A Step Back from the Brink; But There Can Be No Lasting Peace without a New International Security Architecture

Feb. 16—In her weekly webcast today, Helga Zepp-LaRouche stated that the world took a small step back from the brink, as the British-proclaimed deadline for a supposed Russian invasion of Ukraine came and went today without incident. Rather, diplomacy seems to be gathering a bit of a toe-hold, with the back-to-back visits to Moscow and Kiev of French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, along with a growing chorus of American voices demanding strategic sanity from the U.S. government.

“This is an important step,” Zepp-LaRouche commented, “but obviously a lot more has to happen.” She noted that an environment is being created “to force a discussion about Putin’s demands to the U.S. and NATO to have security guarantees that NATO will not expand further to the east, and that no offensive weapon systems would be installed along the Russian border.”

“I hope that diplomacy can play a bigger role again,” Zepp-LaRouche continued, including the idea that has been circulating that a new “Helsinki 2” agreement among the super-powers should be organized. “But I think even Helsinki 2 is not enough, because we need a new international security architecture which takes into account the security interest of every single country.”

What is needed is “a global new security architecture that would mean the end of geopolitics. That is the necessary step mankind has to take if you want to get out of this dilemma of potential world war for good.”

Simply appealing for peace is useful, she continued, but “it falls completely short, because it does not address where the war danger comes from. Sure, the war danger comes from the military-industrial complex, who need their wars to keep their machine going. But you cannot separate the interests of the military-industrial complex from Wall Street, the City of London, Silicon Valley, etc. The fact is that the neo-liberal financial system is blowing out and the war danger comes from that, because there are some people in these circles who would rather risk World War III than allow that a multipolar world develop. Especially now with China and Russia being in a new strategic partnership, which is a completely new element in the situation. The war danger comes from the fact that these neoliberal circles are experiencing their Waterloo.”

Zepp-LaRouche concluded: “This is the powder keg on which we are sitting…. There is no solution within this system. This system is finished, and the only solution would be to do exactly what Lyndon LaRouche proposed for many years, namely to have a complete reorganization of the bankrupt system, a global Glass-Steagall banking separation, and then go to a Hamiltonian banking system and set up a New Bretton Woods system which provides for a long-term low-interest credit for development of the developing sector in particular. That could be done very easily, in cooperation with the Belt and Road Initiative. So a solution is eminently possible.”

Please register to attend the Schiller Institute’s Feb. 19 international conference, “100 Seconds to Midnight on the Doomsday Clock: We Need a New Security Architecture!”