“First task is to defend international institutions as vigorously as possible”

The Executive Intelligence Review (EIR) organized an online forum on March 2, 2026, titled “Epstein and the Bottomless Depravity of the Elites – Urgent Need for a Cultural Renaissance!”. Donald Ramotar, former president of Guyana, held a speech here. Below is the text of his speech.

Thank you very much. The February 28th unprovoked attack by the United States and Israel on Iran, killing several of its military, religious, and political leaders, has ignited a regional war in the Middle East that can go to untold areas, can spread. As we speak, several cities, towns, and villages in Iran and Israel are burning. Many civilians are being killed, mainly in Iran. We have heard of the girl’s school that was hit, in which some 175 children are among those that were proved to be killed. The civilian deaths in Iran, unlike those in Israel and other Arab states, have not been accidental, they were deliberately targeted. This is a pattern of Israel-U.S. methods in previous wars. The objective is to scare the population in the hope of turning them against their government. This is state terrorism in all of its nakedness. The question being sought is, how have we, and why are we in this very dangerous situation? What are the main causes of this? After all, we know that Iran has never threatened the United States. Indeed, no country in the world wants a conflict with the United States. It is just too dangerous.

The answer is, one, Israel’s determination to continue its expansion. Its borders are living borders. They are not fixed borders. They are constantly expanding. If you recall recently, Tucker Carlson had an interview with the U.S. ambassador to Israel—who by the way, seems more to be an Israeli representative to the United States—Mike Huckabee. They see the whole Middle East, as viewed by them, as Israel, as something promised by God. This is the using of the religion in order to keep Israeli borders living and expanding all the time. Every attempt at peace in the region has been sabotaged by Israel. Recall that under the Prime Minister Rabin the possibility for peace was real.

Netanyahu by his propaganda indirectly or directly instigated the assassination of Rabin. Over the decades, Israel in alliance with the United States has made a lot of gains in achieving these objectives. A genocide unchecked is continuing against the Palestinian people despite the talk of ceasefire. And most of the countries have become clients, mostly vassal states of the United States. The only state capable of standing up to Israel’s military expansion and borders expansion is Iran. It has supported the masses in the region that are fighting for freedom and for self-determination; Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis. Therefore, it has become the target of the most powerful military forces in the world, United States being the number-one military force by far, and as far as estimates go, Israel has the fourth-largest army in the world. And this is what some unarmed Palestinians have to face. Israel has had enormous influence on successive governments of the United States through various means. The AIPAC is well known, and a lot has been written and said about them already, of how they influence policies in the United States to favor Israel.

And maybe through blackmail—we were speaking about the Epstein incident there—and it is quite possible that knowing the lifestyle of the rich and powerful, these people were entrapped so that they could be blackmailed. The United States while going along with Israel, has its own selfish and misplaced interests as well. It wants to maintain its hegemony at all costs in the world. That is why under the Biden administration, it launched its proxy war against Russia. And this had its roots way back in 1989, when Germany was reunited, and when the Soviet Union was almost at the end. And after 1991, the United States could not resist the temptation to try to see that Russia never rises again.

The U.S. also developed a hostility to China because of its rapid economic growth, and China’s Belt and Road Initiative, not because any of these countries are threatening them militarily, but they are afraid of the influence that China is gaining because of its work and its relationships all over the world. It is clear that neither China nor Russia harbor any hostility to the United States. The fear the U.S. has is that China is becoming too strong. More and more countries are mutually benefiting from relationships with China. China wants peace, because only through peace, can it continue its economic development. Its soft power has grown enormously.

The United States sees this as a danger. It is therefore trying to retard China’s growth. The first step is to limit its global influence. We in the Caribbean, have seen that they [the U.S.] have announced that very specifically, they want to push China out of the region, not militarily because China doesn’t have any military installations in the Caribbean and Latin America. But they want to push them out economically, to dominate the continent unrivaled, and to continue the kind of neocolonial relationship with the entire continent. Even Canada is now rebelling against such things. Using negative propaganda and fear, fear and even military methods like what we saw happen in Venezuela recently, is now taking place in Iran. This is the method that the Americans are using to try to maintain their hegemony on the world. The U.S. has become so reckless that it is now openly ignoring international laws. International institutions that it can’t control and use for its own purposes are being undermined, and they are even trying to destroy them, like the United Nations, the ICJ, the ICC, and many of the other UN institutions that they have now been starving of cash that they were supposed to be paying to these bodies.

Use of deception in diplomacy and economy is becoming more and more widespread. We know that in the last conflict with Iran, the United States was in discussions with Iran, and during the discussions they were attacked. We know that today they had an agreement to meet again in one of the Arab countries in order to try to see if they could find a solution. The mediator said that there was a very good possibility of solving this problem, and that is why I believe that the attack took place when it did, at this point in time, [so as to] not resume those conversations, because according to the mediator, Iran was at the point of agreeing not to enrich anything for the nuclear program. Deception has now become a full-fledged method in their policy.

We know that Russia has complained bitterly about being deceived with their two agreements, the Minsk agreements. They were deceived deliberately, in order to allow [the West] to arm Ukraine much more to fight. They have been deceived in agreeing to the reunification of Germany on the grounds that NATO would not move one inch. But they are not the only people who are complaining now.

The speech that was given by Mark Carney at Davos, I want to quote one part of what he said : “More recently, great powers have begun using economic integration as weapons, tariffs as leverage, financial infrastructure as coercion, supply chains as vulnerability to be exploited.”

So, all of these things are being used in many ways in order to continue the domination of the United States in the world, and for Israel to get its way, to expand its border, as much as possible in the Middle East.

What is to be done? I think that our first task is to defend international institutions as vigorously as possible. I know that there has often been talk about reforming the institutions, but now I believe the number one task is to maintain them before they’re completely destroyed. And then we can speak about reforming them and democratizing them. Some of the things that people have been talking about, I think need to be thought out more carefully, [such as] the question of the veto powers. I still believe that there is a role for the veto powers for some countries to have, but maybe there will have to be some other ways of democratizing states.

We need to reinvigorate some institutions or even to create some similar institutions. I am speaking about one of the institutions in the 1970s that was extremely effective in influencing world public opinion, which was an underlying movement. It has lapsed. I believe we need to look at it in a different light, not only united in the countries of the South, but also many of the countries of the North, where we see that in some areas there is contradiction. For instance, I just mentioned Canada and the United States in the economic field. They still have some of the same positions as far as some key issues are concerned in politics, international politics and international relations, but a lot of countries now are beginning to see that the United States is more interested in domination, including countries like Canada and so forth.

So an underlying movement needs to be broadened with other countries that are willing to stand up, in order to defend their own interests. Or you need more countries like BRICS. But the BRICS nations, I believe, have got to be thinking very, very carefully of what they are doing, because it is not a cohesive organization. I don’t think that everyone is going along with them, going along with the general ideas in BRICS, and that is causing, I believe, some weakness in the BRICS. For instance, that was reflected in my view of the visit of Prime Minister Modi to Israel, which shows clearly that India, the powerful country of India with such long history and tradition and culture, is lining it up with a racist genocide regime. So I think all of these things need a lot more discussion, and to strengthen these types of institutions that possibly will have the possibility of taking us forward.

Those are my very initial proposals. I hope that it can stimulate some discussion generally to see what we can do individually and collectively, to stand up to face the dangers that the world is facing, to try to prevent an all-out nuclear war that could destroy all of us, and to also build on economic development in order to ensure that we don’t slide into oblivion. Thank you for your attention.