Transcription
And I asked her about some terrible decision Congress made on health care costs. And she literally put her face in her hands and said, "The lobbies, the lobbies." It became overwhelming the money.
American government is a military machine all over the world plus a secret army, the CIA, whose job it is to overthrow governments that are deemed to be inimical to US interests. And the CIA has engaged in probably about a hundred regime change operations around the world since 1947. I've seen some of them with my own eyes. Literally the CIA carrying off heads of government.
When it comes to China, the view is the big battle is still ahead. And one of the reasons for some of the Trump people to say get out of Ukraine is not for rebuilding America. It's for the bigger battle ahead. Actually, John Mirshimer takes that position in not that he wants war, but he says Ukraine's a sideshow. The real issue for US security is China. So, we shouldn't squander our limited resources on a sideshow.
The US, uh, actually was never really isolationist. Um, so, it's important to understand, uh, a little bit of the US history. Remember the US started as a sliver of the eastern seaboard of the United States of the North American continent. So the mission of the United States from the beginning was expansion. The US has always been an expansionary force. It was never isolationist.
I have a principle, by the way, which is, or a principle that I want to establish, which is that the United States should not bomb any country where, uh, if, uh, at least 50% of Americans cannot name two cities in that country. That would basically end all American wars.
>> What you are about to see is a high-profile dinner event held at the Asia Society Hong Kong Center in April 2025. Moderating this dialogue is Mr. Rani Cham, one of Hong Kong's most respected business leaders, a distinguished philanthropist and the co-founder of the Asia Society Hong Kong Center. He is renowned for his profound insights into East West relations and is often the one guiding some of the most crucial and candid conversations on the global stage. His guest for the dialogue is Professor Jeffrey Sachs. As a witness to pivotal historical moments over the past three decades, including advising on reforms in the former Soviet Union, Professor Sachs offers a sweeping and profound diagnosis, dissecting how the United States arrived at its current predicament. He traces back 30 years to reveal how after the Cold War, the US chose hegemony over cooperation, sowing the seeds for today's conflicts. He will also dissect the strategic logic behind US policy towards China, arguing it's not a response to a threat, but a reaction to China's success. Finally, he connects this pursuit of global dominance to the deep-seated decay within America's domestic political system. What follows is a challenging and comprehensive analysis that may reshape your understanding of the last 30 years of world history. Let's listen in.
To my mind, the United States has been, uh, not the most constructive actor, uh, in the world scene for several decades, actually. Uh, I have been a bit chagrined, uh, really for 30 years about American foreign policy and mostly because I saw, at a very personal way and also a professional way, how many opportunities for peace the US, uh, squandered, uh, needlessly. Uh, I was an advisor 35 years ago to President Gorbachev, uh, on the economic reforms of the last moments of the Soviet Union. And, uh, when the Soviet Union went down, President Yeltsin asked me to be an economic advisor for his economic team. I can tell you without question, without any doubt whatsoever, 35 years ago, we had the chance for sustained peace in this world without any fundamental conflicts. The Russian leadership absolutely wanted it. They sought it. They wanted it in a very practical way. And the problem from my perspective, which I only understood step by step over many years, is that the United States didn't want cooperation. It just wanted victory. Uh, it wanted its way. It wanted what came to be called the unipolar world. Uh, the idea that with the Soviet Union gone and China not on anyone's radar screen back in the 1990s in geopolitical terms, uh, the United States ran the show. So they thought, and I basically lived through professionally, close up, more than 30 years of the United States trying to run the show, and it has not gone well. It's been non-stop wars. It has been unnecessary provocations.
In the case of Russia, I'm a definitely a strong minority view together with my friend, uh, John Mearsheimer, that what happened in Ukraine was basically provoked by the United States over many years. I saw a lot of it close up. The war in Ukraine could have been avoided easily on countless occasions, right? >> It could have ended immediately in March 2022 because there was actually a peace agreement that was on the verge of being signed, and the United States stopped that too. So these are tragic, uh, mistakes of foreign policy.
When it comes to China, I am of the view, for those of you who have happened to see me in one way or another on on video, for example, I'm basically of the view that, uh, sorry, my, let me just turn off my phone. I'm basically of the view that China's big mistake vis-à-vis the United States was to be too successful. Uh, and that China has not done anything, in my view, and I mean anything, uh, other than what a normal major country would do to provoke the kinds of reactions and attitudes from the United States. What happened in the US was that with China's rise, starting around 2014 in a very methodical way, the United States came to view China as not only a rival but therefore as an adversary because it was a rival in scale, in success, in technology. And what the United States wanted was primacy or hegemony or unipolarity, and that all of what has happened is basically an American reaction to China's success.
If you want to see that very well documented, I'm sure many of you know the paper, but there's a very, very clear, vivid explanation of American foreign policy in a paper in 2015 for the Council on Foreign Relations by Robert Blackwill and Ashley Tellis, >> called a something like a grand strategy towards China or revised grand strategy towards China, and it spells out in completely vivid terms what has ensued for the past decade. Because what Blackwill, who was my colleague at Harvard for many years and a friend and a very, uh, smart person, but I disagree with him on the most basic point. What he writes in that 2015 paper is that America's grand strategy is primacy, and China's rise is therefore no longer in America's interest. This is an astounding idea. It's basically the idea that success elsewhere is disadvantageous for the United States. If you take that view, you are bound to live in a world of non-stop conflict. If the advances of other places are to your detriment simply because they are advances, you are condemned to view the world in conflictual terms. But Blackwill says in the first sentences of this essay, America's grand strategy has always been to be number one, and therefore China's rise is not in America's interest. And what he and his co-authors spell out is a list of eight or 10 specific steps. We should make trade arrangements that exclude China. This is extraordinary. Uh, this is what President Obama tried to do with TPP. We will have a trade arrangement in Asia without China. Duh. Sorry. Look at a map. Look at some data. This is not a good idea. And the list goes on. Build up the military, uh, around China's perimeter. Not a good idea for peace. Put on barriers to export of technology. I'm talking about 2015. This already started 10 years ago. And what's very interesting about the Council on Foreign Relations documents is that they are not statements of views. They are explanations for the, uh, community of the council of US policy. So this was not a view of Blackwill what should be done. This was a description of what American policy would be, and it's been carried out pretty much systematically since then.
So if you point these things out, you're viewed as a little bit, uh, impolite in Washington. So my, uh, lack of welcome to Washington goes back many years. But I can tell you the feeling is reciprocated. I don't even want to go to Washington. So I don't, except on very rare occasions, because there's nothing to do there. It's not constructive. You're not going to find answers. There's no one really to talk to. There is a view.
Well, that brings us up to the current situation because things are changing, but it's quite complicated how they're changing. I don't think they're changing in a stable direction, uh, or a stable approach. There's one thing that I very much appreciate of what President Trump is doing, which is to try to end the war in Ukraine. I think the war will end because it can't really continue without American support of Ukraine. And I believe despite an administration that reverses policies by the hour, that there won't be a reversal of US policy vis-à-vis Ukraine because no segment of Trump's movement has any interest in putting more funding into Ukraine. And the fact of the matter is, while the early days of the Trump administration have been consumed with foreign issues, the next months will be consumed with domestic fiscal issues. And asking for more money for Ukraine would be deeply perturbing to a very, uh, unpopular fiscal agenda that Trump is going to push through successfully in the next months. And supporting Ukraine would prevent that from happening. That's the only part of the Trump agenda I like.
So, they don't like me probably, although I have some friends inside the government and had friends inside the previous administration and the one before that and the one before that. But we're seeing in other parts of the world tremendous, uh, instability and lack of strategy in the Middle East. Basically, it's a, unfortunately and to my chagrin, it is probably a doubling down of the US, uh, backing of Israeli mayhem, which I regard as a genocide and I regard as absolutely destructive of peace in the region. But I don't see Trump changing that. It's still early days. He once did tweet something of me calling Netanyahu an SOB and, um, Trump posted that, and then there were headlines in Israel for about three days. What did he mean by that? Uh, but apparently not a lot, because in the last days we're back to Netanyahu's wars everywhere. War in, uh, in Gaza, war in the West Bank, war in Lebanon, war in Syria, uh, war in Yemen. And what Netanyahu wants is a war with Iran, which could be a world-ender. Actually, um, I don't think we'll go to war with Iran, but the Israeli mayhem is not being stopped by Trump. It's actually rhetorically being encouraged by Trump. So, that's a big disappointment for me.
When it comes to, uh, trade, I don't have to say more than Trump is uniting the world, uh, because there is, uh, not a single place in the world that is, uh, satisfied with this new tariff regime, including inside the United States. Uh, it has succeeded in, uh, in stopping the stock market rally and reversing it. It succeeded in lowering automobile company share prices yesterday. I didn't check today, but down 5% yesterday, uh, when the automotive tariffs were issued. It's a completely ignorant economic policy as far as I'm concerned. We can talk about it, but I see no merit whatsoever on any count to the protectionism that Trump is trying to, uh, bring about. Um, so there, the whole world is unhappy about it. Um, and then when it comes to Asia, we'll discuss this. Probably Trump and the administration probably want to avoid open conflict with China. Whether they are clever enough to do so, I'm not sure. But there'll be a lot of noise and instability. I predict. I'll make a prediction that is, uh, clear and therefore could be completely proved wrong soon. I don't believe there will be any grand bargain or any great agreement between the United States and China on on anything for years to come because I think the US administration is too unstable for anything like that, because any serious agreements require consideration and strategy. I, for one, don't believe that we have any of that in Washington now. Uh, I think we have improvisation, no role of Congress, uh, basically a one-man show, uh, executive orders, mostly illegal, uh, court, uh, uh, court challenges that are proliferating by the day. Uh, so I think it's a mess, not, not a strategy. Um, well, I hope that explains why I'm not welcome in Washington.
I don't think I would let you eat too much, Jeff. Afterwards, I'll take you to McDonald's. >> Uh, just a couple of, uh, questions. So, where do you think America is is heading? I agree with you from my personal perspective that America has been more wrong than right in terms of its foreign policy for a for the last couple of decades. So, where do you think America is heading? Um, let's not forget the domestic issues. And the domestic issue, I, I, I, I've written about this, that the United States cannot beat China. I'm trying to give him a few minutes to eat. Uh, the United States cannot beat China. China for sure cannot beat America. So, it's not a matter of who will win. It's a matter of who will not lose. And if anybody loses, I don't think it will be because of the other party, but rather it will be because of the domestic situation. I don't know if you agree with that. So how do you see the America, America's domestic situation? After all, you are an economist by training and of course you have gone into many other things. So tell us.
>> The US, uh, does not have a functioning political system, uh, and has not had a functioning political system for 30 years or so. And this is very interesting. American society really has great strengths, many centers of capacity in business, in academia, in civil society. And so even though our political system has badly malfunctioned, the country has done okay for the last 30 years, other than troubles caused by, uh, directly, these foreign policy disasters. But the country and the economy has gone on. Many important innovations have occurred. Uh, many great discoveries have occurred in in the academic community and scientific community. So you see a country with great strengths. But for me, the, uh, remarkable fact is how poorly the political system has functioned consistently for 30 years. And I've tried to understand that, and my conclusion is that there are two things deeply wrong with the American political system. One is that it became a pay-for-play political system to a shocking extent. This >> a pay-for-play that it became a corrupt political system in which campaign contributions translated into public policy. And this was not always the case. Uh, the role of lobbying changed in the United States starting systematically in the 1970s, and there were a series of Supreme Court rulings. The most famous of which is Citizens United, in which the conservative Supreme Court ruled that limits on campaign financing were simply unconstitutional because the idea was, and the judges were very explicit about it, giving for campaigns is speech, and free speech predominates any interest in limiting campaign financing. This was a doctrine put forward by one judge, Lewis Powell. And it's a very interesting history because Lewis Powell was a, a corporate lawyer. Uh, he worked with the US Chamber of Commerce, and in the late '60s and early '70s, he said, "Inside the business community, all of this environmental regulation and Ralph Nader, uh, and consumer interest groups, this is killing us. The business community has to retake politics." And on that basis, a famous memo that he wrote, uh, he caught the attention of Richard Nixon, who put him on the Supreme Court. And a few years after that, he wrote the first opinion ending limits on corporate campaign contributions. It was a concerted strategy, and several decisions basically eliminated any boundaries of giving it.
When you do this, you reach a kind of caricature. Elon Musk is a caricature of this, the richest person in the world who funds the campaign of the presidential candidate and who says to Congress, "Anyone that steps out of line, I fund opponents to defeat you." And so you can't get more vivid in the bureaucratic element than having Elon Musk as your prime minister, which is his informal position right now. And this is how American politics really degenerated terribly over a 30-year period. I once was in the presence of a Democratic Party member of Congress, and I asked her about some terrible decision Congress made on health care costs. And she literally put her face in her hands and said, "The lobbies, the lobbies." It became overwhelming the money play. And because of this, all of the issues of American society, of inequality, of the widening gaps between different classes in America, of the, uh, growth of the poor underclass, of the epidemics of deaths of despair that you all know about, which are very serious afflictions of American society. Not one of them was addressed in public policy. There has been no effort once in 30 years to address inequality in the United States to address. We have an epidemic of, uh, opioids and everything else. Who gets blamed? China, of course. China. Fentanyl. Fentanyl precursors. Who takes the opioids? It's Americans. So, this, this is an example. Climate change is another example. We have not had one consistent policy on climate change for 40 years because of the big oil lobby. It's not even subtle. And there was a very humorous sting by a kind of Greenpeace organization which called the ExxonMobil lobbyist and said, "We're headhunting. We think you could be senior position." We, and so they filmed the ExxonMobil lobbyist, uh, in a fake job interview, and they asked him, "How do you operate?" And he said, "It's easy. Uh, if any trouble arises for the industry, I just call our senator." "Who's your senator?" Joe Manchin. Of course, Joe Manchin is the senator, was the senator from West Virginia. He owned two coal companies personally. That was the family wealth, and he was basically there in his position to block any climate change action for 30 years. So that was one thing that broke American politics. It just stopped being representative of basic issues. And till this day, if you observe the Trump administration, there's not a single moment of discussion about poor people, about their needs, about the role of government. In fact, the whole attempt in the next few months will be to destroy any public services for the poor, especially healthcare. It's amazing. But this is Elon Musk running the show. He doesn't have to worry about his healthcare costs. So, this is one point.
The second point that destroyed American politics was the security state. We became a national security state back in 1945, essentially after World War II, and especially in 1947 with the National Security Act, which established the CIA and the Defense Department and the other institutions of the security state. America has, as everybody knows very well, military bases in 80 countries around the world. Can you imagine? Never in history, with even the British Empire, of course, it was a different era, didn't it quite have this. And so this is American government is a military machine all over the world plus a secret army, the CIA, whose job it is to overthrow governments that are deemed to be inimical to US interests. And the CIA has engaged in probably about a hundred regime change operations around the world since 1947. I've seen some of them with my own eyes. Literally the CIA carrying off heads of government. One was Aristide, who I advised from Haiti, and they took him away in an unmarked plane and flew him to Central, Central African Republic in broad daylight. And by the way, when they overthrew him, the New York Times wouldn't even run a story about it because this is how the security state operates. It wasn't deemed to be newsworthy that the United States, or it wasn't deemed to be deemed to be fit to print. Let me say that the United States had overthrown a government in our hemisphere. Of course, it had done that repeatedly. But when I called the reporter, she told me that the editor was not interested in the story. Okay. My point is that the government, you can't run a democracy and a security state the same way. Eisenhower told us that on January 17th, 1961, when he said, "Beware the military-industrial complex." Believe me, since then, it has only grown to gargantuan proportions.
If you look at this leak three days ago of the attack on the Houthis, okay, there are several notable things about it. First, they behave like 14-year-olds, up to and including the emojis. Okay, these are children. Second, as they noted, uh, this has nothing to do with the Houthis. This is to send a message. Third, they applauded when they destroyed a building that supposedly included some target, but it killed 50 civilians, and it was all muscles and American flags. Fourth, this was decided in a completely haphazard way by the White House. Congress had no role. There was no discussion of it. Fifth, the only thing that the politicians find odd about this whole episode, not the bombing of a country in which we are not at war, not the killing of civilians, not the fact that this was a, I can't use the right words because they're not proper for polite company, but not the way to do this. They can't figure out that something's wrong. All they care about is that it breached secrecy. You know what? That's the least interesting part of this. The fact that you have secrecy that enables random killings of this sort on a routine basis is what's wrong. We should be applauding the break of the secrecy. But the only thing the Congress and the press itself talk about is the secrecy element. They don't talk about how wrong it is to be bombing people. They don't talk about the fact that the reason for the war in Yemen is that there's no solution to the Palestine issue. No substance, just a war machine.
So these, to my mind, are the two fundamental failures of the United States. We don't have a functioning political system. It doesn't address real needs. It enables one person to decide we're not part of the Paris climate agreement. It enables one person to break apart the international trading system. This is extraordinary. If you think about it, tariffs, by the way, under the US Constitution are the responsibility of Congress because tax authority, going back hundreds of years in British constitutional rule, are in the domain of the Parliament or the House of Commons. That's where Parliament came from, which was to limit the tax authority hundreds of years ago. No congressman is objecting to Trump unilaterally setting tariffs. How is he doing that? By the way, it's completely unconstitutional in substance. He's doing it because we have emergency legislation that allows the president of the United States to declare a national emergency. So the tariffs on China are under a fentanyl emergency. Can you imagine how artificial that is? How bogus that is? How it has nothing to do with the issues at hand? But also how not a single member of Congress stands up and says, "You're taking our authority." If we had a functioning Congress, a congressman would stand up and say, "This is our responsibility. You cannot appropriate the voice of the people. This is what revolutions are supposed to be about. That the king of England could not set taxes on the colonies. That's how we started. Now we have a mad king who sets taxes day by day, and Congress has no interest in even intervening in that subject." So this is the essential problem. The country works fine on areas where you don't need a government, but it fails on every area where you do. Our infrastructure fails, the inequalities, the environment, the environmental protection, all of it is failing badly because we don't have a functioning government in the United States.
>> Uh, Jeff, >> more reasons why they don't like me in Washington. Jeff, you have been a friend for many years. Um, Sonia is, uh, is not the biggest lady I've seen. And is your life ever at risk? I'm just asking on behalf of others. May >> maybe from Sonia, >> then you're in good shape. >> But, but, uh, I don't think so. Uh, I, I, I think the capacity of the US government to utterly ignore me is inexhaustible. Uh, and, uh, that is, uh, actually, in, in my view, really the truth. If I were a student on a student visa, I would be dragged out of our house. No doubt. Because that's what's happening to our students right now, day by day. Uh, I don't know what will happen in the US in general. It could get worse. Uh, it, it really could get worse. I've used, since I've been in China for the last week, I have used, semi-jocularly, but not entirely, the Cultural Revolution meme. We are in a bit of a cultural revolution in the United States. Uh, it's played as culture wars, but basically we have a leader who wants to destroy parts of government. This is clear. This is, uh, Elon is doing doing that work. What the real purpose is, is not completely clear. Maybe I'll just mention, uh, actually, one very important point to understand. I think everybody knows it, but let me emphasize it. One of the core points of failure of politics in the United States is the budget. Because if you are governed by lobbying and by campaign contributions, you cannot have an effective fiscal policy. On the one hand, you have a population which votes, and so you need somehow to not have complete turmoil, and so you can't really cut so far. Social Security, for example. You have not been able to cut Medicare or Medicaid. You can't stop paying interest on the debt. And they don't want to stop the military, which is about three and a half to 4% of GDP if you include everything. If you take those items, the pensions, and including the various kinds of pensions, including veterans' benefits, and the healthcare, uh, and the interest on the debt, and the military, you have, uh, roughly 20% of GDP in spending. Our taxes are around 16% of GDP at the federal level. So you start out, even before you have any domestic programs at all, with a deficit of about 4% of GDP. Now, in our lobby-run politics, the first rule is don't raise taxes. So the taxes, especially on wealthy people. So the highest goal in fiscal policy of the Trump administration is to extend the low taxes that were voted 10 years ago, uh, on corporate taxes, which have basically been gutted. We don't collect corporate tax except in a very small amount now, and they want to extend that. Now, our budget deficit includes some public services also, some little bit for infrastructure, which is falling apart, a tiny bit for housing, some for labor, some for education, and that adds up to roughly another 3% of GDP if you include everything: the judicial system, the public administration, all the infrastructure, all the environment, National Science Foundation, everything except the military, the pensions, the healthcare costs, the interest costs, and a couple of other mandatory things. All civilian government is about 3% of GDP. It's not enough. That's why we solve no social problems in the United States. But if you add in the parts that they don't want to cut or can't touch, plus this meager 3%, you end up with a budget deficit of about 6 to 7% of GDP, which is what we have now. This has been going on for 20 years. So our debt is 100% of GDP and rising. The Congressional Budget Office yesterday issued a new report saying by 2055, the debt will be at 155% of GDP on current policy. So if you keep current policy and just extrapolate for 30 years, we reach 155% of GDP debt. So, what is Trump trying to do? Trump is trying to cut taxes relative to baseline. This is all technical because the baseline includes ending some of the tax cuts from 10 years ago, but he wants to extend those. How to do that with such a huge budget deficit? There's no way. There is no way to do this other than to completely destroy the civilian government. And that's what Elon Musk is doing day by day. He's not rooting out waste. He's just closing the government as much as possible. The public will hate this week by week, month by month, when nothing works, when they can't get healthcare, when there's no one to answer a call for Social Security and so on. And that's where we're heading in the next months. That's why I was saying you can't ask for more funding for, uh, Ukraine in that context, period, because there's really going to be a, at least a public brawl. Trump will win this budget battle in my best estimation. It will be brutal and ugly to essentially keep the revenues completely inadequate and brutally slash spending for poor people or even working-class people in America. But he'll probably get this through because it'll be a straight party-line vote enforced by Elon Musk, who will threaten anyone who steps out of line. He'll probably win this battle. But believe me, you'll see a very ugly, very unhappy country, a very unpopular government, and nothing's going to get better out of it because nothing that's being done is going to make people's lives easier. Several thousand rise of prices for automobiles is not going to make people's lives easier. Higher tariffs is not going to make people's lives easier. And the budget deficit will remain significant. And this is, I think, what we're likely to see within a few months. In other words, not, not, not a president who is using his vast popularity with the masses to push through radical change, but rather a very unpopular, very unpopular government that is in fundamental inconsistency of policy with what his own voters want. And then what do you do? Well, you can deport more people. You can try to make more noise. You can double down. You can become more authoritarian. I don't know what will happen, but it will not be a happy course in the coming months. And that's why I believe on the, we could talk about the constructive side. I'm very optimistic about this region. I, I, I really am. And I don't think the US is going to upset anything in this region, actually. Uh, and I think we should be clear about that. Um, but I don't believe in a grand bargain or anything else. I think the US is mainly to be, uh, viewed with some sadness, maybe a little bit of alarm, uh, but not to expect something very constructive because the contradictions are just too large right now. And we need to work out a new political arrangement in the country, and we, we're not going to do that simply. It's going to be many, many years in my view before all of these contradictions get sorted out.
Can, before we leave America and go to other parts of the world, including this one, can you Jeff comment on the following statement that Trump probably has a deep fear and worry and recognition that America is no longer the hegemon, no longer the number one player in the world in many areas, is although overall I think by far America is still the number one. >> Mhm. >> But the fear in him is perhaps driving a lot of the decisions that he makes. Uh, so he's not speaking out of, uh, inward strong belief of their own success, rather it is a strong belief of America's, uh, waning in a relative sense. Uh, is that your reading of the situation? Sorry, you're just finishing the appetizer. Uh, we all will express our sympathy to you toward the end of this session. >> It's a very good question of what Trump himself views and what the, the political elites view, uh, the situation. Um, thank you. Marco Rubio said one clear, direct, uh, correct, and honest statement when he said, "The unipolar world is over." That's probably the single most important statement that's been made in the American political scene in the Trump administration. It wasn't contradicted. No one jumped up and said, "Oh, Marco, you're too pessimistic," or why are you saying that? So I think that there is a real understanding. Yes, there are multiple powers, and, uh, yes, the United States is no longer in charge. I don't know what implication, uh, they take from that and how much Trump's actions are in some response to that. I think there are several points that are, uh, that do follow that we could trace. One, as I said, Trump is not interested in the Ukraine war at all. So he would like it to end. He's in no position to ask for more financial support for Ukraine in any event. So that's why the war will end one way or another. But he probably also understands we're not defeating Russia. Uh, and so the whole point is, uh, pretty useless to be having this war. That's a reflection of reality, uh, in this sense. But he takes another implication of that. One implication is he'd like to de- he, he's happy to divide the spoils of Ukraine with Putin. You take these minerals, we'll take these minerals. So they're, they're dividing up Ukraine. Ukraine is the, is, is the absolute loser in this. >> Predict French, French and Britain used to do in the Middle East. >> This is basically, this is basically what Trump is, is doing or trying to do. I don't think it can work so crudely as, uh, as Trump believes, but that's the level at which this is being done. He and Vladimir will divide Ukraine and will end the conflict and will respect each other on that. But then Trump is also asking, how can America regain its, its strength? And he comes up with multiple answers. One answer that he's absolutely dead serious about is recognizing that because of global warming, ironically, the northern route and the Arctic has been opened up, and the United States is not an Arctic country other than a small stretch of Alaska. And so Trump absolutely believes that Canada needs to belong to the United States, and Greenland needs to belong to the United States. That is not rhetoric. It's not a joke. It is obscene, but it is not a joke. Uh, and the reason that he wants it is that the Arctic has become a strategic part of the world because it's no longer an ice-bound wilderness. It's now going to be central for international trade and resource development. And so that's where that comes from. So that's a, a kind of limited imperialism. It's a Western Hemisphere imperialism that Trump is actually trying to invoke. Again, I think the US probably will militarily occupy Greenland during his, uh, administration. That's an invasion of Europe. I bet that it will take place. I don't think the US will occupy Canada, but I do think that with the 50,000 people of Greenland, the United States may just decide it's going to take Greenland, and that's that. It won't stand. It won't work for the longer term. It will be a disaster, but it could very well happen. So, that's the kind of response. Trump also, I'm sure, believes that the tariffs are necessary for America to restore its greatness in some sense. And probably what he has in mind is we don't produce enough steel and aluminum to build our, uh, arms industry and so forth, and we can't compete with China, uh, unless we restore basic heavy industry. So I think that that is, uh, he doesn't express it in a very clear way, and the tariff policy is an absurd way to approach this, and it's going to fail, but it's probably on his mind in the way you're saying, Ronnie, that, um, that this is part of the rebuilding process for the US. The problem that I have with all of that is I've never seen more illiterate economic policy, because the term for what passes as a thought process day by day. We have no institution. We have no institution in the United States asking the question about industrial policy or strategy. None. We have no planning agency. We have no NRDC, uh, NDRC, um, we have, uh, no, uh, economy ministry. We have no institutional process thinking about America's economic future, because this is not how it's done in the United States. The only industrial planning we have in the United States is the Pentagon. Uh, and that's to build, you know, F-35s and so on. It's not to do infrastructure or economic revitalization. So what Trump is doing is complete improvisation. You cannot run a $30 trillion economy on improvisation. But that's literally what is happening right now, uh, in terms of government policy. We don't even have congressional hearings where ideas are discussed, where experts testify. We don't have white papers. We don't have green papers. We don't have any process of thinking right now. We have edicts from the White House. That's a very strange way to run a country.
You know, uh, let me change, uh, the direction a little bit. Um, I'm with you and John Smith, by the way. Um, that why should America protest in 1962, uh, the Russian, uh, moving the, uh, weapons into Cuba? Why is that unacceptable? And yet now, uh, they are against, uh, Russia, after Russia warned the West repeatedly not to move NATO one inch to the east, as Bill Clinton promised. So, so, so, so I have no problem with that. But what I do have a problem with is I am really impressed how that Donald Trump is able to, before the war of Ukraine ended, to become friends with Putin again and shake hands. I'm not so interested in the psych, personal psychology of it, nor the social, uh, political aspect of it. But what I am concerned is what will that do to the rest of the world? What will that do to Russia? Uh, it, it's truly amazing. And you know, other people, other people dare not think certain things, let alone say it. And if you were to say it, people would say you are the craziest guy and stupid. And yet Donald Trump says, says it as if as a matter of factly, and nobody objects. >> Yeah. >> And being the president, he has the wherewithal to do a lot of things about it. And this is a brave new world that we are seeing. Um, you know, by the way, personally, I agree with a lot of things that, uh, Trump, some of the things that Trump is doing, but what is the cost of it? The international institutions are being totally ignored, if not damaged, wiped out. The rules, the rule-based society, which America loves to say, the rule-based society has no more rules because America is breaking it, and nobody dare to say a word about it. And so, is it worth it to do what he says he, what he's doing, which may not, may have legitimacy to it in some ways? I'm making my, my question longer so that he can finish his fish. >> So please comment on what I have said. Many points. >> Thank you. >> You can finish it after. Thank you. Um, don't let them take it away though. It's very good. I >> I think that there are, uh, a few points to say about the, the so-called rule-based order that are probably worth, uh, worth saying. I did a study last year with a colleague on comparing how countries do or do not abide by the UN principles and whether they vote with or against the majorities in the General Assembly, whether they join UN treaties or don't join UN treaties and so forth. And we call this an index of alignment with the UN Charter. The United States ranked last in the world over the last 20 years. Last. >> Correct. >> It was, uh, the US has not ratified a major UN treaty for decades. In fact, the mere fact that it is a UN treaty leads the Senate to reject it because there's a view that, well, if the rest of the world wants it, it must be against us. Uh, it's a kind of paranoia which predates Trump, but is very pervasive. We once had legislation to prevent, uh, discrimination against people with disabilities. The US adopted this. It was one of the first or the first in the world, and then it went to the UN, and it became a UN treaty. When it became a UN treaty, the Senate refused to ratify it because it was a UN treaty. And so this is an absolutely pervasive weird phenomenon. The United States votes least of all countries with the majority in the UN General Assembly. Uh, part of that is that it votes with Israel against the whole world, uh, on issues of Palestinian rights. But it's more than that. The US became the great champion against the developing country call for any kind of social justice. Every year, the UN votes a massive majority against the use of unilateral sanctions. You know, under international law, no one country is allowed to put on economic sanctions against other countries. Sanctions are reserved as a right for the UN, not for an individual country. But which country uses sanctions every day is the United States by presidential decree, not even by congressional action. So in this sense, the US has, in my opinion, not been a leader of a rules-based order. The US has been a leader of a US-based order. Okay, it, you could say it had some advantages, it had some disadvantages, but the phrase rules-based order was never defined. Whose rules? Not the rules of the UN, certainly not by any objective measure. This is not something new. This is what I was saying has been true for 30 years. Trump, Trump says publicly what is hypocritical privately. So Trump is stunning in, uh, saying, "I don't care about rules. I don't care about treaties. I don't believe in any of this." But the US behavior has been quietly to neglect all of this while professing to lead a rules-based order. So Trump is just, uh, making explicit what has been implicit for a long time. He's much worse in my view because who walks out of the World Health Organization or who walks out of the Paris climate agreement? It takes a lot of nerve, in my view, to do that. It's repudiating the world interest in the most explicit way. So our earlier governments didn't do that, but they also did not do anything positive to, uh, assist when it came to the Paris agreement, for example. The United States has expanded tremendously its supply of fossil fuels since 2015. We have never had legislation in the United States on climate change. Never. We had some tax cuts for renewable energy in the so-called Inflation Reduction Act, but that was quite different from climate action. Congress will not vote climate action because of the corruption that I talked about before, because big oil is more powerful than renewable energy in the American political scene. So all of this is to say that I abhor the way that Trump behaves, but it's not so different in many ways from long-standing behavior.
When it comes to Ukraine, that's a whole another matter which we won't discuss at length, except I'll just repeat. I believe that the US was the provocation. Ronnie said and explained Russia didn't want, uh, NATO on its border any more than the United States wanted the Soviet Union in, in Cuba in 1962. And >> And Condoleezza Rice has been saying all along that NATO must expand to the east. >> Exactly. And this was a very direct provocation. Look at how, by the way, if we want to talk about hypocrisy, the, the United States has military bases, of course, all over this region. And yet, Hutchinson can't have a port in Panama. Okay, that's the double standard that gets us into a ridiculous amount of trouble because under the US mindset, the Western Hemisphere is ours, up to and including Greenland and Canada, by the way. But all the rest of the world has been America's playground to do as it sees fit, the Middle East, anywhere, NATO enlargement anywhere, until, uh, Trump, at least, uh, saying no on that, but in East Asia, still, of course, anywhere. My own view, by the way, I don't know whether it would be subscribed to here or not, but my own view quite strongly is the United States should stop unilaterally any armaments to Taiwan. Period. And I say to do that for the safety of Taiwan. There's nothing more dangerous for Taiwan than sending Taiwan armaments. In my view, this is the same as happened with Ukraine. If you wanted to be friends with Ukraine, keep NATO away. And there's a famous adage which people know, uh, which I and others repeat almost daily. Henry Kissinger's adage that to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous, but to be a friend is fatal. And Taiwan should be very careful. They're not careful, but this is the kind of thing where the double standard. Imagine if China were arming the upper west side of New York because we're against Trump. Uh, it would not go down well. Uh, and, uh, I think we should be very, uh, cognizant of this, uh, risk.
Well, qu, there's a few of you who have never been to this meeting. So they are asking a question which is unbelievable in this setting, and that is, will there be a time of Q&A? There's always a lot of time for Q&A. Great. >> So Jeff is now going to go home. Sorry, Sonia, for quite a while. We know that. Thank you, Sonia. Um, uh, by the way, 20 years ago, so they can finish your dessert. 20 years ago, I was invited by Mitch McConnell and his wife Elaine Chao to Kentucky to their hometown, and they the
Two of them drove me around personally, um, and showing me this building, that building. And I had zero interest because, uh, Hong Kong has far more bigger buildings than in Kentucky. Uh, my only interest that day was to try to convince Mitch McConnell to start paying United Nations dues for America. And America has a habit of not paying.
"That's it."
And, uh, that is truly amazing. But let me ask you another question, and that is, you, you remind me, by the way, of, uh, about comparing the size of buildings to, uh, an American was visiting Israel, actually a kibbutz. And, uh, he, the farmer shows him around the kibbutz, this Texan. And, uh, at the end, he says, "You know, that's fine, but where I come from, I can get in my car in the morning, I can drive the entire day, and I'm still on my farm at night." And the Israeli looks at him and says, "You know, I once had a car like that, too."
Now, Jeff, I want you to, I want you to extend what happened, Donald Trump's view about Russia.
"Fish, right?"
Yeah. Sure. And that is, if Russia, which America has been against ever since the the Ukraine war started, America can make good, uh, with Russia, at least Donald Trump. Yes.
"And nobody else is objecting it."
Okay.
"Yes."
Publicly. Now, could it be that? Well, America really knows that in order to revive its hegemony, it's got to get its economy right. And picking a fight with Russia or with China, uh, is not necessarily good for Americans' economic health. And so it's avoiding fighting Russia. Could it be that Donald Trump would be so enlightened that, hey, let's not pick on China either, it's not good for ourselves, and, and, and so concentrate on rebuilding the economy while keeping peace with China? Uh, after all, he has slapped, uh, uh, you know, tariffs on Mexico, Canada, and, uh, China is sort of, you know, they are 20% extra, but anyway, it's on the side right now, it's not yet the focus. Uh, could it be that they will never get to that focus and have a direct confrontation with China? Is that possible?
It is possible. Uh, it, it is, uh, actually the, the big question. The, the relations with China will not be warm. Let's be sure about that. Uh, the American mindset across the political class, and now in the society as well, because of this, is China's a threat. It's an enemy. Uh, it's a danger. I don't think that is going to go away. It could. I think it's completely specious in my view. But, uh, I don't see that as going away in the same way as with Russia. But I think the question is,
"Why not?"
I think the question is, I'll, so let me say why not. Um, there is, there was up until very recently, and may, and there still is in some parts, a view in Washington, a real view, maybe like in Ukraine, that we are heading towards war with China. To my mind, it's a mind-boggling view. First, if it were to happen, the United States would be defeated. Period. Period. Because it's a big ocean, and you cannot, and if there's a war in, uh, the South China Sea or in, in China's neighborhood, believe me, the United States cannot win that war.
"And every war game done in the United States."
And every war game has confirmed that point. It's, and it's even more true with the advances of technology of the last few years, where everything is surveyed, including ships, uh, and every ship is vulnerable to hypersonic missiles. And projecting power across an ocean depends on a navy, and it can't be done the same way as it could have been done 20 or 30 or 40 years ago, given technological change. So, in my view, the whole idea is horrendous, not to mention the fact that it could easily lead to the destruction of the world. But, uh, there are still definitely parts of the American scene that want to project that there is quite possibly a war coming with China. Maybe it's to build missile systems. Maybe it's to justify the Pentagon budget. Maybe it's the belief that, yes, that could really happen. But that is not a small view in Washington. It got into our official documents in shocking ways. I was shocked when last year's naval, uh, strategy document of our, the head of the Navy, uh, said, "We must prepare for war with China. We must be ready for war with China by 2027." This was in print in the opening lines of this naval strategy. Just to even talk like this is so reckless and provocative in my view. But that found its way into many, many, uh, areas.
So, given all of that, and the fact, and one more thing to say about Ukraine, uh, in, in this regard. Why did Trump come to the view to not pursue the Ukraine war? Well, fundamentally, because the US was losing this proxy war. Uh, in other words, the US tried. It wanted to see whether Putin would back down or not. It wanted to see whether the sanctions would be enough to destabilize the Russian economy. It wanted to see whether Putin would resist mobilizing the domestic population. It wanted to see whether the HIMARS and attack of missile systems would prevail, and so forth. All of that failed. Uh, Ukraine got, uh, very badly mauled. It's losing on the battlefield. It's expensive. It's a losing hand. There's no practical way to change that. Uh, and so Trump is throwing in the hand on that basis. When it comes to China, that kind of view has not yet happened. Uh, you know, we've had three years of failure in Ukraine. In fact, many more years than that, but at least three years of direct failure. Whereas when it comes to China, the view is the big battle is still ahead. And one of the reasons for some of the Trump people to say get out of Ukraine is not for rebuilding America. It's for the bigger battle ahead. Actually, John Mearsheimer takes that position, not that he wants war, but he says Ukraine's a sideshow. The real issue for US security is China. So, we shouldn't squander our limited resources on a sideshow. We should be building for, not war, but for the contest with China. So psychologically, the mood is really very different regarding China.
Now, having said all of that, I think Trump does not want conflict with China. He, he's actually not a warmonger.
"Correct."
He's not a warmonger. It's strange.
"Yeah."
He's nasty, by the way.
"Right."
He's attacking American institutions. He's in favor of locking up our students. He's in favor of breaking the law. He's in favor of abuse. Uh, he's in favor of deporting people. He's a nasty person. He's a bully, but he's not a warmonger against an equal adversary. He doesn't like war. And so, in this sense, it's possible to distinguish between an unpleasant economic relationship and threat, hostility, blame, and still say, "And my good friend, President Xi," and, uh, not view it in any personal level, and not view it as warmongering. So, I think that's the optimistic view. I don't think it gets better than that, uh, in that they will be best buddies and have, you know, some kind of economic grand bargain. I may be pleasantly surprised. I don't think it will go that way. I don't think it will even go as far as what's happening with Putin. But I do think that avoiding conflict is absolutely possible.
It seems to me, Jeff, that the only way to keep US-China from having direct conflict is for the relative strength of the two sides to be somewhat more balanced. Historically, America is way ahead. But it seems that all the, a, a number of things that the Chinese have done in the last two years or three years are really to tell America that we, something that, uh, I heard that, um, Xi Jinping said to Biden in, uh, uh, in Indonesia, in Bali, and that is, "I don't want to muck around with you, but don't force me."
So, you look at all the, the, somebody said that China has hypersonic missiles. They probably do. Um, the balloons, the sub, the US nuclear sub that was forced to surface in the South China Sea, and on and on. A lot of these things seem to me to be unprovoked on the part of the Chinese to tell America that, hey, you are stronger, but we have, you have your Achilles' heel, and you don't know what I have. And so let's show you a little bit what we have. Let's, that way you won't underestimate us, in which case you will become a war. You may start something adventurous.
So, I think China is, a lot of sense, is telling America that. But let me turn to Europe.
Um, um, or let me, let me put it a different way. I, I was with four ministerial or sub-ministerial level, uh, friends from the Middle East in the last 16, 18 months, uh, from four countries: Egypt, Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Israel. All four of them told me that America is no longer the dominant player in this part of the world. They are on the way out. And then I had Barroso, the, uh, European Commission former president, together with the former, uh, foreign minister of, uh, of Spain, and then the former director general of the foreign minister of France, all at my office for dinner a few months, two, three months ago. And I said, "As far as I'm concerned, America is also on the way out of Europe." I want to see what is their reaction. And their reaction was surprising to me: zero. Nobody had a reaction. That means they take it for granted.
And I bumped into your friend, I think you must know him, a friend of mine of 20 some years, uh, uh, 20 years, Guttenberg, Kati Guttenberg, who became the defense secretary under Angela Merkel. And was just a couple weeks ago, we were found ourselves in Abu Dhabi. And I said, "What is Germany's position in this regard?" They said, "Oh, as far as Germany is concerned, America is already long on the way out."
And I talked to some local German people, average people, and they all know that the United States is no longer the dominant player.
So, it seems to me that America is really moving toward what isolationism. At the same time, you have the Greenland thing. By the way, the Greenland thing, it seems to me, from what you have said, is a repeat of the Monroe Doctrine.
Mhm.
Anyway, so, so America is retreated. Uh, do you, do you see that America may be returning to its roots of isolationism, perhaps because of mistakes overseas, plus maybe more important domestic problems? What is your take on that?
The US, uh, actually was never really isolationist. Um, so it's important to understand, uh, a little bit of the US history. Remember, the US started as a sliver of the eastern seaboard of the United States, of the North American continent. So, the mission of the United States from the beginning was expansion. The US has always been an expansionary force. It was never isolationist. But for the first hundred years, the expansion was across the continent of North America. That was imperialism because there were many indigenous nations all across, and there was this, the Spanish, of course. And so the United States built an empire across North America. Wasn't called an empire, but it was effective. And basically, by the way, unlike other empires, they didn't incorporate the nations. They destroyed them. So, the US was more genocidal than, uh, anyone else. The demographics were, uh, much more in favor of the United States rather than the native populations, which were beset by many demographic woes. And the US exterminated, uh, virtually, uh, uh, many of these populations. Okay. As soon as the US reached the Pacific Ocean, it started its overseas imperialism. So there wasn't a break. Uh, there was expansion from the beginning. And as soon as, we usually put the date 1890 as the end of, uh, reaching the Pacific, then came toppling Hawaii, uh, and, uh, beginning the empire in Hawaii. Then in 1898, on completely, uh, hokey circumstances, weapons of mass destruction, uh, in, uh, in Havana Bay, uh, we went to war with Spain because they said Cuba is just ripe for dropping into the American Empire. Uh, and we took Cuba, and Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. So, that was the beginning of the American empire overseas. So, I don't think that the US was ever isolationist. In the 1920s, by the way, uh, the Senate rejected America's membership in the League of Nations. And sometimes historians say that was American isolationism. But that was actually the opposite of isolationism. The opposition of Henry Cabot Lodge, who led the Senate revolt against the League of Nations, was that it would limit American discretion. We are an empire, and we will not be beholden to an international institution. So, Henry Cabot Lodge was an imperialist who opposed the League of Nations because it called for international, uh, co-responsibility, and he didn't want that. He wanted American right of maneuver. After World War II, uh, Roosevelt had a much more collective security vision, but we became the security state. And as, as I explained, our foreign policy was definitely interventionist, but usually in regime change operations and many wars of choice. So, the US is not isolationist, but it never, uh, it didn't take on, uh, European powers until, uh, the 20th century, when it had become the biggest economy, and until several weeks ago, it didn't acknowledge any limits to its power.
Now, the question that we're asking is, given that Trump has acknowledged the limits of American power vis-à-vis Russia, will he do the same vis-à-vis China? I think the answer is probably yes. Then what will America do? It still has its expansionary fervor. It will try to beat up its neighbors in the Western Hemisphere. So, it's, uh, it's a more limited version of imperialism, which is Canada, Panama, Greenland, too good to ignore, too easy to take. Uh, of course, not really so easy as Trump thinks. The world is not quite as lawless. God help us if it becomes that way, but it's not as lawless as Trump imagines in his mind. This is not a, a real estate play, uh, in New York. Uh, this is the, the real thing, and Canada's not going down quietly. And my student Mark Carney, who's now prime minister of Canada, said today, "No, Canada remains Canada. Don't even think about it." Uh, and, uh, I believe him, uh, and I think he's going to probably remain prime minister also, in view of the upcoming psychological warfare that's going to come.
So, can America learn to play by the rules? That's a good question. Uh, you know, this rule-based order, only like the rules that America made. Uh, and now the question is, can America play by rules that others make or that are made in a shared way? This is what we really need. We need a functional United Nations. Uh, we don't have it yet. Trump doesn't like the idea. There's even the fancy term now that there are "sovereigntists," uh, that the highest aspiration for a nation should be the right to do what it wants to do, which is a kind of three-year-old vision of the world, not the vision that we should all play by a common set of rules. So, I think the United States is going to take some time to learn those basic ideas. As in many things, and I think all of you know it, America's much better than Washington. Uh, if you go to Middle America, these are not the views of Middle America. Uh, Middle America supports the UN 70% in, in most surveys. Middle America does not want wars. Middle America, you know, wants kind of normal life. Uh, and so our political system got broken. We need to solve the political crisis so that our politics reflects the kind of mainstream, rather, rather more pacific, not warmongering, of American society.
All the wars America's been in have either been unpopular or covert. This is quite interesting. Uh, Americans didn't say, "Bomb the Houthis." They don't know who the Houthis are. They don't know where Yemen is. They don't have a clue. And Hag has said as much in, uh, in, in the signal. He said, "Nobody knows who the Houthis are. We need a story." He said, "That's, that's America. We need a PR operation. We need a story." It's about Iran. It's about freedom of navigation. No one knows who the Houthis are. I have a principle, by the way, which is, or a principle that I want to establish, which is that the United States should not bomb any country where, uh, at least 50% of Americans cannot name two cities in that country. That would basically end all American wars because Americans don't know any geography at all. So, that is my solution for peace.
That was a truly stunning and incredibly dense analysis. Professor Sachs painted a disturbing picture of cause and effect. It began 30 years ago when the US chose unipolar hegemony over cooperation after the Cold War. This choice not only led to persistent provocations against Russia and a systematic containment of China, but ultimately backfired domestically, giving rise to a political system captured by moneyed interests and an out-of-control military-security complex, leaving the nation incapable of solving any of its real social problems.
This profound speech leaves us with several critical questions to consider. Does Sachs' argument compel us to reconsider the last 30 years of global history? Is the familiar narrative of democracy versus authoritarianism merely a story constructed to maintain unipolar hegemony? Do you agree that a country's foreign policy is a direct reflection of its domestic condition? Has America's domestic political dysfunction made it more unpredictable and dangerous on the world stage? Given this profound diagnosis, where does the United States go from here? Can it reform from within, or is it headed for an even uglier and more unhappy chapter, as Sachs suggests? And what does that mean for the rest of the world?
In Professor Sachs' analysis, what was the single point that shocked you the most? Was it the origin of the Ukraine war, the blueprint for US-China policy, or his depiction of domestic corruption? We welcome you to share your perspective in the comments. Whether you agree with him completely or not, this was undoubtedly a thought-provoking talk. If you appreciate videos that offer this kind of in-depth analysis of global issues, please like and subscribe to our channel.