A Showdown Moment Approaches

An intense series of diplomatic engagements is scheduled over the next two weeks, that may decide, whether the world moves safely into the New Paradigm of development — as most clearly spelled out by President Vladimir Putin’s call, at the June 16-18 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, for a “Greater Eurasia Plan,” and by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s One Belt, One Road program — or goes to war of annihilation, as London and its Obama pawn are promoting.

On Thursday, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will be convening its annual summit in Tashkent, Uzbekistan. India and Pakistan are to be inducted as full members, and Iran will be given elevated status beyond observer, now that the UN sanctions have been lifted following the P5+1 agreement. From Tashkent, Russian President Putin will travel to China for an official state visit with President Xi. Already, Russian Deputy Premier Dmitry Rogozin is in China, preparing the visit with China’s Deputy Premier Wang Yang. Agreements on space technology cooperation, on the possible sale of an $11 billion stake in Russia’s state oil company, Rosneft, and possible Chinese investment in the Moscow-to-Kazan high-speed rail line, which will eventually go all the way to Beijing, are all being worked out.

On Thursday, June 23, the long-awaited Brexit vote takes place in Britain. On June 28, European Union heads of state will decide whether to extend the sanctions against Russia over Ukraine for another six months. The French Foreign Minister on Monday made clear that he does expect the sanctions to be extended, but he indicated that France will force a debate on a timetable for reducing and eliminating them. Sometime, perhaps before the June 28 vote, the Normandy Four (Putin, Merkel, Hollande and Poroshenko) are expected to meet to attempt to kick-start the stalled Minsk II process, which is key to the Russian sanctions issue.

The war provocations coming out of NATO against Russia are clearly causing deep ruptures inside the European ruling institutions. The harsh attack on NATO by German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier in Sunday’s Bild am Sonntag is clearly an indication of such splits. The appearance of Italian Prime Minister Renzi and European Commission President Junckers at St. Petersburg was another.

A further review of last week’s NATO defense ministers meeting in Brussels, in preparation for the July 7-8 NATO heads- of-state summit in Warsaw, shows the insanity that has gripped the Alliance. The participating ministers agreed to add cyberspace as an additional military domain — in addition to air, land, sea and space. What this means concretely, is that an alleged cyber attack against a NATO member state could trigger an invoking of the common defense clause (Article V) of the NATO Charter, leading to a NATO military attack on the country held responsible for the cyber attack. This is the height of madness, and can be a new hair-trigger for war with Russia or China— two countries that have been repeatedly accused of conducting cyber warfare against the US and Europe (last week’s hacking into the Democratic Party data base, originally “proven” to have been conducted by the Russian state, was later found to have been carried out by a hacker with no links to Russia).

Commenting on this succession of diplomatic events, Lyndon LaRouche made the basic point: We do not yet know what will come out of these events. We do know, however, that Putin has his own clear strategy and agenda, and he will act on that. While we do not know specifically what Putin is going to do, we know that it will be a shaping factor in the global situation.