Joshua Scheer Europe’s leaders are gambling with their people’s future—and, Jeffrey Sachs warns, with the survival of the world. Speaking to members of the European Parliament, the economist delivers a blistering indictment of American foreign policy and Europe’s willingness to follow Washington into confrontation with nuclear powers.
Drawing on decades of advising governments, Sachs argues that NATO expansion and the pursuit of American dominance helped squander the promise of peace after the Cold War. From Ukraine to Iran and Gaza, he challenges Western claims to moral leadership and demands a return to diplomacy. Europe, he insists, must find its own voice, negotiate directly with Russia and build relationships with China and the wider world around cooperation rather than war.
Acknowledgment: Thanks to MEP Danilo Della Valle for co-organizing the event with the Fidias Podcast. Visit their YouTube channel to watch more conversations and subscribe.
Please share this story and help us grow our network!
Transcript
This transcript was prepared from the supplied automated text and lightly edited for readability. Timestamps, nonverbal cues and verbal fillers have been removed, and obvious transcription errors in names and terms have been corrected.
Moderator:
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you so much for coming for this beautiful event. It’s very important to talk about these geopolitical changes. That’s why we have the best in the world I believe about geopolitics Jeffrey Sachs to help us and give us in a way some advice what we should do as Europeans in a way so we have here Danilo he’s a member of the European Parliament as well from the five stars Jeffrey the stage is yours we allow you to explain a bit your thoughts in 10 15 minutes and then we can take questions from members of the European Parliament. We can have a discussion and all this.
Jeffrey Sachs:
Perfect. Well, it’s it’s a great pleasure to be together with all of you. Thank you for thank you for the occasion and thank you for the chance to brainstorm. The world is in a very very strange place. Of course, the US is in a very deep political crisis. Europe, I would say, is in a political crisis. The continent is at war and the world is changing. Very rapidly. So it’s not exactly a safe moment or a moment that is so easy to understand but I want to share my thoughts with you from a constructive point of view of how we how we proceed to make peace consciously and affirmatively because if we continue the way we’re going. Any terrible thing can happen honestly. And the rhetoric of war which has overtaken Europe is shocking and extremely dangerous.
And you compound that with a completely completely failed American politics, which is supposed to be your ally. But I can tell you, we’ve never had a worse president in our history. Somebody who is more incompetent, unstable dumb and dangerous from a character point of view. He’s a pathological figure on top of all his other limitations. You really need to take care of Europe. And it’s not happening right now. There’s so much to discuss and so many ways we can start the discussion but let me perhaps start with the big picture. And the big picture is the world has changed dramatically in the last quarter century.
Most importantly with the rise of Asia, most importantly with the rise of China and the return of Asia to centrality in the world economy and centrality in world geopolitics and all in all I view that as a very good thing not a dangerous thing. What has happened is that Asia which had found itself very poor after a century and a half of European imperialism and which regained effective independence after World War II has substantially ended poverty and recovered a prosperous economy. And this is wonderful news because it means that for 4 billion people there’s been a marked improvement of well-being, material conditions and general economic life and that’s true of China, it’s true of India, it’s true of Southeast Asia, it’s true of Central Asia and this is one of the glorious achievements of the world over the last half century.
It is viewed with alarm in the United States and much of the European political class. And in a way that’s understandable, though profoundly wrong. It’s understandable because the Western world so-called basically the North Atlantic world ran the show for about 200 years. Really from the end of the Napoleonic Wars until the year 2000 or so. First with Britain in the main driver’s seat building the largest empire in history in the 19th century and first half of the 20th century and then with the United States as the inheritor of the British Empire after 1945 and this was the western world and the world of values and the world of blah blah blah because the western values were values in which Britain allowed tens of millions of people to starve to death under its laissez-faire policies so-called in India in Ireland and in many other places this was a war of imperial in Cyprus as well and in Cyprus imperial genocides this was not a world of values except values that we wanted to proclaim for ourselves But one of the main implications of this is that in 1820 at the eve of the western hegemony Asia constituted about 60% of world output as best we can measure it. And by 1950 it constituted 20% of world output with the same share of population being about 60%.
So Asia experienced a calamitous 150 years roughly from the beginning of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. And this was Britain’s control of India. This was the western effective control over much of China. This was China’s massive civil war, probably the biggest civil war in history, the so-called Taiping Rebellion, which took tens of millions of lives in the middle of the century after two British wars against China. And the complete colonization of Southeast Asia and other disasters that befell the region both through European European and American imperialism and the results of implications of World War I and World War II because after all, China lost 15 to 20 million people to Japan’s invasion of China from 1937 to 1945 which was a little known but absolutely brutal disgrace and calamity for China. So Europe reached I’m sorry Asia reached about 20% of world output and the western world was 50% plus of world output. The US and Europe even after the devastation of World War II. And that was the starting point of the postc colonial period. What’s happened since then in the 7576 years since 1950 is that Asia recovered its place in the world. And while Asia was 60% of world output in 1820 and 20% of world output in 1950, it’s now about 50% of world output. So it has not fully closed the gaps that opened with the period of imperial domination from the west but it has substantially has. I’m a development economist. So I work in have worked in China for more than 40 years. I’ve worked in India for more than 40 years off and on. I’ve for me this is a great success story to watch poverty ended and economic development hold. And I can tell you from firsthand observation, the Chinese people worked round the clock for 40 years to accomplish this. You’d go into a place at night and the buildings would be built all through the night on bamboo scaffolding and torch lights working to build the Chinese economy and living standards rose and people could feed their families again because they were hungry.
In fact in Mao’s disastrous great leap forward millions of people died between 1958 and 1961 people could send their children to school and then starting in the 1970s onward could send their children to Europe or to the United States for an education. And many of my students from those years are now senior officials in the government or senior professors in universities and they live good and decent lives that are the result of decades of extremely successful development and hard work. All of this is taken as a disaster in the United States. And the talk in the United States is preparing for war.
Because obviously we are nearly at war with China. Why? Well, we’re nearly at war with China because China has grown up again. In fact, they have an unbelievable temerity to have a larger economy than the United States. Can you imagine? This is China’s insolence. Of course, they have four times more people. So, the only way they could have a smaller economy would be to remain at less than 1/4 of our per capita income. And they decided they didn’t want to do that. They decided that they wanted to have a normal life. And lo and behold, if you multiply a normal life by 1.4 billion people and compare it to the US with its 349 million people, China ends up being bigger in absolute terms. Well, that’s almost a cause of spell because how dare they threaten American hegemony?
We don’t use that term. Sorry. How dare they threaten American primacy, which is the strategic objective of the United States. Well, there’s a second profoundly misbehaving country as well, and that of course is Russia. And I want to say that Russia’s biggest crime is that it has 17 million square kilometers. That’s its biggest crime. Why do I say that? Because with 17 million square kilometers, Russia became an enemy of the British Empire as of 1840. And it became an enemy of the United States of America when it took over the British Empire in 1945.
And no matter what Russia or the Soviet Union does, it’s an enemy. And if you behave that way long enough, you end up with the Ukraine war. And of course, there’s a lot to talk about. What I’ve just said makes me a Putin apologist and makes me a vile representative of Russian propaganda and every slur that might be thrown at me. But I’ve been there working for 37 years firsthand. I’m a nice guy. I’m no one’s apologist. I’ve never been on a payroll, by the way. Just if anyone hears anything ever to the contrary, I intelligently made it a policy 40 years ago when I started advising Bolivia and someone attacked me politically for being an external adviser. I decided on the spot, I’ll never take a penny from a government.
And I’ve advised dozens of governments without anything other than my academic salary. So just to be absolutely clear, nothing that I’m saying is because I am anyone’s consultant or anyone’s paid employee. Never have been. And I don’t even have to check the books because it’s been my policy my entire career. So, I’m not a Putin apologist, but I am a great fan of Mikhail Gorbachev, by the way, because he was the greatest man of peace of our age, and he wanted a common European home, and it was open to Europe to have it.
And it was actually promised by the Germans to have it on the occasion of German reunification because on January 30th, 1990, Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher in Tutzing explicitly said and unequivocally said NATO will operate nowhere eastward in the context of German reunification. And that speech you can find online. So go look at it. And on February 7th, a week later, my secretary of state James Baker III said to Gorbachev, “NATO will not move one inch eastward.” And on February 10th, 1990, Chancellor Helmut Kohl told that to Gorbachev face to face.
I was there not in those meetings, but I was there in Berlin in those weeks and months because I was an adviser to Gorbachev’s economic team in 1990. I was an adviser, the main external adviser to Poland in 1989. I watched Gorbachev put together the democratic transformation of Poland. By the way, you might be surprised to know Gorbachev intervened actively to say to General Jaruzelski, take those nice young people from solidarity into the government. That’s how revolutionarily peaceful we were in 1989. And I met Chancellor Kohl and I met Foreign Minister Genscher because I was working on the economic issues of the transition. Then we had peace in our hands for a century to come if we wanted it because the Russians were rather exhausted of 75 years of Bolshevism. It wasn’t exactly the most proficient economic system. They wanted out. They wanted peace. They wanted cooperation.
They wanted friendship. The word that Yeltsin used to me more than any other word was we want to be normal. Mr. Sachs, we want to be normal. We want to be normal politically. We want to be normal economically and review all the nice things that President Putin said when he came to the Bundestag and when he came to visit European institutions when he came to power because he said exactly the same thing. So what happened? What happened with China is the same thing that happened with Russia, which is that your friend and ally and supposed protector, the United States of America, my country, got it into its bright little head in 1992 that now it ran the world.
That became called neoconservatism. Call it what you want. Everybody believed it. Democrats, Republicans, didn’t matter. Nobody was properly mannered. By the way, I saw it because I had a little basic naive idea in 1990 that I had learned from being a student in the literature of John Maynard Keynes, which was when someone’s defeated, you help them so that they don’t turn against you, the next generation, which is what Keynes wrote in the economic consequences of the peace in 1919, which was the most important book personally for me and my career because he basically said, you know, economics also means being nice to be clever for the long term for yourself and for everybody else. Don’t be vindictive. It will boomerang.
So, I had a naive idea back in 1990. Why don’t we help the Soviet Union? It’s an economic crisis. There’s a big financial crisis. It wouldn’t cost us almost anything. But Gorbachev wants to make reforms. He’s the great statesman of peace. Let’s help him. So I proposed a package, the same package I proposed for Poland, which was adopted. And I thought, what a great convincing economist I am, but it was adopted because Poland was to be the eastern end of NATO. I didn’t know that at the time. It was adopted by the geostrategists not because they liked Poland, but partly because there were a lot of Polish voters in Chicago and in Detroit, but also because Poland was our side. But when I proposed it for the Soviet Union, it was turned down entirely, just to give you a little bit of a retrospective. And 25 years later, about 2 years ago, someone sent me the minutes of the National Security Council meeting at the White House on June 3rd, 1991 when my proposal was turned down because it had been released by a Freedom of Information Act and somebody had it. I had never seen it. And if anyone wants to write to me, I’ll send it to them.
It’s the most stunning display of American imbecility you can imagine. And that’s saying a lot because our country’s filled with imbeciles. I’m talking about the leadership. The public understands a lot better. But you know what they said about the proposal? We don’t have to give them anything, but what we need is a good PR package. That’s literally the word that’s used by Richard Darman who was head of office of management and budget. And I mentioned his name because he had been my colleague at Harvard and then went to OMB and dissed the idea of helping Gorbachev. And it’s like watching amateur hour to look at the minutes of this meeting because it’s a bunch of arrogant ignoramuses sitting around the table saying we don’t have to give anything to Gorbachev. And this fool Darman calls him a showman.
Oh, he’s a showman. He’s going to ask for more. We just need a good PR package. So that’s American foreign policy. That’s your ally and protector. That’s the great savior. That’s daddy to use the current technical language. Okay. Russia’s big crime was that it’s big just like China’s big crime. And I would tell you because I just published a book yesterday in German about Russophobia in Europe. A wonderful I recount in the first chapter of this book a wonderful study by a historian named Gleon written in 1950 called the origins of British Russophobia.
And he asked a poignant question completely relevant for us today. He said Britain and Russia were allies in 1815 on at Waterlue. 25 years later they’re enemies. What happened? He asks. Why did the British come to hate the Russians? And so he studied the Hansard. He studied every published record. He read everything. He read whatever was said in the House of Commons. He read every speech. His conclusion in this wonderful book is Russia did nothing except Britain got into its head that Russia was so big that it was a threat to India, to the British Empire in India. It was going to invade India in the Khyber Pass. The great game.
Something that never crossed the Zar’s mind by the way. But Britain talked itself into quite a froth and by n 1840 Russia was the enemy. In 1853 Palmerston the quintessential imperialist went to war in Crimea. Why? Long story but basically just to crush Russia in the Black Sea because Russia in 1852 said we could solve all the grievances there’s no reason for any conflict and Palmerston said we move on to Sevastopol and the reason is that he wanted to make Russia a non- entity so it couldn’t invade the British Empire that’s called Western values by the way and There was a three-year bloody war, the Crimean War. Okay, let me come back to the present.
We’re in the second Crimean War. We’re in the second Crimean War for exactly the same reason that Palmerston and Napoleon III launched the first Crimean War. This is not Putin’s war. This is our war, ladies and gentlemen. It just came about in a slightly different way, but very similar. Our strategists in the 1990s got it into their head that the US is the primary power of the world. You can use your adjective. We’re the world’s sole superpower. We are the indispensable nation. We are, as one of my least favorite secretaries of state, Madeleine Albright said, we’re the country that sees farther than any other country. Look it up what America says about itself.
And all the American strategists could think about was what are our threats? Well, really none. We’re we’re so powerful no one can face us down. All right. The only one we can see is Russia. Russia’s big. We just have to make sure it remains a third rate power or that it breaks apart as Brzezinski wanted it to do. So if you want to understand why we’re in the Crimean War, read Brzezinski’s book, The Grand Chessboard, whose subtitle is the strategic imperatives of American Primacy. And the book is about how the how the United States remains how it keeps primacy in Eurasia.
Excuse me. The US isn’t a Eurasian country, but it’s going to have primacy in Eurasia. You’re going to help, ladies and gentlemen, aren’t you? That’s so kind of you. You will host all our military bases and you will do what we say. And what was decided contrary to what Mr. Genscher and Mr. Cole and Mr. Baker said in January and February 1990 is we’re going to surround Russia with NATO and with Aegis missile systems because we will abandon the ABM treaty in 2002. Not for any reason because it was the stabilizing bulwark of the nuclear security system to not have anti-ballistic missiles.
But the US walked out of it in 2002 and began placements of Aegis missiles in Poland and Romania. And the Russians said we don’t like this. And they didn’t just say it ex post. They said it every year from 1991 onward when it became clear that the words that had been the basis of the 2+4 agreement were just being completely abandoned. But by 1994, Clinton had decided that NATO would expand. His own Secretary of Defense, William Perry, who’s a real gentleman, thought about resigning because this was terrible. Our leading statesman, George Kennan famously wrote in 1997, “This is the gravest mistake of foreign policy that America has made.”
Kissinger, who was not very clever, by the way, not a sweet man, had a debate in 1994, which you should all watch because it’ll also explain the war to you, where he debates Jack Matlock, who was our last ambassador to the Soviet Union, and he’s interviewed. We used to actually have news on the American media. Even you could have an interview with the debate that was a grown-up debate. We don’t have anything like this anymore, but you could actually have a half an hour on a serious issue. So, Robert MacNeil in 1994 interviewed Kissinger and Matlock about NATO enlargement.
And Robert MacNeil asks Matlock, should NATO enlarge? He said, no, no, no. You know this why we’re making better relations with Russia. There’s no reason there’s no risk. There’s no no reason to provoke anything. Then he turns to Kissinger, Mr. Kissinger, should NATO enlarge? Yes, NATO should enlarge. Why is Russia threat? No. No. No. Russia’s no threat. Well, are these countries asking for NATO membership? Are they endangered? No. No. No. They’re not endangered at all. Well, Mr. Kissinger, won’t this antagonize Russia? Yes. Yes, it will. Well, why, Mr. Kissinger, should NATO enlarge?
If it would antagonize Russia. And Kissinger answers, if you can’t antagonize Russia when it’s weak, what are you going to do when they’re strong? This is the logic. So NATO proceeded and it proceeded again. First in 1999, three countries, Hungary, Poland, Czech Republic. 2004 as you know well, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania, and Bulgaria. And then in 2008, the genius George Bush and his wonderful peacemaker Cheney announced at the Bucharest NATO summit that we’re going to go all the way to Ukraine and to that great North Atlantic country, Georgia.
Georgia is not a North Atlantic country, by the way. I checked. It’s not even a European country. And Europe should also understand, don’t get Armenia into this also. Armenia is not even part of Europe. Please leave them alone before something terrible happens. Just like Ukraine and you’re playing exactly with the same fire there as with Ukraine. So the Bucharest NATO summit happens in 2008 and on the first day Bush says now we need to commit to NATO enlargement to Ukraine and to Georgia. And Chancellor Merkel says, ” George, I don’t think that’s a good idea. That’s that’s a Russian red line. That is really not safe.” Angela, Angela, come on. We need to agree here. Were the western alliance.
Angela, you know, don’t hold back and they put the pressure on and in the second day, oh, they compromised. They announced that NATO will expand to Ukraine and to Georgia, but without a date. And Merkel, look at her book that she published last year. She writes, “This will be heard in Russia like as tantamount to a declaration of war.” That second day of the Bucharest summit was the last day of European foreign policy as far as I’m concerned because Europe should have stood up and said this is baloney. This is a provocation. This is completely unnecessary.
It should have stopped this cold and instead Merkel caved and the French caved and that was the last we ever heard of European foreign policy. Frankly, no one said a word boo since then to the Americans except two days ago because or no maybe because of don’t plea please daddy don’t invade Greenland. Will give you all the bases you want. You can do anything you want. You can have all the minerals and all, but don’t invade. Okay? And then the second is please don’t do the [unclear] deal. Okay? I admit the [unclear] deal shows this guy is the most idiotic incompetent person ever to hold the presidency just because he can’t keep a consistent idea for a day at a time. I [unclear] 15 minutes at a time, by the way. But Europe might have said something different about many other issues during the last 15 years, but didn’t. If the US bombs Iran, unprovoked, murders its leaders, do you think there’s a word of murmur from Europe? I haven’t heard one.
Everything seems to be fine except if you are Pedro Sanchez whom I admire tremendously and he says this isn’t right and suddenly the next day his wife is under investigation. So the games are everywhere. But Europe gave up its sovereignty in my view the second day of the Bucharest NATO summit. And you can watch the march to war from there because Yanukovych was rather clever actually. And Yanukovych said we should be neutral and he was right. And the Ukraine public overwhelmingly said don’t bring NATO here roughly 60 to 20% against the US said we got to get rid of this guy you can call it the Maidan revolution of dignity if you want I call it the coup you could call it the regime change operation you could call it the color revolution. Use whatever name you want, but my colleague Victoria Nuland distributed cookies on the Maidan and about $5 billion to help bring it about.
We needed to get rid of the guy because NATO enlargement needs not countries that call for neutrality, but countries that call for western alliance. And so on February 21st, 2014, the German foreign minister, French foreign minister, and Polish foreign minister negotiated with Yanukovych for a constitutional continuation of government with the unity government and elections later in 2014. And in the next day, there was a violent coup. And I mean violent because now it is well understood that the killing in the streets of the Maidan was by the right-wing forces shooting from the Maidan controlled buildings. This is Mr. Katchanovski if you want to read the gruesome details in hundreds of pages of testimony. But this was a setup and the next day Yanukovych is deposed and the United States immediately recognizes the next government. It doesn’t say, “Wait a minute, this is extra constitutional and we want to make sure the Ukraine constitution and Europe doesn’t even have the gumption to say, excuse me, we had an agreement the night before.” Not a word. Europe immediately falls into line.
So you get a coup and of course everything follows from that. Russia intervenes in Crimea and the Donbas. Of course it intervenes. It knows what it’s facing and it proposes something actually not bad. The next February and that is the Minsk agreement. And the Minsk agreement is very interesting because the Minsk agreement wasn’t a Russian claim of territory. It wasn’t President Putin being Peter the Great to rebuild the Russian Empire and all the blah blah blah that you hear from this absurd propaganda in Brussels, in Berlin, and in Washington and in especially London.
No, it wasn’t anything like that. It said give autonomy to the ethnic Russian region. And you know where the idea came from to a large extent? It came from Bolzano. It came from South Tyrol in Italy because Merkel knew that experience of the German minority in South Tyrol. It had been quite successful, very prosperous. We talked to the mayor of Bolzano who said Merkel came often. Thought that would be a great role model for Minsk II and it would have been except the United States said no we’re not doing that Ukraine is a unitary state except for the fact that the Minsk agreement was signed unanimously ratified by the security council and then the US and Ukraine said no thanks and Europe Europe fell into line because there was a Normandy process, you’ll recall, where Germany and France were to be the guarantors of the Minsk II agreement and they completely shut up. And Merkel herself said afterwards, well, this was just a holding period. This wasn’t a real agreement. I don’t believe that, by the way, that she meant that at the beginning. She’s better than that. But that’s what she was told to do after the fact and that’s what happened. So the Minsk II agreement disappeared and then for me a very interesting part of the story picked up in Trump by the way Trump says if I were president there wouldn’t have been the war. Trump of course again technical term in international relations is the biggest bullshitter ever on every single issue and he presided over the building of a million person NATO interoperable army in Ukraine. Thank you. That was his doing between 2017 and 2021.
In 2021, in December, President Putin put on the table draft agreements with NATO and with the United States for security arrangements. And at the core of this was no more NATO enlargement. There were other claims that I don’t think NATO should have or ever would have accepted, but at the core of this was stop the NATO enlargement. So, I called the White House, the Biden White House. These were supposedly my friends, I thought. And I talked to Jake Sullivan, the national security adviser. I said, “Jake, take the deal. Take the off-ramp. Avoid a war. He said, “No, Jeffrey.
NATO has an open door policy. We can’t declare that NATO won’t enlarge. We have an open door policy.” I said, “Jake, are you kidding? Really? Are you kidding? Does Mexico have an open door policy to host a Chinese base? Does Canada have a open door policy to hold host a Russian base in Windsor? What is this open door I said, ‘Oh, Jeffrey, don’t worry. Don’t worry. NATO’s not going to enlarge to Ukraine. I said, “Oh, Jake, that’s really interesting. Why don’t you just say that publicly?” Oh, no. We can’t say that publicly, Jeffrey. We have an open door policy.
So I said, “Jake, you’re going to have a war over something that’s not even going to happen.” And he said, “Jeff, don’t worry. There’s not going to be a war.” Click, that is American foreign policy. Honest to God, I can’t even tell you the incompetence of this. Every sentence incompetent. America has rejected an open door policy in the Western Hemisphere since 1823. It’s called the Monroe Doctrine. There is no open door. The doors closed. But the idea that America can’t put its military bases in Ukraine, that’s Putin being a dictator.
Come on, ladies and gentlemen. This is what got us into this that we can’t honestly focus on what was said, what was done, why it was done, what the concerns are, and what leads us to this. And that’s why we’re in this war. And then to listen to this for four years is really unbelievable. And by the way, I know the European leaders, many of them, not all of them. And I know what they’ve said to me privately over the years and what they say publicly. And I know leaders today who are heads of state or heads of government I should say technically who are heads of government in Europe who said to me in 2008, Jeff, what is your president doing pushing this NATO enlargement?
Now they’re public defenders of everything. What is this? That’s how we all get killed if we if nobody can speak the truth to any of this. This is not propaganda. This is just basic sense and basic history. So my view is there is no reason for a war with Russia. There is no reason for a war with China. There’s no reason for any of these wars. There’s no reason for a genocide in Gaza. For God’s sake, that is just the United States and Israel being complicit in a genocide because the United States vetos the state of Palestine. That’s all that this is. And that has its own history. But Mr.
Netanyahu’s party since 1977 said that all the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea will be Israeli sovereignty. So the slogan that gets my students arrested right now from the river to the sea is Netanyahu slogan by the way. It’s the Likud slogan. It’s not the Palestinian slogan. It’s the Likud slogan. There is no reason for any of these wars. And by the way, I didn’t hear Europe speak a murmur about America’s attack on Iran other than Pedro Sanchez. Now, I may miss some leaders, but I don’t think I miss too many.
That is a brazen, murderous violation of every single international standard we have. And Trump brags, “Oh, the others, my six predecessors wouldn’t do it.” Yeah, you’re the only one stupid enough to do this. But where’s Europe? Let me tell you and then I’ll stop. Where is Europe on Iran? I’ll tell you a little story and then I’ll stop. The day of the attack, I was asked by the Chinese mission at the UN and by the Russian mission and by the Iranian mission, would I say something in the UN Security Council?
Cuz I believe in peace and I don’t believe in murdering another country’s leadership. I think it’s a bad idea, especially when you’re in the middle of negotiations, which is why they were all assembled at the Supreme Leader’s residence to discuss what their negotiating position would be in Vienna early in the following week. And Mossad, which is so clever, said, “Oh, they’re all going to be meeting. Why don’t we kill them all? Very intelligent Israeli policy, I may add. And Trump, being the fool that he is, said, “Yeah, that’s a great idea. I kidnapped the president of Venezuela. Now I have all their oil revenues. Let’s do the same with Iran.
I’ll I’ll choose the next leader the next day.” He literally thought, “Well, in any event, they attacked and the Security Council met that afternoon and I was asked to testify.” So, I went to the Security Council chamber and the Brits were in the seat and they ruled me out of order that no, there wouldn’t be any witnesses and Mr. Sachs has no role in this discussion. Okay, that’s Britain. I’ve come to understand Britain well over the last 50 years. They still believe they’re the British Empire, by the way. Just to let you know if there’s any doubt.
But I sat there and I sat there in growing absolute shock because every European ambassador started with a criticism of Iran for attacking its neighbors. You can’t make this up. It happened that Bahrain was the first to speak. You know that Bahrain hosts the American fleet in the Persian Gulf. And so when Iran was attacked that day, they attacked the British fleet. And literally, and I’m quoting now, I may get a word wrong, but the Bahraini ambassador was the first to open the meeting and said, “We are meeting here today to condemn the unprovoked attack by Iran on Bahrain.”
Okay, I thought that’s a little weird, unprovoked, but it went on the whole session this way. The French ambassador, the British ambassador, the Greek ambassador, some a little bit with glimpses of humanity, most not. It was all Iran. Iran, a criminal state. Nobody in Europe said the United States should not have started a war against Iran. So honestly, I love Europe, but not this political leadership right now. I don’t understand it. Europe had a voice even with the US dependency. Europe used to have a voice. There were leaders here that made a difference.
Willy Brandt and Helmut Schmidt and Helmet Cole and Schroeder and I would say Angela Merkel to the first day of the Bucharest NATO summit. These were real people. They thought, they discussed, they debated, they stood up for Europe’s post World War II values, which have not always been Europe’s values, but were the values that were learned and raised after World War II. And drawing on the best of western civilization I might add. So they were western values just not the ones that were always deployed and Mitterrand and you can go on and on on the list of people who were impressive people who spoke and opposed the Iraq war or stood up for Ostpolitik or advised that we shouldn’t do this or shouldn’t do that or wanted the Helsinki Final Act and the OSCE and indivisible security.
So that’s the Europe I really want. I know it’s there. I think it’s the overwhelming wish of the European public because it doesn’t surprise me that Macron’s I think his approval rating next time around will be maybe you’ll need a microscope to find a positive value. I don’t think it can reach negative technically, but it will reach near zero. And hundreds of thousands of young people on the streets of France are signifying that. And Merz has to be the least successful politician in chancellor in modern German history, the least approved. And because he’s a warmonger and why he’s a warmonger, I can’t understand.
Because he should pick up the phone and call his counterpart in Moscow and say, “President Putin, it’s time that we talked.” That should have been the first thing he did the first day of office. Maybe it would have been disappointing, but he would have tried. But he never tried. So that’s the Europe we need. I’m an outsider, but I love Europe. So I don’t want you to give up on doing that. I don’t think it takes years of change. It takes a change of understanding and heart. I would recommend doing it tomorrow before Ukraine freezes this winter so the suffering stops. Europe is not standing up for Ukraine. Europe is killing Ukraine. By the way, people are going to die in mass numbers. There won’t be safe water.
Russia’s fighting a war to win right now because Europe every day says we’re fighting a war to win too. This kind of rhetoric is madness in the nuclear age to begin with. Complete madness. It’s also madness giving given what the stakes are. And maybe just to really finish, this is not about a ceasefire. This is about a European politician standing up and saying, “Mr. Putin, NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine or to Georgia. Now, let’s stop the war.” That’s what this is about. And the war will stop on that basis. And you know what? There will be disagreements about the borders because we will not have a juridical settlement about borders. We’ll have an armistice line and we’ll have a line of administrative control and that’s like a lot of places in this world and that could stretch for years or decades actually. But the fighting will stop, the madness will stop. The march to nuclear war will stop. And that requires not every day saying we must have a ceasefire, but rather we must have peace and inclusive security. And that’s easy to accomplish because the reason for this war is absolutely clear. Thanks a lot.
Moderator:
We gave you 15 minutes or 10 and you did 1 hour. But it was amazing. Thank you. Yeah, really interesting and really inspiring. I will ask one two questions and then if you want a little to ask and then we jump quickly to some questions very brief. So now this house is gearing up. Europe is gearing up. There is a lot of money in building weapons and all this stuff. So we are 450 million people in Europe. Russia is 180 million. So I’m I’m not saying that you we support it.
But do you what you think will happen? You think we’re going to be able as Europe that they continue fighting? You think we’re going to be able to counterbalance because now Russia is winning and yeah if you can share a bit what you think will happen now
Jeffrey Sachs:
For sure diplomacy is the way but I think Ukraine will will be destroyed before any European weapons even pass a production line and even if they did it won’t stop anything. You’re confronting a nuclear superpower. Using language of we must defeat Russia or Russia must lose to a nuclear superpower is a mind-boggling error. It’s an error of category. It’s an error of judgment. It’s an error that could get everybody killed. There is a famous line in a speech by President Kennedy. I may be able to pull it up. Okay. So let me just give you the context. In the October missile crisis. I think everybody knows we came close to nuclear Armageddon and we came if you don’t know the history read a book by Martin Sherwin called Gambling with Armageddon which was by the greatest American historian of the atomic age and it’s a definitive account of the Cuban missile crisis more fascinating than you can imagine but he talks about the fact that we came within 1 second of a nuclear attack by a disabled Russian submarine with the nuclear tip torpedo that under American doctrine would have led to a full nuclear counter strike by the United States that would have probably ended civilization.
And Kennedy after this finding his way out of this mess and Khrushchev finding the way out of this mess. And they were both great men, by the way, because all their advisors said, “Go to war.” And Kennedy and Khrushchev said, “That’s not a good idea. Let’s find a way out of this.” And they did. And we survived to tell about it. And in the next year, Kennedy was determined to pull the world back from the brink of nuclear war. And that’s where the partial nuclear testban treaty came from. And I wrote a book about this episode called To Move the World, JFK’s Quest for Peace. It’s a good short book, quick read, but it’s about a famous speech that Kennedy gave on June 10, 1963, where he told the American people, “We need to make peace with the other side.” He didn’t give demands to the Soviet Union. He told the American people, “Let’s think because otherwise we’re all going to die. So, let’s think.” And when Khrushchev read the speech, he said, “I want to make peace.” Because Kennedy did not say, “You do this, you do that, you’re evil, you’re this, you’re that.” Kennedy said, “We need to rethink our attitude so that we can make peace.” And Khrushchev said, “Okay, us too.
We too and peace started. So just a little bit of respect is what Kennedy showed brilliantly. It’s not just a little bit of respect. It’s the most eloquent speech. But in it he says the following. Above all, while defending our own vital interests, nuclear powers must avert those confrontations which bring an adversary to a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. To adopt that kind of course in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy or of a collective death wish for the world.
Okay, I want to explain why this is so important. After the missile crisis, Kennedy says, “Above all,” in a speech filled with important points, he says, “Above all,” and he means it. And above all, what? Do not put a nuclear power into a choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war. Well, Madame Kallas wants to humiliate Russia every single day. The Baltic states want to humiliate Russia every single day. Mr. Sikorski wants to humiliate Russia every single day. And I’m happy to name names because I worked with all of their governments.
And I have the top award from the Estonian government for my service to that country. And I have the top award from the Polish government for my service to that country. I’m no enemy of their country. I help them at crucial moments. Stop trying to humiliate Russia. Stop trying to force Russia into a quote humiliating defeat. Above all, avoid that because that is a death wish. Do you really want the death wish? Do you want some stupid American general saying we could take Kaliningrad, no problem? And then when Putin says, “We’ll use all means to defend it.” Then having all these stupid pundits saying, “Oh, he’s just bluffing.” I’m so sick of these pundits like Rockman.
What are these people? What are they going to do after the nuclear war? Oh, I’m sorry. He wasn’t bluffing. Is the idea really humiliation or the person that lived through this more than any other person in history telling you avoid forcing a humiliating retreat? So, what is this arming to go to war with Russia? They have 1,600 actively deployed nuclear weapons. Are you kidding? What are you thinking? Sit down and talk honestly and stop wasting your money on all of this stuff. Look at the PISA scores that came out last week. Europe did not do well and that’s why the students in Paris are out on the streets. They’re not getting a decent education right now. Shame.
Britain can’t keep its health service open. We really want to have World War II just at this moment. What? To avoid fiscal insolvency. So, no, it’s not a good idea. It’s much cheaper to have a phone call. Doesn’t cost €450 billion euros or 900 billion euros. And I’ve even offered my own Zoom account. If President Costa wants to use it or if Chancellor Merz wants to use it, I’ll pay the bill. Make a phone call. Meet Lavrov. I’ve known him for 30 years. He’s incredibly smart. Talk to him. Review the history.
Talk about what could be done. Ah, there will be some things unacceptable, but there will be many things absolutely correct, too. And that’s when you have diplomacy. So, no, this is not a good idea to build up these armaments because Russia doesn’t have the slightest interest in marching into Europe. And it never did except when Napoleon bothered them and when Hitler bothered them. It never did. Just leave a little space for Russia. They’ll leave a little space for you. My proposal is Ukraine should be neutral and that works for your security and it works for Russia’s security and it works for Ukraine’s security by the way just like for Austria.
What a wonderful arrangement Austria made in 1955. It escaped the cold war division by declaring neutrality. And by the way, had Germany declared neutrality in 1952, as Stalin suggested to Adenauer, the Cold War would have ended in 1952. And Adenauer turned it down because he said, “I’d rather have a divided Germany based in with the West based in with the West Germany based in with the US than a unified neutral Germany.” And when Ralph Steininger, the German historian, studied this question, he uncovered a document in the UK actually, which had been handed by a German official to a senior foreign office, where Adenauer said, “I’m not I don’t want unification and neutrality because I distrust Stalin. I don’t want it because I distrust the German people is what he said. Incredible.
But he never said that publicly. So he turned down the chance to end the cold war in 1952. But if we want to end the hot war right now, Ukraine should be neutral. Period.
Moderator:
Thank you for your passion by way that you bring here because there is a lot of people are dying. This is very serious, very very serious. And also I want to thank you because before we had a podcast and we have a problem in Cyprus as well, Cyprus is occupied by Turkey and you offer to do the same thing that you are offering now to because you are friends with Erdogan to sit down with the president of Cyprus with Erdogan and hopefully we can solve problems by talking. So you guys I’m sure you have some questions also. Daril, if you want to jump in, feel free. So let’s start with Slovakia.
Audience member:
Dear professor, you are true legend in Slovakia because you were few years ago in TV discussion with one moderator maybe remember and she was fired because you tell the truth you told the truth about Russia and Ukraine. So maybe you remember. Thank you for coming and thank you for excellent lecture. My question is you know as you said the old world order is collapsing. This world order was based on this American hegemony and now there will be the new world order maybe which will be replacing this the old one. Can you imagine this new world order based on the equilibrium on the balance between the United States and on the one side and the BRICS countries including China, Russia and others on the other side and what should be the role of the European Union in this arrangement because for now we are just the puppets of the United States and very dependent energetically, economically, politically and militarily and that’s not good for us as you said and maybe one small question now you know that the west betrayed betrayed the Russians in the 90s and then if you are if you were the adviser of Gorbachev you have some time machine coming back to the time what would you have advised differently to Gorbachev and others now knowing that they’re betrayed betrays thank you very much
Jeffrey Sachs:
So I believe in a world of regions because in our world today no country not Slovakia not Germany not France not the United States not China is big enough on its own to make a decarbonized energy system or to save the physical environment or to handle many challenges of AI and many other things that we’re going to face. So I believe in a strong Europe and I believe in other regions of the world also I used to say emulate the European Union you know make a union. So I have counseled African countries for decades to strengthen the African Union. I work with ASEAN to strengthen the countries of Southeast Asia as a union and so on.
What does that mean for the world order? I say right now there are four superpowers the United States, Russia, China and India. Europe is of course by economic terms, quality of life terms a superpower but not in geopolitical terms because there is no European geopolitics right now but there should be European geopolitics that reflects Europe’s interests but interests in peace not interests in a coming war with the Russia as I’ve emphasized I believe not in blocks but in a concert. And Europe’s finest moment of peace was the 19th century. It wasn’t perfect, but it was the concert of Europe. It was after 1815 after Napoleon’s defeat first four powers Austria, Prussia, Britain and Russia and then soon after joined by France Bourbon France made a fivep power concert of Europe. Different interests, different countries, different politics, but they said we will consult each other regularly to avoid war in Europe. It worked very well for some decades even with a lot of strains like the Greek war of independence Serbia many things 1848 Europe avoided a general war again and the German the wars of German unification and Italian unification and the Crimean war were major wars.
Wars, but they were not Europeanwide wars. And even post 1871, the concert was still effective. By the 1870s and 1880s, it was really being managed by Bismarck who was an extraordinarily shrewd and effective chancellor who wanted peace actually. He wanted German unification and that meant wars but then he wanted peace in Europe. The concert broke down starting in 1890. It broke down when Kaiser Wilhelm II dismissed Bismarck and the so-called insurance treaty with Russia was allowed to lapse and Germany and Russia had had a secret agreement that Bismarck had negotiated with the Romanovs that they would basically defend each other if attacked by a third country. And this was the reinsurance treaty and it was allowed to lapse after Bismarck was Bismarck was thrown out and Russia signed an alliance with France and then in 1907 Britain joined and that became the Entente and that was opposed by the grand alliance of Austria, Germany and Italy. So Europe by 1907 was no longer a concert. It was divided into two blocks. And when the arch duke was killed in Sarajevo in June 28th 20 1914, those two blocks step by step ended up in the giant clash that created World War I.
I’m against blocks. I’m against the idea of the world divided in two. I think it’s a terrible idea. I don’t even like alliances at all. I would dissolve NATO. And I would say that Europe is not an ally of the United States. Europe and the US have interests. We have shared heritage, shared culture, but we’re not allies. I don’t like allies. What I like is law. I like the UN charter. And I like the idea of countries all abiding by shared principles for great powers. I like the idea of a concert of powers. So that was Franklin Roosevelt’s idea in 1945.
He called it the four policemen. His idea was that the UN would have four policemen. Britain, Soviet Union, China, and the United States. And de Gaulle was absolutely a clever and successful politician and elbowed his way in to be the fifth policeman. But the idea was that this would be a concert of great powers. And Roosevelt was really a great man, by the way. He just had a stunningly smart personality. And absolute so so effective actually and one of the things that he was effective at was holding an anti-hitler alliance together with Joseph Stalin. And Churchill could not have done it. Churchill was not so clever in that way at all. But Roosevelt was and everyone attacks him.
You know, he sidled up to Joe Stalin and so forth, but Roosevelt was a lot smarter than sidling up to somebody. Roosevelt was determined that we should cooperate rather than have war. And as I often say, if there were hypertensive medicines in 1945, anti-hypertension medicines, we would never have had a cold war because Roosevelt died at age 63. He was a young man. But he had very high blood pressure. And he dropped dead on April 12th, 1945. And everyone told Truman, “We’re going to war with the Soviet Union.” And you know, days after Ger Germany’s surrender on May on May 8th, everyone knows that Churchill asked his own war command, “Why don’t we invade the Soviet Union now?” Operation Unthinkable.
This was not Roosevelt’s idea. Roosevelt’s idea was that four powers, very different governance, could cooperate actually. And the Security Council was to be a concert of powers, not a chamber of showmanship and confrontation. And the idea of the veto originally was not what we think, which was, you know, stop the commies or you know, make sure that they can’t do something terrible. The idea of the veto was let’s make sure all the great powers act in concert together. I want the United States, India, China, Russia to cooperate. I don’t want to have a block. I don’t see any reason to oppose China. China just wants normal. It wants decent life. It wants not to be surrounded by the United States military bases. We have a doctrine, by the way, insane, by one of our worst foreign ministers ever, John Foster Dulles, whom, by the way, you should know, Churchill said, Dull, Duller, Dulles. And this is a pretty good summary of John Foster Dulles. But John Foster Dulles said in 1951, “We need to keep China away from the open blue ocean.” Can you imagine? It’s American doctrine that China should not have access to the Pacific Ocean. It’s called the First Island chain. This is insane. How many wars do we need in this world? China can’t have access to the Pacific Ocean. America’s boundary is Japan.
That’s where our boundary is. Yes, apparently. So, I don’t want to block against China. There’s a terrible article in foreign affairs this issue by Kurt Campbell and don’t remember his first name. Doshi is the co-author. That we need to expand our alliance and our block so that we can counterbalance China. So I wrote a response to it saying that’s exactly the logic that got us into World War I. That’s not the way out of the war. Unfortunately foreign affairs will not publish it. So you’ll never see it that way. I’m going to try some other way to express the idea. But no, let’s not have a block.
What does it mean for Europe? Again, it’s the paradox is European institutions are losing their popularity and support tremendously, dramatically because of I think bad decisions. But this is a terrible mistake to think that you know somehow more nationalism is going to solve things in Europe. That’s not really the point. Better decisions would solve things for Europe. The problem in Europe is not Europeanwide institutions. The problem in Europe is bad choices. But if you fragment, it’s going to be much worse because you need scale. You actually need some champions. Airbus was a very good idea. You need some responses for AI and for other areas as well. So you’re not completely dependent on the United States for everything.
So I’m for a strong Europe as a another part of this concert of powers and think that this is and would like Europeans to champion Europe, but not a Europe that’s going to war. That’s going to get everyone killed. That’s not something to champion. So champion the right things and become Europe was the greatest expositor of sustainable development, of quality of life, of peaceful institutions, of unity, of constituent states in a region, of European green deal, of many absolutely wonderful pioneering things that had the whole world looking to Europe. That’s great power status.
That’s doing the right thing. But being part of Mr. Trump’s delusional world is not the right thing.
Questioner:
No, just to just to say so as also Fidas said sometimes the EU uses the magic word autonomy strategic autonomy no to justify justify the rearmu or other geopolitical choice. But it seems sometimes that EU serves the interest of the US like during like the resolution about China or about Russia, Ukraine and I want I want to ask you if how you define the EU today in a few words for example and another thing the global south could the global south do some actions to prevent the scenario you outlined now and to restore international law and the UN. Great.
Jeffrey Sachs:
Wonderful. Yeah. The biggest mistake of this institution of the European Union is that it has put NATO and Europe as the same thing. And that’s juridically true in a lot of ways. You could explain it to me better than I understand it, but the link of Europe and NATO as the same. It’s not, of course, it’s not the same, but they’re so closely intertwined that this is the opposite of strategic autonomy, the very opposite of it. It’s a little sad that both institutions are in the same city. This city. If NATO were somewhere away, it would be much better for Europe.
I would end NATO personally as Europe’s friend. I would just end NATO. I don’t think it serves any purpose. I don’t think it protects you at all. I think it would clarify thinking and I would end NATO period. Of course, I would do diplomacy alongside it. So, I would actually check out a few things first. But I would end NATO and Europe needs a modest but real defense. No question. It raises a lot of very sensitive issues especially the nuclear weapons issue and that has to be faced and it’s a it’s a real issue but Europe doesn’t need a thousand nuclear weapons and Europe also is not vulnerable to attack unless it provokes a war. So don’t take Kaliningrad in one hour.
Don’t don’t provoke Russia. Tell your friends in Estonia, too small. Calm down. Don’t be nasty. No reason. And then you can start to have strategic autonomy in terms of Europe’s interests. Europe and Russia are natural trading partners. Because Russia is 17 million square kilometers with 150 million people. It’s filled with natural resources. Europe’s a very crowded place. Western Europe. It’s one of the most densely settled places on the whole world. Economic theory says, “Aha, one trades land-based resources, the other trades basically high-skilled intensive resources. That’s a great interchange, mutually beneficial for both sides.” That’s not just a theory. That’s what happened between 1990 and around 2010 or even around 2020. Nord Stream was a great pipeline for Europe. Of course, I would like it to have been phased out over time because I want fossil fuels to end anyway.
But the idea of Russia and Europe being natural trading partners is absolutely right. Europe did a huge huge huge economic disaster in these 20 rounds of sanctions. They’ve not really hurt Russia, but they’ve really hurt Europe. You cut yourself off from a principal trading partner, which is a very destructive thing to do. And you can see the European economy is spiraling downward because of this. Germany, you know, Germany will survive with its factories in China. But what kind of factories will there be in Germany? We’ll see. But a lot less than before.
Because the high price US LNG is not going to make a competitive German industry. And by the way, so much of Central Europe depends on the German economy. And that just means that everybody falls down. And Keynesian militarism that you think you’re going to get a quality of life by building a lot of missiles. No, thank you. The quality of life does not come from building missiles. The quality of life comes from having a having a civilian economy that can deliver what people of Europe want. So the problem is the following. Europe cut itself off from Russia.
Russia is not suffering because Russia said, “Okay, we have another partner of a densely populated large economy that functions the same way that Europe functioned for us as a trading partner. It’s called China.” That is not a marriage of convenience. That is an absolutely sensible economic partnership. Great thing for China. China is so crowded and now it has an extra 17 and a half million square kilometers of natural resources and Russia needs humanoid robots because it’s got a declining population in a vast land area. So China’s robots are going to be mining Russia’s resources and farming Russia’s vast regions and it’s a great partnership. So Russia is going to be a very successful country and successful economy in the future.
Europe should trade like it always has. But who does Europe trade with now? Well, can’t trade with China. Can’t trade with Russia. US doesn’t want to trade with you. This is all self-defeating. There is no economic strategy here. So my view is you should have my view my basic view is the Eurasian land area the supercontinent is home to about 70% of the world population and it should be the center of the world economy and it’s a great place for Europe on one end and a great place for China on the other end and the two should be connected and everything in between should be prospering by this interconnectivity and this should be one peaceful integrated supercontinent and that’s an economic strategy but I don’t know what Europe’s economic strategy is right now doesn’t want to trade with anybody it’s becoming more and more protectionist Donald Trump is as I say you know he wants to sell you liquefied natural gas okay they they pay his campaign bills and you buy it.
So I would repair the pipeline and I would reestablish economic relations with Russia [unclear]
Audience member:
From Czech Republic member of the European Parliament. Thank you very much professor for the lecture and also for the lecture in Slovakia because in Slovakia now only 30% of people 40 believe that the Ukraine war was started by Russia whereas 17 believe it was Ukraine and 34 it was the west so and it is by Gopse they have to be truthful because they are paid by no but I wanted to ask what makes us all think that the west that means even United States and EU combined would be a dominant or at least inter interesting force in the future because we are basically the size in population of Assan.
Yes. We are speaking about the conflict between United States and Russia but one is 340 and another is 140 something which basically the other billions of people are watching with vague interest but isn’t it that it will resolve itself because it will become irrelevant towards the real economic forces of the big world big countries
Jeffrey Sachs:
Yeah so this also comes to what what Denilo was asking me and I forgot to mention it which is about the so-called global south. I don’t like the term, by the way, cuz almost all of the global south is in the north. And I like geography. So, I just don’t like the term. The term I use is the emerging markets and developing countries, EMDC’s. And interestingly, the EMDC’s is 85% of the world population. That’s a lot. And it’s about right now 60% of the world output. So here are some basic facts. I won’t have them precisely right but roughly speaking in 1950 Europe and the US the EU 27 and the US each had about 25% of world output. So between Europe and the United States it was about 50% of world output.
China a couple few percent couple percent I don’t remember exactly today the US and Europe US is 14% of world output the EU 27 is about 13% of world output so instead of 50% it’s 27% in population in 1950 if I remember correctly The US and Europe were about 20% of the world population and 50% of world output. So two and a half times the world average per capita income. And today the population of the EU and US is about 800 million combined. So it’s 10% of the world population. By 2100, both of those are going to shrink much further. So the share of the US and Europe in world output combined, I don’t know, I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but maybe 15% or so. And the world and population, the US will be 4% and Europe about 3.6%. So maybe 7 and 12 to 8% of the world in population and in output 10 to 15% something like that. So yes, the whole idea of the westernled world was a interesting phenomenon for two centuries and I won’t review the balance sheet again but it’s not going to happen again.
Just to be clear, China is not going to become the world hegemon in replacement of this also for a simple arithmetic reason which is that China’s population is going to decline dramatically. China is going to age. It will reach I think towards the end of the century a median age of about 57 and the population will be well under a billion people and on the UN’s extrapolation what they call the medium fertility scenario it’s under 800 million people so in a world of 10 billion so it becomes 18% of the world population today it goes down to 8% of the world population. And if you think about what that means for China’s likely share of world output, it peaks around now at around 20% of world output. And then because of the population decline, it starts declining. China’s not a world hegemon. China is a very successful country, a remarkably peaceful country, and an aging country.
And so the region that is most dramatic in population of course is Africa which is the only region in the world with very sharp growth ahead. India has a fertility rate near replacement but a little bit above. So it’s projected to peak at about 1.7 billion and then more or less level off at around 1.7 billion people. So it could be twice the size of China by 50 years from now. Africa is likely to double in population and could even do more than that. Right now Africa Africa was 8% of the world population in 1950 and today it is 18%.
So it went from around 250 million people to 1.5 billion people today. As of 2050, Africa will be about 2.5 billion people. And according to the UN medium scenario, 3.5 billion people as of 2100. By the way, for Europe’s sake, but of course much more for Africa’s sake, the single most strategic thing by far, period, for Africa is to get those kids in school now. And they’re not in school. And no one gives a damn, by the way. I can tell you. No one at the IMF, no one at the World Bank, no one anywhere really cares at all. I’m not saying people don’t ring their hands, but no one really cares in the sense of saying, “Oh my god, we’ve got hundreds of millions of kids that are going to grow up without an education.
What the hell is going to happen?” No one’s asking that. Not here. Not in this house, not in your your external EAS or whatever it’s called. Sorry. Apologies. No one asks questions like this. It’s amazing to me, by the way. Just amazing. What doesn’t get asked also. So all of this is to say yes the west will let’s hope we don’t blow ourselves up in the interim but the west will not run the world it doesn’t run the world now I don’t know the United States obviously can’t defeat Iran probably it can’t defeat Yemen we’re just in a different kind of and you can’t defeat Russia okay so we’re just in a different kind of world and the best thing would be to say, “Hey, we’re all stuck in this world together. What are we going to do?” Rather than the kind of we demand the western values and rules-based order which is farcical in terms rules-based order, the United Nations, the one the United States has walked out of. That’s the rules-based order. There is no US rules-based order or westernbased order. Period. There is a UNbased order. We should defend it, make it work, have a concert of nations that say we’re all in this together, and figure out what we’re going to do about some very, very serious problems.
Now having said all of that, what does that mean for Europe? Nothing bad. Nothing bad about being 4% of the world population or 8% of the world population or 12% of the question is the quality of life that we have. Are we living in peace? Are we living in with the education, with culture, with decency, with real values? Are we able to feed ourselves reliably? Can we enjoy the wonderful civilization that has been created here? Those are the real issues. And I always thought when I got into this gig many decades ago, I knew because this was the job of even before there were spreadsheets, I could have told you our share of the world would go down. And that seemed quite natural to me that this was a historic moment that or the last 200 years was something that wasn’t going to repeat in the in the same way anymore. And I always thought, what should the US do with its power? It should use its power now, which I said to myself in the 1990s, to build the kind of world we want to live in by the time that the US isn’t so powerful.
Well, we never got around to that because we got the idea instead that we’re going to rule the world forever and ever for as far as the eye can see. And now we’re playing out this game like a comic with a comic book president now who’s that’s unfair to comic books and a very dangerous one because of how completely inconsequential he is in understanding anything. So yeah, we’re losing time. What we should be doing when we have the relative weight is helping to build the world that we want to live in the future. That’s what we should do. And we have a lot of say right now. And Europe has the highest living standards in the world. And it’s got the highest evaluation of quality of life in the world because I published the World Happiness Report each year and helped get that started and Europe’s the top of the list basically the top 20 countries almost. That’s quality of life. Teach the rest of the world how to have a nice quality of life. Also, that doesn’t mean going to war with Russia. Means quite the opposite. And that’s a great vocation and everyone wants to come here. Everyone we’re staying in Rome this month. It is so packed with the rest of the world wanting to pour into enjoy the food, the history, the beauty, the climate, the concerts, everything else because the quality of life is really very very very very high. And that is that can be kept and even enhanced but not the way we’re going right now and not by remotely closing up breaking relations with China breaking relations with Russia and so forth. And just one more tip, but I think I’ve been absolutely clear.
Maybe in four weeks the cloud breaks a little bit in the United States. I hope we have an election and that it’s peaceful and that the votes are honestly counted and nothing can be taken for granted anymore. But I think that’s likely. And if it happens, Trump will lose at least one house of Congress and that will make a big difference by the way because it really will make a very big difference. It will be dangerous but it will make a positive difference. But it will be a dangerous period because Trump will become even more erratic and more hostile to our constitutional norms and institutions. But it will weaken him very very significantly in terms of actual power. And so this is something that to keep in mind. But what I was going to say is the US is going to be in a political crisis for the next 10 to 15 years. This is not just a Trump phenomenon that we get past this. We’re so confused.
We’re as confused as you guys. We don’t have any coherent discussion of anything in the United States right now. So don’t count on things returning to quote western normal. That part’s over. Europe needs to find its way right now. You don’t need to make an enemy of the United States, but this transatlantic alliance and this NATO business, this is [incomplete] your interests are with China, with India, with Russia, with Africa. That’s different. And don’t hang on the United States for your diplomacy. If a European leader says one more time, you need to let us at the table. You can’t negotiate without us.
Ladies and gentlemen, there’s no table. Just call Mr. Lavrov and say we’d like to talk. The United States can’t stop that. That’s just what you should do. You don’t need the United States for that. And in fact, the United I won’t give you an hour about Mr. Kushner and Mr. Witkoff, okay? This has nothing to do with diplomacy. So, make your own diplomacy, please.
Moderator:
Because we are running out of time, I want to just make one two points because you brought up Africa and the education in Africa. So one thing I did that was very interest you guys. I know you have questions but we’re running out of time because you brought up the education in Africa. One thing that I did in the past we it was an orphanage in Burundi, the poorest country in the world. So we went and equipped it with like 20 computers there and the kids now we put photo tags and the kids now have hundreds of kids around there have now access to the internet. So we want we are doing I did this personally with my own money and I did a goofund me and if someone that is watching this is interested to open more projects like that maybe they can send me in my email as a member of the European Parliament to kickstart that and do more. And another one thing that you said about education. I think education is one of the big important stuff that we should look in Europe. Our educational systems mostly suck. I will speak for my country Cyprus. And this is the kids are suffering. They growing up in a new era with phones. They’re getting so much education in between the internet and all this stuff and they go to schools and they feel like prison. So we need to step up and improve the
Jeffrey Sachs:
Educational system a lot. So, how interesting. By the way, look at the study, the PISA study that OECD released a couple of weeks ago. Very interesting. Number one in the world rankings is China. It’s of course not all of China. It’s Beijing, Shanghai, Jiangsu, Zhejiang. Four regions. Number one by far. All of the top rankings are East Asia. That’s not income and GDP level. That’s education. And that’s by the way just objective examinations of reading, science, and math. Europe second tier really much lower much lower. And then of course disaster because the PISA doesn’t even include all of a it doesn’t include almost any of Africa because African countries are not even at the bottom of that list. Exactly.
So we’ve got a lot of very practical basic things to do. Like you say this is should be no-brainer.
Moderator:
Okay. We want how did you enjoy your time here in the European Parliament Jeffrey?
Jeffrey Sachs:
I hope that I still get invited back sometime in the future, but I love being here. Thank you.
Moderator:
Thank you, Danilo. Thank you. And thank you guys for being here. Time. Thank you that you watch until the end. Time is the most important thing that you have. And thank you for spending your time with us. Good night. Thank You
Editor’s Note: At a moment when the once vaunted model of responsible journalism is overwhelmingly the play thing of self-serving billionaires and their corporate scribes, alternatives of integrity are desperately needed, and ScheerPost is one of them. Please support our independent journalism by contributing to our online donation platform, Network for Good, or send a check to our new PO Box. We can’t thank you enough, and promise to keep bringing you this kind of vital news.
You can also make a donation to our PayPal or subscribe to our Patreon.