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The talks between U.S. and Russian officials yesterday in Geneva reached no positive outcome. This should not be a surprise, as U.S. spokesman Ned Price announced that the U.S. "had not intended to reach any agreement with Russia." Will this attitude persist as the U.S. approaches further talks? With the Trans-Atlantic nations facing a deepening economic crisis, warnings of a "sharp correction" in hyper-inflated stock markets, the continuing disruption caused by the pandemic, starvation threatening 22 million in Afghanistan, and electricity blackouts in Germany, this is the time to move towards cooperation between sovereign nation states, rather than geopolitical confrontation to defend bankrupt corporate cartels.

So many institutions of the U.S. intellectual establishment are now echoing the Schiller Institute and demanding the release of Afghanistan’s aid and reserve funds—15 think-tanks and organizations in a Jan. 8 joint letter to President Biden and others on their own websites—that there is clearly a horrible realization: United States financial and economic sanctions are murdering an innocent people, for insufficient loyalty to NATO occupying forces. Any citizen who thinks this crime is unrelated to the threat of an imminent, much bigger conflict over Ukraine, is mistaking moral posturing for morality.In the U.S.-Russia meetings now going on in Geneva about NATO in Eastern Europe and Ukraine, moral posturing by U.S. diplomats has quickly and completely replaced the personal diplomacy between Presidents Biden and Putin which seemed to give hope of a solution. After the bilateral U.S.-Russia stage of the meetings on Jan. 10, State Department spokesman Ned Price said that the United States would never consider keeping Ukraine out of NATO, “had not intended to reach any agreement” with Russia, and did not even “consider the talks as a negotiation.” He concluded his briefing with a talking points list of Russian “malign activities,” to claim that Russia, and only Russia, had to de-escalate and make concessions, to allow NATO forces and missiles to complete their long advance right to Russia’s borders—while Russian troops must vacate their own western border regions and “return to their permanent bases.” Secretary of State Tony Blinken added, at the same time, a gratuitous attempt to gloat over Russia’s assistance to the government of Kazakhstan to control rioting and attempted insurrection. Unless President Joe Biden intervenes personally again, Russia’s proposed agreements have been bluntly and permanently rejected. This is the equivalent of Nikita Khrushchev having refused ever to consider withdrawing Soviet missiles from America’s southern border in the terrifying Cuban Missiles Crisis of October 1962. At that time, tens of millions of frightened people around the world had already imagined what that refusal would mean. Even if the consequence now is “merely” a conventional conflict in Ukraine, U.S. former chief weapons inspector and military expert Scott Ritter gives an idea why that would not go well for NATO forces. What if the consequence is only the “complete rupture of relations” threatened by Putin and a deep and immediate Cold War. The nation with the world’s most rapidly expanding and technologically advancing economy, and with the greatest anti-poverty and development influence in Africa, South and East Asia, is firmly in partnership with Russia. This is clearly shown once again in the suppression of the apparently failed “color revolution” attempt in Kazakhstan. If the Biden Administration has decided the United States will attack and confront Russia and China together in a new Cold War—opposing them in space, fighting their policies of exporting nuclear power to third countries, demanding they stop using coal for power, attacking China’s Belt and Road and poverty eradication policies, and so on, who will it have in its corner? Why, the British Empire, of course—those green royals and Bojo the Clown and Her Majesty’s forces eager to deploy into Ukraine. What will America have in reserve? No development credit institution; a weak economic recovery from a deep recession; a labor force 3 million workers and 3.5 million jobs down from two years ago; declining real incomes; a Federal Reserve creating economic calamities worldwide, as the IMF warned Jan. 9, trying to stop the inflation it caused. But far worse than any of this is the ongoing strangulation of the people of Afghanistan by U.S. sanctions. It is causing a growing cascade of deaths by starvation, by freezing in homes with no winter fuel, in a nation for which the United States clearly bears responsibility after 20 years’ war and occupation. Murdered for the sin of not sustaining a puppet government when NATO left it. These sanctions are a crime against humanity. With this Afghanistan as its “banner,” nations will instinctively shun an Anglo-American attempt to make the rules for the world. There would be perverse new meaning, as Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche said today, to the phrase “Afghanistan, the graveyard of empires.” This must be prevented, reversed. The policy must be changed to one of development, by Helga LaRouche’s Operation Ibn Sina. The Schiller Institute’s urgent organizing for this objective, will take its next step forward with a webinar on Martin Luther King Day, Monday, Jan. 17.

This evening in Geneva, informal talks began between the United States and Russia, at a supper with U.S. delegation leader, Wendy Sherman, Deputy Secretary of State, and Sergey Ryabkov, Deputy Foreign Minister, and their teams, at the residence of the U.S. ambassador to the Conference on Disarmament. Tomorrow, the formal talks ensue, on the topic of security, between the U.S. and Russia. On Jan. 12, in Brussels, NATO and Russian officials will meet on security. On Jan. 13 in Vienna, the U.S., Russia and other member nations of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will meet.On the eve of this historic week, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke this morning on two Sunday TV interviews, unfortunately reiterating his litany of charges against Russia, his false history of Europe, and his crazed assertions about what he claims is in the interest of the United States, e.g., backing Eurasian nations against Russia—Georgia, Moldova, Belarus, Ukraine and now Kazakhstan. In turn, Minister Ryabkov today told TASS, speaking of the Russian readiness to discuss the two draft security documents that they have provided for discussion and action: “Honestly speaking, I really doubt that our American colleagues are ready for such a talk, judging by the signals that we have been hearing in recent days…. But it would be naïve to expect progress, given the revised public presentation of the position that we see today, right before the start of contacts.” The Schiller Institute and collaborators in recent years, have done everything in their means to prevent this state of brinkmanship expressed by the Blinken position, which is, in fact, the classic, deadly British Great Gamesmanship in Eurasia. Now is not the fitting moment to prognosticate what exactly will happen in the discussions tomorrow and this week. But it is time to redouble our efforts to engage everyone possible to understand what is going on, and what they can do to stop the drive to Armageddon. An important initiative comes from the United States. Fifteen organizations—including religious, veteran, diplomacy and other groups—issued an open letter Jan. 8 to President Joe Biden, on what kind of negotiations should go on with Russia this week, to the joint interest of all nations and peoples. The letter was also sent to Blinken, and Sen. Charles Schumer and Rep. Nancy Pelosi. The letter is titled, “Further Strengthen Diplomatic Efforts and Avert War,” and is circulating through the channels of the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord. The bipartisan authors call on the U.S. to reject expanding NATO, and say: “It is in the interests of the United States, the region, and the world to address these and other root causes of tension with Russia as part of an ongoing strategic dialogue.” It states: “Continuing engagement is necessary to avert a military conflict that will harm the interests of the United States, harm innocent civilians in Ukraine, and risk spiraling into a potentially catastrophic war between the world’s two leading nuclear powers.” What is called for is statecraft in service of the common good, which in the face of war, is life itself. Look at Afghanistan, for the threat of mass death from famine, disease and weather. Some days ago, a fierce storm system hit south of the Hindu Kush, bringing snow and freezing temperatures in Kabul and neighboring provinces. To the east in Pakistan, over Jan. 6-7, the storm system dropped up to four feet of snow very fast, and trapped thousands of tourists in their cars in the scenic mountain area some 22 miles north of Islamabad, in the popular winter resort town of Murree. So far 22 are dead. Emergency crews are working hard, and this is rightly highly publicized. However, in Kabul, a city of 4.5 million, the frigid weather and lack of food are creating mass death circumstances, but the “news” remains almost completely blacked out. On Jan. 7, the Afghan government issued a direct world appeal by video. Acting Deputy Prime Minister Abdul Ghani Barada said, “In various places right now, people do not have food, accommodation, warm clothes or money….The world has to support Afghan people without any political bias and carry out their humanitarian obligations…. We call for the international community, NGOs and all the countries not to forget our poor people.” The situation underscores the role of the Schiller Institute and collaborators to make known the reality of the crises, and the reality that nations collaborating can solve them all. Plans are being made final for a Schiller Institute international conference on the Afghanistan emergency within the coming 10 days. Circulate everywhere the Schiller Institute Memorandum (Dec. 31, 2021) “Are We Sleepwalking into Thermonuclear World War III?”

Now is the perfect time for the people living in the Trans-Atlantic nations to come to their senses, and throw out the ideological insanity embodied in neoliberal, and neo-conservative policies. The security dialogues with Russia this week provide an opportunity to move away from geopolitical confrontation with Russia; hyperinflation, supply-chain breakdowns, and unsustainable debt expose the fallacy of radical free market/free trade policies; and winter has shown why the Green New Deal must be dumped. So let's get to work, and organize a new paradigm, based on the body of work done by statesman and economist Lyndon LaRouche.

by: Harley SchlangerJan. 8 -- Beginning on January 10, there will be three meetings which will include Russian and American representatives, in which the possibility exists that the tensions which have increased over Ukraine during the second half of 2021 will be addressed, resulting in a de-escalation. These meetings follow direct discussion in two video conferences in December between Presidents Putin and Biden, in which the most urgent issue addressed was the danger of war between Russia and Ukraine. U.S. intelligence claims to have evidence, based on Russian troop movements along the border, that they are preparing to invade Ukraine, as early as the end of January. President Putin dismissed this claim, raising instead his concerns over the possibility that Ukraine would be granted membership in NATO, a prospect he denounced as an unacceptable provocation, which would be the crossing of a "red line." While Biden insists that an offer of NATO membership is not imminent, the Russians have pointed to ongoing NATO-U.S. military exercises in Ukraine, and the provision of increasingly sophisticated weapons to Ukraine, as a threat to Russia's security. Putin has submitted drafts of two legally-binding treaties -- one for the U.S., one for NATO -- which would prevent further eastward expansion of NATO, would prohibit the delivery of new weapon systems to the Ukrainian military, and would pressure Ukraine to abide by the Minsk agreement which it signed to allow for a peaceful resolution of the conflict in the Donbas. He has been raising the need for security guarantees repeatedly, as the anti-Russian rhetoric and NATO military deployments have escalated. For example, he said in a speech delivered to the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi on October 21, that Ukraine does not even have to be given formal NATO membership to pose a strategic threat to Russia. "Formal membership in NATO ultimately may not happen, but the military development of the territory is already underway. And this really poses a threat to the Russian Federation....Tomorrow, rockets could appear near Kharkov, what are we going to do about it? It's not us placing our missiles there, it's them shoving theirs under our nose." He continued, referring to the February 1990 promise made to Soviet President Gorbachev by U.S. officials, on behalf of NATO, that no eastward expansion of NATO would occur after the reunification of Germany: "Everyone from all sides said that after the unification, in no circumstance would NATO infrastructure move toward the east. Russia should have been able to at least rely on that. That's what they said, there were public statements. But in practice? They lied...and then they expanded it once, and then they expanded it again." Putin elaborated his view of the threat to Russian security in a December 21 report to the Defense Ministry Board: "What they (the United States) are doing on the territory of Ukraine now -- or trying to do and going to do -- this is not thousands of kilometers away from our national border. This is at the doorstep of our home. They must understand that we simply have nowhere to retreat further....Do they think we don't see these threats? Or do they think that we are so weak-willed to simply look blankly at the threats posed to Russia?" Putin stressed that placing weapons with nuclear devices in Ukraine puts them within 5 minutes of Moscow! He continued, "As I have already noted, in the event of the continuation of the obviously aggressive line of our Western colleagues, we will take adequate retaliatory military-technical measures, and react toughly to unfriendly steps. And, I want to emphasize, we have every right to do so, we have every right to take actions designed to ensure the security and sovereignty of Russia....We are extremely concerned about the deployment of elements of the U.S. global missile defense system near Russia." In case the urgency and intensity of Putin's message were missed by the Trans-Atlantic powers, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov reiterated the non-negotiable nature of Putin's demand for the adoption of these treaties. Russia is preparing, he said, "to firmly and effectively pursue the agenda of defending our interests and refusing to make concessions that would be unilateral...."

Secretary of State Tony Blinken went on a Goebbels-style rampage against Russia, turning history since 2014 completely on its head, in remarks to reporters following NATO’s virtual foreign ministers meeting. “We’re prepared to respond forcefully to further Russian aggression, but a diplomatic solution is still possible and preferable, if Russia chooses it,” he said, according to the State Department transcript. “That’s what we, together with our allies and partners, will continue to pursue intently next week at the Strategic Stability Dialogue between the United States and Russia, and at the meetings of the NATO-Russia Council and the OSCE, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.”“Ahead of these urgent discussions, let’s be clear about how we got to this moment,” he said, before unleashing a completely false narrative about events since 2014. “In 2014, the Ukrainian people chose a democratic (!) and European future for themselves. Russia responded by manufacturing a crisis and invading,” he said completely reversing the reality that an elected government was overthrown by a neo-Nazi-dominated violent coup in which the U.S. played a direct role. Acknowledging the reality, however, would make it impossible to then paint Moscow as the aggressor trying to crush the “democratic aspirations” of the Ukrainian people. That of course includes the rhetoric that NATO is only a “defensive alliance” that “exists to protect, not to attack.” Additionally, “NATO never promised not to admit new members,” Blinken went on, “It could not and would not—the ‘open door policy’ was a core provision of the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty that founded NATO.” Turning to the topic of the series of meetings beginning on Monday, Jan. 10 in Geneva, Blinken declared that “Russia is now demanding that both the United States and NATO sign treaties to withdraw NATO forces stationed in the territory of Allies in Central and Eastern Europe and to prohibit Ukraine from ever joining NATO. They want to draw us into a debate about NATO, rather than focus on the matter at hand, which is their aggression toward Ukraine. We won’t be diverted from that issue, because what’s happening in Ukraine is not only about Ukraine. It’s part of a broader pattern of destabilizing, dangerous, and often illegal behavior by Moscow as it tries to build a sphere of influence that covers the countries that were once under Soviet dominion, and to stop them from realizing their democratic aspirations as fully sovereign, independent nations.” As for yesterday’s NATO meeting, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg was on the same track as Blinken in terms of blaming Russia for everything. “Russia’s aggressive actions seriously undermine the security order in Europe,” he said. “NATO remains committed to our dual-track approach to Russia: strong deterrence and defense, combined with meaningful dialogue. It is a positive signal that Russia is now prepared to come to the table and talk because when tensions are high, dialogue is even more important.” “We are always ready to listen to Russian concerns and NATO will make every effort to find a political way forward,” Stoltenberg droned on. “But for dialogue to be meaningful, it must also address Allies’ long-standing concerns about Russia’s actions. It must be based on the core principles of European security and it must take place in consultation with Ukraine.” But there’ll be no halt to NATO expansion. “We will not compromise on core principles, including the right for every nation to decide its own path, including what kind of security arrangements it wants to be a part of,” he said. Stoltenberg claimed that the Russian military buildup that sparked fears of an invasion has continued. “We see armored units, we see artillery, we see combat-ready troops, we see electronic warfare equipment and we see a lot of different military capabilities,” he said. This buildup, combined with Russia’s security demands, and its track record in Ukraine and Georgia, “sends a message that there is a real risk for a new armed conflict in Europe,” Stoltenberg said.

by: Harley Schlanger Jan. 4 -- The idea proposed by Helga Zepp-LaRouche to make 2022 the "Year of LaRouche" is not an honorific request, shaped simply by a desire to see that an intellectual giant, the late Lyndon LaRouche (1922 to 2019), is given the recognition he richly deserves. It is, instead, a necessary intervention, to provide both world leaders and honorable citizens the profound, in-depth insight required to pull the world back from the danger of thermonuclear war -- which is what Mrs. LaRouche intends in making this proposal.Lyndon LaRouche had an absolutely unique knowledge of the dynamics that shape human history, which he presented as an integrated understanding of the inter-relationship between strategic relations, global financial and economic processes, scientific advance and culture. The solutions he developed to the civilizational crisis which has been unfolding and deepening since the end of World War II, and especially since the 1963 assassination of President John Kennedy, come from his "top-down approach," of the sort which few today can even appreciate, not to mention replicate. That is why the crisis today is an existential threat to human society, and requires a return to the quality of philosophical/scientific rigor which characterized the richness of his output over the last half-century. A short report cannot provide more than a glimpse into that work, However, a brief review of a statement he presented in a webcast on December 23, 2011, may inspire our readers to engage in a serious dialogue with the body of ideas which are the legacy of Lyndon LaRouche. The webcast was published under the headline, "To Stop Thermonuclear War, Bring on the World Economic Recovery." He begins by identifying the increased danger of war during the Obama presidency as coming from the "intention" of a global oligarchy, centered in the City of London and deploying Obama as their tool, "to eliminate two nations -- Russia and China." The urgency behind this is that the Trans-Atlantic world, since 2007, has faced an accelerating bankruptcy crisis. To protect the value of worthless paper in the hands of the financial institutions controlled by that oligarchy, they deployed central banks to pump unprecedented volumes of liquidity into the system, not to create a real, physical economic recovery, but to maintain the illusion of solvency. It was clear then, as it is today, that the sovereign nations of Russia and China would not submit to bailing out speculative predators, and that made them the ultimate targets. This process which he dissected then entered a new, even bigger phase, following the near-financial collapse in September 2019, with Russia and China again representing the major obstacles to a global financial dictatorship known as the Great Reset, to implement the Malthusian Green New Deal. Thus, the present provocations which are underway against Russia using Ukraine, and China using Taiwan. To shift the power away from the predatory looters of the City of London and Wall Street, which enforced the looting through the U,S. military, NATO and intelligence warfare, such as "regime change coups", he proposed an alliance of Four Powers -- Russia, China, India and the U.S. These nations possessed the potential economic might to enact the measures necessary to transition from the collapsed system into a New Paradigm. To accomplish this, he drafted his Four Economic Laws, which would begin by reaching an agreement to put the world economy through a "legitimate bankruptcy operation," centered around the 1933, Franklin Roosevelt policy of Glass Steagall banking separation. If this were done in a coordinated way today, it would wipe out the worthless debts sitting on the books of bankrupt financial institutions, which he called "gambling debts", opening the way for new credit issued by sovereign national banks, which would function as "Hamiltonian credit" institutions. Each nation would be able to generate credit into reviving the physical economy, with an emphasis on developing new platforms of infrastructure, and credit into areas at the frontiers of science, such as nuclear fusion, and space exploration. There is no other alternative to the "LaRouche Solution." Risking thermonuclear war to sustain a system which is hopelessly bankrupt is not an acceptable option.

HARLEY SCHLANGER: Hello, I’m Harley Schlanger with the Schiller Institute and Executive Intelligence Review. It’s January 6, 2022, and I’m joined today, very happily, by Dr. Andrey Kortunov, the director general of the Russian International Affairs Council (RIAC). He’s been a participant at several Schiller Institute conferences. The RIAC itself is a very prestigious and important institute in shaping Russian foreign policy. We’re speaking at a moment of heightened tension between the U.S. and NATO with Russia, but also on the eve of a number of dialogues which have a potential for a breakthrough, and we want to explore this with Dr. Kortunov. Andrey, thank you for joining us today. ANDREY KORTUNOV: You’re welcome. SCHLANGER: The tension that’s been growing in the most recent period can be traced back to the Dec. 3rd leak in the Washington Post, claiming that the Russians and President Putin are about to invade Ukraine. This has led to several discussions, two talks, in fact, videoconference talks between Presidents Putin and Biden. And there is a demand from President Putin that there be a discussion about legally binding agreements for Russian national security. I’d like to start by just asking you, why do you think at this time, there’s been increased tensions? I don’t mean to say it just started Dec. 3rd, but we’ve seen a constant drumbeat since then. KORTUNOV: Well, it’s hard to tell what exactly triggered the current escalation, but I think it was simmering for some time. If you look at the Russian side of the equation, of course, there has been a growing disappointment with the performance of the Normandy group, and I think that right now, there are very clear frustrations about the ability of this group to lead to the full implementation of the Minsk agreements. There were hopes when Mr. Zelenskyy came to power in Kiev, that he would be very different from his predecessor, Mr. Poroshenko, but at the end of the day, it turned out that it was more of the same. He introduced new legislation on languages, which implies naturalization of the use of the Russian language in Ukraine; he banned a couple of important and influential opposition media; and he prosecution some of Russia-friendly politicians in his country, so the perception was that probably we cannot expect too much from him. Likewise, there was growing frustration with Paris and Berlin, in terms of their ability to use their leverage in Kiev to make the Ukrainian side implement the Minsk agreements. And an indicator of this was the publication of an exchange of letters between Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and his peers in Paris and in Berlin, a very unorthodox, unusual step for Russian diplomacy, which suggests that Russia cannot really count on Berlin and Paris as honest brokers in this context. So, I think ultimately, the decision was made that we should bring it to the attention to President Biden, because President Biden might be a tough negotiator, but he at least delivers on his commitments. And Biden has demonstrated that he is ready to continue a dialogue with Moscow. They had a meeting with President Putin in June of last year in Geneva, and I think that the decision was made that we should count on the United States more than on our European partners. This is how I see the situation on the Russian side. And of course, there are also concerns about what Putin called a “military cultivation” of the Ukrainian territory by the North Atlantic Alliance. Looking at the situation from Moscow, one can see that although Ukraine is not a member to the NATO alliance, but there is more and more military cooperation between Ukraine and countries like the United States, and Germany, and the United Kingdom, and Turkey, and that changes the equation in the east of Ukraine; and I think that the concerns in Moscow are that at some point, President Zelenskyy, or whoever is in charge in Kiev, might decide to go for a military solution of the Donbas problem, and this is definitely not something that Moscow would like to see. So in certain ways, the Russian policy in Ukraine is that of deterrence, to deny Kiev a military solution for the problem of the east. SCHLANGER: Now, you wrote that you don’t believe that President Putin intends to invade Ukraine: That it would be an enormous cost to Russia, and that, in fact, sending troops to the border which was within Russia, may be in all this increased tension, may be designed to send a signal to the West—you just mentioned France and Germany. But do you think the West is getting the signal? Annalena Baerbock, the German Foreign Minister, was just in Washington and she and Blinken were rattling their sabers, a little bit, again. Stoltenberg of NATO continues to make very strong statements. Do you think the signal is being recognized, or it’s reaching the people that need to understand what President Putin is insisting on? KORTUNOV: Well, I think that it really depends on how you define “recognition” of the signal: Because on the one hand, indeed, you’re absolutely right, we observe a lot of rather militant rhetoric coming from the West, and it is not limited to Washington and to Berlin only. We see some other Western countries, where they make very strong statements, denying Russian veto power over decisions that are made, or can be made within the NATO alliance. But on the other hand, you can also observe that there is a readiness, at least, to start talking to Moscow, and this is exactly what Mr. Putin apparently wants. His point is that if we do not generate a certain tension, you will not listen to us, you will not even hear us. So we are forced to make all these noises in order to get heard, if not listened to. So they are ready to meet. I am not too optimistic about potential breakthroughs that can be reached within these meetings, but the idea to meet and to discuss a band of issues is already something that President Putin can claim as his foreign policy accomplishment. SCHLANGER: Now, in the United States, the media are continuing to paint President Putin as an autocrat, Russia as authoritarian nation, and they’re sort of missing one of the broader points here, which is that we’re looking at something which could be described as a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis. And I just went through President Kennedy’s Oct. 22, 1962, where he made a point very parallel to what President Putin is saying, which is that no nation can tolerate offensive weapons that close to its border, as the Soviet weapons were to the U.S. in Cuba. Do you think this is something that is part of the consideration from the standpoint of President Putin and the Russian government? KORTUNOV: Well, I think that, again, you’re right, here. I think that definitely President Putin implies that there are certain rules of the game, maybe not codified rules of the game, that should be observed. And I think that when we’re talking about the U.S. position, there is a standard U.S. feeling of exclusiveness—we can do it because we are good guys, so we cannot harbor any evil intentions, so our missiles are fine. These are peacekeeping missiles, they cannot constitute any threat to Russia or to anyone else. But if you guys put your missiles in the vicinity of our borders, since you are bad guys, it means your missiles are also bad, and that they should be removed. Of course, the United States pursues this policy of double standards for a very long time, and I understand why the United States is doing that, but I think that such double standards can no longer work in our world. So, if we agree that there should be some constraints, and that security interests of major powers should be taken into consideration, then it should be applied universally. It should not be applied to the United States only, but it should be applied to Russia, to China, to some other countries as well. SCHLANGER: Now, you’ve spoken of your view that there needs to be a new security architecture, to replace the existing bloc structure which seems to be left over from the Cold War. Just a few days ago, the permanent five nations of the UN Security Council issued a statement, which I think was quite extraordinary, that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” which is an echo of the discussion between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev back in October 1986 in Reykjavik. Is this the kind of thing that can move toward a new security architecture, or recognition of something like this? And what kind of changes would you like to see, in order to create stability and ease the tensions? KORTUNOV: Well, I would say that this is an important first step, and the question is whether this step will have any continuation. Because it is relatively easy, though it is difficult in itself, but it is, in relative terms, it is easier to make a general statement, without making any specific commitments, than to go for something more practical. I guess that one of the problems we see in Europe, in particular, is that NATO has monopolized the security agenda in Europe, and that implies that if you are not within NATO, you have no stakes in the European security: You are not a stakeholder. And if you’re not a stakeholder, you are tempted to become a spoiler. And that is something that I see as a major problem. So, in my view, the key goal should be not to reverse the NATO enlargement, which is not possible, I think. But rather to deprive NATO of its monopoly position on European security matters. That might imply giving more power and more authority more inclusive European institutions, like the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), for example, which really needs some addition flesh on its bones. It has to be empowered, it has to become a real European multilateral organization that can take a part of the security agenda. There might be some other agreements, and some other arrangements that would diversify our security portfolio in Europe. But I think that definitely, any European system which excludes Russia by definition, is likely to be very—not very stable, let me put it in this way, and fragile, and it will have high maintenance costs. So, I think it’s better to have Russia in, rather than to have Russia out. SCHLANGER: Now, in an article you wrote recently, “A Non-Alarmist Forecast for 2022,” one of the things you talked about is finding areas of cooperation. And you say one of the most urgent of these is Afghanistan for obvious reasons: the refugee crisis, the potential for radicalization of people if the humanitarian crisis deepens—as it is; David Beasley of the World Food Program just said yesterday, almost 9 million Afghans are at the verge of starvation. [https://russiancouncil.ru/en/analytics-and-comments/analytics/a-non-alarmist-forecast-for-2022/] Do you see a potential, then, through the Extended Troika—China, Pakistan, Russia, United States—to do something? And as you know, Mrs. Helga Zepp-LaRouche of the Schiller Institute has called for an “Operation Ibn Sina” to use the healthcare situation as the basis for beginning, not just emergency aid, but building up a modern healthcare system in Afghanistan. Is this some area, where you could see some cooperation? KORTUNOV: Well, Afghanistan strikes me as one of a very few places in the world, where I see no major contradictions between the East and the West, between Russia and China on the one hand, and the United States and the European Union on the other. I think that everybody around Afghanistan, and also if we consider overseas powers, everybody is interested in seeing Afghanistan as a stable place, as a place which will not harbor international terrorism, as a place which will stop being a major drug producer and drug exporter to neighboring countries: So these interests are essentially the same. I would definitely call for an as broad international coalition to deal with Afghanistan as possible; and this coalition should involve not only neighboring countries—which are clearly very important—but also countries which have the stakes in Afghanistan. We can talk about the European Union which remains the largest assistance provider to Afghanistan, even today; we can talk about the United States with its residential influence in Afghanistan; we can talk about Pakistan, Turkey, Iran, and the Central Asian states. So I think the broader the coalition we have in dealing with Afghanistan the better it is, because it would mean that we have more leverage in dealing with the regime in Kabul and that also implies that we can agree on the red lines that this regime should not cross if it wants to maintain its international legitimacy. So I think Afghanistan can be regarded not only as a challenge, but also as an opportunity for a multilateral, international cooperation. We can talk about the Extended Troika. We can talk about the SCO [Shanghai Cooperation Organization] as a platform to discuss Afghanistan. We can talk about other formats, but formats are just tools in our hands. The key issue is to agree on what we expect from the Taliban, and what we can give the Taliban in exchange. SCHLANGER: Now, another area I want to take up with you is the Russia-China alliance. This is causing sleepless nights for a lot of the geopoliticians who see this as primarily a military alliance and it seems as though they’re ignoring the economic benefits of Eurasian integration, including potential benefits for the West. I wonder what your thoughts are on this? Is this going to continue the alliance, and is it more than just a reaction to the targetting of Moscow and Beijing by the Western war-hawks? KORTUNOV: I think that these days, everybody is pivoted to Asia, Asia is becoming an important driver of the global economic development, and you cannot ignore China, no matter where you sit—whether you sit in Moscow, or Brussels, or in Washington, you have to keep in mind what’s going on in Beijing. So the Russian-Chinese cooperation has its own logic: We have arguably the longest land border in the world, and definitely, there is a natural complementarity of the Russian and the Chinese economies. Trade is growing pretty fast: I think if you take last year, it was about $140 billion and there is a lot of potential there. There are also common interests: there are interests that the two countries share in terms of Eurasia, and we discussed Afghanistan; definitely this is where Russian and Chinese interests mostly coincide. We can talk about the situation in Northeast Asia, and again, here, there is a noble effort for Russian and Chinese interests. As far as the United States is concerned, I think definitely both countries are exposed to political and military and economic pressures from Washington. The Biden administration continues the policy of dual containment targetted as both Beijing and Moscow, and that is an additional factor that brings Russia and China closer to each other. But let me emphasize once again that the Russian-Chinese cooperation has its own dynamics, its own logic and this logic does not depend fully on the position of the United States though this position is important for politicians both in Russia and in China. SCHLANGER: I want to come back to the P5 statement on not fighting nuclear wars, because we’ve raised this before in discussion with you: President Putin in January of 2020 proposed a P5 summit, so that it’s broader than just the United States and Russia. Do you still see this as a venue that would be an appropriate one for taking up some of these broader issues? KORTUNOV: I think it would be important, at least, in order to reactivate the United Nations Security Council. Because unfortunately, we see on many important issues, the council cannot really deliver, because there are very clear disagreements between its permanent members and that prevents the council from taking a consolidated action. So I think if they discuss some of the regional issues at such a meeting; if they discuss issues like nonproliferation, or the fight against international terrorism, or let’s say, energy or food security, that would be helpful. Of course, the P5 cannot decide on every single international issue. They cannot resolve all the global problems without participation of other states, but you have to start somewhere, and maybe a P5 meeting, face to face hopefully, will be this important starting point. If it is successful, then we can complement it with other formats, for example, when we talk about the economic dimension we can do a lot within the G20 framework, and that should complement the efforts of the Security Council. Some issues can be discussed in the framework of bilateral U.S.-Russian negotiations, some of them will require multilateral discussions, in multilateral formats. So formats might be different. The question is whether they have the political will to pursue this agenda, whether they are ready to go beyond their conventional wisdom and think strategically. SCHLANGER: And on this question then of bilateral discussion, do you think there’s a prospect for progress on nuclear arms discussions in the year ahead? KORTUNOV: I think that if there is a will, there is a way, of course. But it will be an uphill battle for both sides, because it’s not clear what we could have after the New START agreement expires in about four years from now. The arms race is changing. It’s no longer about numbers, it’s no longer about warheads and delivery means. It’s about quantity, it’s about precision, it’s about prompt strike, it’s about autonomous lethal weapons, it’s about cyborgs, it’s about space, and we still have to find ways to counter these very dangerous, destabilizing trends in the nuclear arms race. On top of that, we have a very serious problem of how to multilateralize strategic arms control, because the lower we go—I mean “we,” the United States and Russian Federation—the lower we go, the more important nuclear capacities of a third country become, and we have to engage them in this way or another into the arms control of the future. So there are many issues here. I will say I’m probably pessimistic about the future of arms control, but it will require a lot of commitment, a lot of patience and a lot of stamina. SCHLANGER: Somewhat pressing right now, which is the situation in Kazakhstan: We were talking last night, given the upcoming meetings and the potential for a breakthrough, that maybe we should be watching for something coming out of the blue that could be a destabilizing influence. And there are elements of what’s happening in Kazakhstan which are coherent with what we’ve seen with color revolutions in the past, including Western intervention into the affairs of other countries. Do you have any reading on this? Any thoughts on that? KORTUNOV: Well, it’s hard to tell. It’s probably too early to jump to conclusions, because of course, there will be people in the West who would applaud the kind of developments in Kazakhstan. At the same time, for instance, if you look at large American oil and mining companies, they had a pretty good business in Kazakhstan, and they cannot be interested in a political destabilization there. So I’m not sure that the United States has been directly involved in staging a color revolution in Kazakhstan. But definitely, there are some external players, that might be interested in turmoil and mutiny in Kazakhstan. Having said that, I should underscore that there are some fundamental domestic roots of the problem: Definitely the leadership of the country was too slow to react to the social and economics demands of the population. They promised political reforms, but again, they dragged their feet on this issue, which triggered the events that we now observe. I can only hope that everybody will learn appropriate lessons. The state authorities should learn how important it is to keep an eye on the changing moods of society, and protesters should also learn that the borderline between peaceful protests and violent extremism might be murky. We now see that already hundreds of people, unfortunately, were killed in Kazakhstan. There were many cases of looting and vandalism, and definitely this is something that has to be stopped. SCHLANGER: Well, Andrey, thank you very much for your time and joining us today. KORTUNOV: Thank you. SCHLANGER: As these meetings take place and we see new developments, I’d like to be able to have an opportunity to speak with you again and see how these things are moving. KORTUNOV: My pleasure, thank you.

In reviewing events of the last days, Helga Zepp-LaRouche raised the question of whether the violent demonstrations that broke out yesterday in Kazakhstan were designed to disrupt the potential progress between the U.S. and Russia which could result from a series of upcoming diplomatic events. It's too early to tell if this is an organized "Color Revolution", she said, but should be investigated, as it is clear the riots in several cities were coordinated.She said she had been expecting a provocation to disrupt the meetings, which begin with a U.S.-Russian Strategic Stability dialogue meeting on January 10. With the announcement by the P5 of the U.N. Security Council that nuclear wars cannot be won, and must not be fought, there is a possibility for a breakthrough away from the geopolitical provocations and tension, which has been building. There are still obstacles to progress, typified by the Baerbock-Blinken talks, in which the German Foreign Minister proved again that she is a loud-speaker for NATO in provocations against Russia and China. It is also shameful that there is still no action to relieve the humanitarian debacle unfolding in Afghanistan. Our role with Operation Ibn Sina is essential to awaken people out of the moral indifference which characterizes the actions of all governments, which do not act for the Common Good.

Is it entirely a coincidence that the ongoing events in Kazakhstan, which shares the world’s longest land border with Russia, are occurring one one week before a series of strategic dialogues between Russia and the U.S., NATO, and other members of the OSCE?Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has responded to protests that became violent in a way that suggested organization, by changing the government, requesting and receiving security assistance from his Collective Security Treaty Organization partners, refusing to negotiate with violent bandits, and ordering his security forces to shoot perpetrators of violence without warning. He has thanked Russian President Vladimir Putin for his support, and received praise from China’s President Xi Jinping, whose country also borders Kazakhstan. The United States has, predictably, focused on warning that the “world” is watching for (or are the Anglo-Americans hoping for?) human rights violations. What are the origins of these protests? Who ran them? What went into preparing them? Plans for destabilizing Russia, published by the RAND corporation in 2019, included six geopolitical options. The first four—starting with providing weapons to Ukraine—have been implemented; the fifth calls for attacking Russian influence in Central Asia (where Kazakhstan is located). If this is an attempted replay of the 2014 Maidan protests in Ukraine, as seems more than possible, then we should look for that event’s British-American parentage. And that’s precisely where the investigation of a purported leader of the protests leads: to London. While additional inquiry is required to unwrap what is occurring in Kazakhstan, the world context is clear. Next week’s dialogues are an opportunity to make an abrupt about-face on priorities and paradigm, to drop the anti-Russia, anti-China, anti-growth (green), and slavishly pro-finance policies that are leading civilization to the brink of a catastrophe from which there were no return: nuclear war. Far better to look to the heavens, source of endless wonder and discovery. The James Webb Space Telescope, launched on Christmas, will be fully operational by this summer, sending images of galaxies from ten billions years ago, based on wavelengths our eyes can’t see. In this Year of Lyndon LaRouche, we must challenge ourselves to play a successful role in building a worthy, human civilization.

Join us LIVE on Saturday at 2pm EST. In the first week of the 2022 New Year, Tony Blair was officially declared a Knight of the Living Dead and U. S. Former Vice-President Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney was presented at the U. S. Capitol by his daughter as the new Arse-nal of Democracy. What Next for the New Year?As investigators probe the shady story of Tony Blair's long-standing connections in Kazakhstan, and Russia tries to avoid the multiple "bear traps" being set by a duplicitous NATO along its 14-nation border, the prospects for a successful world collaboration against the increasingly-consuming coronavirus pandemic or the breakout of thermonuclear war hang in the balance. A return to morality, by reversing the ongoing, premeditated starvation of millions in Afghanistan, is the prerequisite to building a durable peace through development, but with the likes of former de facto United States president Dick Cheney suddenly re-emerging from the bowels of Dante's Inferno as the "hero-defender of liberal democracy," from whence does America find the moral fitness to survive? Lyndon LaRouche believed that "the content of policy is the method by which it is made." A moral policy cannot come from an immoral method. Harley Schlanger and Mike Robinson will discuss and answer questions concerning the alternative policy methods for 2022.

Fearful that upcoming negotiations between the U.S. and Russia might lead to a de-escalation of the crisis in Ukraine, the City of London/Wall Street globalists are setting up a "bear trap" in Kazakhstan, in an effort to further demonize Putin and destabilize Eurasia. No shock here, to find George Soros and Tony Blair in the middle of things, another Color Revolution which, if successful, will benefit no one but the global oligarchy! The "democratic" self-proclaimed leader of the rioters is a former Energy Minister, a convicted embezzler whose party is coordinating the rampaging rioters from Kiev!

On this anniversary of the "Fedsurrection" at the Capitol, we pause to reflect on how the events of that day have been used as an excuse to pursue what are truly anti-democratic policies. As sickening as the posturing around Jan 6 is, the context is global. A strategic confrontation with Russia and China is intended to try to face down those independent nations as the trans-Atlantic financial system implodes. Will we survive? That depends on our ability to rapidly recruit to the perspective of Lyndon LaRouche. Jason Ross was our guest tonight.

With but a few days to go before the scheduled Jan. 10 talks between high level Russian and American diplomats on Russia’s demand for “immediate” written security guarantees from the U.S. and NATO, powerful circles in London and Washington who oppose moving back from the brink of thermonuclear war, have launched yet another provocation against Russia: the violent destabilization of Kazakhstan. Tony Blair, George Soros, and endless numbers of international NGOs are all over the operation.A “color revolution” in Kazakhstan has clear security implications for Russia. Kazakhstan has the longest border with Russia. It is the location of Russia’s principal space launch facility, the Baikonur Cosmodrome, a city that Russia today rents from Kazakhstan. It would appear that powerful circles in London and Washington are intent on provoking the Russian bear to respond with repressive violence in Kazakhstan, or to do the same in Eastern Ukraine, to then turn around and use this as a pre-packaged excuse to launch withering economic warfare against Russia. In a word, if they can get Russia to go for the “bear trap,” they will then give Russia the “Afghanistan treatment”—economic sanctions and warfare so severe as to starve the country into submission… or try to. In that sense, the impending Afghan genocide of more than 20 million people is also a precursor to World War III. Helga Zepp-LaRouche drew out the strategic significance of these developments, in her weekly webcast: “If you would have asked me a week ago, do you expect some effort to disturb the diplomatic offensive coming mainly from Russia and China to defuse what was building up, clearly, as a double ‘Cuban crisis’ with the development around Ukraine and Taiwan, I would have said, one should absolutely expect a provocation to disrupt these meetings, and here we are… “Now, let me first state the positive aspect: There was a certain breakthrough just a few days ago, on Monday, that for the first time the P5 UN nations, that is, the permanent five nuclear weapons states agreed on reaffirming the very important statement which was negotiated between Gorbachev and President Reagan in Reykjavik in October 1986, that a nuclear war can never be won and therefore must never be fought.” That is positive, Zepp-LaRouche said, but now "the words must be followed by deeds. And that statement as such, while it is extremely important, does not yet defuse the crisis around Ukraine, nor the crisis around Taiwan, but, as I said, it’s a very important first step…. “But we need a hundred percent turnaround, because this confrontation against Russia and China is suicidal…I think we need a complete reversal in priorities, and the population has to wake up, that their indifference, your indifference—some of you—against Afghanistan is what allows these rotten policies to go on in our own countries. And we have to have a mobilization for a new paradigm, both within our own countries and also in relations among nations, because these are expressions of the same problem in the system.”

Today a 30-second video was issued by David Beasley, Executive Director of the World Food Program (WFP) on Afghanistan, showing both hungry children, and also food delivery, with the text: “The situation in Afghanistan may have faded from the front page, but don’t let Afghan families fade from your mind. 8.7 million people are on the brink of starvation. Read that again: 8.7 million people are on the brink of starvation. What we do today has the power to change the fate of more than 23 million people. Act now.” Beasley’s immediate message, tweeted with the video, is for WFP donations. He wrote, “The Year 2021 has been a catastrophic year for the people of Afghanistan. Millions of Afghans are counting on WFP for life-saving food this winter. Help us help them.”However, Beasley’s imperative about keeping in our minds what is important about Afghanistan—the value of human life—is what applies across the board to the crises we now face. Think it through. We are capable of mobilizing the physical resources and logistics to stop mass death in Afghanistan. It takes concerted action. The Schiller Institute will host another conference in mid-January (date to be determined soon) on action in Afghanistan. Look at the pandemic in the same way. The same principle applies. In China, concerted action has kept the COVID-19 case rate and death toll very low, with massive testing and contact tracing, as well as localized lockdowns. In contrast, the pandemic virus is now surging in multiple locations elsewhere in Asia, in the trans-Atlantic, the Americas and Africa. On Jan. 4, the daily case count was 2.594 million cases officially reported worldwide (a big undercount), of which 35%, 885,500 cases, were in the United States alone. The Schiller Institute/Committee for the Coincidence of Opposites is preparing an emergency statement of action points required to save lives, and roll back the virus. The outline and principle are the same as in prior statements, but with measures specific to the unfolding events. (Prior statements: “LaRouche’s ‘Apollo Mission’ To Defeat the Global Pandemic: Build a World Health System Now,” April 11, 2020; ’Global Health Security Requires Medical Infrastructure in Every Country—Major Industrial Nations Must Collaborate Now!" May 14, 2021, submitted to the Global Health Summit in Rome; “Open Letter to Virologists and Medical Experts Around the World To Address the COVID-19 Pandemic,” by former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders, Nov. 23, 2021; and others.) There are initiatives in the needed direction. Yesterday, for example, the importance of rapidly expanding medical staff, by calling back into action retirees, was stressed by Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, when he declared an official state of emergency. There are many measures that are clearly bipartisan and nonpartisan, overriding the non-stop partisan shouting going on in the U.S. For example, use the Defense Production Act, as was done under Trump, to get all needed items, from material for construction of hospitals and medical materials, to COVID-19 therapeutics in quantity. Ramp up production of antiviral medications and all kinds of monoclonal antibodies, currently scarce. Mobilizing for emergency action and a world health platform, with a focus on Afghanistan, are entirely consistent with the drive to stop the nuclear war danger. The meetings set for next week, on the initiative of Russia, are critical for that: Jan. 10 in Geneva, between the U.S. and Russia; Jan. 12 in Brussels, between NATO and Russia; and Jan. 13 in Vienna, with Russia and the OSCE. But there are countermoves underway. Today German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock met in Washington, D.C. with Secretary of State Tony Blinken, giving a joint press conference afterward, to snidely play up threats against Russia over Ukraine, and play down any validity to Russia’s concerns over its security. Also today, the EU Foreign Affairs Representative Josep Borrell was in Ukraine, visiting the perimeter of Luhansk, alongside Ukraine Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba, to make accusations against Russia. On Friday, Jan. 7, there will be a special online NATO meeting of foreign ministers of its 30 member countries, in advance of the NATO-Russia meeting next Wednesday, Jan. 12. Circulate everywhere the new Schiller Institute Memorandum, “Are We Sleepwalking into Thermonuclear World War III?”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche raised the question today as to whether the rioters rampaging through the streets of cities in Kazakhstan are being deployed on behalf of a Color Revolution designed to derail the upcoming talks between officials of the U.S. and NATO with their Russian counterparts. She said she had been expecting something like this -- we don't know yet if it is, but we will investigate. A leading Russian analyst said he's hopeful that some positive changes may result from the upcoming meetings, pointing out that engaging in a dialogue is in itself some progress, especially after the hostile rhetoric of the recent years. He said the statement of the P5 members of the U.N. Security Council that "nuclear wars cannot be won, and should not be fought," is a "good first step", but must be followed by specific commitments -- such as cooperation in rebuilding Afghanistan.

There are many lies being spread by financial talking heads in the media about what is behind the inflation that is eating up your paycheck and savings. What is not being discussed is how the flow of an unprecedented volume of trillions of dollars to the biggest banks, to cover their speculative losses, is the actual driver of hyperinflation. This is a scandal! As Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase and Citigroup are rolling over tens of billions in overnight loans from the NY Fed -- of which they are the majority shareholders -- there has been a cut-off of credit to firms engaged in physical economic activity. This began before COVID and Green New Deal legislation. It must be ended by re-enacting Glass Steagall banking separation.

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern has insisted that only a metanoia—a 180- degree spiritual “bootlegger’s turn” away from a self-defeating, self-destructive indifference to promoting the General Welfare of people all over the world—can preserve any nation, including the declining United States. In times of pandemic, this should be clear. This could be done, for example, in consultation with the CIS nations addressed last week by Vladimir Putin, by re-directing the world’s military capabilities to the task of saving millions now threatened with death by famine and by infectious, possibly species-threatening diseases. We could ensure a moral upshift in international relations through establishing a world health platform that reverses the medical apartheid of the past two years (and more) and establishes a world “public sanitation” policy as recently discussed by Russian head of the Federal Service for Supervision of Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare, effectively Chief Sanitary Physician, Anna Popova, and as continually discussed by Dr. Jocelyn Elders and Helga Zepp-LaRouche. The stakes are higher than at any time in human history.Now that spokesmen from Russia and China have described their respective roles in securing the recent P-5 re-statement of the 1986 “Reagan/Gorbachev Resolution” that “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought (see slugs), what can be done to cause the United States and the trans-Atlantic world to honor that premise? We know, that refuting the presently publicly stated”confront Russia" outlook on Ukraine, as espoused by the Atlantic Council and others, requires an affirmative response to the Russian proposal that the decades-earlier broken promises of NATO and the United States, concerning “no NATO expansion eastward,” now be guaranteed in writing. Given the undeniable record of the United States and Europe in not only breaking their strategic promises, but also “restructuring”—i.e. looting and depopulating—Russia for several years in the 1990s through predatory financial “shock therapy,” that doesn’t seem a lot to ask. We can be sure that the true gravity of the present circumstance has been registered in several, even many, national capitals. It may even begin to episodically puncture the media curtain now drawn around the truth; but if so, that will largely be our own doing, in collaboration with institutions that aid that effort. At home, however, the “Prompt Global Strike” and related “Beyond MAD” digital knuckledraggers of the “Silicon(e) Valley Department of Defense” have, at best, an outdated, post-imperial, Bertrand Russell-like view of “how to handle Russia and China.” In this era of political correctness, they wouldn’t dare say it this way, but in a 1952 interview, on or about his 80th birthday, which can be viewed on YouTube, Bertrand Russel opined," It’s very difficult for anybody born since 1914, to realize how profoundly different the world is now from what it was when I was a child…. A world where ancient empires vanish like morning mist… We have to accustom ourselves to Asiatic-self assertion…It is an extraordinarily difficult thing for an old man to live in such a world." Answering the question as to what part “Asia” would play in the near future, Russell said, “Well, Asia… is not prepared any longer to be subservient to the white man. It hasn’t noticed that Russians are white. If it had, it would take a different line. But it seems to think that Russians are yellow, or black, or some other color. And I think our propaganda ought to be mainly devoted only to saying, Russians also are white. I believe that would be the effective propaganda to use in Asia… if Asia does not overwhelm the rest of the world with a vast flood of population and poverty, Asia must live up to its responsibilities. It must learn the sort of things that we have learned in the West, which is how to maintain a roughly stationary [level] of population…” The Malthusian premise luridly on display then, wears the modest garb of “climate change” today, but it still has Bertrand Russell’s face. Hence, the surprise, panic, and shock now being expressed among “policy-making circles” that have awakened to realize that the China-Russia alliance is real. Yet, out of their depraved indifference to American history, Illiterates are referring to this as “the greatest challenge ever to American power.” They would be horrified to realize that it is precisely this China-Russia alliance, together with the United States, that Abraham Lincoln, Czar Alexander I, Dimitri Medelyev, Ansom Burlingame, Wharton Barker, and the Self-Strengthening Movement of China worked to create in the Nineteenth Century, expressed in the Trans-Continental, Trans-Siberian, and Sun Yat-Sen China national railway designs. It is neither “communist,” nor “capitalist.” It is the transformed physical economy, first called the American System, later transferred to Europe and the world by the German-American economist Friedrich List, and then recently completely revolutionized by Lyndon LaRouche and his discoveries, that is, as of now, more studied, appreciated, and understood in Russia, China, and some other countries than in the United States itself. LaRouche is the only American statesman in the last half-century to offer an advanced conception of American strategic policy, one diametrically opposed to British Liberal-Imperialist Bertrand Russell and his intellectual tradition. Perhaps, in this year of LaRouche’s centenary, several nations and institutions will see fit to discuss this “best kept secret.” LaRouche proceeded in his strategic policy designs from the vantage point of physical economy, as invented by the 26-year-old genius Gottfried Leibniz in his essay “Society and Economy.” Through a series of books and lectures, as well as through his eight United States Presidential campaigns, LaRouche insisted that strategy, as well as political action, must proceed from a philosophical method of a particular type. LaRouche identified that method with the person of Socrates, and the politically-suppressed writings of Socrates’ student Plato and Plato’s School of Athens. In his introduction to the LaRouche organization’s polemically authentic translation of Plato’s Timaeus dialogue, “Plato and the New Political Science,” LaRouche wrote: “Contrary to the myth of Plato the merely contemplative speculator, Plato was the leader of the most active and far-flung political intelligence operations organization of the city-builders faction of the fourth century BC…. Platonic ideas, properly so termed, take as their subject the characteristic features of the mental processes by which hypotheses concerning empirical scientific knowledge are formed. It is therefore such Platonic ideas which rightly appear very modern to informed readers today…. It is only by methods of composition which force the reader’s attention away from primary emphasis on prosaic facts of the ephemeral here and now that the reader’s attention is directed to the relatively transfinite, subsuming successive transformations of knowledge in the ephemeral here and now. We, today, must pursue the same method if we are to arrive, at last, at abstraction of sets of principles which account for the ordered course of the history of civilization in the past, and into the future. “Here is the practical importance of historiography to every citizen, whether a public official or an individual man or woman lacking any conspicuous status in public affairs. What we do—or fail to do—in the present, in our here and now, determines how we and others shall live in our own personal future and in the future of our posterity.” Bertrand Russell’s view of Plato was… somewhat different. “For a time I found a certain satisfaction in the Platonic eternal world of ideas, which has a sort of religious flavor. It gave me a certain satisfaction. But then I came to the conclusion that that was nonsense. And then I was left without any satisfaction with it… And remain so….” This “higher manifold” of intelligence warfare is the real domain of the ongoing strategic discussions of today. The disadvantage for Americans is that Bertrand Russell’s “liberal imperialist” outlook is more popular in the State Department and other institutions than is that of Lyndon LaRouche. As a consequence, until the seminal role of Lyndon LaRouche is at least acknowledged in terms of his role in the strategic dialogue with Russia and China over the past 40 years, even on matters of basic historiography, let alone grand strategy, America is doomed, when it comes to matters of grand strategy, to repeat the same self-defeating mistakes over and over, starting with the axiom that “Great Britain/Iago is America’s/Othello’s closest ally.” It is our job to induce a metanoia, a moral “bootlegger’s turn,” including through the evolving pandemic, and the crime against humanity unfolding in Afghanistan, to give the trans-Atlantic world back the moral fitness to survive.

The Permanent 5 members of the UN Security Council announced their agreement that "Nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought", in a statement issued on January 2. To realize this ideal, the practice of geopolitics, which underlies today's obsession with the "Rules-Based Order", and justifies the use of threats and military force to protect it, must be definitively rejected. The alternative to geopolitics is the adoption of the strategic, economic and cultural approach developed by Lyndon LaRouche, which is why Helga Zepp-LaRouche has called for 2022 to be the "Year of LaRouche."

As the year 2022 opened marking economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche’s 100th birthday, the heads of state and government of the five nuclear weapons states, which are also the permanent members of the UN Security Council, consulted as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has insisted they must do, and issued a declaration, for the first time, that “nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought” (see the Declaration in Documentation). The words were used by Presidents Biden and Putin following their Dec. 7, 2021 video conference; and this declaration will now sit over the U.S.-Russian-NATO negotiations on the Ukraine crisis Jan. 10-13.But the fundamental reason for optimism here is not so much the words of this declaration as that the five powers’ leaders acted together against global war. Helga Zepp-LaRouche had publicly called on them to do exactly two years ago—Jan. 3, 2020, in the dangerous period after the assassination of the Iranian General Qassem Soleimani—and has urged it on them many times since. On Jan. 15, 2020, two weeks after Helga LaRouche’s first call, Russian President Putin called for a P5 heads-of-state summit to deal with problems of peace, security, and terrorism—and he, too, has repeated that proposal several times since; and his spokesman emphasized today that it is still necessary after this “nuclear war never” declaration. Already by early March 2020, Helga LaRouche had identified the COVID pandemic—demanding a modern healthcare system be built in every country—as the new requirement for such a major-power summit. This must be done on an emergency basis in Afghanistan, along with food aid and power supply guarantees to save millions of lives. It is the start of, through physical-economic development, the real name for peace; and it points to a new international credit system like FDR’s Bretton Woods, in place of the crash-prone casino we have now. These are the missions uniquely reachable through what Lyndon LaRouche called “the four-power agreement” of America, Russia, China and India. That makes today’s “P5” declaration significant beyond its words. The declaration was posted simultaneously at roughly 11:00 a.m. U.S. Eastern Time on all five Presidents’/Prime Ministers’ websites. “We affirm that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” the statement says. “As nuclear use would have far-reaching consequences, we also affirm that nuclear weapons—for as long as they continue to exist—should serve defensive purposes, deter aggression, and prevent war. We believe strongly that the further spread of such weapons must be prevented.” This rebukes those mad war-hawks like Sen. Roger Wicker who have been raising the “option” of a nuclear first strike on Russia over Ukraine. The five signers also reaffirm the importance of addressing nuclear threats, as well as their commitments to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its obligation “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date.” They “reaffirm that none of our nuclear weapons are targeted at each other or at any other State.” They also declared: “We intend to continue seeking bilateral and multilateral diplomatic approaches to avoid military confrontations, strengthen stability and predictability, increase mutual understanding and confidence, and prevent an arms race that would benefit none and endanger all. We are resolved to pursue constructive dialogue with mutual respect and acknowledgment of each other’s security interests and concerns.” Russia’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said, “We hope that, in the current difficult conditions of international security, the approval of such a political statement will help reduce the level of international tensions.” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov emphasized that Moscow still considered a summit between the world’s major nuclear powers to be “necessary.” China’s Vice Foreign Minister Ma Zhaoxu was quoted by the official Xinhua that the pledge “will help increase mutual trust and replace competition among major powers with coordination and cooperation.” But it is only a step that these nations’ leaders must be kept to. The trans-Atlantic banking and financial system is headed for hyperinflation and crash. What the world absolutely needs is a major-power negotiation process which involves at least India as well, to launch a new international credit system capable of funding real economic development, “TVA-like” thorough development of poorer regions, advanced nuclear power development, technological progress led by space science and fusion power crash programs. The guide and planner of this process, and the world’s leading fighter for it, was Lyndon LaRouche. This begins LaRouche’s year.

Schiller Institute MemorandumDecember 31, 2021 You are being lied to. Russia is not planning to invade Ukraine. Putin is not a “bad actor” out to recreate the Soviet Empire. Ukraine is not a fledgling democracy just minding its own business. As a summary review of the documented record shows, Ukraine is being used by geopolitical forces in the West that answer to the bankrupt speculative financial system, as the flashpoint to trigger a strategic showdown with Russia, a showdown which is already more dangerous than the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, and which could easily end up in a thermonuclear war which no one would win, and none would survive.Consider the facts as we present them in the abbreviated timeline below. Russia, like China, has been increasingly subjected to the threat of being destroyed by two distinct kinds of “nuclear war” by the bellicose and bankrupt UK-U.S. financial Establishment: (1) “first-use nuclear action,” as stated most explicitly by the demented Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS); and (2) the “nuclear option” in financial warfare—measures so extreme that they would be laying financial siege to Russia to try to starve it into submission, as is being done against Afghanistan. Russia has now announced, for the whole world to hear, that its red line is about to be crossed, after which it will be forced to respond with “retaliatory military-technical measures.” That red line, it has made clear, is the further advance of U.S. and NATO military forces up to the very border with Russia, including the positioning of defensive and offensive nuclear-capable missile systems to within a scarce five minutes’ flight time to Moscow. Russia has presented two draft documents—one, a treaty with the United States, the other, an agreement with NATO—which together would provide legally binding security guarantees that NATO’s eastward march will stop, that Ukraine and Georgia in particular will not be invited to join NATO, and that advanced weapons systems will not be placed at Russia’s doorstep. These are neither more nor less than the verbal guarantees the Soviet Union was given in 1990 by the duplicitous Bush and Thatcher governments, guarantees that have been systematically violated ever since. They are neither more nor less than what President John F. Kennedy demanded of Chairman Nikita Khrushchev during the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, which was successfully defused by the deft back-channel negotiations of JFK’s personal envoy, his brother and Attorney General, Robert Kennedy, out of sight of the pro-war military-industrial complex. It is urgently necessary that the United States and NATO promptly sign those proposed documents with Russia—and step back from the edge of thermonuclear extinction. What we chronicle below has been happening, step by step, while most Americans have been asleep at the switch. It is time to wake up, before we sleepwalk into thermonuclear World War III. The Military Component The collapse of the socialist states of Eastern Europe and then the Soviet Union in 1989-91 was a moment of great hope, for an end of the Cold War and the potential for the parties of the Cold War to cooperate in building a new world order based on peace through development. That moment was lost when the Anglo-American elite chose instead to declare itself “the only superpower” in a unipolar world, looting Russia and the former Soviet states, while seeking to either take Russia over, or to crush it. Promises were made to the Soviet Union—and thus to Russia as its recognized legal successor as a nuclear-weapons power—at the outset of this period, all of which have been broken over the past thirty years. Already in February of 1990 in Moscow, then Secretary of State James Baker promised Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachov and Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze that, in the wake of German reunification which came about later that year, if U.S. troops remained in Germany there would be no expansion of NATO “one inch to the East.” (This was confirmed in official U.S. files released in 2017.) At that time, Soviet force structure in East Germany consisted of around 340,000 troops and extensive military infrastructure, weapons, and equipment. The terms of their withdrawal (eventually completed in 1994) and whether or not, under German reunification, NATO forces would replace them in that formerly Soviet-occupied section of Germany, were on the table. Other Eastern European countries, located to the east of East Germany, were still members of the Warsaw Treaty Organization (Warsaw Pact), whose dissolution was not then anticipated; that dissolution happened in July 1991, the month before the Soviet Union itself broke up. But the U.S. Department of Defense was plotting the expansion of NATO eastwards already by October of 1990. Although there were different policies being debated within the U.S. political leadership, planning for expansion was proceeding behind the scenes. On the surface, Russian relations with the trans-Atlantic powers remained non-adversarial for most of the 1990s. In the economic sphere, however, the “takeover” proceeded apace, with the adoption of London- and Wall Street-engineered economic reforms that resulted in the large-scale deindustrialization of Russia, and could have led to the annihilation of its military might. There was some planned dismantling of nuclear weapons in both East and West, with U.S. specialists providing on-site assistance in the transfer of nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Belarus and other now independent ex-Soviet areas back to Russia, as well as in the disposal of some of Russia’s own weapons. On May 27, 1997, the NATO-Russia Founding Act1 was signed, establishing the NATO-Russia Council and other consultation mechanisms. Among other things, the document declared that “NATO and Russia do not consider each other as adversaries.” (Sec. 2, Para. 2) NATO described the document as “the expression of an enduring commitment, undertaken at the highest political level, to build, together, a lasting and inclusive peace in the Euro-Atlantic area.” (Sec. 2, Para. 2) Nonetheless, a shift began to occur in the late 1990s, driven by several events. One was that the imported economic reforms, promoting enormous financial speculation and the looting of Russian resources, led to a blow-out in August 1998 of the Russian government bond market (nearly triggering a meltdown of the global financial system because of bad bets placed on Russian securities by Wall Street and other hedge funds, as ex-Director of the International Monetary Fund Michel Camdessus later acknowledged). In the wake of that collapse, Russia’s London- and Chicago-trained liberal “young reformers” were replaced by a government under the leadership of former Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov and military-industrial planner Yuri Maslyukov, who acted swiftly to stem the collapse of the remainder of Russia’s industry. A second factor in Russia’s troubles at that time was the escalation of terrorist separatist movements in Russia’s North Caucasus region, which Russian intelligence services had solidly identified as being backed and egged on not only by Wahhabite Islamic fundamentalists from Saudi Arabia, but also by U.S. and UK intelligence agencies directly. In summer 1999, these networks attempted to split the entire North Caucasus out of Russia. Also in the late 1990s, NATO boosted its involvement in the Bosnian War and other Balkan Peninsula conflicts among the former components of Yugoslavia, which had broken up. This meddling peaked with NATO’s bombing of Belgrade, the capital of Serbia, in March-June 1999 without authorization of the United Nations Security Council. This action shocked Moscow with the realization that NATO was prepared to act unilaterally, as it wished, without international consensus. In July 1997, at a NATO Summit in Madrid, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic were invited to join NATO, which they formally did in 1999. This was the first of five rounds of NATO expansion. In 2004, all three Baltic countries (formerly republics within the Soviet Union proper), and Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia were admitted. Four more Balkan countries joined in the years following, bringing NATO’s membership up to its current level of 30 countries. Vladimir Putin, in his Dec. 21, 2021 address to an expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry Board, expressed Moscow’s view of the importance of the NATO-Russia Founding Act and its subsequent betrayal by NATO: Take the recent past, in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when we were told that our concerns about NATO’s potential expansion eastwards were absolutely groundless. And then we saw five waves of the bloc’s eastward expansion. Do you remember how it happened? All of you are adults. It happened at a time when Russia’s relations with the United States and main member states of NATO were cloudless, if not completely allied. I have already said this in public and will remind you of this again: American specialists were permanently present at the nuclear arms facilities of the Russian Federation. They went to their office there every day, had desks and an American flag. Wasn’t this enough? What else is required? U.S. advisors worked in the Russian government—career CIA officers, [who] gave their advice. What else did they want? What was the point of supporting separatism in the North Caucasus, with the help of even ISIS—well, if not ISIS, there were other terrorist groups. They obviously supported terrorists. What for? What was the point of expanding NATO and withdrawing from the ABM Treaty? As Putin noted, the United States, under the George W. Bush Administration, began to dismantle the system of strategic arms control assembled during the Cold War, beginning in 2002 with the U.S. withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, just a few months after Putin had extended an offer of strategic cooperation with the United States following the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. administration quickly began planning for a global ballistic missile defense system (BMDS) in Europe and Asia, which in Europe led to the first sailing of an American guided missile destroyer equipped with the Aegis anti-missile missiles (the USS Arleigh Burke) into the Black Sea in the spring of 2012. In 2016 would come the inauguration of an “Aegis Ashore” installation—the same system, but land-based—in Romania, and the start of construction of a similar site in Poland. At a conference in Moscow in May of 2012, then Deputy Chief of the Russian General Staff Gen. Valery Gerasimov provided extensive documentation, with video animations, of the fact that the BMDS was not aimed primarily at Iran, but did, in its intended later phases, represent a threat to Russia’s strategic deterrent. Putin and other Russian officials have also emphasized the possibility of the defensive (anti-missile) systems being quickly reconfigured as missile launchers for direct attack. An increasingly sharper Russian response to the U.S./NATO pursuit of these programs and to the rejection of Russia’s offers of cooperation was also evident in the contrast between two speeches President Putin gave in Germany: before the Bundestag (Parliament) on September 25, 2001, and at the Munich Security Conference in 2007. Putin spoke to the Bundestag, in German, just two weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attack on the U.S. in 2001. He had called President Bush within hours of that attack—he was the first foreign leader to call—offering full Russian support for the U.S. in the moment of crisis. He told the Germans: “The Cold War is over,” and posed a vision of global collaboration in building a new paradigm based on collaboration of the nations of the world. Then on February 10, 2007, Putin delivered a landmark speech at the annual Munich Security Conference. The Western media and some people who were present, including the war-monger U.S. Senator John McCain, denounced it as belligerent, and it became a point of departure for the subsequent demonization of Putin. But it was not an aggressive speech. Putin simply made clear that Russia was not going to be trampled underfoot, as a subjugated nation in a unipolar imperial world. Almost all international media ignored how he opened the speech, with a carefully chosen quotation from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Fireside Chat of September 3,1939, two days after the Nazi invasion of Poland that had marked the outbreak of World War II. FDR said, and Putin quoted, “When peace has been broken anywhere, the peace of all countries everywhere is in danger.” This speech was the signal that, speaking in strategic terms, Russia was “back.” In July 2007, Putin attempted to avert the crossing of a line that Moscow defined as a fundamental threat to Russian security, namely the installation of the American BMDS directly at Russia’s borders. Visiting President George W. Bush in Kennebunkport, Maine, he proposed joint Russian-American development and deployment of anti-missile systems, including an offer to the U.S. administration to use the Russian early-warning radar in Gabala, Azerbaijan as part of a mutual Russian-American missile defense system for Europe, instead of the American BMDS planned for installation in Poland and the Czech Republic (the latter was changed to Romania). Putin also offered to give the U.S. access to a radar facility in southern Russia, and to place coordination of the process with the NATO-Russia Council. Sergei Ivanov, then a deputy prime minister, said that the Russian proposals signified a fundamental change in international relations, and could mean an end to talk about a new Cold War: If our proposals are accepted, Russia will no longer need to place new weapons, including missiles, in the European part of the country, including Kaliningrad. Negotiations between Russian and American officials over the Russian proposal were conducted throughout 2008, before petering out. Key to their failure was the vehemence of Washington’s refusal to abandon construction of the BMDS. In the words of then Acting Assistant Secretary of State for Political Military Affairs Stephen Mull: What we do not accept is that Gabala is a substitute for the plans that we’re already pursuing with our Czech and Polish allies. We believe that those installations are necessary for the security of our interests in Europe. Clearly, the target was not Iran, but Russia, and the opportunity for a new paradigm was lost. At the April 2008 NATO summit in Bucharest, Georgia and Ukraine were promised future NATO membership, although they were not offered formal Membership Action Plans (MAP). Their bids, nonetheless, were welcomed by many and they were left with hopes of MAPs in the future, maybe the near future—enough so that the Georgians declared: The decision to accept that we are going forward to an adhesion to NATO was taken and we consider this is a historic success. In August 2008, while President Dmitri Medvedev was on vacation and then Prime Minister Putin was at the opening of the Olympic Games in Beijing, Mikheil Saakashvili’s Georgia attacked Russian peacekeepers in the breakaway Georgian province of South Ossetia, leading to a short but ferocious war, which Georgia lost. The fact that Saakashvili acted on the assumption he would have full NATO backing, although it proved wrong in the event, was not lost on Moscow and has influenced subsequent Russian thinking about what would happen with Georgia or Ukraine becoming full NATO members. Ukraine In December 2008, in the wake of Georgia’s military showdown with Russia, Carl Bildt and Radek Sikorski, the foreign ministers of Sweden and Poland, respectively, initiated the European Union’s “Eastern Partnership.” It targeted six countries that were formerly republics within the Soviet Union: three in the Caucasus region (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia) and three in East Central Europe (Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine). They were not to be invited to full EU membership, but were nevertheless drawn into a vise through so-called EU Association Agreements (EUAA), each one centered on a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA). The prime target of the effort was Ukraine. Under the EUAA negotiated with Ukraine, but not immediately signed, the country’s industrial economy would be dismantled, trade with Russia savaged (with Russia ending its free-trade regime with Ukraine to prevent its own markets from being flooded via Ukraine), and EU-based market players would grab Ukraine’s agricultural and raw materials exports. Furthermore, the EUAA mandated “convergence” on security issues, with integration into European defense systems. Under such an arrangement, the long-term treaty agreements on the Russian Navy’s use of its crucial Black Sea ports on the Crimean Peninsula—a Russian area since the 18th Century, but administratively assigned to Ukraine within the USSR in the early 1950s—would be terminated, ultimately giving NATO forward-basing on Russia’s immediate border. Turning Ukraine against Russia had been a long-term goal of Cold War Anglo-American strategic planners, as it was earlier of Austro-Hungarian imperial intelligence agencies during World War I. After World War II, up until the mid-1950s, the U.S.A. and UK supported an insurgency against the Soviet Union, a civil war that continued on the ground long after peace had been signed in 1945. The insurgents were from the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) and remnants of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA). The OUN had been founded in 1929 from a template similar to that which produced the Italian and other European fascist movements. Its leader, Stepan Bandera, was an on-again/off-again ally of the Nazis, and the OUN-UPA, under an ethnic-purist ideology, committed mass slaughter of ethnic Poles and Jews in western Ukraine towards the end of World War II. In Europe after the War, Bandera was sponsored by British MI6 (intelligence), while CIA founder Allen Dulles shepherded Gen. Mykola Lebed, another OUN leader, into the U.S.A., despite strong opposition from U.S. Army Intelligence, based on Lebed’s record of collaboration with the Nazis and war crimes. Next-generation followers of Lebed, whose base of operations—the Prolog Research Corporation in New York City—was funded by Dulles’s CIA for intelligence-gathering and the distribution of nationalist and other literature inside the U.S.S.R., staffed the U.S. Radio Liberty facility in Munich, Germany for broadcasting into Ukraine, up into the 1980s.2 When the U.S.S.R. broke up in August 1991, key Banderite leaders dashed into Lviv, far western Ukraine—a mere 1,240 km from Munich, 12 hours by car—and began to rebuild their movement. Lviv Region, which for many years had been part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, not the Russian, was the stronghold of the OUN’s heirs. The Banderites’ influence got a boost after the 2004 Orange Revolution in Kiev. Backed by the U.S. National Endowment for Democracy and the private foundations of financier George Soros, this was a so-called “color revolution,” which overturned the results of a Presidential election and, in a second vote, installed banker Victor Yushchenko as President. He was voted out in 2010 because of popular opposition to his brutal austerity policies (generated by IMF-dictated formulae for privatization and deregulation), but not before overseeing a revision of the official history of Ukraine’s relations with Russia in favor of a radical, anti-Russian nationalism (whereas, historically, there had been a strong tendency among Ukrainian patriots and advocates of independence to prefer a long-term alliance with Russia). The Lviv-based Banderites, meanwhile, recruited and strengthened their movement, and held paramilitary summer camps for young people in the Ukrainian countryside and elsewhere in Eastern Europe. At times, the instructors included off-duty military officers from NATO countries. In 2008, Yushchenko first applied for NATO to grant Ukraine a Membership Action Plan. The turning point for Ukraine’s status as a potential trigger in the current war danger came in 2014. Ongoing efforts to get Ukraine to finalize its EUAA were rejected as untenable by the Viktor Yanukovych government in November 2013, when it became clear that free-trade provisions giving European goods unlimited access to the Russian market through Ukraine would bring retaliatory measures by Ukraine’s biggest trade partner, Russia, to counter this assault on Russia’s own producers, and thus would backfire against the Ukrainian economy. When Yanukovych on November 21 announced postponement of the EU deal, long-laid Banderite plans to turn Ukraine into a tool for isolating and demonizing Russia were activated. Protesters against Yanukovych’s EUAA postponement decision immediately began to assemble in Kiev’s Maidan (central square). Large numbers of ordinary people turned out, waving EU flags, because of the destruction of the Ukrainian economy under “shock” deregulation in the 1990s and the IMF-dictated policies of privatization and austerity throughout the Orange Revolution years. Many had desperately believed, as Ukrainian economist Natalia Vitrenko once put it, that the EUAA would bring them “wages like in Germany and benefits packages like in France.” A disproportionately high number of the demonstrators hailed from far western Ukraine, and pre-planned violence by the Banderite paramilitary group Right Sector was then used for systematic escalation of the Maidan. Bloodshed and victims, all blamed on the regime, were then used to keep Maidan fervor and outrage going through to February 2014.3 Neo-Nazi and other fascist symbols defaced building walls and placards in the Maidan, but they did not deter public U.S. support of this process. Sen. John McCain addressed the mob in December 2013, while Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland passed out cupcakes and negotiated with the U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Geoffrey Pyatt regarding whom to place in office once Yanukovych was ousted. A Nuland-Pyatt phone discussion of this was caught on tape and circulated worldwide. On February 18, 2014, Maidan leaders announced a “peaceful march” on the Supreme Rada (parliament), which turned into an attack and touched off three days of street fighting. Peaking on February 20—a day of sniper fire from high buildings that killed both demonstrators and police—these clashes killed more than 100. Scrupulous research by Ukraine-born Prof. Ivan Katchanovski at the University of Ottawa, using video recordings and other direct evidence of these events, has convincingly shown that the majority of the sniper fire came from the Maidan’s paramilitary positions, not the government’s Berkut special police forces.4 On February 21, 2014, a trio of Maidan leaders, including Arseniy Yatsenyuk, the man hand-picked by Nuland to be Ukraine’s next prime minister, signed an agreement with President Yanukovych, committing both sides to a peaceful transition of power: constitutional reform by September, presidential elections late in the year, and the turning in of weapons. The foreign ministers of France, Germany and Russia helped negotiate it, with a representative from Moscow as an observer. When this document was taken to the Maidan, a young Banderite militant seized the onstage microphone to lead its rejection by the mob, and threatened Yanukovych’s life if he didn’t step down by morning. Yanukovych left Kiev that night. The Rada unconstitutionally installed an acting president. Among the new government’s first measures was for the Rada to strip Russian and other “minority” languages of their status as regional official languages. (As of the 2001 census, Russian was spoken throughout the country and considered “native” by one-third of the population.) This, with other measures announced from Kiev, fanned major opposition to the coup, centered in eastern Ukraine—the Donetsk and Luhansk regions (the Donbas) and Crimea. Civil conflict erupted in both areas, with local groups seizing government buildings. In Crimea, the insurgency against the coup-installed Kiev regime prevailed. A referendum held March 16, 2014 in the Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol (a separate jurisdiction on the peninsula), asked voters whether they wanted to join the Russian Federation or retain Crimea’s status as a part of Ukraine. In Crimea, 97% of the 83% of eligible voters who turned out, voted for integration into the Russian Federation; in Sevastopol, the result was likewise 97% for integration, while the turnout was even higher, at 89%. There was no “Russian military invasion of Ukraine.” On March 1 President Putin sought and received authorization from the Federal Assembly (the legislature) to deploy Russian forces on Ukrainian territory, citing threats to the lives of Russian citizens and Russian-ethnic residents of Crimea; these were troops from the Russian Black Sea Fleet facilities in and around Sevastopol, already stationed in Crimea. The fate of two Donbas self-declared republics in Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts (Regions), was not settled so quickly. Support from within Russia for these insurgents was unofficial, including the involvement of Russian military veterans on a volunteer basis. The Donbas conflict turned into heavy fighting in 2014-15, continuing at a lower level until now; more than 13,000 people have been killed in the past seven years. Defeats of Kiev’s forces by the Donbas militia, including their gaining full control of the Donetsk International Airport in January 2015, set the stage for Kiev’s agreement to a ceasefire. After one false start—the so-called Minsk Protocol in September 2014—an interim state of affairs in the Donbas was agreed to in the February 2015 “Minsk II” accord between the regime in Kiev, then under President Peter Poroshenko, and representatives of the self-declared Donbas republics, which was negotiated by Kiev, France, Germany and Russia with support from the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). It provided for a ceasefire, pullback of weapons, prisoner exchanges, and humanitarian relief, as well as a political settlement within Ukraine. This envisaged a special status for the Donbas, with extensive regional autonomy including the “right of linguistic self-determination.” Re-establishment of Ukraine’s “full control” over its border with Russia in the Donbas was to occur following provisional granting of the special status and after local elections. The special status was to be enshrined in the Ukrainian Constitution by the end of 2015. The UN Security Council endorsed Minsk II on February 17, 2015. It remains unimplemented, because Kiev almost immediately refused to conduct the elections or fully legalize the special status, until first being given control over the Donbas-Russia border. Today, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government in Kiev refuses even to meet with Donbas leaders for negotiations, and continues to claim that the Donbas is under Russian “occupation,” and therefore Kiev should talk only with Russia, not the Donbas leaders. Sporadic fighting has continued, with a new escalation of shelling across the “line of contact” between the Donbas entities and the rest of Ukraine. A New U.S. War Posture The Trump Administration accelerated the take-down of the entire architecture of international arms-control agreements by withdrawing the U.S. from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, signed by President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachov in 1987, and the Open Skies Treaty, negotiated by NATO and the Warsaw Pact nations in 1992. This left the New START Treaty (Measures for the Further Reduction and Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms, signed by the U.S. and the Russian Federation in 2010) as the last of the existing arms control agreements—the one covering heavy intercontinental missiles. Upon taking office this year, President Joe Biden extended the New START Treaty for five years, a decision welcomed by Moscow. On January 19, 2018, the U.S. Department of Defense released its new National Defense Strategy. “Great power competition—not terrorism—is now the primary focus of U.S. national security,” said the then Secretary of Defense James Mattis in a speech describing the document: We face growing threats from revisionist powers as different as China and Russia, nations that seek to create a world consistent with their authoritarian models—pursuing veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions. Hours later, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said, in response to the release of the new Pentagon strategy: We regret that, instead of conducting a normal dialogue, instead of relying on international law, the United States seeks to prove its leadership through confrontational concepts and strategies. All throughout this time period, Moscow has protested these confrontational actions, but to no avail. “Despite our numerous protests and pleas, the American machine has been set into motion, the conveyer belt is moving forward,” Russian President Vladimir Putin said in his dramatic March 1, 2018 address to the Federal Assembly, in which he publicly announced the new generation of strategic weapons that Russia had under development, at least two of which, the Avangard hypersonic glide vehicle for ICBMs and the Kinzhal aeroballistic missile, have since been introduced into service. The Economic Component Beginning in March 2014, right after the February 2014 coup in Kiev, the United States imposed financial and economic sanctions on Russia, purportedly over Crimea and the Donbas republics. These sanctions have included five Acts of Congess, six Presidential Executive Orders, ten “Directives pursuant to Executive Orders” and two additional Presidential “Determinations.” This, according to the Treasury Department’s sanctions list. There have of course been other sanctions, property seizures, diplomatic expulsions for other alleged reasons, as well as other forms of economic warfare. All of the Ukraine/Crimea-related sanctions remain in effect; none have been lifted. The last major new round of sanctions was imposed in 2018 (the CAATSA Act), coinciding with new sanctions over the Sergei Skripal poisoning case. According to various estimates, the resultant cost to Russia’s economy of all of these sanctions (in GDP accounting) has been in the range of $250-400 billion, with comparable losses imposed on European economies. In addition, in 2016 and 2017, President Putin accused the Barack Obama Administration of having conspired with Saudi Arabia to lower the price of oil and thereby damage the Russian economy. During the Trump Administration, that appeared not to continue, as Russia and Saudi Arabia made two significant production-pricing agreements on oil, the second in 2019 with Trump Administration participation of some kind. In 2021, the crisis came to a head. 2021 TimelineFebruary 2: The U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings published an article by Adm. Charles A. Richard, Commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, in which he claimed that the risk of nuclear war with Russia or China was increasing and called for action. There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state. Consequently, the U.S. military must shift its principal assumption from “nuclear employment is not possible” to “nuclear employment is a very real possibility,” and act to meet and deter that reality. March 15: The U.S. Army-led DEFENDER-Europe 21 exercise began and ran through the month of June, involving 28,000 troops from 27 different countries. The exercise included “nearly simultaneous operations across more than 30 training areas” in a dozen countries, reported Army Times. March 16: The UK Government of Prime Minister Boris Johnson released its Integrated Review of security, defense, development, and foreign policy. The report, among other things, announced that the UK nuclear warhead stockpile would be increased from 180 to 260 warheads. This was decided “in recognition of the evolving security environment, including the developing range of technological and doctrinal threats….” April 1: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin called Ukrainian Defense Minister Andriy Taran “to discuss the regional security situation,” the Pentagon reported, condemning the supposed “escalations of Russian aggressive and provocative actions in eastern Ukraine.” Austin assured Taran: Washington will not give up on Ukraine in case Russia escalates aggression. [And] in the event of an escalation of Russian aggression, the United States will not leave Ukraine to its own devices, and neither will it allow Russia’s aggressive aspirations toward Ukraine to be realized. April 13: Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu visited Northern Fleet headquarters in Severomorsk, where he said that the United States and its NATO allies were building up naval and land forces in the Arctic, increasing the intensity of combat training, and expanding and modernizing military infrastructure. This activity is typical not only for the Arctic region. Over the past three years, the North Atlantic bloc has increased its military activity near the Russian borders. Shoigu then commented on the DEFENDER-Europe 21 exercise: Now American troops are being transferred from the continental part of North America across the Atlantic to Europe. There is a movement of troops in Europe to the Russian borders. The main forces are concentrated in the Black Sea region and the Baltic region…. In total, 40,000 military personnel and 15,000 units of weapons and military equipment, including strategic aviation, will be concentrated near our territory…. In response to the Alliance’s military activities threatening Russia, we have taken appropriate measures. Within three weeks, two Russian armies and three formations of the airborne troops were successfully transferred to the western borders of the Russian Federation performing combat training tasks. The troops have shown full readiness and ability to perform tasks to ensure the military security of the country. April 15: The Biden White House issued an Executive Order (EO 14024) proclaiming that Russia’s various so-called malign actions “constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” That EO contained a series of new sanctions against Russia, including expelling ten diplomats, blacklisting six Russian technology companies, sanctioning 32 entities and individuals, and—most importantly—prohibiting U.S. financial institutions from participating in the primary market for ruble or non-ruble denominated bonds issued after June 14, 2021, by the Russian government and its financial institutions. The explicitly stated purpose of the measures was to trigger voluminous capital flight and a “negative feedback loop” that would wreak havoc on the Russian economy. A background briefing by an unnamed senior administration official elaborated: There are elements of this new EO that give us additional authorities that we are not exercising today … We are prepared, going forward, to impose substantial and lasting costs if this [Russian] behavior continues or escalates … We’re also delivering a clear signal that the President has maximum flexibility to expand the sovereign debt prohibitions if Russia’s maligned [sic] activities continue or escalate. The latter was widely understood as a threat that further sanctions could follow barring participation in the far more important secondary bond market, and even escalate to the so-called “nuclear option” of expelling Russia from SWIFT.5 June 14: The EO announced on April 15, 2021 officially went into effect—two days before the June 16, 2021 summit between presidents Biden and Putin. June 23: The Russian Defense Ministry announced that a Russian warship fired warning shots at the Royal Navy destroyer HMS Defender, which it said had violated Russia’s maritime border around Crimea in the Black Sea. HMS Defender had entered waters in the vicinity of Crimea’s Cape Fiolent that are within Russian sovereign territory, and it had ignored warnings to depart the area. Not mentioned in the press coverage but visible on flight tracking websites was an U.S. Air Force RC-135V electronic intelligence aircraft, which was rounding the west coast of Crimea at the time of the Russian naval encounter with the Defender. The BBC, which had one of its own reporters on board the British warship, confirmed that the HMS Defender deliberately entered waters claimed by Russia in order to provoke a response from Russian forces: This would be a deliberate move to make a point to Russia. HMS Defender was going to sail within the 19 km (12 mile) limit of Crimea’s territorial waters. June 23: Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu again warned of the strategic danger facing Europe in an address to the Moscow Conference on International Security: As a whole, the situation in Europe is explosive and requires specific steps to de-escalate it. The Russian side has proposed a number of measures. For example, it put forward a proposal to move the areas of drills away from the contact line. Shoigu also pointed to Russia’s proposal for a moratorium on the deployment of intermediate- and shorter-range missiles in Europe, calling them “a special danger” for Europe because their deployment in Europe “will return to the situation, when the Europeans were hostage to the confrontation between the U.S.S.R. and the U.S.A.” Speaking at the same conference, Gen. Valeriy Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian General Staff, pointed to NATO as a destabilizing factor: NATO’s naval activity near our borders has grown considerably. Warships outfitted with long-range precision weapons are operating in the Black and Baltic Seas constantly, while reconnaissance, patrol and attack aircraft and also unmanned aerial vehicles are performing their flights. The operations by the warships of the United States and its allies are clearly of a provocative nature…. Preconditions are being created for the emergence of incidents, which does not contribute to reducing military tensions. September 20: NATO kicked off Exercise Rapid Trident 21 at the Yavoriv training range in western Ukraine, with 6,000 troops from 15 countries, including 300 from the U.S. The drills are “an important step towards Ukraine’s European integration,” said Brigadier General Vladyslav Klochkov, co-director of the exercises. October 6: NATO ordered the expulsion of eight diplomats from the Russian mission at NATO headquarters in Brussels, alleging that they were “undeclared Russian intelligence officers.” Moscow retaliated Oct 18 by announcing that Russia’s mission to NATO would shut down and the NATO information office in Moscow would be closed and its staff stripped of their accreditation. “If anyone ever believed in the sincerity of those statements [from NATO], there are none left today. Their true price is clear for everyone,” said Russian Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Alexander Grushko, in response to the NATO action. October 19: U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin landed in Kiev and, speaking at a press conference at the Defense Ministry, promised the regime’s leaders that the U.S. will back it in its conflict with Russia: Let me underscore what President Biden said during President Zelensky’s recent visit to Washington. U.S. support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity is unwavering. So, we again call on Russia to end its occupation of Crimea … to stop perpetuating the war in eastern Ukraine … to end its destabilizing activities in the Black Sea and along Ukraine’s borders … and to halt its persistent cyber-attacks and other malign activities against the United States, and our Allies and partners. He noted that the U.S. has spent $2.5 billion in support of Ukraine’s military forces “so that they can preserve their country’s territorial integrity and secure its borders and territorial waters.” “I think our posture in the region continues to present a credible threat against Russia and it enables NATO forces to operate more effectively should deterrence fail,” Austin said the following day in Romania. “And I think this is borne out of our commitment to sustaining a rotational U.S. force presence.” October 21: The NATO defense ministers, on the first day of their meeting in Brussels, endorsed “a new overarching plan to defend our Alliance.…” The new plan includes: “significant improvements to our air and missile defenses, strengthening our conventional capabilities with fifth generation jets, adapting our exercises and intelligence, and improving the readiness and effectiveness of our nuclear deterrent.” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said that the alliance has been increasing its presence on the Black Sea, “because the Black Sea is of strategic importance for NATO.” October 21: Putin warned in a speech to the Valdai Discussion Club in Sochi that Ukraine doesn’t even have to be formally brought into the NATO alliance to pose a strategic threat to Russia: Formal membership in NATO ultimately may not happen, but the military development of the territory is already underway. And this really poses a threat to the Russian Federation … Tomorrow, rockets could appear near Kharkov, what are we going to do about it? It’s not us placing our missiles there, it’s them shoving theirs under our nose. Putin cited NATO’s promise not to move its infrastructure eastwards after the reunification of Germany, a promise which it did not keep: Everyone from all sides said that after the unification, in no circumstances would NATO infrastructure move toward the East. Russia should have been able to at least rely on that. That’s what they said, there were public statements. But in practice? They lied … and then they expanded it once, and then they expanded it again. October 30:The Washington Post, citing unnamed officials, reported that the Russians were engaged in another buildup of troops along the border with Ukraine. The article’s authors said the troop movements have reignited concerns that arose in April. “The point is: It is not a drill. It doesn’t appear to be a training exercise. Something is happening. What is it?” said Michael Kofman, Program Director of the Russia Studies Program at the Virginia-based nonprofit analysis group CNA. November 1:Politico published satellite imagery purporting to show a Russian troop buildup near the Ukrainian border, including armored units, tanks, and self-propelled artillery, along with ground troops massing near the Russian town of Yelnya close to the border with Belarus. Elements of the 1st Guards Tank Army were spotted in the area. The army “has been designed to conduct operations at every level of combat from counterinsurgency to mechanized warfare,” Jane’s analysis reported. Even the Ukrainian Defense Ministry denied the reported Russian military buildup, stating officially: “As of November 1, 2021, an additional transfer of Russian units, weapons and military equipment to the state border of Ukraine was not recorded.” November 2: The Russian Security Council announced that CIA Director William Burns was in Moscow for two days of talks with Nikolai Patrushev, Secretary of the Security Council. According to leaks reported by CNN on November Nov. 5, Biden sent Burns to Moscow to tell the Russians to stop their troop buildup near Ukraine’s border, which the U.S. was monitoring closely. November 8: For the first time, a Resolution passed by both Houses of Congress voiced the demand for “crushing sanctions” on Russia’s economy, purportedly to stop the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, because, in the words of Sen. James Risch, “Russia is creating and weaponizing this energy crisis.” Sen. Ron Johnson said the U.S should “use crushing sanctions to stop the pipeline.” Sen. Tom Cotton added: “The Nord Stream 2 pipeline will expand Russian influence and threaten energy security throughout Europe. Since the Biden administration won’t hold Putin accountable, Congress must take action to ensure our NATO allies aren’t hostage to Russian energy.” November 11: Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov warned that Russia is prepared to act against any NATO provocations: If necessary, we will take measures to ensure our security if there are provocative actions by our opponents near our borders. I’m referring to NATO and NATO forces that are taking rather active and assertive actions in close proximity to our borders, be it in the air, on water, or on land. November 16: British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace met in Kiev with Ukrainian President Zelensky, and signed a joint statement with Ukraine Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov. Zelensky “thanked Ben Wallace for the unwavering support of the UK for the independence and territorial integrity of our country within its internationally recognized borders,” according to a statement issued by his office. Zelensky “also praised the signing of the Ukrainian-British Bilateral Framework Agreement on official credit support for the development of the Ukrainian fleet’s capabilities: The United Kingdom has become our key partner in building the Ukrainian fleet. I expect that future security projects planned under this agreement will be effectively implemented. November 18: During an address to a meeting of the Russian Foreign Policy Board, President Putin protested the repeated flights of U.S. bombers close to Russia’s borders: Indeed, we constantly express our concerns about these matters and talk about red lines, but of course, we understand that our partners are peculiar in the sense that they have a very—how to put it mildly—superficial approach to our warnings about red lines. Putin repeated that Russian concerns about NATO’s eastward expansion “have been totally ignored.” November 19: U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines landed in Brussels to brief NATO ambassadors on U.S. intelligence on the situation and the possibility of a Russian military intervention in Ukraine. NATO’s Stoltenberg suggested that if the new German government (which was still the subject of coalition negotiations) were to pull out of the NATO nuclear sharing arrangement, the B61 nuclear bombs currently stored in Germany could be moved eastwards: Of course, it’s up to Germany to decide whether the nuclear arms will be deployed in this country, but there’s an alternative to this; the nuclear arms may easily end up in other European countries, including these to the east of Germany. That is, even closer to Russia’s border. November 20: Ukrainian military intelligence chief Brig. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told Military Times, on the sidelines of the Halifax International Security Conference, that Russia has more than 92,000 troops massed near Russia’s border with Ukraine and is preparing for an attack by the end of January or beginning of February 2022. November 21: Bloomberg published a report citing unnamed sources saying that the U.S. had shared intelligence including maps with European allies that shows a buildup of 100,000 Russian troops and artillery to prepare for a rapid, large-scale push into Ukraine from multiple locations, should Putin decide to invade. November 30: Radio Free Europe reported that U.S. Republicans had blocked voting on the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) until Nord Stream 2 sanctions were added to it, objecting that the Russia-to-Germany Baltic Sea pipeline will deny billions in annual revenue to “ally” Ukraine. (The overland pipeline from Yamal in Siberia to Europe traverses Ukraine, which collects transit fees.) December 5: Neo-con Democrat Michèle Flournoy, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy under President Barack Obama, appeared on “Fox News Sunday” and declared that President Biden, in his upcoming December 7 video-conference summit with Putin, was going to threaten “much more severe” financial/economic sanctions on Russia than anything previously done: [What] the administration is actively considering with our allies, is an escalating set of sanctions that go beyond what’s been done before. I’m sure they are looking at sanctioning the banking system, sanctioning the energy sector, possibly cutting off Russia from the SWIFT system,@5 which enables all of their international financial transactions. So, they’re looking at much more serious means … much greater level of pain than anything [that Russia has faced to date]. December 6: The day before the Biden-Putin video conference, an anonymous senior White House official briefed the press that all NATO allies had agreed on a package of “financial sanctions that would impose significant and severe economic harm on the Russian economy” should Russia invade Ukraine: We believe that there is a way forward here that will allow us to send a clear message to Russia there will be genuine and meaningful and enduring costs to choosing to go forward—should they choose to go forward—with a military escalation…. We have had intensive discussions with our European partners about what we would do collectively in the event of a major Russian military escalation in Ukraine, and we believe that we have a path forward that would involve substantial economic countermeasures by both the Europeans and the United States, We have put together a pretty damn aggressive package. In its coverage, CNN raised the “nuclear option” directly: Officials have also been weighing disconnecting Russia from the SWIFT international payment system, upon which Russia remains heavily reliant, according to two sources familiar with the discussions. This is being considered a “nuclear” option. The European Parliament passed a nonbinding resolution in the spring calling for such a move should Russia invade Ukraine, and the U.S. has been discussing it with EU counterparts. Later the same day, after Biden had personally spoken with European leaders, the White House issued a statement which did not mention financial sanctions or significant economic damage to Russia. It said, “diplomacy is the only way forward to resolve the conflict in Donbas through the implementation of the Minsk Agreements.” December 7: Presidents Biden and Putin held a video conference summit, after which National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan assured the media that Biden— told President Putin directly that if Russia further invades Ukraine, the United States and our European allies would respond with strong economic measures, and would provide additional defensive material to the Ukrainians, above and beyond that which we are already providing, [and that the United States] would fortify our NATO allies on the eastern flank, with additional capabilities in response to such an escalation. Biden himself emphasized later that he was considering Putin’s demand for security guarantees, which later resulted in Russia’s proposals (see below). December 12: The new German Foreign Minister, Annalena Baerbock, declared on a national television interview that the Nord Stream 2 pipeline could not become operational because, according to the German government coalition agreements, the pipeline was not consistent with European energy law. The previous government of Chancellor Angela Merkel had found the opposite. Baerbock, a war-hawk Green Party leader, did not explain the reversal. The Hill pointed out that the Greens want Ukraine in NATO. December 17: The Russian Foreign Ministry released two draft treaties specifying guarantees for Russia’s security, one, an agreement between Russia and NATO, and the other, a treaty between Russia and the United States. Both documents call for recognizing a principle of “non-interference in the internal affairs” of each other, acknowledge that a “direct military clash between them could result in the use of nuclear weapons that would have far-reaching consequences,” reaffirm “that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” and recognize “the need to make every effort to prevent the risk of outbreak of such war among States that possess nuclear weapons.” The operative part of the U.S.-Russia treaty calls for refraining from taking actions “that could undermine core security interests of the other Party.” Cognizant of the drive for NATO-ization of Ukraine, Article 4 states: The United States of America shall undertake to prevent further eastward expansion of NATO and deny accession to the Alliance to the States of the former U.S.S.R. And, The United States of America shall not establish military bases in the territory of the States of the former U.S.S.R. that are not members of NATO, use their infrastructure for any military activities or develop bilateral military cooperation with them. It goes on to state that the Parties (the U.S. and Russia) will not take military actions outside their own borders that threaten each other’s national security, or fly bombers or sail warships outside of their territorial waters in ways that would threaten each other. On the U.S.’ expansion of its nuclear weapons to include those stored in such locations of Germany, the treaty states, The Parties shall refrain from deploying nuclear weapons outside their national territories and return such weapons already deployed … to their national territories. December 19: An anonymous senior White House official told CNN and other media that there was “only about a four-week window” to compel Russia to de-escalate and that U.S.-planned sanctions “would be overwhelming, immediate, and inflict significant costs on the Russian economy and their financial system.” December 21: In an extensive report delivered to an expanded meeting of the Defense Ministry Board, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu stated: Tensions are growing on the western and eastern borders of Russia. The United States is intensifying its military presence at Russian borders. The United States and NATO are purposefully increasing the scale and intensity of military training activities near Russia. Increasingly, they involve strategic aviation, carrying out simulated launches of nuclear missiles at our facilities. The number of their flights near the Russian borders has more than doubled. NATO pays special attention to the issues of the transfer of troops to the eastern flank of the alliance, including from the continental part of the United States. The exercises are practicing various options for using coalition groups against Russia with the use of non-aligned states—Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. The presence of more than 120 employees of American PMCs [private military companies] in Avdeevka and Priazovskoe settlements in Donetsk region has been reliably established. They equip firing positions in residential buildings and at socially significant facilities, prepare Ukrainian special operations forces and radical armed groups for active hostilities. To commit provocations, tanks with unidentified chemical components were delivered to Avdeevka and Krasny Liman cities. Speaking at that same meeting of the Defense Ministry Board, Russian President Putin himself sounded the alarm: What they [the United States] are doing on the territory of Ukraine now—or trying to do and going to do—this is not thousands of kilometers away from our national border. This is at the doorstep of our home. They must understand that we simply have nowhere to retreat further…. Do they think we don’t see these threats? Or do they think that we are so weak-willed to simply look blankly at the threats posed to Russia? As I have already noted, in the event of the continuation of the obviously aggressive line of our Western colleagues, we will take adequate retaliatory military-technical measures, and react toughly to unfriendly steps. And, I want to emphasize, we have every right to do so, we have every right to take actions designed to ensure the security and sovereignty of Russia…. We are extremely concerned about the deployment of elements of the U.S. global missile defense system near Russia.

Dec. 26—The world is faced right now with an overwhelming multitude of crises: the pandemic, which is very far from being under control, and has resulted so far in around 800,000 deaths in the U.S. and more than 5 million worldwide; an escalating tendency towards hyperinflation; collapsing infrastructure in the U.S. and European nations; world famine of “biblical dimensions”; a mass-migration crisis affecting more than 70 million people; the list could go on. But probably for the first time in U.S. history, the possibility of a new world war is dawning on people, and that this time it would not just be overseas. If it happens, it for sure will come to the United States. The combination of all of these dangers seems almost too much to bear—unless we realize that none of them are natural catastrophes, but are the result of wrong policies. And that means they can be corrected, provided the political will can be mobilized to do so. The overarching problem is that much of the trans-Atlantic world is dominated by a financial oligarchy that has worked diligently since the death of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but especially since the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and its coverup, to eradicate, step by step, the principles of economy associated with the tradition of the American System of Alexander Hamilton and replace it with the British System of monetarist policies of profit maximization. When the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991, these forces—situated primarily in the City of London and Wall Street and more recently also in Silicon Valley—took the demise of Soviet communism as the pretext to create a unipolar world, built upon the much heralded British-American special relationship. This was not stated openly in the tumultuous period spanning the fall of the Berlin Wall, the subsequent German Unification, and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, but behind the scenes the neocons in the U.S. and their London counterparts were already working on what was to become known as the “Wolfowitz doctrine,” i.e., the idea that no country would ever be allowed to bypass the U.S. in terms of economic, military, or political power. Publicly, promises were given to Gorbachev by Secretary of State James Baker III, that NATO would not move “one inch eastward,” if Russia were to allow the peaceful unification of Germany. But that was a deliberate deception from the very beginning. With the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall and the subsequent dissolution of the Iron Curtain. there was an historic chance for a great change. Such chances only emerge at best once in a century. With the borders between Eastern and Western Europe now open, Lyndon LaRouche and his movement proposed the economic program of the “Eurasian Land Bridge,” the idea to integrate the industrial and population centers of Europe with those of Asia through infrastructure development corridors. Such a policy would have created the basis for a peace order for the 21st Century. While there was great support for this visionary policy among many industrialists and peace-loving forces in many countries, the Neo-cons in the U.S. and their British partners had no intention of allowing it. Instead, the CIA published a report in 1991 expressing concern that the nations of the former Soviet Union had a greater number of highly educated scientists and more raw materials than the United States. Therefore, the expansion and upgrading of industrial development could not be encouraged. With the help of the utterly corrupt Boris Yeltsin, Jeffrey Sachs imposed “Shock Therapy” on Russia from 1991 to 1994 and reduced Russia’s industrial capacity to only 30% of its previous level. And the massive population reduction of about one million Russians per year was the result. Organized in institutions such as the Project for a New American Century, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Atlantic Council, and the London-based Henry Jackson Society, these forces had no intention of sticking to the promises made to Gorbachov. They used the occasion of the disappearance of the communist adversary to instead further the transformation of the United States from the Republic that it was created to be by America’s Founding Fathers, into a trans-Atlantic Empire modelled on that very British Empire against which the American Revolution had been fought. With that new orientation came a whole set of policies: further deregulation of the financial markets, including the eventual abolition of the Glass-Steagall Act in 1999; and the systematic abandonment of the UN Charter and its guarantee of each state’s national sovereignty, replacing that guarantee with a “rules based order,” in which the rules are made by a few. The introduction of “humanitarian interventionist wars” and the Right To Protect (R2P) policy, led to the “endless wars” in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, and other nations. A systematic policy of “Regime Change” and “Color Revolution” against all countries which refused to submit to the concept of the unipolar world was run by this Anglo-American cabal. And, since Russia had been effectively deindustrialized with that “shock therapy,” these Neo-cons thought they could dismiss Russia as a strategic player. They proceed to insulted Russia, to boast that Russia would now be no more than a “regional power,” as Obama proclaimed. Meanwhile NATO moved step by step eastward, not only an inch, but by adding fourteen members, including the seven nations of the former Warsaw Pact and the three Baltic states, and in this way moved closer to the border of Russia with modern weapon systems that reduce the time to reach Moscow to a few minutes. At the same time, the U.S. pulled out of one arms control treaty and other treaties, one after the other: The ABM Treaty in 2002, the INF Treaty in 2019, the JCPOA in 2018, and the Open Skies Treaty in 2020. At the same time, the trans-Atlantic oligarchical establishment arrogantly felt so increasingly self-assured that it decided that it had become safe to maintain its power with a turn to more openly Malthusian green policies, given that the “adversary” had disappeared. And that therefore it was no longer so necessary to maintain state-of-the-art industrial and scientific technology. So, the shift to a more openly and unabashed neocolonial “Transformation of the World Economy” out of fossil fuels and related technologies was promoted. The well-greased propaganda machine of the trans-Atlantic media, under the spell of NATO, escalated the scare about anthropogenic climate change, ignoring the views of thousands of scientists who had challenged the arbitrary models based on tailor-made algorithms about CO2 emissions causing the “planet to boil over,” as Obama famously put it to an audience of African students assembled in South Africa. When these monetarist policies erupted in the systemic crisis of 2008, rather than addressing the root causes of the problem, the money printing machines of QE (quantitative easing) and the zero-to-negative interest rate policy were set into motion, to keep the casino economy of speculation and profit maximization going. Ever more apocalyptic scenarios were put into circulation by the Princes of the British Royal Family and their kindergarten troops of the Extinction Rebellion and Fridays for Future, increasingly prophesying that the world would end in twelve years unless people stopped eating and driving cars. The more the untenability of the financial system became clear to insiders, the more the determination of the financial oligarchy grew, to transfer their activities into one last gigantic bubble. “Shifting the Trillions” became the new slogan, which was to signify the “decarbonization” of the world economy, whereby investments would, from now on, be directed only to renewable energy and related industries. Meanwhile Prince Charles upped the ante by declaring from mid-2019 onward, that the world had only 18 months left to reach the royally defined climate goals, or otherwise the world would end. What Charles had in mind, however, had little to do with the behavior of the climate of the Earth, which has stubbornly followed its cycles for millions of years, oscillating from warming periods to ice ages and back, depending on processes in the Sun and the changing position of the solar system in the Milky Way galaxy. Prince Charles’ proclamation had very much to do instead with the series of major climate conferences—from the April 22-23 U.S. Leaders’ Climate Summit, to the United Nation’s COP15 Biodiversity Conference in October in China, and culminating in the COP 26 Climate Conference in Glasgow. It was stated in various ways that, by the time of this last of the series of conferences, which would take place in the UK and would be pretty much under the control of the British Royal Family, the climate regime had to be imposed on the entire world, to make the “Shifting the Trillions” maneuver work. So with big fanfare, the two-week extravaganza took place in Glasgow with, according to the BBC head-count, 120 heads of state participating and many top executives arriving in their heavily CO2-emitting yachts and private jets. But COP26 turned into Flop26. First, the leaders of Russia and China did not come, and according to the statements coming from both countries it became very clear, that they were not willing to submit to a global neo-Malthusian scheme, that essentially would condemn the developing sector to giving up any hope of ever overcoming underdevelopment by forcing them to submit to the abandonment of fossil fuels and sign on to something that would effectively be a global eco-dictatorship. The leaders of several developing nations, including Indonesia, India, and Nigeria, made it very clear that they would not give up their right to development by giving up investments in fossil fuel related energy plants and industries, and that furthermore, they completely rejected the arrogant Eurocentric way of thinking of the British elites and their underlings' efforts to dominate them in a neocolonial manner. With the failure of Flop26, the efforts of the U.S. and UK to assert a neo-Malthusian dictate over the world and the attempt to impose this last mega-bubble, the “Great Reset,” to prolong the life-expectancy of the failing financial system, had fallen through. Not much better was the effort by President Biden to rally the designated democratic countries against the so-called “autocratic” regimes, and to get those “allies” to swear allegiance to the “rules-based order.” Several countries abstained from attendance, refusing the demand to essentially choose between the U.S. and China. In the uninvited “autocratic” states on the other side, the self confidence about their own policy successes, for example in respect to economic growth rates or the success in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic, was expressed openly. The narrative about the “good” democracies and the “bad” autocratic states had, in the meantime, fallen into a gigantic, almost irreconcilable credibility hole. Not only had the most powerful military machine in the world, the U.S. plus NATO, lost the war in Afghanistan after 20 years of war against essentially 65,000 Taliban fighters, but the circumstances of the hurried withdrawal revealed many other unpleasant realities. Except for maybe a couple of schools and roads, nothing had been built in these 20 years and the whole country was in absolute shambles. In the weeks and months since, it has become obvious that more than 90% of the population had been left food insecure, a euphemism for starvation, and left without medical care. As the Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, stated clearly in his address to the Emergency Meeting of the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) Council of Foreign Ministers in Islamabad in December, when the NATO and U.S. troops left in August, everybody knew that 75% of the Afghan budget had come from international aid. When the donors cut that aid following the Taliban takeover, and then the $9.5 billion in foreign reserve assets belonging to the Afghan people was withheld by the U.S. Treasury and some billions more by European banks, the economy was shut down practically at once. As a result, 24 million of the about 40 million people now living in Afghanistan are in acute danger of starvation this winter, dying of disease without medical care, or freezing to death in the very harsh winter weather of Afghanistan. And this is not the fault of the Taliban, but of the continuation of a war, which could not be won militarily, by other means—the means of financial warfare. If these are the “rules” of the rules-based order, “democracy” has become a bad word. And what had been suspected by many observers is now confirmed by the remarks of Secretary of State Blinken: The purpose of the U.S./NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan was not just to end one of the endless wars, it was to free up forces bogged down in an unwinnable war for redeployment in the Indo-Pacific, and around the crisis with Russia over Ukraine. So essentially the “Western democracies” have suffered three distinct and different defeats during the last four months: first, the defeat in Afghanistan, where NATO did not exactly cover itself with glory; second, the disaster of the Flop26; and finally, the “democracy summit,” where everybody but the most ideologically blind proponents of the official narrative is now convinced that the emperor has no clothes. It is essentially due to the combination of these three defeats on top of a worldwide backlash against the arrogant idea of the U.S. historian Francis Fukuyama about the “end of history,” which he declared with the demise of the Soviet Union. The forces of the unipolar world, announced by Fukuyama, are pushing confrontation with Russia over Ukraine. In a twisted form of a mirror-like inversion, the U.S. and the UK are accusing Russia of preparing a military attack against Ukraine, when it is, in fact, NATO, the U.S., and the UK instigating Ukraine to create security situations that are unacceptable to Russia, and which represent the {de facto} crossing of red lines. In a reaction to what was clearly building up to a military conflict between Ukraine and Russia, with the obvious potential of escalating into a larger war, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on December 17, presented two proposed treaties to the U.S. and NATO, one of which, the “Agreement on Measures to Ensure the Security of the Russian Federation and Member States of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization,” would require that NATO members commit to no further enlargements of the alliance, including especially to Ukraine. As President Putin and other Russian officials put it, these treaties would retrospectively put in a legally binding form that which was promised to Russia in 1990 in the first place, and which, given the geographical location of Ukraine and its security implications for Russia, is a perfectly legitimate demand. Putin cautioned, however, that even the signing of such treaties would not be a 100% guarantee, given the record of the U.S. pulling out of legally binding treaties. If NATO and the U.S. reject the signing of such treaties, the world will in all likelihood be in for a reverse Cuban missile crisis or something worse. Russia will be forced to respond now as America would, if Russia were to install offensive weapons systems at the Canadian and Mexican borders. There are remedies, but they require a dramatic change, of course. The U.S. and NATO should sign these two treaties, since they are consistent with what was promised to Russia in 1990 and with what is the necessary precondition for a stable security architecture in the world. All nations must cooperate to build modern health systems in every single country on the planet. It should have become obvious to everybody that the pandemic can not be defeated by only providing health care to the rich countries. The incredible suffering of the Afghan people, who have lived under conditions of war for 40 years, must be stopped with “Operation Ibn Sina.” A modern health care system must be built, and the economy must be built up by integrating Afghanistan into the regional projects of the BRI. The U.S. must return to the principles of the American System of economy of Alexander Hamilton and adopt the Four Laws proposed by Lyndon LaRouche. The combination of these policies can bring the world quickly out of the mortal danger we find ourselves in, but they require that you, the American citizen, become active to save the country and save the world!

The torchlight march of neo-Nazi militia through Kiev on New Years Day exemplifies why Russian President Putin is demanding written, legally-binding security guarantees from the U.S. and NATO. These forces, which were at the heart of the February 2014 regime change coup, and proudly trace their lineage to Nazi SS collaborator Stepan Bandera, are calling for the liberation of Crimea from Russia, and crushing the movement for autonomy in eastern Ukraine. They represent a threat not only against Russia, but against Ukraine and NATO, as they are engaging in provocations against Russia. As JFK declared in his October 1962 speech announcing a blockade of Cuba against Russian ships, no country can tolerate "in an area well-known to have a special and historic relationship to the United States...a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo..." The provocations against Russia, using Ukraine as a tool, is what Putin is reacting to today.

The New Year has the potential to start with a significant shift in the direction of sanity, with the series of meetings next week—held with the U.S., NATO, and the OSCE—to directly discuss with Russia its emphatically stated security concerns. Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche has called on the U.S. and NATO to sign the agreements put forward by Russia, to completely change the world strategic trajectory, which otherwise inexorably leads to what would invariably become nuclear war of global dimensions.Why is the world on such a deadly path, and why are there not enormous protests in cities all across the trans-Atlantic to oppose this deadly course? The Anglo-American financial-military-information oligarchy has no intent of allowing its system of domination to be overthrown by the meteoric economic (and increasingly political) rise of China and the committedly independent sovereignty of Russia. Its anti-growth destructive paradigm demands sacrificing civilization, now on the altar of purported green gods to avert a rumored cataclysm in the future. With the refusal of such nations as India, Russia, China, and Nigeria to “follow the séance” by entering suicidal agreements during the COP26 climate conference in Glasgow, more direct, and brutal means are being called to the fore. The sensible course of affairs would be to dissolve NATO, whose raison d’être vanished several decades ago, or at least to limit and undo its Eastern expansion. Consider Finland, which borders both Russia and NATO-member Norway, and whose President Sauli Niinistö had helpfully offered last spring to host a 2025 conference in Helsinki on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Conference of Security and Cooperation in Europe, as a forum for talking through strategic tensions. Niinistö, in comments echoed by that country’s prime minister, has announced that Finland would not rule out joining NATO. This Anglo-American oligarchy, intent on maintaining a rules-based-order in which it makes the rules, is cynically indifferent to the human suffering it causes, whether through war, medical neglect, or the brutal, genocidal treatment of Afghanistan, which is being denied access to its own resources. But this oligarchical model, so powerfully critiqued in dramatic form by Verdi in his opera Rigoletto, can be overcome! As the locus of economic power in the world moves to Asia, the trans-Atlantic world must develop a new role. As Lyndon LaRouche expressed the need for a new type of cooperation already in 2007, the "medieval legacy of predatory power of usury has gained such power that it can not be defeated except through a concert of clearly defined, mutual self-interest among a combination of powerful nation-states. “That is the common interest which we in the U.S.A. and China, share at this juncture. That is the crucial importance of those within the U.S.A. who typify that common interest of the people of the U.S.A. and Asia. It is our awareness of this common interest, which is therefore a crucial factor in world history at this juncture.” Flashes of opportunity for such cooperation can burst forth, powering a mighty engine of growth. How will you catalyze that change? Will we make 2022, the centennial of Lyndon LaRouche’s birth, the “Year of LaRouche”?