Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) Lets Americans Drown and Burn Unless Ukraine Gets More Money, Plus: Leading Establishment Critic Jeffrey Sachs on Ukraine, Taiwan, BRICS, and more | SYSTEM UPDATE #141
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Welcome to a new episode of System Update, our live nightly show that airs every Monday through Friday at 7 p.m.
Eastern, exclusively here on Rumble, the free speech alternative to YouTube.
Tonight, when Donald Trump ran for president in 2016, one of his signature foreign policy arguments was One that polling data has long shown Americans support, namely that it is both immoral and a violation of the core duty of the American government to continue to pour billions into wars, regime change operations, and other obscenely costly imperial projects to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, all while Americans in the United States
Continue to suffer at home from a de-industrialized heartland, stagnant wages, the inability for millions of American families to raise their children without having both parents work outside the home, a lack of reasonable health care, the inability to pay for college, and on and on and on.
And as you know, that turned out to be a winning message, as Trump robed that attack on longstanding bipartisan neoconservative orthodoxy all the way to the Republican nomination and ultimately to the Oval Office.
It is difficult to think of a more vivid example of the war priorities in Washington than what is happening right now inside the U.S.
Senate.
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, is the federal entity responsible for administering and overseeing disaster relief to American citizens when major destruction ruins or ends their lives, such as the wildfires in Maui, in Hawaii, or Hurricane Idalia in Florida.
Because that agency is short on funds at exactly the same time Americans most urgently need it, Republican Senator Rick Scott of Florida urged a quick stand-alone vote to replenish the Federal Disaster Relief Fund so that American citizens, again, the people to whom the U.S.
government has its highest responsibility, at least in theory, can obtain the relief they desperately need from these multiple natural disasters.
And yet, earlier today, Tammy Duckworth, the Democratic Senator from Illinois, announced that she will block this vote unless, and I'm not making this up, that bill also includes $24 billion, which the Biden administration is demanding as the latest sum of unaccounted-for largesse that will be lavished on our colonial puppets in Kiev, Ukraine.
Let me say that again.
Tammy Duckworth is refusing to allow disaster relief for American citizens in desperate need of help in the United States, unless the bill also includes another $24 billion for Ukraine.
On CNN with Jake Tapper this afternoon, the White House Press Secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, emphasized that the White House fully supports Senator Duckworth's threats.
In other words, in the eyes of the DC ruling class, the interest of Ukraine and the Ukrainian government is at least of equal importance to the urgent need of America's own citizens, whose lives have just been overturned or worse by several natural disasters.
Indeed, the only logical conclusion one can reach is that the lives of American citizens have lower priority Then the latest demands from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
If you're ever wondering why so many Americans despise its ruling class in Washington and are increasingly attracted to the type of foreign policy principles that demands the end of endless wars, And the neocon obsession with sending American resources to slaughter and destabilize other countries rather than using those resources to improve the lives of American citizens.
Just look at what is happening right now in Washington and everything will be clear.
Then last May we spoke with Jeffrey Sachs, the longtime Harvard economist who has held numerous powerful positions as part of the Western establishment going back to the 1980s when he helped Bolivia and then Poland and other countries exit their crisis with debt.
Despite that resume filled with some of the most impressive establishment credentials that exist, Professor Sachs has simultaneously become one of the most emphatic and scathing critics of the foreign policy and global economic dogmas of leading Western institutions.
Indeed, He managed to stay inside the establishment while always being a critic of it, and yet now has become an even more scathing one.
We reviewed that interview as one of the most interesting that we have done, that conversation we had with him back in May, and we are thrilled to have him back tonight for a wide-ranging and very enlightening discussion on the war in Ukraine and the latest events there, the US posture toward both Russia and China,
How to reconcile America First or other anti-imperialist and anti-militarism policies with the seemingly quite rapid march to a cold war with China, if not a hot war with them, and the question of whether the so-called BRICS alliance, led by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa,
that are now expanding to include six more countries, including Saudi Arabia, presents a meaningful threat to the hegemony of Western institutions such as NATO, the G7, and the World Bank, and whether that alliance poses a real threat to the role of the American dollar as the world's reserve currency.
Our discussion with him, which we filmed just about an hour ago because of schedule conflicts, was at least as fascinating as the one we did with him in May.
It really is remarkable that someone who has been on the inside of institutional power for so long is simultaneously now one of the most independent, informed, and important voices of dissent.
We are glad he is and are thrilled to show you our discussion with him.
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For now, welcome to a new episode of System Update starting right now.
The wildfires in Hawaii are really some of the most horrific natural disasters that have taken place in the United States in many years.
The numbers of dead people, including dead children, have been very elusive.
Authority simply refused to provide much information about how terrible the scope of that damage is and there has been almost no interest on the part of the corporate media in the obvious malfeasance that allows so many people to die because Hawaii is a state dominated by Democratic Party politicians and the current federal government is run by Democrats as well and yet the scope of the damage and the blame that
Government officials there for what happened is obviously quite extreme and then you have at the same time things like this horrific hurricane in Florida that is in a very powerful storm and other natural disasters taking place all over the United States and yet President Biden's response from the beginning to the fires in Maui have been incredibly poorly executed and indifferent, bordering on cruel at times.
He has refused to even comment when asked about it and then claimed later he didn't hear the question.
And the willingness to help the people of Hawaii, one of the actual real legitimate roles of the U.S. government, government, given that we have an agency called FEMA that's designed to do that, has been not just stingy, but almost deliberately so.
Here is Newsweek in August, on August 15th, with the headline, Joe Biden sends $700 to Maui fire victims, and that sparks a backlash, quote, insulting.
President Joe Biden is facing renewed criticism for his response to the devastating wildfires on the Hawaii island of Maui after offering victims $700 per household in emergency aid.
Political opponents and commentators described the summit as insulting and compared it with the more than $113 billion worth of aid The U.S.
is sent to Ukraine as it defends itself from an ongoing Russian invasion.
On Monday, the government announced it was sending $200 million in defensive capabilities.
Biden has previously faced backlash over what some saw as a dismissive response to the death toll in Mali, brushing off questions about the disaster while spending the weekend at his Delaware beach house.
You may recall some bizarre controversy a couple of years ago when Ted Cruz went on a long planned, or maybe it was a recently planned, trip to Cancun while Texas was experiencing difficulties with electricity failures.
Ted Cruz wasn't the executive in charge of any agencies, and yet the media had a field day for at least a week over what was supposedly his abandonment of responsibilities.
And yet here you have President Biden, who actually is the chief executive, technically overseeing the agencies responsible for disaster relief, who has just been on vacations, while this fire in Maui was consuming the lives of at least over 1,000 people, and still there are a huge number of children missing.
And the difference in the treatment has been, in terms of the media coverage, has been very stark.
Now, just to give you a sense for how unbelievably stingy that amount is that the government has given, especially when contrasting it to the war in Ukraine, NBC News yesterday announced the following.
Oprah Winfrey and Dwayne Johnson announced a $10 million Maui relief fund.
I believe both of them have homes in Hawaii and have been, from the start, urging greater aid.
And there you see the sub-headline, adults in the affected areas of Lahani and Kula will be eligible to receive $1,200 each month as they get back on their feet.
I heard Oprah Winfrey in a video with Dwayne Johnson earlier today talking about the fact that this fund will enable each affected resident to get $1,200 in emergency relief fund as compared to the relief fund the Biden administration offered of $700.
How would you feel being an American citizen in desperate need as a result of a natural disaster that at least to some extent was not caused but enabled to just get out of complete control by the failure of government leaders and then told that the government can only give you $700 while two very wealthy celebrities just on their own provided almost double that?
And you just see constantly billions and billions of dollars flying around Washington headed toward Kiev across the other side of the world for a war in a country that both President Obama and then President Trump always said correctly was not a vital interest to the United States.
Now the Senator from Florida, which is affected by the current hurricane, Rick Scott, issued a statement on August 29th, just a couple of days ago, about what he intends to do to secure the funds needed both for disaster relief in Florida and then other members of Congress came forward to put more money in for things like the fire in Maui.
There you see Senator Rick Scott demands an immediate Senate vote.
I will be introducing a bill, the Federal Disaster Responsibility Act, that combines the Disaster Relief Fund Repunishment Act, Hurricane Tax Relief Act, Block Grant Assistance Act, and other essential provisions to make sure that the immediate needs for FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund are fully funded and Florida's military bases, families, and growers impacted by disasters have the federal support they need and deserve.
While I've spent the months leading up to this storm fighting to make sure the federal government shows up, President Biden and politicians in Washington have been playing games with FEMA's Disaster Relief Fund and insisting that this critical domestic aid be tied to foreign aid for Ukraine.
Why would anyone insist on making relief for American citizens?
In the middle of natural disasters, dependent upon the willingness of Congress to send billions and billions more on top of the $113 billion already authorized to the war in Ukraine.
The reason he wants a quick, rapid bill is precisely because the war in Ukraine is becoming increasingly controversial, as was totally predictable, and on our show predicted, Public support for that war has been eroding.
A majority of Americans now oppose any further expenditures of their taxpayer dollars to continue to fuel the war in Ukraine.
Because they understand now that that war has no end in sight.
All it's doing is destroying Ukraine, not saving Ukraine.
And all it's doing as well is enriching the same tiny sliver of special interests in Washington, the arms industry, the CIA, the NSA, the intelligence community, that always thrive when wars happen and people die while everybody else suffers.
And here you see it in action.
So the Republicans and Senator Scott's view is The war in Ukraine is very controversial.
It's going to take a long time to get a consensus on it and there's no reason to make Americans wait for disaster relief that they need while that's being done.
He goes on, quote, we've had enough with Washington playing politics and demand that Congress does what's right for American families, starting with ensuring our federal government has all the resources it needs to show up after disasters now and in the future.
The moment the Senate reconvenes next week, I will be introducing this bill and demanding an immediate vote.
Floridians are doing their part in getting ready, and I will not allow Washington to continue playing games with disaster aid and the lives of those needing our help.
Now, earlier today, a Politico reporter, Burgess Everett, who covers the Congress for Politico, explained what was actually happening in Washington.
Washington with regard to this bill.
So we can put this tweet on the screen from earlier today where he says, quote, Senator, Democratic Senator Duckworth tells reporters she will object to Senator Rick Scott's plans to pass disaster aid on its own without the rest of the Biden administration's supplemental request.
Quote, I would, meaning I would object and block it.
I think it's important to include Ukrainian funding.
She's explicitly saying, I don't want any disaster relief going to Americans unless Ukrainians get vastly more sums.
Here is a tweet from the same reporter where he describes what that supplemental request is that Senator Duckworth is demanding be approved before Americans get relief from fires and hurricanes.
He says supplemental request goes up by $4 billion after Hawaii wildfires.
So there was already an attempt to get more funds to prepare for hurricane season.
Now with the Hawaii wildfires, they want $4 billion more.
So you're talking about just $4 billion for the fires, $24 billion for Ukraine, and then $4 billion for the border.
And it would be done in a continuing resolution.
So this is what Senator Duckworth is insisting be done before Americans get their disaster relief from their own government.
Here's an article that summarizes what happened from Florida politics.
They obviously have an interest in disaster relief given that state was just hit by an intense hurricane.
The headline there, Tammy Duckworth will object to Rick Scott's disaster relief bill.
Quote, U.S.
Senator Rick Scott plans to call for a Senate vote next week on replenishing the federal disaster relief fund.
But U.S.
Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat, plans to object unless the bill guarantees aid to Ukraine.
Every time I'm looking at this and saying this, I actually can't believe it.
I want to keep emphasizing how insane that is.
The responsibility of a government, the first responsibility, is to ensure the safety and security of its citizens.
And here you have American citizens, through absolutely no fault of their own, whose lives and families are in desperate need of help from the government, Because of things like wildfires and hurricanes who are being told we're not giving you any of that money that you need unless your representative in Congress agree to send vastly greater sums to Ukraine because President Zelensky has been demanding it and we don't keep President Zelensky waiting for anything.
Certainly not a bunch of American citizens who have no name or lobbyist in Washington.
The article goes on, quote, it's the latest in a month-long standoff over supplemental funding that has taken on fresh urgency since Hurricane Idalia struck Florida's Big Bend region.
Scott, a Naples Republican, pressed for months for the Senate to replenish a largely depleted disaster relief fund.
Why is the American Disaster Relief Fund depleted?
While there's an infinite sum of money ready to be sent to Raytheon and Boeing and General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin for weapons to pour into an endless war in Ukraine?
After Hurricane Adelia made landfall as a Category 3 hurricane, Scott said he intends to bring the Federal Disaster Responsibility Act to the Senate floor and seek unanimous consent to pass the bill, which is the only way a bill can get passed that quickly, with unanimous consent.
And that's why even one senator objecting has the power to stop it.
The legislation would provide $12.5 billion for the disaster fund, the Hurricane Tax Relief Act, and block granting.
That's roughly what FEMA wants to replenish the fund through the year, according to a supplemental funding request from President Joe Biden's administration.
But while the President's funding request bundles that funding with other agency items, most notably more than $44 billion for military support for Ukraine, Scott's bill would focus only on disaster relief.
So Rick Scott is saying, I was elected to serve the interests of the American people, and I think we should just have a quick vote to get them the help they need and let the Senate work out Ukraine later on.
I believe Senator Scott was one of the people who supports the war in Ukraine.
He voted, I believe, we'll check on this, well let's check on this, but I believe he voted for that initial authorization.
But now he's simply saying that there's a lot of increased opposition to the war in Ukraine and the authorizations there because the American people no longer want it.
So let's get this money to the people who need it.
Now, in case you think that this is just some sort of action on the part of a single Rogue Democratic Senator.
You should know first of all, and yeah, we confirmed that Senator Scott did in fact vote for the war in Ukraine, so it's not like he's a Putin apologist or a Kremlin asset or whatever you might want to call him.
He's just somebody saying that even though I want to support the war in Ukraine, I think we should actually prioritize the needs and lives of American citizens, given that this is the American government.
Now, you should know, as I said, that if you think it's a rogue senator, there is no such thing as a rogue Democratic senator.
They march in lockstep in very rare situations.
You might get one like Joe Manchin.
But in general, they do everything in a very coordinated way.
The Democratic Party is a very well-oiled machine, as we've been talking about over the last week, in contrast to the ideological debate you see within the Republican Party, as you saw in the debate stage in Milwaukee.
I would have been shocked if she had been doing this on her own.
And of course, the White House Press Secretary went on CNN to talk to Jake Tapper this afternoon.
He asked her about this and she essentially said the White House supports what Senator Duckworth is threatening to do.
Here's what she told him.
FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has nearly $3.5 billion in disaster relief for this hurricane and for the Maui fires and for any future extreme weather events to come.
We just heard from the FEMA director today.
She is worried about running out of funding, understandably.
She called on Congress to approve the request for another 12 billion.
Again, I just, and here you see the graphic showing the hurricanes and the path that it's likely to take as it moves up the eastern seaboard of the United States.
Let's put that back up on the screen.
Oh, there it is.
And even independent of everything, the fact that the Federal Emergency Disaster Relief Fund, one of the very few things that most Americans would indisputably agree is a legitimate And as always if you suggest that the U.S.
government to help citizens when they have natural disasters uproot their lives is out of funds.
It's depleted.
FEMA is sitting there with no money.
And as always, And as always, if you suggest that the U.S. government should act in any way for the benefit of the American people or to improve their lives in a material way, the D.C. ruling class will say, I'm sorry, we have no money for that.
Just no money.
Where are we going to get the money from?
No money for FEMA.
And yet every time a new war begins, every time, the narrative is the same.
We're fighting this war until the end.
We're going to spend whatever it takes.
We don't care how many hundreds of billions of dollars.
And none of those wars end with any success or benefit except for the people who profit off of them.
And that's exactly what's happening here.
Now let's listen to the rest of this.
Billion dollars in disaster funds so emergency relief efforts are not impacted at all.
We should note, Kareem, that request for relief is paired, it's combined with requests for more aid for Ukraine, which is more controversial to many in Congress.
It might be a sticking point for them.
Why not separate the FEMA dollars from the Ukraine dollars so you don't have that problem for those who need this FEMA money as soon as possible?
So the Administrator came into the briefing room, she laid that out for the reporters in the room, for Americans who are watching, and she said she'll have more to say.
Look, in regards to the supplemental funding that the President has asked for, I don't want to get into hypotheticals.
The President put forward what he thinks is incredibly important that we need.
What does that even mean?
What hypothetical is she talking about?
You see the graphic of the hurricane on the screen?
That's not a hypothetical hurricane, that's an actual hurricane.
That reached landfall in Florida.
There's nothing hypothetical about it.
I don't know why that word popped into her brain and then came out of her mouth, but it makes no sense.
At Ukraine, the president has been very clear.
We're going to help the brave.
I, as usual, I clicked a little bit wrong.
And so let's just, I want to go back a little.
To say, look, as it, in regards to the supplemental funding that the president has asked for, I don't want to get into hypotheticals.
The President put forward what he thinks is incredibly important that we need.
If you look at Ukraine, the President has been very clear.
We're going to help the brave people of Ukraine as they're fighting for their freedom, fighting for their democracy in this unprovoked war, as we've seen from Russia.
And we're going to be there.
Our allies, our partners are going to be there for as long as it takes because it is that important.
It is that critical.
And obviously making sure that we have everything that we need.
I would pay a very substantial sum of money to have 20 minutes with Karine Jean-Pierre to ask her to explain to me why it is so critical to the lives and interests of American citizens to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to fuel the war in Ukraine.
I would just, I need to hear her explain that.
I know she can say that phrase.
And as usual, there's no follow up to ask.
Why she thinks that, even as polls show that Americans don't agree with her, that it's actually urgent.
But you've been seeing on the screen the whole time that FEMA is almost out of money.
And I don't know, it seems pretty urgent and vital to me.
I get why it would be urgent and vital that the United States should expend money.
The taxpaying resources that come from the American people to help the American people when they have natural disasters facing them.
That makes sense to me.
That's obvious.
There are a lot of wars going around in the world, always.
And it's very difficult to explain, I think, why This war is one that the United States ought to fund until the end.
Now, if the United States were a country that had no debt, that was just, had a country where its citizens have enormous benefits, amazing healthcare, and access to higher education, and were relieved of debt, and didn't have to have two parents work outside the home just to keep, maintain subsistence levels, even when they have children, and dump their kids off in healthcare, in daycare, even if they don't want to, And very fulfilling jobs that offer great benefits?
That would be one thing.
Okay, well, we have all this excess money.
Let's use it to help people around the world.
But that is not the case, independent of the fact that we're not actually helping Ukraine.
The United States is helping to destroy Ukraine, as Professor Sachs is about to explain in the interview we conducted with him, in order to serve its cynical and tawdry geopolitical goal of weakening Russia, which I would also pay a lot of money to hear Karine Jean-Pierre, or anyone else in the Biden White House, explain why that is a goal of the United States government, to weaken Russia.
Why is that something we are trying to do, to weaken that other country?
To the point where we're willing to spend hundreds of billions of dollars to do it and cause the loss of enormous amounts of lives.
Especially while in the United States there's no money for FEMA.
for folks not just in Florida, folks in Maui, any type of extreme weather, hurricanes that we see so that we are prepared.
And those things, both of those things are incredibly important.
I'm not going to get into hypotheticals or what it looks like if Congress comes back and wants to split the two.
These are incredibly important, not just for the president, for the American people, right?
We have to keep our commitments on both sides of these things.
I mean, that is a pretty explicit admission of how the Biden White House sees the world. - Right.
They think that the lives of the American people are no, on no higher plank, occupy no higher level of priority than this war in Ukraine on the other side of the world in a country in which we have no direct, no vital interests.
Now, the reality is, of course, they see the war in Ukraine is more important.
That's who their real constituency is.
Western intelligence agencies, the Western arms industry, the CIA, that's who their real constituency is.
And if they were being truly honest, they would admit that they regard that as a far higher priority, which is why people in Hawaii are getting $700 and President Zelensky and his cronies are getting tens of billions and will until the end of time.
But even what she was willing to admit was quite striking.
I know we're conditioned not to think it is, but the idea that the American people have to wait and have their aid held hostage to another $25 billion for Ukraine is actually madness.
If we weren't drowning in the kind of propaganda to which we're so regularly subjected.
Now, just to underscore the point before we get to Professor Sachs, I've mentioned this before.
I don't think I've showed this report from the New York Times on August 28th.
The headline there is President Zelensky said he believes the U.S.
will offer Ukraine an Israel-like relationship.
Quote, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said on Sunday that he believed Washington would offer his country security guarantees similar to those Israel has received from the United States in a durable partnership that does not depend on which party controls the White House.
Why is that so important that this gigantic aid package President Zelensky is demanding and expecting does not depend on which party controls the White House?
It's because they want to ensure that you have no ability to cast your vote in a way that might affect that.
It will be a bipartisan consensus.
It'll be guaranteed.
You may want to go to the polls in 2024 and elect the people who are saying, I think it's more important to take care of American people than it is to fuel war in Ukraine.
But what President Zelensky is trying to do is what he's basically done in his own country, which is remove the democratic process from existing in any meaningful way.
That is, as we've detailed before, what the project in the Republican primary is about.
Re-seizing the Republican Party and putting it back into captivity to Washington orthodoxy of neoconservatism, militarism, imperialism, and corporatism.
Because what they fear the most is when you have a choice.
And you can go to the polls and actually vote for the party that's promising to do the things you want them to do.
What they want is for you to have no choice for the elections to be illusory and where they don't matter.
So you get Nikki Haley or you get Mike Pence or Chris Christie and they are adamant supporters of the war in Ukraine.
Or you get Joe Biden.
Who is an adamant supporter of the war in Ukraine.
So the outcome is the same either way.
That is the project.
It's to remove the relevance and vitality of the election.
That way they don't have to cheat either.
They don't have to concoct lies like Russiagate or the Hunter Biden laptop being Russian disinformation.
They don't have to rig the elections like they did in 2016 to ensure Hillary Clinton lost because they don't care.
As long as there's no anti-establishment candidate and as long as both parties are serving establishment dogma.
And President Zelensky understands that and that's why he wants that.
The article goes on, "While the United States has invested billions in military aid for Ukraine, it is not guaranteed how long or to what extent support will continue.
Some military analysts and administration officials have pushed for the United States to follow the so-called Israel model with Ukraine, which could offer the country more long-term stability and potentially send a message of returns to Russia." Quote, while the United States of America will probably have a model like Israel, where we have weapons and technology and training and finances and so on, Zelensky said in an interview broadcast on Ukrainian television on Sunday.
He added that he did not believe a new American president Would endanger such an agreement because, quote, these are things that are voted on by the Congress.
Meaning he's scared that Donald Trump will get elected.
Or even Ron DeSantis or Vivek Ramaswamy, both of whom are saying they don't want more money going to Ukraine.
Or RFK Jr.
in the Democratic Party who's saying the same thing.
They want right now, with the Biden administration in power and with a bipartisan consensus in the Congress still vibrant, To basically turn Ukraine into Israel, a country that automatically gets billions of dollars every year regardless of how you vote.
The article goes on, quote, The Israel model would represent a middle ground between NATO membership and the current system, a series of one-off military aid bills passed by Congress.
Israel is not part of the Atlantic Alliance, but the United States designates it as a, quote, major non-NATO ally, cooperating on defense, supplying weapons, coordinating spy agencies, and offering billions in military aid.
Since the 1960s, American presidents, both Democrat and Republican, have consistently reaffirmed the close relationship.
With an Israel-like relationship, Ukraine could benefit from a long-term aid agreement that would have it build up its military over a matter of years.
Now, a lot of people think Israel gets a huge amount of money from the United States because it does.
It's been the leading recipient of American aid, or in number two, for many, many years.
But the 10-year agreement that President Obama signed with President Netanyahu Prime Minister Netanyahu was for a total of $38 billion for 10 years, over 10 years.
Ukraine has gotten vastly more sums than that in just 18 months.
But there's no more money for FEMA, and the Democratic Party is not willing to replenish that money, even though people are desperately in need, unless it is accompanied by $25 billion for what really matters, which is the demands of President Zelensky and the Ukrainians.
And in case you're wondering, Why President Trump remains with a lead over President Biden despite being indicted four separate times on serious criminal felony charges.
It's in part because the public has lost all faith and trust in the legitimacy of these institutions for very good reason, but also in part because the ideology that President Trump continues to espouse, namely that these kinds of wars and the billions of dollars flying around to Kiev, the most corrupt country in Russia, with no oversight of any kind, the Senate rejected Rand Paul's oversight efforts and the oversight efforts of other senators, as we reported on.
Is just, it's self-destructive incentive and it needs to end.
And what they're most petrified of is that you will have a choice in 2024 to express what you think about these issues because they already know from the polls that people don't want their money continuing to disappear into the black hole of Ukraine.
Thank you.
He has been one of the most widely touted economists at Harvard for many decades.
You can go back to the mid-1980s or the late 1980s and see him heralded as one of the most important young economists in the world.
He has worked with the World Bank.
He has contacts all over Washington.
He has always had access to the American corporate media.
And while he has also been often an establishment critic, someone kind of banging his instruments on the table in objection to a lot of the more extreme things the United States has done, he has supported a lot of establishment dogma in the past too, but I think he's really become radicalized in particular by how neoconservatism has become the dominant foreign policy ideology in the United States in both political parties.
And the accompanying willingness to put the United States into massive debt to fund these wars and to use the primacy of the dollar to choke entire countries and suffocate them because we don't like their leaders and we want to change them has caused him to really reevaluate almost every establishment dogma that he everyone supported.
He originally began as the head of a COVID task force and quickly was pushed out or resigned because he began questioning a lot of the dogma that dominated COVID as well.
He's just a very self-confident thinker given how his path has been one of constant ascent.
But he is also extremely independent and obviously spending a lot of time listening to alternative perspectives, both in media and politics.
And he has access to a lot of people to speak with them personally as well, including ones who are still inside power.
So his...
Body of information with which he's working, his expertise in global economics and macroeconomics, his experience in working with international relations with countries to help them get out of debt crises that they have because of global institutions is incredibly vast.
And that makes his views not the byproduct of punditry, but the byproduct of specialization and a lot of firsthand knowledge.
And he is at a point in his career where he clearly doesn't care about who he's alienating or who he's offending with his views, but he's also extremely careful to ensure that everything he's saying has a foundation in demonstrable fact, which is what I think makes it so valuable, this kind but he's also extremely careful to ensure that everything he's saying has a foundation
I don't think there's anybody over the last 18 months from whom I've learned more other than perhaps Professor John Mearsheimer, who was also on our show recently and will definitely be again shortly when it comes to our relationship to Russia and Ukraine.
He spent time in Russia and the Alteneers trying to shape American policy and wasn't really listened to.
And we talked to him about the war in Ukraine, about the U.S.
relationship with Russia, about increasing military encirclement by the Biden administration of China and the bipartisan consensus that China should be treated as an enemy of the United States and one where we seem to be on a path heading to an inevitable cold war, at least, if not a hot war.
And the reasons for all of that and the prospects to Change that course of action, as well as the expansion of the BRICS Alliance that happened, I think, caught a lot of American policymakers off guard at a summit in Johannesburg earlier this month, where they announced that six new countries, all of whom are in their own way geostrategically important, including Saudi Arabia and Iran and Argentina, now joining the five founding countries,
That are already now bigger than the G7 by about 40% with those new members, the prospects for that to fuel or facilitate a multipolar world where US hegemony is eroded and what that might look like.
So I found this conversation incredibly interesting.
We taped it right before the show began only because Professor Sachs had a conflicted commitment that prevented him from joining us live, but it was just a couple of hours ago now and I really enjoy the conversation and I am confident That you will as well.
So here is Professor Jeffrey Sachs.
Professor Sachs, it's great to see you again.
Thanks so much for taking the time to join us tonight.
It's a pleasure to be with you.
Thanks.
I feel the same.
So let's start in Ukraine.
You were on our show in May, which is about three months ago now.
What do you make of just in general the state of the war in terms of combat positions, the efforts of the Ukrainians to breach entrenched Russian positions?
Do you think a lot has changed over the course of the last several months since you were on our show in May?
This has been a bloodbath.
This so-called counter-offensive has basically failed, and failed in a very bloody way.
So tens of thousands of Ukrainians have died.
Nothing has been accomplished.
Vast amounts of the hardware have been destroyed.
This is very sad, very predictable.
It is a disaster for Ukraine.
It was a predictable disaster and it shows that there are no ideas and no honesty in the Washington leadership and basically throughout the NATO leadership.
It's bad.
It's just absolutely amazing how even recently I saw Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut say this is money well spent.
Yeah, money well spent throwing tens of thousands of Ukrainians to their tragic and needless deaths.
Mitt Romney says this is great.
Senator Romney says no Americans are dying.
We're just sending Ukrainians to their death.
These senators who are not very clever think that this is somehow weakening Russia, showing American resolve.
It's doing nothing of the sort.
What it is, is destroying Ukraine.
Yeah, I think it's worth noting that despite all the inspiring narratives to which we were subjected at the start of the war, some of which was true, we're now at the point where the overwhelming majority of soldiers who are fighting for Ukraine are fighting because they're forced to.
They're conscript soldiers, they're not volunteers, there's a lot of serious threats and military force and legal punishments hanging over their head if they attempt to flee, as so many of them are doing.
at risk to their own lives.
And that just makes it, I think, even all the more tragic.
Now, when I asked you the last time we spoke in May whether you saw any potential for a resolution, a diplomatic resolution or some other kind of exit, you said you really don't.
Both sides have this maximalist position, or at least the West does, which is this war cannot end until the Russians have ceded every inch of Ukrainian territory, which they have occupied since the conflict began.
And they even include Crimea in that.
But even assuming they don't include Crimea in that, I'm talking about a vast sum of land at this point that the Russians are dug into and have no intention of abandoning.
I guess the only two things that have really changed since we've spoken that might affect your assessment is number one, this counteroffensive that we were being promised would change the war, would transform the war, is now being widely acknowledged.
Even the most pro-war circles in the West is essentially a failure.
And then also, and I think this might even be more significant still, polling now clearly shows in the United States and throughout many Western European nations as well, that public support for the war is clearly eroding.
A majority of Americans now say in the last significant poll that they want no more funds going to the war in Ukraine.
Does either of those two facts, the failure of the counter-offensive, the erosion of public support in the West, give you any more optimism about the potential to have this war end sooner?
Well, Glenn, let me just clarify what I've said all along, which is that the war could end immediately with sound negotiations.
The point I've been making all through this debacle and this tragedy is that Russia put on the table draft security arrangements with the United States on December 17th, 2021, that were absolutely negotiable.
The main Russian demand was do not expand NATO to Ukraine.
This was very straightforward.
Other Russian demands are do not place missiles near us without negotiating with us.
This was also correct and negotiable.
And so the war could have been avoided entirely.
I begged the White House, avoid the war, negotiate.
I spoke at the end of 2021 to senior officials, let's just say, and said that this war can be avoided entirely.
When the war broke out, within days, Zelensky said, OK, OK, we can be neutral.
When that happened, Russia and Ukraine began to exchange documents for an actual agreement within weeks of the February 24th, 2022 invasion.
Within weeks.
And Turkey was the mediator of that.
And the Prime Minister of Israel at the time, Naftali Bennett, was acting as an informal intermediary.
And by the end of March, they were close to an agreement.
The United States stepped in and said, no, do not accept neutrality.
You see, we've been in the hands of the neocons.
We've been in the hands of Newland, Blinken, Sullivan, and Biden.
Let's face it, because he's absolutely part of this.
And they're telling Ukrainians, win!
We will make you a NATO country.
We don't have to listen to the Russians.
And we are destroying Ukraine in the process.
And so when I said in May, whatever I said about probabilities, it wasn't referring to what could be accomplished.
It was referring to what Washington think.
Yeah, no, no, just to be clear, your point on that show was very clear, which was the war is definitely susceptible to diplomatic resolution.
The problem is the West, and particularly Washington, I mean, I'm at the point where I don't know about you, but I actually think their intention
Not only is it kind of an absence to try and end the war, but a desire for the war to be as protracted as possible, to continue for exactly the reason that you referred to in the beginning with this bipartisan idea that the war is working out really well because we're weakening Russia, which would mean, if that's your goal, and it clearly is, they would want the war to go on for as long as possible, meaning their goal isn't really to defend Ukraine, but to destroy Ukraine at the altar of the geopolitical goal of weakening Russia.
Glenn, even on those terms, as dark and cynical and evil as they are, by the way, because it means using Ukraine to destroy a generation of Ukraine for America's geopolitical sake, even in those pure evil terms, it's not working.
Because in fact, Russia's military capacity is dramatically improving.
We're seeing Generation after generation, month by month, of new weapon systems being developed.
Smarter weapons, longer range weapons.
Russia is not being weakened by this.
The idea also that Blumenthal in this disgraceful article in his Connecticut, I think Connecticut Post newspaper, says that this is showing how tough we are vis-a-vis the Chinese.
What the world is seeing is that all this NATO weaponry, the Heimars and the Bradleys and the Strikers and all these things we're sending, they're not defeating Russia.
They're not saving Ukraine.
So it's not even on the neocons own terms, even remotely successful.
The fact of the matter is, I think it's a This is the nth of my lifetime that the United States has done this.
what the heck can we do right now?
We can't back off before the elections because then we really look weak.
But it's terrible what's happening right now.
But we don't know what to do.
So the fact of the matter is they've gotten themselves into yet another miserable bind.
I don't this is the end of my lifetime that the United States has done this.
It's so predictable in Vietnam, in Iraq, in Syria, in Libya, in Afghanistan.
Now in Ukraine.
So we do this all the time.
That's why as soon as this war broke out, or I should say the invasion, the war broke out, people should remember, in February 2014.
But the latest phase, the Russian invasion on February 24, 2022, As soon as that happened, I said, OK, this is yet another neocon debacle.
This is another Afghanistan.
This is going to end terribly for the U.S.
And you know what the amazing thing is?
There's no accountability in the U.S.
political system.
It has nothing to do with democracy.
It doesn't matter which party's in or which party's out.
Victoria Nuland is always there.
It's really amazing.
I want to ask you about the political component of this in just a second and the possibility of actually having a choice in the 2024 election.
Wouldn't that be amazing with the United States to be in this major war that even Joe Biden says has brought the world closer to nuclear annihilation than at any point since 1962.
We might actually have our vote be with the potential to change the policy one way or the other.
That would be very refreshing.
But before I ask you about that, I just want to ask you about the diplomatic aspect to it, which is there were a small number of people saying right at the outbreak of the war where you just said that this looks like all the other words that the U.S.
gets involved with, that sooner or later people are going to realize they've been deceived again, they're going to turn against the war, that it's going to be an endless conflict that's just going to result in bloodshed to the benefit of nobody other than a tiny sliver of the arms industry and the intelligence agencies.
And unfortunately, everybody who said that was called a Russian agent.
I think I got put on three or four different official lists of the Ukrainian government.
I know you did as well, exactly.
In fact, we just got back from our secret meeting in Moscow that we attend each month.
And I should quickly add that that is not the case before that gets taken out of context.
But I want to ask you, this idea that we could have resolved this diplomatically at the start of the war, I think is obviously true.
There were people saying that.
Now we're in a different position where the Russians do have this buffer in eastern Ukraine that they regard as extremely important to their national security.
They are not going to give that up.
And so I'm wondering if you were now spearheading an attempt with the authorization of the United States government to try and foster diplomatic resolutions, what do you think would be the most promising approach or approaches to doing that?
Look, I think the situation is, as you say, much harder at the negotiating table than it was a year ago and vastly, incomparably harder than it was in December 2021.
If you gamble and you lose, it's very hard to just make it up.
What we really should be seriously speaking with the Russians about is the security arrangements in Europe, including the security arrangements for Ukraine.
I don't think there's any chance in the world Crimea is going back to Ukraine under any circumstances.
And interestingly, what Ukraine had before 2022 was the option, which it pulled off the table, basically, of giving Russia a long term lease to the Sevastopol naval base.
That's what Yanukovych was negotiating with Russia.
Russia wasn't negotiating for demanding Crimea's return.
It was demanding a lease on the long term for its naval base.
Now Crimea is lost.
Probably the Donbas is lost for practical purposes.
I think that if this war goes on, maybe Ukraine is going to end up being a landlocked, rumped state with a completely unviable economy as well.
And by that I mean that, you know, a lot of people speculate that Russia might go after Odessa, might go after the remaining coastline.
Of Ukraine.
I don't know.
It's not a prediction.
It's just saying that when the battlefield is against you also, the context worsens.
What I think would interest Russia in serious negotiations that could preserve and subsequently protect Ukraine is a serious security arrangement with the United States and NATO in which Biden would utter the words that he should have uttered at the beginning because they weren't even concession.
They were the right thing to do is to say NATO is not going to enlarge to surround Russia in the Black Sea.
It's not going to Ukraine.
It's not going to Georgia.
That was a terrible idea.
of George W. Bush Jr. and when Victoria Nuland was his ambassador, George Bush's ambassador, to NATO in 2008.
It was an awful proposal to have made and all thinking diplomats, including the U.S.
ambassador to Russia at the time, William Burns, now our CIA director, knew that this was completely destabilizing.
He said it.
He said he described exactly what would happen.
He said, if you even think about offering NATO membership to Ukraine, you will provoke a Russian attack or war in the Donbass or the eastern region of Ukraine, and they will act against Crimea.
I mean, it was something.
And he even said that that was a red line, not just for Putin, but for even anti-Putin liberals.
Now, let me ask you, before we get to China and including its relationship with the war in Ukraine, I just want to ask you the political aspect.
I was in Milwaukee last week for that Republican presidential debate.
And, you know, what's so striking is when I first began writing about politics in 2005, the gigantic villain for American liberalism were neocons.
And now you have neocons dominating Democratic Party politics.
There wasn't a single vote, as you know, last year.
The only time Congress was asked to vote on this war, or at least financial authorization, not one vote in the Democratic Party against sending $40 billion to fuel that war.
The only no votes came from the kind of right-wing, populist, Trump-affiliated flank of the Republican Party.
Opposition within the Republican Party clearly has grown as the polling reflects rising resistance to continuing to fuel this war at a time when Americans are suffering.
So, I want to ask you, I mean, you had the kind of three leading candidates.
You have Donald Trump, you know, saying what he's been saying for the last six years about our ability to get along with Russia, had the foolishness of confronting them.
You have Governor DeSantis, who kind of, when forced, said, yeah, I think it's time to stop thinking about not sending more money to Ukraine.
And then you had Vivek Ramaswamy, clearly kind of Do you think there's a viable possibility that the 2024 election will be the thing that determines the outcome of this war because Americans will have a choice between continuing this war indefinitely under President Biden or stopping it or diplomatically resolving it under whoever the Republican nominee is?
First, it is absolutely striking, according to every opinion survey, that the Republican base is against the war and the Democratic base is for the war.
Now, I think what that means is the Democratic base is listening to Biden and saying Biden's our president, so we support what Biden says.
The Republican base is probably reflecting this gut instinct I think pretty common among Americans is not again.
Not again.
What are we doing?
So I think that even the Democratic support for the war is very weak.
It's basically part of the anti-Trump sentiment.
And so we have to stick with Biden.
What is striking, of course, inside officialdom in the Democratic Party, all elected Democratic Party officials, all the Congress, not a single voice.
Publicly saying that we're on the wrong track right now.
So it's completely alarming.
It will weigh more and more heavily on the Democrats as we go into next year's election, because the Republican side is going to reflect their base and they're going to say this was misguided, wasting your money and incompetent administration.
So it's going to weigh heavily.
It's interesting, you know, the The insurgent Democratic voice in this can well turn out to be Robert Kennedy Jr.
And I wouldn't rule out that he becomes seen as the peace candidate.
That is exactly how he envisions himself, how he thinks that he reflects Kennedy Democrats in the spirit of his uncle, President Kennedy, and his father, Robert Kennedy.
And he's going to campaign on a peace platform.
So it's going to be very interesting that even within the Democratic Party, it's not going to be any simple walk for Biden.
In fact, of course, there are rumors that at the last minute, they're going to pull out Biden and put in Governor Newsom or something like that.
But in any event, If the war continues, which it's likely to do, and if it is this bloodbath, as it seems likely to be, when it comes to Iowa caucuses, when it comes to the New Hampshire primary, this is going to be heard for the first time.
We're actually going to see a debate even within the Democratic Party side.
And I think that's not a small thing.
If they're thinking at all in the White House, they ought to be thinking about that reality because they are on an absolutely terrible course, terrible for Ukraine, terrible for America's position in the world, and actually terrible for their politics in the lead up to an election, and they think they can just fake it.
Until next November.
Things don't work that way anymore.
In the Vietnam War era, the news cycle was much slower.
You could tell lies for two years, three years, four years.
Now we see the videos every day.
So you can't tell the same lies.
We don't depend on General Westmoreland's assessments coming through Walter Cronkite as we did back in 1965.
We now see the videos every day and we know That Ukraine is being destroyed by this neocon fantasy land, and Biden's going to have to face up to that, even for his immediate politics.
And that's good that he's going to have to face up to it.
You know, it is an amazing historical echo that in 1968, the incumbent Democratic President Lyndon Johnson was forced out of the race because he had Democrats running in the primary, first Eugene McCarthy and then Robert Kennedy.
You know consolidating this gigantic anti-war sentiment within the Democratic Party and now you have Robert Kennedy's son positioning himself in a similar way saying that this is madness what we're doing and you can understand I think is kind of unethical and anti-democratic as I obviously see it to be why the Democrats are so desperate and
Not even acknowledge that there's a primary challenge because the last thing they want is Joe Biden on that stage having to defend in front of a withering critique by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
The madness of pursuing this war both for military reasons but also for financial ones.
Let me just segue a little bit into China, because there was, on the Republican stage, an attempt to link these two issues, namely Russia on the one hand, China on the other, and I think it was the exchange between former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy that really captured this kind of division.
So let me first play this debate clip, but then I want to ask you about it.
They need to know the difference between right and wrong.
They need to know the difference between good and evil.
When you look at the situation with Russia and Ukraine, here you have a pro-American country that was invaded by a thug.
So when you want to talk about what has been given to Ukraine, less than 3.5% of our defense budget has been given to Ukraine.
If you look at the percentages per GDP, 11 of the European countries have given more than the U.S.
But what's really important is go back to when China and Russia held hands, shook hands before the Olympics, and named themselves unlimited partners.
A win for Russia is a win for China.
We have to know that.
Ukraine is the first line of defense for us.
And the problem that Vivek doesn't understand is he wants to hand Ukraine to Russia.
He wants to let China eat Taiwan.
He wants to go and stop funding Israel.
You don't do that to friends.
What you do instead is you have the backs of your friends.
I have a little more of that, but honestly, I can't take it.
I've listened to it several times.
It's kind of like the neocon Bible.
It's like the Mad Lib for neocon ideology.
But the part of the exchange, and unfortunately, there's a lot of bipartisan consensus in Washington.
If you want to show some of these clashes, the pickings are very slim.
So that's why I showed you this exchange.
But the part I'm interested in is this idea that Vivek's critique, which is one that is Now, I think gaining some steam is that the reason why this war in Ukraine is such a mistake on at least one of them is that we have committed the cardinal sin that we managed to avoid more or less during the Cold War, which was driving Russia and China together in a kind of unified confederation against the United States.
Nikki Haley's argument is, no, actually, if you're concerned about weakening China, and I want to talk to you just a bit about why we would want to do that.
The way to do that is to make sure that Russia doesn't win because a win for Russia is a win for China.
Which of those views do you think makes more sense?
Well, of course, neither of those views make sense.
China is not an enemy, except that, again, these crazy Washington ignoramuses want to make it an enemy and a dire enemy.
And the clip with Nikki Haley reminded me what a horrible UN ambassador she was, absolutely.
So many countries were just shocked at her crudeness and rudeness, but she'd wag the finger at them and threaten them.
You know who, you know, pays your bills, blah, blah, blah.
So it was all the crudeness of money and threats.
And we can get you if you don't vote with the United States and so forth.
And of course, this doesn't work in the world the way that these arrogant folks think that it does in Washington.
We don't have the hearts and minds of the world with us on Ukraine or on China, because what the rest of the world sees is a kind of thoughtless bully that doesn't make any sense.
And so all of this talk, whether the big issue is China, so we shouldn't have the war with Ukraine, or the big issue is China, so we should have the war with Ukraine.
It's all wrong, period, because China's also not an enemy of the United States.
Now here, by the way, I think Every single member of Congress, but one, is complicit in this.
The only one I know that makes any sense at all in the entire Congress on China's Rand Paul, who says, don't make so many enemies.
Don't waste so much money on the military.
And we don't need to have enemies on this.
I hope I'm quoting him correctly.
Everyone else that I know, the Democrats, the so-called Progressive Caucus, everyone is anti-China.
They ought to get a passport.
They ought to go take a trip.
They ought to go talk to people.
Because the whole thing is another Red Scare.
episode, which we have every generation in the United States, and we're going through it again.
And history books and students 20 years from now will try to understand what were they talking about, honestly?
That's really what they're going to be asking.
Yeah.
I mean, here in Brazil, you know, Brazil and China have become very important trading partners to one another, even though Brazil is the second largest country in our hemisphere, in the United States, in the And there's a lot of Chinese business people and diplomats around with whom I speak all the time.
And the question of why do you see China as an enemy?
I completely understand they're a competitor, an economic competitor that's normal and fine.
Is to me as mystifying as the question of, why do we consider Russia an enemy as well?
This idea that, hey, with good news, we're sending a ton of Ukrainians to their death.
We're only, in Nikki Haley's words, spending 4% or 3% of the defense budget, which is a gargantuan sum of money, in order to keep that war being fueled, is all predicated on the idea that both of these countries are supposed to be our enemies.
So after the debate, I interviewed Vivek, who did his whole routine about how we should be involved in the war in Ukraine because we instead have to focus on the real enemy, which is China.
And I asked him, "Why is China, in your view, an enemy of the United States or a threat to the United States?" And I want to play you a little bit of what he said because I think it's very, I mean, I don't think you can get any solid answers from anybody on this question.
This is yet another bipartisan consensus where there's very little dissent.
As you say, Rand Paul is one of the few people.
So let me just play you a little bit of what he told me about why China's a threat.
Yes.
questions out of respect for your time.
One is on the issue of China.
Last night, you described the Russian-China alliance as the greatest military threat we face.
You said the only war you want to start is against this fourth branch of government, the deep state, the regulatory state.
And yet that kind of rhetoric leads people to wonder whether your opposition to involving ourselves in the war in Ukraine is really about a desire instead to focus that kind of military confrontation with China to start a new Cold War with China.
What is your view of the U.S.
relationship with China going forward?
Look at what I've said in the recent weeks, which also was the source of some jabs that some other candidates were giving me for my views there.
I want to pull Russia apart from China.
I do think that China is a real threat to the United States.
In what sense are they a real threat?
Well, I think that they want to hold an economic gun over our head and ultimately exert leverage to advance geopolitical goals using the economy to do it.
All right, so Professor Sachs, China apparently is our enemy because they want to grow economically and use that economic advantage as some sort of leverage.
Is there a better argument?
I don't want to pick a weak argument to kind of weaken a case with which I don't agree, but I mean, what is this insistence on making China an enemy of the United States?
I think Freud would call that projection.
I'm not absolutely sure, but it seems to me that the idea is attack China for exactly what the United States does for a living, which is to use the economic gun over the head of other countries.
It's the United States that imposes sanctions all over the world.
It's the United States that freezes the bank accounts of other governments all over the world.
It's the United States that puts on unilateral tariffs against WTO regulations, against enemies.
It's the United States that says you can't invest in U.S.
companies and U.S.
companies can't invest in your country.
It's the United States that puts on sanctions on businesses around the world.
And then he says they want to hold a gun over our head.
I think there's I think that there's a much simpler explanation was given in a very fascinatingly clear paper.
I'm going to hold it up.
It was a paper in 2015 published at the Council on Foreign Relations, the establishment of foreign policy, March 2015, called Revising U.S.
Grand Strategy Towards China, and it was written by A former colleague of mine who's one of America's leading diplomats, Ambassador Robert Blackwell.
He taught at Harvard for many years when I was teaching at Harvard.
And it's crystal clear, but it's not exactly as Vivek just put it.
Here's what Blackwell says.
Since its founding, the United States has consistently pursued a grand strategy focused on acquiring and maintaining preeminent power Over various rivals, first on the North American continent, then in the Western Hemisphere, and finally, globally.
So if your goal is that you're number one, if that's how you define your goal, then any other success at a big scale is directly a threat to you, per se.
Not their behavior, the mere fact of their existence.
China is an affront To US hegemony, put it plainly, because China has 1.4 billion people.
And even though still on a per capita basis, it's got a much lower income, much lower output than the United States.
It's a big economy.
It's a major trading country.
And by some measures, this drives Washington crazy, but by some measures specifically measuring the gross domestic product at international prices or purchasing power prices, China is a bigger economy than the United States.
That's almost the sum of the US attitude.
How dare you?
And now what the whole story of this paper in 2015 is, China's rise is now a threat to America's grand strategy of preeminence.
That's it.
You're just too big.
And even though you're maybe one third of the per capita income of the United States, because you're four times larger population, you're a threat.
And a third of the military spending as well.
A third at best.
The U.S.
spends 40% of the worldwide military spending and equal to the next 10 countries and three times China.
And then we say, look at China militarizing.
And we have military bases all around China.
And so it's all this false narrative, but it's based on the fact that Even the neocons, well they do come out in the articles that they think we read, but not in the kind of formal declarations.
Well, the United States needs to be number one.
And that's the full story.
And Russia, well, that's that's a threat.
And China, that's a much bigger threat.
And so there are those who say we have to weaken Russia because they're a threat per se.
And there are those that say, don't worry about Russia.
It's much smaller.
We'll take care of that some other time.
It's China.
But almost nobody in the political class just acknowledges.
How about a world in which countries can develop?
And maybe China doesn't have to be stuck at one third the per capita income level of the United States.
Maybe China can develop also.
It's a big country.
It's got lots of challenges.
Now, by the way, in recent days, all of the articles are China on the verge of economic collapse because this is the latest completely screwy narrative that comes out of Washington.
OK, all reporters.
Now you have to write an article about China at the verge of collapse.
Last month, it was China at the verge of taking over the world.
The obedience on the part of the media class is amazing.
It's just the way they recite.
In the last few days, I'm reading articles by people in Quote, I don't know, quote unquote, major publications like the New York Times or the Washington Post who know absolutely nothing, nothing about this issue.
But they are told, OK, pontificate about it.
You go tell us.
Bret Stephens is going to tell me about China's economy and the China threat.
Are you kidding?
What is this?
The thing that I've been kind of digging at for a while now is, unfortunately or fortunately, I think it's unfortunate that if you want to find anti-interventionist sentiment, it's almost gone.
On the left wing of the Democratic Party, certainly within the Democratic Party itself, maybe it is because in part, as you said, that when there's a Democratic president, people support Democratic foreign policy, and if that means war, they'll support war.
But even when Trump was president, a lot of the sentiment was he's not being confrontational enough with Russia.
He's not being confrontational enough in general to assert American influence.
That was certainly the neocon critique of him, one of the major reasons that they hated him.
And what has kind of been a little bit frustrating, even among this class with the Republican Party, that has become anti-interventionist, that is emphatic about stopping the war in Ukraine, is it's very hard to reconcile that America first ideology with the idea that protecting is it's very hard to reconcile that America first ideology with the idea that protecting Ukraine from Russia is not our business, but for some reason protecting Taiwan from China is, or there's no reason to perceive Russia as an enemy, but there's every
or there's no reason to perceive Russia as an enemy, but there's every reason to perceive China as one.
When you actually Force them to kind of articulate a rationale.
What ultimately they'll say, and I suppose there's some reasonable theoretical validity to it, is that the reason we need to care more about China than we do Ukraine is because unlike Ukraine where we have no vital interest, there's this whole semiconductor industry in Taiwan on which our modern economy depends and we can't allow the Chinese to take it over or destroy it because that would threaten modern life.
When I have interviewed, you know, kind of conservative politicians and asked them, absent this semiconductor dependence issue, do you think it's the business of the United States or the obligation of the United States to protect Taiwan from China?
A lot of them will start saying, and Vivek said it, Marjorie Taylor Greene has said it on my show, in fact, that, no, actually, if we got rid of that dependency, there'd be no more reason for the United States to be so devoted to protecting Taiwan.
Do you think there's any chance of becoming independent in terms of semiconductors or weaning ourselves off of dependency from Taiwan in the short-term future?
So, Glenn, I think, you know, first, the premise of all of this Washington discussion is somehow that we're protecting these countries.
Did we protect Ukraine by saying Ukraine will become part of NATO?
No, we destroyed Ukraine.
Did we protect Afghanistan starting in 1979 by funding the Mujahideen?
No, we destroyed Afghanistan.
So the concept of protecting the country is wrong-headed from the start because nothing was going to interfere with the
TM, the Taiwan semiconductor manufacturing company, the big fab for semiconductors, other than the United States saying we're going to arm Taiwan, we're going to defend Taiwan, we're going to fight China, we're going to impose technology bans on China, we're going to expand the military alliances around the region, we're going to make Taiwan a, quote, porcupine.
The idea that is of arming them so much that China will just stay away.
These are fantasies from beginning to end.
This is not protecting Taiwan.
This is putting Taiwan exactly at the bullseye, just like we did Ukraine.
So, all of these people who think that they're somehow protecting the supply chain of semiconductors have so endangered the supply chain of semiconductors from Taiwan that it's indescribable because there was no risk.
Actually, China wants those semiconductors produced.
And Taiwan is a major supplier of the mainland, and it's a major supplier of the United States, because the US helped to build up the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corporation 30 years ago.
And it has supplied the world, actually.
It's amazing that one fab got to be For odd reasons, particular reasons, such a large temporary part of the world supply chain because other places can do it and China actually will do it also.
And the United States probably could do it also if it applies itself.
But the fact of the matter is it wasn't at risk.
It just wasn't at risk, except when the United States basically says China's an enemy and we take the following steps to prove China's an enemy.
Unilateral trade measures, unilateral export controls, trying to punish the Chinese economy.
Encircling them militarily.
You know, sometimes propaganda, and I know we shouldn't be shocked by it, but the potency of it sometimes amazes me.
All you have to do is look at a map.
And look at where the United States is now purposely putting military bases, including with nuclear-tipped long-range missiles, not just in Australia, but in South Korea and Japan and small islands and the Philippines.
I mean, just look at it.
And then we talk about the aggression of China in the South China Sea.
I mean, imagine the Chinese doing that off the coast of the United States.
And yet people will say, yes, I think China is being aggressive.
But so I want to ask you just two questions.
Then I have one more question out of bricks, because I know you have to go.
But just on this Chinese threat, number one, do you think that a long-term Cold War with China, never mind a hot war, but a Cold War is inevitable?
I mean, it amazes me the casualness with which American media outlets now say, in the event of a war with China, it's like we're being normalized to accept it.
And then the second part of that question is, to me it seems like there's something a little bit unique here in terms of the attempt to breed a confrontation with China, which is usually when we have conflicts with other countries, all the major power centers are on board.
In this case, though, you have a gigantic power center, which is Wall Street and the corporate world of the United States, very much Wanting good relations with China, dependent upon China, is that at least a potential way to prevent the United States and the Chinese from pursuing this kind of insane confrontation?
The United States government is oddly parceled out.
Vested interests control particular agendas.
So for the last 30 years, the neocons have controlled the foreign policy agenda.
It's not That they don't control healthcare, they don't control even the financial sector.
The financial sector, Wall Street controls the economic sphere, tax policy and so forth.
So we have powerful lobbies that control powerful pieces of the government.
And it's completely confused right now, as you say, because the China policy is absolutely incoherent.
on all levels.
But the neocons have this vision that it's their job to fight a potential threat to American hegemony.
But the rest of the business sector, I spoke to a very leading tech company a few weeks ago, which wanted to chat just to say how much they oppose the U.S. barriers to trade with China because they trade enormously with China, one of our most successful which wanted to chat just to say how much they oppose And they say, by the way, we earn a lot of money there.
And we use that money for our R&D so that we try to stay one step ahead of China.
That's our model.
And now the United States government, they don't understand.
They're putting these barriers.
So there's something in Incredibly vacuous and stupid about all of this.
But vacuous and stupid is the order of the day right now.
I would not have thought we would get so deep into this vacuous, stupid, and bloody war in Ukraine before some grown-ups would say, stop it!
This is not in our interest.
We don't have to have NATO there.
But no one stopped it.
So if you ask me, Glenn, is a Cold War inevitable?
It could be avoided tomorrow.
Absolutely.
I could give you the list of specific things.
Not surrender.
Just not having a Cold War.
But is it going to happen?
It could.
Because we're in the era of vacuous and stupid right now.
And we could just continue on this hostile path that makes absolutely no sense.
It has nothing to do with American security.
It has nothing to do with American prosperity.
It's not that China is this overriding threat.
By the way, I think people know, but it's worth saying China has not been involved in one war in the last 40 years, not a single one.
It has one tiny little base in Djibouti for naval repairs, basically.
It may have one or two others.
We have 800 overseas military bases.
As far as I know, in 2,000 years of Chinese statecraft, they've never had an overseas war except Yeah, I think the U.S.
attempted invasions when the Mongols were running China at the end of the 13th century and they tried to invade Japan.
But that I'm going to put on the Mongol account, not on the China account.
Yeah, I think the U.S. has had some more wars in that interim as well.
So could we not have a Cold War?
Tomorrow we could have normalized relations and actually not only prosperity, but we could even work together to solve some problems in the world.
That's not beyond us.
That's actually feasible.
That's not idealistic dreaming.
That's practical.
But are we going to do it?
Well, this is one of the worst administrations I can recall, but I say that about each one, by the way, because I just cannot believe that nobody thinks in Washington anymore.
You know, the thing that alarms me the most is, and I was saying this a lot at the start of the war in Ukraine, that I do think a major factor in why Americans supported this war and continue to is they fed on this kind of anti-Russian animus pervading the media narrative, a lot of which came out of 2016, and the idea that Trump won and Hillary lost in part because of the Kremlin, and there's a lot of anti-Chinese animus
pervading both parties and their media as well.
And once you start unleashing that in people, that can be incredibly dangerous because a lot of times populations will start demanding that sort of aggression, even when the ruling class is a little bit more in doubt.
All right, let me ask you just the last, before I let you go, just this last issue, which is the BRICS alliance, which is an alliance of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
I think the idea was from the start, we're going to kind of be a sort of countervailing alternative to the World Bank and the US dominated military alliance and NATO.
I don't think The West took it very seriously for a good while.
They kind of ignored it or sort of said, OK, you can go over there and do what you want.
But now they just met in Johannesburg and invited six new countries, I think likely because those countries indicated they would like to join, including Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Argentina, all significant countries.
And I think now you're starting to get a little bit more of a fear in the air about what BRICS might mean.
There was a New York Times op-ed today, the title of which was American Power Just Took a Big Hit, and it was essentially focused on the expansion of BRICS.
How seriously do you look at, do you view BRICS in terms of presenting a meaningful challenge to the hegemony of U.S.-dominated institutions in the West?
Well, very interesting.
You know, the BRICS, actually, the right counterpoint is the G7.
So the G7 was the group of the seven countries, the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany and Japan, which seemed to dominate the world.
So you'd have G7 meetings that basically set the global economic agenda.
And the BRICS was the counterpoint to that.
Five countries that had a growing, rapidly growing economy in the aggregate.
And in the last couple of years, the five, Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, again measured at international prices, became larger in the aggregate than the G7.
And that was significant in my view already.
Now, they weren't trying to break the international institutions.
They were trying to say the United States can't dominate those institutions anymore.
We're here.
We're big.
We have a voice.
And we're in a new kind of world, not the U.S.-led world, not the Western-led world, in a truly multipolar world.
Now, the BRICS has taken on even a more significant identity, though, that should be understood.
And that is that I think their number one target right now is to break the hold of the U.S.
dollar, not per se because it's a U.S.
currency, but the U.S.
dollar used for geopolitical purposes.
The U.S.
militarized the international payment system.
One after another, it started freezing the accounts of countries and governments it didn't like.
And the big one, of course, Russia.
It froze hundreds of billions of dollars of the foreign exchange reserves of Russia.
Are you kidding?
Those are foreign exchange reserves.
That's dollars.
I thought it was absurd at the beginning, both that it wouldn't work, but also breaking the basic role of the U.S.
dollar as not a political military instrument, but a payment.
A way to make a payment.
But the United States blew it.
It militarized the dollar.
And what the BRICS are doing actively right now, first the five and now with the new six, is to create alternative payments mechanisms that don't go through SWIFT and the U.S.
banking system.
And of course, President Lula, as you know, is very big on this.
He says, I dream of de-dollarization every day.
I dream of de-dollarization every day.
So he says, you know, if I'm trading with China, why do I have to go through the U.S.
dollar?
And at a technical level, that's a question anyway.
But at a political level, it's damn sure a central question, especially if the United States is going to say, if you don't go along with our sanctions on X, Y and Z, we may freeze your accounts.
And that's where the United States really blew it.
So what we're going to see with the BRICS or the BRICS Plus, by the way, which adding these six now makes the BRICS about 37% of world output compared to about 30% of the G7.
And this is quite meaningful.
About 46% of the world population, if I remember correctly, what they are going to do is not create a single alternative currency to the dollar, but they're going to create alternative payments mechanisms so that the United States can't just stop trade by putting the lid on US banks and this Yeah, it's amazing.
of closing transactions.
That's what's going to be the first real show from the BRICS.
Yeah, you know, it's amazing.
I mean, no less of a figure than Fiona Hill, a hardcore U.S. neocon, I think you could say, kind of a favorite of John Bolton, gave a speech a couple of months ago, and she said, look, I don't agree with it.
I don't think they're right.
But we should realize that this war in Ukraine has kind of become the perfect model to remind the world of all their longstanding grievances against the United States, obviously exacerbated when they just used the power of the dollar to freeze Russian reserves and using Ukraine kind of the way they did Syria as a place to just obviously exacerbated when they just used the power of the dollar to freeze Russian reserves and using Ukraine kind of
And in a lot of ways, we're fueling the rise of BRICS by kind of proving the narrative that they rely on to gather more support.
Professor Sachs, it's always so great to talk to you.
I have a long list of things I'd love to talk to you about beyond what we did, but in respect for your time, and we kind of got to do it in segments, I'm going to let you go with a lot of thanks for taking the time, and we're going to keep bugging you and having you be on our show as much as possible.
Absolutely.
Thanks so much.
Look forward to the next time.
Have a great evening.
Thanks for everything.
Okay.
Thanks.
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