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Is Europe Sleepwalking Its Way
to World War, as in 1914?
by
Helga Zepp-LaRouche
Jan.
3—It is high time for people in Germany to wake up. The situation would be
grotesque, were it not so dangerous. Dozens of historians, authors, and
columnists are warning about the parallels to 1914, and describing how the
people of that time marched like sleepwalkers into the great catastrophe of
the war—and yet we are in principle doing exactly the same thing today—with
the crucial difference that the Third World War would be thermonuclear and
humanity would be wiped out.
The
Russian state-owned foreign radio broadcasting service Voice of Russia warned on Jan. 2
that the world is closer today to nuclear war than it was even at the height
of the Cold War, during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The article however then
argues, in a kind of subterfuge, that this is the result of erosion of the
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In addition to the original Nuclear Club—i.e.,
the states that had detonated a nuclear weapon before Jan. 1, 1967—India,
Pakistan, Israel, and North Korea today possess such weapons, others are very
close to having them, and a total of 30 to 40 states are striving to become
nuclear states, according to the article.
The
truth is even worse. Anne Applebaum, a Polish-American historian and the wife
of Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski, wrote on Dec. 25 in the Washington
Post about the sudden return of Cold War tactics, but she
confuses cause and effect. Russia's deployment of missiles on its western
border was not the beginning of the Cold War tactics, as she suggests, but
rather a response to the construction of the U.S. missile defense system in
Poland and the Czech Republic. China's establishment of an Air Defense Zone
is a reaction to the American doctrine of "Air-Sea Battle," whose
stated intention is to penetrate the defenses of the Chinese mainland.
Global Empire
Behind
the eastward expansion of NATO (and the EU) as well as the Obama
Administration's so-called "Asia Pivot," stands the attempt—first
by the senior Bush and Margaret Thatcher, then by Bush, Jr. and Tony Blair,
and now by Obama and David Cameron—to erect a new world empire based on the
Anglo-American "special relationship." The EU acts as the regional
junior partner of this empire.
This
policy has been causing a new global arms race for quite some time. There are
also various U.S. and NATO offensive military doctrines, which must be seen
as part of an overall strategy. One is the doctrine of Responsibility to
Protect (R2P), which rejects the sovereignty of nations guaranteed by the UN
Charter, in favor of "humanitarian" intervention. No less dangerous
is the repeated blurring of the distinction between nuclear and conventional
weapons, as for example, in the doctrine of "Conventional Prompt Global
Strike" (CPGS) or the so-called pre-emptive use of "small"
nuclear weapons, the "bunker-busters."
In
relevant military publications such as the official journal of the U.S. Air
Force, the end of NATO'S MAD [Mutual Assured Destruction] doctrine is
announced, and the claim is made that it is now possible to neutralize the
nuclear capabilities of any country without creating radioactive fallout.[1] In the Yale Journal
of International Affairs, Prof. Amitai Etzioni calls
for a public debate on the question of who in the Pentagon authorized the
preparation for war against China.[2]
In
response to all these developments, both Russia and China have now made
unmistakably clear that they are each very well equipped with a nuclear
second-strike capability, and will use it with full force if they are
attacked. Various representatives of the Russian government have also
stressed that they will not wait until the West has achieved the technical
superiority it desires, but if necessary they will launch a nuclear first
strike.[3]
Anyone
who thinks through this whole situation must realize that the chessboard for
World War III, this time a thermonuclear war of extermination of mankind, is
being prepared today much more meticulously than was World War I before the
shots at Sarajevo were fired. We would all be losing sleep if we realized how
quickly a stupid accident or a provocation by a third party could bring about
the destruction of mankind.
If
the impending crash of the trans-Atlantic financial system occurs, which
could happen at any moment, and which even such traditional economists as Dennis Snower of the Kiel Institute for the
World Economy are warning about, it is likely that the ensuing
chaos would quickly lead to military consequences that would end in World War
III.
East-West Cooperation
The
First World War would never have happened if Germany's Chancellor Otto von
Bismarck had remained in power, since the pre-history of the war began with
his ouster. What lessons can we learn today, in this moment of great danger,
from Bismarck's policy?
Instead
of media campaigns to build up an enemy image of Russia and China and thus
contribute to a self-fulfilling prophecy, ending up once again, as in the
case of Syria, on the side of the terrorists, we need to declare our full
solidarity with Russia, in light of the terrorist attacks in Volgograd and
other locations in southern Russia. Chancellor Angela Merkel and President
Joachim Gauck should give practical expression to this solidarity by
attending the Olympic Games in Sochi, with a prestigious delegation.
The
nations of Europe should respond promptly to the repeated offers by President
Vladimir Putin and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin for the development
and deployment of a joint missile-defense system. The problem of erosion of
the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, including the risk that these weapons
could end up in the hands of terrorists, can only be dealt with by effective
cooperation between East and West.
Viktor
Ivanov, the head of the Russian Drug Enforcement Administration, has
repeatedly offered Russia's cooperation with NATO, the U.S., and the EU in
the fight against drug cultivation in Afghanistan and against drug-money
laundering. But with no response to this offer, drug production has increased
40-fold under the aegis of NATO in the 12 years of the Afghanistan War! As a
result, a large part of the population in Russia, China, Central Asia, and
also of European youth, is being destroyed. The European nations should
promptly take up the "Rainbow 2" proposal of the Collective
Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) to destroy drug production in
Afghanistan, which includes an economic reconstruction program. Alexander
Rahr, a German expert on Russia, recently supported this idea, as well as a
proposal that the BüSo[4] has circulated for years,
namely to integrate Afghanistan into an economic union with all its neighbors
and thereby stabilize it.
The
nations of Europe should respond immediately to the proposal of Ukrainian
Prime Minister Mykola Azarov and Russian presidential advisor Sergei Glazyev
for tripartite negotiations, in which Ukraine and Russia would work for a
common economic development perspective.
This
economic cooperation could be part of the expansion of the Eurasian Land-Bridge, which was declared a priority by
Chinese President Xi Jinping in Kazakstan recently, in the form of a New Silk
Road. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang detailed this perspective during his recent
tour of Eastern and Central Europe, with a groundbreaking agreement among
Romania, Hungary, and Serbia for the development of a Chinese high-speed rail
system in those countries. All the European nations are currently suffering
from an enormous backlog of needed infrastructure investment and could hugely
benefit from such cooperation. Joint development of the World-Land Bridge
would also be a solid basis for peace in the 21st Century.
Cooperation in Space
The
asteroid impact over Chelyabinsk in Russia on Feb. 15, 2013 once again
starkly reminded the world that we currently have no defense mechanisms to
protect our planet from the impact of asteroids, meteorites, and comets. In
the worst case, the impact of one these objects, of which there are millions
traveling through space, and of which NASA and the European Space Agency have
so far been able to identify only a fraction, would wipe out the human race,
just as happened 65 million years ago with the dinosaurs. The common defense
of our planet can only be achieved through international cooperation in
research and development of defense systems.
China
has proven, with the landing of its rover Chang'e-3 on the Moon—the first
Moon landing in 40 years (!)—that it is well on its way to becoming the
leading spacefaring nation. International cooperation in space and the
conquest of new frontier areas of science are among the common aims of
mankind, which will allow us to leave behind Earthly strife and supposed
geostrategic conflicts of interest and to launch a better era of mankind.
So
it is high time to wake up and contribute to making sure that mankind has any
future at all, and that this future is a great one. There are wonderful
alternatives to a Third World War, and the above-mentioned areas of
cooperation could be expanded in many important areas, such as development of
a fusion power-based global economy or exchanges in areas of Classical
culture, and the design of a completely new era of mankind, appropriate to
the dignity and the nature of mankind as the only creative species.
Translated from German by Susan
Welsh
[1] Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G.
Press, "The New Era of Nuclear Weapons, Deterrence,
and Conflict," Strategic Studies Quarterly.
[2] Amitai Etzioni, "Who Authorized Preparations for War with
China?" Yale Journal of International Affairs,
Summer 2013.
[3] See Carl Osgood and Rachel
Douglas, "U.S. Moves Toward Nuclear First Strike
Capability," EIR, March 15,
2013.
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Fluoride Information
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Monday, January 13, 2014
Is Europe Sleepwalking Its Way to World War, as in 1914? by Helga Zepp-LaRuoche from EIR
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