Putin’s Proposal for a P5 Summit Could Be The Last Chance

The Editorial is adapted from a translation of the July 11 lead article by Helga Zepp-LaRouche, written for the July 16, 2020 issue of the German weekly Neue Solidarität.

We are confronted with an unprecedented challenge: Do we have the moral fitness to survive? Will the main actors on the world stage muster the ability to rapidly raise their thinking to a higher level, or will they cling to their respective ideologies and patterns of action? In the latter case, the extreme tension arising from the combination of the coronavirus pandemic, the decline of the physical economy, the systemic collapse of the financial system, and growing geopolitical confrontation among major powers, threatens to lead to a breaking point, which could degenerate into social chaos and widespread war.

What is needed now, is not a multitude of small steps and measures to deal with all the different crises, but a veritable Grand Design, the realization of a vision for mankind’s future with a comprehensive solution, one taking into consideration the interests of all mankind.

In January of this year, the ability to achieve such a Grand Design took a step towards reality when Russian President Vladimir Putin proposed a summit of the heads of state of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council. The other four permanent members—United States, China, France, and the United Kingdom—have agreed to have such a summit. Putin emphasized that the purpose of this summit, 75 years after the end of World War II, must be to establish a peace order—to ensure that such a catastrophe will never again happen.

The dramatic crises currently menacing the world present a unique opportunity to lay the basis for a new world economic order based on a New Bretton Woods system. A new economic system in accordance with the original intention of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Bretton Woods system, can overcome under-development in the developing countries, and provide the foundation for peace by improving the living standards of all people on this planet.

The unexpected announcement by U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson of his intention to implement an investment program in the tradition of President Franklin Roosevelt, that is, a New Deal (even if the cited sum of £5 billion is only a small first step in the right direction) provides a very useful common thread among the other four heads of state, all of whom have referenced Roosevelt in positive terms in the past. Roosevelt’s program, in full, is needed today.

What is needed today is precisely Roosevelt’s program in full: Glass-Steagall bank separation, an industrial development plan on a global scale this time—a New Deal for the entire world—and a credit system, a New Bretton Woods. One of the first steps should be international cooperation to develop a worldwide health system, i.e., a modern health system in every single country up to at least the standard that China demonstrated in Wuhan in fighting the outbreak of the pandemic.

This summit, which must take place in September at the latest, will in all likelihood be the last chance to establish a basis of trust for a strategic orientation of international relations among nuclear powers that can set the course for overcoming the global economic crisis. If this opportunity is squandered, not only does the toxic tone that has been struck between the United States and China in particular, threaten to escalate into an irreparable conflict, but the danger of a resurgence of the pandemic followed by renewed economic shutdowns could completely shatter social peace in many of the affected countries.

The discussion in the trans-Atlantic neo-liberal establishment is shaped by the assumption that a sharp decline in international stock markets and the increase in death rates from a second wave of the pandemic will be blamed on President Donald Trump, leading to his defeat in the November elections. Given the relentless campaign which the forces of the British Empire have carried out for three and a half years in their coup attempt—from the “Russiagate” fraud to the impeachment proceedings, and the current statue-smashing frenzy—the City of London and Wall Street would likely allow such a sharp decline in the stock markets to happen.

Although in the early stages of the coronavirus outbreak, President Trump praised the Chinese government’s response and stressed his friendship with President Xi Jinping, he shifted positions tentatively as of April 18 and then definitively as of April 30, to blame China for the spread of the virus worldwide. This assertion was first made by the former heads of Britain’s MI6 Secret Intelligence Service, Sir John Sawers and Sir Richard Dearlove, and the London-based Henry Jackson Society which, in a blatant provocation, challenged China to pay $9 trillion in reparations! It has been rejected as unfounded even by American medical experts. A WHO delegation is currently in Wuhan to investigate the origins of the virus and the chronology of the pandemic.

The same British Empire forces behind the coup against President Trump consider his instinct towards having good relations with Russia and China, to be a deadly threat to their geopolitical interests. That is the motive behind the Pentagon’s 2018 National Defense Strategy paper, which defines China and Russia as the top strategic rivals in the “Great Power Competition.”

Looking at our planet from above, it is clear that cooperation between the two largest economies in the world, the United States and China, is indispensable if mankind is to overcome this pandemic and other impending pandemics, as well as hunger, poverty and underdevelopment in the so-called Third World. From the standpoint of the British Empire, the poisoning of the U.S.-Chinese relationship is a top priority.

The summit of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council proposed by President Putin is likely, for all the reasons mentioned here, to be the last chance to put a completely different program on the agenda, in order to prevent the development of the escalating effects of the pandemic, hunger, economic collapse, and a financial crash from running their course. If that course is not shifted, the war danger resulting from the rapidly ensuing chaos may become unstoppable.

All people of good will, and all countries worldwide, should consider it to be in their own interest to support the success of this summit to the utmost.

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