Transcript: Jeffrey Sachs on Trump’s Tariffs & Geopolitics: ‘U.S. Doesn’t Care About India…’

I put it on the US side because I believe that this is a war fundamentally provoked by the United States over a 30-year period.

Actually, it’s a war of NATO expansion that is an effort that began in the 1990s, contrary to the promise that the United States had given to the Soviet Union and then to Russia, that NATO would not move one inch eastward. But when the Soviet Union ended in 1991, the United States reneged on its promise and began NATO enlargement. Actually, that dates back to 1994, when President Bill Clinton made that terrible decision.

Since then, NATO has expanded eastward with the intention, explicit intention, of surrounding Russia and for many in the American political elite, of defeating Russia or dividing Russia or a term that’s sometimes used in Washington, “decolonizing Russia.” But it all added up to the same thing, which is that after the Cold War, the US policy has been to defeat Russia, not to live peacefully with Russia.

Now, the reason that the meeting surprised me when it was announced a couple of days ago is that it’s clear what is happening. Russia saying, if you want an end to this war, we have to get to the root causes of this war. That is essentially NATO enlargement, but many other things alongside that.

The United States made a coup in Ukraine in 2014 which brought in this pro-NATO regime. After overthrowing a president that wanted neutrality for Ukraine, which is the right policy for Ukraine. Then the United States dissed a treaty that could have prevented the full scale escalation. That was the Minsk II agreement endorsed by the UN Security Council that called for autonomy in eastern Ukraine for the ethnic Russian population of that region. The United States told the Ukrainians, “don’t do it.”

Then in early 2022, after the Russian invasion that began on February 24, 2022, there was a peace agreement almost completed between Russia and Ukraine based on Ukraine’s neutrality. And the United States swooped in and told Zelensky, “don’t sign that. We’ll fight on, we’ll defeat Russia.”

So I say all of this as a prelude to saying, what is this meeting about? If President Trump says, finally, the truth, which is that NATO will not enlarge eastward, that the United States will stop its relentless attempt for regime change in Russia or to surround Russia, and that there will be, therefore a neutral and secure Ukraine, then there can be peace.

But President Trump has not had the guts to say that. I don’t know what he believes in any event, personally, but he’s surrounded by the US military industrial complex, which absolutely doesn’t believe it. So I’m interested, of course, what will this meeting bring? But the idea that Trump has asserted on behalf of the military industrial complex that there should just be a ceasefire without getting to the root causes of this conflict is a non-starter from the Russian point of view.

Because from Russia’s point of view, that just means that the west will restart the war on its convenient date at any time, rather than getting to the fundamental reasons for this war in the first place. In this regard, I believe the Russians are right. If this war is to end, it should end by addressing the fundamental reasons for this conflict. The United States was the strong side of this over the last 30 years, and it basically said to Russia, “we can do what we want, where we want, when we want, and we will do so.” And that’s why this war continues. If Trump will say something different, there could be an end to the war.

Trump’s Ability to Change Course

ABHISHEK SINGH: Right. And how confident are you that Trump will be able to do what Obama and Biden did? Not because you talked about the role of the military industrial complex and of course, the US deep state. Would he be able to play by a different playbook, different from Obama’s, Biden’s and other presidents before them, and especially because he sold his voters on peace presidency and Russia, Ukraine war, of course, is the biggest war that the west has its eyes set on.

Do you think Trump, if not for anything else, not for the sake of the millions of Ukrainians who are dead, not for the sake of dead Russians, but perhaps for the sake of the peace prize that he’s eyeing, he’d perhaps be able to walk away from what has been the US foreign policy so far on this matter?

JEFFREY SACHS: He could, of course. It’s his job. I often say, I’ve said for decades, that the main job of the President of the United States is to put the foot on the brake of the war machine of the United States. That’s his job. It’s not an easy job. He’s not very good at this job because he does not communicate political ideas. He does not speak to the American people. He does not build a base.

His idea is that everything is backroom trades, backroom transactions, threats, bluster, bluffs. On that basis, he can’t face down the military industrial complex. It surrounds him. The only way a president can face down the military industrial complex is true leadership. I don’t think Trump has it in him, but I hope I’m wrong. I stand to be corrected.

But for that, Trump would have to explain to the American people, by the way, who don’t want war to explain. Here’s how we get out of this, here’s how we got into it, and here’s how we get out of it. You know, he says this is Biden’s war. Okay? That’s politics. The truth is it’s also his war. From the first term, it’s Obama’s war. Obama oversaw the coup in 2014 that brought in this current Ukrainian regime. It goes back to Clinton.

The truth is this is a US deep state war. This is a CIA, Pentagon, military industrial complex war. It has an agenda. The agenda was spelled out, by the way, very clearly and explicitly by Zbigniew Brzezinski in 1997, who explained everything of what the US elite thought. What Brzezinski said was, “we will make Russia a second or third rate power by surrounding it in the Black Sea region so that Russia can’t project its power.” And Brzezinski concluded in 1997, “Russia will have no alternative but to agree or accede to the European NATO enlargement.”

Well, Brzezinski was wrong. But the point is that Trump would have to explain why we’re changing direction. So far, he’s not shown the intelligence, the timing, the public side, the understanding of this. So I’m a little doubtful, but I’m hoping I’m wrong.

Trump’s Contradictory Approach to India

ABHISHEK SINGH: Right? Right. Now, Professor Trump is a man of many contradictions. On one hand, he’s talking about wanting to hobnob with Putin, and on the other hand, he’s chiding India for, of course, trading with Russia, for buying defense equipment, for buying Russian crude oil. And he’s giving India the impression that the India-US relationship and within that, India’s considerations and compulsions aren’t very important to him either.

Give him the credit for stopping the conflict between India and Pakistan and stop buying Russian oil or pay up 50% in tariffs. What do you make of what Trump has tried to do. As far as the tariffs that he has slapped on India, which by the way, US has called a strategic partner.

JEFFREY SACHS: Well, I tried to explain to my many friends in India, don’t trust the United States. Sorry, this is a basic point. US politicians don’t care at all about India. Please understand this. When I was in India in the spring, I said don’t count on some great trade relationship.

What India has hoped for, I believe, is that it would be a good partner of the United States because it would be a way for the US to, I’ll put it charitably, reduce its dependence on China and increase supply chains with India. I tried to explain, don’t count on that. The US is absolutely uninterested in Indian-based supply chains. Trump is uninterested in that. Trump is incapable of long-term strategic relations in any event.

So my view was always, of course, try to negotiate. I don’t want to presume the worst, but don’t count on it. The US is not an ally of India. India is not going to reap long-term security by siding with the United States in the Quad against China. India’s a great power that has an independent standing in the world. It should not find that standing against China or for the US.

Of course, India is our most populous nation in the whole world. It is a superpower. It should not presume that the United States is going to do great favors to India. That’s not going to happen. India’s objective in my view, is a true multipolar world of mutual respect. And that means that India would have good relations with the United States but also with China, which some, many Indian friends doubt. But I believe it’s very important and very significant and with Russia and with the African Union and with other regions of the world.

So I have to say I was a skeptic that these trade negotiations were given inside track. I’m not at all a fan of the Quad. So for in this sense also this is the US playing games. It’s not in India’s interest to side with the US against China. So all of this means that what’s happening with these punitive tariffs are just exposing the basic truth, which is that there is no strategic relationship between the US and India and under Trump in particular, but more generally with the military industrial complex in the US.

The US aim is hegemony. It’s a delusion. The US is not a hegemon of the world. The US cannot dictate to the rest of the world, but spend a day in Washington, as I painfully do now and then, they’re filled with delusions. And the delusion is not about a great partnership with India. The delusion is about US primacy or hegemony or full spectrum dominance or whatever term you want to use, even though we’re clearly in a multipolar world.

So I tried to say this in India in the spring. I was viewed as anti-American or too cynical. No, I was just trying to be realistic about the state of mind and the approach in Washington now in general, what I’m saying is true, whether it was Biden or whether it was Trump won or whether it was Obama and so forth, but it’s especially true with Trump. He has no allies, he has no strategic partners. He has nothing but improvisation and short-termism.

India’s Strategic Response

ABHISHEK SINGH: Yes, because contrary to what you were advising while you were here in India in spring, many were thinking that India’s relationship with the US under Trump will perhaps get better than it was under previous precedents. However, that said, professor, how do you think India should deal with this matter? Because US as a hegemon. It might not be a hegemon, but fact of the matter is it is, of course, the world’s biggest economy. And it is in India’s interest to ensure that the trade with the US continues to grow as big, perhaps as it can. Currently it’s 100 plus billion dollars, and there were plans to take it to $500 billion levels.

Trump’s Tariffs: Constitutional Crisis and Economic Reality

JEFFREY SACHS: It’s not going to happen. Not in the foreseeable future. The United States is protectionist under Donald Trump. It is likely to remain that way.

By the way, there’s one footnote that we should all be aware. Everything that Trump is doing on tariffs is unconstitutional. It’s all illegal. There is a court case in the U.S. Court of Appeals right now that says that these tariffs are illegal.

The reason they’re illegal is that under our Constitution, Article 1, Section 8, the right to levy duties belongs with the Congress, not with the President of the United States. We actually had a revolution against a king, against King George III in 1776 because of taxation without representation. Well, now we have taxation without representation. Once again, we have one person setting America’s tax system. It’s unbelievably unconstitutional.

Whether the courts face up to our king or not, I don’t know. But I should just add that as a footnote because it’s possible that one day a ruling comes down and all of this is thrown into a new chaos, then it would go to the Supreme Court. By the way, the Supreme Court tends to support King Donald on almost everything. So whether the Supreme Court would enforce the Constitution poses another question.

But all of this is to say there is no stable long term relationship with the United States in which India is going to have a massive expansion of exports to the US. It’s not going to happen. Not because of the underlying economics, because that would be possible, but because of the politics. And Trump is not signing on to an agreement in which China’s trade is reduced and India’s trade soars. It’s not going to happen.

India’s Economic Strategy: Looking Beyond America

Now, it is true that the US is a big economy. It’s arguable, by the way, whether it’s the biggest economy or not, because by many measures, China is a much larger economy if measured at purchasing power prices. If you look at the industrial sector, if you look at international trade, China’s already bigger.

I believe that India should aim for a highly diversified export strategy. I think it’s important. I’ll say it again, even though it sometimes causes my Indian friends and colleagues to roll their eyes. India and China should have a very good economic relationship. This would be wonderful for India’s economy. It would be wonderful for building a multipolar world that isn’t dependent on the United States’ whims. So I think that is another part of the strategy.

I personally believe that India should join RCEP, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, which includes Japan, Korea, China, the ASEAN 10, Australia, New Zealand. Boy, if India would join that phenomenal, you’d have South, Southeast and East Asia booming altogether.

I happen to believe India will be the fast growing large economy of the world for the coming 20 years. But the best way to do it is economic integration of Asia and of course, India-Africa relations, India relations with West Asia, with the Gulf region, and so forth. Looking at the US, which is a slow growing protectionist economy, as the direction for India’s growth is simply not accurate.

India-China Relations: A New Chapter?

ABHISHEK SINGH: Okay. And surprisingly interesting. You just said that because the Indian Prime Minister will soon be visiting China. And I said surprisingly because many here in India were not expecting, given the clashes we had on the border between the two countries a few years ago.

And the Indian Prime Minister has shown the diplomatic deftness to see if he can strike some sort of a pleasant chord with China, perhaps putting to use the fact that US after years of keeping Pakistan at bay, is now again letting Pakistan ingratiate itself. Their chief of army, Asim Munir, will soon be visiting the US again and will be meeting Trump within days of his last meeting with him.

So what do you make of this move and how far do you think the relationship that you were talking about between India and China, how big can it grow, given there are definitely some trust issues between the two countries?

The Case for India-China Cooperation

JEFFREY SACHS: Of course, but India and China together constitute almost 40% of the world population. They’re the two great nations of the world, the largest countries by far in the world. Remember, the United States is less than a fourth of the population of these two countries. Both are growing very dynamically. Both have cutting edge technology, world leading scientists, space efforts and advances in artificial intelligence and digital economy and so forth.

The relationship of the two is extremely important in my view for building a true multipolar, and I’ll use another word, multilateral world. Multilateral, I mean, not just that power is distributed, but that there’s actually an international rule of law, not the dictates of the President of the United States by executive decree, but actually international governance.

If the two largest countries of the world got together on this, this would transform the world to a multilateral world. My advice to the Chinese has been support India to be the sixth permanent member of the UN Security Council. This is the most glaring defect of the UN right now. India is a superpower, the most populous country in the world. We need India in the UN Security Council for the legitimacy of global governance.

So I’m urging that China support India as the sixth permanent member of the UN Security Council. India is the only country in the world that has this completely unambiguous claim to joining as a permanent member of the Security Council. And I think India’s place in the UN Security Council would help to secure multilateralism and global peace.

Resolving the Border Issue: Moving Beyond Colonial Legacy

So this is a first point, but then I think that has to be based on rebuilding trust between the two countries. And here what’s the really fundamental barrier to trust? Of course it is the lines of borders in the Himalayas.

And I don’t want to oversimplify this, but I do want to say one point which is that the border in the Himalayas were never properly adjudicated, of course between the two countries. And the line that ostensibly was drawn, was drawn as usual by some British mid level officer around 1907, McMahon who never visited the place, and he just drew lines on a map.

And this has led to more than a century of conflict because when India gained independence and Prime Minister Nehru first opined on this, at least as I understand and I stand to be corrected, so I’m not an expert in this, but basically India, independent India took the McMahon line and said “that’s the line.”

But I have a theorem about the world, which is that all problems in the world go back to Britain. This is my own view. Almost every problem you see, including the India-China problem, goes back to Britain. This is true in Crimea. It goes back to the British Crimean War. It’s the Middle East. It goes back to the British Mandate over Palestine and so forth. Britain made non-stop trouble, in my view, because it was the dominant empire of the world in the 19th century and empires make trouble.

In any event, all of this is to say China and India should resolve this one issue, because there’s so much more at stake than this one issue. And for both countries, what’s really at stake is a new world order in which they both have security, have sovereignty, and have a major say in the world. Because we’re past the 1945 settlement when India wasn’t even a country, then when China was in civil war, and when the United States basically set the terms to an extent together with the Soviet Union at the time, which also, of course, doesn’t exist anymore.

But we need a new framework. And India and China are the two countries that can put that peacefully into place. And so I’m very encouraged by this upcoming meeting. It’s extremely important, but it’s pragmatically important as well.

Trump’s Real Target: The BRICS Nations

What is Donald Trump really doing right now with these tariffs? If you cut through everything and through all the rhetoric, the high tariffs are put on the BRICS countries, on Brazil. Russia is not only tariffs, it’s just completely sanctioned. India, China, South Africa. Why? Because these are major countries and the United States resents major countries.

Whatever blandishment, whatever claim of strategic this and that, whatever quad, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The United States does not like big countries because they challenge America’s delusional claim to hegemony. And that’s why the big countries actually have a special role to play right now to help the United States down gently. Okay, you’re very nice, we like you, it’s okay. But you don’t run the world.

And that’s why the BRICS really is important right now, to hang together. All of them have been targeted by Trump, not coincidentally. This is the point. Because they’re big, not because of anything that they do, but because they’re big.

The whole US animus to China is not because China is a perfidious country. It’s because China’s economic growth by 2010 came to be seen in the American political elite as a threat to US primacy. Similarly with Russia. Russia’s just too big for the Anglo Saxon eyes, this has been a campaign since 1840 of the UK and the US joined that campaign from 1945 onward to diminish Russia because it’s 17 million square kilometers. It’s a vast, vast continental power.

So the US doesn’t like big countries, but the big countries today really are the pillars of a true world system for the 21st century. So they need to say to the United States, “Stop bullying us, stop giving demands, stop giving ultimatums, stop your claims of secondary sanctions, stop your unilateral tariff actions and behave and cooperate, and then we can have a normal, peaceful world.”

Economics vs. Geopolitics: The Real Motivation Behind Tariffs

ABHISHEK SINGH: Professor, you’re absolutely right when you say that British left the world in a mess, whether it was Crimea, as you were mentioning, or Sykes and Pico in the Middle East, or Radcliffe and McMahon in the Indian subcontinent.

But having said that, the part that I really want you to elaborate further on is of course, the part about BRICS. Because the question here really is whether Trump’s tariffs, are they really more about economics, or is he hoping that the tariffs will solve America’s trade deficit problem? Or is this more about geopolitics, since he has clearly failed to put pressure on Russia successfully. And China he doesn’t want to fight with. And Lula isn’t looking forward to discuss tariffs with him in as many words he recently said. So he thought since India doesn’t have leverage, like perhaps rare earth minerals, he could arm twist India and indirectly put pressure on Russia as well.

American Hegemony and the Futility of Protectionism

JEFFREY SACHS: It is fundamentally about American hegemony, this trade policy. But protectionism cannot defend hegemony. So the whole thing is wrong, it can’t work. But the idea is America is trying to defend something that is not possible to defend, which is America’s dominance.

The US was dominant for a brief period after World War II. Maybe the biggest dominance was 1945 to 1948, when the US also had the atomic monopoly. It also was the only major economy in the world that had not been destroyed by war. In fact, quite the contrary. It had been built. The industrial base had been built by war.

Then came the bipolar period, the Cold War. The Soviet Union was a formidable military counterpart, but it was not an economic technological rival in most sectors of the economy, especially after the semiconductor and the digital age began. And so the US in 1991 decided with the end of the Soviet Union, “now we run the world. Now we are the sole superpower. We are the unipolar power.”

A lot of the rest of the world believed it. Also, the US gave itself wonderful headlines. “We’re the strongest, most powerful nation that ever strode the earth. We are so far ahead of where the Roman Empire was,” et cetera, et cetera. Okay, this was delusional. Remember, the US could not defeat Vietnam, for example. In war, the US military might, for whatever it is, is a power to destroy, not to build, not to make political dominance. So America’s wars don’t work for political purposes.

The China Challenge and American Panic

Having said all of that, the idea was hegemony now, as far as the eye can see. But the rise of China was the biggest shock to the American policymakers. That wasn’t supposed to happen. That wasn’t in the cards. We didn’t even see that coming. They would tell you in 1992, when this unipolarity was self declared. China was nowhere on the map at that time point.

By 2010, the American officials were starting to get nervous. By 2015, I’d say almost panic over China. But what are you going to do? China is a successful country of 1.4 billion people, definitely a superpower, and with great capacity. I say the same thing about India. Also, US can’t stop India, even with 50% tariffs or 100% tariffs or closing the US market. Not that I want that to happen, but that won’t stop India’s rise, that’s for sure.

But this protectionism, therefore, has a set of mixed motives to it. It’s to keep American dominance. It is, they think, to rebuild steel and shipbuilding and other components of the military sector, which basically doesn’t really exist inside the United States to any scale. But why that should be our goal is something I disagree with. I was going to say it’s beyond me, but I understand their thinking. I just think their thinking is completely wrong and primitive.

But they want to build the military sector again, and that means they want to build the whole supply chain, which doesn’t exist. We don’t build ships in the United States. We don’t build a huge proportion of the components of cutting edge technology, of course. So they want to do that. But from the vantage point mostly of primacy and security, Trump thinks also this is somehow going to maybe make the working class better off.

The Working Class Deception

This is not the way to do it. If you want to make the working class better off, you provide public services, decent education, health care, job training, and other things which they completely refuse to do. If you want to help the working class in the United States, don’t give trillions of dollars of tax cuts to the richest people in the world and then cut the health benefits for the poorest Americans, you would do something different.

So while Trump portrays this as a working class scheme, they could care less about the working class, just as they could care less about India. This is about American power, and it’s all misguided. It will come to nothing. It will create a lot of noise and friction in the world.

But basically what the world will learn is that the United States, with its 4% of the world population and maybe 14% of world output measured at purchasing power, prices, and roughly the same share of world trade, but diminishing rapidly, it’s not enough to run the world.

The World Beyond American Dominance

So if the other 95% of the world population, or let me put Europe into the US box, if the other 85% of the world population that isn’t the US alliance realizes, “look, we’re the fast growing part of the world. We’re the overwhelming part of the world population. We have the resource base. We have technology, science, everything that’s needed. We do not depend on the US market. And if the US wants to go protectionist, that’s their problem. But it’s not for us to grovel, get down on our knees, beg to King Donald or anything else. It’s for us to keep open our good relations with each other and our multilateral trading system with each other, and then will flourish.”

Just before we spoke, I saw the banner headline that said China’s exports have boomed again this month, but not to the United States. They’re booming to other parts of the world. Same with India. Same thing will happen. There’s no dependency on the US market in this.

Again, I want to say I’d like the United States to be cooperative. I argue every day that it should be. I argue every day against the protectionism. But I would say to India, don’t think that the US is the be all and end all. It’s a slow growing, modest part of the world economy at a time when the emerging and developing economies are the predominant part of the world economy and the fast growing part of the world economy.

ABHISHEK SINGH: Right, Professor, I also want to talk to you about Europe and the Middle East, but briefly. Somebody you call Bojo tweeted put out a post on X yesterday after US announced its decision to impose additional 25% tariffs in India and said that India has been enabling Putin’s butchery. And he seems to be celebrating the fact that India is being made to pay.

The Anglo-Saxon Mentality

JEFFREY SACHS: I’m glad he said it because it should help everyone in India to understand what this is about. This is the Anglo Saxon mentality. Was Britain a friend of India? Not in my book. I think it was not.

ABHISHEK SINGH: Not in anybody’s book, Professor.

JEFFREY SACHS: Not in the greatest stretch from 1600 to 1947. I would not say that Britain acquitted itself well vis a vis the people of India. And Bojo is a fool in any event. He was a fool before he became Prime Minister. He was a fool as Prime Minister. He is currently a fool in full standing.

He played his role in telling Ukraine in April 2022, “Fight on. Fight on.” There have been a million dead Ukrainians since that point because of the role that Bojo and Biden played together in trying to assert this Anglo Saxon dominance.

So Bojo’s tweet is helpful. It just clarifies what this is about. This is a Britain, by the way, phenomenally interesting place. It lost its empire roughly 80 years ago, but it still has an imperial mentality, which shows how slowly this delusional mentality actually disappears over time. Anyway, I just do wish he’d shut up, frankly, because everything he says is idiotic. But at least this will help India to see clearly what’s at stake.

ABHISHEK SINGH: You’re right. You’re right. I mean, as they say, reality is stranger than fiction. But I’m pretty sure no matter, even if it is a fiction book that we are talking about, India and Britain were not friends, will not be friends in that book either. But having said that, I quickly want to move to Europe before we wrap this up and talk to you about the fact that Trump has not spared Europe either. Do you think Europe in this case, however, has itself to blame for it, considering it just follows US wherever Uncle Sam saunters, whether it is onto a battlefield or it is some major policy discussion which is happening at the level of the UN or wherever else.

Europe’s Pathetic Dependence

JEFFREY SACHS: First, let me say that Europe’s behavior in recent years has surprised me, so I can’t say that I predicted how miserable European leadership has been. I also have the experience of speaking to a number of European leaders who have told me things in private that are the opposite of what they say in public. That doesn’t endear me to the European approach. European leaders have expressed in private how they know that the US destabilized many things, but they don’t say it in public.

So the question is, why is Europe in this rather pathetic state? And I can’t give you a definitive answer because I don’t fully understand it. There are a number of hypotheses.

First, the US has actively cultivated and manipulated the European political environment for decades. We know the CIA was involved in many elections in Europe to keep the so called left out of power. We know that the US has carefully cultivated young politicians and helped to support them to rise in power. So the US has played its active role in management of the European scene.

The Russophobia that is underway in Europe is another factor. Again, whether it’s a primary or secondary factor, I’m not absolutely sure. But they all think Russia is about to invade Europe. It’s the most absurd conceivable idea. But then they run to Uncle Sam, say “defend us, defend us. We’ll do anything so that you keep defending us.” This is really pathetic, actually.

The Energy Trap

After 1991, Europe and Russia were developing stronger mutually beneficial economic relations, notably German Russian economic linkages. The US hated that. It’s so clear. The US told Germany, “don’t import that cheap energy from Russia.” But that was the basis of Germany building its heavy industry, which is now tumbling down because under the US demand, in fact under US blowing up the Nord Stream pipeline, now the German energy advantage is gone and Europe commits to buy liquefied natural gas from the US that is roughly six times, according to some estimates, more expensive than what they were getting in pumped pipeline gas from Russia. So this is a second factor in this.

A third factor is Europe is still today to a shocking extent, 27 independent countries and they don’t have a coherent foreign policy, a coherent governance. Maybe that’s why they feel so dependent in security terms. But it’s hard to be 27 small countries in a world of major powers and they can’t figure out that what they should do is actually get together and take a stand independent of the United States and reflecting Europe’s own true strategic interests.

What I’ve said to the Europeans repeatedly in the past year and they have rejected it outright, or again thinking I’m a Putin apologist or something else, which is the opposite of what I’m trying to express. I’ve said to Europe, “get your diplomacy together and go have normal diplomacy with Russia. Discuss, negotiate, don’t depend on the United States for this, which has completely different interests.” And so far Europe hasn’t figured that out.

ABHISHEK SINGH: Right, Professor, moving quickly from Europe to the Middle East, you have long accused Israel and Netanyahu in particular of running the US foreign policy on Middle East. And if Netanyahu could, he would ensure that US picks up a fight with Iran is something that you’ve said in the past as well. So what do you think is going to happen in the Middle East?

Israel’s Control of US Middle East Policy

JEFFREY SACHS: The US policy has been to support Israel no matter what. Given that blank check or that green light, Israel is committing a genocide in Palestine right now and it makes no attempt even to hide it in their internal communications. Externally they deny it, but internally, you watch Israeli television or TikTok or statements by Israeli politicians, they are flat out saying, “we will control Gaza. These people should go elsewhere. We’re going to destroy the life support systems.” They’re starving 2 million people right now before our eyes. And the United States is saying, “okay, that’s fine.” It’s unbelievable.

Now because that generates protests in the Arab world and military resistance against Israel’s behavior, Israel has said for 30 years under Netanyahu to the US “we want you to fight wars on our behalf.” And there was the famous list of seven countries that General Wesley Clark told us about in 2001. That list was Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran, Somalia, Sudan and Libya. The United States has now fought wars in all seven of these countries. We have no national interest in this at all. We have been fighting Bibi’s wars for 30 years.

The so called 12 day war in Iran, which had no useful consequences, only negative, was another Bibi war. Until the United States gets its own foreign policy in the Middle East will continue to have genocide, ethnic cleansing and war in the Middle East.

The Path to Peace

And so every day I say the United States has interests in the Middle East which start with peace, which start with the normal relations with the Arab world, hundreds of millions of people, which I’m absolutely would be more than satisfied with security for Israel alongside security for Palestine, not genocide. And the two state solution, which more than 180 countries in the world support and essentially only Israel and the United States oppose, is the right way to go.

So we’re trapped right now. We’re not trapped. We have succumbed to this absolutely weird takeover of American foreign policy by Israeli positions. It of course begs the question why? And there are many hypotheses about this. One is campaign contributions, no doubt. One is the Protestant Christian evangelical part of America, which is about 15 to 20% of the population, but a substantial part of Trump’s base, which says for biblical reasons. And it’s very strange, very weird, but because of prophecies in the Book of Revelation, the final book of the Christian New Testament, that…

ABHISHEK SINGH: Don’t tell me we’re going to start talking about… Professor, don’t tell me you’re going to start talking about the red heifer and other things.

JEFFREY SACHS: And honestly, the speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, who was in Israel just this week, said “we support this because of the Bible.” Pretty weird. But it’s not to be misunderstood. It’s real.

It’s not the majority of the American public, by the way, which now, 2 to 1, is on the Palestinian side, and understandably, in my view, but it is among this particular group which has a substantial part of Trump’s voter base.

So in any event, there are theories, which are not far off, of the CIA and Mossad have been linked tightly for more than 60 years. The potential Mossad blackmail and other things. There are many things going on, but whatever it is, the United States has given a blank check to Israel to commit crimes, war crimes, with impunity.

Personal Reflections on America’s Foreign Policy

ABHISHEK SINGH: Right. You know, it’s interesting somehow, such conversations always end up there, talking about red heifers, talking about eschatology, but refraining from that since we’re running out of time. I’ll quickly ask you two personal questions.

Professor Sachs, I say this with due respect, but you must be a really frustrated man at the end of the day every once in a while to see your country in particular do exactly what you have been advising very vociferously against. Do you?

JEFFREY SACHS: Yeah, it’s just strange. Of course, I see what the United States is doing is accelerating its own decline. It’s acting in an irrational, dangerous manner that threatens the world, but also threatens us well being and security.

The United States is the safest country from a national security point of view of any country in history. Two big oceans protect us from the rest of the world, not to mention the military, the nuclear arsenal, and yet we are diminishing our national security every single day by stirring up trouble all over the world. This is crazy.

Trump and the Nobel Peace Prize Question

ABHISHEK SINGH: Right. And my last question to you, Professor. Donald Trump has claimed to have ended or settled about one war per month, including conflicts between India and Pakistan, Congo and Rwanda, Thailand and Cambodia, Israel and Iran, Serbia and Kosovo, Egypt and Ethiopia. So if you were asked, would you support Donald Trump’s candidature for the Nobel Peace Prize?

JEFFREY SACHS: Oh, God. Let me give you a serious answer. No one gets a prize for anything being complicit in genocide. The United States is complicit in an ongoing genocide in Palestine. Right now, that’s an extraordinarily serious matter.

Two million people are being starved to death. This is a disgrace. And this is something that Donald Trump needs to face immediately.

ABHISHEK SINGH: On that note, Professor Sachs, thank you so much for taking the time, being so candid. And of course, we talked about 45 minutes. It’s well past that. So thank you once again for taking the time and talking to us.

JEFFREY SACHS: Of course. Great to be with you. I appreciate it.

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