Sachs talks about Ukraine, Israel, Iran, and China. He tells them: Pursue peace with Russia. A lot of what European leaders believe about Russia is childish. For example, Russia has no intention of invading Europe; its invasion in Ukraine was in response to aggressive NATO expansion. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the U.S. celebrated what it regarded as a unipolar world and decided it will do whatever it wants, regardless of what other countries want. The U.S. didn’t help Russia at all; it installed a kleptocracy. The U.S. expanded NATO relentless eastward, contrary to verbal (but binding) agreements with Gorbachev and other Soviet leaders. The archives online document this, but the U.S. media lies about it.
The Grand Chessboard, by Zbigniew Brzezinski, describes NATO expansion. There’s a chapter “What Will Russia Do?” that concludes that Russia will be powerless to stop NATO expansion. And Russia will never align with China and Iran. Brzezinski was wrong. The book and its thoughts explain why the U.S. is always at war. The U.S. doesn’t allow a country to be neutral.
Expansion into Ukraine was planned to block Russia’s access to the Black Sea. The importance of this was known for over 100 years.
The U.S. launched 100 regime change operations; that’s the main business of the CIA. U.S. foreign policy consists of demonizing some enemy as the next Hitler and trying to overthrow regimes it doesn’t like. Preferably they do it covertly, but they’ll do it overtly if they have to. The war in Iraq was directly engineered by Netanyahu. The war in Iraq was “directly concocted by Netanyahu and his colleagues in the U.S. Pentagon.” It was a war “carried out for Israel.” That was the last time Europe had a voice, since they opposed it.
The U.S. bombed Belgrade for 78 straight days in 1999 and splitting it apart. (Aren’t borders supposed to be sacrosanct?) The CIA engineered the South Sudan rebellion, too.
Mainstream media is effectively controlled by the government and is not a reliable source on foreign policy matters. EU mass media doesn’t tell the truth either. U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East has for decades been in the service of Netanyahu and the Israel lobby. On the web is documentation about Netanyahu’s plan for seven wars, six of which the U.S. dutifully pursued; Iran is next. You can listen to Gen. Wesley Clark talk about that online. The Mideast Plan goes back to a 1996 Israeli document “Clean Break.”
Thanks to Julian Assange’s WikiLeaks, we know about former CIA Director William Burn’s 2008 message to Condoleezza Rice about Russian unified opposition to NATO expansion. the Victor Yanukovich was elected in Ukraine in 2010 on a platform of neutrality. Russia is not trying to reconstruct the Russian empire; it’s “childish propaganda.” Russia wanted the Saverstopal Naval Base.
In 2014 the U.S. worked hard to overthrow Yanukovich. Everyone knows about the phone call between Victoria Nuland (Sach’s Columbia University colleague) and U.S. Ambassador Pyatt. Sachs plays the clip where Nuland says “Fuck the EU!” Sachs says he knows all these people. They all got promoted for what they did.
After the coup, Sachs was asked to help the new government. He flew to Maidan and was told how the U.S. paid the money for the people there. “Spontaneous? Revolution of Dignity? Ladies and Gentleman, please! Where do all these media outlets come from [in Maidan]? Where do all these people come from?” “It’s not a secret, except to the citizens of Europe and the United States.”
[Indeed, consider the $3 billion that USAID spent in just Ukraine,
according to the U.S. Embassy in Kiev, largely on anti-Russia media organizations. Alan McLeod
reports: “In total, USAID spends over a quarter of a billion dollars yearly training and funding a vast, sprawling network of more than 6,200 reporters at nearly 1,000 news outlets or journalism organizations, all under the rubric of promoting ‘independent media’”; that includes almost 90% of Ukraine’s media outlets.]
Sachs talks about the Minsk agreements that gave some autonomy to Russian speaking parts of Ukraine. The U.S. decided it wasn’t gonna be enforced. [It was a chance to arm Ukraine.] Trump 1 raised armaments. There were many thousands of deaths in the Donbas.
Sachs says the Democrats have become complete war mongers, just like most EU parliamentarians.
Sachs said he had a one hour conversation with Jake Sullivan begging him to publicly say that Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO. Sullivan agreed privately to Sachs that Ukraine wouldn’t join NATO but he refused to say it publicly, and he assured Sachs that there’d be no war. Sachs says these are not very bright people.
NATO has an open door policy: any country can join that wants to, even if it annoys Russia. Sachs considers the imaginary scenario in which China wants to build a military base in Ontario to protect China from Trump’s aggressiveness. Would the U.S. allow that? Grown-ups in Europe think Russia should put up with NATO expansion up to its borders.
The U.S. unilaterally abandoned the ABM Treaty in 2002. It “below a Russian gasket.” The U.S. put Aegis missile systems in Romania and Poland. Anthony Blinken told Russian foreign minister Surgey Lavrov in January of 2022 that the U.S. reserves the right to put missile systems wherever it wants, including Ukraine. Would the U.S. allow Russian missiles in Mexico?
And the U.S. put intermediate range missiles in Germany after walking out of the INF treaty in 2019. There is no nuclear arms framework now.
Sachs said he talked personally to all the parties of the March 2022 negotiations to end the war. Sachs flew to Ankara and spoke with them. “Ukraine walked away unilaterally from a near agreement” because the U.S. and U.K. told them to. If your security depends on Boris Johnson, God help us all! Keir Starmer is even worse.
A million or more Ukrainians died or are badly injured. Yet U.S. senators are gleeful and say it’s the best money Americans can spend, since no Americans are dying in the project. “It’s unreal.”
Sachs says he’s pro-Ukrainian. He advised them to save themselves and not listen to American leaders. Sachs quotes Henry Kissinger: It’s dangerous to be an enemy of the U.S., but to be a U.S. ally is fatal. Many people in the audience laughed. Sachs says it applies to Europe, too!
Trump wants to make peace with Russia because he doesn’t want to own a losing war, not because he’s moral. Sachs asks the EU politicians not to destroy their economies by pursuing war with Russia. They should trade with Russia and talk with Russia. He tried to tell EU leaders that, but they won’t listen. If they want to know how the U.S. destroyed the Nord Stream pipeline, he’ll tell them. (Many audience members laugh.) China is not our enemy; the only reason the U.S. is demonizing China is that China is winning economically and has a better system in many ways. EU subservience to the U.S. is not befitting the great nations in the EU.
Sachs says that E.U. stocks rose on news of negotiations and jokes that many people were horrified by the idea of negotiations.
The Trump administration is imperialist at heart. It is seriously possible that the U.S. will land troops in Danish territory (Greenland). “Please don’t have American officials as head of Europe. Have European official.” Negotiate with Russia. Stop the bombast and Russo-phobia.
The U.S. completely handed over foreign policy to Israel. Netanyahu wants war with Iran.
“China is a success story. That’s why it is viewed by the United States as an enemy…. That’s all!” (Huge applause from EU parliamentarians.)
To a question from a Czech, Sachs says: Russia will not invade Europe. It may go as far west as the Dnieper River. The Baltic states should make peace with Russia. Estonia and Latvia have about 25% Russian-speaking citizens.
Sachs sometimes says that EU and U.S. leaders act like children. His wife Sonia replies: that’s unfair to children. They’re worse than children.
A reporter from Belgium asks about EU plans to increase military spending to 5% (including in Belgium). “Europe is much better than NATO. In my opinion NATO isn’t even needed anymore.” It’s an instrument of U.S. hegemony. “Maybe Trump will disband NATO. Maybe Trump is gonna invade Greenland. Who knows?” Russia should invest in its security. Five percent is absurd. But buy European weapons, not U.S. weapons. “Trump is an arms salesman” Vance told the EU not to even thinking of having its own AI. Netherlands produces the world’s best lithography technology for making chips, but they allow the U.S. to dictate policy. Why? Have your own security and foreign policy framework. Europe stands for climate (unlike Trump), sustainable development, social democracy, multilateralism, the UN Charter. Marco Rubio canceled his trip to South Africa because of it had “equality and sustainability” were on the agenda.
Eighteen of the top happiest countries in the world, according to a report, are European. So have your own foreign policy. The world would be better if it were more like Europe.
Europe should talk directly to Russia, without Ukraine and the U.S. interference. The audience applauded.
In response to a German’s question about Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia wanting to join NATO, Sachs said he has no doubt they feared Russia, but the U.S. shouldn’t have supported that. The book “Hubris” explains the history of that. (Hubris: The American Origins of Russia’s War against Ukraine). The audience applauds when Sachs the history of NATO expansion into Georgia and Ukraine. They applaud again when Sachs says diplomats should be diplomats, not secretaries of war. Diplomats have a hard job. It’s a profession. It’s hard to smile while talking with your opponent. “I thought Stoltenberg was the worst, but it keeps getting worse.’ (People laugh.) Sachs says that foreign policy and security have to be a unified EU matter, not 27 different policies.
Sachs says the UK still thinks it runs the world, but in reality it’s like the Monty Python skit in which the knight gets all his limbs cut off but continues fighting. There were pseudo-scientific theories that explained wars as natural.
A MoP from Luxembourg asks what’s the long-term consequence of having lost the war in Ukraine. Sachs says we could be in an age of abundance if we got our heads on straight and stop wars. AI is doing what brilliant scientists couldn’t do. With renewable energy (which has gotten 100 times cheaper) we could change the world. But we continue to fight avoidable wars. “The long term, if we don’t blow ourselves up, is very good.”
A woman asks whether countries bordering Russia need to do Finlandization or Austriaization. Sachs says “Finlandization landed Finland as Number 1 in the world happiness report year after year, rich, successful, happy and secure, pre-NATO.” Smart. Militarizing is a mistake. The U.S. pushed its nose into Russia. Don’t allow that. Michael Von Der, sitting besides Sachs, says that the EU has to create peace in Europe.
Sachs spoke 98 minutes off the cuff. Huge applause at the end.
