The Old Paradigm and The Hordes at Munich

Stewart Battle - U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio bemoaned the post-war contraction of “the great Western empires” during his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Credit: U.S. Department of State

The world strategic situation is defined by the various efforts to revitalize imperialism on the one hand, and on the other this dying system’s conflict with the efforts of the Global South to establish a new, more just world system. This was the assessment of Helga Zepp-LaRouche during a discussion with associates on Feb. 16 following the dramatic developments of the past few days.

Characteristic of the efforts to revitalize a naked imperialism were the remarks by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who bemoaned the post-war contraction of “the great Western empires” during his speech at the Munich Security Conference. Rubio laid out the cynical worldview that is increasingly coming to dominate the Trump administration: “In a perfect world, all of these problems and more would be solved by diplomats and strongly worded resolutions. But we do not live in a perfect world, and we cannot continue to allow those who blatantly and openly threaten our citizens and endanger our global stability to shield themselves behind abstractions of international law which they themselves routinely violate.” You see, men are creatures that only understand brute force, Rubio asserts.

Of course, Rubio’s remarks were also a not-so-veiled threat against Europe, whom Rubio addressed by saying, “America is charting the path for a new century of prosperity, and … we want to do it together with you.” But rather than condemning Rubio’s assertion that Western hegemonism must again dominate the world, he instead received a standing ovation by his European counterparts! Not only did European leaders trip over themselves in making ever-greater rearmament commitments for the alleged coming war with Russia, but a new discussion has broken out over the expansion of nuclear weapons across the continent. Polish President Karol Nawrocki has become the most recent one to announce this, when he said during a Feb. 15 interview: “I’m a great supporter of Poland joining the nuclear project…. This path, with respect to all international regulations, is the path we should follow.” Nawrocki’s comments followed similar statements by Latvia, Finland, Sweden, and Germany.

At the same time, there was enormous disarray in Munich. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz explicitly said there is a rift between Europe and the United States, and that the rules-based order “no longer exists.” He also pounded the war drums against Russia, saying that defending Europe’s freedom will require everyone to “make sacrifices.” Similarly, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that hard power is “the currency of the age,” and therefore, “we must be ready to fight.”

In the backdrop of all this, however, is the continued rollout of the Epstein files. These files do not only incriminate the individuals who have been exposed—which itself remains only a small fraction of the actual number who were involved—but are an indictment of the entire imperial order which has tolerated this kind of thinking, as with Rubio’s barbaric outlook. This point was made powerfully in a Feb. 13 op-ed by U.K. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn. After criticizing Prime Minister Starmer’s “shameful, appalling” decision to appoint Epstein-friend Peter Mandelson, Corbyn takes the scandal to a much higher level: All the other politicians lined up to replace Starmer “are likely to carry forward the abject political legacy he leaves behind. That includes the failure to redress the obscene levels of inequality in our society; the disgraceful attacks on the disabled; the disgusting anti-migrant hatred…; and the ongoing military cooperation with Israel as it violates the sham ceasefire and continues its genocide against the Palestinian people.” As EIR has repeatedly insisted, it’s not Epstein that was the problem, but rather the entire system of which Epstein was merely a symptom.

The Epstein scandal is the death knell of the Western liberal system, Zepp-LaRouche noted further, “because it has revealed the utmost immorality of what’s behind colonialism and what’s behind interventionist wars—imperial wars of all sorts. And I think that is not going to go away. It is a symptom of a dying empire, and whatever the agony will be, how long it will stretch on, I do not think it can be reversed.”

Therefore, the fight for a new paradigm and a cultural renaissance has never been more important than it is today. “Because the real war is the war of culture and the image of man. Is man a beast? ... Or is it the noble idea, of the human species as the only species gifted with creative reason, and capable of making beautiful compositions in classical music, building cathedrals, and writing poems? And that is the real battle of this whole thing…. That is the most important answer we have to give to that, because otherwise people will just sink in despair and disgust, and then there will be no hope for humanity.”

The upcoming EIR Roundtable Conference on March 2, “Epstein and the Bottomless Depravity of the ‘Elites’ —Urgent Need for a Cultural Renaissance!,” will be crucial in this regard. Register today and organize up a storm for it.