With Congress out of session until next week, and while Americans take time out to commemorate those who died in military service in past wars, some leading American and leading Chinese officials alike fear that war between the two nations is likely by Summer. The more astute know that if this is allowed to happen, it will quickly become a broader, multilateral nuclear exchange which will be, as a LaRouchePAC video put it, “Unsurvivable.”

The most recent big step towards war was computer-nerd Defense Secretary Ashton Carter’s long, highly-provocative May 27 commencement address to the U.S. Naval Academy. He told the cadets that he was going to focus his remarks on the Asia-Pacific, because it would define many of their future careers. He singled out the destroyer USS Lassen, which deliberately intruded in Chinese territorial waters last October, and promised that we will “continue to fly, sail, and operate wherever international law allows.” He accused China of

Carter went on to threaten China with superior US weapons systems: the F-35 (which doesn’t work), the P-8, “cutting-edge stealth destroyers,” and numerous others.

A Hitler-style threatening rant, threatening war, and with about the truth-content of one of Hitler’s tirades.

The Chinese have responded. Global Times, a newspaper owned by the Communist Party of China’s People’s Daily, published an unsigned editorial today which said,

Now you too have joined the number of those who know this, and you have taken on, willy-nilly, the inescapable responsibility which accompanies that knowledge. Get it out everywhere for a start—but that’s only the beginning. Ask yourself what Lyndon LaRouche would do.

The following appeal is being circulated internationally, including on the websites of the international LaRouche movement.

The upcoming NATO summit in Warsaw on July 8-9, is expected to be yet another provocation against Russia. By signing this call, we say “stop” this nuclear escalation, before the irreparable occurs!

The hour is grave. A new missile crisis is building, in a mirror image of that which led the Soviet Union in 1962 to deploy nuclear warheads in Cuba, at the doorstep of the United States. Today, the situation is the reverse. At the time, NATO was fighting the Warsaw Pact, today, it is organizing a summit in Warsaw!

We the undersigned observe that NATO is carrying out a provocative policy of “encirclement”:

1)The continuous eastward expansion of NATO towards the borders of Russia, despite the guarantees given by the West to Gorbachov in 1989 that this would not happen;

2)The deployment of the Aegis anti-missile defense system in Romania, Poland, Turkey and Spain. These weapons, equipped with MK41 launchers, can be used for defensive missions (air, land, sea), but also for offensive attacks with nuclear weapons;

3)The planned permanent rotational deployment in the Baltic States, Poland and Romania, of four battalions of 1,000 troops each, and heavy military equipment;

4)The creation of a “Nordic Front” against Russia, comprised of an alliance of NATO members Denmark, Iceland and Norway, and of NATO’s “Partnership for Peace” (Sweden and Finland);

5) The modernization of nuclear weapons, in particular the B61-12 bomb and the Long Range Standoff (LRSO) Cruise Missiles, based in Germany. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein said of these weapons: “The so-called improvements to this weapon seemed to be designed… to make it more usable, to help us fight and win a limited nuclear war.”

To put an end to this threat, we demand:

1)that our government adopt a policy of the “empty chair” (boycott) at the next NATO summit in Warsaw;

2)that our government announce its intention to leave NATO which no longer has any “raison d’être”.

To escape the current countdown to nuclear war, we also call on our government to create without delay the conditions for a new global peace and security architecture, based on the win-win cooperation proposed by the BRICS, cooperation which Europe and the United States, in their own interests, should join in.

The vast efforts we deployed in the 20th Century for war, must be mobilized today for peace and mutual development!

Sign the petition