EIR LEAD EDITORIAL FOR THURSDAY JUNE 29, 2023
Why the Coming Few Months Are So Dangerous
June 28, 2023, 2022 (EIRNS)—The June 23-24 Wagner mutiny led by Yevgeny Prigozhin in Russia was brought under control in less than 24 hours, but the strategic crisis behind that revolt is not under control—and the danger of a full-scale thermonuclear war between the United States and Russia will continue to escalate until it is. The reasons for that—and what to do about it—are as follows.
Russian President Vladimir Putin delivered two short speeches at the Kremlin on June 27, to the military and other service personnel who were instrumental in stopping the short-lived Wagner mutiny with a minimum of bloodshed. He thanked them, and stated bluntly what was at stake: “De facto stopping a civil war in its tracks.” He added that “armed rebellions are usually followed by total chaos and civil war. This is what you have prevented.” Had this not been done, “chaos in the country would have been inevitable, and the enemy would have surely taken advantage of it.” However, “nothing is coming out of it, and, I hope, nothing will come out of it, I am even sure of that.”
A closer identification of the broader forces involved was left to the chief of the Russian national guard, Viktor Zolotov, who stated yesterday that the reason Western intelligence services knew about the mutiny in advance, is that “the mutiny was prearranged, inspired by Western Intelligence services.... Apparently, they instigated Prigozhin himself, or maybe his ambitions took over.” Belarusian President Aleksandr Lukashenko made a similar point in remarks at a promotion ceremony for general officers in Minsk yesterday: “Conclusion: it would have been a war on two fronts. This is not Prigozhin. Prigozhin is the trigger. This turmoil would have spilled all over Russia.”
As if to confirm the accuracy of those charges, Chatham House (also known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs), the centenarian British think tank, published a set of articles on June 27 retailing the lie that Putin had buckled during the Wagner mutiny, and that therefore what is needed at this point is a “massive influx of weapons to Ukraine.” Col. Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, OBE, former commander of U.K. and NATO Chemical, Biological, Radiological, Nuclear forces, took it a long step further in the pages of the Telegraph, asserting that “Ukraine Can Now End Putin’s Crumbling Regime,” and that NATO should give them “permission to attack Russia itself, and bring down its President,” and not worry about any possible Russian nuclear retaliation which, he assured readers, will not happen.
Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche today sharply warned against this kind of “brinkmanship with Armageddon,” which threatens to unleash thermonuclear war on a global scale. If people knew that this kind of insanity is not only being openly discussed, but that it is dominating policy-making in London and Washington, they would be out on the street en masse in protest, Zepp-LaRouche stated. That is why the Schiller Institute is coordinating with numerous organizations and individuals around the world to build an International Peace Coalition, which has decided to hold rallies and protests around the world on Aug. 6, the anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, to stop the headlong rush towards nuclear annihilation.
The current crisis is so acute, Zepp-LaRouche explained in her weekly “Live Dialogue” webcast today, because an entirely new international system is emerging around the BRICS and associated forces, whose insistence on putting an end to 500 years of colonialism and looting threatens to bury the current City of London and Wall Street system.
“If you look at the danger,” Zepp-LaRouche stated, the existence of civilization is at stake; we could lose the whole of humanity. If it comes to nuclear war, that’s it: there is no life left, not even a journalist or a historian to investigate what went wrong. And that’s the danger.
“The Western elites have lost the fear of Armageddon, of nuclear weapons, and they’re playing with these things as if it to say: ‘It’s okay to just drop a little preemptive bomb on Poland. That won’t lead to World War III.’ That’s foolishness!
“I think we need a population who understand that there is nobody who will take care of you, if you don’t do it yourself. So, work with us. There are options, and the potential to have a new world economic order is bigger than ever before.”
