Jeffrey Sachs on the Geopolitics of Peace in the European Parliament

American Professor Jeffrey Sachs has a speech in the European Parliament at an event titled “The Geopolitics of Peace”, hosted by former UN Assistant Secretary General and current BSW MEP Michael von der Schulenburg, on February 19, 2025.

Here are key points of the impressive speech:

- This is indeed a complicated and fast-changing time and a very dangerous one. So we really need clarity of thought. I’m especially interested in our conversation, so I’ll try to be as succinct and clear as I can be.

- I’ve watched the events very close-up in Eastern Europe, the former Soviet Union, Russia, very closely for the last 36 years. I was an adviser to the Polish government in 1989, to President Gorbachev in 1990 and 1991, to President Yeltsin in 1991 to 1993, to President Kuchma of Ukraine in 1993, 1994. I helped introduce the Estonian currency. I helped several countries in former Yugoslavia, especially Slovenia. I’ve watched the events very close-up for 36 years. After the Maidan, I was asked by the new government to come to Kyiv, and I was taken around the Maidan, and I learned a lot of things firsthand. I’ve been in touch with Russian leaders for more than 30 years.

- I know the American political leadership close-up. I want to say this because what I want to explain in my point of view is not secondhand. It’s not ideology. It’s what I’ve seen with my own eyes and experienced during this period.

- In my understanding of the events that have befallen Europe in many contexts, and I’ll include not only the Ukraine crisis, but Serbia 1999, the wars in the Middle East, including Iraq, Syria, the wars in Africa, including Sudan, Somalia, Libya… These are wars that the United States led and caused. And this has been true for more than 40 years now.

- The United States came to the view, especially in 1990, 1991, and then with the end of the Soviet Union, that the US now ran the world and that the US did not have to heed anybody’s views, red lines, concerns, security viewpoints, or any international obligations or any UN framework.

- Europe has paid a heavy price for this because Europe has not had any foreign policy during this period that I can figure out. No voice, no unity, no clarity, no European interests, only American loyalty.

- There would be no end to eastward enlargement of NATO. This would be the US unipolar world. This is the US idea to have the piece on every part of the board. Any place without a US military base is an enemy, basically. ‘Neutrality’ is a dirty word in the US political lexicon.

- On February 7, 1991, Hans-Dietrich Genscher and James Baker III spoke with Gorbachev. Genscher gave a press conference afterwards where he explained, NATO will not move eastward. So… the decision was taken in 1994 to expand NATO all the way to Ukraine.

- Russia has no vocation other than the European vocation. So as Europe moves east, there’s nothing Russia can do about it. So says yet another American strategist. Is it any question why we’re in war all the time? Because one thing about America is we always know what our counterparts are going to do, and we always get it wrong. And one reason we always get it wrong is that in game theory that the American strategists play, you don’t actually talk to the other side. You just know what the other side’s strategy is. That’s wonderful. It saves so much time. You don’t need any diplomacy.

- So this project began, and we had a continuity of government for 30 years until maybe yesterday, perhaps. Thirty years of a project. Ukraine and Georgia were the keys to the project. Why? Because America learned everything it knows from the British.

- So we are the wannabe British Empire. And what the British Empire understood in 1853 is that you surround Russia in the Black Sea, and you deny Russia access to the Eastern Mediterranean. And all you’re watching is an American project to do that in the 21st century. The idea was that there would be Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, and Georgia as the Black Sea littoral that would deprive Russia of any international status by blocking the Black Sea and essentially by neutralizing Russia as more than a local power. So the next round of NATO enlargement came in 2004 with seven more countries, the three Baltic states, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovenia, and Slovakia. At this point, Russia was pretty damn upset. This was a complete violation of the post-war order agreed with German reunification.

- So as everybody recalls, because we just had the Munich Security Conference last week, in 2007 President Putin said, “Stop!”. “Enough! Enough. Stop now!” And, of course, what that meant was in 2008, the United States jammed down Europe’s throat, enlargement of NATO to Ukraine and to Georgia.

- Russia had no territorial interests or designs in Ukraine at all. I know. I was there during these years. What Russia was negotiating was a 25-year lease to 2042 for Sevastopol naval base. Not for Crimea. Not for the Donbas. Nothing like that. This idea that Putin is ‘reconstructing the Russian empire’, this is childish propaganda.

- Now in 2014, the US worked actively to overthrow Yanukovych in Kyiv. Everybody knows the phone call intercepted by my Columbia University colleague, Victoria Nuland, and the US ambassador, Peter Pyatt. You don’t get better evidence. The Russians intercepted her call, and they put it on the Internet. And it’s not a secret, except to citizens of Europe and the United States.

- Then came Minsk, and especially Minsk II, which, by the way, was modeled on South Tyrolean autonomy. It said there should be autonomy for the Russian-speaking regions in the east of Ukraine. It was supported unanimously by the UN Security Council.

- The United States and Ukraine decided it was not to be enforced. Germany and France, which were the guarantors of the Normandy process, let it go. And it was absolutely another direct American unipolar action with Europe as usual playing completely useless subsidiary role even though it was a guarantor of the agreement... In Europe, in your commission, you’re a high representative. This is nonsense stuff. This is not even baby geopolitics. This is just not thinking at all. So the war started.

- What was Putin’s intention in the war? I can tell you what his intention was. It was to force Zelensky to negotiate neutrality. And that happened within seven days of the start of the invasion. You should understand this, not the propaganda that’s written about this. Oh, that they failed and he was going “to take over Ukraine.” Come on, ladies and gentlemen. Understand something basic. The idea was to keep NATO. And what is NATO? It’s the United States off of Russia’s border. No more, no less.

- But because the United States unilaterally abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002 and ended the nuclear arms control framework by doing so. And this is extremely important to understand. The nuclear arms control framework is based on trying to block a first strike. The ABM Treaty was a critical component of that. The US unilaterally walked out of the ABM Treaty in 2002.

- Since the US talked the negotiators away from the table, about a million Ukrainians have died or been severely wounded. And the American senators who are as nasty and cynical and corrupt as imaginable say this is “wonderful expenditure of our money because no Americans are dying.” It’s the pure proxy war.

- Now, just to bring us up to yesterday, this failed. The idea all along was “Russia can’t resist.” The Americans thought “we have the upper hand.” This project failed. The idea of the project was that Russia would fold its hand.

- Trump does not want the losing hand. This is why it is more likely than not this war will end because Trump and President Putin will agree to end the war. If Europe does all its great warmongering, it doesn’t matter.

- Europe needs a foreign policy, A real one… Please don’t have American officials as head of Europe. Have European officials. Please have a European foreign policy. You’re going to be living with Russia for a long time, so please negotiate with Russia. There are real security issues on the table, but the bombast and the Russophobia is not serving your security at all.

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