Perfidious Albion Fears the Ghost of John Quincy Adams

March 3—Let us first recall, for all those that have, in the last two days, either been deluged with commentaries and “takes” on the eruption that occurred in the White House Vance-Zelenskyy-Trump exchange of Feb. 28, or have, for some reason, not yet viewed it, and evaluated it for themselves, the single most important matter that was discussed there. This matter is so far widely, almost hysterically under-reported, and under-emphasized. It far outweighs anything that was raised, or could have been raised, in the exchange. It was enunciated, several times, by President Donald Trump: “You’re gambling with World War Three!”

In this 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, and after the explosive events of last week, and, most emphatically, last Friday, at the White House, the practice and standard of American diplomacy pioneered by Secretary of State, later President, and, still later, Congressman and fierce anti-slavery advocate, John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) is the proper standard to which our nation must now return. That standard is incommensurate with that of most recent American Presidential Administrations, particularly after Franklin Roosevelt’s death in April of 1945. President Eisenhower, in the Suez Crisis of 1956; President John F. Kennedy, in the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis actions, and in his American University speech, June 10, 1963; President Ronald Reagan’s March 23, 1983 announcement of the Strategic Defense Initiative, are examples of that John Quincy Adams standard. Note that in all three cases, the actions taken by those Presidents were in response to war, or the looming danger of war. In a thermonuclear age, war, particularly war involving nuclear powers, must be made obsolete.

Both Vice-President Vance and President Trump gently alluded to the small matter—a matter also never honestly reported—that Ukraine has been decisively defeated on the battlefield, and has no military capability to win the war—as it never had, and never could have had—without causing the United States to escalate to a possible World War Three against Russia “on its behalf.” “You don’t have the cards,” Trump said to Zelenskyy on Friday.

Zelenskyy has asked, several times now, for thermonuclear weapons. Ukraine has attacked the pre-2014 territory of Russia withAmerican made and NATO directed long-range missiles several times. It would be unreasonable, as of now, to think that a Ukraine, outfitted with nuclear weapons, would not use them “in a heartbeat” against Russia. President Trump made it clear that the goal of his Administration is an immediate peace. “You’re gambling with World War Three!!” is one of the central reasons, if not the principal reason, that he is doing that.

Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Reagan seriously negotiated, or initiated negotiations with the then-Soviet Union to prevent the outbreak, accidental or intentional, of World War Three. Now, President Donald Trump has assembled a team, with flaws to be sure, but with the understood central intention of preventing World War Three, by replacing war with diplomacy, to unravel the Gordian knot of certain thermonuclear extinction that was otherwise to be the fate of the human race in the not-too-distant-future. In a Sunday exchange with a Fox News reporter, the new Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard responded this way to the question, “So what is the intelligence community’s assessment of Vladimir Putin and his future ambitions?”

Gabbard: “Well, I want to focus, first of all, on President Trump’s goal and the reality that’s on the ground. That’s the thing that seems to be getting lost in what we’re seeing in President Zelenskyy’s statements in the White House and the European leaders’ response to this. President Trump recognizes the urgent need to end this war after three long, bloody years, and has proven that he is the only person that can do this. President Zelenskyy has different aims in mind. He has said that he wants to end this war, but he will only accept an end, apparently, that leads to what he views as Ukraine’s victory, even if it comes at an incredibly high cost of potentially World War Three, or even a nuclear war. President Trump is committed to peace and to freedom. We’re seeing this big divergence here between his position and his commitment to these values and the interests of the American people, and the interests of President Zelenskyy and these European leaders. This is an issue that has to be resolved. I know President Trump is committed to doing this, and that’s really where the next step needs to lead.”

Later, she added, “Really, there’s two viable paths here. One is that this war continues as it has for over three years. More and more Ukrainians will lose their lives. More and more of the country of Ukraine will be decimated and destroyed, in what will continue to be essentially a war of attrition. And to what end? To what outcome? President Trump sees this reality. So the alternative to this, which he is so intent on, which he talked about continuously throughout his campaign, (and) the American people voted for, is his commitment to ending this war and bringing about peace.”

In the question posed, and in Gabbard’s answer, as well as in the post-Friday exchanges of other Administration members with the intelligence agents embedded in what goes under the name “media,” we are seeing the potential emerging of a higher level of diplomatic thought, leading to a higher order resolution of conflict. These 180 degrees “bootlegger’s turn” by America away from its three-decades, trillions-dollar policy of perpetual war, must be bolstered. It must be strengthened by the American people gaining a clear understanding of why the international community, which is not “Europe,” but the “Global Majority”—the nations of Asia, Africa, South and Central America, and then, the trans-Atlantic sector—must also be given the knowledge that there is, now, another direction to American diplomacy. But it is not unprecedented: It is the American diplomacy of John Quincy Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and the President Ronald Reagan who adopted the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) policy of economist and statesman Lyndon LaRouche on matters of war and peace.

Of course, breaking with the British-U.S. “special relationship,” particularly with regard to matters of intelligence-sharing, is, if not prerequisite, certainly coterminous with any successful negotiation for peace anywhere on the planet. In a June 27, 2009 webcast, “Britain Delenda Est,” Lyndon LaRouche explained, 16 years ago, the actual problem we witnessed, from France’s Macron, from Britain’s Starmer, and Zelenskyy on Friday, Feb. 28—which was not a “Ukraine problem”—and how to solve it:

“Europe has no power, Western and Central Europe, no power whatsoever. They lost their sovereignty to the British Empire. Margaret Thatcher took the initiative, supported by President Mitterrand of France, and supported by George H.W. Bush, who’s a real kisser of the bottom of the British—his father, after all, put Hitler into power in Germany; that’s where the real Bush League started, and it’s been the same ever since. So, these three characters: Margaret Thatcher, the Witch of London, François Mitterrand, the longstanding enemy, hater of Charles de Gaulle, and the President of the United States, poor, simpering, silly George H.W. Bush, as President, made an agreement in which they imposed imperial management over all of Western and Central Europe. Europe has no freedom. They are not allowed to create their own currency; they’re not allowed to create national credit. They have industries and capacities, still, which if they could organize national credit, properly, continental Europe could unify its efforts among nations and actually start a recovery program. They are forbidden to do that! By the British Empire! Which now holds all of Western and Central Europe as a colony of the British Empire….

“We are an anti-oligarchical nation. We have nothing to do in our tradition, with the monetary systems of Europe. We came here, and founded this nation, to be free of the monetary systems of Europe! To be free of things like the IMF, today! To be free of the British Empire. People came from Europe in particular, to this territory, to join and participate in building a nation, which would carry forward the best of European civilization, its best heritage, but free of the oligarchical problem which still sat on top of the people of Europe. People came here, not to get away from Italian culture, not to get away from French culture, not to get away from German culture—but, quite the contrary: to free these cultures, by bringing these cultures here, to bring the best of them here! And to develop, here, the best of European civilization. But free of the oligarchical systems of Europe.

“Therefore, we have, embedded in our history, and in traditions of an organic type, which we can evoke any time we have the guts to do so, we can evoke, again, the European heritage which is specific to the United States, a United States which was created to get free of the evil in Europe, the incompetence in Europe. We can launch that again, from the United States, under our Constitution, which was designed for this mission.” [Emphases in original.]

American diplomacy, freed from its British influence, can now fulfill that mission for which the nation was originally founded—should the people of the United States, in collaboration with a Global Majority for peace, act to make a new security and development architecture.