As we approach the inauguration of the second Donald Trump administration, it is clear that the faction of the so-called “rules-based order” is committing itself to further fanning the flames of war and genocide taking place in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Haiti, and even in the so-called “Collective West” where blazing fires in California are now destroying lives and livelihoods, due to decades of “controlled disintegration” and “planned shrinkage” to finance mountains of unpayable, usurious debt.

What the incoming Trump Administration will do is a mystery, and as such cannot be relied upon, as if the American Presidency was some kind of spectator sport. What’s clear is that everyday citizens must take it upon themselves to establish a “community of principle” among sovereign nation-states, or as Helga Zepp-LaRouche has called the “One Humanity,” which subsumes the Many. The BRICS+ has just accepted Indonesia—the fourth most populous country in the world with 277.5 million people—which now puts it at representing close to 60% of the world population. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi began the year by visiting four African nations: Chad, the DR Congo, Namibia, and Nigeria. China has made clear its policy of win-win cooperation with Africa and is bringing to the continent infrastructure development, manufacturing, and other physical-economic benefits.

The so-called “Realist” faction of diplomacy, which the British agent of influence Henry Kissinger identified himself with, has prevented a new paradigm of international relations based on mutual economic development from taking place, all on the premise of preserving the “balance of power” among superpowers, which calls back to the notorious 1815 Congress of Vienna which prevented continental Europe from embracing the ideals of the American Revolution.

We will take up the origins of the realist school in today’s program, along with identifying some its modern proponents today, with Harley Schlanger, TLO Spokesman and longtime LaRouche associate, and Cliff Kiracofe, a former Senior Professional Staff Member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Foreign Relations and President of the Washington Institute for Peace and Development.