EIR-NEWS, 12. juni 2024
Onsdag den 12. juni var Schiller Instituttet vært for en hasteindkaldt pressekonference med fire fremtrædende talere: Scott Ritter, tidligere FN-våbeninspektør og efterretningsofficer i den amerikanske marine; oberst Richard H. Black (pensioneret), tidligere chef for den amerikanske hærs strafferetlige afdeling i Pentagon og tidligere senator i staten Virginia; Helga Zepp-LaRouche: grundlægger og formand for Schiller Instituttet; og oberst Lawrence Wilkerson (pensioneret), tidligere stabschef for USA’s udenrigsminister Colin Powell. Ray McGovern, tidligere CIA-analytiker og medstifter af Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), skulle have medvirket, men måtte aflyse på grund af helbredsproblemer.
Stedet var National Press Club i Washington, D.C., og det personlige møde blev suppleret af journalister, der deltog via Zoom fra hele verden, med simultantolkning på spansk, tysk og fransk. Derudover deltog næsten 2.000 mennesker på et live-feed fra Schiller Instituttet, mens andre deltog via andre elektroniske kanaler.
Schiller Instituttets ordstyrer, Dennis Speed, bemærkede, at blandt andre Scott Ritter og Helga Zepp-LaRouche er blevet opført som mål af Ukraines USA-finansierede Center for Countering Disinformation (CCD). Ritter fik for nylig en chokerende behandling på foranledning af udenrigsministeriet, da han blev forhindret i at gå om bord på et fly for at deltage i St. Petersburg International Economic Forum i Rusland, og hans pas blev beslaglagt.
Ritter åbnede begivenheden med at sige, at hovedhistorien i alle amerikanske nyhedsudsendelser burde være den akutte fare for atomkrig. Folk siger med urette, at Cuba-krisen var det tætteste, vi nogensinde kom på en atomkrig, bemærkede han; på det tidspunkt foregik der diplomati. I dag sidder ambassadør Anatoly Antonov, en førende specialist i våbenkontrol, på den russiske ambassade på Wisconsin Avenue i Washington, D.C., “og hans telefon ringer ikke.” Efter Sovjetunionens fald besluttede USA at bevare en strategisk fordel og begyndte at trække sig ud af våbenkontrolaftaler. Gradvist gav afskrækkelse plads til en doktrin om krigsførelse med atomvåben. “Den største trussel mod os”, insisterede Ritter, “er den amerikanske politik med atomvåben”, og kun takket være den russiske ledelses tålmodighed har vi undgået en atomkrig.
Oberst Richard Black fortsatte temaet: “Vores atomdoktrin giver USA’s præsident fuld autoritet – uindskrænket autoritet” – til at starte en atomkrig uanset årsagen. Dette er forskelligt fra den russiske eller kinesiske doktrin; den russiske doktrin er defensiv, og atomvåben vil derfor kun blive brugt, hvis landet er under atomangreb, eller hvis nationens suveræne eksistens på anden måde er truet. “Ukraine var aldrig en vital amerikansk interesse”, sagde Black og tilføjede, at krigen begyndte over, hvorvidt Ukraine ville blive integreret i NATO, og atomvåben kunne stationeres der, tæt nok på til, at Rusland ikke ville have tid til at reagere på et førsteangreb. Efter at Rusland gik ind i Ukraine i februar 2022, begyndte fredsforhandlingerne inden for fire dage. Efter to måneder var de næsten nået frem til en aftale. Så blev den britiske premierminister Boris Johnson sendt til Kiev for at fortælle ukrainerne: “Hold op med de fredsforhandlinger, og kom tilbage til det vigtige arbejde med at kæmpe.”
Sammenfattende sagde Black: “Hele dette enorme hav af blodsudgydelser, som fulgte, har stort set været unødvendigt.” Han beskrev amerikanske og NATO-lancerede provokationer såsom sabotagen af Nord Stream-rørledningen, der kastede den tyske økonomi ud i recession; den franske præsident Macrons forslag om at sende tropper som “trænere”, som i Vietnam, hvilket uundgåeligt vil føre til kamp; og forsøgene på at blænde russiske varslingsradarer og angreb på den russiske Engels-2-luftbase, hvor dets atombevæbnede bombefly er stationeret.
Helga Zepp-LaRouche beskrev, hvordan Rusland reagerer på disse tiltagende provokationer fra NATO. Ud over at gennemføre manøvrer til taktisk brug af atomvåben er en russisk flotille ankommet til Cuba netop på dagen for pressekonferencen. Da hun skulle diskutere løsninger, foreslog hun, at “det mest oplagte referencepunkt er Den Westfalske Fred”, som afsluttede Trediveårskrigen, fordi en fortsættelse af den krig ville have dræbt alle i Europa. Vi har nu en global version af den situation. Hun bad deltagerne om at studere hendes ti principper for en ny international sikkerheds- og udviklingsarkitektur og roste den kinesiske præsident Xi Jinpings forslag og det brasiliansk/kinesiske initiativ til at afslutte krigen i Ukraine.
Oberst Lawrence Wilkerson begyndte med at citere en “stor mand, en patriot og en helt i dette land”, Daniel Ellsberg, som har sagt, at vi er tættere på atomkrig, end vi nogensinde har været. Wilkerson tilføjede: “Det er alt sammen vores skyld. Det er imperiets skyld…. Vi har ophævet alle de beskyttende traktater, som vi møjsommeligt har udformet.” Før USA’s stedfortræderkonfrontation med Rusland i Ukraine var det et etableret princip i diplomatiet, at to stater, der besidder atomvåben, aldrig må gå i krig. “Det amerikanske folk har glemt, hvad det vil sige at bygge et beskyttelsesrum i sin baghave,” sagde han. “Vi har i denne nation ikke længere nogen idé om, hvad atomvåben kan gøre.”
Spørgsmål fra seerne og pressen
Den første spørger spurgte, om hvis vores ledere vidste, at de ville dø, ville det afholde dem fra at angribe med atomvåben. Oberst Black svarede, at amerikanske ledere sandsynligvis ville overleve et første angreb. Men vi har ikke et centralt intellektuelt lederskab, som tager ansvar for politikken.
“Vesten har i bund og grund satset hele sin eksistens på Putins rationalitet.” Ritter tilføjede: “Jeg vil sige, at der i Vesten ikke er en eneste leder, der i dag forstår, hvad atomkrig er…. Vi er nødt til at finde en måde at gøre det amerikanske folk bange igen.” Wilkerson fortalte, hvordan USA og Rusland ved afslutningen af Den kolde Krig havde 30.000 atomvåben hver og begyndte at reducere deres lagre. En undersøgelse fra U.S. Air Force sagde, at vi kunne gå ned til 600 hver. “Det var gode dage!” sagde Wilkerson. Men nu diskuterer USA, hvordan vi kan ændre vores atomare politik, så den bliver mere aggressiv.
Den uafhængige senatskandidat Diane Sare spurgte Zepp-LaRouche om forholdet mellem det truende sammenbrud af det transatlantiske finanssystem og krigsfaren. Som svar erkendte fru Zepp-LaRouche, at “systemet kan eksplodere når som helst, mens vi sidder her”, og at det truende tab af magt driver amerikansk hensynsløshed. Zepp-LaRouche beskrev afslutningen på Den kolde Krig som en “Sternstunde der Menschheit”, en gylden mulighed for menneskeheden. Men desværre afviste de neokonservative denne mulighed og gik i stedet efter deres drøm om en “unipolær verden” og Francis Fukuyamas teori om “historiens afslutning”. Årtier med NATO-udvidelse fulgte, med farvede revolutioner og militære interventioner. Hun tilføjede, at i modsætning til de neokonservatives vrangforestillinger, for hvem BRIKS betragtes som “en stor trussel mod herredømmet”, er ingen af disse lande en trussel i virkeligheden.
Professor Steve Starr, som underviser i atomvåben på University of Missouri, spurgte, hvad formålet var med angrebene på de russiske radarer, og om USA leverede oplysninger til at ramme dem. Wilkerson svarede på sidstnævnte spørgsmål og sagde: “Det er velinformeret spekulation, men ja.” Til spørgsmålet om, hvorfor det blev gjort, sagde han: “Vi er sindssyge.” Vi gjorde det af samme grund, som vi sprængte Nord Stream-rørledningen i luften. Ritter tilføjede, at dronerne ikke kunne være trængt ind i Rusland uden amerikanske efterretninger i realtid.
Black tilføjede: “Hvis man bluffer, er der altid en chance for, at den anden person gennemskuer ens bluff…. Man satser faktisk hele menneskeheden … og vi er jetonerne.”
En spørger i Mexico spurgte til den manglende krigsforberedelse i Vesten, og om det kunne være med til at afskrække en beslutning om at starte en krig. Ritter svarede, at hverken USA eller NATO er i stand til at gå ind i en fuld konfrontation med Rusland. “Det er den gode nyhed … den dårlige nyhed er, at vi fører en aggressiv politik, og standarden er atomvåben.”
En reporter fra TASS spurgte om muligheden for, at USA eller allierede vil forsyne Ukraine med atomvåben. Ritter spurgte retorisk: “Hvorfor skulle vi overdrage de farligste våben i verden til den mest uansvarlige nation i verden?”
En spørger fra Patriot Action PAC spurgte, om en atomar konflikt kunne blive brugt som en valgtaktik af denne regering. Black sagde, at det er scenariet “wag the dog”, og tilføjede, at Bill Clinton havde brugt krig mod Serbien til at komme sig politisk efter en rigsretssag. Men det skal være noget uventet, modererede Black; folk er nu trætte af krig. Det har de gjort klart ved valget til Europa-Parlamentet den 9. juni. Wilkerson tilføjede, at Biden er som LBJ (Lyndon B. Johnson –red.) i 1965: Han optrappede en krig, der ikke kunne vindes, fordi det ville skade hans muligheder for at blive genvalgt, hvis han trak sig.
Zepp-LaRouche blev bedt om at kommentere valget til Europa-Parlamentet den 9. juni. Hun svarede, at det er godt, at der nu er to tyske partier i parlamentet, som er imod krigen, men Tyskland er blevet “til grin i hele verden, … den totale kolonislave for anglosfæren.” Ritter tilføjede, at amerikanerne ikke længere tror på, at deres stemme tæller, og at de ikke kan lide nogen af kandidaterne. Men, sagde han, “spørg Emmanuel Macron – din stemme betyder noget.”
Et spørgsmål kom fra Pressenza International Press Agency om, hvordan folk rundt om i verden kan bidrage til fred i Ukraine, som de gjorde for at afslutte apartheid i Sydafrika. Zepp-LaRouche svarede: “Det er eftertrykkeligt stemmernes og landene i det Globale Syds ret” at gribe ind, fordi faren for atomkrig påvirker alle. NATO er fokuseret på at kontrollere fortællingen og har skabt et helt apparat til at dæmonisere Rusland og Kina, så det Globale Syd ikke bliver hørt i Vesten. En mere selvsikker rolle for Syd er det vigtigste, der kan ske for at ændre på tingene.
En tidligere ambassadør fra Grækenland bemærkede, at der ikke er noget civilforsvar i USA eller Europa i tilfælde af et atomart angreb. Black foreslog, at der blev sat opslag op i New Yorks undergrundsbaner med besked om at købe kaliumjod-tabletter for at beskytte sig mod stråling: “Det ville måske få folk til at tænke sig om en ekstra gang.” Ritter sagde, at regeringens opfordring til et mere aggressivt atomart scenarie indebærer, at nogen faktisk er i gang med at planlægge. Men denne planlægning omfatter ikke foranstaltninger som lagre af vand, mad, beskyttelsesrum osv. for at beskytte det amerikanske folk, som burde spørge: Svigter I os?
Ritter blev spurgt, hvad han havde tænkt sig at sige i Sankt Petersborg, hvis han ikke var blevet forhindret i at tage af sted. Han fortalte, at han havde planlagt en 40-dages rejse gennem Rusland som fredsambassadør, og at han ville live-streame turen. Det “skræmte dem fra vid og sans”, så de inddrog hans pas.
Carl Osgood fra EIR mindede Wilkerson om, at Daniel Elsberg skrev, at USA altid har brugt atomvåben, som en kriminel bruger en pistol, for at få det, han vil have, uden at trykke på aftrækkeren. Wilkerson spøgede med senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), som repræsenterer hans hjemstat, og sagde: “Lindsey har nået nye niveauer af sindssyge.” Han tilføjede, at USA har 30-35 lande under drakoniske sanktioner uden nogen egentlig grund. Vi er forhadte over hele verden, vi er ude af stand til at mobilisere til krig, så den eneste mulighed er truslen om atomkrig.
Der kom et spørgsmål fra The Grayzone-siden: Hvad er konsekvenserne af Bidens foreslåede aftale med saudierne om at hjælpe med uranberigelse for at få normaliseret forholdet til Israel? Wilkerson svarede, at USA er desperat efter at løse situationen i Gaza, og saudierne ønsker at kunne fremstille et atomvåben. Kina og Rusland vil ikke give dem den mulighed, men det vil vi!
En reporter fra Radio Mindanao i Filippinerne spurgte, om det filippinske militær bliver optrænet som stedfortræder for en krig mod Kina. Ritter svarede, at USA ikke er i stand til at bekæmpe en ligeværdig styrke og derfor bruger Filippinerne i stedet, ligesom i Ukraine. Black sagde: “Det er meget vigtigt for Filippinerne at være klar over, hvad der foregår.”
Sammenfattende bemærkninger
Wilkerson: Den stat med atomvåben i dag, som er mest tilbøjelig til at bruge disse våben, er USA. En forsigtig stat har aldrig flere fjender på et givet tidspunkt, end den kan håndtere, men vi har gjort det meste af verden til fjender. Han foreslog, at vi skulle lære at bruge det “behændige instrument for national magt, der hedder diplomati”.
Black: Det var en stor sejr for menneskeheden, at Den kolde Krig sluttede ublodigt. Vi formåede ikke at udnytte det, og vi flyttede grænsen mod øst. Da Warszawa-pagten forsvandt, gjorde NATO det ikke. Det var et frygteligt tab for menneskeheden, at vi forpassede muligheden for fred.
Ritter: “Jeg blev rådet til ikke at forsøge at skræmme folk,” men det råd ignorerer han. Alle amerikanere er nødt til at vågne op om morgenen med den frygt for at dø af atomkrig, for så vil folk handle. For at din stemme skal tælle, er kandidaterne nødt til at vide, hvad din stemme står for: “Hvis du ikke er imod atomkrig, vil du aldrig få vores stemme.”
Zepp-LaRouche: “Vi er på vej ind i den vigtigste og farligste periode i hele historien.” NATO står over for et enormt ansigtstab, og den måde, hvorpå de opgav deres stedfortrædere i Afghanistan, burde være en lærestreg for filippinerne og ukrainerne. Hun fordømte den idiotiske politik med at konfiskere russiske aktiver – selv IMF har advaret om, at det finansielle system vil kollapse, når Rusland gør gengæld. Generationen fra Anden Verdenskrig vidste, hvad krig var, men den nye generation er overfladisk tænkende og kender ikke historien. Hvordan kunne den store tyske civilisation synke til nazismens niveau?
Der må være en følelse af højere lovmæssighed, naturlov, konkluderede fru Zepp-LaRouche, men den blev opgivet af sejrherrerne. Det er nødvendigt for debatten. “Vi er nødt til at opløfte menneskeheden til et højere moralsk niveau, hvis vi vil overleve denne store fare.”
Foto: EIRNS/Stuart Lewis
Hele afskriftet på engelsk:
Emergency Press Conference: The Danger of Nuclear War Is Real, and Must Be Stopped
Schiller Institute with founder and Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche, Scott Ritter, Col. Richard H. Black (ret.), Larry Wilkerson, hosted by Dennis Speed
DENNIS SPEED: … National Press Club in Washington, D.C. and to today’s press availability, [“The Danger of Nuclear War Is Real, and Must Be Stopped”](https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2024/06/07/emergency-press-conference-the-danger-of-nuclear-war-is-real/) Today’s event is sponsored by the Schiller Institute, an international human rights organization founded in 1984 by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, one of the speakers today.
Helga has the distinction, along with former UN weapons inspector and U.S. Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter as well as Col. Richard Black (ret.), who is also a distinguished Vietnam veteran and former State Senator from Virginia, of having appeared on several hit lists that have been issued by the Ukrainian organization, the Center for Countering Disinformation; which has indirectly received funds from the United States. There are others in the room here today who share that same distinction. One of the questions that will be left with you today is, “Are American taxpayers funding foreign organizations that are directly threatening the lives, the livelihoods, and the freedom of thought as well as the freedom to travel, of American citizens? Is the United States State Department engaged in activities that are violations of the rights of American citizens?”
I think we’re all aware of the recent involuntary detour that Scott Ritter was supposed to make from his appointment to speak at the recent St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, which was attended by 19,000 other people from 136 countries. It was hardly a secret meeting, and it’s hardly a secret that we have a problem in the United States. For example, this is hardly a secret meeting. It’s hardly a secret that American society is at a crossroads; and today’s topic defines it better than anything else. We are aware of the dangers that have occurred, particularly because highly irresponsible actions taken in the military sphere, including the bombing of early warning systems in the territory of Russia. Scott Ritter, who people are aware has gone out of his way in every way possible to call the attention to this, is here with us today. We’re going to begin with him, followed by Colonel Black.
SCOTT RITTER: Thank you very much for the introduction. It’s an honor and privilege to be here today to talk to you about a topic that sadly is being ignored. Pick up the morning newspaper, pick up the afternoon newspaper, pick up any newspaper, and I doubt you’re going to see on the headline “America at Imminent Risk of Nuclear Armageddon.” But that should be the headline of every newspaper; that should be the lead story of every newscast. Not because the goal is to frighten people. I’ve had many people accuse me of fear-mongering, saying that “It’s irresponsible what you’re doing, promoting fear.” I say, it’s irresponsible for the American public, for the American citizen to allow the government that works {for them} to engage in policies that will lead to the termination of all human life on the planet Earth as we know it. That’s the end result here.
We’re talking about a number of things. Today we can talk about a failure of diplomacy. I have said that we are at a period of time in our nation’s history that is far more dangerous than the Cuban Missile Crisis, and a lot of people take umbrage at that, especially people who didn’t live during the Cuban Missile Crisis and have no concept of what the Cuban Missile Crisis was. But the Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962, people have said that’s the closest the United States and the Soviet Union came to nuclear war. In a way, they’re right, but let me talk about some differences at that time. While the Soviets were sending ships with missiles to Cuba, the danger was that they were going to run into a blockade that would lead to a direct military conflict that could expand into a nuclear conflict—while all that was happening, a man named John McCloy was speaking to a man named Valerian Zorin. Diplomacy was taking place. We, the United States, were actively engaging with the Soviet counterparts to prevent the very war everybody was afraid of! The reason why there was no war is because there was diplomacy: Because leaders were talking to leaders, if not directly, then indirectly. If not through official channels, then through the back channel. Diplomacy was alive and well.
Today, Ladies and Gentlemen, right down the road on Wisconsin Avenue, is an embassy—the Russian Embassy. Seated in that embassy is a diplomat named Anatoly Antonov, one of the most distinguished American experts in the Russian Foreign Service: The lead arms control negotiator for the last remaining arms control treaty between Russia and the United States! He’s been sitting there for several years, and his phone is not ringing! We are not calling him! We are not talking to him! There is no diplomacy today—and yet, our two countries are on a collision course, that could very well lead to a nuclear conflict.
And when I say nuclear conflict, let’s be clear here: Now we’re going to talk about doctrine. There was a time when nuclear weapons existed for the purpose of deterring nuclear attack. That’s a sick thing, this concept of deterrence. Mutually Assured Destruction is sort of insanity encapsulated into a couple of words, but that’s the reality of it. The United States had nuclear weapons, the Soviet Union had nuclear weapons. We had to make sure that nobody felt competent enough to use these weapons preemptively to gain some sort of strategic advantage. The end result was Mutually Assured Destruction, nuclear deterrence. And this worked up until the end of the Soviet Union.
It worked so well, I have to say, one of my first adult jobs was as a Marine Corps officer implementing arms control treaties in the former Soviet Union, part of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, where we got rid of entire categories of nuclear weapons. The first time that we didn’t just limit the growth, but we actually reduced the arsenals. This could have led to even greater cuts in the nuclear arsenals, but no, not for the United States. When the Soviet Union went away, we decided that we needed to maintain a nuclear advantage over the Soviets, and we corrupted the concept of arms control. We withdrew from arms control treaties, like the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which gave Mutually Assured Destruction its teeth. See, without ballistic missile defense, the missiles would hit their target—which means that if you go to war, your missiles would the target they’re aimed at, and the missiles aimed at you will hit the target. Under George W. Bush we decided we didn’t want any missiles to hit America. Ostensibly a rational thought, except at the same time, we were seeking to gain nuclear supremacy over the Russians so that our missiles would hit Russia! This creates an imbalance.
After 9/11, we went further. We saw a transition of nuclear deterrence doctrine into nuclear war-fighting doctrine, where we embraced a doctrine that said that we could use nuclear weapons preemptively against a non-nuclear threat. Our current President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief, Joe Biden, campaigned on a promise to return America to the sanity of sole-use doctrine, meaning the sole purpose of America’s nuclear arsenal would be to deter others from attacking us. He didn’t do it. Why? I attended a reunion of Intermediate Nuclear Forces inspectors and negotiators a couple of years ago, and we asked that question to a senior Biden administration arms control official. The answer? {The inter-agency isn’t ready for this yet.}
Now, I live in a nation that is ostensibly the greatest democracy in the world. I know that I go to vote. I know that I looked at the names on the ballot. I never saw “inter-agency” on the ballot. I don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, when it comes to democracy. The President is the Commander-in-Chief. He is the Executive. If he wants a policy direction, he directs it to happen. And the inter-agency needs to salute smartly and seek to implement it. But we’re being told that the inter-agency isn’t ready.” That means the Establishment isn’t ready; that means the Establishment seeks something else, and that, of course, is American nuclear supremacy.
We live in a world where other nations will no longer tolerate this. Russia is one of them. And Russia, today, is a nation that is at the pointy end of the American nuclear spear. They’re seeing the United States promulgate policies that have American military capabilities thrust up to the very borders of Russia, indeed, crossing over into the borders of Russia. Threatening Russia’s strategic nuclear enterprise—early warning radars, command and control facilities, even nuclear weapons depots and nuclear launch systems. We have facilitated—“we,” being the United States—an attack against Engels Air Base where Russian strategic nuclear bombers are stationed. Under Russian doctrine, this {alone} justifies a nuclear response. We have been tickling the Russian nuclear bear for a long time, and only through the patience and wisdom of the Russian leadership have we avoided a nuclear war.
As an American, I take umbrage at that. I don’t want to be at the mercy of any foreign leader. I would rather that the American leadership takes a rational step towards de-confliction: That I be at the mercy of a government that I get to hold accountable at the polls—a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.” A Constitution that begins with, “We, the people of the United States of America,” and that’s the final thought I want to put out there.
We have a duty and responsibility as citizens to wake up and recognize the threats that face us collectively as a nation, as a people. And the greatest threat to the continued survival of the United States of America today is {American nuclear policy, American nuclear weapons.} These weapons do not protect us, Ladies and Gentlemen. These weapons are literally a loaded gun at our head with an insane man’s finger on the trigger. We need to come together; we need to stop this. We have an election in November: Let us all do our job as citizens, and vote for somebody who places the survival of America above all else, which means they place nuclear non-proliferation, nuclear disarmament and arms control above all else. Thank you very much.
SPEED: Before you say something, sir, I didn’t fully correctly introduce him. Col. Richard Black (ret.) is a combat veteran who has seen the face of war. He always talks about how he shed a bucket of blood for his country, he talks about seeing people killed next to him, as a pilot. He’s a former head of the U.S. Army’s Criminal Law Division of the Pentagon, a former Virginia State Senator. But most importantly, as Scott was just referencing, I decided I should say something, he has {seen} the face of war, and he intends to stop it. Colonel Black.
COL. RICHARD BLACK (ret.): Thank you much for the kind introduction. I’m Senator Dick Black. The purpose of our press conference today is to alert the world to the great risk of nuclear action occurring. We’re growing very close to that.
It’s important to understand the nature of American military doctrine regarding nuclear weapons. Our nuclear doctrine grants the President of the United States plenary authority, unfettered authority to launch a nuclear strike for any reason, or for no reason at all. It is an offensive doctrine. It is not a defensive doctrine: It is a doctrine that allows the President to wake up and decide that he is going to carry out a nuclear Pearl Harbor against an enemy of his choice.
Now, obviously there are political considerations, but if you’re talking about a nuclear war, you’re talking about a situation where there is going to be such vast destruction that political considerations are going to dim into the background.
There was a comment made just this last Friday by a fellow, Pranay Vaddi, who is with the National Security Council, he’s the senior arms control official. He was commenting on why more nuclear weapons might be required. Now, both the United States and Russia have over 5,000 nuclear weapons currently, China has 600. Here’s something Mr. Vaddi said as a representative from the White House—the National Security Council is in the White House. He said, “We need to be fully prepared to execute {if} the President makes that decision.” [Emphasis in original] What does he mean by “execute”? He means we need to be prepared to launch a nuclear strike if the President decides we’re going to do so. This is a great deal different from Russian or Chinese doctrine. The Russian doctrine is based on the defensive use of nuclear weapons. They can use them if they are imminently about to be attacked, if they are attacked, or if the cohesion of Russia as a nation is about to be destroyed by the attack of an enemy. So, it should greatly distress us and concern us that we have a White House official saying, “we need to be prepared to execute if the President makes that decision.” In a responsible government, we should never be talking about the President ordering a nuclear strike.
Now, to go back with the war in Ukraine, which has gotten us to this point, Ukraine was never a vital United States interest. The war has been fought principally over the idea of whether Ukraine would be integrated into NATO, which would then allow nuclear missiles to be stationed right up to the Russian border. In other words, Russia would be in a posture where they could be attacked suddenly, unexpectedly, and have absolutely no time to respond. That really is the essence of what you get to with this enormous deadly war in Ukraine.
A war is being fought at the doorstep of a giant nuclear superpower. You go back to the Cuban Missile Crisis—and I lived through that. I lived in Miami, and I was in Havana before the Revolution, I was there after the Revolution. I watched the whole thing unfold. I literally discovered a vast military convoy that was moved secretly through the city of Miami at night in preparation to invade Cuba. Now, they never did, but it sure made my eyes bulge out, while I was driving up Route 27 and this endless convoy came the other way. But at that time, there was such a dramatic difference, because Russia was a weak nuclear power. As a nuclear force, it was not a very big nuclear force. Today, it actually has more nuclear weapons than the United States. Both have roughly 5,000, they have a little more.
But in any event, where we have gotten to, this terrible war—the biggest war in Europe since the Second World War—is being fought on the doorstep of Russia. And the Russians entered the war in February of 2022. Four days after they crossed the border, peace negotiations with Ukraine began—after four days. After two months, a peace agreement had been pretty well hammered out, to the point where the First Deputy Foreign Minister of Ukraine announced that they were virtually on the edge of an agreement. It was at that point that the Prime Minister of Britain, Boris Johnson, was sent to basically tell them to knock off the peace talks, get back to the important work of fighting. When the peace agreement was about to be finalized, there were very few casualties, relatively; there was very little property destruction. The parties both were fairly pleased with the peace agreement; it was something they both could live with. So, all of this vast sea of bloodshed that has been followed, has been largely unnecessary.
Now, what’s happened is that Ukraine is running out of manpower. They’re much smaller in population than Russia, and the casualties have worn them down. As they have become weaker and weaker in terms of manpower, you have the United States and NATO becoming increasingly restless and anxious to sort of pull this thing off; to bring them to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. We’ve seen them with the United States working together with Ukraine and NATO. They sank the flagship of the Russian fleet, the cruiser {Moskva}. In a very, very dramatic action, the United States orchestrated the sabotage of the Nord Stream pipeline, which has permanently damaged the European economy, particularly the economy of Germany which was thrown into a recession because of the destruction of Nord Stream.
More recently, we’ve had Emmanuel Macron, the French President, and he has been the lead man in a trial balloon to see whether Western countries could be incentivized to go ahead and send their own troops as trainers—just like in Vietnam—trainers into Ukraine, which inevitably would lead to their engagement in battle. Everybody understands that.
All of this has built up to the point where we just had the European Union elections, and the elections were a devastating loss for the powers that be in NATO. A tremendous conservative victory, and I think among other things it has reflected the fact that Europeans are sick and tired of war. They never wanted this war; it was imposed on them, and they would like to be away from it. But nonetheless, we continue, as has been mentioned, with the attacks to blind the radars that defend Moscow from an unprovoked attack by missiles coming in. We have helped Ukraine to launch the attacks on the Engels Air Base, where the Russians have their nuclear bombers stationed. It goes on and on. Most recently, we are now talking about making our nuclear doctrine even more aggressive.
I don’t honestly know, if I had the assignment, how do you make the nuclear doctrine of the United States more aggressive than giving the President carte blanche authority to attack anybody at any time? I would have to ask a lot of questions if someone assigned me that task. But in any event, as we get closer to the election, as things become more desperate on the Ukrainian front lines, we have an anxious White House that is willing to attempt more and more reckless actions, and there’s a very high risk that this nuclear gambit that is underway right now may not succeed. And an accident could occur, and we won’t be holding another press conference to announce the results of it when that’s finished.
So, in any event, we’ll continue, but thank you, and thank you, Scott, for your comments.
SPEED: Our next speaker, coming to us from Germany, is the author of [“Ten Principles of a New International Security and Development Architecture”](https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/11/30/ten-principles-of-a-new-international-security-and-development-architecture/). She issued these Ten Principles on November 22, 2022, at a conference which was called [“On Stopping the Danger of Thermonuclear War”](https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/11/21/conference-stop-the-danger-of-nuclear-war-now/) then. The first of those points stated that “The new International Security and Development Architecture must be a partnership of perfectly sovereign nation states, which is based on the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and the UN Charter.” The second principle was “The absolute priority must be to alleviate poverty in every nation on the planet, which is easily possible, if the existing technologies are being used for the benefit of the common good.”
Helga Zepp-LaRouche was also the inspiration for the creation of an organization called the International Peace Coalition, which has held 53 consecutive meetings, and will be holding its 54th meeting this coming Friday. It’s always my honor to introduce her; welcome, Helga.
HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Thank you, Dennis. Right now we have the second maneuver [rehearsing the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons](http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/74108). This is not a routine maneuver, but explicitly in response to Western provocations such as Macron’s announcement of sending troops to Ukraine, Cameron’s permission that the Ukrainians can use all weapons for strikes into Russian territory, and naturally the attack on the early warning radar system. This is now happening. Also today actually, a Russian flotilla of ships has arrived in Cuba, a frigate, and a nuclear submarine, and two other ships. There is no question that we are right now at a reverse Cuban Missile Crisis, except it is, for the reasons in part already mentioned, much more dangerous than the first Cuban Missile Crisis.
The worst problem is that the Western Establishments have talked themselves into the belief that whatever Russia is doing just bluffing. And this is while the population is not being told that what is happening from the side of NATO is actually a nuclear chicken game which is taking the limits further and further and further, crossing red lines all the time, and we are indeed on the verge of a potential catastrophe.
I want to reference a solution which was mentioned by Dennis. We absolutely have to change the entire outlook. We have to go to a New Paradigm, and the most obvious reference point is the Peace of Westphalia, which ended 150 years of religious warfare in Europe. It occurred, because the participants of the war realized that if they would continue, there would absolutely nobody left to survive to enjoy the victory, because at that point, already, one-third of all of villages, people, animals, were all destroyed, and a continuation would have destroyed everybody else.
So now, in the time of nuclear weapons, it is also clear that if it ever would come to a nuclear war, there would be absolutely nobody left to survive, to enjoy the victory.
Now, there is a debate that this is not going to be fatal, that you can have a tactical nuclear war, but I think people should study the writings of Ted Postol, who very clearly developed the idea of what is the fundamental difference between a conventional war and a nuclear war. The likelihood is that it would end up with a total global war where all nuclear weapons would be used, followed by probably ten years of a nuclear winter, where all life on the planet would be extinct, so that not even an historian would be left to investigate the reasons how this happened, is very likely.
Therefore, we have to draw the lesson from the Peace of Westphalia. We should have an immediate new security and development architecture, which takes account the interests of every single country on the planet. Because that’s the lesson from the Peace of Westphalia: That if you do not take into account the interests of the other—and that means {all} others—peace is not possible. Whenever that principle was applied, it led to peace. When it was not applied, like in the Versailles Treaty, it was just a stepping stone to the next war, which in that case was World War II. So, the Peace of Westphalia as a model for such a conference, which I volunteered to write Ten Principles to give people an idea what such a new security and development architecture must absolutely take into account. I would ask people to get these Ten Principles and look at them. And I think it is eminently possible.
Now, what would be the institution which could implement such an idea? Well, if nothing else helps, it has to be put to the UN General Assembly, because it concerns all people on the planet if we are going to live or die. The Chinese government already has made several proposals: Xi Jinping proposed the Global Security Initiative, the Global Development Initiative, and the Global Civilizational Initiative, which has exactly such an approach of an all-inclusive idea that all nations must be part of it. Also, the recent [Brazil-China proposal](https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/zxxx_662805/202405/t20240523_11310698.html) for a Ukraine peace conference is all-inclusive, unlike the Swiss Bürgenstock conference, which is doomed to fail simply because it does not invite Russia to be a participant and it is based on a premise which cannot lead to a result in any case.
So, I think we are at a point where the peoples of the world are called upon to bring in their voice, because already in the Bandung Conference in 1955, Presidents Sukarno and Prime Minister Nehru said that if it ever comes to global war, maybe the countries the Global South will die a few weeks later, but they will die anyhow. That is why the issue of war and peace is not a matter of just NATO or some military-industrial complex or whatever. It is a question of every citizen in the world, which by the very nature of a global war, must act as a world citizen.
Therefore, I think we need to have a public debate about such an idea, because if we continue with the geopolitical confrontation, it is just a question of time when it will be too late. But we are the intelligent species, we are the creative species, and therefore we should have confidence that we can find a solution to such an absolutely existential problem like the mortal threat to our existence.
SPEED: We’re beginning a transition in our discussion now. As we begin to go to various matters, we want to first ask that Col. Lawrence Wilkerson will speak to us. Ray McGovern, as some people know, was hoping to be with us today. He was unable to do so, because of medical circumstances.
Larry is currently a senior fellow at what’s called the Eisenhower Media Network. This is a group of former military intelligence and civilian national security officials who are concerned to counter Washington’s Establishment narrative on most national security issues of the day. Some of us remember, not fondly, and Larry has no problem with this, 21 years ago when he was sitting next to Colin Powell, when Colin Powell did his thing at the United Nations. Larry has been very, very clear about the nature of that disaster. He’s been very clear about his role. He’s been very clear about reversing that role. Why this is important is that something like that kind of Damascus Road is what we’re going to need coming from various members of the American military and intelligence very rapidly if we’re going to survive what we’re now in. So, it’s my first honor—it’s the first time I’ve done this—to welcome Larry. You have the floor, go ahead.
COL. LARRY WILKERSON (ret.): Thank you. Thank you for having me here, and I thank Ray for letting me fill in for him. I’m going to speak very briefly, but I hope the points I make will resonate along with those that Scott gave, and the others, because they’re all very important points.
A few years ago, I had the opportunity to sit down with a great man, a patriot, a hero of this country. And the question we were dealing with was posed by him. This was Dan Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers fame. Dan said, “The question is, are we closer today than we were since August 29, 1949, when the Soviets exploded their first atomic bomb, and there was nuclear competition?” And before I could answer, he said, “We are; absolutely we are closer than we have ever been before. The {Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists} is right: The hand is moving so close to midnight that you can hardly decipher the clock. We are that close to nuclear conflict.” This is Dan Ellsberg, who was one of the premier, if not {the} premier nuclear planner for RAND and then for the Pentagon, at the time when he was working for the United States government. This is the man also who drove a Jeep through the wire out in Nevada to get to Ground Zero to make sure that Ronald Reagan couldn’t conduct that last nuclear test. And he was successful. He drove a Jeep to Ground Zero so they couldn’t shoot. A very brave man; a hero. He thought that we were at that point that we had never been at before; a few seconds from nuclear war.
And we talked about the reasons. And the first reason Scott has already talked about, but I want to reiterate it because it’s so important, because it is all our fault. It is the empire’s fault: It is the United States of America’s fault. We have abrogated every treaty regime pertinent to nuclear weapons. {We did it}. We even caused the last and ultimate one, the New START Treaty, to not be looked on favorably for renewal by Moscow because of our actions in Ukraine. So, we have abrogated {every single protective treaty environment that we painstakingly crafted} over the many years of the Cold War. Nuclear weapons are free to roam.
The second point is, we now have nine countries that are nuclear weapon states, and I include Israel, of course, in there—and one of the most dangerous nuclear weapons states in my view. We have two or three aspirants—frankly, I think the Saudis have contracted with the Pakistanis to buy 30 or 40 warheads if Iran develops one—so we could have two nuclear weapons states within a moment or two if Iran suddenly decided to take the enriched uranium they have now, which the IAEA has even said is enough for three bombs, and pretty shortly if they made that decision. So, we have a proliferation of nuclear weapons states, and no treaty regimes whatsoever.
The third point—and this is as important as the first two, and I’ve discovered this in travelling all across America and speaking on university campuses, to Rotaries, to all manner of different organizations in all 50 states. The American people have forgotten. The American people do not understand what it was to build a bomb shelter in your backyard and stock it with food and water. I used to hand out pamphlet, a pamphlet from the United States government signed by Lyndon Baines Johnson, that told you with photographs and pictures and other paraphernalia in the pamphlet how to build a bomb shelter in your backyard. I used to go in the basement of my school when I was youngster, and sit there with my head in my lap, as the teacher instructed us how to perform, because we were doing a nuclear drill. We don’t have any idea in this nation anymore of what nuclear weapons can do.
Then the last point. We had a principle during the Cold War. It was absolutely fundamental to our philosophy about nuclear weapons, and it was pretty fundamental with the other nuclear weapon-owning states in the world as well, including Russia (the Soviet Union at that time). No weapon-owning state would ever go directly for war with another weapon-owning state. Think about that for a moment: That’s a pretty darn good principle. The only time that’s been violated is with India and Pakistan. And in both cases, we rushed off to Delhi and Islamabad as fast as we could get there. We sat down and in 2002—I know personally about this—with General Musharraf, and with the diplomats in New Delhi, and we told them, “Stop now. Stop now.” And gave them no choice really, we even sort of rendered a threat. No two nuclear weapon-owning states should go to war with one another.
Where are we in Ukraine? Where are we in Ukraine? We are a hair’s breadth from violating that principle! A hair’s breadth! And we’ve got leaders like Macron who thinks he’s a latter day Charles de Gaulle, who wants to make that threat real. He wants to actually introduce NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine.
So, we are at a very dangerous period, and if Dan were still alive, Dan would be apoplectic at this point. I guarantee you he would. He spent his life trying to prevent this moment from coming, and it looks as if it’s more imminent than it has ever been since August 29, 1949. And the American people by and large are utterly ignorant as to this fact. Thanks.
{{Open Discussion}}
SPEED: I first want to just ask if any of the speakers has anything they would like to either say or respond to anything that has been heard. So, first I’ll just ask Scott, anything at this point.
Colonel Black?
BLACK: I think I’m good.
SPEED: And Helga. You’re OK. All right.
So, let’s do the following. We have people who are present in the room, and then we have people who are on the internet. So, I want to ask for the first two questions or comments to come from the room here, and then the next two will come from the internet. Please raise your hand to get in line in the queue for the virtual side, so we can list the names and know who you’re with. We’re going to start here in the room. Please identify yourself when you speak.
KEN MEYERCORD [ph]: If the leaders of every nuclear power knew that they were going to die if they initiate a nuclear attack, do you think that would deter them from doing so?
SPEED: To whom are you directing that?
MEYERCORD [ph]: Anybody.
BLACK: I’m not sure whether it would or not, but we do know that the leadership of the United States has ways—they will go underground, they will not be killed by the first strike. My guess is there probably are a number of the global elite who will be protected. Whether that makes a difference, I don’t know. It’s almost as though, we don’t have a central organizing intellect to our war policy. We’ve got all the various countries of NATO, we have all these various departments of the government. It’s as though there’s always somebody in every department who wants to have the latest little foot forward, so there’s somebody who says, “Why don’t we give them M-1 tanks? Why don’t we give them HIMARS missiles? Why don’t we do the ATACMS, even though they can reach way out into Russia with those? How about F-16 jets? Shouldn’t we be talking about tactical nuclear bombs?” It’s as those we’re just sort of meandering.
Early in the war, I’m sure Scott will recall, there was a, he may have been an Italian general—but there was someone who made the comment that it seems as though we’re sleepwalking into World War III, and that got my attention. It’s not as though there’s some central scheme and plan, but it’s sort of this unfolding amorphous thing. And fortunately, I think, on the other side, there is a central organizing intellect. There is a central disciplining individual. I think President Putin has firm control of the direction and the limits. While they’d love to try to get people to start calling him “Mad Vlad,” the West has essentially backed its entire existence on his rationality and the fact that he will not do something that is rash and unpredictable.
RITTER: A., I support everything Colonel Black just said, not just because he outranks me, but because he’s right.
I’m going to build upon what Colonel Wilkerson said. The question was, do you think the leaders understand that if we go to nuclear war, they’re going to die? I will say today that there is not a single leader who understands what nuclear war is. And because you don’t understand what nuclear war is, you don’t understand the consequences thereof. In the Cold War, we had a plan: It was the Single Integrated Operations Plan, it was the nuclear plan. And when John F. Kennedy was first briefed on it when he became President, he got sick to his stomach, and turned to his advisors and said, “And we call ourselves a human race.” He chastised the Pentagon: He said, “You can’t ask me to push a button and destroy the world. You have to give me options.” So, the Pentagon gave him options, which were that no matter what he did, he pushed a button and it ended the world. Lyndon Johnson was faced with the same insanity. Every American President during the Cold War understood the consequences of his actions: That if we initiated a nuclear strike, we would all die, he would die, there’s no surviving this at all.
Then, the Cold War ended, and we went into this period when people forgot what nuclear war was. In fact, it was a good thing. I like it that we forgot what nuclear war was, because it meant that we were doing things like de-targetting our missiles, so that the missiles in our silos weren’t on a hair-trigger to be fired up. They had taken the target out of the missiles. In order to use these missiles, you had to make a deliberate decision to {re}-target them, to {rebuild} the plan, and this created time for sanity to sink in!
And then George W. Bush came along, and decided that America’s nuclear arsenal had to be a usable nuclear arsenal. But we operated under the notion that we were the supreme nuclear power, and that we could intimidate anybody into submission; that nobody had the guts to stand up to us, especially the Russians or the Chinese, because we made it clear that they would be destroyed, that they would die. And we operated on the premise that we wouldn’t die—and so, it all became a big game of bluff, of bluster, of bullying. Well, the Russians haven’t put up with that, and neither have the Chinese. Today Russia has the superior nuclear power; it’s the superior nuclear power in the world, with a modernized nuclear force that can destroy every target in the United States, anyplace in the world that it wants to. Fortunately, it’s tied to a doctrine that has some sort of sanity built into it.
You talked about, Colonel Black, somebody saying we need to become more aggressive with our nuclear doctrine. What it means is we need to become more aggressive with our bluff. See, somebody might not be afraid of America if they know all we have are Minuteman 3 or Tridents with city-killing capability. But my God, if we make the W-76-2 low-yield nuclear weapon and we put it on a Trident missile in an Ohio-class submarine, we now have the capability to launch a {small nuclear war}. And then we can “escalate to de-escalate.” How do we prove to the Russians that we can beat them, if they don’t think we’re going to fire our missile? By firing a missile with a nuclear warhead that just goes boom instead of {boom}. We think that the Russians will go, “Oh, gosh! Thanks for nuking us. We’re done.” But what we honestly believe is that now the Russians think that because we have this usable nuclear weapon, that we may in fact use it. So, to prevent us from using it, Russia will alter its patterns of behavior. But Russia won’t alter its patterns of behavior, when it comes to issues of existential survival. The United States—talk about backing ourselves into a corner—in this case the United States is {advancing} ourselves into a corner of no return. We are creating a nuclear doctrine {backed by capacity}, backed by doctrine, backed by aggressive leadership that doesn’t understand the consequences of their actions!
We will go to nuclear war, and we will meet our nuclear demise not because somebody intended for this to happen, but because it was an accident. They said, “they will never call our bluff,” they will never react in a way because—oh, they just nuked us; it’s all over. That’s the future of this world, Ladies and Gentlemen, unless we find a way to reverse course.
And the first thing—and I agree with Colonel Wilkerson on this so much: Sir, we have to find a way to make the American people afraid again. That’s a horrible thing to say, but if the American people don’t do what you and I did—. When I was a kid, I grew up in Germany next to a nuclear weapons storage facility. And when my dad went into the bunker, which meant that we might be going to war, that meant the world was going to end. And I grew up as a child, fearful. I would go to school in the morning not knowing if I would come home at night, or there would be a world. That’s no childhood for anybody! But it made me scared to death of nuclear weapons, which made the joy I felt when I participated in getting rid of nuclear weapons as a weapons inspector, that much more. We need to recapture that joy, Colonel, but we have to do it by making Americans afraid again.
SPEED: Two things. Helga, anything to add?
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: We pass.
SPEED: OK, and Colonel Wilkerson?
WILKERSON: Well, I would just say that I agree with Scott. I think we do need to scare people again. And I would reiterate the euphoria that existed just after the end of the Cold War when {we}—{we} were in Russia, destroying warheads! We were destroying them so fast, the lawyers got involved and stopped us on liability issues. But we were actually destroying warheads. You talked about us being at around 5,000-6000 today. We had 30,000 each then. We destroyed all those warheads. That, in and of itself, shows what’s possible. We were planning, on the joint staff—this is not joke—we were planning to go down to somewhere around 1,200 warheads—total warheads of all types. We thought about, and had a study from, of all places, the U.S. Air Force, who said we could go down to 600. All we had to do was talk our other antagonists in the world, and they didn’t look much like antagonists at that time, into doing the same thing. And maybe even we could make the Non-Proliferation Treaty have some real robust meaning. Those were good days!
How did we lose them? We polluted them.
SPEED: Hmm! Let me say while we’re going to this question, the first question was perfect in length, because of the answers you’re going to get. So, we like to ask that when people speak, please be concise and think clearly about what it is you want to ask. If you have a particular person you want to have answer, please indicate that as well.
DIANE SARE: I’m Diane Sare. I happen to also be an independent candidate for U.S. Senate in New York. This question of how we wake up the American people looms large. I would like particularly ask Helga her thoughts on, one, the relationship between the looming blow-out of the trans-Atlantic financial system and the war drive. I think we clearly see the elections are a factor in keeping up a delusion of some kind of military victory against Russia. But what happened when the Berlin Wall came down, because really the only thing I can think of is that there has to be some kind of revolution in the West. And the last thing that I can think about, is the shift that was huge—I think it’s not much on people’s mindsit was a missed opportunity, is: are there parallels in this situation? One thing that comes to mind is the movement on the campuses against the genocide in Gaza. But I’d really like your thoughts on how we break this, and the connection between the financial situation and the war drive.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, retrospectively, the end of the Soviet Union and the German unification was an historical chance. In German you call it “{Sternstunden der Menschheit},” a stellar hour of humanity. Because there was the possibility to have a peace order for the 21st century. At that time—even some years before—the Soviet Union was not regarded as a threat anymore, the hope of Gorbachev, and even Putin later until 2001, was that Russia could maybe join NATO, which he mentioned it to Clinton when Clinton visited Moscow in 2001. We proposed at that time the Eurasian Land-Bridge as the economic basis for such a peace order.
That chance was thoroughly missed: It’s one of the great tragedies at all, and that we are today at the verge of World War III is that the neo-cons in Great Britain and the United States decided to use the unipolar world conception, running the world as an empire based on the Anglo-American special relationship and declare the end of history—Fukuyama—meaning that everybody would adopt the neo-liberal model of Western democracy. What followed was decades of NATO expansion to the East, color revolution, regime change, interventionist wars. And this has all brought us to the point where we are today. It has caused a tremendous backlash, a blowback of incredible proportions. Almost everything that is happening in the world is the result of these wrong policies by the West from that moment on.
The fact that we have now the BRICS countries becoming probably the BRICS+50, maybe not this year, but soon. The fact that the Global South is deciding to form their own economic system is regarded as a big threat to the hegemon. But what I am suggesting is a completely different approach. None of these countries—not China, not Russia, not Brazil, not India, not South Africa, nor any of the new Global South countries which are forming this new economic alliance—is an enemy of the United States or Europe. If the United States and Europe would say, “OK, we stop geopolitics, and we go for a new system where we cooperate instead of confrontation.” You know the problems of the world are so massive: We have world hunger, we have the migration problem, we have unbelievable misery of so many people, and if all the nations would decide to cooperate to uplift the human species, it could be done (maybe not as Trump was saying in a day), but it could be done in a very, very quick period of time. I personally think, it’s the only hope. The idea of a new security and development architecture is not an illusion: I think it’s the only realistic approach.
And it includes emphatically a reorganization of the bankrupt financial system, because as you correctly say, Diane, the real motor of the war drive is the fact that the trans-Atlantic neo-liberal system is hopelessly bankrupt. We are sitting on a debt of $2 quadrillion in outstanding derivatives. There is no way how this can be remedied under normal conditions: The central banks are always moving between quantitative easing, quantitative tightening because there is no way out of it. The system could blow out {at any moment}, as we are sitting here. And the only orderly approach is to do exactly what Franklin D. Roosevelt did in 1933: Banking separation exactly like the Glass-Steagall Act prescribed, and then basically move to have a new credit system which provides credit for development. This is why we have said that the “new name for peace is development.”
One very important aspect of this new security and development architecture I mentioned is our proposal for how to remedy the crisis with Gaza, Israel, and Southwest Asia. We have actualized an old proposal of my late husband, Lyndon LaRouche, [“The Oasis Plan”](https://laroucheorganization.com/larouche-plan-southwest-asia): which is the idea to have massive development of new fresh water through desalination of ocean water, through the use of peaceful nuclear energy, and to have a massive economic development of all of Southwest Asia, because that is the only way how you can overcome this conflict.
So, there are constructive proposals which all could go into this new security and development architecture. I really urge people to think about it. I do not think that anything short of that will solve the problem.
SPEED: I have a list of four people so far on YouTube. It’s probably larger since I’ve been standing here. I’m going to announce the first two, and then we’ll return to the live audience here. So, it’s Steve Starr first, and then Antonio Váldez from {El Mercurio}. I think we have audio on them only.
STEVEN STARR: My name is Steven Starr, I’m a professor at the University of Missouri. I teach a class here on nuclear weapons, and I also recently published a [book on nuclear high-altitude electromagnetic pulse](https://www.google.com/books/edition/Nuclear_High_Altitude_Electromagnetic_Pu/tSUo0AEACAAJ?hl=en).
My question is for Colonel Wilkerson and Scott Ritter. As was mentioned, three of Russia’s ten nuclear early warning system radar sites were recently attacked by Ukrainian drones. Considering that these Russian radars are specifically designed to observe incoming nuclear-armed U.S. ICBMs and could not play any role in the Ukraine war, what do you think was the purpose of these attacks? And did the U.S. provide the targetting data for the drones that were used in the attacks?
RITTER: Colonel, you outrank me. [laughter]
WILKERSON: The answer to your question, I think—and this is somewhat speculation, but it’s informed speculation—is, yes. We knew all about it; we even provided targetting data. And why we did it, I have to answer by saying, we’re insane! The Russians do not have the kind of sophisticated array of warning that we have in space, so this is very important to them. This is like our old distant early warning line which never worked, but theirs works. And it has absolutely no capability of surveilling the battlefield in Ukraine, so what was the purpose of hitting it? I suspect that the purpose of hitting it, was something akin to the purpose of taking out Nord Stream 2. It’s absurd, it’s insane! But this is the kind of thing we do today.
RITTER: I would back up the Colonel by noting that the United States and NATO employ what we call today intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance [ISR] assets over Ukraine and around Ukraine. These drone attacks, I don’t believe, could have penetrated Russian air defenses without access to real-time intelligence about where these air defenses are deployed, what the radar envelopes are, what the terrain features are, how you can use terrain masking, timing of attack, the specific route of attack. It’s a very sophisticated plot that is beyond the capability of Ukraine to do of its own volition. So, I agree with the Colonel, that the United States was directly involved in the targetting of this.
Now the question is, why would the United States do this? I come back to one my built-in assumptions, is that we think the Russians are bluffing. We believe that if we can put enough pressure on Russia, that we will cause the Russians to quickly seek the negotiating table to bring an end to this conflict. A lot of what we have been doing against the Russians, using the Ukrainians as proxies, is tying to something that’s scheduled to take place next week—the Swiss peace conference. But the purpose of the Swiss peace conference isn’t to seek peace: It’s to create a global coalition which can put political pressure on Russia. So, there’s a sequencing of trying to build this global coalition to put pressure on Russia, and putting Russia in a state where it will respond to that pressure.
So, these attacks that have been made against Russia’s critical infrastructure, attacks made against Russian civilian targets, are all designed to wear down the resolve of the Russian government, so they would respond to this pressure. This is lunacy in the extreme. Russia has a nuclear posture which clearly states that when its critical nuclear infrastructure is placed under threat—to include nuclear threat or conventional threat—this warrants a threat of existential nature that can legitimately give Russia the green light to use their nuclear weapons in response.
Russians aren’t bluffing. They don’t bluff. The Russians are highly responsible. They have a very mature posture and very mature leadership. Vladimir Putin has been in power for 25 years. You get to know the lay of the land during that time. He is comfortable with where Russia is. He is comfortable with who Russia is. And he is comfortable with Russia’s place in the world. He is not going to throw away a quarter-century’s work on a whim, on an urge, on a miscalculation. But at the end of the day, when he is confronted with an existential threat, he will respond in accordance with Russian doctrine—and that means nuclear weapons. This is a gross miscalculation on the part of the Ukrainians, on the part of the United States, and on the part of all the allies, that we have tried to bring together to put this pressure on Russia.
We don’t understand Russia. Which is why I believe the best thing we can do as Americans, is to begin talking to the Russians, begin listening to the Russians, begin learning about the Russians so that we better understand who they are, what they are, what they want. And we can make responsible policies based upon that.
SPEED: Colonel Wilkerson?
WILKERSON: I agree with what Scott just said. I’m told, and I believe it, that Antony Blinken and Jake Sullivan cannot talk to Sergey Lavrov. They cannot pick up the telephone and talk to one of the most accomplished diplomats on the face of the Earth, Sergey Lavrov. That’s absurd. What do you do diplomacy for? Whom do you talk to most urgently with diplomacy? Your enemies, not your friends! You talk to your friends on a cell phone any time you want to. You talk to your enemies, or your would-be enemies, or your {pretend} enemies, but you {definitely don’t forbid} your top diplomat from talking to the top diplomat of the country you’re most embroiled with, and most dangerously embroiled with.
SPEED: Colonel Black, did you have something you wanted to add?
BLACK: I thought I would just add the fact that when it comes to the drone attacks on the radar sites that defend Moscow, this was a coordinated thing. This was not simply somebody from Ukraine maybe with some permission from some Americans to go ahead and do this. It was orchestrated, because you had the attack on the early warning system; you had the attack on the nuclear bombers; you had the integration and adjustment of the F-16 jets to make them nuclear-capable and nuclear ready—all of these things coming together. Maybe it was an effort to bluff, to raise the stakes on the Russians. Or, maybe it was simply the way that the Pentagon does, to make sure that if they anticipate that the Commander-in-Chief might take a certain action, that they’ve put things in place to make sure that they’re ready for it.
In either event, it is a {very dangerous thing}, because it just ratchets up, if you’re bluffing, there’s always a chance that the other person calls your bluff. And if he calls the bluff, it is Russia’s general position that they don’t fight a limited nuclear war. Their idea is that nuclear war is an all-out war. We have this idea, “well, maybe you can tinker around, maybe you can have a little nuclear war, and that’ll work out and everybody will back down.” Sometimes people don’t back down. And to gamble the existence of humanity on whether somebody will back down—it’s one thing if you’ve got $50 bucks on a card table in a poker game, but you’re actually putting all of humanity on the table. We’re the chips, and we’ve got reckless people gambling our lives with this.
SPEED: OK, Antonio Váldez?
ANTONIO VÁLDEZ [via interpreter]: I am in Mexico. I would like to Scott Ritter, and anyone else who would like to add their opinion, we have been reading reports for some time over these last three years, like the one from the International Security Program and other similar reports that conclude that the current pace of U.S. operations is adequate for peacetime operations, but not for major conflicts. If there were a major regional conflict, such as a war with China, the medium- and long-range weapons would quickly be exhausted, and there is no capacity to increase for a major war. And we recently heard the German Defense Ministry speak of preparing for war in 2029. My question is: Can we interpret this as, at least, perhaps good news in the short term, that the President will not launch into a global conflict, because the conditions are not adequate? Or that perhaps delay a possible nuclear response? Thank you.
RITTER: The good news is, you’re correct. That neither the United States nor NATO is in a position to engage in a large-scale conflict with Russia. Russia has done something in the two-plus years that the special military operation has been ongoing, that I think has shocked the West. You could hear it in the words of Gen. Christopher Cavoli—he’s the commander of American forces in Europe. He said, the Russians got their defense industry up and running; they’ve rebuilt their military, they have a very large military, well-trained, well-led, well-equipped, and we got nothing like that, and we’re not going to have anything like that anytime soon.
The West has shown an inability to gear up for this kind of large-scale war, because there’s a political cost to be played. As we saw recently in Europe with the recent European elections, there is a political price to pay for bad policy. And some European political parties have paid a heavy price. Emmanuel Macron has paid a heavy price for bad policy. The idea of going on a war footing where you haven’t adequately explained the necessity of conflict to your people is bad policy.
So, neither the United States nor Europe is in a position to confront Russia in a sustained, high-intensity fashion. That’s the good news.
The bad news is, we still have a policy that’s very aggressive against Russia, which means that the default in lieu of adequate conventional capacity is nuclear posture. So, rather than making us safer, this actually makes the world a much more dangerous place to live, because we aren’t altering our policies to meet conventional realities, conventional capabilities: We are insisting on moving forward aggressively on policies that can only be backed up by nuclear weapons, which makes the likelihood of these weapons being used that much higher.
SPEED: We’re going to come back to the live audience, but let me announce that we have a David Anderson with Pressenza and Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos, who will be the next two people on the social media.
This individual in the front, you had your hand up?
TASS: I’m Ivan Tulchik[ph] of TASS news agency. I’ve got a follow-up question on the issue that Colonel Black has already touched upon. What are the chances that the U.S. or its allies, in one form or another, will provide Ukraine with nuclear arms? Thank you so much.
BLACK: I would say I don’t envision the U. S. providing nuclear weapons to Ukraine unless it is as part of a scheme where we would control the nuclear weapons. But it would give us some degree of plausible deniability, some sort of a buffer between us and the actual employment. I think we would be careful about doing that. But Scott, what are your thoughts?
RITTER: I’ll just quickly say that I think there is zero chance we would ever give Ukraine nuclear weapons. One, it’s insane. Why would we turn over the dangerous weapons in the world to the most irresponsible nation in the world? We have leaders in America who speak highly of Zelenskyy, but we know the truth. He is not a good leader. We have leaders who talk about Ukrainian democracy, but we know the truth: It’s not a democracy. We know it’s the most corrupt place in Europe; maybe one of the most corrupt places in the world, led by people who are totally inadequate to the task. We would {never} in a million years give Ukraine a nuclear weapon.
I’ll just throw in another reason why. NATO has a nuclear doctrine. We talked about how we employ nuclear weapons as part of a NATO nuclear strategy. Key to that is that it’s kept within NATO, and that it’s done consensually. If the United States were to give nuclear weapons to Ukraine, we would be undercutting our own posture when it comes to the validity and viability of a unified NATO nuclear response. So, it’s counterproductive across the board. I don’t see the United States ever giving Ukraine weapons, nor do I see the United States every standing by while Ukraine seeks to acquire nuclear weapons. We will never let the irresponsible entity known as Ukraine have nuclear weapons—that’s my personal belief.
SUZANNE MONK: Hi, my name is Suzanne Monk; I’m with Patriot Action PAC. I wanted to ask a question with regards to the election. You said that, of course, bad policies, you spoke about that. We seem to have a President running for office right now who is intent on issuing bad policies. In any other election year, downplaying war would be a good voter call. But he seems to be doing the opposite. Do you think there’s a possibility that nuclear conflict or escalation of the existing conflict would be used as an election tool by this administration?
BLACK: Well, you’ve got the wag the dog scenario. The idea that, sort of, as a last-minute ploy you go to war, because wars mobilize people and excite them, and all of a sudden, everything is forgotten. We’ve seen this happen before. This is how the war against Serbia originated. The United States was going to stay out of the war in Serbia, and then there was an impeachment underway with President Clinton, and all of a sudden, we changed our policy and went to war.
It seems to me difficult to pull that off this time, because people have seen, sort of, the unfolding of the war. Politically, I don’t sense that it works. The wag-the-dog thing works best when there’s something that’s rather unexpected, where you can suddenly deploy troops, and there’s this sudden shock of excitement. I think people are very tired of war. They’re obviously tired in Europe, they’ve made that clear. And they rejected war in Europe. And I think there is the same feeling in this country. It was very exciting at the beginning, and now it’s become a grind. People are getting very tired of it. I think if the President were to do something very dramatic; you know of course, they’re becoming desperate in some ways. It depends on how desperate, but I think it would be difficult to pull off that scenario.
RITTER: I want to hear what Colonel Wilkerson thinks about this, because he actually was in an administration that took the country to war for political purposes. So, I think his insights into this particular question would be invaluable. If you don’t mind, Colonel?
WILKERSON: No, there’s no question that George W. Bush had as a principal incentive, with the war in Iraq, the one that started in 2003, doing the same thing for him that the first Iraq War did for his father. Too early, his father wasn’t re-elected, but Bush timed it so that he thought, “Now the American people will vote for me, and I’ll be re-elected in 2004 because I’m at war.” It very much was an incentive—not the principal one, but it was an incentive.
Here’s where I’m worried about this conversation in a very different way. I think one of the reasons Joe Biden, in particular, is not seeking a ceasefire and a peace agreement, or at least peace negotiations leading to an agreement, and all that that would mean, is because he’s like LBJ in 1965. LBJ said, quote, “Old Ho ain’t going to be moved by no bombs,” when the Air Force briefed him on all the things they were going to do to North Vietnam and so forth. LBJ knew that we could not win that war, and yet went on and escalated it to over half a million troops. Why did he do that? He did that because he wanted the Great Society to come about, and he knew that if he were perceived as cutting and running from a war, that he in essence had inherited, but nonetheless had taken charge of, he would be punished by the American people. I think Biden is thinking the same way. He cannot cut and run from Ukraine until the election is over, and he’s won.
That’s insidious; it’s just incredible, but it is true that domestic politics, often more powerful than even foreign politics, influences a President’s decision-making, particularly on war. That’s how I think it’s influencing Biden right now, and it’s keeping him from going to the peace table. That, plus the fact that as Dean Acheson said, so powerfully, “Prestige is often more important than actual winning or losing,” and prestige is involved now. It’s involved for Jake Sullivan, Tony Blinken, Joe Biden, Lindsey Graham, and a whole bunch of other idiots in the Senate and the Congress in general. It’s prestige that we’re fighting for now, and we’re losing. {And we know we are losing,} and we know we’re losing badly. And we know we should go to the peace table, get a ceasefire, go to the peace table and seek a negotiation and get the best deal we can. But, we won’t do it, because of prestige, and we’re fearful about what it would do to our prospects of being re-elected.
SPEED: Let me just say at this point that there are a whole lot of questions coming in. We want to make sure that we acknowledge this to people, and there’s something important I want to say about that, which is: We’re not going to be able to get to all of them. But, the good folks at {Executive Intelligence Review} have authorized me to say that all questions which are written we will certainly make available to the speakers, and perhaps those that are obviously most pertinent, we’ll ask that the speakers respond in writing. And we’ll be able to make those available for purposes of an exchange among people. That’s only said because of the following: We have 1,600 people on just on our Schiller feed—that’s only one feed—right now watching live. And in addition to that, there are other people who are writing me frantically in my private text messages also about questions they want to have asked.
One of them, which was triggered by the discussion on elections, actually it’s not one, I got {five}, about the European elections which have just occurred. This was sort of what people think of that. I want to go to Helga about that, because she’s in Germany, and of course she’s been more than following this. But then, if anyone on the panel has any comment as to whether—the question that was being asked is: What has been the impact we’ve seen in the recent European elections, and do we think that that has some importance for the direction of war? So, Helga, I’m ask you that first, and then see if any of the panel have a response to that.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think it is important, because for the first time in Germany, for example, you have now two parties of the size of parliament parties, that are explicitly against the war. This is not enough to stop the coalition government from pursuing the policies. It’s a shame, because Germany has become the laughingstock in the whole world for being completely devoid of any sovereignty, of having become the total colonial slave of the Anglosphere, disregarding the interests of the German people. So I think given the enormity of what is happening, the election result is not adequate, but it is a major step forward. Macron got smashed. I think he may be out soon. He’s maneuvering back and forth, which is probably not succeeding. But you have five European heads of state who have come out extremely strongly warning of the danger of nuclear war. That is very emphatically Vučić of Serbia, it’s naturally Viktor Orbán of Hungary, it’s Irakli Kobakhidze of Georgia, and the Bulgarian President Ruman Radev who is very alarmed. He says “the train to war has left the station already.” {And] we should not forget Prime Minister Robert Fico of Slovakia, who came out very, very strongly against the danger of war, and he was the victim of an assassination attempt which fortunately did not function. Even his speeches afterwards are basically repeating the same thing. So, I would not underestimate the cohesion of the European Union—Serbia naturally is not part of it—but the cohesion of the European Union is faltering. In my view, this is a good thing, because what do you need a European Union bureaucracy for, which does not represent the interests of its member states and the people?
So, I think Europe is in a convulsion, and since there are more elections coming this year, state elections, I think the earthquake which we start to see—you know the Alternative for Germany (AfD) is now the strongest party in all the East German states—that means soon we will have a wall again between East and West Germany. No, I don’t think that will happen, but the division between Germany East and West is absolutely incredible.
I think it’s a work in process, but to just observe it not good enough. I have maintained for a long time that we have to build the bridge to this new system which is emerging. Because we really have the same interests, and Europe should work with the countries of the Global South to build a new world economic order. And the United States should go back to its tradition of the American Revolution, of the Founding Fathers, of John Quincy Adams’ foreign policy, of Lincoln, of Franklin Roosevelt, of Kennedy. Then, I think all problems could be solved.
SPEED: OK Scott?
RITTER: Real quick: There’s a lot of people out—we’re in an election year, and I can say first-hand, and I’m sure everybody has similar stories, there’s just people that don’t believe their vote counts any more. Or, when they look at the candidates that are likely to be one ballot, they just say—“We don’t like any of ‘em.” And this is all legitimate. But for the people that say, “What power is democracy? What power is the vote?” Ask Emmanuel Macron! The vote matters! Your vote matters! Everbody’s vote matters! We’re here today, to talk about the dangers of nuclear war. As Colonel Wilkerson said, Joe Biden and his administration may be formulating policy that promotes the potential of nuclear conflict, because that’s the only way out for Joe. He’s desperate! He can’t be seen as being weak! Why don’t we, the people, tell Joe that it ain’t weak to walk away from nuclear war! And if Joe doesn’t want to listen, why don’t we tell Donald Trump, “You’re not weak, by not promoting nuclear war!” Why don’t we get enough Americans in the street, before the election, to say, “We are the swing vote! The people that don’t want nuclear war! And if you don’t win us over, we’re not voting for you, and you could lose the election!”
You see, we live in an evenly divided nation right now. And if we can get enough people together, united in the notion that America needs to be walking away from nuclear war, not sleepwalking towards nuclear war, our vote will matter! Our vote will matter.
So, we need to find a way to capture this. I’m not sleepwalking—but I’ll tell you this, on September 28th, we’re putting together a rally in Kingston. If we get enough people in the streets, shut down the throughway like we did in Woodstock. And if we have similar rallies in every swing state in America, where people just got up, just one day—Saturday, September 28th—stood up and said, “I’m angry as hell, and I’m not going to take it any more! Listen to me, or lose the election!” They will listen.
And we know this is true: Because in June of 1982, a million people went into the streets of Central Park, New York, and they protested against nuclear war. They protested in favor of arms control. The President of the United States at that time, was a {crazy}, red-hatin’ man named Ronald Reagan! “Evil Empire!” Five years later, he signed the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, beginning a process, as Colonel Wilkerson said, that led to not only getting rid of nuclear warheads, but getting rid of nuclear weapons.
We can do it! We, the people of the United States: government of the people, by the people, and for the people! But the people have to make themselves matter. Ask Emmanuel Macron what happens when the people decide that you don’t matter any more. Ask Joe Biden, ask Donald Trump, what happens, when we decide, {they} don’t matter any more.
Our vote does count: Let’s make it count.
SPEED: OK, what we’re going to do is, we’re going to go back to social media, and I’m going to ask that the questioners, because there are so many people, and we all have scheduling issues—I ask that people will direct their question to an individual speaker, and we’ll get one question and one response. If someone has something that’s urgent, that’s going to be other speakers, to put that in.
I want to go David Anderson with Pressenza.
DAVID ANDERSON: Can you hear me, now? Thank you so much, I am David Anderson with Pressenza international press agency, and my question is concerning the international committee, how people in different parts of the world, in South America, in Africa, in Asia can contribute to fight that situation, and a little bit, how the power has been done before with the South African campaign against apartheid? Can something like this be done, concerning nuclear war?
SPEED: Helga raised her hand, so she fairly got it. Go ahead.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: I think what I said earlier, that since global war affects the entire human community, it is emphatically the right of countries and voices from the Global South, which is the global majority. They represent 85% of the human population, and I think the more people, the more newspapers, social media, politicians, institutions, students, universities, think tanks, papers, would call for world peace and renounce this present confrontation, the better. Because the problem is that, while we are on the verge of World War III, which could happen by an accident, or by miscalculation, the general population is not aware of it, because the NATO policy is so much focussed on controlling the narrative, that they have launched now a whole apparatus of fact-checkers, of so-called “fight against disinformation,” there is an entire apparatus which is out to manipulate the public opinion, to demonize Russia, to demonize China, and to basically create an image that NATO has committed no fault, it’s all these other evil countries—and that’s not true! You saw at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, there were 139 countries, 21,000 people representing the vast majority of the world who thinking differently. But they are not heard in the West. So, I think the louder the voice from the Global South comes, so that the people who are listening only to the very, very controlled mass media, that those people wake up and hear what the Global South has to say. I think that’s the most important thing which could happen right now, as a new element in the situation, to shift the world in a more safe direction.
SPEED: OK, I just want to announce, we’re going to take another 26 minutes here, until 3 o’clock, and I see some people now are writing questions, which is very good. I was corrected: We are now up to 1,700 people watching simultaneously.
So we want to go now to Leonidas Chrysanthopoulos. And you also want to say who you are.
LEONIDAS CHRYSANTHOPOULOS: My question is to Larry Wilkerson on the issue of civil protection, in the case of a nuclear attack. I had also, when I was a kid during the Cold War, I had also lived in Washington, D.C., where we were also going through all these nuclear alerts in school: I remember the sirens going off in Washington.
Now, nothing is happening in the United States, to inform the people of what to do in case of emergency. Nothing is happening in Europe. I wrote an article about the necessity of doing something in Greece about that, and two days after that, Germany woke up: Somebody took that article and started saying something must be done. The authorities here, in Greece, they don’t give a damn. They tell me that if we raise the issue, there’ll be panic. I tell them, that you should make modifications in the subways so that they could accommodate the population of Athens and other practical things. But I have the impression that their point of view is that after we have a nuclear attack, we don’t give a damn what happens to the people, we have some holes for ourselves to save ourselves. Is this what’s happening in the other Western countries? And in the U.S.? I mean, the people of the West are going to be sacrificed like that? That’s my question.
WILKERSON: Interesting question, actually. I went through the experience of the enhancement—I guess that’s the right term—of our Continuation of Government, COG, capability, immediately after 9/11, as you might expect. I even got flown away to an alternate command post, blindfolded and in full MOPP gear—that is, a mask, protective clothing, and everything else, on the Black Hawk helicopter, and landed, and sworn in as President of the United States when I got there. My first act was to fire Donald Rumsfeld. [laughter]
We have places all over, now, largely as a result of that. And the intelligentsia, as it were, the {nomenklatura}, the people who make the decisions and are the political leaders in this country, will survive—for a brief time, anyway: If we have an all-out nuclear war, no one’s going to survive, period. But it is kind of comfortable for those who are in the leadership positions to know they have these alternative command posts, and that they’ll be whisked away to them, and they’ll be saved, at least for an interim period.
And you’re right: There’s nothing else that I can detect, across the country, certainly nothing like we had during the height of the Cold War, and that’s one of the reasons why I tried to emphasize before in my initial comments, that’s one of the reasons I think the American people are ignorant. And I don’t mean that in a derisive sense. I simply mean it in a descriptive sense: They don’t know! They haven’t a clue! And politicians {have no interest whatsoever} in giving them a clue.
BLACK: I’d just like to add one quick thing, if I could?
You know, I think it would make very good sense, I happen to believe there would be some survivability after a nuclear war. I think most of the Western world would be annihilated, New York City would be turned to glass. The Pentagon, Northern Virginia would be turned to glass. But, I think there would be some survivability. And one thing I think might wake people up a little bit, would be notices, for example, on the New York subway, telling people to get their potassium iodide tablets, which you take—you take them immediately after the outbreak, and you load up your thyroid with iodine so that it doesn’t take in the iodine from the fallout. I think if people began to put things in a concrete way, where they began to envision what it would be like, and actually, sort of like we did when we were growing up as kids, you learned—I can still remember: You covered your eyes, because the flash blinded people; you put your hand behind your back to protect your neck from the roof falling in, and you got under your little wooden desk. We did it all the time: I remember it to this day! We don’t have anything like that, but I think—I have potassium iodide tablets, not because I’m overly reactive. I’ve been in a lot of combat and so forth, but I just think the family should be protected.
So I think if we took some concrete measures and we notified people, “here are protective actions you could take, you may not survive, but it’s worth at least doing something.” It might make people think twice. I don’t know: What you think, Scott?
RITTER: Just real quick on this one. You mentioned in your outstanding remarks about a statement made by a National Security Council official, talking about how we’re going to be aggressively pursuing a potential nuclear scenario. And that’s sort of interesting, because that implies that the government is doing planning for a potential nuclear conflict: Prepared to execute, if the President makes the decision. That’s fair.
But then, now, we have an election season. Why doesn’t somebody ask Joe Biden, “If you’re ordering the military to be prepared to execute a nuclear operation, what are you telling the American people? What’re we prepared to execute? Where’s our survivability? Are you abandoning us?” And the answer is: “Yes!”
So once again, to reiterate everything we’ve been trying to say here, to the people of the United States: Be afraid! Be very afraid. They are planning a nuclear war, and your survivability does not factor into it {one thing}. The only choice you have right now, is to turn yourself into a weapon, a weapon of democracy: Make your vote count. And there’s no more important issue today than stopping the nuclear war that our government is planning, and they’re leaving you out of it. Because if they cared about you, they’d be handing out the pills, they’d be talking about nuclear drills, they’d be reopening the subways and the gymnasium basements, and everything else. They’d be stockpiling water, stockpiling food, but they’re not doing that, because {you don’t matter}.
Make yourselves matter.
SPEED: I’m going to make one exception, on the internet. If Dimitri Lascaris is still there. He’s an independent journalist, that was going to be going to give an interview. So if he is able to be brought up, let’s bring him up right now. If not, let’s continue.
I was passed one note that you may or may not be aware of, Scott, and others: The Biden administration just announced that the United States will provide arms and training to the Azov Brigade. That’s something that we may want to comment about a little bit.
Let’s some back here, now, to the floor—in the back.
ALIM MUHAMMAD: I have a question for Scott Ritter: You were pulled off a plane. You were on your way to St. Petersburg, to attend the International Economic Forum. What were you going to say, that got everybody so upset? [laughter]
RITTER: It’s no secret what I was going to say.
The passport that was taken from me and revoked by the State Department, there’s been no explanation provided as to why they did this, and on what authority they did this. But they did it. It’s a passport that was issued to me in 2021, it was a valid passport. It’s a passport that I’ve used to travel internationally several times, to include two prior trips to Russia. It’s a passport that the U.S. government is intimately familiar with, because they seize it from me, every time I return from Russia, as they hold me in a pen awaiting detailed questioning about what I was about to do, or what I had done in Russia.
What I’ve been doing since May of 2023 is traveling to Russia on a mission of peace, a mission designed to learn about the Russian people, to learn about their culture, to learn about their history, to learn about their soul, and to capture this and bring it back to America as the antidote to the disease, the poison of Russophobia that has gripped the American people.
Maybe they weren’t afraid in May, because it was the initial go around. I was very well received in Russia, but it didn’t resonate so well in the United States. But I went back in December and January, December of last year, January of this year, again on an extended trip; this one took me to the new territories, took me to Crimea, took me to Chechnya (of all places). Anybody who speaks Russia, please don’t watch my speech to the Chechen soldiers, because it’s the worst Russian-language performance in modern history. But, the point is, I was starting to gain traction. My message was starting to resonate, not only inside Russia, but here in the United States, and around the world.
The trip that I was going on, started at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, but it didn’t stop there: There was going to be a 40-day journey throughout Russia, from the Pacific Ocean to the Baltic Sea, and everything in between, where I would take this message, of speaking to the Russians of peace, of hope, of trying to find an alternative to the policy paths that we’re currently on, that lead to the potential of nuclear war: 40 days. And we had set up the mechanism, where we would be live-streaming this event back to an American audience that is growing exponentially, as we speak. This scared (excuse my French) the {crap} out of the Biden administration! Scared them to death! Which is why they took the extraordinary measure of pulling me out of the line and preventing me from flying: a violation of my Fifth Amendment rights of freedom of travel; a violation of my Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure. They have provided no reason why they did this, and ultimately, because they knew what I was doing, and they knew what they were stopping by stopping me, a violation of my First Amendment rights. I know my Constitution: Apparently the Biden administration {doesn’t}.
SPEED: Any other questions here?
CARL OSGOOD: Carl Osgood with {EIR}. I was happy that Colonel Wilkerson mentioned Daniel Ellsberg, because another thing that Daniel Ellsberg said, and I read this in his book—I never had the pleasure of meeting him in person—was that contrary to popular myth, the popular view, the U.S. has always used nuclear weapons in the way that a criminal uses a gun, in order to get what he wants, even if he doesn’t pull the trigger. So my question for Scott Ritter and Colonel Wilkerson is, how is the U.S. using nuclear weapons now?
RITTER: The good Colonel, I yield to you.
WILKERSON: I’d say, it’s been some time since I was in government and associated with nuclear weapons in any direct way, but I would surmise that we’re using them the way we have used them throughout the time of our possession of them, including having them first, as the film “Oppenheimer” made sort of a graphic presentation of, and Lindsey Graham has given new resonance to, with his allusion to Hiroshima and Nagasaki with respect to Gaza. Lindsey has reached new crescendos of insanity in my view, and I’m from the same state he is, South Carolina.
We use nuclear weapons as a backdrop for threatening whenever we need to use them. We talked about, earlier, the situation in the Global South. Well, let’s just look at what’s happening with the rest of the world, is what I like to call it: Right now, according to the office of financial assets control, we have probably somewhere between 30 and 35 countries under draconian sanctions. We have a lot of individuals, in addition to the countries, under draconian sanctions. We are detested by 3.6 billion people in the world, is my guess, given the countries under sanction, given their nature, and given, in any cases, the absolute lack of any real reason to have them, and the fact that they might be pointed at the leadership of a state or country, but they in fact are impacting the people more than the leadership, if the leadership at all! So, we have built up a body of people in the world, that I estimate to be somewhere between a quarter and a third that hate our guts. Well, behind all of that, of course, is nuclear weapons.
And we talked about this earlier, and Scott alluded to it: I’m a member of something called the All Volunteer Force Forum. As a matter of fact, I and Gen. Dennis Laich founded it several years ago. And one of the things we have been doing, is taking a good, hard look at the American military today. And what Scott said, I can amplify a thousand times over: We are so broken within the American military, that we couldn’t mobilize for war if we tried. Not only that, in the polling that we do, very sophisticated polling every year, and have done for almost three decades, the propensity to serve of American youth in the draft age quadrant, roughly 18-24, is down to 9%, the lowest it’s ever been. It’s General Laich’s and my conclusion, if we had a real war, most American youth would go to Canada or Mexico in the first 48 hours.
So it would be impossible to mobilize this country. Well, what do we do when we realize this? We threaten with nuclear weapons. We leave the nuclear weapons in the background, we hold the nuclear weapons up, we let people know—we don’t have to tell too many, they know it. That’s what scares me more than anything else about the bellicosity coming out of the White House, with regard to China, with regard to Russia, with regard to Iran, because we can’t back it up! We cannot back it up—except, with nuclear weapons.
So, you asked the frightening question, who will be the first in the world to use nuclear weapons? The same people who were the first in the world to use them in 1945. {That} is another thing Dan and I talked about, and we both agreed, it is probably one of the most dangerous aspects of the current situation.
SPEED: OK, we’re going to take one final question, which is from The Grayzone.
HEKMAT ABOUKHATER: Hi, this is Hekmat Aboukhater from The Grayzone, and I sent two questions, but I’ll just go for the first one: What are the implications if Biden’s potential deal with the authoritarian monarchy of Saudi Arabia, in which he is offering U.S. support to develop Saudi civilian nuclear program, with uranium enrichment, in exchange for a Saudi normalization with Israel?
SPEED: Who wants to take it?
WILKERSON: I’ll give you a first impression, and it’s more than a first impression, because I was there when we were talking about this, in 04 and ‘05. What we are is desperate: We’re desperate to get a situation in Gaza under some kind of control, and the only way we do that with the Arab states, led by Riyadh, is to guarantee, this time, guarantee that there will be a Palestinian state, and that means you’ve got to show some concrete on the ground. There’s got to be a prospect of a state.
The other thing the Saudis are holding over our head, is, they want a nuclear weapon, or, they want a latent capacity for a nuclear weapon, so that when Iran gets one, and they have enough uranium right now in enriched, this is IAEA, to make a bomb—to make three bombs, as a matter of fact. So they’re very close. The Saudis want to be able to make one, at the moment that the Iranians do. So that’s what they want this for, and we are {stupid} enough and desperate enough with regard to Gaza, to give it to them.
Now, who won’t give it to them? The bad people in the world: Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. They will not give the Saudis nuclear weapons capability; but we will.
BLACK: Yeah, I would tend to agree with Colonel Wilkerson. Everything revolves around November, the elections in November. It is absolutely vital that we keep the Ukraine war going through November, and also the Democratic Party right now is faced with an enormous, intractable dilemma, because two voting blocs of their own party are at war with one another, and the only way that they can defuse it, is if they can, at this point, if they can slow down or stop the war in Gaza. It’s become enormously unpopular; it has brought to light a lot of things about the history of Israel and so forth, that they would prefer to stay in the past, and that people not become aware of. But it is very possible that the war in Gaza may be the deciding issue in who wins the election in November.
So it’s very critical. We never would have thought of giving this nuclear assistance to Saudi Arabia, but at this point, they’ve got the leverage, we don’t have the leverage; Biden must take steps to defuse this situation, and he’s willing to do anything to do it.
So, again, it’s another situation where the use of nuclear weapons, or at least the technology to create nuclear weapons, is on the table. And, of course, we’re the ones who suffer the cost for this.
SPEED: OK. We’re going to take one final question, which is from the Philippines, and then we’re going to have summaries. Let me also indicate to people who I think will probably be more than interested after this discussion, that there is an organization called the International Peace Coalition. The person who convenes that each week is Anastasia Battle, who’s here to my left, and I’m going to have her say something about that at the very conclusion. I think there’s still 1,700 people with us. All of you are invited, if you are people of good will, which we presume many of you to be, to seek us out and become part of that action.
So we’ll go to the final question, which I mentioned is from the Philippines, and it is from Maria Catherine Suba from Radio Mindanao Network.
MARIA CATHERINE SUBA: Yes, good afternoon, everyone. It’s already 2.57 a.m. here in the Philippines. I am Maria Catherine Suba, a fill-in broadcaster. I am a co-host of the late “Butch” Valdes with the [inaud 1:56:57]
My question goes to Mr. Scott Ritter. As a former UN weapons inspector and U.S. Marines intelligence officer, and actually, to anyone else who wants to answer it: A proxy war is being orchestrated in this part of the world, our country the Philippines. Our country is actually being used by the U.S. in its intent of war against China, and according to geopolitical analysts the Philippines will be the next Ukraine. The Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has allowed an additional nine EDCA sites, or more appropriately, nine U.S. military bases all over the country. The armed forces of the Philippines seem to be following orders from their U.S. counterpart: Drum-beats of war are being heard almost every day. Sinophobia is being propagated on mainstream media. Almost every week, there’s an incident of Chinese coast guard with water cannons, a fishing vessel at the South China Sea. Do you think a false-flag operation can happen here, as sanctions are getting worse? What do you propose for these to stop? Thank you.
RITTER: Thank you very much for the question. Just so you know, I have a little bit of background in the Philippines. In 1986, I was deployed there as a platoon commander, to reinforce the Subic garrison after the fall of the Marcos regime; there was concern about New People’s Army. So I have a warm spot in my heart for the Philippines.
Let’s build upon what Colonel Wilkerson had said, earlier. The United States is incapable of fighting a sustained conflict against a peer level force. The United States cannot fight and engage China and win. We {will} not beat the Chinese; we {cannot} beat the Chinese, and we {know} this, and yet we’re using the Philippines to create the conditions of potential conflict with the Chinese. Please understand that for the Filipino people, this is a recipe for disaster.
You think America is your friend. So, too, did the Ukrainian people, and they are dying by the hundreds of thousands. Friends don’t let friends die in those quantities! The Ukrainians have been displaced by the tens of millions; friends don’t let friends have their cities destroyed in this manner! Friends don’t let friends have families separated, have mothers and children destined to a life of refugee status, and perpetual poverty. That’s not how friends behave. America has never been the friends of the Ukrainians, and we are not the friends of the Filipinos! {We don’t like you!} If we did like you, we wouldn’t be doing this to you! We are using you! You are a tool, nothing but a tool, and when the tool ceases to be useful, we will discard you—and discard you means usually, after a war that devastates you. We are using you to gain some sort of momentary leverage over the Chinese. We will fail! The Chinese will win, and you will be destroyed! {End of story!}
It’s high time the Filipino people pressure their government to start sitting down and engaging the Chinese government, responsibly. China is {not} your enemy: China is your neighbor! China is your friend. China doesn’t want war, and if you would engage China in {diplomacy}, and as we’ve all indicated here, America has long since lost the skill-set necessary to carry out diplomacy, but the Filipinos, the Philippine people can reignite this to relearn it, to use this skill to prevent a war. But if you continue to behave as colonial subjects—and I know that’s a sore subject to the Filipinos, because you were the colonial subjects of America; we still view you as our colonial subjects. We don’t like you, we don’t care about you, we just want to use you! Grow up!
Grow up, and act responsibly: Take control of your own future. America’s not here to help you, America’s here only to use you until there’s nothing left, and then we will discard you on the trash heap of history.
BLACK: I spent a lot of time in the Philippines, and came in off the carrier Iwo Jima, the Valley Forge, the Guadalcanal. And Scott would agree with me: Americans have a tremendous love for the Filipino people. I would say, two of my very, very closest friends are from the Philippines. And we really wish, very much, that you were not in this posture, but I think it’s very important for the Philippines to be clear-eyed in what’s going on, and not to be led down the path by bellicose military people from the United States.
You’re talking about small islands. I wish China were not engaged in that particular policy. I tend to be sympathetic toward them on many things, but less so on that one. But at the same time, I think, you’ve got to make sort of a cold, clear-eyed assessment, and say, look, it’s not worth a war with a great power for the Philippines to engage in combat over those small islands. But I do agree it is time to use diplomacy and to attempt to resolve the issue. Whatever you do, do not simply become a tool of the United States, and be led into an armed conflict that ends up in disaster for the Filipino people. Because if you do, you will break the heart of a whole lot of us who just dearly love the Philippines and the people of the islands.
SPEED: OK. So, we’re at the point of summary remarks. I want to start with Larry Wilkerson. Of course, if there’s anything you wish to address that hasn’t been addressed already, please feel free to do so. And we’ll then proceed.
WILKERSON: I’ll just add to what was just said: I thought when Teddy Allen brought Ferdinand Marcos and Imelda Marcos to Pearl, and we escorted them up to Camp Smith, that the Philippines had finally awakened and thrown us out. And we would never be back. And then I saw Donald Rumsfeld take advantage of 9/11 and start infiltrating special forces back into the Philippines and I knew the game was back on, again. So, I agree with what both Scott and Colonel Black said. There’s a lot of affection on my part for the Philippines, too. But you should grow up and not need the United States, and not put the United States and China at loggerheads over your dead body, because that’s what it’ll be about.
The topic here, today, was nuclear weapons, and I’ll just say this, again: The most likely state owning nuclear weapons today, to use those nuclear weapons, again, is the United States. And we have put ourselves in that position, and in that posture, by our incompetence at the other skill-sets, most prominently diplomacy, necessary for the relations of nations. We are not a very competent, in any vein, of diplomacy entity any more. There’s an old principle of the relations of nations, called conservation of enemies. Simply stated, it says, that a prudent state never has any more enemies at any one time, than it can handle. We have, 3.6 billion and growing every day, probably by a hundred million a week, people who hate our guts; who detest us; who are fed up with us; who think the “rules-based order” is our rules and orders to them. That’s not going to last, it’s not going to preserve us; it’s not going to preserve our empire in any way, fashion or form, so if we don’t change very quickly, we’re going down. And what I would advise people like the Philippines, and Australia, and other of our good allies over this last 50, 60, 70 years, is to “check your six,” really closely and see what you can do to make accommodations with the other powers in the world, most prominently Russia and China, but India is bigtime in there, too; India will be a replacement for China if she just keeps her act together for the next 20 years, and then we’ll have those two countries at loggerheads.
But you’re look at a dying empire. You’re looking at a dying empire, and if we don’t do something about it, we’re going to have a really bad death, rather than a death, say, like Britain had, where she is still around, stupidly led by Rishi Sunak, but soon to be gotten rid of, probably.
So, it’s a different world. It’s a totally different world. It’s no longer unipolar, it’s multipolar, and it’s going to act that way: It’s going to have a new financial system, a new monetary exchange system, a new banking system, everything’s going to be new. And we’re going to be on the outside, unless we learn to accommodate. And you learn to accommodate with that deft instrument of national power called “diplomacy.” So we’d better grow some diplomats, and fast.
SPEED: OK, thank you. Colonel Black.
BLACK: I would just like to add one thing: In 1991, the Soviet empire simply dissolved. It was one of the great victories of mankind, that we had been engaged in this tense standoff, and it ended bloodlessly. At that point, we had a thousand-mile buffer between Germany and the Russian border, and it was an opportunity, an historic opportunity to draw back from this nuclear brinkmanship, where we were just literally toe-to-toe at the Wall between East and West. But we failed to take advantage of it, and under various presidents, George Bush was one of them, and just sort of the whole sequence of fellows, we moved the border. We kept moving Eastward, until finally, we reached the point where, now we are virtually up to the Russian border.
This whole thing, you know, when the Wall fell, you know, the Warsaw Pact dissolved; it just simply disappeared—but NATO didn’t. And I can recall, as a senior officer at the time, thinking, “just hold a parade, and tell ‘em, ‘We won! Go home.’” But we didn’t, we kept it alive. In order for NATO to survive the collapse of the Soviet Union, we had to create an illusion, we had to have an enemy. Russia was not an enemy! Russia was desperate to integrate with the rest of Europe, and to become part of all Western civilization. And it just was a terrible loss for humanity that we gave up that buffer, we gave up the opportunity to integrate Russia, and now we have perpetuated this illusion of them as this threatening enemy which they are not.
SPEED: Scott.
RITTER: First of all, I want to thank you, Dennis, and I want to thank Helga. I want to thank Colonel Wilkerson and Colonel Black, and everybody who is attending in person and online, for coming. This is one of the most important topics that can be discussed in the world today. And so, the fact that you are listening implies that you understand this.
Now, the question is, what do we do about this? How do we go forth from here? How do we take this message out, and turn it into something discernable, something that can prevent the wars that we acknowledge should never be fought: nuclear conflict.
I was advised—and I’m one of these stupid Marines that gets lots of advice, and then I ignore it—I was advised to do not try to scare people.
No! Y’all need to be scared, every single one of you. You need to have the kind of fear—you know, there’s people who live in the Southwest, who have been told over and over again about the danger of wildfire. “Nah, it’ll happen to them, not me.” Until they’re in their car, with their dogs, with no escape route, the flames have closed in, and they’re feeling the heat, and at that moment, they get that ugly feeling in the pit of their stomach, and they get the cold sweat: They know they’re going to die! They know they’re going to die, because it’s there in front of them, it’s unavoidable.
That fear, every American needs to feel. The same fear people have who live in hurricane zones. They say, “well, don’t worry about it, hurricanes happen to other people, but not me”—but then the water’s coming in. It’s swept away everything, you’re holding on for dear life, and suddenly, that feeling in your stomach: “I’m going to die!”
Every American needs to wake up every morning with that fear in your stomach, because {you’re going to die}! It’s a {certainty}, unless we change the policy direction that we’re on! I don’t know what you think anybody’s been saying up here, but what I heard, is, we’re headed toward a nuclear conflict that the United States is going to start!
How do we stop it? The first thing, the realization that this threat is real.
You need to be afraid. You need to be {very} afraid. And then, and only then, will you take the action necessary to stop this. And we know what the action is—ask Emmanuel Macron. {Go to the voting booth in November}—if we’re still alive—and make sure that your vote counts! But in order for it to count, the people running for office have to know what your vote stands for! And you need to come together collectively and we need to tell them, that there is a consensus that we don’t want to die in a nuclear Armageddon! And that if you are a politician, running for national office, and you don’t {oppose} nuclear war, {you will never get our vote}! Regardless of party, regardless of personality, regardless of anything. We must empower ourselves by making this issue the dominant issue, and they have to wake up for it: So, I’ll just leave you with September 28, Ladies and Gentlemen. Let’s make that day, that Saturday in September, the day that the American people put the nuclear issue on the table, on the ballot, and tell our elected officials, or those who want to become our elected officials, unless they convince us that they don’t want a nuclear war, and they will enact policies to avoid nuclear conflict.
Thank you very much.
SPEED: Thank you. Helga.
ZEPP-LAROUCHE: Well, first of all, let me thank all the speakers for the very important warning you are giving to the world, and also the participants who are listening online, sitting in the room, or in other forms. But I would like you to get active immediately, not just wait for the U.S. election, and I want you to join the International Peace Coalition. The next meeting is 5 o’clock European time, 11 a.m. Eastern Time.
The reason why this is so urgent, is because we are going in my view, in the most important and dangerous period, probably, in all of history. The reasons for this is the following: We have at the beginning of July, the NATO annual summit, and I think that given the fact that the Ukrainian war is really running into trouble, but for the new weapons systems, it would have ended already. Because the people are not there, the soldiers are not there, and this will be an incredible moment, because NATO has {immense} reputation problem, an image loss in the eyes of the world. NATO already lost shamefully against 65,000 Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, and left Kabul in August 2021; you all remember the images of people hanging onto the airplanes trying to get out. They were abandoned by the way, by NATO, the locals who had worked with NATO for 20 years were left behind. That should be a lesson, also, for the Philippines and the Ukrainians. And now, the war in Ukraine is lost by NATO. What does it mean, if the entire force of NATO, with all the weapons and all the incredible money which was spent, was not able to defeat the Russian army which has a military budget which is about 10% of that of the United States? And image loss which is incredible. And that increases for the time being, the danger that a nuclear escalation could happen out of this dynamic.
Then, we have another problem: We have the idiotic policy that some people, Janet Yellen, the EU, they want to confiscate the Russian assets, which they confiscated already, but to spend them for Ukraine! Now, even the IMF has warned that they should not do that, because that would put at risk the entire financial system, because Russia has already announced that they will retaliate, and confiscate U.S. and European assets. And that could trigger a whole chain reaction of such developments, because that will be read by the Global South as one more reason to de-dollarize, because it’s not safe to be in the dollar.
Then, you have the BRICS summit in October: That will be in all likelihood, a very spectacular event, where many, many more countries—up to now there were 59 countries that announced that they want to be part of this new system. That will be also a point when the West has to reflect what to do.
And then, naturally comes the November election.
Now, I think we need to think not only of mobilizing in this entire period, between now and the U.S. election, because I think this is an extremely dangerous period; but also, because if we do not introduce another component into our thinking, a new way of approaching the whole idea of humanity, of are we the creative species or not? And I would like you to remember, actually, what happened in 1945, when Germany was completely a rubble-field. You remember the pictures of Dresden after the bombardment. Many other cities were looking almost like that. And, that is, by the way, one of the reasons—responding to the earlier question, would the Western leaders today not do what they do if they would understand nuclear war?—I think the problem is a generational and a cultural problem. Because I remember very well in Europe, the World War II generation, they knew what war was, and they told our generation, who didn’t experience it, but all the stories told by my grandparents, by my parents and relatives about the horrors of war, and that is also in my genes; and the new generation, which is completely shallow-minded, and they don’t know history, they don’t know culture, they don’t know what the Classical culture is—so they are being brainwashed by all these manipulations, and they just don’t get it. And I think the older people and the younger people have to get together.
Now, what happened in ’45 was that the shock about how could Germany, this beautiful pearl among nations and countries, which it was during the time of Bach, or Mozart, Beethoven, of Schiller, Goethe, how could such a nation which produced so many inventors and so many creative individuals, sink so deeply to the level of Nazism, and the 12 years of the horror show of what Nazism meant? Well, I think people were so shocked that there was a soul-searching, and people said, we have to give ourselves a higher lawfulness, that this can never happen again. And there was a big debate about natural law, that we have to have something which is more fundamental than positive law, or whatever people do and say; and that this natural law in European history was the idea that there is a higher lawfulness which is built in creation, which we have to access, and which is valid, and which is functioning in the real world.
Now, unfortunately, that debate about the use of natural law, as a very practical aspect in legislation, in lawfulness, was abandoned. It was abandoned by the occupying powers. It was extinguished by the Frankfurt School, it was eliminated by the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which started the reeducation to eliminate any such profound ideas: And that is part of the tragedy why people don’t remember this period, which was a very important moment of recollection, how could this tragedy have happened? And that is why, in the [new security and development architecture](https://schillerinstitute.com/blog/2022/11/30/ten-principles-of-a-new-international-security-and-development-architecture/) which I have proposed, the last three principles refer to these epistemological foundations on which the New Paradigm has to be built. So, I would urge you to look at that, study it, and let us bring this into the debate, because I think we need this higher lawfulness. In Europe, it was called “natural law.” In India, it is called “cosmology.” In China it was call the “Mandate of Heaven.” And in every great culture and nation, you have this idea that there is such a higher lawfulness on which we have to agree, because we are human beings. And I think that has to be part of the discussion, because we have to have to uplift humanity, very, very rapidly, to a higher level of morality if we want to survive this great danger.
SPEED: Thank you, Helga.
Anastasia Battle, who is the convenor of the International Peace Coalition will make an announcement, and then we will conclude.
ANASTASIA BATTLE: Thank you, Dennis, and thank you, Scott Ritter and Col. Richard Black. Helga and myself, we co-founded the International Peace Coalition with the idea of bringing people together, above their ideologies, across the world from many different countries, to say, “We must have peace {now}!” How many times have you seen the peace movement be completely destroyed and divided, from gossip, just complete nonsense. We have to bring people together, now, to say, “No nuclear war, we must bring humanity to a higher level, now.”
And I’m very honored that we’ve had both Scott Ritter and Col. Richard Black on the International Peace Coalition. I want to invite you, here, in the audience, but also the people who were online, which I can only imagine is thousands at this point. You can email in to questions@schillerinstitute.org, and we’d be happy to get back to you and bring you into the fold. We need as many people onboard, right now, as you can hear from our veteran heroic warriors for peace, that they’re not going to stop, and we need to have that same courage within all of you.
So, thank you so much for joining us in this process, and we look forward to your collaboration. [applause]
SPEED: Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Col. Richard Black, Scott Ritter, Helga Zepp-LaRouche, we want to thank you for being here and joining us. And I want all of you here to join me in thanking them for what they’ve done today. [applause]
That officially concludes our event. Thank you.