Truth is the First Casualty of War
A New Paradigm is Required to Avert Catastrophe
(Feb. 4, 2022)—On February 3, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Ned Price told NPR that Russia is planning to make “A video with graphic scenes of false explosions—depicting corpses, crisis actors pretending to be mourners, and images of destroyed locations or military equipment” in order to justify an imminent invasion of Ukraine. Already widely discredited, this narrative could be used to provide cover for an actual NATO attack on Russian forces, which would then be called “fake.” Could the world survive the aftermath?
While Biden is sending 3,000 American troops to Eastern Europe, the United States already has 4,000 troops in Eastern Europe as part of a NATO deployment of 10,000. Do you think even 40 or 50,000 ground troops can win a war with Russia? If war is intended, the only option for the United States and NATO is the nuclear one, which has been already called for by the deranged U.S. Senator Roger Wicker a few weeks ago. Notably, not one member of the U.S. Senate, including my opponent Chuck Schumer, has refuted this insanity.
Meanwhile, the British are hinting that Ukraine’s President Zelensky may have to go, as despite the CIA’s robust warnings, he is not convinced that a Russian invasion of Ukraine is imminent. Perhaps he doesn’t recognize the benefit of his nation being reduced to rubble by a war between superpowers.
President Putin, unlike his British and American counterparts, has been very clear about what is at stake: placement of nuclear weapons on the border of Russia effectively eliminates the deterrent of a second strike option, and greatly increases the risk of nuclear war, including by mistake, as the response time for Russia in the event of a real or perceived nuclear attack would be reduced to less than 7 minutes.
In 1962, President Kennedy was willing to risk war with the Soviet Union in order to ensure that nuclear missiles were not placed in Cuba, which is significantly further from the border of the United States than Ukraine is from Russia. Therefore, it really should not be hard for Americans to understand the legitimate security concerns that Russia would have about Ukraine joining NATO.
In 1990, then-Secretary of State James Baker III assured Gorbachev that in exchange for the peaceful reunification of Germany, NATO would “not move one inch to the east” of the German border. Since then, NATO has added 14 nations and moved 1,000 km farther east. It is therefore understandable that Russia wants written, legally binding agreements from NATO and the United States.
However, as the world should have learned from World War II, treaties and agreements do not necessarily prevent war. What is urgently required is for the United States to break from the perverse trajectory we have been on ever since the death of President Roosevelt at the end of World War II. Roosevelt had warned that if “British colonial methods” were allowed to prevail, and nations were kept oppressed and impoverished, that we would soon see another major war.
The late American statesman Lyndon LaRouche, a World War II veteran whose centennial we observe this year, had warned presciently when Hillary Clinton was giggling over the brutal assassination of Libya’s leader Muammar Gaddafi, that the Libya war was part of a trajectory leading to war with Russia, and even China. Now we are there.
Lyndon LaRouche’s widow and founder of the Schiller Institute, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, has advanced an alternative to this path toward annihilation. The fulcrum is the fate of the people of Afghanistan, who are currently condemned to a tortuous death of starvation and disease because of sanctions and the decision by the United States and European banks to freeze their funds in the wake of the abrupt exit by the United States. Right now, over 7 million children are starving, with one million near death.
The United States, Russia and China could combine to lead an effort involving the surrounding nations, to not only supply desperately needed humanitarian aid, but to build a fully operational modern healthcare system in that war-ravaged nation. This would require new infrastructure to deliver water and electricity along with modern transportation systems. Obviously, the Taliban would have to be in the center of the negotiations, but they have already opened talks with many of these nations, and have nothing to gain through the suffering of their people.
This initiative, called by Zepp-LaRouche “Operation Ibn Sina (Avicenna)” after the brilliant Islamic scholar and physician born in this region over 1200 years ago, is the opportunity to build trust between the major powers, now perilously close to war, while preventing the imminent death by starvation of as many as 23 million people.
By embracing “Operation Ibn Sina,” the United States could avert nuclear war, and save the lives of millions in Afghanistan. Action is urgently needed now. As poets have understood better than politicians, universal law dictates that the fate of these starving children is likely to become your own, sooner than you might imagine.