Brief Notes: In this compelling discussion, Professor Jeffrey Sachs joins Glenn Diesen to analyze the “unhinged” nature of the U.S. empire and its consequences for an increasingly subordinated Europe. Sachs delivers a sharp critique of European leaders’ complicity in American imperialist actions, specifically addressing recent tensions surrounding NATO and the controversial rhetoric regarding Greenland. The conversation delves into the failures of Western diplomacy and the self-destructive nature of “Russophobia,” questioning if Europe can ever break free from its subservient role to secure a stable future. This interview provides a provocative look at the shifting global order and the urgent need for a more realistic and independent European foreign policy. (Jan 22, 2025)
Europe’s Failure to Understand American Imperialism
GLENN DIESEN: Welcome back. We have the great privilege to be joined by Professor Jeffrey Sachs to make sense of what’s happening with NATO as Trump seeks to annex Greenland. So thank you for coming back on.
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: Of course. Anytime, Glenn.
GLENN DIESEN: About a year ago, in February of 2025, you wrote that Europe needs a foreign policy that is realistic, understands Russia’s situation, understands Europe’s situation, understands what America is and what it stands for, and that tries to avoid Europe being invaded by the United States.
It’s certainly not impossible that Trump’s America will land troops in Greenland. I’m not joking, and I don’t think Trump is joking. So, of course, a year ago, the Europeans were a bit dismissive about these ideas, not so much anymore.
And now, of course, forward one year, the Europeans are very outraged, not necessarily expressing it to Trump very clearly, as they find themselves on the receiving end of US hostilities, and they suddenly have rediscovered the importance of international law and principles, even though they helped to tear this down over the past 30 years. So I was wondering how you make sense of all of this, because following what’s happened in Davos yesterday, how do you read the situation?
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: President Kennedy in 1961, in his inaugural address said, “He who would ride on the back of a tiger often comes back inside the tiger.” If you think that you’re going to live on the back of a predator, you may be the next meal.
I think the Europeans forgot that over 30 years. When I mean what I meant in saying to the European Parliament, you should understand what the United States is, I meant that they should understand the United States is an imperial power. It acts brazenly and brutally.
And for about 20 years, almost no European leader said a word against that predatory behavior by the United States. As the US invaded one country after another, as it overthrew governments, as it played recklessly in Ukraine, the Europeans were quiet. They may even have liked it, as the US was complicit in Israel’s disastrous wars across Africa and the Middle East.
As the United States went to war in Iraq, went to war in Libya, overthrew or assigned the CIA to overthrow the government of Syria, played a very deep and destructive role in the overthrow of Ukraine’s president, Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014, the European leaders just were silent.
When the United States bombed Iran last June, the European leaders said, “Oh, Iran, you should exercise restraint.” They didn’t tell the United States to exercise restraint. When the United States kidnapped the president of Venezuela, the European leaders were, “Fine, he’s a bad, bad guy.”
But then when the United States said, “We want Greenland,” oh, no, that’s unfair. What about international law? You have to respect things. And the New York Times discovered that America has imperial tendencies. It hadn’t mentioned that for several decades, actually, but it discovered it because now it was talking about a European country in the European territory.
European Complicity and Self-Destruction
So there’s a lot of naivete and hypocrisy in everything that’s been going on in recent times. To put my position very clear, I think the United States is thuggish, imperialistic, reckless, and that the US has left a large swath of the world in misery and Europe has been mostly compliant or complicit in a lot of that outside Europe.
So I sympathize with the Europeans, of course I do about Greenland. This is just a grotesque power grab by Trump. But I wish that the Europeans had exercised some awareness, prudence and actually capacity in recent years to tell the United States, “Don’t behave that way.”
Also, from a very realist point of view, if I may say so, the Europeans were absurd in their Russophobia. That wasn’t realism, that was self-destruction. Rather than keeping lines of communication open with Russia, they left everything to the United States.
So now they find themselves completely boxed in because they have no diplomacy with Russia. They basically have no diplomacy with the United States. They basically have no diplomacy is the reality of Europe right now. But they did that to themselves.
And I don’t like to say it, but I have to say I told you so to them, because I’ve been saying this for years to the European leaders. So have you. Get your act together, have diplomatic policy, understand what the United States is all about. Don’t be so hypocritical. It will come back to haunt you. These are all the basic truths of the last few days.
GLENN DIESEN: Yeah, I think the European idea is that much like the Cold War, the hatred of Russia should unify the West. But the problem is this is not the Cold War. The Americans do not see the Russians as main adversaries.
So the only thing happens by pushing this crazy Russophobia is the Europeans make themselves more dependent on the US while the US has less interest in sharing this common balancing. So they make themselves subservient. But I tried to make this point in here, but I’m told that this is Russian propaganda, so…
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: It’s not Russian propaganda.
We see right before our eyes what the consequences of all of this have turned out to be, which is Europe bereft of any security, any capacity to discuss issues. They’re running around in an absolute panic.
In a sense, you don’t blame them, except that they had a lot of warning in this, including the one that I gave to them last February. But of course you and I have been making these warnings for many, many years.
The Fraud of the Rules-Based International Order
GLENN DIESEN: But a lot of things happened now in Davos though. The most interesting speech maybe was from Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney. He more or less admitted that the whole so-called rules-based international order was a fraud. That it was, well, it gave the West certain specific privileges.
Yeah, they can refer to liberal democracy and human rights to push aside international law, of course as the exclusive prerogative of the West, so a hegemonic concept. But now of course they find themselves on the outside, as you suggested, and this is not acceptable.
I thought this was quite remarkable because this suggested a change in world order. Canada has to diversify. The Europeans though, have been much weaker in their response. Macron even sent a message, private message to Trump which was shared in which he said, more or less trying to get on the inside saying, “Oh, we agree, everything you’re doing against Syria, Iran, let’s work on this together. Just leave Greenland alone.”
So trying to get back on the inside while NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte spent the entire interview I watched celebrating daddy and why he’s been the most wonderful thing ever to happen to NATO. Even at the same time, Trump shared a message saying that the real enemy of America is from within, which is NATO.
So it’s quite remarkable to watch. But despite all of this, do you see this being a sign of decline of the US Empire? I mean, is this the end of NATO? Change the world order? How are you reading this? Because these are just quite remarkable things we’re hearing.
Mark Carney’s Strategic Shift and Canada’s Bold Move
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: Let’s start with Mark Carney. First, I want to say how proud I am because he was a student in my department in the 1980s. We knew he was special then. And he is showing that he’s perhaps suddenly the most important statesman of the Western world, the only one talking straightforwardly and honestly.
Now, his speech in Davos, which was masterful, came after his trip to China, which was perhaps even more remarkable because here is the Premier of Canada going to Beijing and forging a, quote, “strategic partnership” with China. They made a trade partnership, an investment partnership, a plan for Chinese investment in electric vehicles in Canada, which is much needed because the American auto industry is basically going to be defunct because it’s doubling down on internal combustion engines, that is the traditional U.S. industry.
And Canada is diversifying economically, but also geopolitically. This was a gutsy move because Canada shares a long border with the United States, of course, and Trump every few days essentially declares Canada his as well. But Prime Minister Carney spoke very clearly and was not afraid to forge new, very important foreign policy relations with China. And I do think that that is of significant importance.
I assume that others have taken note. I know that some governments are wide-eyed and amazed at what’s happening and indeed taking note.
The Instability Ahead and Trump’s Stock Market Constraints
What all of this means is, of course, first and foremost, a lot of instability ahead. Now, Trump backed down in Davos from his day before threat to take Greenland in any way by use of force and so on. He backed down from his threat of tariffs. It’s an interesting question why?
I have my own pet theory of that, and that’s because the stock market declined the day before. This is really the only thing, I’m afraid, that constrains Trump. He needs to please his billionaire backers. He himself panics when the stock market goes down. That’s also his pride and joy.
The stock market reacted badly to all of the potential ramifications of the conflict between the United States and Europe. And so Trump backed down not because of what the Europeans did, but because the stock market tanked. And probably the Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent, explained to Trump that maybe he should tone it down so that he gets the stock market back up.
Maybe they actually ran ahead of the market and made some money on all of these trades because that’s also pretty much par for the most corrupt government we’ve ever had in the United States. But the point is Trump backed down a bit, but perhaps some of the Europeans also made concessions.
We don’t know what’s going on, but one story right now, which would be outrageous but not impossible, is that the Europeans told the United States, well, you can have sovereignty over parts of Greenland, over your bases. This seems to be one meme that’s being repeated in U.S. newspapers right now. Who knows what was said. It certainly wasn’t a real negotiation by anybody yet. So anything that was said I would regard with 100% skepticism of really being meaningful. So this was another piece of the chaos.
Scott Bessent’s Admission: Economic Warfare Against Iran
I think there was another part of Davos that should get more attention than it’s gotten. And that was an interview by the U.S. Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent on Fox Business News. It was extraordinary because it explained another thing that you and I have spoken about and that I’ve been posting about. And that’s what’s going on in Iran, because Scott Bessent let the cat out of the bag.
He said, this is a regime change operation. The idea is for the U.S. to crush the Iranian economy. If you or I were to say that two days ago or three days ago, oh, no, you must be an Iranian apologist. You must be trying to exculpate the Iranian regime from all its corruption and so on.
But let me just read a little bit of what Bessent said. He was asked by the interviewer Maria Bartiromo, “What do you want to say about sanctions, something you’ve been working on, of course. What are you planning there in terms of Iran and the impact there? Do sanctions work?”
So Bessent says, “Okay, there are treasury sanctions. And if you look at a speech that I gave at the Economic Club of New York last March, I said that I believed the Iranian currency was on the verge of collapse, that if I were an Iranian citizen, I would take my money out. President Trump ordered Treasury and our OFAC division, that is the Office of Foreign Asset Control, to put maximum pressure on Iran. And it’s worked because in December, their economy collapsed. We saw a major bank go under. The central bank has started to print money. There is dollar shortage. They are not able to get imports. And this is why the people took to the streets. So this is economic statecraft. No shots fired. And things are moving in a very positive way here.”
It’s extraordinary. So he explains, yes, this is economic statecraft to crush the Iranian economy. It’s war with economic means, completely against international law, against the UN Charter. The sanctions are illegal. And when Scott Bessent says things are moving in a very positive way because of economic collapse, you can see how completely twisted these people are.
This really is an evil empire, I have to say, because the idea is destruction of others. Usually we have treasury secretaries that don’t exactly explain these things with all this pride, but Bessent laid it out clearly.
I think it also helped me to really underscore why Bessent has his job. He was the hedge fund guy with Soros that attacked the pound sterling. So he’s known as the guy who can bring down someone else’s currency. What a handy thing to have as your Treasury Secretary. He’s not an expert on economic policy, on fiscal affairs, on the state of the American people, nothing about that. But he can bring down a currency, and that was his job in Iran, and he’s chortling about this.
Regime Change Operations and European Complicity
So there’s lots of regime change. Now today in the Wall Street Journal, the headline is that the Cuban government has to fall before the year end. So that’s another regime change operation underway.
By the way, the Europeans on Iran, like you quoted Macron, they didn’t say a word. They didn’t say a word when the United States was out to crush the regime. So I think at least all of your listeners are extremely well informed. We need people to understand this is just thuggish gangster behavior by the U.S. It’s been going on a long time.
The fact that it turned against the Europeans, oh, that was a surprise. The fact that it has been long used against the Libyans, the Sudanese, the Somalis, the Lebanese, the Iraqis, the Iranians, the Yemenites, the Palestinians, of course, well, that didn’t bear notice beforehand.
I must actually add, even though of course I’m wishing for Denmark’s well-being, when the U.S. and Israel bombed Iran last June, there was of course a UN Security Council meeting. And so I went to attend. And in that meeting, the Danish ambassador chastised the Iranians, the Iranians who were just bombed, for thinking about possibly retaliating. And she said to the Iranians, “You must exercise restraint” without mentioning that Iran had just been bombed. She didn’t even mention it.
So I went up to her afterwards and I said, “Madam Ambassador, maybe you should also have said that Israel just bombed Iran.” She turned around and walked away. So now they’re upset, but that’s what they were defending up until now. They were defending lawlessness and they were hiding it, but now it is turned on them. Not that I’m happy about that. I find the whole thing completely despicable.
Europe’s Self-Destructive Subservience
GLENN DIESEN: That’s why I liked your “riding the tiger” analogy, because I think this has been the idea of the Europeans ever since the end of the Cold War. We’ll go along with the hegemonic project, be the junior partner of the United States and look the other way. And I don’t think they realized that they were just feeding the monster. And at some point, of course, they would come for their allies.
And especially now that the world is becoming more multipolar. And I think that this goes beyond Trump, though, because in a multipolar world, it seems that the United States will have to prioritize other regions. And I always made the point that we should have good relations with America. But in order to have it, we have to diversify also our ties. Otherwise we become too dependent on the U.S. and the U.S. would then be in a position to take advantage and create this extractive, almost colonial relationship.
But the EU seems to go the exact opposite direction, which is why I was wondering, what does this mean for the political West? Because the political West united against the Soviet Union or pursuing collective hegemony in the post-Cold War order, as Carney suggested, this doesn’t work anymore.
But I might be wrong because Europeans seem to be willing to play this role and don’t have any political imagination to be anything else than subservient to the U.S. Empire. Even as the U.S. trashes. This is the amazing part that people like Rutte, they will continue to tell Trump how wonderful and amazing he is even as he’s threatening European countries. It’s quite extraordinary.
The Possibility of Peace with Russia
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: There have been glimpses, mere glimpses, I acknowledge, but glimpses of insight. Chancellor Merz, who came into office warmongering and has beat the war drums ever since, just about every day, said just before New Year’s that Russia is a European state, it’s got European culture, and there will have to be relations between Europe, meaning European Union and Russia, for that reason after this conflict ends.
Well, this was the first statement I heard of this kind. Rather than the idea that there’s going to be another wall a mile high between the two sides, if one would look at the modern history objectively, not from a partisan point of view, not from a U.S. point of view, or a European point of view, or a Russian point of view, or a Chinese point of view, what you find is that actually all sides could get along if they would just stop warmongering against the others.
And Europe’s big mistake is this Russophobia, this idea that Russia is intrinsically and inherently evil and therefore that is the inexorable adversary of Europe. It ain’t true. It hasn’t been true. To say who was evil between Germany and Russia in the middle of the 20th century would give you quite a different conclusion.
To understand what Yeltsin and Gorbachev were really offering the West should have been the most clear and dramatic wake-up call for Europe imaginable. I was there those years. I know it. Peace was absolutely possible. It was desired by the Russians, no question in the world.
In fact, Gorbachev unilaterally disbanded the Warsaw Pact and said Germany should reunify. Of course, on the condition, very clear and explicit, that NATO wouldn’t enlarge one bit to the East. Okay, all of this could have been achieved if the two sides had just been honest. But the United States, much more than Europe, was completely dishonest in this period.
And the Russophobia of Eastern Europe, whatever one thinks, you could at least understand it, although I don’t agree with it, but it should not have guided European policy overall. So Europe trapped itself and it remains trapped.
But if it could step back and think, which admittedly is very hard for these politicians to do, they would see that till today, it’s possible to have peace with Russia. It would be built on neutrality of states in between the European Union and Russia, first and foremost Ukraine. That was the whole idea of how to achieve a peaceful settlement.
The same reason that Austria was both neutral and safe during the entire Cold War period, because it was in between. And it did not lose its security by being neutral. Not at all. It increased its security. So there were ways forward. There are ways forward now. But it requires a different approach.
And the British are the most hopeless in this. They’ve had the same approach since 1840. Germany has been a country that has understood East politics, Ostpolitik, Willy Brandt and others. After that, if there were a Helmut Schmidt or a Helmut Kohl, things would be different. If there were Chancellor Merkel, up until the second day of the Bucharest NATO summit, because she knew that what the United States was pushing was all wrong, it would be different.
So we can’t give up that this is hopeless. But it is urgent that Europe come to understand if it continues to prosecute this war with Russia, it’s going to find itself nowhere in this world, just broken apart, an enemy of Russia, an enemy of China, an enemy of the United States, bereft of a functioning economy. And that is the current line of travel.
Europe’s Diplomatic Paralysis
GLENN DIESEN: Well, even as Europe now is on this path, as you suggest, and I very much agree with, I’m very skeptical about the ability to do anything about it. Because at the moment, the discussion in Europe is, can we even talk to Russia? This is where we are, even as we’re losing the war. And the British and the Baltic States, of course, say, no, we can’t talk to Russia. That’s just, you know, that’s not acceptable.
And even if we can solve this, then we have to move on to next stage. Who should represent us in the talks with Russia? I mean, we’re never even going to get to sitting down with the Russians. And once we sit down, we’re going to start with the position that Russia more or less has to recapitulate. There has to be NATO expansion. Ukraine needs an 800,000 peacetime army.
It’s just hard to see any actual diplomacy. I guess just as a final question. How do you explain this, though? Is it just because it’s 27 countries who can only unite on Russophobia, or how do you explain the inability to do very basic diplomacy for basic national interests?
Germany’s Responsibility and the Path Forward for Europe
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: I think that it would be possible to find a way forward, not with all 27 agreeing suddenly, but if Germany, and ideally Germany, France, Italy would find some rationality. And let me explain why Germany bears the most responsibility and has the highest stakes.
This war in Ukraine came about because of German duplicity as much as US duplicity. It was Germany, after all, that made the deal: no NATO enlargement in return for German reunification. And Germany violated that, actually already in the early 1990s. It wasn’t only the United States that was calling for NATO enlargement. It was also Germany that was calling for NATO enlargement. So Germany cheated.
This is first. Second, Germany cheated again, actually several times, 2014, 2015 onward. Because in 2014, Germany helped to secure a deal with Yanukovych: you will stay in power and we will have a unity government and early elections in Ukraine by the end of 2014. The United States broke that, sided with the violent coup that took place the day after the European Yanukovych agreement was reached. And then Germany quickly went along with that, rather than saying no, we actually had an agreement. Yanukovych is still the President. That’s how we’re going to proceed. So Germany dropped the ball again.
Then in 2015, when the Minsk II agreement was signed, Germany was to be the guarantor of Minsk II. And as I’ve said many times, Minsk II was actually modeled on the case of South Tyrol in Italy, which is a German ethnic region of northern Italy that has autonomy. And Chancellor Merkel knew all about South Tyrol because she visited it and the German politicians, the ethnic German politicians in South Tyrol. And that was to be the model for the Donbas, that it would have autonomy. And Germany and France were to be the two guarantors of that. Germany again dropped the ball. That’s Chancellor Merkel, I’m sorry to say, because I like her, but she dropped the ball again.
Building a Coalition for Diplomacy
So the first way to turn this around is actually for Germany to turn this around because it has really violated its commitments repeatedly. If Germany did that, France should be able to do that. I had a conversation with Macron in 2023. I’m almost sure that it was at a conference that he hosted where he said, “Yes, NATO enlargement. I agree with you, Mr. Sachs, that’s the provocation.” But he was not consequent to act on that.
As for Italy, strangely, interestingly, there is no Russophobia in Italy. Italy is politically and socially okay with Russia, actually. But the Prime Minister goes along with NATO or goes along with her European colleagues. But it would not be a hard political sell in Italy to say, we need diplomacy.
Well, if you got those three big ones, that would change the dynamic in Europe quite quickly. I know other, and by the way, Central Europe, the former Habsburg lands, if I could put it that way, of the Czech Republic under Babiš, the Slovakia under Roberto Fico, and Hungary led by Viktor Orbán, they’re all in favor of diplomacy. So that’s not even a hard sell. That’s already the case.
So you’d have Central Europe, you’d have Germany, you’d have France, you’d have Italy, you’d have Spain under Pedro Sánchez. It’s not impossible, but unfortunately, Merz was terrible from the first day. A German chancellor should never come into office just beating the drums of war without even trying diplomacy. And I’m afraid that that is exactly what Merz did.
The Failure of German Leadership
And his predecessor, Olaf Scholz, was unbelievable. He’s the man that stood next to Joe Biden as Joe Biden explained that the United States was going to destroy the Nord Stream 2 pipeline and he kept mum about it. We don’t even understand how Scholz was such a failure. Did the US have something on him? We don’t know.
But the point is, German leadership has been extraordinarily weak and duplicitous. I would say, at key moments in this, Germany has a responsibility to turn this around as the biggest single country and of course, the major industrial power, albeit a failing one in Europe right now.
This is what I would hope could happen. I’m not giving up on it because it’s too important to just let Europe continue to founder and pull itself apart in pieces or appease Trump time and again in the most pathetic way. Rutte, I won’t even talk about. It’s beyond imagining.
NATO Leadership and European Cowardice
And interestingly, I may say, by the way, Jens Stoltenberg of your country, who’s finance minister and was the Secretary General of NATO, someone I’ve known for decades, I believe I’m correct that he said recently that it’s time to talk to the Russians. He never would have said that as Secretary General of NATO.
And when he stepped down as Secretary General and started to say things different from what he was saying as Secretary General of NATO, I spoke to a political leader and said, “What’s going on with Jens? Why didn’t he say that when he was Secretary General?” And I was told, “Well, Jeff, when he was Secretary General, who was he working for?” And I said, “You mean the United States?” “Yes.”
So he wouldn’t say something different. Now, Mark Rutte is pathetic. You don’t have to call this mad king president of ours “daddy” as secretary general. It’s a little bit of an invitation to have Greenland invaded. I must say how pathetic Rutte is.
But the point is, a lot of leaders in Europe know. They’re just so cowardly or so inured to the way things have gone for decades of falsehoods, that they just can’t speak right now. So I’m not giving up, because I think that there still is a solution for Europe. And as long as there is a solution, maybe somebody will find it.
GLENN DIESEN: Well, I hope in this troubling time, I do enjoy the optimism there. So thank you very much for taking the time.
PROFESSOR JEFFREY SACHS: Of course. Great to be with you. We’ll talk soon.
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