EIR Daily Alert Service, MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2018

MONDAY, JUNE 4, 2018

Volume 5, Number 110

EIR Daily Alert Service

P.O. Box 17390, Washington, DC 20041-0390

EDITORIAL

The World Is Poised on the Brink of a New Order of Peace and Development

June 3 (EIRNS)—A truly spectacular transformation in the history of Mankind is now in clear sight, in the near future, if the citizens of the world have the courage to seize the opportunity. One recalls Friedrich Schiller’s famous epigram “The Moment,” reflecting on the results of the French Revolution:

“A momentous epoch hath the cent’ry engender’d,
Yet the moment so great findeth a people so small.”

Can the human race today rise to the greatness of this moment?

The Spirit of the New Silk Road, a process initiated by Lyndon and Helga LaRouche in the 1990s and embraced so powerfully by Xi Jinping five years ago, has brought about this great moment, together with the historical revolt of populations in the US and Europe against the cultural and economic decay across the western world. This is reflected in Brexit, the Trump election, the recent Italian election, and similar stirrings elsewhere.

Today, the divisions of the world into geopolitical blocs—the core of the British Empire’s capacity to maintain the power of the financial oligarchy in the City of London and Wall Street—is crumbling before our eyes. President Donald Trump has launched a peace and development process in the Korean Peninsula, working closely with China, Russia, and Japan. U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman has announced that the urgently needed summit between Trump and President Vladimir Putin is finally being organized, with an agenda to resolve the remaining “cockpits for war” in Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe, especially Syria and Ukraine. In all such hot spots, success depends entirely on all parties following the wise words of Lyndon LaRouche—get the tractors rolling immediately, drive the development process from the beginning as the necessary condition for any political agreements. This is the premise of the New Silk Road—the win-win belief in the common aims and common rights of all people, creating peace through development.

India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in his keynote speech to the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on June 1, made clear that India will be part of this win-win approach, issuing a passionate plea for Asian nations, and all nations, to be finished with “great power rivalries,” emphasizing: “Asia of rivalry will hold us all back. Asia of cooperation will shape this century.”

Ambassador Huntsman told “Fox and Friends” this morning, when asked about plans for a Putin-Trump summit, that “both sides are looking favorably on that,” and that: “It is inconceivable to conclude that you can settle down the Mideast without the United States and Russia dealing with the hornets’ nest of an issue called Syria. And, it’s inconceivable that you can deal rationally with strategic stability and nuclear weapons when our two countries possess 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. Isolation doesn’t fix things. It’s coming together.”

Trump is taking bold steps. The Russiagate scam continues to unravel, as the exposure by the LaRouche organization of the British role in the attempted coup against the President of the United States is now a leading feature even in the mainstream media. The complicit players within the Obama Administration’s intelligence community are now facing potential criminal prosecution themselves, and are further exposing themselves in their panic. Obama’s DNI James Clapper literally bragged to Bloomberg News June 2 that he and others “manipulated” foreign elections and “overthrew governments” on a regular basis, but that this is OK since “it was done with the best interests of the people in that country in mind—given the traditional reverence for human rights.” History will account for the “human rights” provided by the Anglo-American cabal to the people of Vietnam, of Iraq, of Libya, and of Syria, among others. It is precisely this mentality of “regime change”—simply a new term for the British Empire’s geopolitics—which Trump has rejected, and which is a major cause of the British panicked attempt to destroy him.

The new paradigm now coming into being is endangered by the rapidly deteriorating condition of the Western financial system. The European sector of that system is facing the revolt in Italy, the crisis at Deutsche Bank, and other potential sparks which could ignite the massive derivative bubble which is propping up the entire edifice. With Trump breaking free of the British coup plot, he must act swiftly to implement a Hamiltonian reform of the financial system, as presented in LaRouche’s Four Laws, to make it possible for the nation to both participate in, and contribute to, the unfolding of the Silk Road development process in every part of the world and beyond.

U.S. POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC

Biggest Threat to U.S. Defense Is Collapse of Skilled Labor Force and Industrial Base

June 1 (EIRNS)—The “Annual Industrial Capabilities” report to Congress was “quietly released” on May 17 by the Pentagon’s Office of Manufacturing and Industrial Base Policy, according to Defense News. While EIR has not yet reviewed the full report, Defense News’ May 22 summary of the report’s findings makes clear that the United States defense is not threatened as much by foreign powers as by our own policies. Decades of post-industrial, rock-sex-drug culture, “information theory” replacing Classical science, remains the greatest threat to national security, and has resulted in more youth on drugs than capable of skilled labor and engineering.

“The greatest challenge that could harm domestic defense capabilities is the demographics of the workforce. Only 39% of the current workforce is under the age of 45. And while jobs in the aerospace and defense sectors are seen positively by the majority of young professionals, only 1.5% of 25- to 34-year-olds in the U.S. have a science degree,” Defense News wrote in its coverage of the report.

Those figures are taken from Figure 1 in the report, which states that aerospace and defense “companies are being faced with a shortage of qualified workers to meet current demands as well as needing to integrate a younger workforce with the ‘right skills, aptitude, experience and interest to step into the jobs vacated by senior-level engineers and skilled technicians’ as they exit the workforce.”

The U.S. likewise does not have a diversified industrial base, and therefore lacks the design and production capability needed to develop new systems. For example, the report warns that “the biggest risk for the aerospace sector is its ability to sustain the design and manufacturing skills and capabilities needed for future aircraft design and manufacture,” according to Defense News.

Defense News summarizes the report’s findings for sectors such as shipbuilding, which faces “potential consequences if something were to happen to the small, highly concentrated industrial base.” The danger referenced is the lack of a workflow necessary to ensure those industrial capabilities do not go under—although not said, a danger stemming from the rule of Wall Street “markets.” Likewise, “the age and condition of the naval shipyard infrastructure, which is on average seven years older than industry standard” is also critical, leading to significant work stoppages every year.

Growing Drumbeat against Britain as the Enemy That Set Up ‘Russiagate’

June 1 (EIRNS)—Will “the bridge to the Russia investigation … erected 1,700 miles away in London, where foreign figures contacted Trump campaign advisers and provided the FBI with hearsay allegations of Trump-Russia collusion … come falling down when more facts surface?” asked John Solomon, executive vice president for video for The Hill, in an opinion column today in that well-read Washington publication. Solomon marshals relevant known facts to make his case for Congress to get to the bottom of London’s role in what became FBI “targeting of a confidential human source against a human person” prior to having any legitimate grounds, against FBI rules.

Solomon’s piece is one of many now taking up the strategic focus on Great Britain’s role, which LaRouche PAC and LaRouche’s EIRmagazine uniquely identified from the start as required to defeat the intended coup against President Trump.

Another contribution came from Gateway Pundit’s Cassandra Fairbanks today, who made the case that such an international operation could not have been carried out except under the direction of then-President Barack Obama, and pinned Gina Haspel as being necessarily in the middle of this operation at the time.

Citing interviews with “three former intelligence officers with knowledge of the corrupt criminal activity of the Obama CIA,” Fairbanks summarized the British role:

“The U.K.’s Joint Intelligence Committee [JIC] was the venue used by the CIA and the DNI to share and receive ‘intelligence’ allegedly linking Trump to Russia.

“The sources believe that John Brennan and James Clapper used highly classified intelligence channels to create a trail of fake evidence linking Trump to Russia.

“George Papadopoulos was targeted deliberately by U.K. intel operatives in a plot to trick him.

“It was Joseph Mifsud, not Papadopoulos, who raised the prospect of meeting with the Russians and introduced the claim that Russia had damaging information about Hillary Clinton.

“Joseph Mifsud was a British operative, not a Russian asset.

“The only entity that could have coordinated the entire operation was the Obama White House.”

She goes on that “the CIA’s London Chief of Station … or their senior intelligence analyst posted to the London Embassy would attend weekly JIC meetings according to one of the sources. At the time, the COS was Gina Haspel, who is now the director of the CIA.”

Top whistleblower Bill Binney, former technical signals expert at the National Security Agency, corroborated to Fairbanks that such an operation could only have been done through Obama. Referring to his meeting at President Trump’s behest with then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Binney said: “What [former CIA analyst] Ray McGovern and I were thinking is that the whole conspiracy about the Russian narrative was concocted by Brennan and then most likely approved by Obama. This is what I told Pompeo when I was in with him. It requires the NSA, CIA, FBI, DNI, DNC and the DOJ to be coordinating especially for things like the Steele dossier. The only one place they all come together and can be ordered to coordinate and cooperate is the president—which was Obama. The DOJ doesn’t fall under the DNI or anybody else—only the President.”

U.S., South Korea Diminish Military Exercises To ‘Create Conditions Favorable for the Summit’

June 3 (EIRNS)—South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo and U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis met on the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore this weekend, releasing a joint statement that U.S.-South Korean military exercises will continue, but will be scaled down in order to show good will towards the breakthrough in diplomatic relations with North Korea. The Korea Times reports that the downscaling “is expected to include the reduction of deployment of U.S. nuclear submarines and strategic bombers around the Korean Peninsula along with the joint exercises.”

The statement reads: “Both ministers shared the stance that the Washington-Pyongyang summit will provide a historic opportunity in denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and establishing permanent peace. For this, they promised to help create conditions favorable for the summit and tighten bilateral communication and mutual assistance.”

The Korea Times also quotes a South Korean ministry official saying today that Song and Mattis agreed to carry out the combined exercises in a “low key” manner. The unnamed official said: “The allies will carry out the military drills as scheduled. But we will not actively make them public. We may not announce the deployments of the strategic assets, even though they are deployed according to our annual plan. This means we will refrain from excessive promotions, rather than cancelling the combined drills.”

Clapper Brags: When We Meddle and Overturn Governments, We Do It ‘for the People’

June 3 (EIRNS)—Former DNI James Clapper took the opportunity of an interview with Bloomberg Saturday to brag about his (and other Americans’) role in interfering in foreign elections and overthrowing governments. Bloomberg’s Tobin Harshaw asked: “Speaking of election interference, you write candidly in your book that the U.S. has long tried to sway foreign elections where it had an important national interest, and you even cite a study of 81 examples. How do you square the current outrage over Russian manipulation of social media—which is kind of a tame practice compared to some of the things that the CIA did?”

Clapper replied, with no little chest thumping: “I guess the way I think about that is that through our history, when we tried to manipulate or influence elections or even overturned governments, it was done with the best interests of the people in that country in mind, given the traditional reverence for human rights.”

STRATEGIC WAR DANGER

Former Pacific Command Adm. Harry Harris Sings Insane and Dangerous Swan Song

June 1 (EIRNS)—Adm. Harry Harris spoke at the transfer of his leadership of Pacific Command to Adm. Phil Davidson on May 30 in Hawaii. Describing it as his last speech in uniform, he proceeded to issue a mad war cry against China and Russia, and lied about the view of President Trump regarding these two great powers. This last speech would be welcomed were there any indication that Davidson is any less rabid.

Harris said: “China remains our biggest long-term challenge. Without focussed involvement and engagement by the United States and our allies and partners, China will realize its dream of hegemony in Asia. We should work with Beijing where we can, but stand ready to confront them when we must….

“A resurgent and revanchist Russia, whose longest coastline is in the Pacific, remains an existential threat to the United States even as Moscow remains the spoiler in the Indo-Pacific today.

“A lot has happened since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Soviet Union dissolved, and much of it for the good. But make no mistake, our 27-year holiday from history is over. Great power competition is back. I believe we’re at an inflection point in history. Our Commander in Chief is clear—geopolitical competition between free and repressive visions of world order is taking place in the Indo-Pacific.”

London Puts Former Argentine President Fernández de Kirchner in the Crosshairs

June 2 (EIRNS)— Yesterday the provisional President of the Argentine Senate Federico Pinedo called a special session for June 5 to discuss lifting the parliamentary immunity from former President and now Senator Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. This comes two days after President Mauricio Macri suffered a stinging defeat in the Senate, which passed the bill to lower utility rates retroactively to levels of last November, prior to this year’s astronomical increases, demanded by the IMF. Macri vetoed the bill as promised.

The timing here is key. The June 5 date will be two days prior to the expiration of the sleazy Judge Claudio Bonadio’s Dec. 7, 2017 order that Fernández’s immunity be lifted so she can be sent to pre-trial detention in the case of the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish social center in Buenos Aires, in which she is accused of covering up Iran’s role.

The British Empire is behind this travesty. They intend to railroad Fernández into jail, as they did earlier this year with her Brazilian ally, former President Lula da Silva. Both leaders, along with deposed Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, stood up against IMF looting of their countries; the three had led their countries into economic cooperation with China, Russia, and other New Silk Road nations.

Pinedo’s call also came just hours after the Buenos Aires Federal Appeals Court ruled that the suspicious Jan. 19, 2015 death of federal prosecutor Alberto Nisman was definitely a homicide and not a suicide—for which no evidence has ever been provided—asserting that Nisman’s death was related to the document he presented a few days earlier charging Fernández with protecting Iran in the AMIA case. The implication is that Fernández ordered him killed.

The Justicialista/Peronist party, while no Fernández ally, has made known it will oppose any attempt to lift her immunity.

This is a desperate move by Macri’s London backers. Fernández was a vocal proponent of the Senate bill that Macri vetoed, and has gained in popularity as Macri’s approval rating has plummeted as a result of the economic disaster his policies have produced. His reelection chances for 2019 are dimming, while social and labor protest against his seeking an IMF bailout is sweeping the country. Yesterday, Finance Minister Nicolas Dujovne announced new austerity measures that will especially affect the state sector—7,000 employees will be fired—and slash the budget for any new public works contracts. These $800 million in cuts are the first of $8 billion the IMF is demanding.

The slogan in a protest yesterday captures the popular rage: “Macri shithead…there’s a gorilla in the Pink House,” (Pink House being the presidential palace, and “gorilla” is the term referring to right-wing military fascists).

Soros Dope Mob on Drive To Turn Mexico into ‘World Power’ of Menticidal Drugs

June 2 (EIRNS)—In the run-up to Mexico’s July 2018 presidential elections, George Soros’s drug mafia just staged an international conference in Guanajuato, on May 30-31, a so-called “CannaMexico World Summit.” Its stated goal was to line up the political/economic forces in Mexico to get rapid full-scale legalization of cannabis/marijuana, to “revolutionize the potential of an industry in Latin America,” as organizers wrote.

The actual strategic goal is much bigger. Soros and the City of London/Wall Street banks are out to get the incoming Mexican government, whichever it is, to cut an official government deal with the drug cartels, under which drug production and consumption are legalized and the cartels declared no longer mafia, but “legitimate businessmen.” And not just for marijuana.

The “summit” was held at former Mexican President Vicente Fox’s “Centro Fox” in Guanajuato. Fox has been working with Soros on drug legalization since his 2000-2006 presidency. Interviewed in advance of CannaMexico on May 25 with cannabis lobby website “Civilized,” Fox said Mexico’s legalization of “medical” marijuana (in June 2017) was just “the first step…. We need to go for the whole enchilada and achieve full legalization.” At the summit itself he brashly declared that the time has come “to produce a new industry, to change criminals into businessmen, to change small-time drug dealers into entrepreneurs meeting demand.”

Soros’s top legalization strategist Ethan Nadelmann was another star at the narco confab, making headlines for his speech arguing that “Mexico will be a world power” if it “positions itself as a world-class leader in the production and marketing of cannabis.” If Mexican businessmen play it right, money will come to Mexico “by the handfuls,” the sleazeball said. Nadelmann openly said that he believes “all drugs can be wonderful.”

The “summit” brought together a host of narco hedge fund owners from Canada and the U.S. (e.g., the “Queen of Cannabis” Cheryl Shuman, president of Beverly Hills Cannabis Club). Their game is to legalize all the way across North America. Nadelmann reported that Soros’s Drug Policy Alliance has been organizing tours for Mexican “businessmen” to see first-hand how legalization “works” in Colorado and Washington state, while Fox is telling Mexicans that Canada is moving quickly towards ending cannabis prohibition, so Mexico should not “fall behind.”

Negotiations Underway To Resolve Syria Crisis

June 3 (EIRNS)—Numerous reports indicate there is a high level of activity to begin to resolve the Syria crisis with negotiations underway among Russian, American, Israeli, Iranian, Turkish and Jordanian officials. Since all the negotiations are fluid and secret and much of the press reports are leaks intended to influence the negotiations on behalf of the leakers, it is impossible to draw specific conclusions; what is clear is that there is a very active effort, led by Russian President Vladimir Putin, to resolve the matter and restore full sovereignty to Syria.

In the last few days there are reported to have been discussions among the players about a withdrawal of Iranian forces from southern Syria and a withdrawal of U.S. forces from al-Tanf. According to the London-based Saudi newspaper Asharq Al-Awsat and picked up by the Israeli paper Ha’aretz, U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of State David Satterfield proposed to Russian, Turkish, and Jordanian officials that all Syrian and non-Syrian militias pull back from the Jordanian border. Syrian opposition forces would move to Idlib in northern Syria and hand over their heavy weapons to the Russians. Then Syrian government forces would return to the Jordanian border, Russian police points would be set up, and an American-Russian mechanism would be put in place to control the implementation.

Apparently the dispute is over timing, with the U.S. saying they want verification of the withdrawal of Iranian forces before dismantling the U.S. base at al-Tanf, with the Syrians demanding that the base be dismantled first. Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem told a Damascus press conference yesterday that the U.S. must dismantle the base before negotiations begin. However, Asharq Al-Awsat reports that the Facebook page of the Russian air base at Hmeimim said that the agreement stipulates the withdrawal of Iranian forces from the south, and that this is expected to begin within a few days.

This report coincides with increased direct discussions between the Israelis and the Russians. Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman met in Moscow on May 31 with Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to discuss security arrangements on the Golan Heights and southern Syria. This comes after several direct discussions between Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu and Putin, beginning with Netanyahu’s visit to Russia for Victory Day celebrations in early May.

Contrary to other officials in his administration, President Trump has repeatedly stated that he wants to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria. It is also widely reported that the Trump Administration is expected to announce a comprehensive peace plan for Southwest Asia in mid-June.

Mattis Agrees To Reread National Security Strategy: ‘We All Know We Can Work Together’

June 3 (EIRNS)—Defense Secretary James Mattis, at the end of the Q&A following his presentation at the Shangri-La Dialogue on Saturday, was asked by a Malaysian delegate about the December 2017 National Security Strategy, asking if that document’s declaration that both Russia and China are strategic adversaries were not actually pushing them together against the United States.

Mattis responded quite thoughtfully: “If that’s what the documents appear to do—I’ve got to go back and read them again, because our view is that with both those nations, with great power competition and at levels that we had hoped we’d see be characterized more by cooperation and collaboration—if the competition is going to grow more strident then that’s what we don’t want to have happen.”

He said that in his view, the U.S. can and should cooperate with both. “I would not be wasting my time going to Beijing at the end of the month if I really thought that’s the only option between us and China. What would be the point of it?  I’ve got more important things to do,” he said.

Mattis said he expects that “both Moscow and Beijing” will agree that the best method is for “many different nations all sitting down together, all trying to find a way forward with respect for each other’s internal dynamics, each other’s culture and not finding this as a reason why we cannot work together.  We all know we can work together. We have worked closely with Russia to defeat fascism and with China to defeat fascism.  We have worked closely with other nations that we had open war with: with Germany, with Japan after World War II.  There is no need for this to go in the direction you’re referring to of those two against the world.”

He concluded saying that Russia and China share with the U.S. a “desire for peace” and to “figure out how we can find a way through these disagreements in a positive, productive, relationship that’s competitive, certainly, but does not have to be combative, and that we all have to work hard at that. But I will go back and read the documents again—after you go through it about 30 times, before you sign it, you can sometimes start to see the forest for the trees.  So, thanks for bringing that up. I’ll take a look at it.  It’s certainly not how we see the world.”

This is a most interesting discussion, reflecting more President Trump’s multiple declarations that friendly relations with Russia and China are a good thing, unlike the policy in the National Security Strategy.

COLLAPSING WESTERN FINANCIAL SYSTEM

Trump Again Seeks Action To Save Nuclear and Coal Electricity Plants

June 2 (EIRNS)—The numbers and output of nuclear and coal generating plants in the U.S. are declining to the point of risk to baseline electricity supplies; and yesterday, the Trump Administration asked for action. White House spokesperson Sarah Sanders said that the President wants Secretary of Energy Rick Perry to “prepare immediate steps” on this.

This statement follows reports of an Administration 40-page memorandum on the topic of remedies to the plight of nuclear and coal generating sectors, which has not been released. According to the Wall Street Journal today, which, along with Bloomberg, reported obtaining a copy, “The memo is dated May 29 and labeled as a draft addendum to a larger package submitted to the National Security Council.” The NSC and the Energy Department are working on new policies to aid the nuclear and coal sectors, on security grounds. Bloomberg reports that the memo calls for placing a two-year hold on forced early closures of coal and nuclear plants, during which “the DOE would conduct a study of vulnerabilities in the U.S. power grid system.”

At present the U.S. has 99 nuclear power reactors in operation, down from the peak of 104, and set to go lower rapidly, if more nuclear plants are allowed to shut down as planned over the next few years. States are fighting rearguard actions.

One-quarter of the nation’s 99 nuclear plants do not make sufficient revenue to cover expenses, and risk shutting down over the next three years, according to a study by Bloomberg released in mid-May. The 24 plants in that category, have a generating capacity of 32.5 gigawatts, which is more than a quarter of the entire fleet of U.S. reactors, which supplies about 20% of U.S. electric power. A similar study in March, showed that half of the U.S. coal-fired electric capacity is on shaky ground.

THE NEW GLOBAL ECONOMIC ORDER

India’s Modi: The World Summons Us To Rise Above Divisions and Work Together

June 1 (EIRNS)—Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s keynote speech today opening the annual International Institute for Strategic Studies Asia Security Summit, known as the Shangri-La Dialogue, laid out a vision for a shared future for Asia and the world, antithetical to the geopolitical axioms of his British imperial hosts at IISS. Modi came into the meeting after his recent successful one-on-one dialogues with Presidents Xi and Putin to speak to this audience of defense professionals from over 50 countries as the representative of one of the world’s oldest civilizations. India, he made clear, intends to play its rightful role in shaping the emerging New Paradigm based on the common aims of humanity.

“For thousands of years, Indians have turned to the East. Not just to see the Sun rise, but also to pray for its light to spread over the entire world. Humankind now looks to the Rising East, with the hope to see the promise that this 21st century beholds for the whole world, because the destiny of the world will be deeply influenced by the course of developments in the Indo-Pacific region,” he said from the outset.

“Because, this new age of promise is also caught in shifting plates of global politics and the fault lines of history. I am here to say that the future we seek does not have to be as elusive as Shangri-La; that we can shape this region in our collective hopes and aspirations.”

Modi spoke of the Indo-Pacific as “a natural region,” rejecting those promoting that term as a geopolitical operation against China. “India does not see the Indo-Pacific region as a strategy or a club of limited members. Nor as a grouping that seeks to dominate. And by no means do we consider it as directed against any country. A geographical definition, as such, cannot be. India’s vision for the Indo-Pacific region is, therefore, a positive one,” Modi specified.

“Oceans had an important place in Indian thinking since pre-Vedic times. Thousands of years ago, the Indus Valley Civilization as well as Indian peninsula had maritime trade. Oceans and Varuna—the Lord of all Waters—find a prominent place in the world’s oldest books, the Vedas.”

Thus, “the Indian Ocean has shaped much of India’s history. It now holds the key to our future. The ocean carries 90% of India’s trade and our energy sources.” But at the same time, it is “the life line of global commerce … [and] now bears ships of major powers. Both raise concerns of stability and contest.”

India seeks “to cooperate for an architecture for peace and security in the region,” he affirmed, but warned that peace is only possible “if we do not return to the age of great power rivalries. I have said this before: Asia of rivalry will hold us all back. Asia of cooperation will shape this century. So, each nation must ask itself: Are its choices building a more united world, or forcing new divisions? It is a responsibility that both existing and rising powers have. Competition is normal. But, contests must not turn into conflict; differences must not be allowed to become disputes.”

Modi spoke of India’s “strategic autonomy,” maintaining partnerships with the United States, Japan, Korea, Russia, China and Africa, as a reflection of the multipolar world order are needed. “Our friendships are not alliances of containment,” he reiterated. In this context he said that “no other relationship of India has as many layers as our relations with China. We are the world’s two most populous countries and among the fastest growing major economies. Our cooperation is expanding. Trade is growing. And, we have displayed maturity and wisdom in managing issues and ensuring a peaceful border.

“In April, a two-day informal summit with President Xi helped us cement our understanding that strong and stable relations between our two nations are an important factor for global peace and progress,” he said. “I firmly believe that, Asia and the world will have a better future when India and China work together in trust and confidence, sensitive to each other’s interests.”

He concluded his speech with the beautiful statement that “this world is at a crossroad. There are temptations of the worst lessons of history. But, there is also a path of wisdom. It summons us to a higher purpose: To rise above a narrow view of our interests and recognize that each of us can serve our interests better when we work together as equals in the larger good of all nations. I am here to urge all to take that path.”

Correction: In Friday’s EIR Daily Alert, the new Italian Minister for the South was misnamed as Erika Stefani (Lega).  The new Minister, from M5S, is Barbara Lezzi.

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