Jeffrey Sachs

Well, political is reporting the Biden administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve a new 1.1 Billion dollar arm sale to Taiwan. The package reported include 60 anti ship missiles, 1 hundred and missiles. This comes after two years warship sales through Taiwan street Sunday for the first time since the house speaker Nancy Pelosi visit Taiwan this month. China condemned this in large major military drills near Taiwan. Meanwhile President Biden announced three billion dollars more military aid for Ukraine last week, concluding money for missiles, telegrants, and joints to help Ukrainian forces fight russia. We begin today's show looking at the US policy on Russia and china, we joined by the economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the center for Sustainable development at Columbia university, his president to the UN Sustainable Development Solutions network, he served as vice three UN Secretaries general, his latest article headline at the west force narrative about Russia and china. He begins his article by writing quote the world on the edge of nuclear catastrophe and no small part because the failure of western political leaders to be forced right about the causes of escalating global conflict the relentless western narrative that the west is noble, while Russia and China are evil, are simple minded, are extraordinarily dangerous. Jeffrey sax writes, Jeffrey sax welcome to the democracy now. I want you to take it from there what is the story that the people on the west round the world should understand about what's happening right now with the conflicts with russia, with the Russian ukraine, and with China? The main point Amy is that we are not using the promisey we are using weaponry, and this sale announced to Taiwan that you've been discussing this morning is just another case in point, this does not make Taiwan safer, this does not make the world safer, certainly doesn't make United States savior. This goes back a long way. I think it's useful to start 30 years ago, the Soviet Union ended, and some American leaders got into their head, head. There was no where they called the unipolar world that the US was the so superpower, and we could run the show. The result has been disastrous. We have had now three decades of militarization of American foreign policy. A new database that tops maintaining has just shown there's has been more 100 military intervene by the United States since 1991, it's really unbelievable. And I have seen in my own experience, so the last 30 years working extensively in Russia and Central Europe, in china, and another part of the world, how the US approach is a military first, and offering military only approach. We are, we are, we want, we call for NATO enlargement no matter what other countries say, it may be harmful to their security interests, we'll rush side anyone else and when they complain, we should more armaments to our allies in that region. We go to war when we want, where we want, whether was Afghanistan or iraq, or the covert war against Saudi in Syria, which was even today now probably understood stood by the American people. Or the war in Libya. Or we say we are peace loving. What's wrong with Russia and china? They are so warlike, they are out to undermine the world, and we end up in terrible competitions. The war in Ukraine just to finish the introductory view could have been avoided, and should have been avoided through diplomacy. What President Putin of Russia was saying for years was do not expand NATO into the black sea, not to ukraine, much less to georgia, which people look on the map straight across to the eastern edge of black sea. Russia said it will surround us this will drop it as our security. Let us have diplomacy. The United States rejected all the diplomacy. I try to contact the White House at the end of 2021. In fact, I did contact the white house, and it said there won't be war, unless the US enters diplomatic talks with President Putin over this question of NATO enlargement, I was told the US will never do that, that is off the table. And it was off the table. Now we have a war that extraordinarily dangerous, and we are taking exactly the same tactics in East Asia that late to the war in Ukraine organized alliances, building up a weaponry. I chat talking China by having speak policy flying to Taiwan when Chinese government said please, lower the temperature, lower the tensions, we say no, we do what we want, and now send more arms this is a recipe for yet another war. And in my mind it's terrifying. We are the 60 emperors in Cuban Miss crisis which has started all my life. And I read about it, read a book about it this at night, I will driving to the precipice, and we are filled with our our enthusiasm. It's just unaccountably dangerous and wrong. And in my mind, it's terrifying. We are the 60 Anthropus the Cuban Missile Crisis which I studied all my life. And I written about it. I read a book about the at the end, we are driving to the precipice, and we are filled with our our enthusiasm with with what we do so, and unaccountably a dangerous and wrong headed the whole approach of the US foreign policy and its bipartisanship. Oh, Jeffrey sex, I want to ask you what the things that you mentioned, reason article was a public association news was this insistence of United States are jacking a blow as well in maintaining hegemony throughout the world a time when the economic power of the west declining, you mentioned for instance that the the breaks nations Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa represent more than 40% over the population have great gdp, then the G7 nations, their interest and their concerns are pretty much dismissed, in the case obviously obviously of Russia and China are portrayed to the American people as the aggressors, authoritarians, as the ones that are creating turmoil in the world Yeah, absolutely. And it directing us to that extremely important, this proportion of power of the western world and especially the Anglo Texan world was started and the United States, it's about 250 years old, so a short period in world history. It happened for a lot of very interesting reasons that the industrial revolution came to England first. The steam engine was invented. That's probably the same almost about in history. Britain became militarily dominant in the 19th century like the United States was in the second half of the 20th century. Britain ran the show. Britain have the empire and which the Sultan never set. And the west meaning the United States and Western Europe now meaning the US and European Union, the UK, Canada, Japan and other words the G7 European Union together. It's a small part of the world population, perhaps now roughly 10%, little bit more maybe twelve and a half percent if I did Japan to the Western Europe in the US but the mindset is we run the world and that was the way wha wha it was for 200 years in this industrial late but times have changed and really since the 1950s the rest of the world went again independence from European imperialism starting to educate its populations started to adopt and adapt and innovate technologies and the lower in a whole a small silver ratio of a world really did it didn't have monopoly on wisdom or knowledge or is our technology and this wonderful the knowledge and possibility of decent lines is spreading throughout the whole world but in the United States there is a resentment to this a deep resentment and I think this also a tremendous historical ignorance because I think a lot of US leaders I have no clue as to modern history but they resent China's rice that is a threat to the United States. How dare China rice this all world, this is our century. And so starting around 2014, I saw steps by step, but watch this with in hands detail because it's my day, daily activity, how the United States recast China not as a country that was recovering from a century and a half of great difficulty, but rather as an enemy. And we consciously as a matter of American foreign policy starts to say we need to contain China. China's rise is no longer in our interest. As if the United States has determined whether China is prosperous or not. But the Chinese are not naive e extraordinarily sophisticated. They watched all this exactly the same way that I did. I know the authors of the US Texas as they are my colleagues at Harvard or other places. I was shocked when this kind of containment idea started to blight. But basic point is that the west has LED the world for a precious period 250 years about film. That's all right. That's our western world. We are the G7. We get the determine who writes the rules of the game. And indeed obama, you know, a good guy under the spectrum of what we happened foreign p policy, said, let's write the rules of trade for asia, but not have China write any of these rules, the US will write the rules. This is an incredible and dangerous and automoted way to understand the vote. We in the United States are 4.2% Of the world population, we do not run the world, we are not world leader, we we are a country of 4.2% People in a big diverse world, and we should learn to get along, play in the sandbox peacefully, not demand we have all the toys in the sandbox, and we are not over that thinking acking, and unfortunately it's of political parties, it's what motives speak policy and go to Taiwan in the middle of all these, if she really has to go to but it's the mindset that the US is in charge. I want to go back a little bit back into the the 1990s. You recall sure the enormous financial collapse are called in Mexico in the 1990s where the Clinton administration authorized $50 billion in a bailout to mexico, which at the time you were advising the poor Soviet Russian government, which also had a financial, had had the deeper financial problem at the time, but was unable to get any significant of western and systems, even from the international military found the difference how they realize respond mexico, and what the roles of may have been, what a current situation is in Russian state. Absolutely. I had a control experiment because I was economic advisor both to Poland and to the Soviet Union in the last year of the president Gorbachev, and to President Yeltsin in the first two years of Russian independence 1992, 1993. My job was finance to actually help Russia find a way to reject as as you described a massive financial crisis, and my basic recommendation in Poland and then in Soviet Union and in Russia was to avoid a social crisis and a geopolitical crisis, the rich world should help to tamp down this extraordinarily financial crisis that was taking place with the breakdown of the former Soviet union. Well, interestingly, in the case of poland, I made a series various specific recommendations, and they were all accepted by the US government creating a stable canceling part of Poland's debt, allowing many financial maneuvers to get Poland out of difficulty. You know, I pat myself on the back, I made I made a recommendation, and one of them for billion dollar stabilization fund was accepted within 8 hours by the way, White House, so so I thought pretty good. Then came the analogous appeal on behalf of first global trust in the final days, and then President Yao Qin. Everything I recommended, which was on the same basis of economic dynamics, was rejected flat out by the White House. I didn't understand that I have to tell you at that time. I said about it worked on poland, and they stared at me blankly. In fact after a secretary stated 1992, it doesn't even matter whether I am agree with you, it's not going to happen. And it took me actually quite a while to understand the underlying geopolitics. Those were exactly the days of training and wolf wars and runs field, and what became the project for the new American century, meaning for the continuation of the American hegemony I didn't see it in at the moment, because I was thinking about economics, how to help overcome the financial crisis. But the unipolar politics was taking shape, and it was devastating. Of course, it left Russia that a mass of financial crisis that lead to a lot of instability have its own implication for years to come, but even more than that, what these people were planning early on to despite explicit promises to Gorbachev Yeltsin was the expansion of nato. And the Clinton started the expansion of NATO with the three countries Central Europe, poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic, and then George W Bush junior added seven countries of Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, and the three Baltic states, but right up against russia. And then in 2008, the quadrigraph, which was the US insistence over the private session of the European leaders in the European leaders talks to me privately about it at at the time, but in 2008, it was said NATO will expand to Ukraine and to georgia. And again, it take up the map and look at the Black Sea, the explicit goal was to surround Russia in the Black Sea. By the way, it's an old playbook.It's the same playbook as Pomestin in eighteen fifty three to fi eighteen fifty seven, for the first Crimean war surround Russia in the black sea cut off its ability to to have a military presence to project any kind of influence in the eastern Mediterranean, Brezhnev himself said in nineteen ninety seven that Ukraine will be the geographical pivot for Eurasia.So what the new comes to doing in early nineteen Ninety was building the us unipolar world and they were already contemplating lots of wars in order to take out the former soviet allied countries.What's to overthrow Saddam? What's to overthrow assad? What's to overthrow Qaddafi? Those were all warded out next twenty years that completely disaster the horrible for the United States, trillions of dollars wasted.But it was a plan, and that new conceived a plan is in its Heyday right now, and two fronts, in the Ukrainian front and on the Taiwan straits front, and it's extraordinary dangerous.What is this, this people are doing to American foreign policy, which hardly is a 一些 a policy of democracy is a policy of a small group that has the idea that Can you draw a line between what happened as a Russian economy on raffle to the conditions leading up to the Ukrainian invasion? I mean how did the economic catastrophe that follow the collapse of the Soviet Union lead to the rise of the oligarch class? Indeed the president of Vladimir Putin I'll try to explain to now me. For years, I was recommending was a financial help to, what whether was Poland or or to the Soviet or to russia. I was absolutely a guest at the cheating in the corruption and giveaways, and I said so very explicitly the time resign both because I was useless in trying to get the western help, and also because I did not like it at all. What was going on? And I would say that the failure of an ordinary approach which was achieved in poland, but failed in the former Soviet Union because there was no western constructive engagement, definitely played a role in the instability in the 1990s, definitely played a role in the rise of the oligarch class, and in fact, I was absolutely explaining to the US and to the imf, what a bank, 1994, 1995, they didn't care, because they thought well that's ok, that's for ye lian, perhaps all of that cheating in the shares loans process, having set off having said of all of that, I think what is important to say is that there's no linear determination, even from advance like that, which was destabilizing very unhappy and unnecessary to what is happening now, because when President Putin came in, he was entirely european, was not antiyou American what he saw though, what the incredible arrogance of the United States in expansion of nato, the wars in iraq, in cover war in syria, the war in Libya against the UN resolution, so we created so much of what we facing right now to our own arrogance, there was no linear determination, it was step by step. Us arrogance that helped bring us to what we are today.