The following article by William Jones will appear in the upcoming issue of EIR.

The summit between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was intended to provide the basis for a close relationship between these two major countries in resolving their differences and working together for the advancement of humanity. The sudden decision by the U.S. President to bomb Syria on the bogus pretext of Syrian use of chemical weapons, did not, however, disrupt the negotiations. While the Chinese delegation must have been totally taken aback by this major military operation in the midst of this important meeting, they decided not to skip a beat after President Trump informed President Xi about the bombing after the state dinner on the evening of April 6. The meetings continued with the Chinese delegation the next morning as scheduled and were concluded by early afternoon.

The chemistry between the two leaders was good. They had already established a good rapport previously through their mutual correspondence and their phone calls. There were many smiling faces during the pauses with the press during the breaks in the more serious discussions. President Trump said that the two leaders had developed and “outstanding” relationship and that “lots of very potentially bad problems will be going away”. President Xi also was quite pleased with the reception his delegation, which included four Politburo members, had been given by the President. The Summit, he said “held a uniquely important significance for the Sino-U.S. relationship.”

“President Trump made excellent preparation for our country’s representatives and gave us a warm reception,” Xi said. “We recently have had in-depth and lengthy communications to this end and arrived at many common understandings, the most important being deepening our friendship and building a kind of trust in keeping with the Sino-U.S. working relationship and friendship.”

President Trump also had most of his cabinet with him at the summit, including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, Defense Secretary James Mattis, Treasury Secretary Stephen Mnuchin, and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. President Xi also extended an invitation to President Trump to visit China this year, which President Trump readily accepted. President Xi also invited the U.S. President to join the Belt and Road Initiative.

The two presidents also established a new and cabinet-level framework for negotiations, the United States-China Comprehensive Dialogue, which will be overseen by them. This mechanism will replace the previous U.S.-China Strategic and Economic Dialogue, which was criticized by the Trump people as being a “talk-shop” with no practical results.  With the new format they hope to realize concrete results within a short period. The Dialogue will have four pillars: the Diplomatic and Security Dialogue; the Comprehensive Economic Dialogue, the Law Enforcement and Cyber-security Dialogue, and the Social and Cultural Issues Dialogue.

The two presidents had discussed the important issues of trade and have decided to develop a 100-day action plan on trade with China which would have “way-stations of accomplishment along the way”, according to Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin. There was also a discussion regarding investment and eliminating the obstacles that remained in achieving a genuine bilateral investment treaty between the two countries  Secretary Tillerson also indicated that there had been a longer discussion on the North Korean nuclear program, with a renewed commitment by both sides to a denuclearized Korean peninsula and increased cooperation in convincing the North Koreans to give up their program although there was no “package arrangement” on the topic, he said. Tillerson said that President Xi shared the U.S. view that this situation has reached a very serious stage.

While the summit seemed to have achieved the limited goals it had set of establishing a good working relationship between the leaders and conducting a thorough discussion of the issues on which the two countries were divided, the shadow cast by the attack on Syria still remains. Some Chinese analysts have already expressed the suspicion that the operation was timed to underline the determination of the United States to use, military action, if necessary, against the DPRK, if the threat remains, thereby putting pressure on China to take a harder line against its North Korean neighbor. Although no one should be so foolish as to think that conducting any kind of military strike against the DPRK, in contrast to Syria, could be done without immediate retaliation from North Korea. The unilateral exertion of U.S. power in the Middle East also sent the subtle message that  the “major power relationship” sought by China, a relationship of equality, was still a distant goal.

The response of the Chinese Foreign Ministry to the strike was unusually muted. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying on April 8 reiterated that China opposes the use of chemical weapons “by any country, organization or person for any purpose and under any circumstance.” At the same time, she said that the matter deserved a thorough UN investigation in order to really determine who was responsible “and on the basis of solid evidence, reaching a conclusion which can stand the test of history and facts.”

At the moment, “history and facts” seem to be both in abeyance with regard to the pretext for the military strike. President Trump should heed the words of the American philosopher, George Santayana, “Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” And it looks like this could well become a repeat of the George W. Bush rush to war, again based on bogus “weapons of mass destruction” if the path embarked on is not quickly reversed. And no doubt, Chinese military strategists will be closely following the development of this sudden shift by the U.S. President in order to ferret out the significance for them—and the consequences  of this very erratic  and dangerous—military escalation.

On April 7th, just hours after Donald Trump had ordered an attack on the Syrian base of Al Shairat, French Presidential candidate Jacques Cheminade and long-time collaborator or Lyndon and Helga LaRouche, met with Lebanese President Michel Aoun at the Baabda presidential palace, to talk, quite the contrary, about “peace through development” for the whole region. Christine Bierre, in charge of this region for Cheminade’s movement, also attended the meeting.

Following a 30-minute interview, Cheminade made the following remarks to the press gathered at the Presidential palace.

“I have come to Lebanon in the spirit of a Free Lebanon, over and above all political factions, as one should always consider such things in France, and to show the role Lebanon can play in the Middle East and in world affairs. For a long time now, in particular since February 1989, General Aoun has been very important in this respect because he has always shown great political courage in that respect and great independent mindedness, nurtured by his political courage.

“Today, I have come here to say that France must do everything to support the cause of Lebanon, and in particular to make sure that Europe and France contribute much more aid to the political and economic refugees coming to Lebanon and to those in Lebanon who receive the refugees and who sometimes live less well than they do. France must do all in her power to deal with that question. We know that there are between 2 and 2.5 million refugees in Lebanon, for a population of 4.5 million inhabitants. We must absolutely do something to help Lebanon.

“The way to help in a decisive manner is to allow the refugees to return to their countries, in particular to Syria, and to create conditions of peace in Syria, through economic development and reconstruction. We did this in France after World War II, with public credit and a commitment to the future. Today we need credit for the development of Syria so that the Syrians can go back to their country and live there. With time, and that time must be as short as possible, that is the only way to establish peace through mutual development in the Near and Middle East.

“What happened today at dawn, the missiles fire from an American vessel at an important Syrian base is something that will no doubt worsen what is happening here. It was carried out before an international investigation into what really happened in Syria could occur, and it is a decision by President Trump, to go far beyond what Obama did in 2013, when Obama stopped before launching missiles.

“In my opinion, there has been, in a totally premature manner, a violation of the sovereignty of one nation by another one. I think this is very serious, it does not help peace in the Near and Middle East in any way, and we must very quickly, without losing time in useless debates, say that this intervention in the internal affairs of a state must stop and create the conditions for peace through mutual development in the future. From that standpoint, Lebanon and the Lebanon of General Aoun must play an absolutely fundamental role that France must recognize.”

In further media coverage during the day, Jacques Cheminade came back to the hypocrisy and cynicism of those in France and the Western camp who are calling for a coalition against Assad. “I am not for a coalition against Bashar Al Assad,” he told the correspondent of the French national all-business BFM TV, “but in favor of stabilizing the situation in Lebanon. Some preach and preach morality; the reality is that those doing the moralizing are the ones who organized the military intervention in Libya with the consequences we know, and who allow Yemen to be bombed by Saudi Arabia. They even give the Saudis more intelligence to be able to better bomb Yemen and after that, they give lessons on morality to the entire world. I find that to be of the utmost hypocrisy and cynicism.”

Cheminade told Radio France Internationale (RFI), “Politics is not being nice to someone’s face and cynical behind his back. Politics is what General de Gaulle did, which is to try by all means to reach détente, entente and cooperation” among all nations.

Finally, Cheminade expressed his concern with the serious problems Lebanon is facing today due to the war against Syria. To a question by a Lebanese journalist following his presentation at Baabda, Cheminade answered that he talked with President Aoun “about pressing France and Europe for more help to urgently improve the sewer system currently in a catastrophic state due to the occupation by too many people, of a country of only 4.5 million inhabitants. President Aoun said Europe had begun to help, but Cheminade said that aid must go much further, indicating that France’s world-class water companies should be brought in to contribute to solve those problems.

“Lebanon could become a powder keg,” he warned, in his interview to BFM TV, and for that reason “the refugees must be able to go back to Syria and the conditions created for them to do so, rather than creating dissensions and tensions through interventions like that of Trump.”

An article in the April 8th issue of the main French-language Lebanese daily l’Orient le Jour also reported that Cheminade was in Lebanon to “to support a Free Lebanon … beyond its political divisions,” pay homage to Aoun’s “political courage” and “independent mindedness” and call for more aid to Lebanon to solve its domestic difficulties due to the refugee crisis. On BFM TV, Cheminade warned that Lebanon could become a “powder keg,” which means “creating the conditions for Syrians to go back home and not to create “dissensions and tensions by intervening like Trump has done.”

Lebanon is exemplary, he said, “because there have been all these family quarrels, with killings and murders; it’s almost Shakespearean, with the Hariris, the Geageas, the Frangiehs, the Gemayels, etc. But Aoun came and succeeded in creating unity among those people who thought towards the future of the country. It is that attitude that we must have throughout the whole region.”

Cheminade concluded his trip to Lebanon in discussion with a few Frenchmen, and potential voters, who attended a meeting that the candidate organized that evening.