that new reality. “It takes politicians and the media a while before this reality sinks in,” Zepp-LaRouche noted. “Europeans right now are really completely scared about the possibility of the Ukraine crisis going out of control,” Zepp-LaRouche stated, "and they are trying to put a new model on the table. But I believe that something else is needed. We are right now at a branching point of all of history, and we need a new model of international relations, where thinking in terms of geopolitics, in terms of blocs, in terms of wars of one against the other within a zero-sum game—this has to be overcome." A new international security architecture based on the universal economic development of all nations must be forged, even as we stand at the very edge of a terrible existential danger. “We must fill people with hope that it can be accomplished,” Zepp-LaRouche told a meeting of Schiller Institute associates today. Americans in particular must ensure that the United States joins with Russia and China in forging constructive solutions to the world’s problems. The Feb. 10 joint seminar of the Schiller Institute and the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) on “The Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan: Toward a Long-Term Solution,” is one such urgent forum.

Feb. 8—We begin by providing a short report, otherwise unavailable to Americans, of what went on in the six- hour discussions that occurred several days ago between Presidents Vladimir Putin of Russia and Emmanuel Macron of France. It should be noted that simultaneously with these discussions, President Joe Biden was meeting with Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany. Prior to their respective meetings with the United States and Russia, Scholz and Macron had spoken on the phone, and they also spoke on the phone immediately after those meetings had concluded. Macron then went to Ukraine to meet with President Zelensky, and was to return to Germany to consult with Chancellor Scholz after that meeting.President Putin: "I am deeply grateful to Mr President for discussing these matters in Moscow today. I believe that these security matters concern not only Russia but also Europe and the world as a whole. “Look, our proposals include not only NATO’s expansion, which we oppose, but also a second point: the non-deployment of offensive systems near our borders. If everyone wants peace, tranquility, well-being and confidence, what is bad about not deploying offensive weapons near our borders? Can anyone tell me what is bad about this? “If NATO is a peaceful organization, what is bad about returning its infrastructure to the level of 1997, when the NATO-Russia Act was signed? This would create conditions for building up confidence and security. Is this bad? “We can let the open-door pledge be, even though the issue remains on the agenda. It is a key priority for us, and I have explained why. We talked about this for six hours. “Tomorrow, President Macron will fly to Kiev. We have agreed that he will at least put forth his action plan regarding this. I am deeply grateful to him for giving so much attention to this and that he is trying to find a solution to this matter of great importance to all of us.” President Macron:… "I think that it is first of all France’s responsibility to have the strongest possible relationship with Russia. We are two great European nations and great world powers. We are two permanent members of the UN Security Council. “Bilateral relations are of great importance for us, firstly, to have them develop, and to have common decisions on acute international issues. We are trying to do so on the Iranian issue and attempting to find a point of contact on Libya and other matters. We do have disagreements but we still find compromise. This is obvious to me. “Secondly, I think that President Putin and I agree that Russia is a European country. Those who can see Europe should be able to work with Russia and find ways to build the future in Europe and with Europeans. Is it easy? No, but Europe was also created through difficult initiatives that had immediate effects. So, yes, we do have difficulties but we must not give up. “Finally, this is France’s mission, it is its role. During these six months we are presiding in the European Union. Our role is to make the voice of the European Union heard and take into account a variety of complex circumstances in communication with such neighbors as Russia, which plays a decisive role in our security, and listen to all Europeans as well. I have been doing this over the past days. Being here I am trying to be the person who can make a contribution to finding this proper way. “I have a simple conviction. Do we increase our collective capability for making peace without our contacts with Russia? No, we do not. Who do we leave this role for? For others. “We do have disagreements. We realize that. Sometimes we fail to move forward and it is the result of such disagreements. However, we are trying to find compromises. I consider it to be my responsibility. Our task is to make sure that these compromises protect the interests of our partners and allies. This is why in the coming days and weeks we must start this difficult work, find new decisions in order to protect these guarantees while still protecting our basic principles and our neighborly relations, because our geography will not change. This is why we carry on.” Serious negotiations and diplomacy have been underway involving a day-to-day dialogue among the heads of state of Germany, France, Russia, and United States, as well as Ukraine, not only to prevent the potential outbreak of war, intended or unintended, but also, in the words of Macron, to “jointly show the will to work on security guarantees and to build a new security and stability order in Europe.” That fact has been suppressed from the consciousness of the American and European citizenry, in favor of media sideshows aptly characterized by Russian spokesman Maria Zhakarova as “psychedelic phobias.” In that vein, “The Ned Price Experience” was once again called out on Monday by reporter Matt Lee, this time supported by a colleague. State Department spokesman Ned Price attempted to falsify his exchange last week with reporter Lee, who had simply asked Price for any evidence to corroborate his “State Department-approved” assertion that Russia had manufactured a “false flag” video depicting an attack by Ukraine on Russia, including using “crisis actors” a la Alex Jones. In Monday’s exchange, in which Price again refused to provide any evidence whatsoever, Lee again asked, “Do you have anything more that you can say to back up the claim than you did— than you had to say last week? That’s all.” Price: “Beyond what we told you last week …in pretty detailed terms about the Russian plans … We don’t have anything further to offer on that.” Second reporter: “Then you’re saying the proof that you’re correct is that nothing is actually going to happen? Is that what you’re saying? … because you putting this out there will have stopped the Russians from doing it, correct?” While the practice of State Department-Speak (StateSpeak) has been previously satirized over decades by authors like Joseph Heller and Kurt Vonnegut, the Ned Price and other responses on Ukraine are now more like the dialogue in “Waiting For Godot—” self-assured opaqueness, unassailable by reason, but internally consistent and therefore “obvious” to the speaker alone. Whatever NATO’s objections to reality, however, last week’s Russia-China agreement underscores a reality that was extensively discussed by Lyndon LaRouche exactly 40 years ago in his “A Fifty Year Development Program for the Pacific Ocean Basin”: the center of gravity of human civilization has shifted to Africa, Asia, and the Indian subcontinent, the homes of more than five billion of the nearly eight billion people on the planet. NATO’s strained “sphere of influence” discussions with respect to China and Russia are the equivalent of using Ptolemy’s discredited epicycles to draw more and more elaborate “revisionings” of an “old, mad, dying imperial world” that is being decisively transcended through investments in advanced power, space, and production systems applied to mining, manufacturing, and agriculture, creating a whole new world platform—and the people who will produce and benefit from this transformation. Those who don’t intend to miss out on Earth’s next fifty years of progress, are “making it clear with their feet” which side of the future they intend to be on. The State Department’s hapless flailing, while it should be derided, must also be taken seriously; it serves to mask the actual foreign policy practice of the United States, its “Iago-like” controller Great Britain, and that of other equally guilty participants, in the ongoing death-by-starvation- and-depraved indifference in Afghanistan and Yemen, most spectacularly, and in the use of sanctions against vulnerable states throughout the world. Attention was called to this in the Monday United Nations Security Council session, in the Open Debate on “General issues relating to sanctions: preventing their humanitarian and unintended consequences.” Unlike Cambodia 1975-79, the world cannot pretend to not know what is happening there. The United States cannot pretend to not be responsible. The individual citizens, armed with social media and other forms of communication, cannot claim that they are powerless or voiceless to stop one of the cruelest forms of murder, starvation. Dante’s Count Ugolino could at least claim that he ate his children out of extreme hunger. Today, we are as Count Ugolino, with respect to our consumption of the lives of perhaps a million or more children in Afghanistan, either because we defend the genocidal policies now under way, or because we fail to overturn them. The Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC) and the Schiller Institute (SI) will be convening a seminar on Thursday, February 10, 2022 at 4 PM Moscow time/2 PM CET/8 AM EST on the topic, “The Humanitarian Crisis in Afghanistan: Toward a Long-term Solution.” Join us and help implement the Institute’s Operation Ibn Sina, not only to save Afghanistan, but to, by that means, save the soul of trans-Atlantic civilization.

Why is it that U.S. nuclear war exercises are good, as we are told they are "to secure our freedoms", but Russian exercises are described as a prelude to invade another country? Who has invaded more countries in recent years, the combined U.S./NATO forces, or Russia and China? Which alliance has used false flags as an excuse for war, organized Color Revolutions to carry out coups, and imposed sanctions to punish innocent civilians? The lying narratives must stop! The Schiller Institute will hold a joint event with the Russian International Affairs Council on Feb. 10 to discuss a solution to the crisis in Afghanistan. Join us: https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/02/07/seminar-the-humanitarian-crisis-in-afghanistan-toward-a-long-term-solution/

The din of war in the trans-Atlantic media, the drumbeat of “Russian attack and invasion,” has now reached a crescendo. Can there still be some Leonard Bernstein of London who will raise the orchestra of the intelligence services to a still louder pitch, until American and European publics actually believe that a Russian military invasion of Ukraine is underway? Will some stiff-necked journalists continue to demand actual evidence?On Feb. 5 the Financial Times took the podium, with “U.S. Believes Russia Plans Nuclear Exercise To Warn West over Ukraine.” It declared with the London media’s usual evidence-freedom that “U.S. military and intelligence officials believe Russia is planning a major nuclear weapons exercise this month as a warning to NATO not to intervene if President Vladimir Putin decides to invade.” This nuclear weapons exercise should be in September, the FT decides, but the bully Putin is going to hold it in February or March instead to intimidate NATO when the invasion goes ahead. The invasion that, according to NBC on Sunday, Biden Administration officials believe is coming “any day now.” “Russia generally holds its annual nuclear exercises—which involve testing intercontinental ballistic missiles from land, sea and air—in the fall,” wrote the FT. “But the U.S. believes Putin has decided to hold them earlier this year as a show of strength in the event that he orders his military to further invade Ukraine” probably in “mid-February to the end of March.” Then a somewhat unintelligible—perhaps crazy—analyst from the Hudson Institute is quoted, of this hypothesized February nuclear exercise, “It would be an incredibly provocative and foreboding message if they did that simultaneously with an invasion of Ukraine.” What the FT presented as its war scoop—similar to Bloomberg News’ short-lived headline, “Russia Invades Ukraine,” on Feb. 4—actually was already apparently stated to the Congress Feb. 3 in closed-door, classified testimony by Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley and DNI Avril Haines, and then leaked to Fleet Street. What about the fact that the United States right now is holding nuclear weapons exercises, called Global Lightning 2022, which exercises are intended to simulate an extended nuclear war, with first strikes—nuclear and conventional—retaliatory second strikes, responses to those strikes, and on, with more and more of the nuclear arsenals being fired? Nothing such inconveniently directed threat matters, facing the “Russia is invading Ukraine” drumbeat. But it does matter to its real target, the human race. Helga Zepp-LaRouche in a new article said of Global Lightning, “This nuclear war plan includes not only nuclear weapons but various other lethal systems such as missile defense systems, directed energy weapons such as electromagnetic pulse weapons and lasers, cyberattacks, and Space Force attacks from space. Who would be able to survive such a prolonged nuclear war?” There are some signs of motion toward a solution: French President Emmanuel Macron’s negotiation with Russian President Vladimir Putin gave signs of immediate, possibly productive follow-up from both sides. But the real solution can only be found in the direction Zepp-LaRouche indicated. The financial system is an immense mass of unpayable debts preparing to crash again, worse than in 2008, and the City of London and Wall Street can survive it only if they beat down Russia and/or China before it crashes, distracting millions in the process from perceiving the failing monetarist system. A new paradigm of economic as well as moral and cultural relations among the great powers is the antidote both to the coming financial crash, and to the resort to unsurvivable war. A New Bretton Woods credit system is urgently needed which can save Afghanistan and other war-destroyed nations, and build modern healthcare systems in every country to save people from pandemics.

"A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought" Schiller Institute International Online Conference, two panels Saturday, February 19, starting 10 a.m. EST The Schiller Institute will hold an international online conference on Saturday, February 19 to reassert that very sane declaration by the five nuclear powers and permanent members of the UN Security Council, which they affirmed in a joint statement on Jan. 3 of this year. The conference will also present a {solution} to the current crisis: the establishment of a new security architecture that guarantees all nations the right to security, and to economic and cultural development. To do that, a dialogue about the causes and the cures of the current crisis is urgent.In the last week of January, the U.S. Strategic Command launched the Global Lightning exercise to test the readiness of US nuclear forces under a nuclear war plan, operative since 2019, based on the assumption that the United States and NATO would be able to survive a nuclear first strike by Russia or China, then retaliate, absorb further attacks, retaliate again, etc., in an ongoing military confrontation. President Putin had announced Russia's new nuclear weapons systems in 2018, including the Avangard hypersonic missile, the hypersonic cruise missile Kinzhal, nuclear-powered cruise missiles, fast underwater drones, and laser weapons. This was an enormous shock to the western military establishment. But President Putin was responding to the 2004-2014 color revolutions and so-called "humanitarian" wars against all governments who opposed having their own nations looted. The $5 billion spent on NGOs in Ukraine alone is well known, which eventually became the Nazi Maidan coup of February 2014, on Russia’s very doorstep. On Dec. 17, 2021, Putin presented two draft treaties to the United States and NATO, insisting that there be no further eastward expansion of NATO (especially into Ukraine), and no offensive weapon systems stationed on Russia's borders. Given the lack of serious response so far, Putin has announced "military-technical measures" in the event of a definitive refusal.One American expert has written that he thinks Russia’s “military-technical measures” may include deploying sea-launched hypersonic Zircon nuclear-armed cruise missiles off the coast of Washington, D.C., which Russian experts have previously said could destroy the American capital so quickly the President would not have time to board Air Force One to escape. More and more people are waking up to the fact that there are only the proverbial hundred seconds before midnight left on the Doomsday Clock.To stop the clock, the causes of war must be addressed: 1) The hyperinflationary final phase of the trans-Atlantic neoliberal financial system; and 2) the deadly fantasy of the financial establishment in the City of London, Wall Street and Silicon Valley that they can impose their "rules-based order" in their eternal unipolar world.The root causes trace back to the shift of August 1971, prophetically recognized by Lyndon LaRouche, when Nixon effectively ended the Bretton Woods system by abolishing fixed exchange rates and thus paving the way for speculative profit maximization. This caused the increasing shift away from investments in the productive physical economy and towards speculation in increasingly exotic derivative-based financial products, and now "shifting the trillions" into the Green New Deal.From the standpoint of the physical economy, this policy of driving investments into industries with the lowest possible energy-flux density ultimately represents an extensive destruction of capital, just like investments in the military production of weapon systems. Far too many people are confused about monetary values, as distinct from real wealth. They have bought into the illusion that the share values of listed companies say something about the productivity of the economy – which they do not.Some more level-headed voices have spoken out in favor of a new pan-European security architecture including Russia and Ukraine, in a new Helsinki agreement. However, in view of the complexity of the world situation, the threat to world peace affecting all states, and the indivisibility of the security of all, it is necessary to go beyond Helsinki and create an international security architecture that encompasses the security interests of all states on earth.Just such a proposal is elaborated in a recent article published by Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche: “100 Seconds to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock: We Need a New Security Architecture!” This architecture must be based on the principles of the Peace of Westphalia; i.e., it must guarantee the interests of all states and, above all, their right to economic and cultural development. The maintenance of world peace requires a total and definitive renunciation of Malthusian politics, and requires universal access to the achievements of scientific and technological advance for all nations. This new order— the prerequisite for the survival of the human species—requires a new paradigm of thought that must draw upon the best classical traditions of all cultures at the highest humanistic level.Who can deny that we are an indivisible community of destiny?We have a choice: Either we let the clock tick away until the last of the hundred seconds has struck, and then there will be no one left to comment on the result; or we can remember that we are the only known creative species in the universe, and shape our common future together.