Today's edition of the unofficial Jeffrey Sachs Fan Club - This interview was on Jay Shapiro's program, which I do NOT recommend (see comment below).
Jeffrey Sachs joins me for a wide-ranging conversation about the Ukraine war, NATO expansion, Russia, and the increasingly dangerous confrontation between the West and Moscow. Sachs argues that the war cannot be understood simply as an unprovoked conflict between Russia and Ukraine, and takes us back to the end of the Cold War to explain why he believes the United States repeatedly ignored Russia's security concerns and chose confrontation over a different post-Cold War settlement.
We discuss NATO expansion, the promises surrounding German reunification, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rise of American unipolar power, and the competing visions of the world order that emerged after World War II. Sachs also makes the case that the war is being sustained by more than ideology: military contracting, corruption, geopolitical power, and the emerging business of AI-enabled warfare all play a role. He argues that Ukraine's neutrality and a halt to further NATO expansion could provide the basis for ending the conflict.
I also push Sachs on the arguments he makes, including the experiences of people in Eastern Europe who view Russia very differently, and ask whether his analysis gives enough weight to Russian imperial ambitions. We discuss the possibility of nuclear escalation, the April 2022 peace negotiations, the military-industrial complex, Nord Stream, and whether the West has chosen victory over peace. Whatever you think of Sachs's conclusions, this is an attempt to step back from the daily headlines and ask a much bigger question: How did we get here, and is there still a path out?
JAY- Consider it a bit of a potentially this an emergency broadcast because it seems to me that this conversation is going to be about Russia, Ukraine. Do you think we are at a severe tipping point in the war, the hostilities that really potentially could spill over into something much worse economically and militarily? And if so, why? Because I'm seeing this, like shipping diesel oil supply shortage, with this new wrinkle of the Ukrainian bombings of refineries in Russia being potentially a big point. But tell me how you see it where, how severe is this moment?
SACHS- Well, of course, in a war things can go wildly out of hand, but in this war, things could end in an agreement, basically at any moment that the United States and Europe wake up to some basic truths. So the war is bad, a lot of Ukrainians are dying. A lot of Ukraine is being pummeled, just as one would expect when fighting a very powerful neighbor. But there was a reason for this war and the reason for this war was that the United States asserted that it could put its military alliance NATO anywhere that it wanted including in Ukraine, including in the South Caucuses region, in the country Georgia. And this is completely contrary to anything the United States would accept in our own hemisphere. We have a doctrine actually 203 years old called the Monroe Doctrine which said to the Europeans, "Don't you dare come into our neighborhood, don't threaten us. Don't set up new colonies in the Americas." That's the Monroe Doctrine. And what Russia has been saying for 35 years, basically since the demise of the Soviet Union, don't treat us like you can walk over us. We have our own security concerns and they're real and we don't want you to establish military bases on our border any more than you would like us to establish military bases on your border. So it's a basic question of the Golden Rule in very important and serious terms. The United States has rejected the Golden Rule for 35 years.
It said you do what we say, not what we do - we will go to Ukraine. That's their right. It's an open door policy they call it. We'll go anywhere we want. And in fact, when the Ukrainian government in 2014 actually didn't want NATO, the United States conspired to help overthrow that government, as a matter of fact, and bring in the government that came in in 2014.
And anyway, Jay, I've seen all of this close up for 36 years. I've seen the bad US behavior and what's happened in the last couple of years is that the Europeans have taken on this cause almost in a messianic way rather than understanding or acknowledging the history that this is a war that shouldn't have happened, that NATO should not have enlarged that we should not have pressed against Russia and crossed every one of their security red lines. Rather, they've said Ukraine must win.
Now, winning against a nuclear superpower with more nuclear weapons than any other country on Earth is a kind of insane objective. Really totally delusional. And the European leaders are the worst that I've seen in in decades. And the smaller and weaker they are, the more they're barking. So the loudest voices are the three Balkan states, tiny little countries, that have significant Russian minority populations, and they spew Russia hatred every day. It's very surprising. It's not a survival instinct. The polls spew Russia hatred every single day as well. I have to, by the way, tell you I advised the Polish government in the early 1990s. I advised the Baltic country of Estonia. I advised the Soviet government. I advised the Russian government. I advised the Ukrainian government. I have no side in this other than peace and survival. I don't come at this like an ideologue, but I and I work very hard to help get the Baltic States and Poland into the European Union, but I'm disgusted by their behavior. I have to tell you, and I should add, and I will add, just to clarify for any viewer, I have high national awards given to me by the President of Poland and by the President of Estonia for the services that I have rendered to their country as an economic adviser. But they're behaving terribly right now.
They're shouting. They're spewing Russia hatred. And they think the United States is going to, you know, say save their day and it's not going to happen. If they continue escalating, there could well be a nuclear war. Not beyond imagining. It's absolutely not beyond imagining. And these people, maybe they don't know any of the history that I've seen with my own eyes. Maybe they don't care to know.
Maybe they've listened to the propaganda long enough that we're pure and the other side's evil. But the truth of the matter is they're absolutely provoking an escalation of the conflict now. And I've been writing open letters published in Berlin to Merz, Chancellor of Germany because his country's played an absolutely awful role.
I'm not even speaking about the first part of the 20th century after 1990, in promoting this NATO enlargement in telling lies about all the promises that Germany made with the Soviet Union as part of the quid-pro-quo for German reunification. And then Germany forgot every word that it said. And I'm trying to remind Mr. Merz of a few historical truths. So Jay, bottom line of all of this is, it's very dangerous what's happening. The rhetoric is over the top.
The fighting is escalating. Ukraine is really being pummeled right now because Russia is a much stronger country and a much stronger military. All of that is predictable. There could be escalation, but Russia has what's called escalatory dominance, which is that we escalate, they'll escalate. We escalate further, okay, they'll drop a nuke. They say so.
They tell us, "Stop already. Stop it." And it is exactly the right position. Stop this madness. Make peace today. Very straightforwardly. Ukraine is neutral. No more NATO enlargement. Disarmament on both sides. Resolve any remaining border issues by diplomacy, not by war. That's it. Peace treaty, done today.
JAY- Yeah. Yeah. Are those two articles that you just sent me, are they public? Because I'll point people [SACHS- Yeah] to them. Yeah. So, because you laid this out and I want to, I want to pick on, pick on them a little bit, but I do want to zoom out a little bit. My show, you know, I do less of sort of the day-to-day update stuff and more of the zoom out. So if I want, I want to go back to some of this like general, whose war is this question, and you know, I don't know how you, how you answer that. Is it a proxy war between NATO and Russia or is it is this actually Ukraine and Russia? And if so, for me, my, you know, I haven't talked about this on my show a lot, Ukraine. I'm starting to.
And my turning point was seeing all the busification videos of the forced mobilization stuff, if you've seen them in Ukraine, of, you know, and I'm like, you know, I don't know the history as well as someone like you do, who lived it and has been close to it.
But that shit I can't support. I'm not okay with this. You know, if NATO wants to fight this war, go fight it yourself. But you know, so you can respond to that a little bit, but I do want to back it up to the question of sort of the world order at the fall of the Cold War. Because you write in sort of the perspective of Russia's perspective on this war from their perspective, that they were willing to be partners in this new world order and peace partners with Europe. Can you defend that a little bit or talk a little bit more about why you believe that that was the path they wanted to go down and why weren't they allowed to go down that path?
SACHS- Yeah, Russia is a huge country of course, the largest land mass in the world, 17 million square kilometers. It's a powerful country because it has a large nuclear arsenal, it's got lots of resources. It's got lots of very talented people. It's a sophisticated country technologically. But during the Cold War, it devoted a lot of that sophistication to a military arms race with the United States and it couldn't keep up with the United States. So from an economic point of view, it's kind of a middling country. From a landmass point of view, it's the largest. From a great power point of view, I would call it a great power certainly, because of its military, its intercontinental ballistic missiles, its nuclear arsenal.
This is no pushover and not to be fought in a direct war. The Soviet Union, the precursor, was America's ally in World War II. And Franklin Roosevelt, our wartime president, found effective cooperation with Joseph Stalin, who was a nasty figure, but he was our wartime ally. And the Soviet Union bore the brunt of defeating Hitler, something that Americans should understand because it affected everything else about the Soviet and then the Russian security mindset afterwards.
You know, the United States was attacked one day in World War II. Russia fought most of World War II on its own territory, or let's say the Soviet Union did, and it lost an estimated 27 million people, it its army broke Hitler's army, not D-Day, which came years later, but in these titanic battles that took place in Stalingrad and Kursk and in the starvation of Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. The Soviet and Russian people bore the brunt of Hitler as our ally and we should hail that fact. At the end of the war there was a divided opinion in the United States.
Franklin Roosevelt thought we can continue and must continue the cooperation with the Soviet Union and that it's possible. It's not the same system, of course, Stalin committed many vast crimes in his gulag, but for the sake of world peace, it was possible and necessary to continue cooperation.
Much of the US military and what became the CIA in 1947 took the view that Russia or the Soviet Union was our enemy, our inevitable enemy. The British who hadn't lost their empire yet under Churchill actually thought that maybe the war in Europe should just continue after May 1945 with an invasion of the Soviet Union itself. Churchill was a pure British imperialist. He was the ultimate British imperialist. And he actually asked the war cabinet and or the war command, his military command, how about just going on and invading the Soviet Union. That wasn't an idle thought. It was called Operation Unthinkable. They told Churchill it was unthinkable.
There was no condition to do that. But that was the mindset. So there was a debate. I think Roosevelt had by far the better side of the debate. He wasn't alone in it. Henry Wallace, his vice president between 1941 and January 1944 or March 1945, I guess it would have been, also believed that. But Wallace was pushed out as too dovish. Truman was a completely inexperienced senator and a small businessman from hometown in the Midwest and basically went with the military view that the Soviets are our enemy. Now this is a fascinating subject. You know, did the Soviet Union make the Cold War inevitable? I think not. I think that if the US had agreed with the Soviet Union on a demilitarized and neutral Germany, the cold War would have been avoided because the Soviet core interest was not to be invaded again by Germany. Well, fast forward from 1945 to 1990. The Berlin Wall fell on November 7th, 1989. And immediately the German chancellor Helmut Kohl said, now we reunify a divided Germany, because rather than accepting a neutral disarmed Germany, the United States said we'll take the western side, the Soviets will have the eastern side. We'll build up the military of the western side, put it into a new NATO alliance and that became the Cold War division. And I walked across Checkpoint Charlie in 1972 with the tanks in the Berlin Wall. I saw the division, of course, with my own eyes, starting as a high school student and then many, many times afterwards.
I believe none of it was necessary had the United States accepted a disarmed and neutral Germany, but we wanted a strong militarized Germany to face the Soviet "threat," or so they called it. I think it was a self-fulfilling threat that we created, in fact.
But in 1990, there had been no peace treaty to end World War II. And so there needed to be negotiated an agreement with the occupying powers. There were four of them still, legally. Federal Republic of Germany was still an occupied country legally. The German Democratic Republic in the east was still an occupied country legally by the Soviet Union. So to become a sovereign unified Germany that required the agreement of four countries, the United States, UK, France and the Soviet Union.
And the Germans with the American absolute backing and explicit agreement promised the Soviet Union, okay, if we reunify, NATO, this military alliance will not move eastward. Period. We will not take advantage of unification to threaten your security again. That wasn't a just a happen stance. That was a core issue for the Soviet Union going back to 1945 and to 1933 from Hitler's rise. So this was the terms.
The Soviet Union ended in December 1991. It dissolved into 15 successor states of which Russia is a successor. It's actually legally the continuation state so-called of the Soviet Union. All the treaties that applied to the Soviet Union applied to Russia by all the outside. They're supposed to keep the agreements. The United States and Germany reneged. However, they said, "Okay, now we expand NATO. We don't care what we promised. We don't care what we said. Now we start expanding NATO." It was a cynical move recognized by top American diplomats like George Kennan to be very dangerous and very cynical, opposed by the last US ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matlock, whom I knew personally. They said this is terrible. Why provoke a new conflict when we have no conflict right now? Why threaten Russia's security with the eastward enlargement of NATO? Why cheat on what we promised? Well, this was the era of the US as the unipolar state, as the sole superpower, as the great hegemon, as the indispensable nation, as Madeline Albright said. A lot of hubris basically.
JAY- But can I, can I pause it even there, because this is like the crucial point of like why, in your estimation, is it just this ideological - we're going to do what we want, or was it financial, of like there's a whole lot of money to be made even if we provoke another war, like we'll we can make a lot of money, like this is the crucial point, because I, this is an awesome retelling of it because actually one of the articles is about, I think a great line of, if you're trying to make peace, you have to actually hear the narrative of everyone.
And this is, this is you're telling a bit of sort of the Russian narrative, from their perspective. And it's an important article and I'm going to ask you in a minute what you think they might get wrong or you disagree with, but it's important to hear them out. And it's rational. It's not irrational fascism or whatever.
But this is the crucial point because post World War II, it seems like the United Nations as the table and this thing that's going to be the new conversation place to talk about world peace. In your telling, and I and I tend to agree with it, it seems Russia was on board with that back with Khrushchev banging on the table about, you know, African independence and everything else and then but NATO was this like carve-out piece. Was the US just always kidding? Was the US always just playing house at the United Nations when really what they really cared about was expansion through this thing called NATO and doing their, like this is the, this is the crucial part of the story that I think that I don't understand the motivation for it. SACHS- America's always had a mix of motives and a mix of viewpoints in elite circles.
JAY- Yeah.
SACHS- The public is not asked most of the time. Yeah, but there has been a feeling from 1945 onward that America's one of the two great superpowers of the world and it should someday be the great superpower of the world. And there was another view, the view of Roosevelt, who thought, well there are four policemen of the world, he called them in 1945 - the US, Russia, China and the British Empire and the four policemen should be co-guarantors of world peace and the term that I think is the most accurate is a Concert of Great Powers because in the 19th century there was a concert of the five great European powers where they agreed we will discuss things regularly, we will find a peaceful accommodation among us. That's Britain, France, Prussia, Austria and Russia, and it was systematized and it lasted until the 1890s and when it broke down into two mutually opposed alliances, that's when World War I came. So what Roosevelt was after was a Concert of Nations. But you can see early on that there were hardliners in the United States who said, "We don't want that. Communism's evil. We're good. We need to defeat communism." There were what Eisenhower famously told us on January 17th, 1961: There is a military industrial complex whose business is war preparation and war. And Eisenhower, a general, The General, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces of World War II, told us, "Beware the military-industrial complex." They are already with their tentacles everywhere.
They already have their say in the Congress, in every district where armaments industries are produced. They have their ideological call. They got us into Vietnam, which was the most stupid imaginable war to get trapped in. They later got us into the war in Iraq in Afghanistan. This has been going on for a long time. So yes, there are two different views. There was the hardline view that we need to dominate and there was the view that we can have a concert of great powers.
That battle has been going on for at least 81 years since the end of World War II. But, at the end of the Soviet Union, the hardliners, those who became called the neocons, they won decisively.
Who could argue with them? We can do what we want. So the battle was ended. There still was a debate. People can watch a fascinating episode of the MacNeil News Report online in which Jack Matlock debates Henry Kissinger. It's a classic. 1994, MacNeil asks Matlock, should NATO enlarge? Matlock says, no, of course not. It will just provoke anxiety with Russia and new tensions with Russia.
Then he asks Kissinger, should NATO enlarge? And Kissinger says, "Yes, NATO should enlarge." And MacNeil says, "Well, why, Mr. Kissinger? Is Russia a threat?" No, no, no, no. Russia's not a threat. Well, are these countries that want to be NATO members, are they threatened? No. No. No. Nothing like that, No. Well, will NATO enlargement aggravate the Russians? Oh, yes. Yes, it will. Well, why, Mr. Kissinger, should NATO enlarge? And he says, and I'm almost literally quoting, if you can't aggravate the Russians now when they're weak, what are you going to do when they're strong? This is the logic. Not that there was any need to do this, but look, if we're going to provoke them, we will provoke them. So, let's provoke them when they're weak. What a view of the world. Yeah.
But this to my mind is the view of the world. And [laughter] if you want, you know, the background to it, read Thucydides, read the Peloponnesian wars. The Athenians behaved exactly this way until their demise in the end. They were always provoking, always trying to expand their empire, always trying to threaten the vassal states, always trying to take the new advantage until finally they collapsed. And this is the US path in my view. So, it's not that everybody subscribes to this, but it seemed, it seemed like either a sure winner or, who am I to fight it after the Soviet Union was gone, who could challenge. Yeah. The United States? That was really the attitude.
Yeah. And by the way, Brzezinski in 1997 spells it out very clearly because he has a whole chapter, chapter four of his book, The Grand Chessboard, is all about exactly the question, what will Russia do when we push? And he goes through a whole chapter. Will it side with China? Nah. Will it side with Iran? No. Will it object to the US doing this? Yes. But it can't really object. In the end, Russia's only chance to be an advanced economy runs through the United States. So, they'll do what we say in the end. That's the conclusion of the book.
JAY- What, how much money is being made in Ukraine right now with corruption? And how big of a problem is that at this point in your estimation? Because you know, you're an economist by training and I'm just, so much of this war makes so little sense to me and I'm hearing the, I'm hearing the narrative of sort of an ideological America being strong, you know, thing which I grasp it makes sense, but I have to think also just this is just pure business and money grab I think, famously everyone knows Ukraine is worth a lot of money like how much of this is just, maybe this is too much of my sort of leftist roots coming out, but I feel like we don't belong to nations. We just belong to banks and we fight on behalf. [laughter] It's really I'm not a citizen of a nation. I just am a client of a bank and then they make me go fight for their investments. But maybe that's too cynical or maybe that's dead on.
SACHS- So I think that there are many motivations to war and there are many motivations to foreign policy and there is no single answer. But one of the things that keeps this war going is simply that the western world which is losing a lot of its say in the world because of the rise of China and others, absolutely doesn't want to show that its power is limited. So to end this war, NATO countries led by the United States would have to say specifically NATO will not enlarge. That's all, to my mind, Best sentence imaginable. I said that to Jake Sullivan. I said that to all the US leaders. They won't say it because it will show American weakness. That's a real consideration among these strategists whom I do not respect for their analysis, I have to tell you they play games but this is life and death and absolutely wrongheaded. So that's one motivation inside Ukraine, after the February 2014 coup, a very limited hardline right-wing faction was brought to power in Ukraine. There was a coup. This is a government that is post-coup that the United States played a major role in, because the Ukrainian people actually didn't even want NATO. You look the opinion surveys were overwhelmingly against NATO and then the US helped to overthrow the president Victor Yanukovich on February 22nd, 2014. Now, this is a very ultranationalist group. It's got links to Nazi roots because a lot of this ultra-nationalism was anti-Soviet siding with Hitler in World War II. And so that's why all the Bandera issues and Azov Brigade issues are quite real because this goes back to siding with Hitler against the Soviet Union by these ultranationalists with a lot of war crimes on their hands historically, back to World War II.
So that's a real, real issue. Also, Zelensky is not that, but he's completely captured by that. That is the dominant force in Ukrainian politics.
So, that's a second issue. Third issue is Ukraine is a complete cesspool of corruption itself, because you can imagine it never really was a functioning state. I saw that with my own eyes also over the years. But the amount of money changing hands and the amount of arms being sold on the black market and the amounts of false bids, it's massive. Massive. Everybody knows it. Everyone in the United States and Europe knows it. Okay, that's a third consideration. Of course, he operates like a dictator now. There's no elections, just can't have elections during war. No. Sorry. Yes, you can. Abraham Lincoln did it. Franklin Roosevelt did it. You can do it Mr. Zelensky. So this this is another important consideration that yes, it's absolute corruption. Then comes the American motivations. We are very corrupt. Not well, maybe even the same way, because Trump is family business top to bottom. So Trump is the most corrupt, most brazenly corrupt president in American history. We've had a few, but none that have done business the way Trump does business for personal gain out of national policy. But in addition to that, there is the military-industrial complex that is hundreds of billions of dollars of military contracting. War is a business. Definitely, it's a vote in this. And then there's the weirdness, Jay. Really the truth. A lot of the AI companies, starting with Palantir, but not only Palantir, say explicitly, "This war is great. We're making our AI battlefield. We're learning how to do these weapon systems." This is a person like Eric Schmidt who said basically exactly this. He was CEO of Google. Now, he's a big promoter of the Ukraine war. We have to escalate, because this is great. We're learning how autonomous drones can work. We're learning how AI battlefield can work. I don't think this is a small matter because these people really own this White House right now. Peter Teal, Musk, Alex Karp, Schmidt, and so forth. Their hands are all over this administration. And it's not only the military contracts for them. You know, you want an AI empowered battlefield.
What could be better than a real battlefield? Honestly, it's strange. So, there are many motivations in this from American glory to outright, you know, billions changing hands privately. The American people are sick of this. Trump campaigned that he would stop this. The Ukrainian people from all we can gather from the opinion surveys that are done and of course it's in a war zone and I can't completely attest to them, but they all show an overwhelming desire for a negotiated end to this war now, which I do believe could happen basically immediately because even without settling the borders you can have an armistice line that says both sides agree not to pursue further border changes by force but only by negotiation, diplomacy, maybe land swaps or other things. And that plus neutrality plus no NATO enlargement plus arms control is a recipe for ending the war in my view.
JAY- Yeah. Well, if you have time for one quick one too, and then I know you have to run, but on the AI thing, I just saw the documentary NAZA two nights ago, this one that's making the rounds and if people want a nightmare. I haven't seen it yet. I know I have to see it. Yeah.
SACHS-Yeah.
JAY- I have a reaction video to it if you want my sort of take on it that's on my show. It's horrible but on the AI thing, it's really we'll take a look. It's really, it's really relevant. But the last thing I want to, just for some push back on it, because I have a lot of friends who are uncomfortable with your line here. A lot of, I live in Berlin now so, but I run into a lot of friends who lived in these former Soviet, you know, states on the border and they all have rather negative views of Russia and it's, you know, for understandable reasons and they think listen, people like this guy they just don't understand the Russian menace, they just don't get it, he didn't live through it, they don't get it like he tells this very rational story but like Putin won't stop there, you know, he just has a chip on his shoulder which may maybe you do about giving advice, that then was sort of like stabbed in the back by your own country.
SACHS- I don't, I don't have a chip on my shoulder. I saw it from all sides, from all countries. And by the way, I'm married for an absolutely wonderful 46 years to my wife born in Prague. She grew up in the conditions of Soviet occupation. I've been at this for more than 50 years. If anyone thinks I don't know, I've been to all of the countries, I've advised all of the governments. I've worked with the Ukrainian government from the start. I've worked with the Estonian government. I helped to cancel all of Poland's debts. I've been around. Okay? This is not naive. This is not a question - I just don't get it. I have studied this issue for 50 years. I've seen it up close personally. I've talked to Gorbachev. I've talked to Yeltsin. I've talked to European leaders across the board. I've talked to Macron. I've talked to all of these leaders. I've followed the negotiations. I know because I flew to Anchorage. That a peace was about to be signed in April 2022 and the United States and Britain told Zelensky to stop.
Yeah, I met Zelensky. I didn't talk to them since the war started. Though I offered, they weren't interested. They had the American view. I kept telling them, "It's not going to make you safe. It's going to make it much worse." But I will not take the idea [laughter] that I'm somehow naive about this. This has been a lifetime of experience. Thank you very much. And I've seen it with my own eyes and I have no illusions, but I know absolutely that we chose victory rather than peace. And at every step we chose to ignore what Russia was saying, that makes perfect sense for a major power like Russia, which is - don't come to our border with your weapon systems and your military bases. And I apply the Golden Rule. The United States should do to Russia what it wants Russia to do to it. And I know what it wants Russia to do to it because it said so in the Monroe Doctrine and it said so every year. And it said so in the Cuban missile crisis and it said so in the new national security strategy. Stay out of our neighborhood.
JAY- Yeah.
SACHS- And when Russia says the same to us makes good sense. And that doesn't mean by the way and I'll just end here. I am not for spheres of influence. And I've written - I'll send you another paper you can put on which is the difference of spheres of security and spheres of influence. A sphere of influence says the United States gets to beat up the countries in the Western Hemisphere. That's deplorable. I find it disgusting. If anyone has any doubts, I find Trump disgusting. Okay, so this is a first point. I'm not talking about Russia beating up on Ukraine. I'm not talking about Russia running Ukraine. I'm talking about a different thing. A sphere of security is the right of the United States. And I'll say it's a right. It's the right of the United States to say to Mexico and to Canada, you do not host Chinese and Russian military bases on your soil. And it's the right of Russia to say to the United States and Ukraine, you do not come to our borders with your Aegis missile systems and your NATO military bases and your NATO built and positioned army. Perfectly sensible. That's a sphere of security to keep two superpowers from blowing up the planet.
Keep some space in between them. It's not a sphere of influence. It's not saying that Ukraine has to bow down to Russia. It's saying the United States has no right to put NATO in Ukraine. That's the point.
JAY-Yeah.
SACHS- And it seems to me that this idea of the open door policy of NATO is baloney. We don't accept it in our own neighborhood because it's baloney and we shouldn't pedal such nonsense in other places in the world. JAY- Yeah. Well, that's great. I'll let you go there. It also seems to me when NATO on the border and trade starts flowing in the other direction, it's as I said before, militaries, I don't know if they're protecting, they seem to just be protecting assets and private property and I'm sure Russia wants security, but they also had a lovely trade partner in Ukraine and that all came to an end too. And so it's also like what the fuck. We were, we were trying to be...
SACHS- Yeah. And by the way, Jay, just so you know, for people who don't know, one of the subplots of American policy was to keep Germany and Russia from getting too close economically. We're so cynical in the United States. We hated the pipeline from the beginning. Yeah. Not about Ukraine. We hated NordStream because, oh well, that's going to strengthen German industry. It's going to strengthen German-Russian cooperation. We don't want a powerful Russia-German cooperation. We want US primacy. That's a quite different thing. [JAY- Yeah.] And so there's all of the things that and Germany by making these this cheat on what Helmut Kohl told Gorbachev just absolutely cheating and unfortunately Germany was a real agent of this not just the US starting in 1992, 93 by cheating.
Germany undercut its own economy massively because it cut off this incredibly fruitful trade of energy coming from Russia and German manufactured goods, superb world-class machinery, flowing to Russia. Now you have German industry uncompetitive, on its knees, shedding jobs massively. And this is one of the one, one of the reasons for that, not the only, but one of the reasons for that is this disastrous war.
JAY- Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, I'll let you go. It seems we're at this turning point that I'm following the crisis in shipping and with the refineries. And it's it seems as you stated this, this could go one of two ways. And the path of the Yemen, Iran, Israel, America, Russia, all combining for World War III is getting a little too close for comfort. And let's hope.
SACHS- Absolutely.
JAY- Yeah. Let's hope you flee disaster. Let's change course fast. Yeah. Well, I'll let you go,
SACHS- Jay. Thanks a lot. I'll send you send you a couple things.
JAY- Absolutely.
§I don't recommend Jay's program and have no interest in seeing it again. So how did I find this interview? My YouTube algorithm found it and put it in my daily feed, since they already know what I'm looking for. So there also was, of course, a new performance by Ana Marija Knajnc in Ljubljana. I would rather be watching pipe-organ videos than processing this geopolitical material. But then, this truly is the End Times.
In one of Jay's last big questions, he is essentially telling Sachs that anyone talking against NATO must be pro-Putin, so how do you differentiate from being Pro-Putin? Rather rude, I would say, given all the interview ahead of that. It is like an appearance on Piers Morgan about two weeks ago, wherein Piers kept pressing Jeffrey Sachs on "Can't you say one thing negative about Putin?" Repeatedly. And Sachs was rather flummoxed by this, but eventually cracked down on him. I could certainly say something negative about President Putin, but what I would say and given Morgan's apparent blood pressure issues, I might not want to be responsible for his on-air detonation. Or would I?
Sergey Latyshev was writing yesterday (my-dolzhny-nachat-s-granicy-i-pobedit-v-pervyh-srazhenijah-litva-obkladyvaet-kaliningrad) about Lithuania trying to encircle Kaliningrad and hoping to host nuclear weapons, Latvia becoming even more Russophobic, and Estonia's new defense chief, Martin Herem, made a truly delusional statement, claiming that Tallinn is actually capable of fighting Russia single-handedly, stating that: "Estonia is capable of fighting Russia alone. We will smash Russian infrastructure. If you cross the border, we will kill you all. Russia must break up into a multitude of independent states." (With reports from Don Hank's Substack) And Estonia's delusions are backed up with Canadian troops. Really, you want to attack and break up Russia? FAFO.
Leave a comment! This is a re-direct to my Substack page.
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