The Silk Road Can Make the Syrian Ceasefire Succeed

When Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization signed an agreement in 1993 to end the killing and establish self-government for the Palestinians, Lyndon LaRouche immediately said that the tractors must roll, today, if the plan was to succeed. The common benefit to both sides, based on Israeli industrial capacity and Palestinian skilled labor, must be launched without delay, he insisted. That did not happen, as the IMF and World Bank were put in charge to oversee the process.

Twenty-three years later — The dramatic ceasefire in Syria agreed to by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Secretary of State John Kerry on Feb. 22 in Munich, and confirmed in a phone call from President Vladimir Putin to President Barack Obama, has the immediate potential of transforming not only Syria, not only the Mideast, but the entire world. The brilliant strategic intervention by Putin into Syria last year demonstrated that terrorists could be defeated, but also that the US under President Obama had in fact sided with the terrorists to achieve “regime change” against uncooperative governments. That era of U.S. subservience to British imperial tyranny can be finished — if the ceasefire holds.

As with Oslo, the ceasefire will only hold if the the reconstruction and development of Syria (and the region) begins immediately. Helga Zepp-LaRouche said on Feb. 23 that the Silk Road process launched by Xi Jinping can and must be brought into the region now – not next month or next year. The development program for Southwest Asia presented in the EIR report The New Silk Road Becomes the World Land-Bridge provides the foundation. Xi Jinping initiated the project during his visit to Saudi Arabia, Iran and Egypt in January. There is no time to lose.

The scope of the Syria agreement is breathtaking when contrasted to the massive effort over the past months by London, Wall Street, and the White House to demonize Putin, threatening war on Russia both in Europe and the Mideast. After the phone call between Putin and Obama, Obama issued only a brief acknowledgement of the call. Putin, on the other hand, issued a statement elucidating the details of the historic breakthrough, worked out through “intensive work by Russian and American experts.”

The agreement establishes close cooperation between US and Russian “political and military officials,” all under UN oversight, who will jointly establish a hot line, and a joint working group to “promote and monitor” the ceasefire. The full scale war on Al Nusra and ISIS will continue unabated – with significant levels of US-Russian cooperation.

John Kerry’s spokesman Mark Toner, asked on Feb. 22 what will happen to US backed opposition groups who continue fighting alongside ISIS and Al Nusra, responded: “If you hang out with the wrong folks, then you make that decision.”

The CIA, and the White House, are not pleased. The Wall Street Journal issued a report from unnamed sources that CIA Director John Brennan, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, and Obama’s new Chairmen of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Joseph Dunford are doing what they can to sabotage the deal, claiming Putin will not comply, and demanding new and increased pressure on him, to cause “real pain.” The Economist Magazine, the voice of the City of London, went berserk, writing: “The only puzzle is what John Kerry, America’s secretary of state, thought he could achieve through his agreement with Mr Lavrov–except, perhaps, to expose Russian cynicism.”

Clearly, leading figures within the US institutions realized that if Obama were allowed to proceed, the world was rapidly heading for thermonuclear extinction. Now, there are those who want to dump him, as well we must. What is required to consolidate these moves is to end the power of the problem at the source — Wall Street and the British Empire. Unleashing the global development process required must begin by shutting down Wall Street and restoring a sane economic order.