HELGA ZEPP-LAROUCHE: 

På engelsk:

Hello.  I greet you wherever you may be.  What brings this meeting together, which is actually a sequel meeting to one we had on October 7th, where with the distinguished Congressmen and -women from Latin America, it was clear to us that we had to do an extra effort to mobilize the world population to the danger in which we are.  And, I think that one of the most disturbing facts about the present situation is that for those who have looked at the danger of nuclear war and the escalation, who are realizing that the vast majority of human beings on this planet have no inkling on what kind of a powder keg we are sitting.  If you think back to the early 1980s, when we had the medium-range missile crisis in Europe between the SS-20 and the Pershing II being directed against each other with only a few minutes\’ warning time, you had hundreds of thousands of people in the street warning of World War III.  And today, when the situation is so much more dangerous, there is very little.  There are some demonstrations, but not in any correspondence of the possibility of the extinction of the civilization, which is what we are talking about if only one nuclear weapon would be used.  Just to give you a sense, we have today, the 27th of October until October 30th—another three days—you have simultaneously the entire NATO and the entire Russian armed forces being involved in their annual nuclear exercise.  That means the arsenals of the two largest nuclear powers are right now rehearsing a nuclear war.  Because that is the basis of the Steadfast Noon maneuver, the NATO maneuver which is exercising the readiness of their nuclear arsenal.  Given the fact that the main target is Russia, they are rehearsing a nuclear war against Russia.  That means that the entire arsenal of B-52 bombers have been brought from the United States to the European theater.  At the same time, the Russians also have their regular maneuvers called “Grom,” which is the Russian word for thunder.  They are also involved in a large maneuver, including the live missile launches. 

Given the tension, this is not just a routine maneuver, even though it has been declared by both sides to be that.  But this is in the middle of a situation in the Ukraine war which is getting more dangerous by the day; this is in the context of all kinds of maneuvers.  For example, remember that Russian Defense Minister Shoigu just a few days ago had called all his colleagues—the Defense Ministers of the U.S., U.K., France, and Turkey—warning them that they had intelligence about the Ukraine preparing a dirty nuclear bomb which then in a fake operation would blame Russia for.  Naturally, this was denied by the Ukrainian side, but just yesterday Shoigu continued this series of phone calls by calling the Indian and Chinese Defense Ministers, also discussing this situation.

Now, only a very short time ago, President Zelenskyy of Ukraine, in a meeting with the Australians, had basically called for preemptive use of nuclear weapons against Russia, which then was pulled back.  His aides said he didn\’t mean it that way.  Stoltenberg, the NATO General Secretary, said that a victory of Russia in Ukraine would be a defeat of NATO, and therefore could not be tolerated.  President Biden on October 6th in a more or less private meeting, had warned about the use of tactical nuclear weapons from the side of Russia would could lead to an Armageddon, which then also was corrected.  Defense Minister Shoigu said that the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine is absolutely not on the table, and not even on the horizon.  Naturally, all of this takes place in the context of which side has what nuclear doctrine.  It is an absolute fact that the Russian nuclear military doctrine provides for the use of nuclear weapons only in the case that the territorial existence of Russia is at stake.  That obviously is not the case under normal circumstances.  While on the other side, since the Bush administration, the United State has a first strike doctrine.  That is something which is absolutely not discussed, and I think we have to discuss it because ever since the U.S. has the prompt global strike doctrine, it does have the element of a first strike use.

Now, when President Biden came into office in January 20, 2021, he promised that he would clarify that, and correct the U.S. doctrine to the sole purpose only that only in order to deter a nuclear attack, or if necessary, retaliate against a nuclear attack, would the United States use nuclear weapons.  So, I think we need to have a very broad discussion among military experts.  Is it acceptable to be part of NATO when the policy of NATO is a first strike policy?  That is not some theoretical question very far away.  We should note the fact that in February 2021, it was the leader of the Strategic Command, Admiral Richard, who had advised the Pentagon to change the likelihood of the use of nuclear weapons from \”not likely\” to \”likely.\”  So, that was the response.  Just last week, the United States ship {USS West Virginia} ballistic missile submarine surfaced in the Arabian Sea.  Now, Russian expert Alexander Timokhin, wrote in the magazine {Vzglyad} which is the Russian word for view, that the very unlikely occurring of that U.S. submarine surfacing—normally these submarines don\’t like to be seen and their location is supposed to be a secret—would have been a demonstration on the side of the United States that they are capable of delivering a first strike to disarm the Russian nuclear arsenals in a preemptive way and prevent Russian retaliation by putting such missiles on a flat trajectory rather than a ballistic one, and therefore shortening the flight time significantly, thereby depriving the Russian side of going for a counterstrike.

I don\’t know.  This all is very worrisome, and I think we do need a public debate about that, because if we are that close to the mistrust and the assumption that this could happen and the Russians have this doomsday strategy whereby if the Russian leadership would be eliminated in a first strike, then they have an automatism which would set into motion all the nuclear capability even if the Russian leadership is already eliminated. 

I think all of these developments are really a reason to have a total alarmist situation.  What is at stake is the existence of the human species.  We have discussed at the previous meeting on October 7th that the fact that if there would be a nuclear war, and it is the agreement of all competent military experts that there is no such thing as a tactical nuclear war, if one single nuclear weapon is used, the entire arsenal will be used, and that will be the end of civilization.  Because a nuclear winter would kill off in all likelihood those few billion who would survive the actual nuclear war.  It would probably be the end of the human race, or at least in the form we know it now.  If some miserable people would survive in the following years, one should remember the word of John F Kennedy who said that those who die in the first hours will be lucky compared to those who manage to live on for a couple of weeks or months or years.

Therefore, because it is the existence of all of civilization which is at stake, we discussed that that by definition makes it that every person on this planet is a world citizen, and has to think like a world citizen.  We have been catapulted to be representative of the one humanity, whose existence is at stake right now.  This is why we want to escalate this mobilization.  We want to bring it into all countries, and we want to evoke from a group of nations whatever it may be, that they must address this condition.  We must have an emergency session of the UN General Assembly or another occasion would be at the upcoming G-20 meeting in Indonesia in mid-November.  But a group of nations has to come forward and offer an alternative to this danger.

The Schiller Institute has mobilized since the outbreak of this war, to have an international conference to have a New Paradigm, to have a new international security and development architecture which takes into account the interest of every single country on the planet; which means a European security architecture clearly has failed.  If you don\’t include countries which right now are supposed to be completely excluded, and there is actually an effort going on to decouple the United States and Europe and some of their few allies from Russia, China, the BRICS countries, the SCO.  That will not work.  You cannot split the world in two places and think that with all the problems we have that there can be a solution.  We need a motion to put on the table for a new international security and development architecture, a new world economic order which addresses also the fact that the trans-Atlantic financial system is in a hyperinflationary blow-out.  We have seen in the case of Great Britain and the unfortunate fate of the short-term Prime Minister Liz Truss, that the effort by the central banks—in that case, by the Bank of England—to go for first quantitative easing, pumping money, then seeing that this leads to inflation; then going to quantitative tightening, then realizing that may lead to a collapse of the stock and bond markets, then going back to quantitative easing.  This is not going to be a viable solution.  If the European Central Bank is doing the same thing in the next several days, they will have the same experience as the Bank of England had.  We are at the end of the system, and we need a new monetary system, a new credit system which allows us to overcome poverty for every person on this planet.  We need to have a new conception of how to organize the affairs so that every country on this planet can develop its fullest potential.

So, this is what we want to instigate a broad discussion about, and as Dennis was saying, it was Schiller\’s conviction that you can be a patriot of your country, and act as a world citizen at the same time, acting in the interest of all of humanity.  We have reached in the history of mankind that point where either the human species makes that evolutionary jump to think in terms of the one humanity first, and then puts the national interest second.  It\’s OK to have a national interest, but it should never be contrary to the interests of humanity as a whole.  We are calling to organize a movement of world citizens of all countries to unite, because that may be the last resort to stop something which not even an historian would be left over to comment on.  We want to invite all of you to participate and help to spread that effort.  Thank you.