Following along behind the United States into a crisis of the Trump administration’s own making, the Australian government has just torn the 200 Royal Australian Navy personnel on HMAS Toowoomba away from their families to send them into harm’s way in the Strait of Hormuz on the fake pretext of freedom of navigation.
As usual, being the drover’s dog of the USA and UK in military actions has bipartisan support from the Australian Labor Party, who, like the Liberals, take their lead from the Anglo-American-dominated Five Eyes intelligence agencies that have a history of fabricating “intelligence” to orchestrate wars.
Given the potential for runaway escalation into a broader global conflict that draws in the great powers, Australia instead should be urging its ally the United States to cooperate with Russia and China, the only nations capable of achieving a genuine resolution of this war danger with Iran.
The Citizens Party endorses the call of the international Schiller Institute for an emergency summit between US President Donald Trump, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
A 7 January statement written by Schiller Institute President Helga Zepp-LaRouche urges: “If the world is to escape a spiral of retaliations and counter-retaliations in the wake of the killing of Iranian Major General Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi Popular Mobilisation Units Deputy Commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the Presidents of the United States, Russia and China must convene an emergency summit to address the current crisis in Southwest Asia and the solutions to that crisis.”
Click here to read the full statement.
Russia and China both have crucial stakes in the developments in the Persian Gulf—Russia as the credible regional powerbroker which saved Syria from the horror of ISIS and a Libya-style regime-change catastrophe, and China as the largest consumer of oil shipped through the Gulf and the leading exponent of the economic development that is the ultimate path towards Middle East peace.
Only collaboration between these three great powers can broker a genuine resolution of the crisis, both in the immediate and long term.
Since Trump ordered the murder of General Soleimani on clearly false intelligence which his administration is unable to back up, and under circumstances that have prompted experts to suspect the Pentagon and State Department are really calling the shots, Iran has retaliated against US bases in Iraq, but thankfully neither side has escalated further.
The danger is this could be a temporary hiatus, however, easily broken by rash actions and false-flag operations. This is because Trump is surrounded by a neoconservative foreign policy apparatus that has been gunning for war with Iran for decades, as former NATO commander General Wesley Clark famously exposed was revealed to him in the weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attack in 2001. This is the same apparatus that fabricated the lies used to invade Iraq. Trump won the election for president by denouncing this apparatus and their lies, and their agenda of keeping America mired in permanent war in places like Syria and Afghanistan, but in his rhetoric he made an exception for Iran. This prejudice against Iran has led him to accept false claims and instigate actions that now threaten more of the wars he campaigned against.
If Trump is at all genuine about not seeking regime change in Iran, and finding an alternative to war, he must break with the Anglo-American neocon apparatus and work with Putin and Xi on a pathway. The Schiller Institute calls for the three powers to create a new paradigm for the world:
“Such a paradigm must end geopolitics and imperialism, and establish a new financial and strategic architecture for the world, based on defence of the sovereignty and cultural integrity of all nations.”
The late Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser asserted in his 2014 book Dangerous Allies that Australia is not an independent nation, but has always been subservient to the UK and USA, our “dangerous allies” that have continuously led us into destructive overseas wars (with the exception of WWII). It is time for Australia to assert an independent foreign policy and urge cooperation between the great powers, which would carry great weight in Washington, and potentially strengthen Trump’s war avoidance instincts against the war-hungry neocon apparatus.
Schiller Institute day of action
The Schiller Institute is organising a Day of Action, Wednesday, 15 January, to intensify support for the call for an emergency Trump-Putin-Xi summit. Activists on five continents will mobilise citizens, government officials, diplomats and institutions in support of the Call.
15 January is the birthday of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. The Schiller Institute encourages all to commemorate the ideas and life’s work of Dr King, by organising for peace through economic development, as in the Call for the Emergency Summit.