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World on the Edge of the Nuclear Abyss:
More Officials Get the Courage To Tell the Truth

by Helga Zepp-LaRouche
August 2015

This article appears in the August 14, 2015 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

[PDF version of this article]

Helga Zepp-LaRouche.

Aug. 7—Whereas it is no longer possible to ignore the signs that the U.S. Administration and NATO are preparing a military confrontation with Russia and China, perhaps even during this or next month, more and more leading personalities have found the courage, virtually at the last minute before the catastrophe, to break through the orchestrated charade (theater), which is aimed at using black propaganda to prepare the population for the coming war. The "Guns of August," the build-up toward the third, and, as Speaker of the Duma Sergei Naryshkin put it, humanity's last world war, is in full swing. But the way out is also within reach.

It is most remarkable that a former NATO Commander should express himself as follows. The Italian Lt. General Fabio Mini, formerly Chief of the General Staff for NATO's Southern Command and the Commander of KFOR in Kosovo, on the web-site "Critica Scientifica," issued a clear warning Aug. 6 that the current "world war" was escalating into a nuclear confrontation, and he linked this dynamic with the control of the financial markets over national states. He warned that today, limited wars are no longer possible, even theoretically, and that all the present conflicts—from the Cold War against Russia in the Baltic states, to Ukraine, to Syria and Yemen, including the so-called "low intensity conflicts"—indicate that we must not expect a totally new conflict, but that we are already in it up to our necks.

"What is occurring in Asia with the Pacific strategic pivot," Lt. General Mini said, "is perhaps the clearest sign that the prospect of a World War II-like explosion is more probable in that theater. Not so much because aircraft carriers and missiles are being transferred there (which is indeed taking place), but because the preparation for a world war of that kind, including the inevitable nuclear confrontation, is what is being prepared. That is not to say that it will happen immediately, but the longer the preparation goes on, the more resources will go into weapons, and the more Asian and Western minds will orient to that direction." (see interview excerpts)

Russian State Duma
“If the logic of the Cold War is imposed on us, then we have to respond appropriately. And one should be very careful in using words such as ‘redividing the world’ or ‘Third World War.’ Both in our country and abroad. A Third World War would be mankind’last. And the strengthening of Russia’ s defense capabilities, including the funding decisions the Duma makes, is intended precisely to avert such a war.”
                                         —Sergey Naryshkin, in an interview with Izvestia July 30.
Here, Russian State Duma chairperson Naryshkin (right) speaks at a September 5, 2014 press conference in Moscow with OSCE official Iikka Kanerva.

On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, an array of personalities has spoken out on the urgent necessity to ban and scrap nuclear weapons, due to their potential to wipe out humanity; interestingly, these include Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, but also the likely next leader of the British Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn, as well as Mikhail Gorbachov. Gorbachov warned in an Aug. 6 interview with Spiegel Online that he was very worried about the danger of nuclear war, and that we might not survive the coming year if anyone in this overheated situation were to lose his nerve.

The American journalist Jack Hanick wrote in the New York Observer Aug. 4, under the headline "Can the U.S. Stop a War with Russia?," that the United States is preparing a war against Russia. But, [in defensive response,] Russia is also preparing for this war and will bring it to America, as the recent flights of the Bear-Bombers off the California coast on July 4 have shown. The American media of all political stripes have offered no critical analysis indicating that it would be necessary to take Russian arguments seriously, if serious consequences are to be avoided.

The United States is edging its way ever closer to a war against Russia; Democrats and Republicans are trying to outdo each other with provocative speeches, but history is full of examples of failed attempts to subdue Russia, Napoleon's and Hitler's being only the most recent examples.

Allying with Terrorists

The most spectacular interview, however, next to that of General Mini, has come from the former head of American Military Intelligence (DIA), Michael Flynn, on the "Head to Head" program on Al-Jazeera television Aug. 6. In that interview Flynn confirmed to interviewer Mehdi Hasan, that he had not only studied a DIA Memorandum from 2012, according to which the West supported the creation of an Islamic state in Syria; but that the support by the White House for the radical jihadists—which then morphed into ISIL and al-Nusra—had been no error in judgment, but a conscious decision to play this card.

Department of Defense/Claudette Roulo
Army Lt. General Michael Flynn, then-head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, speaks at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado July 26, 2014.

During the broadcast Hasan read the relevant sections of the 2012 memorandum, which had already been published pursuant to an FOIA court case. One section reads:

"There is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria ... and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime....

Hasan repeatedly asked during the interview, whether the U.S. Administration had turned a blind eye in respect to the report, in response to which Flynn repeatedly emphasized that this had been a conscious decision. Earlier releases from this DIA report suggested that the U.S. Administration had organized the arming of al-Qaeda, al-Nusra, the Muslim Brotherhood, and ISIS, in full knowledge that these groups intended to set up a Caliphate in eastern Syria and Iraq, in order to overthrow the Assad regime. Flynn underscored that the DIA had not only produced this memorandum in 2012, but that he had repeatedly spoken with the White House and the National Security Council and warned of the conseqeunces which would occur if these organizations were armed.

CC/Freedom House
The Syrian “moderate opposition” photographed in October 2012. “We told our U.S. colleagues that the most important [thing] is, that up until now, all examples of U.S. instructors training militants, the so-called moderate opposition, on the territory of neighboring countries, resulted in the vast majority of those militants ending up on the extremists’ side.”
                                                           —Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov,
                                                              at a Qatar press conference August 3.

This interview was extraordinarily explosive, because three days after the U.S. Congress left on July 29 for its summer recess, President Obama—naturally without the consent of the Congress that the Constitution prescribes—changed the rules of engagement for the U.S. Airforce in Syria, so that it would, from now on, be permitted to defend the American-trained Syrian rebels (55 men!), including against the Syrian Air Force. That is, to all intents and purposes, an open pathway to military strikes against Syria.

Exactly such a decision had been prevented in September 2013, literally at the last moment, when the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS), Gen. Martin Dempsey, very well briefed by Flynn, spoke with Obama shortly before the already-ordered military operation against Syria, and warned him, that it would lead to impeachment proceedings, if he did not obtain Congress's permission for this war. Obama saw that he was forced to consult Congress, and, sensing that he would lose the vote, the President ultimately pulled back from a decision that would have had unforeseen consequences.

One Minute to Midnight

For Flynn, in the current situation, to bring into the open the truth about the background of the evolution of the ISIS terrorists, is obviously of the highest strategic importance. Because today, as two years ago, the attempt to eradicate the Assad government with the help of Islamic terrorists, threatens to provoke a confrontation in the whole region, and beyond. After Obama's announcement, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov immediately warned that military strikes against the Syrian army would complicate the war against ISIS, and remarked ironically, that most of the "moderate" rebels trained by the U.S. end up within a very short time in the ranks of the terrorists.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin at the same time gave Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan a sharp warning, that his bombing of the Kurds in Syria endangered the war against ISIS. Russia maintains the Tartus base in Syria, which, in the event of the overthrow of Assad, would fall into the hands of ISIS.

It is literally one minute to midnight, to carry out an open debate on the failed policy in Southwest Asia, if an escalation into the worst-scenario catastrophe is to be stopped. Because the trail of destruction leads from Iraq—against which a war based on lies was started wantonly—to Afghanistan, then Libya, Syria, and Yemen.

Jeremy Corbyn, the probable new head of the British Labour Party, has just demanded that Tony Blair be held accountable for war crimes, if the Chilcot Report proves his guilt in the realization of the war against Iraq. What is proven in any case is the complete failure of the policy of regime change, with the help of terrorists, in this region; terrorists who will then be bombed in order to create new terrorists.

In October, NATO will hold a series of maneuvers among which is one with the name Trident Juncture 15, the largest one of its kind in 25 years. In that maneuver, among other things, a deployment of nuclear weapons against Russia will be simulated. In the same time frame, JCS Chairman Dempsey and a range of other high-ranking military leaders will be replaced by successors, several among whom have already declared that Russia is Enemy No. 1 for the United States.

Mankind has never found itself so close to the edge of its potential extinction. It is of vital importance that Germany and all the other European nations make perfectly clear that they are having no part of a possible war against Russia and China.

There are a whole slew of measures which could be taken. Among them are the immediate ending of sanctions against Russia; the immediate ban and destruction of nuclear weapons—beginning with those stationed in Europe—and an honest discussion about the failed policy in southwest Asia in reference to the DIA memo. Likewise, it is urgent to put on the table the solution to the strategic challenges now threatening all mankind, challenges such as terrorism, the refugee catastrophe, drugs, famine, and so forth,—for whose solution cooperation with Russia and China is decisive. We urgently need citizens who will no longer allow mediocre governments, led by Great Britain and the United States, to sleepwalk into World War III.