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Oct. 18, 2022 - Tulsi Gabbard Show
01:07:26
Russia, Ukraine and Preventing Nuclear Holocaust with Jeffrey Sachs | The Tulsi Gabbard Show
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Hello, everyone.
Thank you so much for joining me for today's episode of the Tulsi Gabbard Show.
I appreciate that you've taken the time to spend a little bit of your day with me, especially because the issue that we're talking about is the most important issue that's facing us today.
Us, the American people, and people of the world.
And that's the issue of nuclear war.
The most important responsibility that any president has in this country is to keep the American people safe, to make sure that we are safe and free.
But as you and I are sitting here today, the reality is that our president and Democratic Party warmongers have pushed us to the precipice of nuclear war.
This is the most urgent existential threat facing the American people in the world today.
This is not something new, however.
This didn't just magically appear overnight catching all of our leaders by surprise.
I ran for president in 2020 because I knew that this is where we were headed.
I saw all of the signs pointing urgently in this direction.
It's why every day on the campaign I raised this issue.
I talked about the dangers that we face of this new Cold War, this nuclear arms race, this getting rid of non-nuclear proliferation treaties.
I brought it up on the national debate stage, but every single time I was confronted with the reality that politicians refused to talk about it.
The media refused to cover it.
They ignored it.
They didn't care.
An exasperated reporter, I remember after one of my town halls, you know, they had reporters who were traveling with us around the country, frankly.
They're embedded reporters.
And so they heard the things that I was saying every day at these different town halls in different cities and communities.
And one of them came up to me and said, my gosh, Tulsi, why do you always talk about nuclear war?
Like, enough already.
they didn't care then and they don't care now.
It's because they don't care about us.
They don't care about our planet.
They don't care about the fact that our future is at risk.
And I am not, you know, falsely fomenting fear by saying that as we sit here today, our future is at risk.
Congress and the Biden administration, they don't care that their actions could lead to the end of the world as we know it.
Thank you.
I want to pause and ask you to just stop for a moment and think about what that means.
The world as we know it.
My parents' generation lived through the duck and cover era at schools.
You know, I've seen it in movies.
Maybe you lived through that era too, or if you didn't, you've heard about it.
You know, they sound the alarm.
This was obviously during the previous Cold War.
And when the alarm was sounded, all the kids in school would have to go and kneel under their desks as though somehow...
That would protect our kids from a nuclear explosion or the follow-on radioactive fallout.
It was a joke.
Unfortunately, we are facing the same joke right now.
Our leaders have completely failed us.
They have put us in this position knowing that if the worst-case scenario occurs and we are at greater risk of a nuclear holocaust now than we have been since the Cuban Missile Crisis...
Our leaders know, the wealthiest of people in the world know, they've got bunkers and places that they will be able to go to shelter, to truly shelter, and to protect themselves and their loved ones, not only from a nuclear blast, but from the fallout that follows.
So the question that you and I need to be asking ourselves right now is, hey, what about us?
What about the rest of us?
What about the American people?
What about people all over the world who don't happen to be the wealthiest billionaires, who don't happen to be the most powerful politicians?
What do we do?
I've got a good idea of the answer to that question because a few years ago in Hawaii, we actually experienced something that forced us to confront this reality personally.
family.
It was 7 or 8 o'clock in the morning on January 13, 2018, when an emergency alert was sent out from state civil defense via text message to every cell phone, radio, and on television, sounding that alarm stating and on television, sounding that alarm stating ballistic missile threat inbound to Hawaii.
Seek immediate shelter.
This is not a drill.
I remember looking at that text.
And immediately thinking, there's just minutes to live.
And everyone reacted in the same way.
People started running, scrambling, sprinting, trying to figure out, okay, they're telling us to seek shelter immediately.
There's a missile incoming.
This is not a drill.
Where do I go now?
Where is their shelter?
You know, parents wondering, where can I take my kids?
And very quickly realizing there was no shelter.
There was nowhere for people to go to be safe.
So what ended up was you had families huddling together in a closet for what they believed could be their last moments on earth.
There was a video that was posted on social media after of a father desperately trying to protect his terrified young daughter, lowering her into a manhole and telling her, I hope I'll see you again.
Don't come out.
There were...
Security cameras that caught footage of terrified college students at the University of Hawaii sprinting across campus trying to find an open building at least or some kind of shelter to protect themselves.
Now, this was taken very seriously because we are the most remote island chain in the world.
And we sit within range of North Korea's nuclear warheads and intercontinental ballistic missile capabilities.
So we thought that this was it.
Now that turned out to be a false alarm, but the truth that it exposed was very clear.
There is no shelter.
There is nowhere to go.
So I want you to think about that and remember that every time you hear politicians on television saying, hey, yeah, we may go to nuclear war.
We may use a nuclear weapon.
Nuclear weapons are on the table.
Again, coming from people who care only for themselves and are setting the rest of us in the world...
Not only setting us up for failure, but setting us up to face the unimaginable consequences of utter destruction and suffering and death that's caused by a nuclear war.
When you read articles in the paper of people talking about how we can use tactical nuclear weapons and this kind of nuclear weapon as though a nuclear war can be won.
It can't.
It can't.
All it takes is one spark that could begin this nuclear war and that may be an intentional one or An unintentional spark, like we saw throughout the last Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union and in the Cuban Missile Crisis,
how many, many times there were very near misses from a nuclear war starting, not because it was ordered by the heads of states of these countries, but because of a miscalculation or a miscommunication or someone read the radar wrong or got the message wrong.
But these are the things that become a reality in the fog of war.
When you have tensions that are so high and things are continuing to escalate, this potential outcome does not only occur if a leader of a country decides to use a nuclear weapon.
The fact that we are on this path and on this road puts us at the greatest risk than we've ever seen of a nuclear holocaust.
Ronald Reagan said it best.
When he said a nuclear war can never be won and should never be fought.
He got it right.
President Kennedy got it right.
And I'm going to share with you some really powerful quotes from a speech that he gave.
These leaders, a Democrat and Republican, they understood the seriousness of this risk and of this threat.
Our leaders today, they don't care.
They are failing us, putting us in this position of risk, and all for their own selfish reasons.
So, if you look at where we are now, you know, President Biden made a comment indoors at a political fundraiser that we've not faced the prospect of a nuclear holocaust since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
But he didn't Make this acknowledgement in an address to the nation and the American people.
And he's certainly not telling us that it is the Biden administration and Congress and their policies and actions that are responsible for putting us here.
He is our commander-in-chief.
He has the responsibility, the power, and the capability to end this conflict and walk us back from the brink.
But he and Congress lack the political will and courage to do what is necessary to protect you and I and our loved ones and our ability to aspire towards a future.
A future of peace and prosperity and freedom.
They are taking that away from us.
It's unforgivable.
And so instead of doing what's necessary to They are continuing to escalate tensions.
They're continuing to shove us closer to World War III and nuclear war, willing to sacrifice all of us, willing to sacrifice the American people, willing to sacrifice cities like New York or Los Angeles.
And for what?
Towards what objective?
President Kennedy truly laid out the seriousness and the reality of the situation that we are in in a speech that he delivered at the American University in 1963. And 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 cause in the nuclear age would be evidence only of the bankruptcy of our policy or of a collective death wish for the world.
A death wish for the world.
A death wish for the world.
Our leaders need to listen to Presidents Reagan and Kennedy and heed their warnings.
But this regime change war against Russia that the United States and NATO are waging via their proxy in Ukraine didn't begin when Putin invaded Ukraine.
They had their eyes set on this objective long before that.
We saw that through Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party and how eager they were to start a new Cold War in 2016. Accusing President Trump of colluding with Russia just so they could undermine his presidency because they refused to accept the outcome of that election.
Not because they believed it was true, but because they believed it would help them regain their political power.
After years of an investigation, it turned out that this was a baseless accusation.
But...
They didn't care.
They continued to hype up this Cold War by labeling their political opponents and anyone who dares to question or challenge their push to war as Putin apologists or puppets.
They labeled any information that they didn't like as Russian disinformation and propaganda.
They silenced voices they didn't like as Putin apologists, as people who were spreading Russian propaganda, immediately trying to smear and discredit those voices, regardless of how qualified and experienced and thoughtful their perspective and views might be.
So the Democratic Party is led by war hawks, warmongers, who are firmly in the grips of the military-industrial complex.
They don't know or care about the cost of war, and they certainly don't know who pays the price.
Now, you might have missed this in the news because there weren't any headlines about it that I know of.
And it might surprise you, but when Congress was considering a $40 billion bill to escalate this proxy war against Russia...
68 Republicans in the House of Representatives voted—I'm sorry, I got the number wrong—68 Republicans in all of Congress voted against the bill.
Guess how many Democrats voted against it?
Zero.
Zero Democrats voted against this bill.
And so it's up to us to hold them accountable.
Where are these so-called progressives who claim to be champions for peace?
Where is Bernie Sanders?
Where is AOC? Their silence is deafening.
We all want to see an end to this war.
We all want to see an end to the suffering of the Ukrainian people.
We want to see a de-escalation of this new Cold War.
And we need leaders who will walk us back from the brink of nuclear catastrophe.
President Biden and Congress have the responsibility and the opportunity to do exactly that.
To de-escalate these tensions, to negotiate and mediate a peaceful settlement to end this war.
What should outrage every one of us is that back in March of this year, not long after Putin invaded Ukraine, negotiations were actually taking place between Ukraine and Russia to bring about an end to this war, to make a deal.
Now it's been widely reported that it was the United States that convinced President Zelensky to walk away from those discussions, to continue to escalate and wage this war.
We should ask our leaders, why is that?
Why are you actively trying to oppose peace and continue to escalate war?
And that's what's happening.
These Democratic Party warmongers are continuing to beat their war drums.
The war is raging on.
And again, they have put us in this place now where we the American people in the world are at risk of World War III kicking off and a nuclear war that could destroy us all.
Now this is but the latest in their economic wars of modern day siege and regime change all waged under the guise of humanitarianism spreading democracy and freedom when in fact they're destroying the homes and lives of people around the world in order to save them.
And in doing so they're undermining our national security and exacting a devastating toll on my brothers and sisters in uniform and the American people.
But in their minds They're convoluted thinking.
They think it's worth it.
This rationale and this mindset of these warmongers was summed up perfectly by Madeleine Albright.
We have heard that a half a million children have died.
I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima.
And, you know, is the price worth it?
I think this is a very hard choice, but the price, we think the price is worth it.
I've sounded the alarm about the cost and consequence of regime change wars and the existential threat of a nuclear cold war and nuclear arms race throughout my years in Congress and when I ran for president.
As a result, I was smeared by the Democratic Party leaders and the corporate media accused of being an isolationist, a pacifist, an apologist for dictators, with Hillary Clinton pointing me out and saying, hey, Tulsi Gabbard is a Russian asset, a traitor to the country that I love and that I'm willing to die for.
But I know what I'm fighting for.
I've never stopped advocating for peace and I never will.
Because I know the cost.
I know the cost of war.
I know that we can't be prosperous and free as a people and as a society unless we're at peace.
So we need to stop trying to be the policemen of the world.
We need to stop sending our troops to go and fight in wars that undermine our national security and provide no benefit to the American people in our security.
We need to stop—our leaders need to stop being subservient to the military-industrial complex.
We need to see the world as it is, not some fantasy world that we wish existed, and make decisions accordingly.
We need leaders who are engaging with other countries, seeking opportunities for cooperation rather than conflict, and basing our decisions on what serves the interests of the American people, our freedom, our security— And honor our men and women in uniform by ensuring that they are not abused and put into harm's way working as mercenaries for permanent Washington warlords,
but instead reserved to fulfill our mission of defending our freedoms and keeping us safe.
Today, I'm really grateful to have a conversation with one of the world's most renowned economists and someone who is a brilliant foreign policy expert.
He has worked as the director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University.
He has served as president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.
He has authored three New York Times bestsellers and is the recipient of 40 honorary doctorates.
Economist magazine named him one of the three most influential living economists in the world today.
But really, most importantly, and relevant to our conversation now and the work, the very important work that he's doing, he's a true champion for peace and diplomacy.
He has worked with leaders from around the world promoting peace and diplomacy, engaging both secular and religious communities around this effort.
He's served as a special advisor to three UN secretaries general, and his impactful work has taken him around the world working in over 140 countries, including Russia, where he served as an advisor to President Boris Yeltsin and President Gorbachev as they were working to transition to a market economy.
I'm grateful that Professor Jeffrey Sachs has taken some time out to join us on the show today to talk about the greatest threat we face.
Professor Sachs.
Greetings.
Nice to see you.
How are you?
Nice to see you.
I'm good.
How are you?
Very good.
Where in the world are you?
In Vienna.
Okay.
Nice place, yeah.
Literally on the other side of the planet from where I am.
So thanks for making the time.
I'm in Hawaii right now.
Okay, very good.
Managing multiple time zones always makes things interesting.
So we get to see the sunrise.
There's a silver lining in that.
I know you're limited on time, so I want to be respectful of that and cut straight to the chase here.
You have been and continue to be such an incredible leading voice at a time when our country and the world literally sit on the precipice of nuclear war.
The US and NATO have been waging this proxy war against Russia after Russia invaded Ukraine.
We have been told all along by President Biden and others that the United States must wage this proxy war for the sake of democracy and freedom and that we all have to pay the price.
Others throughout Europe and the United States in the permanent Washington establishment have said that if we don't stop Putin right now, then he will go on to take over all of Europe and therefore poses a threat to freedom everywhere.
Where we sit now, none of that has really played out.
Can you speak?
I know you've got a lot of personal experience in working within this part of the world.
Obviously, you're a leading economist in the world, and you know a lot of the backstory that the American people and people of the world, frankly, just aren't getting.
How did the intelligence community and our leaders get this so wrong, or did they not get it wrong and they had other objectives that they didn't tell us about from the beginning?
Thanks so much for the chance to go into this in more depth than our mainstream media do.
In fact, the mainstream media will not look at this story with any accuracy or any insight at all.
There's a narrative and you better stick to it.
But the narrative is wrong and it's extraordinarily dangerous.
And we are indeed on a path to nuclear war.
We're on a path of escalation.
And the U.S. seemingly doesn't want to or know how to get off that escalatory cycle that we're on right now.
Now, the basic point is this.
We are in a war with Russia.
It is a proxy war in that it's Mostly Ukrainians that are fighting on the ground, though there are some foreign forces also.
We don't know exactly who, but the US is involved in the military intelligence, the armaments, flows, the logistics, and the strategy.
So this is a proxy war.
And we have said that the war is to defeat Putin.
And on the other side, what I know is that Putin and Russia, to the best of my knowledge, view this war also in existential terms.
Let me just put it that way at the start, which means they do not plan to lose this war.
The U.S. seems to think that, well, if you bloody Russia knows enough, they'll just go home.
And the US has gone home from wars like Vietnam and Afghanistan.
But what the US doesn't understand is that from Russia's perspective, what's happening in Ukraine is core to Russia's national security.
It's not just a lark or an ancillary move or a tactical move.
Russian leaders, I should say, view this war in stark security terms.
Right or wrong, what that means is you have two sides that say, we are not going to lose this war.
Both sides are nuclear superpowers.
And I think that this is the core reality, which is that I I do not want to test the proposition that Russia will be defeated without using nuclear weapons.
I do not like the rhetoric that we have.
Oh, we won't act out of fear.
It's a bluff and so forth.
Well, it's not a bluff, Russia's sense of its security threat that it's facing right now.
That's not a bluff.
That's real.
The people in charge in our country have little deep understanding of the Russian perspective.
I know that because I've been around this for 32 years.
Yeah.
The U.S. just pushes its way in and does what it wants and declares the other side crazy or whatever.
But crazy, but super rational that it's not going to use nuclear weapons.
It just doesn't add up basically.
It doesn't.
When you look at the history of this, this is a...
This is a war that didn't start on February 24th, 2022. It was not an unprovoked war that suddenly started on February of this year.
In fact, the fighting's been going on for eight years because the fighting started in 2014. But even that fighting had very stark antecedents.
And I take the story back already.
32 years ago, you know, at the end of the Soviet Union, and I happened to be around at the time as one of the advisors closest to the action, I would say, in Eastern Europe and advising Mikhail Gorbachev's economic team and then Boris Yeltsin's economic team.
I saw a lot.
The United States said to Gorbachev, who offered, who said, I want to end the Warsaw Pact, the Soviet military alliance, said, we will not take advantage of that.
If the Soviet Union ends the Warsaw Pact, we will not extend NATO to replace the Warsaw Pact.
This was extremely clear.
For people who don't know, what is the Warsaw Pact and why was it in the past?
The Warsaw Pact was the Soviet NATO, if you want to put it that way.
That was a military alliance of states that were under Soviet control in Central and Eastern Europe.
And their militaries were tied to the Soviet Union.
And the two sides, the U.S.-led alliance, NATO, and the Soviet-led alliance, the Warsaw Pact, faced down each other's tank, turrets, and gun sights.
And actually came face-to-face in tank confrontations in Berlin in 1962, one of the events that nearly led us.
or end of 61, I guess, that led us to the brink of nuclear war.
And Gorbachev, as a man of peace who wanted to reunify He didn't want to end the Soviet Union, but he wanted to reunify Europe and reform the Soviet Union.
Knew that his side was in crisis and needed reform, but it wasn't That they didn't have options, but Gorbachev's option was, let's make peace.
We will step down from the military alliance.
And NATO said, we too.
We won't extend.
Now, the long and the short of it is the U.S. cheated, as usual, because we typically cheat because we are powerful.
And power brings impunity.
You do what you want.
No one's going to stop us from that.
The White House in 1992, the neoconservatives led by Cheney and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and others were saying, oh, my God, now we don't have an enemy.
Now we are the unipolar power.
We're the sole superpower in the world.
We do what we want.
And they already started to plan a number of wars that were going to end the regimes that had sided with the Soviet Union and so forth.
They didn't recognize there was another world possible now.
There was Russia that wanted normal relations.
There was Gorbachev before Yeltsin that wanted normal relations.
I was there.
I know what they wanted.
They wanted normalcy.
They wanted peace.
But the U.S. got the idea, okay, now it's time for us to extend NATO. Now, the first expansion Was to Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, Central Europe, not on Russia's border in 1999. Provocative.
Against what we had promised, but not a dire direct threat to Russia.
Russia complained, but it wasn't up against Russia.
Then came NATO bombing of Serbia, a close ally of Russia in 1999, bombing Belgrade for several weeks.
That kind of miffed the Russian leadership saying, you're supposed to be a defensive alliance, you're bombing our ally.
Then came George W. Bush and his intention to extend NATO basically on an unlimited scale in the region.
So he expanded NATO to seven countries, the three Baltic states right up against Russia's border now.
Two Black Sea states, Romania and Bulgaria, and Slovenia and Slovakia.
Seven during his eight-year period.
But the main bombshell, if I could call it, that came in 2008 at the Bucharest NATO summit when the United States insisted That NATO get ready for enlargement to Ukraine and to Georgia.
Now, if you look at a map, you can see that we are then First of all, right up against Russia's border with the U.S. alliance.
And Georgia, my God, look at a map.
That is not a North Atlantic state.
Remember, NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
The idea clearly was to surround Russia in the Black Sea.
Why the Black Sea?
Because that's where Russia's naval fleet is.
Even US strategists wrote very clearly that if Russia is bottled up, if the US controls essentially Ukraine, then Russia ceases to be a major power.
The US gains a great advantage in geopolitics and in its role in Eurasia.
So we played out that game, we thought, with NATO expansion.
In 2013, Things went red hot because Russia had a neighbor in Ukraine, a president at the time, Viktor Yanukovych, who was a pro-Russian politician.
Led Ukraine to declare neutrality in 2010. And this calmed down things because Ukraine itself said, no, thank you.
We don't want NATO. We want to be neutral.
We don't want to get these two superpowers fighting over us.
Right.
Clearly played a role in the overthrow of Yanukovych at the end of 2013 and early 2014. I saw that with my own eyes, actually, because after Yanukovych was overthrown, I was asked to go to Kiev to talk with the new government about the economic crisis.
And I went.
And when I was there, I was shown around by...
NGOs of the US explaining the direct role that they had played in the Maidan overthrow of Yanukovych.
And we also caught Victoria Nuland, who's currently our Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, on the phone planning the post-Yanukovych government in Kyiv.
But don't listen to those tapes.
Let's keep focus.
Exactly.
Don't look at how we got here.
Yes.
We were told we had nothing to do with that.
This was just a public insurrection.
Well, at that point, Russia, from that moment on, we've been at war, basically, because Russia said the U.S. is pushing, absolutely, and is aiming to corner us.
That's the Russian perception.
You may say exaggerated or not.
I think there's a lot in that perception, frankly.
But since the overthrow of Yanukovych, Russia has viewed this issue of NATO enlargement as a dire threat.
Now, fast forward to 2021. But with one sentence, we funded massively the Ukrainian army between 2014 and 2021. That's why it's fighting right now.
We poured in billions and billions of dollars.
Russia watched that, of course, saying, my God, this is becoming an American-based army, effectively, American army.
Hardware.
Then came Biden.
I thought, okay, maybe, maybe something will cool off.
Quite the contrary.
Biden just played the deep state game.
I don't know who's really calling the shots, frankly, but Biden said, basically, we're in a struggle with Russia.
And three times in 2021, the United States at the highest levels reaffirmed that Ukraine would be a member of NATO. And this was at the 2021 NATO meeting and in a State Department strategic document with Ukraine and in a Defense Department strategic document with Ukraine.
Well, at the end of 2021, Putin He said, look, this is completely unacceptable for our security interests.
And he put down demands, if you could call it that, that NATO must stop enlarging and we need to negotiate over this.
I, at that point, called the White House, and I said, for heaven's sake, negotiate.
This is real, and NATO enlargement isn't even desirable for Ukraine.
It's not desirable for us.
We would never tolerate such a situation, say, Mexico deciding, oh, we want a military alliance with China.
And Washington says, no problem, of course.
You know, we can't even imagine, because we don't even...
Attempt for an iota to put ourselves in the other position to understand what this means.
That's why we get so many things wrong because we don't think we have to understand anything.
We have to make up their narrative and our narrative because we're the United States of America.
We're so powerful.
So the upshot of it was...
Biden said, we will never negotiate over Ukraine's right to join NATO. That's never going to be on the table.
They call it the open door policy, as if the US has the right to form military alliances anywhere, irrespective of the security implications for other countries.
And our own.
In the neighborhood, which we would never accept.
We have something called the Monroe Doctrine, which told Europe, don't even dream of doing what we do routinely.
Well, the war came, and then, what I said at the beginning, we are now in—we're in an extraordinarily dangerous moment because Russia— Views this war as core to its security.
The United States, because the Ukrainians are fighting anyway, so it's not on our ground, says, we're just going to continue to fight to defeat Putin.
We don't even hide it.
In fact, I think we go out of our way not to hide it.
Biden saying this man cannot remain in power.
The U.S. Secretary of Defense saying our goal is to weaken Russia.
Zelensky, just about every day Not even talking about Ukraine's interests, but mocking Russia, mocking Russia.
So the idea is humiliation.
They think that, you know, perhaps this will lead to Putin's overthrow.
After all, you know, Yanukovych was overthrown.
I don't know what...
Dreams or gambles or whatever they're playing.
But boy, are they playing with fire.
And they're playing with fire on our heads.
And I profoundly resent it.
And I'm shocked by the complete lack of any debate in the U.S. Congress on this.
You know a lot more about that than I do.
But I just cannot believe that we don't have a full-fledged debate about how dangerous this situation is.
And one thing I'd like to read, Tulsi, you know how much I admire President Kennedy for not having blown up the world 60 years ago in the Cuban Missile Crisis when all his advisors said bomb.
And they also had everything wrong as usual.
They said, well, the missiles in Cuba aren't ready, but they were ready.
And we would have had a nuclear war, but Kennedy sussed it out properly and understood that we needed compromise, we needed diplomacy, we needed peace.
So he removed American missiles from Turkey, Khrushchev removed the Soviet missiles from Right.
In the lead-up to that treaty, Kennedy made the greatest speech of an American president in modern history.
And I urge everybody to get online June 10, 1963, the American commencement speech, also known as his peace speech, because he lays out how you preserve the peace.
But one thing that he said, and I want to read it because I think it's so striking...
He said in this speech, 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.
Listen to what he's saying.
Do not confront a nuclear adversary with the choice of either a humiliating retreat or a nuclear war.
I can't think of a closer description to what we are actually doing right now than that.
It is the precise description of what is actually underway in the United States.
We are Aiming to humiliate this person.
And we're doing it, and we are risking nuclear war.
And then we're told by our leaders, and I don't know what they're thinking, honestly.
I don't have a clue as to what's really in their minds.
But they're telling us, don't worry about it.
Exactly.
My advice is worry.
Completely.
Call your congressman, say, this is crazy.
Stop this.
Yeah.
I think, I mean, gosh, everything that you're saying is obviously so directly on point as far as how we got to this position and how completely our leaders are absolutely failing us.
It seems as though they have a death wish to the world in the way in which...
You know, they're talking about, oh, the use of tactical nuclear weapons and strategic nuclear weapons as though a nuclear war can possibly be contained or limited and can be won.
Coltsy, it's just, sorry to interrupt.
You know, you read in their newspaper articles.
Will Putin use nuclear weapons?
What is his arsenal?
Let's have a look.
Exactly.
As if this is the most normal thing in the world.
Yes.
Yes.
And as though like, okay, so he's got, you know, what is it, over 6,000 nuclear warheads.
We've got over 5,000.
As though like, oh, that's going to make a difference than if he had 2,000, because if he had fewer and launched fewer nuclear weapons, that that would somehow limit the impact of truly the nuclear holocaust.
That one nuclear attack would launch forever.
Not just in one country in Europe, but on the world, sparking World War III. And I think the fact that politicians are not talking about this, the mainstream media is certainly not talking about it, Except in a nonchalant way as though, hey, yeah, this is no big deal.
Let's just have a conversation about it.
But like you said, it should raise a huge waving red flag of concern to everybody at home that there is no debate on this in Congress.
And that if anybody tries to bring this up, they immediately are labeled as you and I have been and continue to be as, oh, you're just a Putin puppet.
You are an apologist for this terrible dictator.
You are all of this name-calling and smearing without ever actually just going to the substance of the conversation.
We can have a debate on the role of NATO and whether it should be enlarged or not or Russia's intent or this and that.
But the fact that there is no credible debate on the fact that we are on the brink of nuclear war because of the decisions that American leaders and leaders in NATO have made and continue to make, refusing to choose a path towards peace and diplomacy, refusing to recognize refusing to choose a path towards peace and diplomacy, refusing to recognize the threat to the world, we are in this position because
And I think it goes to, you know, this recent news of how our federal Department of Health and Human Services is now purchasing drugs to use in a radiological and nuclear emergency for the American people as though like, yeah, no big deal.
We'll give you a couple of pills or inject you with some drugs so that you can withstand a nuclear attack.
I'm sure you saw the PSA that New York City put out saying, hey, if there's a nuclear attack, get inside, stay inside, and stay tuned.
We saw, you know, back in our nuclear missile attack scare that we had in Hawaii, you know, everybody got the text message a couple of years ago saying, hey, missile incoming, seek shelter immediately, this is not a drill.
But like everyone in Hawaii realized immediately when we thought, hey, we've got 15 minutes to live, there is no shelter.
There's no place to go.
Of course.
All of this is so cruel, so macabre, so surrealistic, so stupid, so phony.
We used to have in my childhood, the duck and cover, get under your desk.
Exactly.
That'll save you.
Right.
You know, it is hard to imagine, hard to understand what anyone is thinking Right now in the leadership in Washington.
That's exactly what I'm wondering.
If they are thinking at all, I try to reach out because I know a number of these people.
They're not interested.
They don't want to hear it.
They're not talking.
They are provoking.
There are big mysteries, by the way, as everything, because everything is a lie and everything is classified.
But in mid-March, we got reports That from the Turkish mediators, that Russia and Ukraine were close to an agreement.
And both the Ukrainian and the Russian negotiators confirmed that.
And they exchanged papers.
And then you hear from the US, ah, we don't think these are going anywhere.
These negotiations aren't going anywhere.
And then Biden flew to Brussels to meet with the other NATO leaders and he said this is gonna be a long war.
He didn't say this is promising news.
He said this is gonna be a long war.
Then he went to Warsaw and he said that man cannot stay in power.
And then Lloyd Austin said we're weakening Russia.
You see it has all of the hallmarks of us torpedoing the negotiations.
Can I prove it?
No, because they don't tell us anything and everything is a lie.
But what I can see is that the United States government has never, in this whole crisis, stood up and said, we want to see effective negotiations and we support them.
We thank Turkey for being a mediator.
We call on both sides to reach an agreement.
We are dead set against that because these neocons have had this fantasy world For 30 years that this is the U.S. world and that this is the unipolar world and if we want to expand NATO, we're going to expand NATO and no one's going to stop us, nuclear threats or not.
And that's where we are right now.
So you're saying this goes back 30 years.
I want to go back to your description of what happened in kind of that immediate post-Soviet era.
The Warsaw Pact was dissolved.
Was there ever a debate or conversation at that time saying, okay, if the Warsaw Pact is resolved, then what purpose is there for NATO to exist in the first place?
If NATO existed as a counterbalance towards the Soviet threat or pressure, Well, if the Warsaw Pact is gone, does NATO have a purpose?
And if NATO does exist, was Russia ever invited to join?
So, very interesting.
There were, of course, people who had that thought and some senior people and some very clever people.
Bill Perry, who was our defense secretary under Clinton.
And Perry Looked for ways for NATO to reach out to really try to bring Russia into a trustful relationship so this becomes a security alliance, not a confrontational alliance.
And he describes in his memoirs how much progress he made and the personal relations he forged with senior Russian officials and the institutional progress.
Then he says, Then he started hearing, my word, in the State Department, they're pushing for NATO enlargement.
And he starts asking around, what is this?
And it's Madeleine Albright and Holbrooke, Richard Holbrooke.
And he says, this is a terrible idea.
We're just at a fragile stage right now where we're building trust, building relations.
Why would you start to do this?
And he...
Doesn't understand that it's a done deal because he's been played bureaucratically.
And he goes to see Clinton.
And Clinton says, yes, I'm considering and so on.
And then Clinton decides, OK, we're going to expand NATO because Clinton, I think, regarded this in his local political terms as a good move for the 1996 elections, maybe.
Who knows?
You never know because it's so flaky, this kind of thing.
And Perry...
Writes in his memoirs, I debated, should I resign at that moment?
Because this was a big deal.
Then, this is already 26 years ago.
So this isn't something that just came with us.
Perry debates resigning, and then he says, I decided...
Not to resign.
And then now I don't know.
I've thought about it for the last 20 years.
Should I have resigned at that point?
And what's also striking is that our senior statesman, who I appreciate more and more as I get older and know more and have seen more, George Kennan, who...
He was the author of the containment policy in 1947 against the Soviet Union, but always meant it to be a non-military kind of containment and always emphasized there's an off-rap to the Cold War.
And he bemoaned the whole Cold War approach of a thermonuclear arms race.
He thought this was madness.
When Clinton went ahead with the NATO enlargement, Kennan immediately said, this is the start of the new Cold War.
Striking.
The person I think most sensitive to Russian history in the 20th century and he knew immediately that we were on a new path of confrontation because he understood the US government and he understood the Russian government and he called it that was in 1997 I believe that he stated that so 25 years ago so The whole narrative right now is that this came out of nowhere.
And if you say NATO enlargement, like you say, you're mocked, you're laughed at, you're called a Putin apologist, you're put on some Ukraine list as a propagator of propaganda and so on.
You know, the truth is we don't hear the truth about a lot of things these days because we are a security state.
Where everything is confidential, everything is hidden from the public.
All these decisions that we're talking about, the life and death decisions of the planet, are being made by a handful of people.
A handful of people.
That's the real situation of American political system.
That is not the democracy we talk about of deliberation and congressional hearings and And we don't have champions like we had in the past, whereas J. William Fulbright, who talked about the arrogance of power and who warned against the Vietnam War and people that I knew growing up who were able to stand against this monolithic, militaristic viewpoint.
But we don't have that right now, so it's extraordinarily dangerous.
What is your message to people, to the American people and people of the world right now who are hearing this, who are understanding the gravity of this crisis that we are facing, where literally as we sit here, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a week,
maybe in a month, We could be in a situation where World War III is sparked, where a nuclear war has begun, and we are on the path towards destruction of this world as we know it, destruction of life as we know it.
The 2024 election is a few years away still, so yes, we have an election here in the United States coming up in a few weeks.
It's important to vote.
But what can we do right now?
You know, I was just on a call with a wonderful peace group in Brooklyn, New York, and they asked the question, and I thought that one thing they could do immediately was call the New York congressmen and congresswomen and say, we want you online right now to talk to us.
We don't want to hear from your staff.
We don't want to hear we're too busy.
This is life and death.
And we want to speak to you.
We don't just want to hear from you.
We want to speak to you.
Because it's your job also to keep us safe.
And I would like people all over the country to call their congressmen and congresswomen and get them online with communities.
Because we don't have to just assume that somewhere far off in Washington they're doing the right thing.
We don't have to wait for them to run 100 miles to find them someplace.
We can have the same kind of Zoom with them as we're having right now and demand that they do their job.
They're not doing their job.
And this is the biggest problem because in the U.S. Constitution, Congress declares war.
But we don't have a constitutional order.
We have a security state.
And the security state means that we are in the hands of a few people.
And frankly, I don't trust their judgment right now.
They've got a terrible, terrible track record.
I know there's a lot of people across the United States who are concerned for the well-being of the people of Ukraine, people who are putting Ukrainian flags out in front of their homes and who feel very compassionate towards the pain and the suffering that they're people who are putting Ukrainian flags out in front of their homes and who feel very A little less these days, but it was 24-7 when the invasion first began.
What is your message to them when we say, hey, tell our members of Congress, tell the president to do the right thing?
Can you paint the picture of what that is for the American people who are trying to figure out what is the right thing to do to do good?
Yeah, we say our government says we love Ukraine, but they're loving them to death.
Literally.
Putting Ukraine in between NATO and Russia.
It's going to be Ukraine that's going to receive the first nuclear attack if there is one.
Right.
So we're not doing any favors to Ukraine right now.
We should be pushing both sides to negotiate for peace.
And the idea that this war is helping Ukraine.
No, we're helping Ukraine the same way we helped Afghanistan.
In other words, we are leveling this country by our armaments, their armaments, our HIMARS, their missiles.
This is not helping Ukraine.
I absolutely want to help the Ukrainian people.
I advised the Ukrainian government.
I've been involved with Ukraine from the beginning.
My message is not about pro-Russia or pro-Ukraine.
It is about peace so that everybody can survive.
And if you fly the flag for Ukraine, absolutely.
But that doesn't mean that the way to protect Ukraine is NATO weaponry in an escalation to nuclear war.
That's no protection at all.
It's astonishing to me how the President of the United States and all of his emissaries in different ways continue to repeat the talking point over and over and over again.
well, this is Putin's war, you know, increasing gas prices are because of Putin's war, supply shortages are because of Putin's war.
There's no one asked directly, hey, when does this war end?
When do we kind of like, when do we cut things off?
And Biden says, well, that's up to Putin, putting everything on Putin's doorstep as though the United States of America is a powerless entity that is passive in all of this.
I think the leverage that the United States has, obviously because of the money and arms and everything that are pouring into Ukraine, is probably the most powerful in the world to push for peace.
And it's not just leverage about our leverage in Ukraine and so forth.
It's This war is about the United States.
So it's absolutely direct.
At the beginning of the war, Chancellor Schultz of Germany went to Putin and said, you know, I guarantee NATO won't expand while I'm chancellor.
And Putin laughed at him and said, yeah, how long are you going to be chancellor?
He wants to talk to Biden.
Let's get real.
This is a U.S.-led alliance.
And so this is about the United States.
And we need to sit down to negotiate.
And we, the American people, need to demand that our leaders sit down to negotiate.
And if we can't arrive at a negotiating position, we'll learn that in the course of negotiating.
But as President Kennedy said, let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us never fear to negotiate.
So that's a good idea.
Let's get to the negotiating table.
That means us.
Absolutely.
This could not be a more perfect message, a more urgent message to the American people.
I think a lot of people who are concerned about the direction that we are headed, the fact that we're spending billions of dollars I think?
Just to make ends meet.
And yet seeing our taxpayer dollars go towards yet another war that's pushed us to the brink of nuclear catastrophe and Holocaust.
So I'm so grateful for your leadership, Professor Sachs.
I'm grateful for the history, the experience, the first-hand knowledge, and frankly, the courage that you bring to this very necessary dialogue.
And please, please, please continue.
Well, I will.
And I want to say the same about you because you are brave, courageous, clear-sighted, and a crucial leader for our country.
And so I really thank you.
And what a pleasure it is to be with you, even if we have to talk about such a grim topic.
At least we get to help more people to understand the situation.
I agree.
I look forward to more conversations with you like this.
There's a lot more to do.
Wonderful.
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
Thank you.
Good to see you.
Thanks a lot.
As you've just heard, Professor Sachs really clearly outlined how we got to this situation and the seriousness and the urgency of the threat that we face, the existential threat that's facing all of humanity and the world.
The proliferation of nuclear weapons has made this world infinitely more dangerous than it was just a century ago, along with the dissolution of almost every nuclear nonproliferation treaty that was put in place by courageous leaders like Reagan and JFK.
today we're led by cowards.
So, if we are to have hope for a future, for our future, We need leaders who draw courage and inspiration from the words of President Kennedy when he spoke about what we must do to achieve peace and why it is so important.
First, examine our attitude towards peace itself.
Too many of us think it is impossible.
Too many think it is unreal.
But that is a dangerous, defeatist belief.
It leads to the conclusion.
That war is inevitable.
That mankind is doomed.
That we are gripped by forces we cannot control.
We need not accept that view.
Our problems are man-made.
Therefore, they can be solved by man.
And man can be as big as he wants.
No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings.
Man's reason and spirit Have often solved the seemingly unsolvable, and we believe they can do it again.
I am not referring to the absolute, infinite concept of universal peace and goodwill of which some fantasies and fanatics dream.
I do not deny the value of hopes and dreams, but we merely invite discouragement and incredulity by making that our only and immediate goal.
Let us focus instead On a more practical, more attainable peace, based not on a sudden revolution in human nature, but on a gradual evolution in human institutions, on a series of concrete actions and effective agreements, which are in the interests of all concerned.
There is no single simple key to this peace, no grand or magic formula to be adopted by one or two powers.
Genuine peace must be the product of many nations, the sum of many acts.
It must be dynamic, not static, changing to meet the challenge of each new generation.
For peace is a process, a way of solving problems.
With such a peace, there will still be quarrels and conflicting interests, as there are within families and nations.
World peace like community peace, Does not require that each man love his neighbor.
It requires only that they live together in mutual tolerance, submitting their disputes to a just and peaceful settlement.
And history teaches us that enmities between nations, as between individuals, do not last forever.
However fixed our likes and dislikes may seem, the tide of time and events We'll often bring surprising changes in the relations between nations and neighbors.
So let us persevere.
Peace need not be impractical, and war need not be inevitable.
By defining our goal more clearly, by making it seem more manageable and less remote, we can help all people to see it, to draw hope from it, and to move irresistibly towards it.
The United States is a nation that holds great power, potential, and resources.
But with this great power comes even greater responsibility.
We cannot be prosperous or free as a people or as a nation unless we are at peace.
We need leaders who will fight for that peace.
We the people, we can't stand silent and just allow them to push us over the nuclear precipice.
We can't just stand by, put our heads in the sand, and allow this to happen without taking direct action and making sure that members of Congress, the President of the United States, and the media actually hear our voices.
Be so loud that they can't ignore us.
And pray that our leaders will listen.
Pray that they will heed the words of President Kennedy and take immediate action, the necessary action to ensure that we have a future that is peaceful, prosperous, and free.
We have a lot of work to do.
And I look forward to continuing the conversation with you next week.
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