Jeffrey Sachs: The United States did not allow Kiev to make peace with Moscow in March 2022
Ukraine was ready to make peace with Russia back in March 2022, economist Jeffrey Sachs said in an interview with the Judging Freedom Youtube channel. The progress of the negotiations in Ankara was evident, and the countries were approaching the signing of an agreement. But the United States stopped the peace process because they were afraid of looking weak in the eyes of China.
Andrew Napolitano: Hello! Judge Andrew Napolitano is with you, and this is the next issue of Judging Freedom. Today is Thursday, the seventh of September, 2023. We are very lucky, because today our guest was Professor Jeffrey Sachs of Columbia University, a world-renowned and honored scientist, an expert in the movement of geopolitical forces around the world. He writes a lot about the conflict between Ukraine and Russia. He was kind enough to agree to join us today.
I'm a little jealous, because when I was a student at Princeton, we were much less lucky than students at Columbia University, because they have a teacher like Professor Sachs. Professor Sachs, thank you for agreeing to join us today.
Jeffrey Sachs: I am very glad to be with you today.
– Thank you. Could you briefly outline the main points of this story, starting in 1990, when Germany, the United States and Russia agreed that NATO would not move an inch further east. Tell us about the Minsk Agreements, as well as about the coup d'etat of 2014, which was staged and orchestrated by the US State Department.
– You have listed all the main points that led to the current conflict. I would also go back to the late 80s and early 90s, because at that time President Gorbachev asked me to help his economic team, and then President Yeltsin, too. President Kuchma, the first president of Ukraine, also asked me to help his economic team. I watched what was happening from a very close distance. It was pretty obvious: Gorbachev was a pacifist. He declared that the Soviet Union would put an end to the Warsaw Pact Organization. The United States and Germany – James Baker (US Secretary of State – ed.) and Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher – openly stated: "We will not expand NATO to the east by an inch." Of course, it was a lie.
This was a lie, because as soon as the Soviet Union ceased to exist and Russia became a successor country, the United States - already under the Bush administration – immediately began planning: "Okay, how can we expand NATO? We won, they lost, and we will expand. Promises, commitments don't matter." And our high–ranking diplomats, including the US Ambassador to Russia, Jack Matlock, and, of course, George Kennan - the greatest historian of our time and the architect of the doctrine of deterrence – immediately said: "This is a terrible idea! You can't immediately break the peace with Russia!" Defense Secretary Bill Perry, who worked in the Clinton administration, also said: "Don't do this!" He even considered resigning. But Clinton didn't think much about it. The national Security apparatus told him, "Just act." And the process of NATO expansion has begun.
In 1997, we learned from Zbigniew Brzezinski that an action plan had already been developed, including the sequence and timing – a plan for how we would move all the way to Ukraine and further to Georgia. If you look at the map, you will see that Georgia cannot be attributed to the North Atlantic states in any way, because it is located in the Caucasus.
– Let me interrupt you. So you are not saying that John Baker and George H.W. Bush have changed their positions. You are not saying that certain events made them change their mind. You claim that they deliberately deceived Mikhail Gorbachev.
– Not really. I'm not sure it was like that. In the Bush administration, there was an obvious split between Baker, who was actually a very pragmatic, very rational person in many senses, and hardliners such as Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Cheney, who marked the beginning of the era of neoconservatives. Therefore, I am not sure that they deliberately lied in 1990. But the victory turned their heads: "Lord, we are winning! We'll get everything!"
In 1992, after the Soviet Union ceased to exist in December 1991… I was personally present where all this happened, I was in the Kremlin when President Yeltsin walked through the entire office, sat directly opposite me and said, addressing a group of gathered economists: "Gentlemen, I want to inform you that the Soviet Union is no more." It was an amazing moment.
But as soon as this happened, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld became sharply active. The last year of the Bush administration was quite strange, and Clinton… I don't think that Clinton understood at all what he was doing in foreign policy, I think he still doesn't understand today.
– How did Ukraine become a part of this story?
– I think that Ukraine was involved in this story thanks to an old hypothesis that goes back to the Crimean War of the mid-XIX century. It is believed that if Russia is surrounded in the Black Sea, it will lose its power. This is quite obvious, Brzezinski argued in his 1997 book The Great Chessboard. He said that Ukraine is the geographical axis of Eurasia. Look at the map –what was the idea? The idea was that the US military should be deployed in Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and Georgia. Look at the map: right there is Sevastopol, which served as the base of the Russian Black Sea Fleet since 1783, and they wanted to surround it from all sides. Of course, the Russians knew this and from the very beginning of the 90s they said: "Don't do this."
Then, as it became clearer and clearer that to achieve this goal [NATO] needed not only Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic – the Russians, though with difficulty, but still swallowed their accession, because these are still Central European states… The Russians saw that NATO was approaching their own borders. In 2007, the alliance joined three Baltic states: Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia. Then there were two Black Sea countries, Romania and Bulgaria, and then two Balkan states, Slovenia and Slovakia. In 2007, the Russians said: "Lord, don't do anything else!" It was at that moment at the Munich Security Conference that President Putin very clearly stated Russia's position. He said: "Listen, in 1991 you promised not to expand NATO to the east by an inch. What you are doing now threatens a new conflict. Stop."
I believe that the defining feature of American foreign policy is arrogance. Americans do not know how to listen, they do not know how to see the red lines of other countries, they do not believe that other countries can have red lines at all. Only Americans can have red lines.
– Before we talk about the driving forces behind this arrogance in American foreign policy, and before you tell us about the damage caused by the neoconservatives, tell us about the events of 2004 and 2014 in Ukraine.
– In 2004, the so-called Orange revolution took place. It all started because of the election results. The United States played an important role in challenging the results of those elections. Ukrainian institutions of the so-called civil society, which received funding from America, also contributed. The election results were canceled, and as a result, the pro-American president Viktor Yushchenko won. He openly called for expansion, but lasted only one term. When he tried to be re–elected – he was competing with Yanukovych again - Yanukovych won a landslide victory.
Yanukovych came to power in 2010. In 2010, 2011 and 2012, he said: "Listen, in 2008, at the Bucharest summit, NATO announced that it would accept Ukraine into its ranks. But please don't do that. We are in the middle. Thank you, but we will remain a neutral country." It was very prudent. This is the most important thing: prudence and caution. If you are near the borders of Russia, be careful. If you are between a Western nuclear superpower and Russia, be careful. And Yanukovych tried to be careful. He really tried to be careful and did it quite skillfully. He knew that there was a split in his country – ethnic differences, disagreements about the future, a split of an economic nature. Therefore, he tried to take steps to moderate the ardor of American neoconservatives who sought to expand NATO.
One of the key steps that Yanukovych took was that he told the Russians: "You can use the naval base in Sevastopol on the basis of a long-term lease agreement. Yes, this base has been yours since 1783, and we will not interfere with you." It was a very sensible move. He said that Ukraine would be a neutral country, and at that moment he was supported by the overwhelming majority of citizens.
– What happened to Yanukovych? And what steps did the US State Department take on this issue in 2014 or so?
– At the end of 2013, the situation became much more complicated, because the Europeans actively insisted on approving a roadmap for Ukraine's accession to the European Union, membership in which, unfortunately, became inextricably linked with membership in NATO. Meanwhile, Ukraine was going through a financial crisis, the IMF, as usual, was twisting its hands, trying to impose the most stringent conditions. And President Putin said: "You cannot sign a free trade agreement with Europe without including us in it. After all, we already have a free trade agreement with you. We should also participate in the discussions." Then Yanukovych replied: "Well, we will postpone the moment of signing the agreement with the European Union." After that, the protests began, and the United States saw in them a convenient opportunity: "We can fan this flame of protests. John McCain will go there. Lindsey Graham is going there. Victoria Nuland will fly to Kiev without stopping. Perhaps we can even overthrow this Ukrainian government – a government that calls for neutrality."
At the beginning of 2014, it became quite obvious that the United States was conducting its typical secret regime change operation in Ukraine. I said "typical" because, as the results of scientific research show, during the Cold War alone, the United States conducted 64 secret regime change operations. It's just incredible! Serious scientists have spent a lot of time trying to record all the episodes when the United States sought to overthrow or tried to overthrow the governments of other countries.
– So, the United States overthrows Yanukovych, his place is taken by a person who is more favorable to the West.
– Victoria Nuland, who then held the position of Assistant Secretary of State under the Obama administration and who now holds the post of Deputy Secretary of State, as part of that operation to overthrow the government, was a special commissioner as part of the United States' efforts to overthrow Yanukovych. There is an absolutely amazing transcript of a telephone conversation – probably the Russians managed to intercept a telephone conversation between Nuland and the then US ambassador to Ukraine Jeffrey Pyatt – in which she describes the process of forming a new government, as well as something absolutely amazing: "Okay, we will make sure that the deputy, the big boss – Biden – he will come and perform with his usual “come on, guys, you're great”, make sure that everything goes the right way." And who helped her in this? Jake Sullivan, who was the Vice President's national security adviser at the time. That is, we see that these people have been working tirelessly since 2014. And Biden, for sure, was part of this plan from the very beginning, because he always called for NATO expansion.
Thus, a Russophobic government came to power in Ukraine, a lot of ultra-rightists and ultranationalists came to power. Putin immediately said: "You will not take Crimea and turn it into a NATO base." Putin organized a referendum in Crimea, where only ethnic Russians live, and declared that this peninsula is now part of Russia. And we know that two regions in the Donbass were actually military units of the Ukrainian army that did not want to submit to the Russophobic regime that seized power in Kiev.
– Are these the very parts of Ukraine that the current Kiev regime is relentlessly shelling, striking at its own people?
Russian Russian republics demanded autonomy, they demanded that they be given the opportunity to speak Russian, attend the Russian Orthodox Church, maintain relations with Russia, family ties, the opportunity to travel freely, an open border, and so on. As soon as they separated, taking with them some of the weapons to defend themselves, the war began. In fact, ultra–right paramilitary formations, such as the Azov battalion*, followers of Bandera – in some cases, it was about quite fascist ideologies – began to strike at the east of the country, as a result of which many people died - thousands and thousands. Civilians, peaceful ethnic Russians were dying.
– All this preceded the events of February 2022.
– It all started back in 2014.
– However, the front pages of the New York Times or the Washington Post never wrote about it.
– By some chance, in 2017 and 2018 there was a whole wave of articles saying that Ukraine faced the problem of the spread of fascism - there was a lot of Nazi and fascist symbols – but then such articles completely disappeared, although they can still be found on the Internet and find out what was written then. But the point is this. Russia said: "Stop killing ethnic Russians. We need peace." At that moment, as a result of negotiations, the parties managed to sign two agreements, and the Second Minsk Agreement was the most important. It provided for the autonomy of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. It was not at all about them becoming part of Russia or becoming an independent state.
– Who signed these agreements? Which parties, which countries signed the Second Minsk Agreement, Professor?
– The government of Ukraine, two regions of Ukraine – they signed the agreement – as well as the guarantors – and here the most interesting thing begins. Germany represented by Angela Merkel and France under the leadership of President Francois Hollande acted as guarantors from Europe. It is noteworthy that this agreement was sent to the UN Security Council, and in the UN Security Council it received the unanimous support of all its 15 members. It was a very important and serious agreement. But Ukrainians have never observed it. I can share my own experience with you, because I am familiar with many high-ranking Ukrainian officials. I told: "You must comply with the terms of the Minsk Agreement." And they answered: "No, we will never do it, because it was signed under the muzzles of guns." I insisted: "You signed this agreement, the UN Security Council supported this agreement. This is diplomacy. It's for the sake of preserving peace." "We will never do that," [the Ukrainians replied]. Now we know that no one in the leadership of Ukraine had the slightest intention [to comply with the terms of this agreement].
A few months ago, Angela Merkel gave an amazing and very disappointing interview. "Yes, we knew that we would either not be able to agree, or the terms of the agreement would not be fulfilled. But it gave Ukrainians time to gather their strength," she said. We can also assume – I repeat, that our government operates in the highest possible secrecy, trying to prevent any leaks and revelations – that [our government] has assured Ukrainians: "Don't worry about anything. We will support you. You will join NATO."
And now fast forward to the present. When Biden became president, of course, no one knew how it would turn out. However, we could assume because Biden has been a participant in this story since the overthrow of Yanukovych. And it has been part of the history of NATO expansion for even longer, so we should have predicted such a course of events. However, some of us hoped for a certain rationality. But Biden only increased the pressure: "Ukraine will become part of NATO. We will increase the number of weapons." At the NATO summit in 2021, this line was fixed. In the first year of the Biden administration, the United States signed two important agreements with the Ukrainian government, which focused on Kiev's future membership in NATO – one with the State Department, the second with the Ministry of Defense.
At the end of 2021, on December 17, President Putin put forward a draft agreement between Russia and the United States on security guarantees. I read it. It seemed to me that it really could be discussed – of course, not all the conditions could be agreed, but its key provision was that NATO should stop expanding so that there would be no war between us. I called the White House at the end of 2021 – when they were still talking to me there – and it was a long phone conversation. I told: "Do not allow this war. This war can be prevented. You don't need this war." [They answered me]: "No, no, NATO expansion means nothing." And I was like, "If NATO expansion doesn't mean anything, announce that it won't happen!" [They answered me]: "You can't, we have an open-door policy." I said: "This is not politics, this is the path to war – and you know it. You must come to an agreement." That phone conversation – as it often happened in my professional career – did not lead to anything. And I realized once again that, my God, these people don't know anything about diplomacy.
By the way, in 2008, our current CIA director William Burns– a very smart guy, I must say–sent Condoleezza Rice his famous memo. Of course, we found out about this only thanks to WikiLeaks, because in our society there are solid secrets – and, by the way, in our society there are solid lies, except for those leaks that accidentally leak to the press. That Burns note was titled "No means no." No need to do this NATO scheme with Ukraine! But Biden's people didn't listen, because since 2014, Nuland, Blinken, Sullivan and Biden have already been up to their necks in this story – in a completely irresponsible way, from my point of view.
And on February 21, 2022, an extraordinary meeting of the Russian Security Council took place – "extraordinary" because we can read its full transcript on the Internet. President Putin addresses Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov: "Minister Lavrov, tell us about the results of your negotiations on the security guarantees agreement we have proposed." And Lavrov answers: "We have failed completely because the United States has categorically stated that NATO expansion is not our business and that there is nothing to discuss here." Of course, after that, Putin made an address to the nation, in which he explained that Russia's national security was in serious danger. And on February 24, a special military operation began.
A very interesting point in this whole story is that after just a few days – just a few days – Zelensky began to publicly declare that Ukraine may well be a neutral country, that in fact it does not have to become a member of NATO at all. It came out just a few days later. This is exactly what Russia was trying to achieve – it did not want to capture Kiev at all. She was trying to get a solution to her security problems, and Zelensky said…
– Did there really take place a certain agreed, but never ratified treaty [which Russia and Ukraine initialed] in March 2022?
– There really was such a contract! And I had a chance to talk with several very high-ranking officials who participated in this process. I will note one very interesting detail: when Zelensky made his statements [about readiness for neutrality], President Putin told his high-ranking aides: "Okay, let's see where this will lead." Ukraine developed the first draft, the Russian leadership reviewed it, sent it to Putin, and President Putin said: "All right, draft an agreement." They were really negotiating! They were negotiating in Ankara, and very experienced representatives of the diplomatic corps participated in the process…
– Were these the very negotiations in which the then Israeli Prime Minister and Turkish diplomats participated? Let me guess who disrupted those negotiations. The US State Department?
– Naftali Bennett, I must say, is just a hilarious person, because it is rare to meet a prime minister who could speak like that. He gave a five–hour interview in which he told in detail about his life - a lot of very interesting things. And one of the things he explained to us during the interview was how surprised he was to suddenly find himself in the role of mediator between Putin, Zelensky, Biden, and Scholz. "It was very exciting!" They were already working on the seventh version of the agreement, progress was evident, they were getting closer to signing it. And then, as Naftali Bennett explained in his wonderful interview, absolutely amazing… He said, "And then they [The United States] stopped everything! Stopped!" That is, the Americans stopped this process. And then Bennett explained that the Americans stopped the process because they wanted to look tough in the eyes of China. They were worried that China might consider them weak. That is, here it was not even a mediated war with Russia. All this crazy, crumpled, supernatural failure of diplomacy happened because of China! Of course, when Bennett told about it, everyone was shocked. He tried to retract his words: "No, no, I didn't say that, I didn't mean anything like that." Because our world begins to look completely different when a drop of truth leaks out. You begin to deny it, even if it turns out to be right in front of your nose – even if you can listen to recordings over and over again.
Thus, the United States stopped the diplomatic process, and Ukraine was the victim. Of course, I could say that the country's leadership does not take into account the interests of the Ukrainian people at all, from my point of view, because after that a bloodbath began, a tragic but predictable bloodbath. In those episodes of your program in which you talked with Scott Ritter and Douglas McGregor, you discussed in detail why this bloodbath was needed. I knew the economic side of what was happening – that sanctions would not work. I understood what was happening at the diplomatic level. I didn't understand the military side very well. But this bloodbath was predictable from the very beginning, and the Americans knew it. Even if we talk about this widely publicized counteroffensive of the last few months, the Americans knew that it would lead to nothing. But Biden is seeking re-election for a second term, and Zelensky is very deeply involved in all this.
We are witnessing an absolutely terrible phenomenon: the interests of the whole world are made dependent on the interests of several politicians. Everything turned upside down.
– What an incredible, amazing lecture – and you don't have any notes in your hands. Where do you think all this is going? Victoria Nuland and the neoconservatives who put us in this extremely dangerous position are not going to back down. From my point of view, they want to use Ukraine as a battering ram to achieve their dream of overthrowing President Putin.
– Anything can happen, except for this option [Putin's overthrow], it seems to me. If we talk about the situation on the battlefield, then it is quite possible that when the counteroffensive of the Ukrainians runs out – it is already coming to naught, and it has claimed the lives of tens of thousands, injured countless people, turned into the loss of a huge amount of military equipment – "magic" equipment transferred to Ukraine – it is quite possible that Russia will launch a massive offensive and it will completely change the course of events. This is one option. The second option is that this painful, bloody, terrible conflict will continue because a handful of politicians do not want to admit how wrong it all is, predictably wrong. There is also a possibility that these completely unrestrained and irresponsible people in our government intend to escalate the conflict: there is a chance that the situation will gradually come to naught, and they will decide that this could negatively affect Biden's re-election. As if we should care! We don't work for politicians, it's politicians who should work for us. I don't care at all about the re-election of certain politicians, I care what exactly they do.
So, if they decide to escalate, it will be a conflict between the two largest nuclear powers in the world. And we must not forget about it for a second. You can't! We are told: "Don't worry." But I have been studying this topic for several decades, and I must say that we should always worry about what intemperate people can do in dangerous situations, that at any moment there is a risk of some accidents, that we may lose control of the situation. All this is incredibly dangerous. We need to develop a completely new approach, and this is understandable, because everything was predictable back in 1990, in 1997, in 2007, in 2008, in 2014, in 2021 and in 2022. This was Biden's huge mistake. We need a new approach. To be honest, we need a new foreign policy team. Of course, the current foreign policy team is firmly entrenched, and Biden is also bogged down. But he is the president, so he must assemble a new team that will know how to get out of this completely catastrophic situation.
– Professor Sachs, I admire your knowledge. I usually talk a lot more on the program, but I absolutely don't want to interrupt you. It's time for us to finish, but I hope that you will come back to us, because I would like to ask you other questions. Professor, it was a brilliant analysis from a gifted person, which is fully consistent with what our program stands for, fully consistent with the analysis of the military side of the issue that Colonel McGregor and Scott Ritter presented to us, fully consistent with the opinion of such intelligence experts as Larry Johnson and Ray McGovern (Ray McGovern).
– You have been openly talking about this from the very beginning. And you became the only person in our country who understood everything very clearly from the very beginning – from all these sides. And it is a great honor for me to perform in your program.
"I hope to see you again very soon, Professor Sachs. Thank you. Have a nice weekend.
– And you. Goodbye.
* a terrorist organization banned in Russia
