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Economist and geopolitical analyst Jeffrey Sachs has blamed Washington’s “imperial mentality” for fuelling global crises, saying the Ukraine conflict is a “U.S.-provoked” war with Russia driven by NATO expansion. Speaking with students, Sachs said U.S. President Donald Trump wants to end the war but lacks the political strength to stop it, warning that without concessions on NATO, any American leader risks being branded “a traitor.” His remarks come as speculation grows over a possible Trump–Vladimir Putin meeting in Alaska and amid mounting pressure on Ukrainian
Transcript
I'd like to be a little bit more general than that and to talk about geopolitics
more generally. Uh geopolitics the relations among especially the major
powers the United States, China, Russia, India, uh Europe
are at a very difficult and fraught time
and we're in a crisis that is very serious. It's a crisis because
we're living in uh the nuclear age. There are nine countries that we know of
that have nuclear weapons. Maybe some others also do, but nine that we know
of. Most of those nine are in conflict with at least one other country uh that
has nuclear weapons in geopolitical or diplomatic terms. and in the case of the
United States and Russia in open conflict in Ukraine because that's
actually a war between the US and Russia and a very dangerous war. So my view is
that we need to uh
understand the global scene well so that we avoid
terrible terrible mishaps. And I often refer to the doomsday clock
of the bulletin of atomic scientists. This is a US publication that was
started in 1947 after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. And it was started by the atomic scientists who had their journal.
And they wanted to tell the world this is very dangerous indeed. And the risks
of this new age of nuclear weapons is unprecedented because the power of
destruction is something unlike any time before. So they started this clock and
the clock puts the hands of the clock closer or farther from midnight.
And when the clock was started it was 7 minutes from midnight. And the message
to the world was we are close to destruction because of these new
weapons. And that was in 1947 when the US alone had the atomic bomb. But then
of course in 1949 that monopoly was broken by the Soviet
Union which developed its atomic bomb and then in the 1950s and 1960s by
Britain, France, China and then we know Israel sometime in the 1960s
uh though never announced exactly uh and then India, Pakistan, North Korea
and the clock has gone back and forth depending on geopolitics.
It went away from midnight at the end of
the Cold War in 1991. The Soviet Union ended. It seemed that
there was no more threat, no more cold war. The US and China were on good
relations. the Soviet Union under Gorbachev and then Russia under
President Yelson said, "We just want good relations. We want to rebuild. We want decent relations." So the
scientists put the hand of the doomsday clock 17 minutes from midnight.
Every US presidency since then has experienced the clock coming closer to
midnight. I don't think that's an accident. I think that is the mistake of
American foreign policy which though the United States is the most secure country
in world history in being able to avoid
an invasion from outside because we're not afraid of Canada. We're not afraid
of being invaded by Mexico. though there once was a war with Mexico in 1846
but they lost. So this is not a big threat and we have two big oceans.
So the US should be very calm and the only threat that the US faces to
its security at all is the possibility of a nuclear war which should not be
hard to avoid. You just have to be cooperative with other nuclear powers.
But as I said, from 17 minutes to midnight, Bill Clinton came, it moved
closer. George W. Bush Jr. came, it moved closer to midnight. Barack Obama
moved closer to midnight. Trump won moved closer to midnight. Biden closer to midnight. Now it's 89 seconds to
midnight. So less than one and a half minutes to midnight from 17 and a half
minutes. What is going on that every
administration is moving the hands closer to midnight? Of course, there are
many in possible interpretations, but mine centers on the United States and
centers on the Western world more generally, by which I mean the US, the
European Union, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, if I could add
those together because those are offshoots of Britain as well. And in my
view, what is going on is a serious misunderstanding of global reality by the leadership of
my country that has persisted now for more than 30 years. You had a wonderful
debate uh professor Jang with with Francis Fukuyama
uh which I just had the chance to read from 14 years ago. And as you told me,
you're right. You won the debate. But the idea of Professor Fukyama
already back in uh n the early 1990s was
that the West had triumphed and it was the end of history.
And my basic understanding of the reality is something different.
And that is that with the end of the cold war, the world had triumphed in the
sense that we had the chance to escape from nuclear war and from confrontation
and we had the chance for rapid economic development in all parts of the world
which China led and China exemplified. So from the 40 years from 1980 to 2020,
China experienced the fastest economic development in world history for a large
country. And it showed what's possible in our world today because of technology, education,
infrastructure, how big an advance can be made. And I watched this, by the way,
with my own eyes personally because my first visit to China was 1981.
And so China was not a rich country in 1981. Uh China was very poor in 1981
because of the history of the previous 150 years. And over that 40-year period,
which is the period of my professional life, China experienced this rapid
development. And my view is that's what's possible in all parts of the world. So, while I completely hail
China's accomplishment and know that it draws on deep roots of China's history
and civilization, I do believe it's something that all regions of the world can accomplish.
Maybe not at the same speed, maybe not with all the same success as China, but
I do not write off any part of the world, Africa or India or South Asia or
Central Asia or Latin America. This idea that we could all live in peace, in
mutual prosperity with rapid economic development in poor
countries, I think is the reality of our world in its potential, but obviously
not the reality of our world in its actuality. So we need to understand the world as it
could be and then aim to achieve that world. Unfortunately this was not the
idea of the United States at the end of 1991
when Mr. Fukuyama, Professor Fukyama declared the end of history. The idea
was that the western world would lead the world from now onward and especially
the United States within the western world would lead the world onward.
Whether other regions developed or not was of modest interest, but if they did
develop, they needed to develop under the wing of the United States. In other words, what was important at the end of
the cold war was dominance, not cooperation
or peace. And this is why I think the world has remained and become more and
more dangerous over the last 35 years. So to my
understanding, we have a mindset problem. And the mindset problem is that
the western world dominated the world economy and world politics and finance
for about 250 years. Roughly from 1750
to roughly the year 2000. And during that period, the ideology in
the western world explained that dominance as an inherent
rightful feature of the world. And it explained that dominance in a number of
different ways. Some very extreme, some
a little bit less extreme because there were theories of racial superiority.
There were theories of social superiority. There were theories of cultural
superiority. There were theories of religious superiority that this was a
Christian world after all. But whichever theory one subscribed to, there were
theories of genetic superiority, biological superiority.
Whichever view one took uh the idea was deeply embedded in the mores the stories
the beliefs the institutions and the politics of the western world and two
countries dominated most of all and most of the world's problems today can be
traced to them actually one was Britain and China had quite an interesting
experience with Britain starting from 1793 uh up through uh probably the end of
World War II. And the other has been the United States which is a a successor uh
to Britain in both the Western world and the Anglo-Saxon world. So the British
definitely had an arrogance of power. Uh and they used that arrogance of power in
China, in India, in Russia, in every part of the world because the belief was
that Britain was the empire on which the sun never set. Uh this was the era of
pox Britannica, although it wasn't so peaceful, but it was the era of British
dominance. And the 19th century was really defined by British dominance
internationally. Europe experienced two uh disastrous civil wars in the first
half of the 20th century which we call World War I and World War II. But in
Europe they were really civil wars within European countries. And at the
end Britain was no longer able to maintain a global empire. But the United
States took over at that point and the US inherited the mindset and the
institutions of British imperial rule. The main geopolitical
institution of British imperial rule was to control regimes of different parts of
the world. So Britain mastered what we call regime change operations. If you
don't like a government, replace it. It's a different kind of foreign policy from diplomacy. In diplomacy, if you
don't like a government, sit down and negotiate. If you're British in the 19th century
and you don't like a government, threaten it, kill the person, the ruler,
or overthrow it. uh and this was the main mode of British uh action. In the
second half of the 20th century, the United States took over that method of
operation. Indeed, the British taught it to the Americans, I would say. And in 1953,
we did a joint venture together, the British and the Americans,
the British MI6, the spy agency, and the CIA to overthrow the government of Iran,
which brings us to our current situation. Iran had a functioning democratic government in 1953
led by Prime Minister Mosedc. He had a very radical idea. Mosedc's
idea in 1953 was that the oil that was under the ground actually belonged to
the Iranians where the British knew that it belonged to the British.
So when the Iranian prime minister democratically elected said this is our
oil it's under our ground the uh British government knew that it
had to overthrow him and it connected with the US government and they made a
secret operation to overthrow Mosedc and to install the sha of Iran a palevi
dynasty and to make a police state under US control.
If you add up all such regime change operations by the United States between
1945 and 1989 at the end of the Cold War, one
scholar, Lindseay Oor in an excellent book in 2017 called Covert Regime Change
and she was a student of John Mirshimer uh at the time uh she counted 64 four
covert regime change operations by the United States, mostly CIAled
and six overt regime change operations, meaning an open war to topple another
government. So 70 regime change operations. This is a very distinct kind
of statecraft. It is the opposite of diplomacy.
You don't have to deal with the other side. You have to control it or overthrow it, kill it, assassinate the
leader, make a coup, fix an election, buy an election, create
unrest to topple a regime. And this happened 64 times
covertly. What does covert mean? Covert means that
the US denied its role even though it was obvious to the people there. So when
these events occur, they're not really covert in the sense of who did this.
Everyone says the United States did it, but the United States said we didn't
have anything to do with it. That wasn't us. That was a local unrest.
So I mention all of this because that kind of arrogant statecraft
which is imperial mentality was the US mentality from 1945 to 1991.
It was justified to the American people as necessary because of the war against
global communism. So that was the explanation that was given. and
especially against the Soviet Union. And the United States accused the Soviet
Union of wanting to take over the world. And it used that as an explanation to
try to take over the world, every other place. And very importantly and
interestingly, the United States rejected neutrality by any country and used the expression,
if you are not with us, you are against us. So the US also actively opposed
neutrality. This is also a very interesting peculiar
idea because many countries said we don't want to choose. We want to trade
with the Soviet Union. We want to trade with the United States. We don't have a big army. We don't don't attack us, but
we don't want bad relations with either side. And the US said, "No, that's not
good enough. You're either with us or you're against us." And very
interestingly for scholars here and this is a room of scholars if you read the
pelpeneisian war by Thusidities which has become famous again because of
Graham Allison's uh book in the dialogue called the Melian dialogue
which is a dialogue between Athens and the leaders of Melos a small island
The Melians said, "We want to be friends with Athens and we want to be friends
with Sparta." And the Athenian says, "No, you can't. You are with us against them." And the
Melians said, "No, no, but we want to be just neutral. Just be leave us alone. We
like you, but we don't want to be part of your empire. We don't want to be part of their empire." And the Athenian says,
"No, if you do that, you will weaken our power in our realm. You will show to all
of the allies of Athens that we're weak. So, you must submit to us, otherwise
we'll have to kill you." And actually in history apparently in 416
BC the Melos said no we will be neutral
and the Athenians invaded and they killed all the Melian men. Actually
of course what the Pelpeneisian war really shows is that just 12 years later
Athens was defeated. So all that arrogance led to nothing but defeat.
It even shows something more. Sparta which won the war disappeared from
history also. So neither side won in the end. The war exhausted both sides and
Greece was invaded by Macedonia in the next century. So both sides lost from
this ongoing war. But the arrogance of Athens is the arrogance of the United
States. And by the way, Athens was a great democracy and it had a great arrogance and it made
a great selfd disaster by that arrogance. And by being a democracy, they elected a
lot of stupid people that were very demagogic and that told them, why don't
we invade Syracusea? why don't we continue the war and they had no sense
and they were defeated in the end. So I
began uh much of my uh work during this
period from 1989 onward. I was already uh working in Latin America. But then
came the end of the cold war. And just to say I was an adviser to President
Gorbachev, not personally but through his chief economist. And then I was personally an
adviser to President Yelen. And I was personally invi an adviser to the
president of Ukraine and to many of the other leaders. And I thought, well, this
is wonderful. The Cold War is over. We're all now in a market economy
worldwide. We can all share in prosperity. The poorer countries can grow faster and
close the income gap with the richer countries and the richer countries should help the poorer countries to
catch up and then we'll have a safe, prosperous world. And I also believed
and believe today as an economist there's enough to go around because
another theory of economics the Malthusian theory is there's not enough
for everybody. So the fighting is inevitable. There will always be those who lose in
the end because there's not enough for everybody in the world. We could discuss
that but I reject that on economic grounds. In other words, not out of
moral theory, but out of practical theory, we could have everybody living a
good life as long as they're using solar power, not if they're using fossil fuel.
So, as long as we make the right technological choices, then there's enough to go around in the world for
everybody in the world. That's what I argued in the early 1990s.
The United States, however, maintained and even intensified its imperial idea.
Instead of viewing the end of the Cold War as the opportunity for a new world
order that was balanced, fair, peaceful, the United States viewed the end of the
Cold War as the opportunity for hegemony. And that's very explicit. This became
the ideology of the so-called neoconservatives who dominated American politics from
1991 basically until today. And the neoconservative idea is the world can
only be safe if the US leads the world because the US is a power for good. And
so the US should set the rules. It should be the world policeman. It should determine what happens in each part of
the world and then things will be fine. This is a very arrogant position. Of
course, it's a very delusional idea, but it is really the idea that was espoused
by government after government starting in 1991.
And I witnessed it close up because my argument as an economist was that we
should help Russia to get back on its feet. We should help Africa to achieve
development. We should make sure that poverty is overcome everywhere. And none
of those ideas was accepted in the American political leadership. Even by
my own colleagues who were in positions of power temporarily, they viewed
such ideas as naive uh and uh as contrary to American
interests. America's interest is to be number one, not to be cooperative in an
open world in which there is shared prosperity. So the ideology was in my view uh made
even worse by the end of the cold war. It turned out, by the way, and it's
relevant for China also, during the Cold War, all of the US rhetoric was, "We
fight the Soviet Union because of world communism." That word, as you know, in the American
scene is viewed as something completely uh
shocking. when Russia became independent and
declared uh we are in a market economy
postcommunist this is a another age it made no difference to American politics
this is quite interesting in practice Russia was still an enemy even
afterwards because it wasn't really communism or ideology ology. It was
simply big powers. And in this, John Mirshimer is right
about the American mentality, which is that the United States sees
Russia as a threat, not because of any specific ideology, but because it is
big. And the United States sees China as a threat. not because of anything that
China does or is other than being big and successful.
And therefore, China's only offense is that it threatens American dominance.
And that I think is a succinct description of the viewpoint of the
American leadership. Now to come back to my view of economics, this is a terrible
mistake. Not only on a moral level, but on a practical level. The United States
has 4% of the world population, 335 million people. How could 4% of the
world dominate the world? It's not possible. except if all the rest of the
world were to remain poor, unsuccessful, backward, and so forth. But there's no
not only no moral reason for that, there's no practical reason why that should be the case. So I long believed
that poor countries can grow faster and catch up. And China, of course, is the
greatest success story in history of that. But China follows a basic pattern
that Japan followed previously, that uh Hong Kong, Singapore followed previously
because catching up is possible if the leadership is good, if the planning is good, if the strategy is good, there's
all this headroom for rapid economic growth possible. And China proved the
case once again at a scale unprecedented in history.
So the US viewpoint about dominance makes no sense, not only not morally and
not practically in terms of security, because the world's not safe if the US is rich and Russia is unstable with
nuclear weapons. Why does that make the US secure? That makes the US more dangerous. But it's also wrong
economically because Russia will catch up. China will catch up. Africa will catch up and the
United States will find out that being 4% of the world population is just 4%.
It's not enough to rule the world. It the US will have to learn to be cooperative and will have to learn that
state craft is more than overthrowing governments. But and here I will come to the point
about current politics. The US still does not understand this till today. And
the wars that we see and the crisis that we see are still crises of the old
imperial mentality. So the war in Ukraine
is a war that the US caused, not a war that Putin caused, but a war
that the US caused by expanding the military alliance NATO eastward and
trying to set up a military base or bases in Ukraine and in the South
Caucuses, especially the country Georgia and the
Russian government said, "No, you can't have military bases on our border. We don't accept that. That's that's a real
security threat for us." And the American position was, "It's none of your business, Russia, what we do. If
Ukraine says yes, we're going to put our missiles next to you." And President
Putin said, "No, you're not. That's dangerous for us." And the United States
said it's none of your business. And so this is the essence of the Ukraine
conflict, which is that the US said we can expand our military reach anywhere.
The Russians said not on our border and it finally came to war. Before it came
to war, the government in Ukraine in n in 2010 was very clever. It said, "We
want neutrality." Huh? Well, read Thusidities. Uh, the Americans did not
accept Ukraine's call for neutrality. What did the United States do to the
president who wanted neutrality? It overthrew that president in February
2014. So, the US made a coup together with Ukrainian forces. The US role was quite
obvious though it was denied. So we can call it a covert regime change
operation. I happen to have been told by some of the participants just how much the US
played a role. And at a crucial moment, a phone call by the US diplomat Victoria
Nuland was intercepted by the Russians and posted online and that call said the
next government should be so and so which was the next government actually. So the US chose the next government and
where is Victoria Nuland today? She is my colleague at Columbia University. So
this is the route to success. Make a coup and then you get to be a Colombia professor. Uh so this is uh the Ukraine
conflict. President Trump came into office saying I want to stop this war
because it's useless and the Russians are winning on the battlefield. But interestingly, President Trump does
not have the power or the logic to stop
the war because he can't say publicly the obvious. He can't say to the
American people, NATO will not expand. If he says that, he's declared, "You're
a weakling. You're a traitor. You're making a concession to President Putin. You're giving up. you're uh on the
payroll of the Russians. And so the imperial logic still prevails even if
the individual as president might want to do something different. Of course,
none of us can figure out Donald Trump's mentality, not even Donald Trump. So, we don't know
what he really truly thinks, but what I know is that he seems to want to end the
Ukraine war, but does not have the political strength and the individual
leadership to end it because all around him is the militaryindustrial complex
that says the US can go where it wants.
Then comes the Middle East conflict. second conflict. This is also an
imperial conflict. It started, of course, as so many conflicts do, with
the British. And the conflict with Ukraine, by the way, started with the British because in 1853,
Britain went to war against Russia for exactly the same reason that the United States went to war against Russia in
2014. Britain said, "We need to weaken Russia in 1853." So the war in Ukraine
is like the 19th century Crimean War. Almost the same actors, but the United
States wasn't involved in the first one, but Britain was involved in both of them. When it comes to the Middle East,
this is also a crisis made by Britain. uh and it comes from World War I as you
know when Ottoman Empire uh which ruled the Middle East was defeated by the
Allied powers the US, France and Britain and Britain was the dominant imperial
power of the age especially in the Middle East. It ruled over Egypt. It
ruled over Aiden which is Yemen today
because this was the route to Britain's empire in India the seaw route and so
Britain was very careful to control the whole sea lane from the Mediterranean to
India and India was the crown jewel of the British Empire. So at the end of
World War I when the Turkish Empire was defeated, Britain aimed to control all
of this territory. And it made many promises and many
contradictory promises to other powers. Britain told the Arabs, "You will
control this region." Britain told the French, "You will control this region."
Britain uh told the Jews, "You will control this region." uh and of course
Britain ultimately wanted to control the region. So this was typical British
imperial deceit or duplicity. But one of the outcomes was the Balffor
declaration which in which Britain called for the establishment of a Jewish
homeland in what was a province of the Ottoman Empire and which was became
known as Palestine after World War I which was the ancient Roman name uh that
was used for this territory also. So Britain took over Palestine under the
League of Nations and it said that this would be a Jewish homeland. This is a
very complicated weird story because the Jewish
faith had his had its uh main temple in
this place 2,000 years earlier, but it had been banished from this place by the
Roman Empire in the year 135 AD. And now
it was recreating this ancient state. The only problem was that 95% of the
population was Arabs who did not want a Jewish homeland in this territory. But
Britain used its imperial power to force the inmigration
of people of Jewish religion, especially from Eastern Europe, to claim a part of
uh British controlled Palestine. And
a very long story that has led to a 100red years of crisis because there was
a local population. the local population resisted the incoming uh of uh migrants
from Europe especially and then after uh the state of Israel was established
from other regions of the world including the Middle East and South Asia and the mentality of the British of of
the uh Jewish state which was established in 1948 by the United
Nations was our security depends on having no
Arab state next to us that opposes us. And so the idea of sharing
the land, which was a UN idea, was actually rejected by both sides in a
way. The Arabs said, "We're the majority. We should rule." And the Jews said, "We're the minority. We need to
dominate because otherwise we won't be safe." And so this has led from 1948 until
today to an unresolved war. But remember it this was a state
created by the British Empire and now backed by the US Empire. So, Israel
could not survive without the US being the imperial power
that enforces Israel's uh power in the region because Israel is
just 8 million people. The Arab world is about 400 million people and Israel
therefore depends on its security entirely on the United States.
The United States has seen this as an imperial project that's good for the United States because if the US
has control over the Middle East through Israel, well, that gives the US control
effectively militarily in the region. So, the US has backed Israel for many
decades during this period. It's a very dangerous ongoing conflict.
because it is very unjust and Israel needs to use more and more
force in order to repress the aspirations of the Palestinian people.
And the more force that Israel uses, the more resistance there is. And we've
reached a point of violence that is unprecedented in modern times. Israel is committing a
genocide in Gaza right now, which is one part of the Palestinian lands. And every
day they're slaughtering tens or hundreds of innocent people with open
fire. And today there was another massacre. People came for food and they
were just shot by the Israeli armed forces.
Iran, as you know, which is a long empire that has 5,000 years of history,
backed the Palestinian cause, and it supported resistance to Israel,
both the Hamas and Hezbollah, two groups, and in Yemen also the Houthi uh
militants. So, Israel has always had the idea we need to topple the
Iranian regime. Instead of saying we need to settle the Palestinian crisis by giving a state of
Palestine next door to a state of Israel, Israel has said we need to
overthrow the Iranian government so that they don't bother us. And Israel
actually made a long list of governments that it wanted overthrown by the United
States because those governments were resisting Israel's attempt to control
the region. And the list actually was made, literally made, we want seven
governments overthrown. And that list was unveiled in 2001
uh in a and one of our generals, General Wesley Clark, talked about this in an
amazing set of interviews. And the seven countries are Lebanon,
Syria, Iraq, Iran, Somalia,
Sudan, and Libya. So, seven countries that were supporting
the Palestinian cause and the Israeli government said to the Americans, "You
overthrow those seven governments." Well, it's not so easy. Those turned
into seven major wars. We had the war in Lebanon for many, many years. We had a
15-year war in Syria, which is still going on because the US tried to over or
did overthrow the Syrian government. We had the US invasion of Iraq in March
2003. We had the US bombing of Libya in 2011,
which created a civil war in Libya. We had the US supporting an insurgency in
Sudan to break Sudan into two countries, Sudan and South Sudan, both of which are
in civil war now. And we have had the US supporting interventions in Somalia,
which is an ongoing battleground as well. So the US, the one that was
missing up until two weeks ago or up until last month was Iran.
And the Israeli government was always begging the US, "Bomb Iran, bomb Iran,
bomb Iran." And finally, Trump, who's again not very smart,
not very effective, uh not very capable of resisting uh these kinds of demands,
said, "Okay, we'll bomb Iran." And the war, such as it was, lasted 12
days. Israel went in and assassinated dozens of people through its MOSAD, the
Secret Service or the um spy agency, but
basically it's an assassination unit. And the idea was to create a regime
change, but it failed. The government is intact. uh and um the situation is more
dangerous than ever because Iran is a country of a 100 million people almost.
It's a major country. It has big missile systems. It has a real military capacity
and it has an alliance with Russia and it has friendship with other nuclear
powers like Pakistan. So even if it doesn't have its own nuclear weapons, maybe Pakistan will
give it nuclear weapons. Maybe Pakistan would defend Iran if there was a full-fledged war with Israel. So this is
the second region where imperial mentality lasts until today. The US is
unwilling to compromise on the imperial prerogatives.
So the final uh point that I want to raise and then close is the US China
confrontation and how dangerous it is.
As I said, the US got along well with China from the 1970s
to around 2010 in my estimation because China was viewed by America as poor.
lots of villages that grew rice. You could make uh our components for our
products, make our smartphones uh and so forth, but China wasn't a
threat. And it was a good counterweight to the Soviet Union or to Russia. That
was the attitude. Not too much more. So, not too much attention given and not too
much concern. and ideology played no concern because during the cultural
revolution period uh which was not exactly American ideology this is when the relationship
was formed between Mao and Nixon then came the opening and that was an
opportunity for investment and trade that's fine but ideology played no
special role started ing around 2010, the American leaders that were watching
this said, "Oh, this is China's getting awfully big and uh rather successful."
And then I think two announcements by China really opened up American eyes.
One was the belt and road initiative which was suddenly an economic financial
uh infrastructure initiative that had suddenly a 100 partner countries and the
US didn't have anything like that and then the made in China 2025 program
which was a really brilliant initiative of China to identify 10 major technology
areas and set policies to make a major major advance in these areas. And this
is one of the most successful industrial policies I know of in history, the made in China 2025 because it really worked.
It really produced the EV revolution. It really produced uh the digital
revolution here. It really produced the renewable energy revolution. So it was very successful, but it terrified the
Americans suddenly. So starting around 2015, the whole view changed almost
suddenly in the United States. The view went from economic partnership to the
need to contain China, the need to do something to slow down China's economic
advance. Okay, all of this is quite dumb in my view. Uh you don't get ahead in
this world by stopping someone else. uh and uh there's no reason to. You're not
going to be better off. You're not going to be safe. Uh it's just a lose-lose
proposition if it's successful and it probably wouldn't be successful in any
event. It started under Obama, by the way. It didn't start with Trump. It
started definitely under Obama and the uh Trans-Pacific Partnership idea, which
was the dumbest idea of trade policy that I know of, which was to make an
Asian trade system without China. How can you do that? China's the main
trade country for all of Asia. But the United States had the idea, we'll make
an Asian trade system without China. This is only in America uh could you
have such delusions. In any event, it started with Obama, it continued with
Trump and it also implicates Taiwan issue. Of course, this is the most
dangerous flash point of all, maybe the most dangerous in the whole world
because the American politicians because of this mindset
do not know how to stay out of China's internal issues. And so rather than
saying that's not our problem uh you settle this peacefully but uh it's not
our issue, the United States of course is providing large flows of armaments to
Taiwan. And the American political leaders are talking openly about
defending Taiwan and militarily defending Taiwan. If China said, "We're
going to militarily defend the state of Missouri," or, "We're going to militarily defend Texas or we're going
to militarily defend California, it would not play very well in the US." But
the US because of the imperial mentality cannot put itself in China's position or
doesn't care to because the US can determine what should be done. So just
to conclude, I view this issue as extremely dangerous and peace actually
depends on the good sense of the Taiwanese leaders, which is fragile because if a
Taiwanese president were to declare independence, all hell could break out
because the United States would not necessarily have any responsibility.
And this is why the situation is so dangerous. And if Taiwan were smart, and my feeling
is Taiwan could end up like Ukraine, destroyed in between two uh fighting giants.
And if Taiwan were smart, the first thing they should say is to the United
States, don't send us any weapons, please. We don't want a fight here. We'll handle
our own diplomacy across the Taiwan Straits. Please quote don't defend us
because we don't want to end up like Ukraine caught between two giant powers.
So I'll conclude here for our discussion to say that the world really is
dangerous right now because of this mindset on the one hand
that I've described in the US and at the same time because of changing reality. I
want to end on an optimistic note. If we can avoid conflict
because of the technological revolution, we really could have a world of
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