AT ONE MINUTE TO MIDNIGHT, DOES HUMANITY HAVE THE MORAL FITNESS TO SURVIVE?

Two futures are now playing out on the world stage. One, the annihilation of the human species in a nuclear war, is as unthinkable as it is possible; the other, a new paradigm of peace and development, is as necessary as it is beautiful. We are just as close to the one as the other, and the two tracks cannot coexist for much longer.

Pointing out that humanity is moving inch by inch toward a nuclear war, Helga Zepp-LaRouche remarked to the International Peace Coalition (IPC) meeting on July 24, “We are in a situation comparable to August 1914.” Relating the recent warnings of retired German General and Chairman of the NATO Military Committee Harald Kujat, she said, “You remember the Guns of August, and the first of September was when it was too late; World War I was not to be stopped. And we are now at the end of July, and I think it is not an exaggeration that this is the time frame we are talking about.” How can political leaders in the world “have completely forgotten the lessons of how much horror the world wars have inflicted on humanity,” she asks. The difference now is that the coming war will be nuclear.

Pushing us ever-closer to that nuclear cliff, the beast-man logic of “might makes right” continues to be on lurid display in the escalating and increasingly degenerate threats coming from certain elected officials in the West. More than an “eye-for-an-eye,” little Marco Rubio told reporters after the recently concluded ASEAN meeting, “the President’s policy is a head for an eye… [Iran] will pay a very heavy price for the things they’re doing… They’re going to suffer more until they come to their senses.” Trump echoed the mafia-like sentiment in telling reporters on Thursday, “They haven’t received enough pain yet.”

Will the “pain” that Trump is being nudged toward inflicting on Iran be delivered by a tactical nuclear weapon, as some qualified experts are warning? “I am considering a massive attack. Bigger than ever before,” Trump told reporters.

The situation around the other major crisis point, the war in Ukraine, remains dangerous. Speaking to reporters at the SCO Foreign Ministers’ meeting on Thursday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov made clear that Russia wasn’t the one who caused the Anchorage agreements on resolving the Ukraine war to “fail,” but that the West has done everything it could, including and especially arming Ukraine against Russia, to prevent peace. This was to be raised, Lavrov reported on Wednesday, at his Thursday meeting with Rubio.

Whatever is (or isn’t) going on inside the heads of Western officials, it is the underlying ideology of geopolitics, the virus in thinking bestowed upon humanity by the British Empire, which is the real threat. The logic of attempting to keep a portion of humanity underdeveloped, in some degree of servitude, is not only evil; it is against natural law and will bring about its own early extinction.

The question that must be asked and acted upon is, How do we make sure it doesn’t bring about the extinction of all of us?

“To those who risk falling into the temptation to despair before so many ongoing wars in the world,” writes Pope Leo XIV, “I direct the invitation that Pope Pius XI extended to the whole Church: Let us thank God that He makes us live among the present problems. It is no longer permitted to anyone to be mediocre.”

Helga Zepp-LaRouche unscored that call to action by the Pope: “Naturally, in the age of thermonuclear weapons, war cannot be a method of conflict resolution. In…the new book by the Pope, he says, to go to war is a road of no return. And I think that should be taken extremely seriously.”

Take it seriously: Mobilize a mass movement to stop the threat of nuclear annihilation, starting with next Friday’s joint EIR and International Peace Coalition emergency roundtable, “Solve the Immigration Crisis with Development: What You Need to Know About the Strategic Significance of Pope Leo’s Encyclical,” at which solutions to the root causes—creating a new paradigm for development to replace that which has brought us to the brink—will be put on the table.