“What we hear in our media is propaganda, it is not real”

ts. He is an award-winning US economist. Director of the UN’s Sustainable Development Solutions Network, as well as Director of the Earth Institute at the prestigious Columbia University in New York City, and a member of the Pontifical Academy of Social Sciences since 2021. Jeffrey David Sachs, born in 1954, also a professor at Harvard University’s economics department from 1983, a consultant to the IMF, World Bank, OECD, WTO, and UNDP, is deeply concerned about the current global situation. He, who had earned a dubious reputation as a radical liberaliser. From 1985 in Bolivia, from 1989 in Poland, from 1991 in Russia. Wikipedia states, “In 1989, Yugoslavia negotiated with the IMF the so-called ‘Marković-Sachs program,’ which came about only at the IMF’s insistence. Within a few months, a radical import liberalisation was undertaken in 1989/90, which caused 2435 companies with a total of 1.3 million employees to go bankrupt by the end of 1990. Yugoslavia’s gross national product fell by 7.5 percent in 1990 and by 15 per cent in 1991.” Joseph E Stiglitz concludes that the shock therapy-style policy of rapid privatisation he recommended contributed to the rapid economic collapse of the Eastern bloc.
    Nowadays, however, according to Wikipedia, Sachs is “committed to extensive debt relief for extremely poor countries and to fighting diseases, especially HIV/AIDS in developing countries. He criticises the WTO and the IMF because the donors of these organisations are unwilling to provide effective aid to the extremely poor. He accuses the U.S. government of being unwilling to allocate 0.7% of gross national product to development aid.”
    As for the war in Ukraine, Sach’s statement is unequivocal. In an interview on May 13^th, 2022, titled “Jeffrey Sachs on Ending the Russia-Ukraine War”¹, he states that he is virtually constantly traveling around the world and talking to leaders everywhere: “What we hear in our media is propaganda, it’s not real. We should be negotiating. Actually, Biden refused to negoatiate with Putin.” Sachs who has been involved in this issue since the 1990s, points out that at the time Gorbachev had been promised that NATO would not be expanded eastward. Putin has repeatedly referred to this, he says. Sachs: “We are liars, I’m sorry to put it that way, we cheated.” The Minsk agreements were signed, but “when Putin says, what about the Minsk agreements, he is shouted down or ignored (...) I can only tell you how many emails I’m gonna get from Ukrainian Canadians, from Ukrainian Americans, Sax, are you crazy, what are you saying, but the truth is, diplomacy is crucial if you’re going to avoid wars.”

“At its core it is
about exceptionalism”

Sachs had already expressed fundamental views on US foreign policy in 2018. In a lecture titled “The End of American Exceptionalism”², he does not mince words about what current US policy is doing, not only in domestic policy but also in foreign policy: “We are at a crossroads. In 1941, Henry Luz declared the American century. In 1992, when the Soviet Union collapsed, we were the colossus, the New Rome, the sole superpower of the world. And I’m arguing it was a lot of illusion. The idea that there is a one power that bestrides the world, especially one country with 4.4% of the world’s population presuming to lead the world, to be the superpower, is very naive and very dangerous in my view. It’s in central terms, it is this word exceptionalism which has been repeated throughout American history, that we are the exceptional country. That at this point I think makes us a danger to ourselves. We have ended up so vastly overextended. Military bases in more than 70 countries around the world, more than 700 bases around the world. Wars that are dragging on endlessly. From Afghanistan, violence throughout the Middle East, Libya, all our drone and covert operations in Africa, the Middle East, and elsewhere. We are a danger to ourselves now by taking this idea of exceptionalism in such an anachronistic way when it no longer applies.” He states that his criticism is aimed at the established US foreign policy, which has been ongoing for decades. “It has become more and more unreal and out of kilter because the share of the world economy or global finance or technology that America dominates, let’s say, has diminished over time. We once were the economic colossus at the end of World War II. We were the ones standing that had not been attacked on home territory, except for one day, Pearl Harbour, and we were a military, technological, and financial powerhouse, of course. But over time, other countries, other regions, have developed. Of course China is the most remarkable case of economic development the world has ever seen. 1.4 billion people coming out of poverty in a 40-year period. And the reality of where we are today in the in the US and where we term ourselves as still the indispensable country [and the belief in] American primacy in every region of the world.”
    What had Kishore Mahbubani, one of the hundred most influential contemporary intellectuals, according to Newsweek, said long ago? Western supremacy has come to an end. It has been an aberration of history. The overwhelming majority of people on this planet are not Western and finally want to be taken seriously. If Jeffrey Sachs’ statement contributes to this, much will already be gained. But where are the voices of the European intellectuals? •

¹ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1qI1XKMPks
²https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZU0IXO7AQw