杰弗里·萨克斯：“危险”的美国政策和“西方的虚假叙述”加剧了与俄罗斯、中国的紧张关系
https://metacpc.org/en/jeffrey-sachs-dn/
现在的民主| 杰弗里·萨克斯
我们与哥伦比亚大学经济学家杰弗里·萨克斯讨论西方霸权以及美国在俄罗斯、乌克兰和中国的政策，他的新文章标题为“西方关于俄罗斯和中国的错误叙述”。 萨克斯表示，美国两党的外交政策方针“极其危险且错误”，并警告美国正在为东亚“制造另一场战争”。
艾米·古德曼：Politico 报道称，拜登政府正准备请求国会批准一项价值 11 亿美元的新对台军售。 据报道，该套装包括60枚反舰导弹、100枚空对空导弹。 在此之前，自众议院议长南希·佩洛西本月早些时候访问台湾以来，两艘美国军舰周日首次穿越台湾海峡。 中国谴责这次访问，并在台湾附近发起了大规模军事演习。
与此同时，拜登总统上周宣布向乌克兰提供 30 亿美元的额外军事援助，包括购买导弹、火炮和无人机的资金，以帮助乌克兰军队对抗俄罗斯。
我们今天的节目开始关注美国对俄罗斯和中国的政策。 哥伦比亚大学可持续发展中心主任、经济学家杰弗里·萨克斯也加入了我们的行列。 他是联合国可持续发展解决方案网络的主席。 他曾担任三位联合国秘书长的顾问。 他最新文章的标题是“西方关于俄罗斯和中国的错误叙述”。
他在文章开头写道：“世界正处于核灾难的边缘，这在很大程度上是因为西方政治领导人未能直言不讳地说明全球冲突升级的原因。 西方无情地认为西方是高尚的，而俄罗斯和中国是邪恶的，这种说法是头脑简单且极其危险的，”杰弗里·萨克斯写道。
杰弗里·萨克斯，欢迎来到民主现在！ 你为什么不从那里拿走它呢？
杰弗里·萨克斯：谢谢。 很高兴和你在一起。
艾米·古德曼：关于目前与俄罗斯、与俄罗斯和乌克兰以及与中国的冲突，西方和世界各地的人们应该了解什么故事？
杰弗里·萨克斯：艾米，重点是我们没有使用外交手段；而是使用外交手段。 我们正在使用武器。 你们今天早上讨论的现在向台湾宣布的这次出售只是另一个例子。 这并不会让台湾变得更安全。 这并不会让世界变得更安全。 这当然不会让美国变得更安全。
这可以追溯到很久以前。 我认为从30年前开始是有用的。 苏联解体，一些美国领导人认为现在已经是他们所谓的单极世界，美国是唯一的超级大国，我们可以掌控一切。 结果是灾难性的。 美国外交政策的军事化现已经历了三十年。 塔夫茨大学正在维护的一个新数据库刚刚显示，自1991年以来，美国已经进行了100多次军事干预。这实在令人难以置信。
根据我过去 30 年在俄罗斯、中欧、中国和世界其他地区广泛工作的经验，我看到美国的做法是军事优先，而且往往是只军事， 方法。 我们武装我们想要的人。 我们呼吁北约东扩，无论其他国家说什么可能损害他们的安全利益。 我们置其他人的安全利益于不顾。 当他们抱怨时，我们向该地区的盟友运送更多武器。 我们想什么时候、什么地方发动战争，无论是阿富汗、伊拉克，还是叙利亚针对阿萨德的秘密战争（美国人民至今还没有正确理解这场战争），或者利比亚战争。 我们说：“我们热爱和平。 俄罗斯和中国到底出了什么问题？ 他们是如此好战。 他们的目的是破坏世界。” 我们最终陷入了可怕的对抗。
乌克兰战争——只是为了完成介绍性观点——本可以避免，也应该通过外交来避免。 俄罗斯总统普京多年来一直在说的是“不要将北约扩张到黑海，不要扩张到乌克兰，更不要扩张到格鲁吉亚”，如果人们从地图上看，它会直接延伸到黑海的东部边缘。 俄罗斯说：“这将包围我们。 这将危及我们的安全。 让我们进行外交吧。” 美国拒绝一切外交手段。 我在2021年底试图联系白宫——事实上，我确实联系了白宫，并表示除非美国就北约东扩问题与普京总统进行外交谈判，否则就会爆发战争。 我被告知美国永远不会这样做。 那是不可能的。 但这是不可能的。 现在我们面临着一场异常危险的战争。
我们在东亚采取的策略与导致战争的策略完全相同
乌克兰。 我们正在组织联盟，建立武器装备，对中国说垃圾话，让佩洛西议长飞往台湾，而中国政府却说：“请降温，缓和紧张局势。” 我们说：“不，我们做我们想做的”，然后派遣更多武器。 这是另一场战争的根源。 在我看来，这很可怕。
我们正值古巴导弹危机 60 周年，我一生都在研究这一危机，我也写过有关该危机的文章，还写了一本关于其后果的书。 我们正驶向悬崖，一路上我们充满了热情。 美国外交政策的整个方针是不可解释的危险和错误。 这是两党合作的。
胡安·冈萨雷斯：杰弗里·萨克斯，我想问你——你在《联盟新闻》最近发表的一篇文章中提到的一件事是，美国坚持拖累欧洲，维持全球霸权。 在西方经济实力日渐衰落之际。 例如，你提到金砖国家——巴西、俄罗斯、印度、中国和南非——占世界人口的40%以上，GDP比七国集团高，但他们的利益和关切却远远高于七国集团。 俄罗斯和中国被忽视了，或者在这种情况下，显然是俄罗斯和中国，被美国人民描绘成侵略者、独裁者、在世界上制造动荡的人。
杰弗里·萨克斯：你的观点是——
胡安·冈萨雷斯：我想知道你是否可以对此进行扩展。
JEFFREY SACHS：是的，绝对如此，指导我们实现这一点非常重要。 西方世界，特别是盎格鲁-撒克逊世界，从大英帝国开始，到现在的美国，其不成比例的权力大约有250年的历史，在世界历史上是一个很短的时期。 由于许多非常有趣的原因，工业革命首先来到了英国。 蒸汽机就是在那里发明的。 这可能是现代历史上最重要的发明。 英国在 19 世纪成为军事霸主，就像美国在 20 世纪下半叶一样。 英国主导了这一切。 英国拥有日不落帝国。 而西方，指的是美国和西欧，现在指的是美国和欧盟、英国、加拿大、日本——换句话说，七国集团、欧盟一起——也许只是世界人口的一小部分。 现在大约是 10%，如果再加上日本、西欧和美国，可能会多一点，也许是 12.5%。但人们的心态是“我们统治世界”。 这就是工业时代 200 年来的情况。
但时代已经变了。 事实上，自 20 世纪 50 年代以来，世界其他地区从欧洲帝国主义中获得独立后，就开始教育其人民，开始采用、适应和创新技术。 你瞧，世界上的一小部分人并没有真正统治世界，也没有垄断智慧、知识、科学或技术。 这太棒了。 体面生活的知识和可能性正在全世界传播。
但在美国，对此有一种怨恨，一种很深的怨恨。 我认为还有一种巨大的历史无知，因为我认为很多美国领导人对现代历史一无所知。 但他们对中国的崛起感到不满。 这是对美国的侮辱。 中国何敢崛起！ 这是我们的世界！ 这是我们的世纪！ 因此，从 2014 年左右开始，我一步一步地看到——我非常详细地观察，因为这是我的日常活动——美国如何将中国重塑为一个正在从一个半世纪的巨大困难中恢复过来的国家， 而是作为敌人。 作为美国外交政策的问题，我们有意识地开始说：“我们需要遏制中国。 中国的崛起不再符合我们的利益”，仿佛中国的繁荣与否是由美国来决定的。 中国人并不天真； 事实上，它们非常复杂。 他们以与我完全相同的方式观看这一切。 我认识美国文本的作者。 他们是我在哈佛或其他地方的同事。 当这种遏制想法开始应用时，我感到震惊。
但基本点是，西方领导世界的时间很短，250年，但感觉，“这是我们的权利。 这是西方世界。 我们是七国集团。 我们可以决定谁来制定游戏规则。” 事实上，奥巴马，你知道，在我们外交政策领域是一位好人，他说：“让我们为亚洲制定贸易规则，但不要让中国制定任何这些规则。 美国将制定规则。” 这是一种极其幼稚、危险且过时的理解世界的方式。 我们美国人口占世界人口的 4.2%。 我们不统治世界。 我们不是世界领导者。 我们是一个拥有4.2%人口的国家，身处一个多元化的世界，我们应该学会相处，
安静地在沙箱里玩耍，不要求我们拥有沙箱里的所有玩具。 我们还没有结束这种想法。 不幸的是，这两个政党都是政党。 这就是佩洛西议长在这一切之中前往台湾的动力，就好像她真的必须去煽动紧张局势一样。 但这是美国主导的心态。
JUAN GONZÁLEZ：我想稍微回到 20 世纪 90 年代。 我敢肯定，你还记得 20 世纪 90 年代墨西哥发生的巨大金融崩溃，当时克林顿政府授权向墨西哥提供 500 亿美元的救助，而这笔资金实际上是针对华尔街投资者的。 当时，您为后苏联时期的俄罗斯政府提供咨询，该政府当时也面临严重的财务问题，但无法获得任何重大的西方援助，甚至无法从国际货币基金组织获得援助。 你当时对此持批评态度。 我想知道你能否谈谈美国应对墨西哥危机和俄罗斯金融危机的差异，以及俄罗斯当前局势的根源可能是什么。
杰弗里·萨克斯：当然。 我做了一个对照实验，因为我在戈尔巴乔夫总统的最后一年担任波兰和苏联的经济顾问，在俄罗斯独立的头两年（1992年、93年）担任叶利钦总统的经济顾问。 我的工作是金融，实际上是帮助俄罗斯找到解决正如你所描述的那样的大规模金融危机的方法。 我在波兰、然后在苏联和俄罗斯的基本建议是：为了避免社会危机和地缘政治危机，富裕的西方世界应该帮助遏制这场随着经济崩溃而发生的非同寻常的金融危机。 前苏联。
嗯，有趣的是，就波兰而言，我提出了一系列非常具体的建议，这些建议都被美国政府接受了——设立一个稳定基金，取消波兰的部分债务，允许采取许多金融手段让波兰摆脱困境。 困难。 而且，你知道，我拍拍自己的背。 “哦，看看这个！” 我提出了一项建议，其中一项是十亿美元的稳定基金，白宫在八小时内就接受了。 所以，我想：“很好。”
随后，在最后几天，首先是代表戈尔巴乔夫，然后是叶利钦总统发出了类似的呼吁。 我所建议的一切都是以经济动态为基础的，但都被白宫断然拒绝。 我当时不明白，我必须告诉你。 我说：“但这在波兰行得通。” 他们会茫然地看着我。 事实上，一位代理国务卿在 1992 年曾说过：“萨克斯教授，我是否同意你的观点并不重要。 这不会发生。”
Jeffrey Sachs: "Dangerous" U.S. Policy & "West's False Narrative" Stoking Tensions with Russia, China
https://metacpc.org/en/jeffrey-sachs-dn/
We discuss Western hegemony and U.S. policy in Russia, Ukraine and China with Columbia University economist Jeffrey Sachs, whose new article is headlined “The West’s False Narrative About Russia and China.” Sachs says the bipartisan U.S. approach to foreign policy is “unaccountably dangerous and wrongheaded,” and warns the U.S. is creating “a recipe for yet another war” in East Asia.
AMY GOODMAN: Politico is reporting the Biden administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve a new $1.1 billion arms sale to Taiwan. The package reportedly includes 60 anti-ship missiles, 100 air-to-air missiles. This comes after two U.S. warships sailed through the Taiwan Strait Sunday for the first time since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan earlier this month. China condemned the visit and launched major military drills near Taiwan.
Meanwhile, President Biden announced $3 billion in more military aid for Ukraine last week, including money for missiles, artillery rounds and drones to help Ukrainian forces fight Russia.
We begin today’s show looking at U.S. policy on Russia and China. We’re joined by the economist Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University. He’s president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network. He served as adviser to three U.N. secretaries-general. His latest article is headlined “The West’s False Narrative About Russia and China.”
He begins the article by writing, quote, “The world is on the edge of nuclear catastrophe in no small part because of the failure of Western political leaders to be forthright about the causes of the escalating global conflicts. The relentless Western narrative that the West is noble while Russia and China are evil is simple-minded and extraordinarily dangerous,” Jeffrey Sachs writes.
Jeffrey Sachs, welcome to Democracy Now! Why don’t you take it from there?
JEFFREY SACHS: Thank you. Good to be with you.
AMY GOODMAN: What is the story that people in the West and around the world should understand about what’s happening right now with these conflicts, with Russia, with Russia and Ukraine, and with China?
JEFFREY SACHS: The main point, Amy, is that we are not using diplomacy; we are using weaponry. This sale now announced to Taiwan that you’ve been discussing this morning is just another case in point. This does not make Taiwan safer. This does not make the world safer. It certainly doesn’t make the United States safer.
This goes back a long way. I think it’s useful to start 30 years ago. The Soviet Union ended, and some American leaders got it into their head that there was now what they called the unipolar world, that the U.S. was the sole superpower, and we could run the show. The results have been disastrous. We have had now three decades of militarization of American foreign policy. A new database that Tufts is maintaining has just shown that there have been more than 100 military interventions by the United States since 1991. It’s really unbelievable.
And I have seen, in my own experience over the last 30 years working extensively in Russia, in Central Europe, in China and in other parts of the world, how the U.S. approach is a military-first, and often a military-only, approach. We arm who we want. We call for NATO enlargement, no matter what other countries say may be harmful to their security interests. We brush aside anyone else’s security interests. And when they complain, we ship more armaments to our allies in that region. We go to war when we want, where we want, whether it was Afghanistan or Iraq or the covert war against Assad in Syria, which is even today not properly understood by the American people, or the war in Libya. And we say, “We’re peace-loving. What’s wrong with Russia and China? They are so warlike. They’re out to undermine the world.” And we end up in terrible confrontations.
The war in Ukraine — just to finish the introductory view — could have been avoided and should have been avoided through diplomacy. What President Putin of Russia was saying for years was “Do not expand NATO into the Black Sea, not to Ukraine, much less to Georgia,” which if people look on the map, straight across to the eastern edge of the Black Sea. Russia said, “This will surround us. This will jeopardize our security. Let us have diplomacy.” The United States rejected all diplomacy. I tried to contact the White House at the end of 2021 — in fact, I did contact the White House and said there will be war unless the U.S. enters diplomatic talks with President Putin over this question of NATO enlargement. I was told the U.S. will never do that. That is off the table. And it was off the table. Now we have a war that’s extraordinarily dangerous.
And we are taking exactly the same tactics in East Asia that led to the war in Ukraine. We’re organizing alliances, building up weaponry, trash-talking China, having Speaker Pelosi fly to Taiwan, when the Chinese government said, “Please, lower the temperature, lower the tensions.” We say, “No, we do what we want,” and now send more arms. This is a recipe for yet another war. And to my mind, it’s terrifying.
We are at the 60th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, which I’ve studied all my life and I’ve written about, have written a book about the aftermath. We are driving to the precipice, and we are filled with our enthusiasm as we do so. And it’s just unaccountably dangerous and wrongheaded, the whole approach of U.S. foreign policy. And it’s bipartisan.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Jeffrey Sachs, I wanted to ask you — one of the things that you mentioned in a recent article that was published in Consortium News was this insistence of the United States, dragging Europe along, as well, in maintaining hegemony throughout the world at a time when the economic power of the West is declining. You mention, for instance, that the BRICS nations — Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa — represent more than 40% of the world population and have a greater GDP than the G7 nations, yet their interests and their concerns are pretty much dismissed or, in the case, obviously, of Russia and China, portrayed to the American people as the aggressors, as the authoritarians, as the ones that are creating turmoil in the world.
JEFFREY SACHS: Your point is —
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I’m wondering if you could expand on that.
JEFFREY SACHS: Yeah, absolutely, and directing us to that is extremely important. The disproportionate power of the Western world, and especially the Anglo-Saxon world, which started with the British Empire, and now the United States, is about 250 years old, so a short period in world history. It happened, for a lot of very interesting reasons, that the Industrial Revolution came to England first. The steam engine was invented there. That’s probably the single most important invention of modern history. Britain became militarily dominant in the 19th century, like the United States was in the second half of the 20th century. Britain ran the show. Britain had the empire on which the sun never set. And the West, meaning the United States and Western Europe, now meaning the U.S. and the European Union, the U.K., Canada, Japan — in other words, the G7, the European Union together — is a small part of the world population, perhaps now roughly 10%, a little bit more, maybe 12.5% if you add in Japan to Western Europe and the U.S. But the mindset is “We run the world.” And that was the way it was for 200 years in this Industrial Age.
But times have changed. And really, since the 1950s, the rest of the world, when it gained independence from European imperialism, started to educate its populations, started to adopt and adapt and innovate technologies. And lo and behold, a small sliver of the world really didn’t run the world or didn’t have a monopoly on wisdom or knowledge or science or technology. And this is wonderful. The knowledge and possibility of decent lives is spreading throughout the whole world.
But in the United States, there is a resentment to this, a deep resentment. I think there’s also a tremendous historical ignorance, because I think a lot of U.S. leaders have no clue as to modern history. But they resent China’s rise. That is an affront to the United States. How dare China rise! This is our world! This is our century! And so, starting around 2014, I saw, step by step — I watched it with intense detail, because it’s my daily activity — how the United States recast China not as a country that was recovering from a century and a half of great difficulty, but rather as an enemy. And we consciously, as a matter of American foreign policy, started to say, “We need to contain China. China’s rise is no longer in our interest,” as if the United States is to determine whether China is prosperous or not. The Chinese are not naive; in fact, they’re extraordinarily sophisticated. They watched all of this exactly the same way that I did. I know the authors of the U.S. texts. They are my colleagues, at Harvard or other places. I was shocked when this kind of containment idea started to be applied.
But the basic point is, the West has led the world for a brief period, 250 years, but feel, “That’s our right. This is a Western world. We are the G7. We get to determine who writes the rules of the game.” Indeed, Obama, you know, a good guy on the spectrum of what we have in foreign policy, said, “Let’s write the rules of trade for Asia, but not have China write any of those rules. The U.S. will write the rules.” This is an incredibly naive and dangerous and outmoded way to understand the world. We in the United States are 4.2% of the world’s population. We do not run the world. We are not world leader. We are a country of 4.2% of the people in a big, diverse world, and we should learn to get along, play in the sandbox peacefully, not demand that we have all the toys in the sandbox. And we’re not over that thinking yet. And unfortunately, it’s both political parties. It’s what motivates Speaker Pelosi to go to Taiwan in the middle of all of this, as if she really had to go to stir up the tensions. But it’s the mindset that the U.S. is in charge.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: I wanted to go back a little bit to — back into the 1990s. You recall, I’m sure, the enormous financial collapse that occurred in Mexico in the 1990s, where the Clinton administration authorized $50 billion in a bailout to Mexico, which was really to Wall Street investors. At the time, you were advising the post-Soviet Russian government, which also had a financial — had deep financial problems at the time but was unable to get any significant Western assistance, even from the International Monetary Fund. And you were critical of that at the time. I’m wondering if you could talk about the differences how the U.S. responded to the Mexico crisis versus the Russian financial crisis, and what the roots of that may have been in what the current situation is in Russia today.
JEFFREY SACHS: Absolutely. And I had a controlled experiment, because I was economic adviser both to Poland and to the Soviet Union in the last year of President Gorbachev and to President Yeltsin in the first two years of Russian independence, 1992, ’93. My job was finance, to actually help Russia find a way to address, as you described it, a massive financial crisis. And my basic recommendation in Poland, and then in Soviet Union and in Russia, was: To avoid a societal crisis and a geopolitical crisis, the rich Western world should help to tamp down this extraordinary financial crisis that was taking place with the breakdown of the former Soviet Union.
Well, interestingly, in the case of Poland, I made a series of very specific recommendations, and they were all accepted by the U.S. government — creating a stabilization fund, canceling part of Poland’s debts, allowing many financial maneuvers to get Poland out of the difficulty. And, you know, I patted myself on the back. “Oh, look at this!” I make a recommendation, and one of them, for a billion dollars, stabilization fund, was accepted within eight hours by the White House. So, I thought, “Pretty good.”
Then came the analogous appeal on behalf of, first, Gorbachev, in the final days, and then President Yeltsin. Everything I recommended, which was on the same basis of economic dynamics, was rejected flat out by the White House. I didn’t understand it, I have to tell you, at the time. I said, “But it worked in Poland.” And they’d stare at me blankly. In fact, an acting secretary of state in 1992 said, “Professor Sachs, it doesn’t even matter whether I agree with you or not. It’s not going to happen.”
And it took me, actually, quite a while to understand the underlying geopolitics. Those were exactly the days of Cheney and Wolfowitz and Rumsfeld and what became the Project for the New American Century, meaning for the continuation of American hegemony. I didn’t see it at the moment, because I was thinking as an economist, how to help overcome a financial crisis. But the unipolar politics was taking shape, and it was devastating. Of course, it left Russia in a massive financial crisis that led to a lot of instability that had its own implications for years to come.
But even more than that, what these people were planning, early on, despite explicit promises to Gorbachev and Yeltsin, was the expansion of NATO. And Clinton started the expansion of NATO with the three countries of Central Europe — Poland, Hungary and Czech Republic — and then George W. Bush Jr. added seven countries — Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia and the three Baltic states — but right up against Russia. And then, in 2008, the coup de grâce, which was the U.S. insistence, over the private opposition of the European leaders — and European leaders talked to me privately about it at the time. But in 2008, Bush said NATO will expand to Ukraine and to Georgia. And again, if you take out a map and look at the Black Sea, the explicit goal was to surround Russia in the Black Sea. By the way, it’s an old playbook. It’s the same playbook as Palmerston in 1853 to 1856 in the first Crimean War: surround Russia in the Black Sea, cut off its ability to have a military presence and to project any kind of influence into the eastern Mediterranean. Brzezinski himself said in 1997 that Ukraine would be the geographic pivot for Eurasia.
So, what these neocons were doing in the early 1990s was building the U.S. unipolar world. And they were already contemplating lots of wars in order to take out the former Soviet-allied countries — wars to overthrow Saddam, wars to overthrow Assad, wars to overthrow Gaddafi. Those were all rolled out in the next 20 years. They’ve been a complete disaster, debacle for those countries, horrible for the United States, trillions of dollars wasted. But it was a plan. And that neoconservative plan is in its heyday right now on two fronts: in the Ukraine front and on the Taiwan Strait front. And it’s extraordinarily dangerous, what these people are doing to American foreign policy, which hardly is, you know, a policy of democracy. It’s a policy of a small group that has the idea that a unipolar world and U.S. hegemony is the way that we need to go.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeffrey Sachs, we don’t have much time, but since this was such a big issue — Naomi Klein took you on big time with The Shock Doctrine, talking about you recommending shock therapy. Can you draw a line between what happened as the Russian economy unraveled to the conditions leading up to the Ukraine invasion? I mean, how did the economic catastrophe that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union lead to the rise of the oligarchic class and, indeed, the presidency of Vladimir Putin?
JEFFREY SACHS: Yeah, I’ve tried to explain to Naomi, whom I admire a great deal, for years that what I was recommending was financial help to — whether it was Poland or to the Soviet Union or to Russia. I was absolutely aghast at the cheating and the corruption and the giveaways. And I said so very explicitly at the time and resigned over it, both because I was useless in trying to get Western help and also because I did not like at all what was going on.
And I would say that the failure of an orderly approach, which was achieved in Poland but failed in the former Soviet Union because there was no Western constructive engagement, definitely played a role in the instability in the 1990s, definitely played a role in the rise of the oligarch class. In fact, I was absolutely explaining to the U.S. and to the IMF and the World Bank in 1994, ’95, what was going on. They didn’t care, because they thought, “Well, that’s OK. That’s for Yeltsin, perhaps,” all of that cheating in the shares-for-loans process. Having said all of that, it was a —
AMY GOODMAN: We have less than a minute.
JEFFREY SACHS: OK. Having said all of that, I think what is important to say is that there is no linear determinism, even from events like that, which were destabilizing and very unhappy and unnecessary, to what is happening now, because when President Putin came in, he was not anti-European, he was not anti-American. What he saw, though, was the incredible arrogance of the United States, the expansion of NATO, the wars in Iraq, the covert war in Syria, the war in Libya, against the U.N. resolution. So, we created so much of what we’re facing right now through our own ineptitude and arrogance. There was no linear determination. It was step-by-step U.S. arrogance that has helped to bring us to where we are today.
AMY GOODMAN: Jeffrey Sachs, economist and director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University, president of the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, has served as adviser to three U.N. secretaries-general. I want to thank you so much for being with us, joining us from Austria, where he’s attending a conference.
Coming up, we will look at — we will talk to a reporter who’s documented how, over the last year, the U.S. has approved just 123 Afghan humanitarian parole applications. Compare that to 68,000 approved applications from Ukrainians in recent months. Stay with us.
