'The World Is at the Edge of Nuclear War': Jeffrey Sachs

Jeffrey Sachs says it isn’t just that diplomacy between Russia and the US has failed. Diplomacy is no longer even being attempted.

The list of public intellectuals whom I actually respect and find impressive is rapidly dwindling. But one of the few high-profile academics I do admire is Jeffrey Sachs, an American economist, public policy analyst, and professor at Columbia University.

Sachs isn’t just a brilliant economist (though we’d almost certainly disagree on many points), but an astute and intrepid analyst of global affairs. He was one of the earliest public thinkers to connect the dots on the destruction of Nord Stream 2, pointing out it had all the earmarks of a CIA-led operation.

“If you followed the US for the last five decades, actually six decades from Vietnam onward, you know a lot about this. This is what happens when you have a secret intelligence unit, the CIA, which carries out covert operations. That’s there job. Presidents give orders, they do all sorts of things. They make coups, they create civil unrest, they create ‘revolutions,’ they blow up infrastructure. It’s part of the job, and it’s actually quite well known.”

Sachs is one of the few people who seems to realize US meddling in Ukraine, which began well before Russia’s 2022 invasion, has brought the world to the brink of World War III.

For those who don’t know, US Secretary of State Tony Blinken recently announced Ukraine will be joining NATO, an action many have warned for years could trigger a full-blown war in Europe and Asia, unlike anything we’ve witnessed since World War II.

It’s difficult to understand the many forces and incentives at work that are driving us toward what could possibly be World War III, but Sachs, in a recent interview on The Duran, touches on some important points.

Sachs’s primary point isn’t just that diplomacy has failed. It’s that diplomacy is no longer even being attempted.

Communication between Russian the US have grown so bad that US diplomats leave the room when Russian diplomats arrive. When Russian ambassadors say they’re open to discussions, US ambassadors say there is nothing to discuss.

Sachs explains why this is happening, and it begins with the goals of the United States.

“The US has an agenda,” says Sachs. “The agenda is hegemony.”

It’s shocking to hear this, but Sachs points out it is literally spelled out in Pentagon and State Department documents, though the word used often is “primacy.” And because hegemony is the goal, it has frustrated the primary way conflicts of this nature are resolved: diplomacy.

“When you believe in dominance…you believe you don’t have to talk to anyone else,” Sachs says. “There are no red lines on the other side. There are no interests on the other side.”

Previous global showdowns of this kind—such as the Cuban Missile Crisis—were resolved when leaders of these countries were able to reach out to one another and find a diplomatic solution, even if that meant circumventing military and state advisors.

“The two heads of state, Kennedy and Khrushchev, figured out how to save the world despite their own advisors,” say Sachs, the author of To Move the World: JFK's Quest for Peace.

None of that is happening today, Sachs says, perhaps because “Biden is not mentally up to it.”

Whatever the reason, Sachs says the total failure of diplomatic relations could result in catastrophe.

Sachs says it’s not just that leaders like Biden, Blinken, and Victoria Nuland don’t understand diplomacy. He says they believe they don’t even need diplomacy.

“The world is at the edge of nuclear war,” he says, “and you don’t even try to have a discussion with the other side.”

Watch the entire discussion here.