MEDIA FORCE

LET US WORK TO PREVENT THIS FROM HAPPENING!!!!
Will World War III Begin on German Soil?
May 23, 2026 (EIRNS)—It is arguably the case that the spark that could unleash nuclear World War III between NATO and Russia (and China) will not come from the war against Iran or even Ukraine—dangerous though those crises continue to be—but from Germany.

On a widely watched TV talk show on ZDF, Germany’s second public television channel, a highly-respected retired brigadier general who was Military Policy Adviser to former Chancellor Angela Merkel from 2006-2013, Erich Vad, finally gave voice to what many Germans have been scared to say out loud. “Your rhetoric is driving us into a war!” he told CDU security expert Roderich Kiesewetter, a well-known war hawk. If the anti-Russian war mobilization of Germany by the Merz government continues; if they insist on bringing Ukraine into the EU on an expedited basis; and if Germany and other NATO countries keep producing and guiding the drones that are raining havoc on Russia, “You will have Russian missile strikes on our country!” Vad warned.

Vad didn’t mince his words: “The day will come when they [the Russians] carry out retaliatory strikes against Europe, against Germany. First conventionally, and if necessary, they’ll go one level higher. Russia is the world’s strongest nuclear power. If we bring Ukraine into Europe, we will bring the war with Russia into Europe!”

Vad was not overstating the problem.

The Russian government is placing the blame squarely on the nations of NATO and the EU for what they call the “barbaric” May 22 attack on the Starobelsk trade school in the Lugansk People’s Republic, in which Ukrainian drones killed 18 adolescents (at last count) and wounded dozens more as they slept in their dormitories. “This constitutes a manifestation of neo-N**ism,” President Vladimir Putin charged. “It was a targeted strike against civilians—straight out of the German N**i playbook,” a Russian Foreign Ministry statement reported, adding: “These strikes use long-range weapons supplied to the Kiev regime by NATO countries, including drones, and are being carried out with the technical assistance of foreign specialists from well-known NATO member states. We have reliable information that Western capitals are feeding intelligence to the Ukrainian armed forces and helping with targeting.”

Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov told a United Russia Party gathering: “The European Union is now virtually indistinguishable from NATO and has essentially become a replica of that alliance… We are also seeing instances of direct military intervention.”

Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche today described the very idea that Germany would somehow go to war against Russia as totally insane. She called on the Merz government to stop its provocative policies, and for Russia and Germany to instead return to a path of mutually beneficial economic cooperation. She also called on peace-loving forces, political groups and individuals around the world to put a spotlight on this danger, and initiate a serious international discussion of the crisis, and of the policy alternatives to war and economic depression.

Zepp-LaRouche called for the widest possible distribution of her open letter “To the Governments of the United Nations: A Policy to Bring Peace and Development to Southwest Asia”, which is designed to contribute to the policy debate around the need for a new international security and development architecture that is set to occur at the May 26 special session of the United Nations Security Council.

To the Governments of the United Nations: A Policy to Bring Peace and Development to Southwest Asia | On May 26, China, as the rotating chair of the United Nations Security Council, will convene a meeting under the theme “Upholding the Purposes and Principles of the UN Charter and Strengthening the UN-Centered International System.” The meeting will occur with the world at a historical branching...

The Backdrop to the Trump-Xi Summit
May 13, 2026 (EIRNS)—“In the case of the actualization of the presently onrushing general monetary-financial blow-out,” Lyndon LaRouche wrote in November 2004, "all of the sundry elements of a complexly integrated world system, including the most notable nations of Asia, would be plunged into chaos in a way most nearly resembling the plunge of Fourteenth Century Europe into its notorious New Dark Age.

“What prevents most among what were presumably well-informed circles of finance and government, from seeing this fact,” LaRouche continued, “is that they are gripped, hysterically, by the fearful delusion that a crash of the type which is now onrushing simply would never happen. In fact, unless certain radical changes of the type I would propose were taken, the crash deemed unthinkable by most today will happen, very soon.”

In the 10 weeks since U.S. President Donald Trump launched the U.S.-Israeli war of aggression against Iran on Feb. 28, which led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, gasoline prices in the U.S. have risen by about 46%. Diesel, the lifeblood of American agriculture, has jumped by 48%.

Now look at Asia. Gas prices in the Philippines (population 118 million) have leapt by 65% in the same time period. In Malaysia (population 36 million), by 55%. And in Pakistan (population 259 million), by 61%.

India (population 1.477 billion), is the third largest oil consumer in the world and imports 87% of its total consumption, with half of that historically coming through the Strait of Hormuz. Despite this extraordinary import dependency, gas prices at the pump have not gone up at all in India—but only because, at the instruction of the government, major state retailers have frozen retail rates, and the government has taken the financial hit instead. That means that India’s $175 billion spent on oil imports in 2025 will rise by at least 50% to about $265 billion in 2026. Small wonder that threats of speculative financial warfare against India are already surfacing, such as the Bloomberg report that “a widening current account deficit will put pressure on the rupee, raise external borrowing needs, and make the economy more vulnerable to global capital outflows.”

India will not suffer such attacks passively. India is this year’s rotating chair of the BRICS grouping of nations, with its 11 members and 10 partner nations, which is committed to building a new, more just global economic system. The BRICS Foreign Ministers are meeting in New Delhi on May 14-15—the same days Trump will be meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Beijing. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov hit the nail on the head in a May 12 interview before departing for New Delhi, when asked about the policies coming from Washington and the West:

“They put pressure on everyone, demanding that they should not purchase Russian oil, and this is unfair play. These are colonial, or neocolonial, methods. ‘You shouldn’t purchase cheap Russian oil. You should purchase my expensive oil, and buy expensive LNG from the U.S. We will rule the world by controlling global energy,’” Lavrov said, adding that not all countries “cave in to such pressure.”

One thing that Trump will find out in his summit discussions with Xi Jinping is that China is a country that will not cave in—as he found that Iran also has not caved in. Nor has Russia.

Not caving in is an important first step. The next step then has to be the construction of a global alternative to the current bankrupt system, with its in-built drive for unending wars. That will be the central topic addressed at the May 15 EIR Emergency Roundtable Dialogue, “The Iran War and the ‘Controlled Disintegration’ of the World Economy”.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche told her weekly webcast audience today: “This will be an extremely important meeting … [with] top-level government officials, acting ambassadors, former members of parliament, professors, experts. The focus will be on the effect of the danger of a new world depression coming out of the consequences of the war against Iran.”

She continued: “Because we have to get people not only the right analysis of the problem, but also what the solution is. And that has to be a new security and development architecture, which must take into account the interest of every single country, or it will not work. And I get many responses from people who realize that what they thought was a utopian idea, when I mentioned it the first time four years ago, are now saying, ‘Well, the present order is clearly disintegrating. So this is now the time for this conception.’”

May 15 EIR Roundtable: The Iran War and the 'Controlled Disintegration' of the World Economy May 15 at 11:00 a.m. ET Online via Zoom and live-streamed over YouTube Simultaneous interpretation into Spanish, French, and German will be available Speakers Session A (Moderator: Dennis Speed) * Helga Zepp-LaRouche (Germany): Editor-in-chief, Executive Intelligence Review * H.E. Abolfazl Pasandide...