STRATEGIC ALERT NEWSLETTER
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| | | The priority of the moment is to mobilize all possible forces to stop the danger of an escalation of the conflict between Russia and NATO into a third world war, as the Doomsday Clock puts us at 90 seconds to Armageddon. Concomitantly, comes the necessity of eliminating the reasons for the war drive against both Russia and China, namely the collapse of the Western “rules-based order”, otherwise called the “unipolar world”.
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Such was the theme of the deliberations at the Schiller Institute online conference of Feb. 4. As Helga Zepp-LaRouche pointed out in her keynote address, the aim of this event and of many other activities of the SI is “to create a world movement of world citizens, who, faced with the biggest crisis in the history of the human species, work together all over the world in order to establish a new paradigm of cooperation instead of confrontation, a new paradigm in international relations, that allows for the life and happiness of every human being on the planet.
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“We must end the war through negotiations immediately, which is why we are organizing worldwide support for the initiative of Pope Francis to offer the venue of the Vatican for negotiations without preconditions. Fortunately, President Lula of Brazil is now forming a peace club of nations of the Global South, who all support the idea of ending the war through diplomacy, and who have clearly refused to be pulled into the geopolitical confrontation between the U.S. and Russia and China (cf. below)....
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“The present crisis is not about Ukraine, it is about the attempt to reconquer control over a unipolar world at a moment, when that possibility has irrevocably vanished. And it is about the control of the narrative of who is the instigator of this war of aggression. Naturally, the Western mainstream media want us to believe that Russia is the sole culprit in this ‘unprovoked war of aggression’ and everybody who claims that this war has a prehistory dating back at least to 1991, is automatically labeled a ‘Putin-agent’. Every person who is not a moron and has lived consciously through the last three-plus decades, must reject this as an insult to his or her intelligence.”
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This crisis has accelerated the moves in the non-Western world to come together and demand a new security and economic development architecture, as was confirmed by the speakers at the conference from Ibero-America, Asia and Africa, including former President of Guyana Donald Ramotar. (The interventions on Africa will be reported next week.)
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In the United States and Europe, popular opposition to the war is also growing, although far too slowly, while more and more former military and intelligence figures, including in the U.S., are demanding that their governments recognize the failure of NATO’s war games and opt for immediate diplomatic negotiations (cf. SAS 4, 5/23).
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| | | An unprecedented rally will take place in Washington on Feb. 19 to protest NATO’s war drive under the banner “Rage Against the War Machine”. Unprecedented, as it’s organized by a very broad-based right-left coalition, bringing together people from the entire political spectrum, who are opposed to war. Sister rallies will also be held in many other U.S. cities, followed by many in Europe one week later.
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Representatives of the two principal sponsors, the People’s Party and the Libertarian Party, participated in Panel I of the Feb. 4 Schiller Institute conference (cf. above), together with the SI’s Diane Sare, who will speak at the Washington rally. Other speakers include Tulsi Gabbard, Ron Paul, Judge Napolitano, Dennis Kucinch, Max Blumenthal, and Jill Stein.
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The ten demands of the organizers are clear-cut: “Not one more penny for war in Ukraine, Negotiate Peace, Stop the war inflation, Disband NATO, Global nuclear de-escalation, Abolish the CIA and the Military-Industrial Deep State, Slash the Pentagon budget, Abolish war and empire, Restore civil liberties, Free Julian Assange.”
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Angela McArdle, chair of the Libertarian National Committee, explained to the Schiller Institute conference that “Our coalition spans a lot of different political parties and ideologies because no matter where we come from, we all feel compelled to speak out against this war on behalf of humanity. Nuclear war affects everyone; peace is for everyone. Even though we might all have a different idea about economics, or how we want to get to wherever we’re going, from a values perspective we all want a future world that is free of nuclear war. We want a safe, prosperous future for our families, for our friends, and for the people who come after us. We don’t want to live in the shadow of nuclear winter, we want to see humanity thrive. That’s why we’ve been able to set aside some of our other differences and come together. And quite honestly, it’s been a wonderful experience. I think that we need to have things like this happen a lot more often, because it really helps us to push past the tribalism that holds us back in so many ways that’s just so unnecessary.... And believe it or not, there are a lot of areas we all agree on. This is one of them.”
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The national chair of the People’s Party Nick Brana, after presenting the demands of the demonstrators, added: “I’m very proud that we’ve been able to come together, a party perceived as being on the right -- the Libertarian Party; and a party perceived as being on the left - the People’s Party. These... are not left-right issues. At the People’s Party, we really see that left-right framework as an outdated framework that is used as part of the ideological control matrix to keep people from actually talking to each other”, and from looking at “who is really profiting from the war”.
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| Both Angela McArdle and Nick Brana expressed their gratitude to the Schiller Institute for its unique role in bringing the big strategic picture into the mobilization for a viable anti-war movement in the United States. Indeed, coalitions built on principled issues, or the notion of “coincidence of the opposites”, have always been encouraged by the SI. |
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| | | The recent double earthquake in southern Turkiye and northwestern Syria is a terrible disaster which is generating a wave of emotion and empathy from around the world. The situation will likely worsen due to forecast weather of extremely low temperatures throughout the region, resulting in the collapse of weakened buildings due to the cold and frost, not to mention the immediate consequences to children, women and men who have lost everything.
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Time is of the essence. We welcome an international response; in fact there are several countries that have already offered their assistance to the populations affected by the earthquakes. This being said, it is difficult to accept that the same disaster has a very different human impact on either side of the borders of Turkiye and Syria. On the Syrian side, this tragedy is affecting a population that has been hard hit by years of war and sanctions imposed by the United States with other nations.
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This situation confronts us, as Western nations, with our responsibility to uphold the values we claim to embody. Are we going to continue to apply the measures that we very well know have led to the unimaginable suffering, misfortune and death of innocent people? Or are we going to finally make the decision to lift these criminal sanctions? Don’t we know, after so many years of use, that the weapon of sanctions only hurts the people?
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| It is time for Western leaders to regain a minimum of moral fiber, by taking this tragedy as the opportunity to definitively lift all sanctions against Syria and, from then on, to organize the reconstruction of the country with those who are determined to contribute to it. |
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| | | It took less than one year, in September 2019, for the Federal Reserve to stop Quantitative Tightening and reverse to Quantitative Easing, because the whole house of cards was coming down. The Fed was forced to take over the overnight (repo) market. At that point, however, liquidity-generated hyperinflation could no longer be contained within the confines of financial asset values, and began to spill over into the physical economy, with commodity speculation. As we have often documented, current consumer price inflation was not provoked by the post-Covid recovery, or by the Ukraine war, but rather by the multiplier effect of financial derivatives on imbalances created by the insane “climate policies” of the West. Thus, conventional anti-inflationary policies won't work. Only a bankruptcy reorganization of the system could do the job.
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The Fed shifted back to monetary tightening about one year ago, and the ECB about six months ago. This has opened deep cracks in the bankrupt financial system. Consider the strange market response to the recent central bank moves. The Fed and the ECB announced interest rate hikes of 25 and 50 basis points, while ECB President Christine Lagarde indicated a further half point rise to come in March. Yet stocks and bonds soared after these announcements.
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The Financial Times interpreted the development as meaning that “investors bet that rates are close to peak”. However, that might understate the disconnect between the hawkish central bank language and the behavior of investors. Among financial traders, it is received wisdom that the big crash is coming, and sooner than expected. Central banks will be forced to turn back to liquidity injections on a larger scale than ever before, in an attempt to bail out the system.
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| In this situation, the EU’s insistence on its mix of “green” policies and sanctions can only be characterized as sheer insanity. Due to the drop in industrial and household consumption and a mild winter so far, natural gas prices have dropped to below €60/MWh in Europe (TTF Future). This is still twice the average price in 2021, and three times that in 2019, and cannot be sustained by producers, households and economic players in general. Furthermore, nobody knows what will happen on Feb. 20, when ICE opens the alternative gas market in London to bypass the EU price cap. Ergo, the energy crisis is not over and the de-industrialization threat has not vanished. |
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| | | France and the United Kingdom have been hit with huge demonstrations and strikes since the New Year, to protest the heightened austerity measures taken as a result of the shift toward a war economy in all of Europe. Similar protests are breaking out in Denmark and Germany.
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A steadily growing movement in France, supported by two-thirds of the population according to polls, is more immediately directed against the “pension reform” which President Emmanuel Macron and the government insist on imposing (cf. SAS 3/23). While demanding that Frenchmen work longer before being entitled to full pension benefits, and pay skyrocketing prices for energy, Emmanuel Macron announced on Jan. 20 that military spending would be increased by over one third in the next few years. Thus, by 2030, France's military budget will have doubled since he took power in 2017, he added proudly.
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Over two million people joined the protests in one form or another on Jan. 31 (2.8 million, according to the CGT trade union), including 500,000 in Paris alone and tens of thousands in dozens of medium-sized cities. The actions severely disrupted transportation, with three-quarters of trains outside Paris canceled. According to the CGT trade union, at least 75% of workers were on strike at the big TotalEnergies oil refineries and fuel depots, and power plants had to cut back production due to the number of workers on strike at the main electricity company, EDF. And one of the main teachers’ unions reports that some 55% of secondary school teachers failed to report to work. A publication of the CGT, Unité, posted an article Jan. 30 blasting the delivery of additional weapons to Ukraine by NATO countries. The struggle for peace in Ukraine, and against military escalation, it states, “is inseparable from our struggles, in France, for social progress”.
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In the U.K., the new government of Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has only just begun really to increase military spending, after raising taxes, while working households have faced double-digit inflation and fuel shortages. After the House of Commons passed “minimum service” legislation Jan. 30, intended to block strikes by compelling employees to scab on their unions, more than half a million workers walked off the job (300,000 teachers, joined by 100,000 civil servants, 100,000 train and bus drivers, 70,000 university workers, etc.). Ambulance drivers and nurses have been striking at intervals for months, and plan to continue the movement. The Parliamentary Undersecretary of State for Enterprises and Markets Kevin Hollinrake, in arguing against the planned strikes, explained on Jan. 30 that an “inflation-matching pay increase of 11% for all public sector workers would cost £28 billion”.
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That figure should be put into perspective. Former Prime Minister Boris Johnson increased military spending by £24 billion in three years as of 2019, and the current government proposes to raise it by £157 billion more from 2023-2030, an average annual increase of £20 billion or 40%. That is very far above the 11% “inflation-matching pay increase”, which Hollinrake found so impossible.
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| For comparison, the military budget of the United States is gargantuesque, at $847 billion a year, against $772 billion for all non-defense discretionary spending combined! |
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| | | The reality behind the frantic efforts of German Economy Minister Robert Habeck to find alternate suppliers for Russian gas, is that they have flopped. The prospective volumes of LNG that are supposed to come from the Gulf States, Ibero-America and the United States/Canada will not suffice to fill the gap created by the sanctions against Russia.
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Germany’s mainstream media, nonetheless, continue to report the government’s announcements of alternate gas supplies to come soon to avoid alarming the citizens. But that has not stopped the Federal Net Agency from calling on the same citizens to reduce energy consumption even more – albeit without specifying how deep a cut to expect.
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Consumption of gas in the industrial sector already dropped by 15% in 2022, and in private households by 12%. The decline was considerably more in many small and medium-sized companies, that were not able to afford the inflated energy costs or could not find a supplier who would sign a contract with them. The general supply situation has worsened since Jan. 1, after the three remaining nuclear power plants were taken off the grid on Dec. 31, with the uncertain option of being kept on reserve for emergencies until April 15. That, in itself, has reduced by 6% the national energy mix that was still available in 2022.
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In this volatile situation, expert sources warn that Germany will lack no less than 15 billion cubic meters of gas next winter, a gap that cannot be filled by LNG. According to calculations by the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies, Germany faces a supply gap of around 30 bcm of gas later this year, and the so-called Floating Storage and Regasification Units (FSRUs), which are currently being installed with much fanfare in a number of German ports to allow the import of LNG, will be able to produce only less than half of this volume by the end of 2023. But Berlin stubbornly sticks to its policy of cutting gas consumption in industry and private households, rather than deciding to import sufficient volumes of gas from the place where these exist –namely Russia. That would, of course, entail the commitment to help repair the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
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| In that context, we note that the Times of London reported on Feb. 1 that preliminary investigations into the pipeline sabotage have not yielded a single piece of evidence that Russia is to blame. On the contrary, European and German experts would not rule out that a western agency carried out the sabotage... |
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| | | A stream of Republican Congressmen took to television news and podcasts on Monday to lavish praise on the U.S. military for saving America, by shooting down a Chinese "spy satellite". At the same time, they pounded on President Biden for not acting sooner to protect Americans from what one called "a hostile foreign intrusion". The "spy ship", which the Chinese described as an "airship for civilian use", that is, a "weather balloon" carried over U.S. territory accidentally by strong winds, had first been reported on Feb. 1, and then shot down three days later.
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Republicans reportedly are drafting a resolution condemning the President for not ordering the destruction of the balloon sooner. The head of their group in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, declared that Biden let China "make a mockery of U.S. air space", while Marco Rubio, the lead Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said it was a "message" to the world sent by Beijing that they no longer see the U.S. as "a mega-power”, but as "a once-great superpower that's hollowed out, it's in decline".
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Missing in all this verbal onslaught is any confirmation that this was indeed a "spy balloon" (which the U.S. intelligence community is now supposed to prove from the debris captured in the Atlantic). This is certainly not the first time that a civilian weather balloon, captured by strong winds, has strayed off path. The hysteria whipped up must be seen in the context of a massive gear-up for war with China.
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This context includes Air Force General Minihan's memo telling those airmen under his command to prepare for war with China, which he said "his gut" tells him will occur by 2025; as well as the publication of a RAND Corporation report last month, Avoiding a Long War: U.S. Policy and the Trajectory of the Russia-Ukraine Conflict. The authors express skepticism that there will be a positive outcome for NATO in Ukraine, warning that continuing the escalation includes the risk of nuclear war. But they also conclude that a drawn-out struggle for Ukraine detracts from the preparation needed to contain China, asserting what many analysts have said, which is that the U.S. at present is not prepared for a two-front war -- against Russia in Ukraine and China in the Indo-Pacific. RAND often previews the direction of future military policy.
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| The incident also provided a pretext for the postponement of Secretary of State Blinken's trip to Beijing for a meeting with top Chinese officials, which was scheduled as part of an effort to reopen talks between the two nations. While Republican neocons are using this to attack Joe Biden, it fits the bipartisan war buildup policy, of defining both Russia and China as adversaries that must be contained through the creation of "Global NATO". |
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| | | At a Jan. 30 joint press conference with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz in Brasilia, Brazilian President Lula da Silva proposed that a group of nations come together to help Russia and Ukraine find a path towards peace. He said he had discussed the issue both with Scholz and with French President Emmanuel Macron, and intended to discuss it with others.
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We need “a club of people who want to achieve peace on the planet”, he said. A group of countries, could be formed that “sit down at the table with Ukraine and Russia to try to find peace, and reach an end to the war.” He specified that “Brazil is ready to make a contribution. I believe China can make an important contribution. I think India can play an important role. I think Indonesia can play an important role… What we have to do is form a group strong enough to be respected at a negotiating table—and sit down with both sides.”
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The Brazilian President’s remarks were undoubtedly not appreciated by the German Chancellor, since he did not hold Russia solely responsible for the war, but called for more information to determine the actual reason for the war, recalling that the war in Iraq had been based on lies. Moreover, Lula refused Scholz’ request to send ammunition to Ukraine for the German Leopard tanks to be supplied, saying “Brazil doesn’t want any particpation in this war – not even indirectly”.(In another blow to Olaf Scholz’s mission in South America, Brazil will not join his “climate club”, preferring to organize a “peace club”.)
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| In commenting President Lula’s proposal on Feb. 1, Helga Zepp-LaRouche expressed her great hope that all countries and forces such as the Vatican, that are fighting for a peaceful solution will come together. “There should not be a competition among them”, but all the initiatives -- of Pope Francis, of President Lula, and of President Erdoğan in Turkiye -- “should all be lasered into one effort, to try to stop this war, because it is becoming absolutely horrible. The Ukrainians are being slaughtered!” |
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| | | Whoever wrote the speech the Pope gave to the authorities, civil society and diplomatic representatives in Kinshasa on Jan. 31, delivered a little poetic jewel. Francis used the image of diamonds to both address the potential wealth of the country, and expose foreign looting of its resources. He also compared the many qualities of diamonds to those of human beings, celebrating the latter’s unique value, which surpasses all natural wealth and other living matter. He attacked the depredations by foreign interests in the Democratic Republic of Congo (D.R.C.): “Hands off the Democratic Republic of the Congo! Hands off Africa! Stop choking Africa: It is not a mine to be stripped or a terrain to be plundered”.
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His attack has been understood as support for D.R.C. President Félix Tshisekedi and his allies in the East African Community, against Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who protects foreign-run mining operations in eastern Congo.
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While “many have offered Africa help in the effort to combat climate change and the coronavirus”, the Pope noted, cooperation needs allow effective intervention “without imposing external models that are more useful to those who help than to who are helped”.
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One such external model is the pseudo-environmentalist opposition to the Transaqua project for water transfer from the Congo basin to the Chad basin, which the Congo government has adopted under external pressure. In reporting about the state of the project on Feb. 1, CGTN correctly explained that it “ would involve 12 countries working together to build a 2400 km long canal to move about 100 billion cubic millions of water from the every year... The canal was also intended to generate hydro-electricity at several points along its length. It was also seen as a solution to its security crisis caused by the Boko Haram insurgency. The project would help reduce conflicts over water and instability in the Lake Chad region.” However, the D.R.C. “has opposed the project and a section of French scientists say the large scale project could cause irreversible environmental damage”.
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After being approved by all member countries of the Lake Chad Basin Commission in 2018, the project was stalled, but the Nigerian government recently took it up again and is seeking financing from the African Development Bank. However, the outgoing Water Resources Minister, Suleiman Adamu, told the Nigerian Guardian that the war in Ukraine has diverted the international community’s attention from matters of socio-economic development.
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| Indeed, we would add, the international community has committed over $100 billion to keep the killing going in Ukraine (Devex data), while, with the same amount of funding, two Transaquas could be built to save human lives in Africa! |
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