by: Harley Schlanger
The announcement that President Biden canceled his October 10-12 trip to Germany provided a third short term reprieve from making a decision to lift restrictions preventing Ukraine from firing U.S. and U.K. long-range missiles against targets inside Russia. Ukraine's "President" Zelensky has been insistently demanding that Biden give a green light for this drastic escalation against Russia. He has support for this provocative threat from the U.S. Secretary of State Blinken, British Foreign Secretary Lammy, and the usual gang of neocons from numerous Anglo-American think tanks and media. Also championing this course has been British Prime Minister Starmer, who had hoped to receive Biden's approval during a summit on September 13 in Washington, or on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly session on September 24.
On both occasions, those demanding an escalation were disappointed by Biden's refusal. Perhaps they believed that the third time would be a charm, and that Biden would acquiesce to pressure while attending the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at Ramstein Airbase on October 12. With the cancellation of the Ramstein meeting, their hopes have been pushed back to the next NATO Defense Minister's summit, on October 17.
Biden's hesitancy to meet their demands is reported to stem from an ongoing debate between military officials in the Pentagon and some in intelligence, versus the hard-core war hawks and Russophobes around Blinken and the Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines. The former appear to take Russian President Putin at his word, when he said that under Russia's revised nuclear doctrine, he would consider long-range strikes by non-nuclear nations to be an act of war by those aiding the attacks -- that is, the NATO members -- and that there would be severe consequences; while the utopians among the neocons argue that Putin is bluffing, and NATO must call his bluff. Some among the latter are under the delusion that the U.S. could win a nuclear war against Russia.
The latter grouping is propelled by a growing desperation, stemming from the recognition that Ukraine is not only losing the war, but the end is fast approaching. Even the normally pro-war {Financial Times} admitted there is a "mood shift" occurring in Washington and western capitals. Yet, thus far, this shift has not led to calls for negotiations to replace escalation.
The Threat of Nuclear War
The refusal of NATO officials thus far to seek a diplomatic pathway to end the war was a topic in the weekly dialogue "Global War or Universal Peace — Who Shall Decide?" with the chairwoman of the Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, on October 9. We are reaching the point, she said, which former German Bundeswehr Chief of Staff Gen. Harald Kujat (ret.) “had warned about one year ago: that NATO will come to the point of decision of either having a negotiated solution, one which will be accepted by Russia … or go for an escalation.
“I’m afraid,” she continued, “that we are sitting in the immediate vicinity of a decision to escalate which could lead, in the worst case, to a global nuclear war.”
This urgent warning was reiterated by Zepp-LaRouche in her statement opening the weekly Zoom call of the International Peace Coalition on October 11. She spoke of the wars in Ukraine and southwest Asia as "two powder kegs" which are increasing the threat of unleashing a nuclear war. A sobering confirmation of this was presented by former U.N. weapons inspector Scott Ritter, who spoke next. Ritter said, “We’ve never been closer to nuclear demise than we are today.” He pointed out that Iran’s nuclear technology capability means that it is “not a large technological leap to have a device ready for fissile material,” so that Iran could produce “a nuclear gun” in a very short period of time. Israel has nuclear weapons, which no one talks about. And above all, Iran is strategically aligned with fellow BRICS member Russia. If there is no intervention to end the insane drive from Israel to attack Iran, we may all soon be dead!
As this call as proceeding, Zelensky responded to the cancellation of Biden's visit with a frantic road trip to Rome, Paris and London, in an effort to breathe life into his dead-on-arrival "peace plan", combining the demand for more aid with an appeal to free Ukraine to fire missiles deep into Russia. His message included the now standard line of the Russophobic war hawks: If you don't help us now to defeat Russia, you will be next.
This unsubstantiated warning has dominated discussion among European leaders, who are fearful that the fight against Russia will be abandoned by the U.S. if Donald Trump wins the presidential election in November. The new foreign policy chief of the EU, Kaja Kallas from Estonia, and the new head of NATO, Mark Rutte, were selected as hard-liners who share European Commission President von der Leyen's paranoid view that Putin is preparing to send Russian troops to overrun Europe once Ukraine surrenders.
The Ultimate Target Is Iran
In her weekly webcast, Zepp-LaRouche then turned to the situation in Southwest Asia, where tensions have increased, as Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu is pounding Lebanon with the "Gaza treatment". In addition to the assassinations of leaders of Hezbollah, Israel's bombings, missile strikes and troops deployed into southern Lebanon have displaced more than 600,000 Lebanese out of a population of less than 6 million, and have killed more than 2,000, while flattening residential neighborhoods in Beirut.
As Lebanon is being set aflame, Netanyahu is threatening a retaliatory strike on Iran, targeting its oil industry and other vital infrastructure, including the possibility of hitting its nuclear program. Like Zelensky, with his hyper-manic push to rope Biden into his war with Russia, Netanyahu is hoping to convince Biden to join Israel in attacking Iran's nuclear facilities, or at least to provide more weapons, logistical support and financing for an Israeli attack. This strategy, known as the "Breakaway Ally Scenario", is attributed initially to Henry Kissinger, and was revived by neocons around Paul Wolfowitz, providing a justification for a U.S. attack on Iran to bailout Israel, which would initiate, but could not win a war against Iran on its own.
This would be truly “playing with fire,” Russia's Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned in an Oct. 7 interview with Newsweek. The Kremlin announced that President Putin would be meeting with Iran's President Pezeshkian on Friday, Oct. 11 in Turkmenistan, to sign a mutual security agreement. The two were scheduled to meet at the Kazan BRICS summit Oct. 22-24, but moved the meeting up in an attempt to pre-empt an Israel strike..
Biden and Netanyahu had their first discussion in recent weeks on Tuesday, attempting to repair the effect of leaks that the relationship has gone sour. A report released that same day shows that the Biden administration has given Israel nearly $23 billion since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, with no end in sight, as there is strong bipartisan support for Israeli genocide in the U.S. Congress.
Time for Citizens to Act
Zepp-LaRouche initiated the formation of an International Peace Coalition (IPC) more than a year ago to counter the neocon drive for Permanent War. During that time, leading representatives from more than forty nations have joined the weekly Zoom calls to coordinate action from all committed to peace, and build momentum to counter the imperial war drive coming from the City of London-Wall Street dominated TransAtlantic alliance.
In addressing the danger in this week's Schiller Institute webcast dialogue, of World War III going nuclear, she said, "I think what we in the Schiller Institute have been saying the whole time is that we need a stop to this; we need a complete change. People have to speak out that we are on the verge of World War III, and that we absolutely have to go in a different direction, by going in the direction of a new security and development architecture, which stops geopolitics and puts in its place the idea of cooperation. So, I think that is really what we are looking at."
The weekly IPC Zoom calls are open for participants to join every Friday at 17:00 hours CET/11:00 AM Eastern time. (Watch this week's call: One Solution to Stop Two Regional Crises from Leading to World War Three
