STRATEGIC ALERT NEWSLETTER
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| | | Global NATO, in the name of an illusory “rules-based order”, has brought us to a situation, where the danger of a nuclear war is not only no longer unthinkable, but is openly discussed. Using proxies such as Ukraine and Israel, the level of disregard for human life and human rights displayed by Western leaders is shocking.
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There are, however, voices warning of the danger. Senior British journalist Simon Jenkins wrote in The Guardian on March 5 that NATO’s strategy in Ukraine has “lost all coherence”, which means that “This is the moment when such wars run out of control”. He concludes that "The crass ineptitude of a quarter of a century of western military interventions should have taught us some lessons. Apparently not.”
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Pope Francis, for his part, in an interview with the Swiss television RTS, called on the Ukrainians to recognize that they cannot win the war and to “have the courage” to raise the white flag and negotiate an end to the conflict. Even his very measured call for sanity to prevail set off a storm of protests in the West, although there are indications in this direction (cf. below).
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In Gaza, the immediate danger is far more dramatic, where the first cases of children starving to death have been reported, while thousands of others face the same fate. The Biden Administration has staged a Hollywood-like spectacle of delivering aid to the Palestinians through airlifts, and is now engaged in building piers to deliver food and medicine by sea, while politely asking the Netanyahu government to scale back the killing. But at the same time, the Administration has not only refused to stop weapons deliveries to Israel, it has also approved, without public notice, at least 100 weapons sales since the war against Gaza began on Oct. 7. That in addition to rejecting all calls for a ceasefire at the United Nations.
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The policy of the European Union has been no less hypocritical, on the contrary. Moreover, the supplies to be sent by sea will take several weeks, while the dying continues, and funding for the UN organization UNRWA has been suspended (cf. below).
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| What these governments should be doing is supporting an approach such as the Oasis Plan, which the Schiller Institute has proposed. This will be discussed in detail at the international conference on April 13, reported below. |
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| | | The following is excerpted from a release by the Schiller Institute on the conference (online and in person in New York City and Dresden, Germany) to be held on April 13, from 17:00 to 22:00 CEST.
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On February 18, The LaRouche Organization released a 14-minute video entitled, "The Oasis Plan: LaRouche's Solution for the Middle East."
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"The whole world is witness to the horrors being inflicted upon the Palestinian people, shared with us every day in video form," opens the video. "But the destruction continues, actively supported by the United States and a diminishing number of other countries. Humanity’s moral fitness to survive is being tested. The horror show must end, starting with an immediate, unconditional ceasefire." This must be accompanied by a massive flow of humanitarian assistance to Gaza, and work towards a political solution to the crisis, including the existence and full international recognition of a sovereign Palestinian state.
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"But without economic development," the video states, "without a viable and meaningful path of progress into the future, political agreements in themselves are unsustainable. The people of the region must know that their children will enjoy a better future, a better life. Peace through economic development is the only successful basis for a lasting, just peace in the region. This is what Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin came to realize — there is no purely military basis for peace or security; development is essential."
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How can the Israelis and Palestinians ever make peace after what has happened? Helga Zepp-LaRouche, the founder and international leader of the Schiller Institute, emphasizes that we cannot solve this conflict, or any conflict, by remaining on the level of the conflict. Using a concept from Nicholas of Cusa (1401–1464) called the coincidence of opposites, she urges us to rise above the level of despair, hatred and vengeance, to find a common interest in increasing the welfare of all the people through economic development of the region as a whole.
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We urgently need an inspiring vision of a future in which the Israelis and Palestinians can live side by side. "Peace through development" is the name of the concept Lyndon LaRouche (1922–2019) and his co-thinkers have proposed since 1975, and not only here, in the form of the Oasis Plan, but for the whole world in the form of the World Land-Bridge.
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The Oasis Plan focused primarily on addressing the greatest barrier to development in the region — the shortage of fresh water — through the construction of a network of desalination plants, ideally nuclear powered, that could turn the plentiful seawater into freshwater. And these plants would not only be on the Mediterranean coast; they would be built along two new canals: one connecting the Red Sea with the Dead Sea, and another connecting the Dead Sea to the Mediterranean.
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By cooperating to fight the desert, rather than each other, the people of the region will better be able to recognize the humanity in each other, the common capability of human beings to discover principles of nature and to transform our relationship to the environment around us.
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There are no human animals.
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The Oasis Plan is not only for Israel and Palestine, and the neighboring countries, but the whole Southwest Asia region, including war-torn Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen. And it will only come about by rejecting geopolitics, and starting to build a new paradigm of international relations – a new security and development architecture.
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Many speak about the day after. But the only way to get there is to give people hope right now.
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| | | Michael Fakhri, UN Special Rapporteur for the Right To Food, described the horrendous situation on the ground to Anadolu Agency on March 7: “When the war broke out, we saw people go hungry in unprecedented ways. We have never seen any community made to go hungry so quickly. Now what we are seeing is famine. Children are dying from malnutrition, and dehydration.” He expects the speed of deaths to increase significantly: “I cannot imagine a more horrific situation.”
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At least 20 people have died from malnutrition and dehydration at two hospitals in the north of Gaza, most of them children, reported AP, as people are forced to eat grass and animal fodder in places where Israel has completely cut off food supplies. Also in the south, 16 premature babies have died of malnutrition-related causes in the last five weeks. “The child deaths we feared are here,” according to Adele Khodr, UNICEF’s Middle East chief.
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As for the recent airdrops of aid, Fakhri pointed out that they “are very expensive, and not very effective. In fact, sometimes airdrops can cause a lot of chaos and problems as the food is scattered everywhere, with no systemic way of distributing the food.” He proposed that the United States and other countries providing the airdrops should instead “focus on ensuring an immediate ceasefire by putting pressure on Israel to allow humanitarian aid to enter unfettered and to ensure a permanent ceasefire.”
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| Meanwhile, the one UN Agency which is capable of managing and distributing assistance on the scale required is UNRWA, whose director Philippe Lazzarini was invited to a plenary briefing of the UN general assembly on March 4. He stated bluntly that the agency is “at the breaking point” and in danger of “imminent collapse”, due to the decision by 16 developed countries to suspend all funding. That decision was made after the Israeli government charged a few staff members of the UNRWA of collaborating with Hamas terrorists – and before the slightest investigation was carried out on the accusations. For Lazzarini, Benjamin Netanyahu’s intention is to shut down the UN agency completely, in order to control all operations in Gaza. |
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| | | European elites have plunged headlong into a Schachtian economic mode, but have not decided yet who their "Hjalmar Schacht" will be, Ursula von der Leyen or Mario Draghi. At its congress in Bucharest on March 7, the European People's Party made Ursula von der Leyen its candidate for a second mandate as chairman of the European Commission. However, nearly one out of five delegates did not vote for her. Soon after, opposition to von der Leyen's candidacy emerged from national sections of the EPP, as well as its allies in the European Parliament.
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EU Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton from France, as well as German Finance Minister Christian Lindner both criticized the choice. From Italy, the more conservative wing of Forza Italia, a member of the EPP, also voiced its opposition.
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Thierry Breton, who is considered to be very close to French President Emmanuel Macron, stated: "Despite her qualities, Ursula von der Leyen has been put in minority by her own party. The real question now is whether it is possible to entrust again the management of Europe to the EPP for 5 more years, that makes 25 consecutive years. The EPP itself seem not to believe in her candidacy."
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On March 6, Lindner told Handelsblatt: "It is Ursula von der Leyen's legacy, that we have regulation instead of innovation. We need to do a U-turn. Von der Leyen's policy jeopardizes our competitiveness and our economic prosperity."
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In Italy, Senate Vice President Licia Ronzulli, from the Forza Italia Party, said: "The EPP chose to confirm the name of Ursula von der Leyen. Maybe they could dare more and make a more courageous step."
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From the standpoint of the European elites there are not many alternative figures to UdvL, or rather, for the moment there is only one, who has already entered the race: former ECB chairman Mario Draghi. In fact, over the past few months, there has been a concerted effort from the top to build for Draghi an image that would best fit the role of a new Hjalmar Schacht. Last September, he was appointed head of a task force to investigate and present solutions to the EU loss of "competitiveness", which put him in a unique position to dictate future economic policies.
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As we reported two weeks ago, Draghi presented his prescriptions to the EU Council and the European Parliament. The EU, according to him, needs to invest €500 billion yearly in the "green transition", in addition to increasing defense spending and "productive investments" (see SAS 9/24). In order to leave a semblance of democratic choice, he said that EU leaders must decide how to finance it, either with fiscal measures or with Eurobonds.
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| However, it is no secret that Draghi's preference is Eurobonds, i.e., the emission of European common debt. His masters have made it explicit. In early January, Thierry Breton – the same one who has rejected a second mandate for von der Leyen – proposed a €100 billion fund for defense spending, financed through Eurobonds. On March 4, presenting his proposal to the media, he said "We need to change the paradigm and move into war economy mode". He stressed that "a number of heads of state are starting to talk about it very clearly: it is an idea proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron and Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, also supported by Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo.” |
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| | | Nearly half a century ago, Lyndon LaRouche warned Western leaders against endorsing Schachtian economics, as it leads to genocide . In a May 15, 1976 article entitled “Why Ignorant Bankers Believe Schacht Succeeded”, LaRouche explained the significance of the economic policies of Hjalmar Schacht, Hitler’s Economics Minister and central banker until 1939, who was put into those positions by his British banker sponsors:
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"Every competent political analyst knows (...) that it was Schacht’s monetary policies which directly and inevitably caused the emergence of Nazi criminal practices in the occupied territories and the slave-labor death camp system…. The entire structure of pre-World War II imperialist debt rested upon the foundation of the reparations debt imposed upon Weimar Germany by the victorious World War I Allied Powers. From 1923 through 1928, through combined debt-payments rescheduling and U.S. credits, Weimar enjoyed a modest recovery. As a result of the 1928-1929 speculative crises and inevitable crash, the capacity of the U.S. economy to issue further credit for support of world trade was curtailed, and the world economy began a chain reaction collapse leading directly and inevitably into the consequences of 1931 and of the 1932-1934 period….
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"The result, a kind of cannibalistic turning-inward of inflation against the body of the affected economy … brought the Nazi German economy to the point of internal crisis in 1936…. Without German military conquests, Schacht’s policy would have brought about the immediate collapse of the German economy sometime shortly after 1936.”
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LaRouche further elaborated this point in a March 4, 1980 article:
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"For most of the German economy, Schacht and Hitler imposed the kind of austerity … wiped out independent German business en masse, maintaining only a war-economy prosperity among the Nazi Germany equivalent of the ‘Fortune 500.’ Schacht controlled Germany’s continuing inflation by increasing the cuts in real income of the German population at rates corresponding to or exceeding the continuing rate of inflation…. It was this looting policy which impelled Hitler’s regime to cut the proportion of the population to be supported through, first, euthanasia against the aged and seriously ill and, later, the ‘useless eaters’ policy of more generalized genocide.”
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With that in mind, consider the significance of the latest news reports from Germany that document the accelerating collapse of the entire German industrial economy. In January, the manufacturing sector as a whole collapsed by 6.3% over a year earlier. The electrical equipment sub-sector plummeted by 33%; transportation equipment fell by 27%; capital goods dropped by 13%. The only thing that is growing is the arms production sector of the economy.
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| So, if your concern is to prevent a return to the policies of Hitler, with the attendant danger of nuclear war, you have to stop the Schachtian policies which the City of London and Wall Street are hell-bent on imposing -- again. That is why a new international security and development architecture is required. |
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| | | The German government has proposed a special bill designed to open the door to massive state funding of activities targeting so-called “enemies of democracy”. More specifically, it would increase funds for the "Living Democracy" program (Demokratie Leben) of the Ministry for Family Affairs to some €200 million annually, to be allocated to NGOs involved in promoting initiatives in schools and neighborhood communities against racism, discrimination, etc. The range of activities financed under this program is already very broad, as it targets those who criticize gender policies or propagate extreme right-wing views, and it has mainly benefited NGOs in leftist and green milieus.
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The government hopes to get the bill passed by the Bundestag before the summer break, but it has come under massive criticism not only from the opposition (Christian Democrats and Alternative for Germany), but also from one of the government coalition partners, the Free Democrats. Indeed, the vice chairman of the latter, Wolfgang Kubicki, is among the fiercest critics of the text. He stated that "there will be no so-called democracy promotion law that provides for institutional funding of associations and organizations that call themselves so-called non-governmental organizations... The democratic constitutional state does not have the task of ensuring social diversity. Anyone who thinks they can decide on social diversity with the help of a law does not have the protection of democracy in mind, but their own power politics."
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The exact content of the new measures is not known, but domestic security service head Thomas Haldenwang said that more attention will be given to "violence-prone language," hinting at possible persecution of free speech. In a classic example of the Orwellian approach, it looks like an attempt to promote democracy by outlawing an open debate of ideas and silencing the opposition.
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| Faced with massive criticism, the German government will likely try to push through the draft bill by surfing on the wave of the large demonstrations urging action "against the right" that have been organized in the past weeks in German cities by a coalition of Greens, leftists, churches and labor unions. |
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| | | The British government has openly criticized German Chancellor Scholz for refusing to deliver the Taurus cruise missile to Ukraine, which lead to a warning by German Colonel Ralph Thiele (ret.), chairman of the Political-Military Society, Chairman of EuroDefense Germany, and CEO of StratByrd Consulting. In an interview with NTV, he pointed out that “The British are the drivers of a belligerent solution to the problem, i.e., to bring the Russians to their knees through war … we should not allow ourselves to be driven by the British.”
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In an interview with Focus Online published on March 2, Col. Thiele again turned the spotlight on the British, saying that the UK is a prime suspect in the wiretapped discussion on the Taurus among high-level German officers (cf. SAS 10/24). In terms of who might have intercepted and circulated the discussion, Focus quotes Thiele as saying that “basically, there are two ‘suspects’”. One, the article continues, is the Western states, that might want to undermine Chancellor Scholz’s cautious approach. “Since hybrid warfare - in which the British, for example, are also masters - is preferably conducted via third parties, nothing is as it seems at first.”
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| On the other hand, the British have an ally in German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. She is also opposed to the Chancellor’s position on the Taurus. On the Caren Miosga TV show March 10, she indicated she was in favor of direct delivery of the cruise missile to Kyiv, in addition to supporting the British proposal for a “ring exchange”, under which the Taurus would be given to the U.K., which then would supply Ukraine with British Storm Shadow missiles. |
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| | | Although NATO’s blustering Secretary General Stoltenberg won’t yet admit it publicly, the impossibility for Ukraine to defeat Russia at this point is evident to everyone involved. In that light, there are indications that Western “elites” are looking for a way out, but one which will keep the military-financial machine turning in high gear, and will pursue the attacks on Russia by other means. (For example, the U.S. embassy in Moscow has recently put out a travel warning for Americans on the danger of “extremist” attacks throughout Russia.) That makes the risk of a flight forward all the much greater.
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In the United States, the Republicans in Congress are still blocking extra funds for Kyiv, and are unlikely to change their policy in a key election year, while President Biden is extremely weak and faces heavy opposition even among the Democrats for his permanent war policy. That may be one of the factors that led to the resignation of Victoria Nuland, Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, an unbridled Russophobe who has handled Washington’s disastrous Ukraine policy since before the uprising on the Maidan in 2014.
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And then, we have the Wall Street Journal, which revealed elements of the peace deal that Moscow and Kyiv had worked out in April 2022, which President Zelenskyy was prevented from signing after the heavy-handed intervention of the British (among others), delivered in an emergency trip to Kyiv by then Prime Minister Boris Johnson. The details published show that the agreement was more favorable for Ukraine than what it can claim today, although the WSJ article presents it as “punitive” for Ukraine.
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| Finally, we note the growing opposition within Ukraine that President Zelenskyy has to deal with, coming from all sides. After all, hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians have been killed, and the country has been reduced to handouts from NATO. In any case, General Zaluzhnyy, Zelenskyy’s main political rival and Ukraine’s commander-in-chief until he was fired a few weeks ago, has just been named ambassador to the United Kingdom. Moreover, the Foreign Ministry spokesman just resigned, and it’s rumored that his boss, Dmytro Kuleba, could be the next to go. |
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| | | The March 2024 “Two Sessions” of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress, and its advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, exhibited a strong sense of confidence in the country’s ability to complete its policy of “modernization” in spite of all the obstacles that are being thrown up against it by the United States and other Western countries.
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On the opening day of the conference, Prime Minister Li Qiang read the Government Work Report, which sums up the past year and lays out the framework for the year to come. The targets for 2024 include achieving a growth rate of around 5%, creating 12 million new jobs, and increasing the Consumer Price Index by circa 3%.
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A new watch word of the deliberations was the concept of creating “new high-quality productive forces”. This notion involves lifting the economy to a new platform of development by raising the level of technology throughout. In order to fund the endeavor, the government will provide “ultra-long bonds” for targeted funding of appropriate high-technology projects, as well as other “special purpose bonds” for the same purpose. This is not some new form of “quantitative easing”, but rather a concerted effort to promote science and technology innovation, integrated urban-rural development, high-quality population development, and food and energy security. The focus here is to encourage industry as well as consumers to replace worn and aging equipment or appliances in order to upgrade the very fabric of China’s industry.
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It was also announced that government funds for Research & Development would increase this year by 10%, a significant jump from previous years. In addition, local and provincial governments as well as enterprises, both state-owned and privately owned, are encouraged to increase their R&D spending. This aims to allow the production domestically of those high-tech goods which the West is trying to prevent China from purchasing abroad.
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While Foreign Minister Wang Yi, who gave a press conference on the sidelines of the Two Sessions on March 6, made clear that China would adhere to the agreements made at last year’s summit between President Xi and President Biden, he also noted that the U.S. continued to exert pressure “to suppress China” , lengthening its sanctions list, and “reaching bewildering levels of unfathomable absurdity”.
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Various speakers at the Congress, including Wang, indicated that China welcomed foreign investment, and that it was instituting the necessary reforms to create a “level playing field” for all participants, domestic as well as foreign. New areas will be opened up for investment by foreign companies in the service and financial industries.
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| On foreign policy, the Chinese leadership intends to continue to organize for negotiated settlements in both Ukraine and Gaza. |
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