The visit of UK Defense Secretary Wallace to Washington yesterday demonstrates that, in the minds of key Anglo-American officials, the "Special Relationship" between the U.S. and U.K. -- which allows the Brits to run U.S. foreign policy -- is still operational. If this is not dumped, the world will be headed toward more wars, eventually to nuclear war. How can we end an era in which the world is governed by imperial geopolitics? Read Helga Zepp LaRouche's memo: "Afghanistan at a Crossroads - Graveyard For Empires, Or Start Of A New Era" 

Out of the frying pan, into the fire?  Will the U.S. blindly follow the British lead to turn the retreat from Afghanistan into more provocations against Russia and China?  Or can we learn from our catastrophic mistakes, and join Afghanistan's neighbors to engage in cooperative, mutually beneficial development policies, to bring peace to the war-torn country.  Further, it is time to end the U.S. economic enslavement to British neoliberal economic/financial policies -- No to the Great Reset, instead, implement LaRouche's Four Laws! 

Pessimists might be shocked by some recent developments.  A Putin-Biden phone call ending in a call for joint action against cyber warfare?  A unanimous U.N. Security Council vote to open the door for humanitarian aid to be distributed to "all parts of Syria"?  How about a U.S. official commenting favorably on a Taliban-Afghan government meeting in Tehran, saying that what Iran is doing "may well be constructive"?  The key is ending the dangerous application of British imperial geopolitics, which has dominated strategic relations for most of the last two centuries.  For a road map to peaceful cooperation in Afghanistan, read Helga Zepp-LaRouche's statement, "Afghanistan at a Crossroads: Graveyard for Empires, or Start of a New Era?" 

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The U.S. and NATO withdrawal from Afghanistan brings to an end 20 years of a misguided military operation and places squarely on the table the difference in outcomes achieved through geopolitics and through cooperative development. We never should have been in Afghanistan. The 9/11 attacks were not organized by a group of 19 individuals coordinated from a cave. The hijackers drew on external support during their time in the United States, and it came not from Osama bin Laden operating in Afghanistan, but from Saudi Arabia. There was no military mission to achieve in Afghanistan.

PDF of this statement

After the hasty withdrawal of U.S. and NATO troops from Afghanistan—U.S. troops, except for a few security forces, were flown out in the dark of night without informing Afghan allies—this country has become, for the moment but likely not for long, the theater of world history. The news keeps pouring in: On the ground, the Taliban forces are making rapid territorial gains in the north and northeast of the country, which has already caused considerable tension and concern in Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, and they have captured the western border town Islam Qala, which handles significant trade flows with Iran. At the same time, intense diplomatic activity is ongoing among all those countries whose security interests are affected by the events in Afghanistan: Iran, Pakistan, India, Russia, China, to name only the most important.

Dramatic developments are taking place over the past days which make clear that the world is sitting at a crossroads. Two clearly distinct ideas about the nature of man are contending for the future of human civilization. One, which could well lead to the destruction of civilization itself in a nuclear holocaust, sides with the Aristotelian outlook of the British Empire, that some people are born to rule and others to serve, that human beings are as defined by Thomas Hobbes, as “all against all,” with nations following the same logic, locked into geopolitical laws of zero-sum “survival of the fittest.” The other view believes that: “Development holds the key to the people’s well-being, [and] no country should be left behind. All nations are equally entitled to development opportunities and rights to development.” While it would be understandable that one may think this statement came from Franklin D. Roosevelt as he planned his postwar vision for the role of a United Nations, it is in fact the words of Xi Jinping, speaking on July 6 to delegates of 500 parties and institutions from around the world, representing 160 countries, fully three-fourths of the human race, joining in support of the principle of “Peace Through Development,” as intended by China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Join us LIVE on Saturday at 2pm for our weekly Manhattan Project meeting featuring Hussein Askary, Harley Schlanger and Diane Sare. 

Just as the attempt by the forces running the British Empire to establish and maintain a global "Rules-Based Order", through applying an imperial strategy they named "geopolitics", failed in Afghanistan in the 19th century, so the replay launched in the late 1970s until the present has once again failed, disastrously, as the U.S. and NATO forces retreated this week, under the cover of night. The failure in the 19th century did not teach the world a lesson, as allowing the imperial oligarchs to apply the same geopolitical theory led to two bloody and destructive world wars in the 20th century — which many believe, with some validity, was precisely their intention!

Have we not learned the lesson yet, that submitting sovereign nation states to geopolitical practices deployed on behalf of imperial ambitions threatens the survival of mankind?

This time, we have an alternative: dump geopolitics and adopt Lyndon LaRouche's approach to peace through development. We must act now, as we may not have another chance.

Intense diplomacy is underway concerning Afghanistan, with the U.S. pull-out now announced to be completed as of Aug. 31, according to President Biden’s press briefing Thursday. Taliban representatives were in Moscow the same day, and also in Tehran. They conveyed a message to China in an interview in “This Week in Asia.” Russian President Putin and other officials have been in close contact with Tajikistan leaders. Today, India Foreign Minister Jaishankar was in Moscow, after making a stop yesterday in Tehran, on late notice, but meeting with President Elect Ebrahim Raisi.

With guest speaker Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst and co-founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).