Jeffrey Sachs 歐盟演講 美國軍火販子引發烏克蘭戰爭
美國為何引發烏克蘭戰爭：傑弗裏·薩克斯教授在歐洲議會發表激烈演講
2025年2月23日
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7ThOU4xKaU?
傑弗裏·薩克斯呼籲歐洲堅持自己的外交政策，擺脫北約的影響。他在歐洲議會發表講話時批評北約總部所在地，稱其應該“搬到其他地方”。薩克斯還指出，歐洲上一次擁有強大的獨立聲音是在2003年伊拉克入侵期間，並將唐納德·特朗普稱為優先考慮美國利益的“軍火販子”。他的見解強調了歐洲需要製定自己的地緣政治戰略，以在全球舞台上保持相關性。
傑弗裏·薩克斯在歐洲議會的爆炸性講話震驚了整個歐洲！
傑弗裏·薩克斯 2025 年 2 月 27 日
傑弗裏·薩克斯是美國經濟學家和公共政策分析師，也是哥倫比亞大學的教授，他上周在歐洲議會發表了一次不同尋常的演講。以下是他的簡短評論；完整版在這裏。
文本：
眾所周知，北約擴張始於 1999 年，當時匈牙利、波蘭和捷克共和國加入。俄羅斯對此極為不滿。但這些國家當時還遠未達到邊界。俄羅斯提出抗議，但當然無濟於事。然後小布什在 9/11 事件發生時上台，普京總統承諾提供支持。然後美國於 2001 年 9 月 20 日決定在五年內發動七場戰爭。您可以聽聽韋斯利·克拉克將軍對此的在線談論。他是北約最高指揮官，1999 年 9 月 20 日他去了五角大樓，拿到了解釋七場戰爭的文件。順便說一句，這些都是內塔尼亞胡的戰爭。其目的部分是為了清理蘇聯舊盟友，部分是為了消滅哈馬斯和真主黨的支持者，因為內塔尼亞胡的想法是隻有一個國家，謝謝，隻有一個國家。那就是以色列。以色列將控製所有領土，任何反對的人，我們都將推翻。這是美國直到今天早上的政策。我們不知道現在是否會改變。唯一的問題是，也許美國將擁有加沙，而不是以色列擁有加沙，但這個想法至少已經存在了 25 年。它實際上可以追溯到內塔尼亞胡和他的美國政治團隊在 1996 年製定的一份名為“徹底決裂”的文件，旨在結束兩國解決方案的想法。您也可以在網上找到它。所以這些都是長期事件，這些不是克林頓、布什還是奧巴馬。
把美國政治看作日常遊戲是一種無聊的方式，但美國政治並非如此。
如你所知，維克多·亞努科維奇 2010 年在烏克蘭以中立的立場當選。俄羅斯在烏克蘭根本沒有領土利益或意圖。我知道。那些年我在那裏。俄羅斯談判的隻是 25 年的海軍基地租賃，直到 2042 年，僅此而已。不是克裏米亞，不是頓巴斯，不是那樣的。普京正在重建俄羅斯帝國的想法是幼稚的宣傳。對不起，如果有人知道日複一日和年複一年的曆史，這些都是幼稚的東西，但似乎比成人的東西更有效。
美國決定必須推翻這個人。這被稱為政權更迭行動。美國已經進行了大約 100 次這樣的行動，許多發生在你們的國家，許多發生在世界各地。這就是中情局的謀生手段。好吧，請知道這是一種非常不尋常的外交政策，但在美國，如果你不喜歡對方，你不會與他們談判，你會試圖推翻他們，最好是秘密地推翻。如果秘密地行不通，你就公開地推翻。你總是說這不是我們的錯，他們是侵略者，他們是對方，他們是希特勒。每兩三年就會出現一次，無論是薩達姆·侯賽因，無論是阿薩德，還是普京，這非常方便。這是美國人民在任何地方得到的唯一外交政策解釋。好吧，我們正麵臨 1938 年慕尼黑危機，不能與對方對話，他們是邪惡的、不可調和的敵人。這是我們從大眾媒體聽到的唯一外交政策模式，大眾媒體完全重複了這一模式，因為它完全被美國政府收買了。我懇求烏克蘭人，我和烏克蘭人有往來。我為烏克蘭人提供建議。我不是反烏克蘭人，我完全支持烏克蘭人。我說，拯救你們的生命，拯救你們的主權，拯救你們的領土，保持中立，不要聽美國人的。我向他們重複了亨利·基辛格的名言：成為美國的敵人是危險的，但成為朋友是致命的。好吧，讓我為歐洲重複一遍：成為美國的敵人是危險的，但成為朋友是致命的。特朗普不想輸，這就是為什麽這場戰爭很有可能結束，因為特朗普和普京總統將同意結束戰爭。如果歐洲盡其所能進行戰爭販子活動，那也沒關係，戰爭即將結束，所以不要再這樣了你的係統。
請告訴你的同事，一切都結束了，因為特朗普不想讓失敗者背鍋。就是這樣，這不是什麽偉大的道德。
他不想讓失敗者背鍋。烏克蘭就是失敗者。目前正在進行的談判將拯救烏克蘭。其次是歐洲。最近幾天，你們的股市因為談判的可怕消息而上漲。我知道這在這些會議室裏引起了極大的恐懼，但這是你現在能得到的最好的消息。我鼓勵他們。他們不聽我的，但我試圖聯係一些歐洲領導人。大多數人根本不想聽我說任何話。但我說不要去基輔，去莫斯科。和你的同行討論。你在開玩笑嗎，你是歐洲，你有4.5億人，你是一個20萬億美元的經濟體。你應該是俄羅斯的主要經濟貿易夥伴。順便說一句，這是自然聯係。
如果有人想討論美國是如何炸毀北溪管道的，我很樂意談論這個問題。
順便說一句，在中東問題上，美國 30 年前就完全把外交政策移交給了內塔尼亞胡。以色列遊說團體主宰著美國政治。對此毫無疑問。我可以花幾個小時來解釋它是如何運作的。這非常危險。
我希望特朗普不會因為內塔尼亞胡而毀掉他的政府，讓巴勒斯坦人民雪上加霜，我認為內塔尼亞胡是國際刑事法院正式起訴的戰犯。這需要說明。根據國際法，在 1967 年 6 月 4 日的邊界上建立一個巴勒斯坦國是實現和平的唯一途徑。這是歐洲與中東邊界實現和平的唯一途徑。這是兩國解決方案。順便說一句，隻有一個障礙，那就是美國在聯合國安理會的否決權。所以如果你想要有影響力，就告訴美國放棄否決權。你們與世界上 180 個國家站在一起。唯一反對巴勒斯坦建國的國家是美國、以色列、密克羅尼西亞、瑙魯、巴布亞新幾內亞和巴拉圭。
所以這是一個歐洲可以產生巨大影響力的地方。歐洲對伊朗核協議和伊朗保持沉默。內塔尼亞胡一生最大的夢想是美國和伊朗之間的戰爭。他沒有放棄，這也並非不可能，這是因為美國在這方麵沒有獨立的外交政策。它由以色列統治。這是悲劇。順便說一句，這很神奇，而且可能會結束。特朗普可能會說他想要恢複外交政策。也許我
希望最終是這樣。
關於中國，我隻想說，中國不是敵人，中國隻是一個成功的故事。這就是為什麽美國視中國為敵人，因為中國的經濟規模比美國更大。
俄羅斯不會入侵歐洲。這是根本問題。它可能會入侵到第聶伯河，但它不會入侵歐洲。但確實存在一些問題。俄羅斯的主要問題是美國，因為俄羅斯作為一個大國和世界上最大的核大國，從一開始就對美國的單極統治深感擔憂。現在這種情況似乎可能要結束了。歐洲也必須直接與俄羅斯展開談判，因為美國很快就會失去興趣，而你們將在未來幾千年裏與俄羅斯共存。好吧，那麽你想要什麽？你想要確保波羅的海國家是安全的。對波羅的海國家來說，最好的事情就是停止他們的恐俄症。這是最重要的事情。愛沙尼亞有大約 25% 的俄羅斯公民或講俄語的公民，即俄羅斯族。不要激怒鄰國，僅此而已。
這並不難，真的不難，我想再次解釋我的觀點。我幫助過這些國家，也就是我所談論的國家，試圖提供建議。我不是他們的敵人，我不是普京的傀儡，也不是普京的辯護者。我曾在愛沙尼亞工作過，他們給了我，我認為這是愛沙尼亞總統可以授予非國民的第二高平民榮譽，因為我在 1992 年為他們設計了貨幣體係。所以我給他們的建議是，愛沙尼亞，不要站在那裏說我們想分裂俄羅斯，你在開玩笑嗎？不要，這不是在這個世界上生存的方式。你要通過相互尊重來生存，實際上你要通過談判來生存，你要通過討論來生存，不要禁止俄語。當你 25% 的人口以俄語為母語時，這不是一個好主意。即使邊境上沒有巨人，這也不對。這樣做不對，你應該把它作為官方語言，你應該在小學裏使用這種語言，你不會激怒俄羅斯東正教會。所以基本上我們需要像成年人一樣行事，當我不斷說他們像孩子一樣行事時，索尼婭總是對我說這對孩子不公平，因為這樣更糟糕。我們有一個六歲的孫女和一個三歲的孫子，他們實際上和睦相處他們的朋友。我們不會叫他們走，隻是明天嘲笑他們。我們說走，給他們一個擁抱，然後去玩。他們就這麽做了。
順便說一句，這並不難。
Why America Caused The Ukraine War: Professor Jeffrey Sachs Makes Fiery Speech At EU Parliament
Jeffrey Sachs' explosive address at the EU Parliament sends shockwaves across Europe!
Text:
The NATO enlargement, as you know, started in 1999 with Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic. Russia was extremely unhappy about it. But these were countries still far from the border. Russia protested, but of course to no avail. Then George Bush Jr came in when 9/11 occurred and President Putin pledged support. And then the US decided on 20 September 2001 that it would launch seven wars in five years. You can listen to General Wesley Clark’s online talk about that. He was NATO Supreme Commander and in 1999 he went to the Pentagon on 20 September 2001 and was handed the paper explaining the seven wars. These, by the way, were Netanyahu’s Wars. The idea was partly to clean up old Soviet allies and partly to take out supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah because Netanyahu’s idea was there will be one state, thank you, only one state.It will be Israel. Israel will control all of the territory and anyone who objects ,we will overthrow . That’s US policy until this morning.We don’t know whether it will change now. The only wrinkle is that maybe the US will own Gaza instead of Israel owning Gaza, but the idea has been around at least for 25 years. It actually goes back to a document called Clean Break that Netanyahu and his American political team put together in 1996 to end the idea of the two-state solution. You can also find it online. So these are long-term events, these aren’t is it Clinton is it Bush or is it Obama.
That’s the boring way to look at American politics as the day-to-day game, but that’s not what American politics is.
As you know, Viktor Yanukovych was elected in 2010 in Ukraine on the platform of neutrality. Russia had no territorial interests or designs in Ukraine at all. I know. I was there during those years. What Russia was negotiating was a 25-year lease to 2042 for a naval base, that’s it. Not for Crimea, not for the Donbas, nothing like that. This idea that Putin is reconstructing the Russian Empire is childish propaganda. Excuse me, if anyone knows the day-to-day and year-to-year history, this is childish stuff which seems to work better than adult stuff.
The United States decided this man must be overthrown. It’s called a regime change operation.There have been about 100 of them carried out by the United States, many in your countries and many all over the world. That’s what the CIA does for a living. Okay, please know it’s a very unusual kind of foreign policy, but in America if you don’t like the other side you don’t negotiate with them, you try to overthrow them, preferably covertly. If it doesn’t work covertly, you do it overtly.You always say it’s not our fault, they’re the aggressor, they’re the other side, they’re Hitler. That comes up every two or three years whether it’s Saddam Hussein, whether it’s Assad, whether it’s Putin, that’s very convenient. That’s the only foreign policy explanation the American people are ever given anywhere. Well, we’re facing Munich 1938, can’t talk to the other side, they’re evil implacable foes.That’s the only model of foreign policy we ever hear from our mass media and the mass media repeats it entirely because it’s completely suborned by the US Government. I begged the Ukrainians and I had a track record with the Ukrainians. I advised the Ukrainians. I’m not anti-Ukrainian, I’m pro-Ukrainian completely. I said save your lives, save your sovereignty, save your territory, be neutral, don’t listen to the Americans. I repeated to them the famous adage of Henry Kissinger: that to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal. Okay, so let me repeat that for Europe: to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal. Trump does not want a losing hand, this is why it is more likely than not this war will end because Trump and President Putin will agree to end the war. If Europe does all its great warmongering, it doesn’t matter, the war is ending so get it out of your system.
Please tell your colleagues it’s over and it’s over because Trump doesn’t want to carry a loser. That’s it, it’s not some great morality.
He doesn’t want to carry a loser. Ukraine is a loser. The one that will be saved by the negotiations taking place right now is Ukraine. Second is Europe.Your stock markets are rising in recent days by the horrible news of negotiations. I know this has been met with sheer horror in these chambers, but this is the best news that you could get now. I encouraged them.They don’t listen to me, but I tried to reach out to some of the European leaders. Most don’t want to hear anything from me at all.But I said don’t go to Kiev, go to Moscow. Discuss with your counterparts. Are you kidding, you’re Europe, you’re 450 million people, you’re a 20 trillion economy.You should be the main economic trading partner of Russia.Its natural links by the way.
If anyone would like to discuss how the US blew up Nordstream, I’d be happy to talk about that.
On the Middle East, by the way, the US completely handed over foreign policy to Netanyahu 30 years ago. The Israel lobby dominates American politics. Just have no doubt about it. I could explain for hours how it works. It’s very dangerous.
I’m hoping that Trump will not destroy his administration and worse the Palestinian people because of Netanyahu whom I regard as a war criminal properly indicted by the ICC.That needs to be told. No more that there will be a state of Palestine on the borders of the 4th of June 1967 according to international law as the only way for peace. It’s the only way for Europe to have peace on your borders with the Middle East. It’s the two-state solution. There is only one obstacle to it by the way and that is the veto of the United States in the UN Security Council. So if you want to have some influence tell the United States drop the veto.You are together with 180 countries in the world. The only ones that oppose a Palestinian state are the United States, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Papua New Guinea and Paraguay.
So this is a place where Europe could have a big influence. Europe has gone silent about the JCPOA and Iran. Netanyahu’s greatest dream in life is a war between the United States and Iran. He’s not given up and it’s not impossible that that would come also and that’s because the US in this regard does not have an independent foreign policy. It is run by Israel. It’s tragic. It’s amazing by the way and it could end. Trump may say that he wants foreign policy back.Maybe I’m
hoping that it’s the case finally.
Let me just say with respect to China, China is not an enemy, China is just a success story.That’s why it is viewed by the United States as an enemy because China is a bigger economy than the United States.
Russia is not going to invade Europe. This is the fundamental point. It may get up to the Dnipro River, it’s not going to invade Europe. But there are real issues. The main issue for Russia was the United States because Russia as a major power and the largest nuclear power in the world was profoundly concerned about US unipolarity from the beginning. Now that this is seemingly possibly ending. Europe has to open negotiations directly with Russia as well because the United States will quickly lose interest and you’re going to be living with Russia for the next thousands of years. Okay, so what do you want? You want to make sure that the Baltic states are secure. The best thing for the Baltic states is to stop their Russophobia. This is the most important thing. Estonia has about 25% Russian citizens or Russian-speaking citizens, ethnic Russians. Don’t provoke the neighbour, that’s all.
This is not hard, it really isn’t hard and again I want to explain my point of view. I have helped these countries the ones I’m talking about, trying to advise. I’m not their enemy, I’m not Putin’s puppet, I’m not Putin’s apologist. I worked in Estonia, they gave me, I think it’s the second highest civilian honour that a president of Estonia can bestow on a non-national because I designed their currency system for them in 1992. So I’m giving them advice, do not stand there, Estonia, and say we want to break up Russia, are you kidding? Don’t, this is not how to survive in this world. You survive with mutual respect, actually you survive in negotiation, you survive in discussion, you don’t outlaw the Russian language. That is not a good idea when 25% of your population has Russian as a first language. It’s not right even if there weren’t a giant on the border. It wouldn’t be the right thing to do, you’d have it as an official language, you’d have a language in lower school, you wouldn’t antagonise the Russian Orthodox church. So basically we need to behave like grown-ups and when I constantly say that they’re acting like children, Sonia always says to me that’s unfair to children because this is worse . We have a six-year-old grand-daughter and a three-year-old grandson and they actually make up with their friends. And we don’t tell them go, just ridicule them tomorrow .We say go, give them a hug and go play. And they do.
This is not hard by the way.
The Geopolitics of Peace — Jeffrey Sachs in the European Parliament
By Jeffrey D. Sachs / Other News Feb 27, 2025
https://scheerpost.com/2025/02/27/the-geopolitics-of-peace-jeffrey-sachs-in-the-european-parliament/
Edited Transcript:
Introduction
Michael, thank you so much, and thanks to all of you for the chance to be together and to think together. This is indeed a complicated and fast-changing time and a very dangerous one. So, we really need clarity of thought. I’m especially interested in our conversation, so I’ll try to be as succinct and clear as I can be. I’ve watched the events very close-up in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine, very closely for the last 36 years. I was an adviser to the Polish government in 1989, to President Gorbachev’s economic team in 1990 and 1991, to President Yeltsin’s economic team in 1991 to 1993, and to President Kuchma’s economic team in Ukraine in 1993 to 1994. I helped introduce the Estonian currency. I helped several countries in former Yugoslavia, especially Slovenia. After the Maidan, I was asked by the new government to come to Kyiv, and I was taken around the Maidan, and I learned a lot of things firsthand. I’ve been in touch with Russian leaders for more than 30 years. I also know the American political leadership close-up. Our previous Secretary of Treasury, Janet Yellen, was my wonderful macroeconomics teacher 52 years ago. We have been friends for a half century. I know these people. I say this because what I want to explain in my point of view is not second-hand. It’s not ideology. It’s what I’ve seen with my own eyes and experienced during this period. I want to share with you my understanding of the events that have befallen Europe in many contexts, and I’ll include not only the Ukraine crisis, but also Serbia 1999, the wars in the Middle East, including Iraq, Syria, the wars in Africa, including Sudan, Somalia, Libya. These are to a very significant extent the result of deeply misguided US policies. What I will say may well surprise you, but I speak from experience and knowledge of these events.
(*1) Edited transcript of Professor Jeffrey Sachs’ speech in the European Parliament at an event titled “The Geopolitics of Peace”, hosted by former UN Assistant Secretary General and current BSW MEP Michael von der Schulenburg, on February 19, 2025. The transcript has been edited for clarity and annotated in footnotes and hyperlinks.
The Geopolitics of Peace
i. U.S. Foreign Policy
These are wars that the United States has led and caused. And this has been true for more than 30 years now. The United States came to the view, especially during 1990-91, and then with the end of the Soviet Union, that the US now runs the world, and that the US does not have to heed anybody’s views, red-lines, concerns, security viewpoints, international obligations, or any UN framework. I’m sorry to put it so plainly, but I do want you to understand.
I tried very hard in 1991 to get financial help for Gorbachev,(*2) who I think was the greatest statesman of our modern time. I recently read the archived memo of the National Security Council discussion of my proposal on June 3, 1991, reading for the first time how the White House completely dismissed it, and essentially laughed off the table my plea for the US to help the Soviet Union with financial stabilization and with financial aid to make its reforms. The memo documents that the US Government decided to do the very minimum to prevent disaster, but just the minimum.(*3) They decided that it’s not the US job to help. Quite the contrary.(*4)
When the Soviet Union ended in 1991, the view became even more exaggerated. And I can name chapter and verse, but the view was we [the US] run the show. Cheney, Wolfowitz, and many other names that you will have come to know literally believed this is now a US world, and we will do as we want. We will clean up from the former Soviet Union. We will take out any remaining Soviet-era allies. Countries like Iraq, Syria, and so forth will go. And we’ve been experiencing this foreign policy for now essentially 33 years. Europe has paid a heavy price for this because Europe has not had any foreign policy during this period that I can figure out. No voice, no unity, no clarity, no European interests, only American loyalty.
There were moments where there were disagreements and, I think, very wonderful disagreements. The last time of significance was 2003 in the lead-up to the Iraq war when France and Germany said we don’t support the United States going around the UN Security Council for this war. That war was directly concocted by Netanyahu and his colleagues in the US Pentagon.(*5) I’m not saying that it was a link or mutuality. I’m saying it was a war carried out for Israel. It was a war that Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith coordinated with Netanyahu. And that was the last time that Europe had a voice. I spoke with European leaders then, and they were very clear, and it was quite wonderful to hear their opposition an unacceptable war. Europe lost its voice entirely after that, but especially in 2008. What happened after 1991, and to bring us to 2008, is that the United States decided that unipolarity meant that NATO would enlarge somewhere from Brussels to Vladivostok, step by step.
(*2) Which became part of a project led by Prof. Graham Allison at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government with Gorbachev economic advisor Grigory Yavlinsky and published in the book Window of Opportunity: The Grand Bargain for Democracy in the Soviet Union, Pantheon Books, 1991.
(*3) Richard Darman, at the OMB, put it this way. “In defining the U.S. interest, we need to be somewhat Machiavellian. What is the minimum amount necessary to mollify a regime with which we wish to work on other ma]ers? In other words, what is the bare minimum to keep things moving. I don’t believe we need to worry about the USSR’s decomposi^on. If this is our internal understanding, then we can go ahead publicly.” Later, Darman adds, “I want to seem serious while not fooling ourselves. We have enough ingredients already for a good PR package.” (Emphasis in original)
(*4) See also my paper “How the Neocons Chose Hegemony Over Peace in the Early 1990s,” available here: h]ps://www.jeffsachs.org/newspaper-ar^cles/bfsmbpe4plx7cc6lgxhf37lx249r22?rq=how%20the%20neocons
(*5) See Dennis Fritz, Deadly Betrayal: The Truth about why the United States Invaded Iraq, OR Books, 2024. Link here: h]ps://orbooks.com/catalog/deadly-betrayal/
ii. NATO Expansion
There would be no end to eastward enlargement of NATO. This would be the US unipolar world. If you play the game of Risk as a child like I did, this is the US idea: to have the piece on every part of the board. Any place without a US military base is an enemy, basically. Neutrality is a dirty word in the US political lexicon.
Neutrality is perhaps the dirtiest word according to the US mindset. If you’re an enemy, we know you’re an enemy. If you are neutral, you are a subversive, because you’re really against us, but just not telling us. You’re only pretending to be neutral. So, this was indeed the mindset, and the decision was taken formally in 1994 when President Clinton signed off on NATO enlargement to the east.
You will recall that on February 7, 1990, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and James Baker III spoke with Gorbachev. Genscher gave a press conference afterwards where he explained that NATO will not move eastward.(*6) Germany and the US would not take advantage of the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact. Understand, please, that this commitment was made in a juridical and diplomatic context, not a casual context. These commitments were core to the negotiations to end World War II that made way for German reunification.
An understanding was reached that NATO will not move one inch eastward.(*7) And it was explicit, and it is in countless documents. And just look up National Security Archive of George Washington University, and you can get dozens of documents.(*8) It’s a website called “What Gorbachev Heard About NATO.” Take a look, please, because everything you’re told by the US about this promise is a lie, but the archives are perfectly clear.
So, the decision was taken by Clinton in 1994 to expand NATO all the way to Ukraine. This is a long-term US project. This is not due to one administration or another. This is a US government project that started more than 30 years ago. In 1997, Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote The Grand Chessboard, describing the NATO enlargement eastward.
That book is not just the musings of Mr. Brzezinski. That is his presentation to the public of decisions already made by the United States government, which is how a book like this works. The book describes the eastward enlargement of Europe and of NATO as simultaneous and conjoined events. And there’s a good chapter in that book that asks, what will Russia do as Europe and NATO expand eastward?
I knew Zbig Brzezinski personally. He was very nice to me. I was advising Poland, and he was a big help. He was also a smart man, and yet he got everything wrong in 1997. In 1997, he wrote in detail why Russia could do nothing but accede to the eastward expansion of NATO and Europe.(*9) In fact, he says the eastward expansion of Europe and not just Europe, but NATO. This was a US plan, a project. And Brzezinski explains how Russia will never align with China. Unthinkable. Russia will never align with Iran.
According to Brzezinski, Russia has no vocation other than the European vocation. So, as Europe moves east, there’s nothing Russia can do about it. So, says yet another American strategist. Is it any question why we’re in war all the time? Because one thing about America is we always “know” what our counterparts are going to do, and we always get it wrong! And one reason we always get it wrong is that in the non-cooperative game theory that the American strategists play, you don’t actually talk to the other side. You just know what the other side’s strategy is. That’s wonderful. It saves so much time. You simply don’t need any diplomacy.
(*6) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ogM0EjYbPRk
(*7) It was an agreement, albeit verbal, as Gorbachev emphasized to the US and Germany the importance of the US- German pledge not to expand NATO eastward.
(*8) Many of the key documents are here https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early and here https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2018-03-16/nato-expansion-what-yeltsin-heard
(*9) Here is what Brzezinski writes: “Russia’s only real geostrategic op^on—the op^on that could give Russia a realis^c interna^onal role and also maximize the opportunity of transforming and socially modernizing itself—is Europe. And not just any Europe, but the transatlan^c Europe of the enlarging EU and NATO. Such a Europe is taking shape, as we have seen in chapter 3, and it is also likely to remain linked closely to America. That is the Europe to which Russia will have to relate, if it is to avoid dangerous geopoli^cal isola^on.” Brzezinski, Zbigniew. The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and Its Geostrategic ImperaEves (p. 118). Basic Books. 1997.
iii. The Black Sea Strategy
So, this project began in earnest in 1994, and we have had a continuity of government policy for 30 years until maybe yesterday, perhaps.(*10) A thirty-year project. Ukraine and Georgia were the keys to the project. Why? Because America learned everything it knows from the British.
We are the wannabe British Empire. And what the British Empire understood in 1853, with Mr. Palmerston, excuse me, Lord Palmerston [together with Napoleon III], is that you surround Russia in the Black Sea, and you deny Russia access to the Eastern Mediterranean. What you’re watching is an American project to do the same in the 21st century. The US idea was that there would be Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia all in NATO, that would deprive Russia of any international status by blocking the Black Sea and essentially by neutralizing Russia as little more than a local power. Brzezinski is clear about this geography.
After Palmerston and before Brzezinski, there was of course Halford Mackinder in 1904: “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland;?Who rules the Heartland commands the World- Island;?Who rules the World-Island commands the world.”(*11)
I’ve known the presidents and/or their teams. Nothing changed much from Clinton to Bush Jr. to Obama to Trump to Biden. Maybe they got worse step by step. Biden was the worst in my view. Maybe this is also because he was not compos mentis for the last couple of years. I say that seriously, not as a snarky remark. The American political system is a system of image. It’s a system of media manipulation every day. It is a PR system. You could have a president that basically doesn’t function and have that person in power for two years and run for reelection. The one thing is he had to stand on a stage for 90 minutes by himself, and that was the end of it. Had it not been that glitch, he would have gone on to have his candidacy, whether he was sleeping after 4 PM in the afternoon or not. So, this is the reality. Everybody goes along with it. It’s impolite to say what I’m saying because we don’t speak the truth about almost anything in this world right now.
So, this project went on since the 1990s. Bombing Belgrade 78 straight days in 1999 was part of this project. Splitting apart that country when borders are “sacrosanct,” aren’t they? Except for Kosovo, that is. Borders are sacrosanct except when America changes them. Breaking apart Sudan was another related US project. Consider the South Sudan rebellion. Did that just happen because South Sudanese rebelled? Or shall I give you the CIA playbook?
Let us please understand as grown-ups what this is about. Military campaigns are costly. They require equipment, training, base camps, intelligence, finance. That support comes from big powers. It doesn’t come from local insurrections. South Sudan did not defeat Sudan in a tribal battle. Breaking Sudan was a US project. I would go often to Nairobi and come across US military or Senators or others with a “deep interest” in Sudan’s internal politics. That war was part of the game of US unipolarity.
(*10) I refer to the Trump-Pu^n phone call of February 12, 2025 and the statements that followed in quick succession.
(*11) Mackinder wrote in 1919 the book DemocraEc Ideals and Reality, building upon his earlier work The Geographical Pivot of History from 1904.
iv. U.S. Foreign Policy and NATO Expansion
And so, NATO enlargement, as you know, started in 1999 with Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Russia was extremely unhappy about it, but these were countries still far from Russia’s border. Russia protested, but, of course, to no avail. Then George Bush Jr. came into office. When 9/11 occurred, President Putin pledged all support to the US. And then the US decided around September 20, 2001, that it would launch seven wars in five years!
You can listen to General Wesley Clark on video speak about that.(*12) He was NATO’s Supreme Commander in 1999. He went to the Pentagon around September 20, 2001. He was handed a piece of paper explaining the prospect of seven US wars of choice. These were, in fact, Netanyahu’s wars.
The US Government plan was partly to clean up [remove] old Soviet allies and partly to take out supporters of Hamas and Hezbollah. Netanyahu’s idea was and is that there will be one state, thank you, in all pre-1948 Palestine. Yes, only one state. It will be Israel. Israel will control all the territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. And if anyone objects, we will overthrow them. Well, not Israel, exactly, but more specifically our friend, the United States. That’s been US policy until this morning. We don’t know whether it will change. Now the only wrinkle is that maybe the US will “own Gaza” [according to President Trump] instead of Israel owning Gaza.
Netanyahu’s idea has been around at least for 25 years. It goes back to a document called “Clean Break” that Netanyahu and his American political team put together in 1996 to end the idea of the two-state solution. You can also find that document online.(*13)
So, these are long-term US projects. It’s wrong to ask, “Is it Clinton? Is it Bush? Is it Obama?” That’s the boring way to look at American politics, as a day-to-day or year-to-year game. Yet that’s not what American politics is.
After 1999, the next round of NATO enlargement came in 2004 with seven more countries: the three Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Slovakia. At this point, Russia was pretty upset. This second-wave of NATO enlargement was a complete violation of the post-war order agreed at the time of German reunification. Essentially, it was a fundamental trick, or defection, of the US from a cooperative arrangement with Russia.
As everybody recalls, because we just had the Munich Security Conference last week, President Putin went to the MSC in 2007 to say, “Stop, enough is enough.” Of course, the US did not listen.(*14)
In 2008, the United States jammed down Europe’s throat it’s long-standing project to enlarge NATO to Ukraine and to Georgia. This is a long-term project. I listened to Mr. Saakashvili in New York City in the Spring of 2008, when he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations. He told us that Georgia is in the heart of Europe and as such would join NATO. I walked out and called my wife, and said, “This man’s crazy; he’s going to blow up his country.” A month later, a war broke out between Russia and Georgia, in which Georgia was defeated. The most recent events in Tbilisi are again not helpful for Georgia, with your MEPs going there to prod protests. That doesn’t save Georgia; that gets Georgia destroyed, completely destroyed.
In 2008, as everybody knows, our former CIA director William Burns, who at the time was the US Ambassador to Russia, sent a long diplomatic cable back to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, which was famously entitled “Nyet means Nyet.”(*15) Burns’ message was that NATO enlargement was opposed by the entire Russian political class, not just President Putin.
We know about the cable only from Julian Assange. Believe me, not one word is told to the American people about anything of this by our government or our leading newspapers these days. So, we have Julian Assange to thank for the memo, which we can read in detail.
As you know, Viktor Yanukovych was elected as President of Ukraine in 2010 on the platform of Ukraine’s neutrality. Russia had no territorial interests or designs in Ukraine at all. I know. I was there off and on during these years. What Russia was negotiating during 2010 was a 25-year lease to 2042 for Sevastopol naval base. That’s it. There were no Russian demands for Crimea, or for the Donbas. Nothing like that at all. The idea that Putin is reconstructing the Russian empire is childish propaganda. Excuse me.
If anyone knows the day-to-day and year-to-year history, this is childish stuff. Yet childish stuff seems to work better than adult stuff. So, there were no territorial demands at all before the 2014 coup. Yet the United States decided that Yanukovych must be overthrown because he favored neutrality and opposed NATO enlargement. It’s called a regime change operation.
There have been around one hundred regime-change operations by the US since 1947, many in your countries [speaking to the MEPs] and many all over the world.(*16) That’s what the CIA does for a living. Please know it. It’s a very unusual kind of foreign policy. In the American Government, if you don’t like the other side, you don’t negotiate with them, you try to overthrow them, preferably, covertly. If it doesn’t work covertly, you do it overtly. You always say it’s not our fault. They’re the aggressor. They’re the other side.
They’re “Hitler.” That comes up every two or three years. Whether it’s Saddam Hussein, whether it’s Assad, whether it’s Putin, that’s very convenient. That’s the only foreign policy explanation the American people are ever given. Well, we’re facing Munich 1938. We can’t talk to the other side. They’re evil and implacable foes. That’s the only model of foreign policy we ever hear from our government and mass media. The mass media repeats it entirely because it’s completely suborned by the US government.
(*12) See the interview of Former NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark, in 2011 with Democracy, where he was told by Pentagon official “we’re going to a]ack and destroy the governments in 7 countries in five years— we’re going to start with Iraq, and then we’re going to move to Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Iran.”
(*13) In 1996, Netanyahu and his American advisors issued the document “Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm” with the Ins^tute for Advanced Strategic and Poli^cal Studies. This new “clean break” strategy called upon Israel to reject the framework of “land for peace”. This effec^vely advocated that Israel would not withdraw from the Pales^nian occupied lands of 1967 in exchange for regional peace. Instead, Israel would con^nue with its policy of occupa^on un^l securing “peace for peace”, by reshaping the Middle East to its liking. Redrawing the map of the region consisted of toppling governments that were opposed to Israel’s dominance. Link here: https://www.dougfeith.com/docs/Clean_Break.pdf
(*14) On February 10, 2007, Russian President Vladimir Pu^n delivered a speech at the 43rd Munich Security Conference. The speech can be found here http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/transcripts/24034
(*15) Ambassador William Burns’ memo Nyet Means Nyet: Russia’s NATO Enlargement Redlines. The memo can be found here https://wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/08MOSCOW265_a.html
(*16) Political scientist Lindsey O’Rourke documented 64 U.S. covert regime-change operations between 1947 and 1989, and concluded that “Regime change operations, especially those conducted covertly, have osen led to prolonged instability, civil wars, and humanitarian crises in the affected regions.” O’Rourke, Covert Regime Change: America’s Secret Cold War, 2018. Aser 1989, there is ample evidence of the CIA involved in Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Venezuela, and many other countries.
v. The Maidan Revolution and Its Aftermath
Now in 2014, the US worked actively to overthrow Yanukovych. Everybody knows the phone call intercepted by my Columbia University colleague, Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador, Peter Pyatt. You don’t get better evidence. The Russians intercepted her call, and they put it on the Internet. Listen to it.(*17)
It’s fascinating. By doing that, they all got promoted in the Biden administration. That’s the job. When the Maidan occurred, I was called soon after. “Professor Sachs, the new Ukrainian prime minister would like to see you to talk about the economic crisis.” So, I flew to Kyiv, and I was walked around the Maidan. And I was told how the US paid the money for all the people around the Maidan, the “spontaneous” revolution of dignity.
Ladies and gentlemen, please, how did all those Ukrainian media outlets suddenly appear at the time of the Maidan? Where did all this organization come from? Where did all these buses come from? Where did all those people come from? Are you kidding? This is an organized effort. And it’s not a secret, except perhaps to citizens of Europe and the United States. Everyone else understands it quite clearly. Then after the coup came the Minsk agreements, especially Minsk II, which, incidentally, was modeled on South Tyrolean autonomy for the ethnic Germans in Italy. The Belgians too can relate to Minsk II very well, as it called for autonomy and language rights of the Russian speakers of Eastern Ukraine. Minsk II was supported unanimously by the UN Security Council.(*18) Yet the United States and Ukraine decided it would not be enforced. Germany and France, the guarantors of the Normandy process, also let it be ignored. This dismissal of Minsk II was another direct American unipolar action with Europe as usual playing a completely useless subsidiary role though it was guarantor of the agreement.
Trump won the 2016 election and then expanded arms shipments to Ukraine. There were many thousands of deaths in the shelling by Ukraine in the Donbas. There was no implementation of the Minsk II agreement. Then Biden came into office in 2021. I hoped for better but was profoundly disappointed once again. I used to be a member of the Democratic Party. I now am a member of no party because both are the same anyway. The Democrats became complete warmongers over time, and there was not one voice in the party calling for peace. Just as with most of your parliamentarians, the same way.
At the end of 2021, Putin put on the table a last effort to reach a modus operandi with the US, in two security agreement drafts, one with Europe and one with the United States. He put the Russia-US draft agreement on the table on December 15, 2021.
Following that, I had an hour-long call with [National Security Advisor] Jake Sullivan in the White House, begging, “Jake, avoid the war. You can avoid the war. All the US has to do is say, ‘NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine.’” And he said to me, “Oh, NATO’s not going to enlarge to Ukraine. Don’t worry about it.”
I said, “Jake, say it publicly.” “No. No. No. We can’t say it publicly.” I said, “Jake, you’re going to have a war over something that isn’t even going to happen?” He said, “Don’t worry, Jeff. There will be no war.” These are not very bright people. I’m telling you, if I can give you my honest view, they’re not very bright people. They talk to themselves. They don’t talk to anybody else. They play game theory. In noncooperative game theory, you don’t talk to the other side. You just make your strategy. This is the essence of non-cooperative game theory. It’s not negotiation theory. It’s not peacemaking theory. It is unilateral, noncooperative theory, if you know formal game theory.
That’s what they play. That kind of game theory started [in application] at the RAND Corporation. That’s what they still play. In 2019, there’s a paper by RAND, “Extending Russia: Competing from Advantageous Ground.”(*19) Incredibly, the paper, in the public domain, asks how the US should annoy, antagonize, and weaken Russia. That’s literally the strategy. We’re trying to provoke Russia, trying to make Russia break apart, perhaps have regime change, maybe unrest, maybe an economic crisis.
That’s what you in Europe call your ally. So, there I was with my frustrating phone call with Sullivan, standing out in the freezing cold. I happened to be trying to have a ski day. “Oh, there’ll be no war, Jeff.” We know what happened next: the Biden Administration refused to negotiate over NATO enlargement. The stupidest idea of NATO is the so-called open-door policy, based on Article Ten of the NATO Treaty (1949). NATO reserves the right to go where it wants, as long as the host government agrees, without any neighbor – such as Russia — having any say whatsoever.
Well, I tell the Mexicans and the Canadians, “Don’t try it.” You know, Trump may want to take over Canada. So, the Canadian Government could say to China, “Why don’t you build a military base in Ontario?” I wouldn’t advise it. The US would not say, “Well, it’s an open door. That’s Canada’s and China’s business, not ours.” The US would invade Canada.
Yet grownups, including in Europe, in this Parliament, in NATO, in the European Commission, repeat the absurd mantra that Russia has no say in NATO enlargement. This is nonsense stuff. This is not even baby geopolitics. This is just not thinking at all. So, the Ukraine War escalated in February 2022 when the Biden Administration refused any serious negotiations.
(*17) Link to the transcript of the leaked phone call between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-26079957
(*18) The Minsk II agreement was endorsed by the United Nations Security Council through Resolution 2202, which was adopted unanimously on February 17, 2015. https://press.un.org/en/2015/sc11785.doc.htm
(*19) Link to RAND paper: https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR3063.html
vi. The Ukraine War and Nuclear Arms Control
What was Putin’s intention in the war? I can tell you what his intention was. It was to force Zelensky to negotiate neutrality. This happened within days of the start of the invasion. You should understand this basic point, not the propaganda that’s written about the invasion claiming that Russia’s aim was to conquer Ukraine with a few tens of thousands of troops.
Come on, ladies and gentlemen. Please understand something basic. The idea of Russia’s invasion was to keep NATO out of Ukraine. And what is NATO, really? It is the US military, with its missiles, its CIA deployments, and all the rest. Russia’s goal was to keep the US away from its border. Why is Russia so interested in this? Consider if China or Russia decided to have a military base on the Rio Grande or in the Canadian border, not only would the United States freak out; we’d have war within about ten minutes. When the Soviet Union tried this in Cuba in 1962, the world nearly ended in nuclear Armageddon.
All of this is gravely amplified because the United States unilaterally abandoned the Anti- Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and ended the relative stability nuclear arms control framework by doing so. This is extremely important to understand. The nuclear arms control framework is based, in large part, on trying to deter a first [decapitation] strike. The ABM Treaty was a critical component of that stability. The US unilaterally walked out of the ABM Treaty in 2002. This blew a Russian gasket. So, everything I’ve been describing about NATO enlargement has occurred in the context of the US destruction of the nuclear framework. Starting in 2010, the US began to put in Aegis anti-ballistic missile systems in Poland and then later in Romania. Russia doesn’t like that.
One of the issues on the table in December and January, December 2021, January 2022, was whether the United States claimed the right to put missile systems in Ukraine. According to former CIA analyst Ray McGovern, Blinken told Lavrov in January 2022 that the United States reserves the right to put missile systems in Ukraine.
That’s, my dear friends, is your putative ally. And now the US wants to put intermediate missile systems in Germany. Remember that the United States walked out of the INF treaty in 2019. There is no nuclear arms framework right now.(*20) Essentially, none.
When Zelensky said a few days after Russia’s invasion that Ukraine was ready for neutrality, a peace agreement was in reach. I know the details of this because I talked to key negotiators and mediators in detail and have learned much from public pronouncements of others. Shortly after the start of negotiations in March 2022, a document was exchanged between the parties that President Putin had approved, and that Lavrov had presented. This was being managed by the Turkish mediators. I flew to Ankara in the spring of 2022 to hear first-hand and in detail what happened in the mediation. The bottom-line is this: Ukraine walked away, unilaterally, from a near agreement.
(*20) The United States formally withdrew from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty on August 2, 2019, following a six-month suspension period that began on February 2, 2019
vii. The End of the Ukraine War
Why did Ukraine walk away from the negotiations? Because the United States told them to and because the UK added icing to the cake by having BoJo [Boris Johnson] go to Kyiv in early April to Ukraine to make the same point. Keir Starmer turns out to be even worse, even more of a warmonger. It’s unimaginable, but it is true. Boris Johnson explained, and you can find it on the web, that what’s at stake here is nothing less than Western hegemony! Not Ukraine but Western hegemony. Michael von der Schulenberg and I met at the Vatican with a group of experts in Spring 2022, and we wrote a document explaining that nothing good can come out of continued war.(*21) Our group argued strenuously, but to no avail, that Ukraine should negotiate immediately, because delays will mean massive deaths, risk of nuclear escalation, and possibly an outright loss of the war.
I wouldn’t want to change one word from what we wrote then. Nothing was wrong in that document. Since the US talked Ukraine out of the negotiations, perhaps one million Ukrainians have died or been severely wounded. And American senators who are as nasty and cynical as imaginable say this is a wonderful expenditure of US money because no Americans are dying. It’s the pure proxy war. One of our senators nearby New York State, Connecticut’s Richard Blumenthal, said this out loud. Mitt Romney said this out loud. It’s the best money America can spend. No Americans are dying. It’s unreal.
Now, just to bring us up to yesterday, the US Ukraine Project has failed. The core idea of the project all along was that Russia would fold its hand. The core idea all along was Russia can’t resist, just as Zbigniew Brzezinski argued in 1997. The Americans thought the US surely has the upper hand.
The US will win because we’re going to bluff them. The Russians are not really going to fight. The Russians are really going to mobilize. We’ll deploy the economic “nuclear option” of cutting Russia out of SWIFT. That will destroy the economy. Our sanctions will bring Russia to their knees. The HIMARS will do them in. The ATACMS, the F-16s, will do them in. Honestly, I’ve listened to this kind of talk for more than 50 years. Our national security leaders have spoken nonsense for decades.
I begged the Ukrainians: stay neutral. Don’t listen to the Americans. I repeated to them the famous adage of Henry Kissinger, that to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal. Let me repeat that for Europe: To be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal.
(*21) The meeting at the Vatican was the Fraternal Economy Session on Jubilee 2025: Hope in the Signs of the Times. Link here: https://www.pass.va/content/dam/casinapioiv/pass/pdf-booklet/2024_booklet_fraternal_economy.pdf
viii. The Trump Administration
Let me end with a few words about President Donald Trump. Trump does not want Biden’s losing hand. This is why Trump and President Putin are likely to agree to end the war. Even if Europe continues with its warmongering, it won’t matter. The war is ending. So, please, get it out of your system. Please tell your colleagues. “It’s over.” It’s over because Trump doesn’t want to hold on to a loser. The one that will be saved by the negotiations taking place right now is Ukraine. The second is Europe.
Your stock market is rising in recent days because of the “horrible news” of negotiations and potential peace. I know this prospect of a negotiated peace has been met with sheer horror in these chambers, but this is the best news that you could get. I’ve tried to reach out to some of the European leaders. I’ve said, don’t go to Kyiv, go to Moscow. Negotiate with your counterparts. You’re the European Union. You’re 450 million people and a $20 trillion economy. Act like it.
The European Union should be the main trading partner of Russia. Europe and Russia have complementary economies. The fit for mutually beneficial trade is very strong. By the way, if anyone would like to discuss how the US blew up Nord Stream, I’d be happy to talk about that too. The Trump administration is imperialist at heart. Trump obviously believes that the great powers dominate the world. The US will be ruthless and cynical, and yes, also vis-à-vis Europe. Don’t go begging to Washington. That won’t help. It would probably spur the ruthlessness. Instead, have a true European foreign policy.
So, I’m not saying that we’re at the new age of peace, but we are in a very different kind of politics right now, a return to great power politics. Europe needs its own foreign policy, and not just a foreign policy of Russophobia. Europe needs a foreign policy that is realistic, understands Russia’s situation, understands Europe’s situation, understands what America is and what it stands for, and that tries to avoid Europe being invaded by the United States. It’s certainly not impossible that Trump’s America will land troops in Greenland. I’m not joking, and I don’t think Trump is joking. Europe needs a foreign policy, a real one. Europe needs something different from, “Yes, we’ll bargain with Mr. Trump and meet him halfway.” Do you know what that will be like? Give me a call afterwards.
Please have a European foreign policy. You’re going to be living with Russia for a long time, so please negotiate with Russia. There are real security issues on the table both for Europe and Russia, but the bombast and the Russophobia is not serving your security at all. It’s not serving Ukraine’s security at all. This American adventure that you signed on to and for which you are now the lead cheerleader has contributed to around 1 million Ukrainian casualties.
ix. On the Middle East and China
On the Middle East, incidentally, the US completely handed over foreign policy to Netanyahu 30 years ago. The Israel lobby dominates American politics. Please, have no doubt about it. I could explain for hours how it works. It’s very dangerous. I’m hoping that Trump will not destroy his administration, and far worse, the Palestinian people, because of Netanyahu, whom I regard as a war criminal who has been properly indicted by the ICC.(*22)
The only way for Europe to have peace on your borders with the Middle East is the two-state solution. There is only one obstacle to it, and that is the veto of the United States in the UN Security Council, at the behest of the Israel Lobby. So, if you want the EU to have some influence, tell the United States to drop the veto. In this the European Union would be together with around 160 other countries in the world. The only ones that oppose a Palestinian state are basically the United States, Israel, Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Argentina, and Paraguay.(*23)
The Middle East is a place where the European Union could have a big geopolitical influence. Yet, Europe has gone silent about the JCPOA and Iran and around half of Europe has gone silent over Israel’s war crimes and blockage of the two-state solution.
Netanyahu’s greatest dream in life is the war between the United States and Iran. And he’s not given up. It’s not impossible that a US-Iran War will also come. Yet Europe could stop it – if Europe has its own foreign policy. I’m hoping that Trump will end Netanyahu’s grip on American politics. Even if not, the EU can work with the rest of the world to bring peace to the Middle East.
Finally, let me just say with respect to China, China is not an enemy. China is merely a great success story. That’s why it is viewed by the United States as an enemy, because China has a bigger economy than the United States (measured in international prices). The US resists reality. Europe should not do so. Let me repeat, China is no enemy and no threat. It is a natural partner with Europe in trade and in saving the global environment.
That’s all. Many thanks.
(*22) “Benjamin NETANYAHU, the Prime Minister of Israel, and Yoav GALLANT, the Minister of Defence of Israel, bear criminal responsibility for the following war crimes and crimes against humanity committed on the territory of the State of Palestine.” Link to ICC: https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/statement-icc-prosecutor-karim-aa-khan-kc-applications-arrest-warrants-situation-state
(*23) The United Nations can end the Middle East conflict by welcoming Palestine as a member. Link to my article here: https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/1/10/the-un-can-end-the-middle-east-conflict-by-welcoming-palestine-as-a-member
Q&A Section
Audience Question: Should Europe increase its military spending?
Professor Jeffrey Sachs Answer:
I would not be against an approach of Europe spending two to three percent of GDP for a unified European security structure and invested in Europe and in European technology, and not having the United States dictate the use of European technology. The Netherlands produces the only machines of advanced semiconductors using extreme ultraviolet lithography. That company, of course, is ASML. Yet America determines every policy of ASML. If I were you, I wouldn’t hand over all security and technology to the United States.
I would suggest having your own security framework so you can have your own foreign policy framework as well. Europe stands for lots of things that the United States does not stand for. Europe stands for climate action. Our president is completely bonkers on this. And Europe stands for decency, for social democracy, as an ethos. Europe stands for multilateralism. Europe stands for the UN Charter. The US stands for none of those things. Our Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently canceled his trip to South Africa because equality and sustainability were on the agenda. That is a vivid, if grim, reflection of Anglo-Saxon libertarianism. Egalitarianism is not a word of the American lexicon. Nor is Sustainability.
You may know that of the 193 UN member states, 191 have presented SDG (Sustainable Development Goal) plans to the UN in the High-Level Political Forum (HLPF). Just three countries have not done so: Haiti, Myanmar and the United States of America. Biden’s Treasury was not even permitted to use the phrase Sustainable Development Goals. I mention all of this because you need your own foreign policy.
I issue two reports each year. One is the World Happiness Report. In the 2024 report, 8 of the top 10 countries are European. Europe has the highest quality of life in the whole world. The US ranked 23rd. The other annual report is the Sustainable Development Report. In the 2024 report, 19 of the top 20 countries in sustainable development are in Europe. The US ranked 46th. You need your own foreign policy to protect that quality of life! I was and remain a great fan of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and continue to believe that OSCE is the proper framework for European security. It could really work.
Audience Question: How should Europe engage diplomatically with Russia? Professor Jeffrey Sachs Answer:
I think that there are tremendously important issues for Europe to negotiate directly with Russia. And so, I would urge, President Costa and the leadership of Europe to open direct discussions with President Putin because European security is on the table. I know the Russian leaders, many of them, quite well. They are good negotiators, and you should negotiate with them, and you should negotiate well with them. I would ask the Russian counterparts some questions. I would ask them, what are the security guarantees that can work so that this war ends permanently? What are the security guarantees for the Baltic states? Part of the process of negotiation is to ask the other side about your concerns. I know Foreign Minister Lavrov for 30 years. I regard him as a brilliant foreign minister. Talk with him. Negotiate with him. Get his ideas. Put your ideas on the table. The most important thing is to stop the yelling, stop the warmongering, and discuss with the Russian counterparts. And don’t beg to be at the table with the United States. You don’t need to be in the room with the United States. You’re Europe. You should be in the room with Europe and Russia. Don’t hand over your foreign policy to anybody, not to the United States, not to Ukraine, not to Israel. Keep a European foreign policy. This is the basic idea.
Audience Question: Countries including Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic wanted to join NATO. So does Ukraine. Why shouldn’t they be allowed to do so?
Professor Jeffrey Sachs Answer:
NATO is not a choice of Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic, or Ukraine. NATO is a US-led military alliance. The question facing Europe back in 1991 and today is how to ensure peace. If I were making decisions back in 1991, I would have ended NATO altogether when the Warsaw Pact was dissolved, and certainly when the Soviet Union itself ended. When countries requested NATO membership, I would have explained to them what our defense secretary William Perry, leading statesman George Kennan, last US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, all said in the 1990s. They all said, in effect, “We understand your feelings, but enlarging NATO is not a good idea because it could easily provoke a new Cold War with Russia.” There’s a very good new book by Jonathan Haslam, published by Harvard University Press, called Hubris. It offers a detailed historical documentation of NATO enlargement. It explains how the US was too arrogant to discuss, negotiate, and honor the redlines of Russia, even after promising that NATO would not enlarge.
Audience Question: What are the long-term consequences of this lost war? Professor Jeffrey Sachs Answer:
We’re in the biggest technological advance in human history. It’s truly amazing what can be done right now. You know, I marvel at the fact that somebody who knows little chemistry won the Nobel Peace Prize for chemistry because he’s superb at AI and deep neural networks, indeed a genius, Demis Hassabis. He and his team at DeepMind figured out how to use AI to crack the problem of protein folding, a problem that had occupied generations of biochemists. So, if we put our minds, our resources and our energies towards it, we can transform the world energy system for climate safety. We can protect biodiversity. We can ensure every child gets a quality education. We can do so many wonderful things right now. What do we need for success? In my view, most importantly, we need peace. And my basic point is there are no deep reasons for conflict anywhere because every conflict I study is just a mistake. We are not struggling for Lebensraum. That idea, which essentially came from Malthus and later became a Nazi idea, was always wrong, a fundamental intellectual mistake. We have had race wars, national wars of survival, out of the fear that we don’t have enough for everybody on this planet, so that we are in a struggle for survival. As an economist, I can tell you, we have plenty on the planet for everybody’s sustainable development. Plenty. We’re not in a conflict with China. We’re not in a conflict with Russia. If we calm down, if we ask about the long term, the long term is very good, that is, if we don’t blow ourselves up beforehand. So, this is my point. The prospects are very positive if we construct the peace.
Audience Question: Do you think the way out of this conflict is a Finlandization of Ukraine? Professor Jeffrey Sachs Answer:
Excellent question. Let me just report one aspect about Finlandization. Finlandization landed Finland number one in the World Happiness Report year after year. Finland is rich, successful, happy, and secure. That’s pre-NATO Finland I’m discussing. So “Finlandization” was a wonderful thing for Finland. When Sweden and Finland and Austria were neutral, bravo. Smart. When Ukraine was neutral, smart. If you have two superpowers, keep them apart a little bit. If the United States had any sense at all, it would have left these countries as the neutral space in between the US military and Russia, but the US has far too little sense.
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Jeffrey D. Sachs
Jeffrey D. Sachs is a University Professor and Director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, where he directed The Earth Institute from 2002 until 2016. He is also President of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network and a commissioner of the UN Broadband Commission for Development. He has been advisor to three United Nations Secretaries-General, and currently serves as an SDG Advocate under Secretary-General Antonio Guterres. Sachs is the author, most recently, of
“A New Foreign Policy: Beyond American Exceptionalism” (2020).
books “Building the New American Economy: Smart, Fair, and Sustainable” (2017)
“The Age of Sustainable Development,” (2015) with Ban Ki-moon.
