New ‘Cuba Missiles Crisis’ in Europe:
Are We Headed Toward
World War III?
by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
August 2008
| Mrs. Zepp-LaRouche is the founder of the Schiller Institute and the chairwoman of the Civil Rights Solidarity Movement (BüSo) in Germany. Her article has been translated from German and subheads added. |
Either there is an immediate halt to the imperial geopolitics-driven provocations against Russia—such as the attack on South Ossetia by the British puppet-regime in Georgia, and the U.S.-Polish agreement to station anti-ballistic missile defense systems and a U.S. base in Poland—or the strategic situation could very quickly escalate into a Third World War. Driven by the progressive meltdown of the world financial system, the British Empire faction’s drive to encircle Russia and China and force them to capitulate, is playing with fire—a dangerous game of Vabanque, which could result in the destruction of human civilization. This policy, British in origin and carried out with American help, includes a possible military strike against Iran—an option which is by no means “off the table.”
 Helga Zepp-LaRouche |
Considering the monstrous destruction and horror wrought by the two world wars of the 20th Century, it is truly unfathomable how little public courage our political leaders have shown in the face of this threat—a threat which only an imbecile could fail to recognize. I suppose it’s better than nothing, when one politician or another asserts that we shouldn’t break off relations with Russia because we still have common security interests, such as with regard to Iran. But, why hasn’t a single current or former minister or parliamentarian shown the courage to publicly denounce this strategy of confrontation against Russia and China, and to demand that Germany distance itself from it?
Dmitri Rogozin, the Russian Ambassador to NATO, summed it up when he responded to reporters in Brussels by asking: “Are you ready to risk your prosperity and your lives and the lives of your children for the sake of Saakashvili?” He might as well have referred to the latter by his nickname “Sorosvili,” since George Soros, and his business partner at the Quantum Fund hedge fund, Mark Malloch Brown—more recently Lord Malloch-Brown—have been funding every single member of the Georgian government, from the Cabinet level down to the lowest-ranking police officer, to the tune of millions, ever since the so-called Rose Revolution. Shouldn’t Germany’s BND foreign intelligence agency be capable of recognizing such an obvious operation by the British secret service? This ban on thinking had better be lifted soon, before World War III erupts.
The British Strategy
Georgia’s British-inspired aggression was aimed at humiliating Russia, weakening it, isolating it from the West, and driving a wedge, once and for all, between Russia and the United States, in order to destroy the potential for U.S.-Russian cooperation in the tradition of Franklin Roosevelt. The report by the French military secret service DRI, that it was American officers who had been active in the bombardment, and that it was American military advisors who had been embedded in the Georgian Army in aiming the “Grad” multiple rocket launchers, is only apparently contradictory: The paradox disappears, once we consider H.G. Wells’ theory that the United States must become permeated with British-imperial doctrine.
This extremely high-risk Anglo-American policy is evidently going to be continued, even following Saakashvili’s miscalculation in his first strike against South Ossetia. As Gen. Col. Anatoly Nogovitsyn, deputy chief of Russia’s General Staff, stated at a press conference on Aug. 22, Georgian units are already busy with reconnaissance missions and preparations for new armed actions. He added that the presence of NATO warships in the Black Sea, which is controlled by the Russian Navy, is neither necessary nor useful. The agreement between the United States and Poland on stationing anti-ballistic missile systems, hastily signed as an answer to the Russian counterstrike against Georgia, irrefutably demonstrates what a glance at the map also makes clear: The target is Russia, and not some distant “rogue states.”
Russia reacted immediately by announcing an asymmetric response to these ABM systems: an air missile defense system in which Russia, Belarus, and Russia’s Baltic enclave Kaliningrad are to participate. If that should come to pass, and provided that the Polish and Czech parliaments ratify the plans to install the respective ABM systems and radar stations, then we will have a reverse Cuba Missiles Crisis in Central Europe, with Russian and U.S. troops facing each other on the border, but with considerably shorter warning times than in the 1980s, when the Warsaw Pact’s medium-range SS20 missiles were arrayed against NATO’s Pershing IIs. Chancellor Helmut Schmidt was right when he said at the time, that the world was on the brink of a third world war. Today that is even more true.
The recognition that we would be at war with Russia today, had Georgia and Ukraine been granted NATO membership at NATO’s summit earlier this year in Bucharest, should be sufficient incentive to renounce all further eastward NATO expansion once and for all. And we should bring to mind how it has come about, that Russia (and China) have so suddenly been built up as an enemy image.
Let us also recall that after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we threw away our opportunity for putting the East-West relationship onto a completely new footing. On geopolitical grounds, Western policy was instead oriented toward using “shock therapy” as a means of transforming Russia into a raw materials-producing Third World country. Western oligarchs had great sympathy for their Russian partners, and for the Yeltsin clan, and together they looted the country of its wealth. Having Russia as a kind of infinite stockpile of raw materials for the West, as an integral part of the globalized economy, was not seen as a problem. And George Soros’s role has never been forgotten in Moscow.
It was only when President Vladimir Putin succeeded in gradually suppressing the influence of the mafia structures, while strengthening Russia economically and politically, and defending the country’s sovereign interests, that Russia was once again declared to be the enemy. The Russian government, with its decisive action against Georgia, was in fact demonstrating that the era of globalization, i.e., of the Anglo-American empire, has come to a close.
Europe and the Lisbon Treaty
While French President Nicolas Sarkozy has played a useful role, with his six-point program, in de-escalating the war between Russia and Georgia, his conclusion that Europe could have acted more effectively had the Lisbon Treaty already been adopted, is all the more confusing. What if, for example, the European President had been Tony Blair, and the ambassador had been David Miliband or Giuliano Amato? In that event, the European Union would most likely already be at war with Russia today. The British Centre for European Reform is already calling for setting up EU combat units, so that we can wage our wars in Central Europe on our own, without the United States.
As the Italian journalist Paolo Bozzacchi has reported in the weekly Oggi, in the aftermath the Italian Parliament’s ratification of the EU treaty, the Brussels EU bureaucracy is feeling a new surge of confidence, and now thinks that they could have the treaty signed, sealed, and delivered before next year’s elections for European Parliament—despite Ireland’s “No” vote.
That would be the worst possible outcome, because the design of the Lisbon Treaty, which foresees the militarization of the EU, along with the abolition of parliamentary democracy and the establishment of an oligarchical dictatorship in a federal state that could do whatever it pleased, stems from the same motivation as the policy of encirclement of Russia and China. The idea that Europe has to be transformed into a militarized empire, in order to meet “the great challenges” (by which is meant Russia, China, and, in the view of some, the United States), is a sure-fire recipe for World War III.
The events in the Caucasus should be enough to extinguish enthusiasm anyone might have for this monstrous Tower of Babel. Germany’s best contribution to world peace would be to put its entire weight into reversing the process which was started with the Maastricht Treaty. We should revoke all EU treaties that have been adopted since then, and should devote our regained sovereignty to working jointly with Russia, China, India, and, hopefully, the United States, in order to establish a New Bretton Woods system, as has been proposed by Lyndon LaRouche.
Related pages:
Helga Zepp-LaRouche's New Call for a New Bretton Woods
More Articles on the Eurasian Landbridge
More Articles by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
