by Jason Ross (EIRNS) — Secretary of War Pete Hegseth launched a rant in defense of his murderous boat strikes. Credit: U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Alexander Kubitza.
U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s defense of a Caribbean killing campaign marks a profound rupture: a moment when a senior U.S. official publicly embraces lethal force untethered from self-defense, due process, or any coherent definition of war. When policymakers reduce entire boatloads of men to “terrorists” without evidence, when survivors in the water are targeted for a second strike, the message is clear. It signals a governing philosophy in which legitimacy flows from power and force, not from law, accountability, or a credible strategy to end the crises fueling the drug trade.
This mindset is rippling across global conflict zones.
It mirrors the logic that has flattened Gaza into rubble, that continues to incinerate prospects for a just two-state settlement, and that treats despair as a security threat rather than the product of decades of underdevelopment and injustice.
It echoes through the migration debate, where politicians frame the desperate as invaders, instead of recognizing the economic vacuum that drives families to relocate.
It is seen in Ukraine, where NATO warmongers insist on continuing the war to the last Ukrainian, sacrificing the potential for reconciliation and regional stability due to a profound enmity for Russia and its independence on the world stage.
These arenas share an underlying failure: Violence is deployed where development and cooperation are needed, and political power is built on managing crises rather than resolving them.
A different paradigm exists! Development is the engine of peace.
Real security in the Caribbean would come not from drone strikes on small ships, but from coordinated investment in ports, power grids, agriculture, and industry across the region—projects that replace cartel recruitment with jobs and dignity. Real security in the Middle East would come from a comprehensive peace realized through shared infrastructure—water management, desalination, transport corridors—exactly the kind envisioned by LaRouche’s Oasis Plan.
Such initiatives bind what were once adversaries into trajectories of mutual benefit and make war irrational. Real security at the U.S. border would flow from long-term partnerships that expand economic opportunity throughout Latin America and beyond, reducing the pressure that turns poverty into forced migration. This would mark a shift from promoting underdevelopment and conflict as a means of more easily accessing raw materials.
Where nations are connected by physical development, scientific cooperation, and rising standards of living, the logic of extermination and warfare loses its basis. Instead of defining survival by how many enemies can be killed, societies begin measuring success by how many families can build a stable future.
The world is already drifting toward a crossroads. One path normalizes permanent warfare and exploitation. The other asserts that stability accompanies ending scarcity. This is the outlook of the LaRouche movement’s World Land-Bridge.
The world needs a renaissance of development that connects societies and renders violence obsolete by making cooperation more profitable than destruction. This requires a commitment to a financial reorganization of the bankrupt speculative economic system of the trans-Atlantic, whose breakdown fuels every major flashpoint on the planet.
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By Independent News Roundup