Chinese President Xi Jinping, speaking Sep. 1 at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan, described to attendees the framework of the new world currently taking shape. The SCO’s “biggest achievement is that it has steadily grown into a new type of regional cooperation organization…. Its most valuable spiritual asset is that it pioneered, and has since followed invariably, the Shanghai Spirit of mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for diversity of civilizations, and pursuit of common development. Its most important experience for cooperation is that it has found the right way of coexistence featuring non-alliance, non-confrontation and not targeting any third party, enabling regional countries to build a common home together.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a similar comment Sep. 1 when speaking to reporters from Bishkek. The SCO “is a platform for the development of common joint decisions that should benefit all participating countries. And in this sense, it seems to me that it has good prospects,” he said.
Western media and pundits have largely worked to play the event down—a talking shop, a summit big on documents and short on action, a gathering of autocrats with nothing binding to show. But the real reason for these attacks is that these pundits, whether they know it or not, are still governed by Henry Kissinger’s infamous maxim: History is not made in the South.
Set the absurdity of that notion aside for the moment, and assume it holds. Then consider the insanity currently gripping the countries where history is supposedly made.
The U.S. has restarted strikes against Iran, in a war that has already caused the largest shock to global energy and export markets in decades. In its strikes on Tuesday, Sept. 1, the U.S. hit a wedding ceremony in southern Iran, killing at least four and injuring dozens — recalling the strike that killed more than 150 children at an elementary school in Minab early in the war. Despite six months of bombardment, the U.S. is no closer to any of its stated objectives than it was in February, and has failed to bring even its closest allies in to support it.
President Donald Trump has now dispensed with the pretense of diplomacy altogether, posting on Truth Social Sep. 2: “I’m not trying to force Iran to the bargaining table… I couldn’t care less if they sign a worthless, to them, agreement. I like our position now much better, with almost total control of the Hormuz Strait, and their economy totally collapsing.” A U.S. official told Axios that the administration plans to periodically “mow the lawn” in Iran, claiming that the latest strikes had bought a month of reduced threat to shipping in the Strait of Hormuz—nearly an open admission of another “endless war.”
Europe is gripped by the same madness. On Sept. 1, the German government formally blamed Russia for the alleged attempted drone attack at Leipzig/Halle Airport last month, where an explosive-laden drone was found beside a Ukrainian cargo plane. Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt said the investigations prove Russian responsibility, while declining to release any actual evidence. Berlin summoned the Russian ambassador, ordered the Russian consulate in Bonn closed as of Sep. 18, revoked the contract for the Russian House cultural center in Berlin, and proposed further EU sanctions listings. EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the following day that the plot bore “all the hallmarks of state-sponsored terrorism” and that Russian ambassadors had already been summoned by member states across Europe. The continent is moving unmistakably toward war with the world’s largest nuclear power.
Not to be outdone, Volodymyr Zelensky announced on Sept. 1 that Kiev was preparing to close all of Russia’s airspace, and threatened that civilian aircraft should avoid the “completely unsafe” conditions that the Ukrainian military will create. This stunt will not accomplish anything in the real world aside from stirring the emotions of its supporters. But what it will do is accelerate the recent days’ already sharp increase in Russian strikes across Ukraine, cheered on by Western Russophobes intent on fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian. Putin pointed out the obvious when asked about Zelensky’s statement—that it’s merely further proof of Kiev’s adoption of “state terrorism” as policy.
Speaking on her weekly webcast Sept. 2, Helga Zepp-LaRouche addressed this global duality. The majority of the world, she argued, is moving toward peaceful cooperation for mutual benefit. The Bishkek summit brought together ten SCO member-states and fifteen observers — countries that, as Putin noted, represent some 42% of the world’s population, roughly a third of global GDP, and a comparable share of its landmass. Nations that have committed to resolving conflicts through discussion and diplomacy, Zepp-LaRouche said; they constitute “a new model of cooperation” and, in combination with the BRICS, “a new form of world system, where one country is not dominant and the other ones are colonial subjects.”
That momentum is now being carried forward, she noted, to the Sept. 1-4 Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, drawing 5,000 participants from 70 countries, and also on to the BRICS summit in New Delhi later this month. Asia holds the only real growth rates in the world today—”this is a momentum the West is completely ignoring.”
“So I think the signs are that all the efforts to divide the BRICS countries and run operations against them individually are not really playing out well,” continued Zepp-LaRouche. “And I think that the momentum of the future of the world—provided that the insane elements in the West are not ruining everything with nuclear war—that is the future, and it is a model for how countries can cooperate. And if the European countries, and even the United States, would just become reasonable and say, ‘We should stop the effort to smash this and rather reach out and say let’s cooperate for the common good of humanity,’ all problems could be solved relatively easily. But I don’t see that reason dawning yet.”
