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LIVE: ‘Ukraine War is Over’, Jeffrey Sachs Makes Fiery Speech At EU Parliament, Challenges America!

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when I said that the United States should help the Soviet Union in financial stabilization and in making its reforms and the memo documents including some of my former colleagues at Harvard in particular saying we will do the

0:19minimum that we will do to prevent disaster but the minimum it's not our

0:25job to help quite the contrary it's not our interest to help when the Soviet Union ended in

0:351991 the view became even more exaggerated and I can name chapter and

0:43verse but the view was we run the show cheney Wolawitz and many other

0:51names that you will have come to know literally believed this is now a US

0:59world and we will do as we want we will

1:04clean up from the former Soviet Union we will take out any remaining

1:11allies countries like Iraq Syria and so forth will

1:16go and we've been experiencing this foreign

1:21policy for now essentially 33

1:28years europe has paid a heavy price for this because Europe has not had any

1:34foreign policy during this period that I can figure out no voice no unity no clarity no European

1:44interests only American loyalty

1:50there were moments where there were disagreements and very uh I think uh

1:55wonderful disagreements especially in the last time of significance was 2003

2:02in the Iraq war when France and Germany said we don't support the United States

2:09going around the UN security council for this war that war by the way was

2:15directly concocted by Netanyahu and his colleagues in the US

2:23uh Pentagon i'm not saying that it was a link or mutuality i'm saying it was a

2:31direct war that was a war carried out for Israel it was a war that Paul Wolitz

2:38and Douglas Feith coordinated with Netanyahu and that was the last time

2:45that Europe had a voice and I spoke with European leaders

2:52then and they were very clear and it was uh quite

2:59wonderful europe lost its voice entirely after that but especially in

3:072008 now what happened after 1991 to get to 2008 is that the United States

3:16decided that unipolarity meant that NATO would enlarge somewhere from Brussels to

3:24Vladivosto step by step there would be no end to eastward enlargement of

3:31NATO this would be the US unipolar world if you played the game of risk as a

3:38child like I did this is the US idea to have the peace on every part of the

3:46board any place without a US military base is an enemy

3:52basically neutrality is a dirty word in the US political lexicon perhaps the dirtiest word at

4:00least if you're an enemy we know you're an enemy uh if you are neutral you're

4:06subversive because then you're really against us because you're not telling us you're pretending to be neutral

4:15so this was the mindset and the decision was taken formally in

4:201994 when President Clinton signed off on NATO enlargement to the east you will

4:27recall that in February 7th

4:331991 Hans Dietra Genture and James Baker III spoke with Gorbachev

4:40genture gave a press conference afterwards where he explained "NATO will

4:45not move eastward we will not take advantage of the dissolution of the Warsaw pact." And

4:55understand that was in a jeritical context not a casual context this was

5:02the end of World War II being negotiated for German

5:08reunification and an agreement was made that NATO will not move one inch

5:15eastward and it was explicit and it is in countless documents and just look up

5:21national security archive of George Washington University and you can get

5:26dozens of documents it's a website called what Gorbachov heard about NATO

5:33take a look because everything you're told by the US is a lie about this but

5:39the archives are perfectly clear so the decision was taken in

5:461994 to expand NATO all the way to

5:51Ukraine this is a project this is not one administration or another this is a

5:58US government project that started more than 30 years

6:07ago in 1997 Ziggnu Bjinski wrote the grand

6:15chessboard that is not just musings of Mr bjinski that is the presentation of

6:21the decisions of the United States government explained to the public which

6:27is how these books work and the book describes the eastward

6:34enlargement of Europe and of NATO as simultaneous

6:40events and there's a good chapter in that book that says what will Russia do

6:47as Europe and NATO expand eastward and I knew Zig Bjinski

6:56personally he was very nice to me uh I was advising Poland he was a big help he

7:03was a very nice and smart man and he got everything wrong so in 1997 he wrote in detail why

7:13Russia could do nothing but exceed to the eastward expansion of NATO and

7:19Europe in fact he says the eastward expansion of Europe and not just Europe but NATO this was a plan a

7:29project and he explains how Russia will never align with

7:34China unthinkable russia will never align with

7:40Iran russia has no vocation other than the European vocation so as Europe moves

7:46east there's nothing Russia can do about it so says yet another American

7:54strategist is it any question why we're in war all the

7:59time because one thing about America is we always know what our counterparts are

8:05going to do and we always get it wrong and one reason we always get it wrong is

8:12that in game theory that the American strategists play you don't actually talk

8:18to the other side you just know what the other side's strategy is that's it's

8:24wonderful it saves so much time you don't need any diplomacy

8:34so this project began and we had a continuity of government for 30 years

8:42until maybe yesterday

8:47perhaps 30 years of a project ukraine and Georgia were the keys to the project

8:57why because America learned everything it knows from the

9:03British and so we are the wannabe British

9:09Empire and what the British Empire understood in

9:141853 Mr palmer Lord Palmerston excuse me is that you surround Russia in the

9:22Black Sea and you deny Russia access to the Eastern

9:28Mediterranean and all you're watching is an American project to do that in the

9:3521st century the idea

9:40was that there would be Ukraine Romania Bulgaria Turkey and

9:48Georgia as the Black Sea literal that would deprive Russia of any

9:57international status by blocking the Black Sea and essentially

10:04by neutralizing Russia as more than a local power bjinski is completely clear about

10:12this and before Bjinsky there was Mckinder and who owns the island of the

10:19world owns the world so this project goes back a long time i think it goes

10:25back basically to Palmerston in 19 and again I've lived

10:34through every administration i've known these presidents i've known their teams nothing changed much from Clinton

10:42to Bush to Obama to Trump won to

10:47Biden maybe they got worse step by step biden was the worst in my view uh

10:56maybe also because he was not compass menus for the last couple of years and I

11:02say that seriously not as a snarky remark the American political system is

11:08a system of image it's a system of media manipulation every day it is a PR system

11:17and so you could have a president that basically doesn't function and have that

11:22in power for two years and actually have that president run for reelection and

11:29one damn thing is he had to stand on a stage for 90 minutes by himself and that

11:34was the end of it had it not been that mistake he would have gone on to have

11:39his candidacy whether he was sleeping after 400 p.m in the afternoon or not so this is actually the reality

11:49everybody goes along with it it's impolite to say anything that I'm saying

11:55because we don't speak the truth about almost anything in this world right now so this project went on from the

12:041990s bombing Bgrade 78 straight days in 1999 was part of this

12:12project splitting apart the country when borders are sacrosanked aren't they

12:17indeed except for Kosovo that's fine because borders are

12:23sacrosanked except when America changes them sudan was another related

12:31project the South Sudan rebellion did that just happen because South Sudin

12:38rebelled or can I give you the CIA playbook to please

12:44understand as grown-ups what this is about

12:50military events are costly they require equipment

12:56training base camps intelligence finance that comes from big

13:03powers that doesn't come from local

13:09insurrections south Sudan did not defeat North Sudan or

13:14Sudan in a tribal battle it was a US

13:20project i would go often to Nairobi and meet US military or senators or others

13:29with deep interests in Sudan's politics this was part of the game of

13:37unipolarity so the NATO enlargement as you know started in 1999 with Hungary Poland and

13:44the Czech Republic and Russia was extremely unhappy about it but these were

13:51countries still far from the border and Russia protested but of course to no avail then

14:00George Bush Jr came in when 9/11 occurred President Putin pledged all

14:07support and then the US uh decided in

14:13September 20th

14:182001 that it would launch seven wars in 5 years and you can listen to General

14:26Wesley Clark online talk about that he was NATO Supreme Commander in

14:321999 he went to the Pentagon on September 20th 2001 he was handed the

14:38paper explaining seven wars these by the way were Netanyahu's wars the idea was

14:46partly to clean up old Soviet allies and partly to take out supporters of Hamas

14:53and Hezbollah because Netanyahu's idea was there will be one state thank you only

15:00one state it will be Israel israel will control all of the territory and anyone

15:06that objects we will overthrow not we exactly our friend the United States

15:13that's US policy until this morning we don't know whether it will

15:19change now the only wrinkle is that maybe the US will own Gaza instead of

15:25Israel owning Gaza but the idea has been around at least

15:31for 25 years it actually goes back to a

15:36document called clean break that Netanyahu and his American political team put together in 1996 to end the

15:46idea of the two-state solution you can also find it online so these are projects these are

15:53long-term events these aren't is it Clinton is it Bush is it

16:00Obama that's the boring way to look at American politics as the dayto-day game

16:06but that's not what American politics is so the next round of NATO enlargement

16:12came in 2004 with seven more countries the three Baltic states

16:19Romania Bulgaria Slovenia and Slovakia at this point Russia was pretty damn

16:28upset this was a complete violation of the post war

16:34agreed with German reunification essentially it was

16:40a it it was a fundamental trick or defection of the US from a cooperative

16:47arrangement is what it amounted to because they believe in uniolarity

16:56so as everybody recalls because we just had the Munich Security Conference last week in 2007 President Putin said "Stop

17:04enough enough stop now." And of course what that meant was

17:11in 2008 the United States jammed down Europe's throat enlargement of NATO to

17:16Ukraine and to Georgia this is a long-term project i listened to Mr sakashi in New

17:24York in May of 2008 and I walked out

17:29called Sonia and said "This man's crazy." And a month later a war broke out because the United States told this

17:38guy "We save Georgia." And he stands at the Council on Foreign Relations says

17:44Georgia's in the center of Europe well it ain't ladies and gentlemen it's not

17:50in the center of Europe and the most recent events are not

17:55helpful for Georgia for its safety and your MPs going there or MEPs going there

18:02and European politicians that gets Georgia destroyed that doesn't save Georgia that gets Georgia

18:09destroyed completely destroyed in 2008 as everybody knows our former CIA

18:18director William Burns sent a long message back to Condisa Rice net means

18:23net about expansion this we know from Julian Assange because believe me not

18:30one word is told to the American people about anything or to you or by any of

18:37your newspapers these days so we have Julian Assange to thank but we can read

18:42the memo in detail as you know Victor Yanukovich was

18:48elected in 2010 on the platform of neutrality russia had no

18:56territorial interests or designs in Ukraine at all i know I was there during

19:03these pe these years what Russia was negotiating was a 25-year lease to 20

19:1242 for Savasto naval base that's it not for Crimea not for the Donbas

19:20nothing like that this idea that Putin is reconstructing the Russian Empire this

19:28is childish propaganda excuse me if anyone knows the daytoday and

19:36year-to-year history this is childish stuff childish stuff seems to work

19:42better than adult stuff so no designs at all the United

19:49States decided this man must be overthrown it's called a regime change

19:55operation there have been about a hundred of them by the United States many in your

20:03countries and many all over the world that's what the CIA does for a

20:11living okay please know it it's a very unusual kind of foreign policy

20:18but in America if you don't like the other side you don't negotiate with them

20:25you try to overthrow them preferably

20:31covertly if it doesn't work covertly you do it overtly you always say "It's not our

20:38fault they're the aggressor they're the other side they're Hitler." That comes

20:44up every two or three years whether it's Saddam Hussein whether it's Assad

20:49whether it's Putin that's very convenient that's the only foreign policy explanation the American people

20:56are ever given anywhere well we're facing Munich 1938

21:03well we're facing Munich 1938 can't talk to the other side they're evil

21:08implacable foes that's the only model of foreign policy

21:14we ever hear from our mass media and the mass media repeats it entirely because

21:21it's completely suborned by the US government now in

21:292014 the US worked actively to overthrow

21:34Yanukovich everybody knows the phone call intercepted by my Columbia University

21:41colleague Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador Peter

21:47Pat you don't get better evidence the Russians intercepted her call and they

21:53put it on the internet listen to it it's fascinating i know all these

21:59people by the way by doing that they all got promoted in the Biden administration

22:06that's the job now when the Maidan occurred I was called immediately oh

22:14Professor Saxs the new Ukrainian prime minister would like to see you to talk

22:20about the economic crisis because I'm pretty good at

22:25that and so I flew to Kiev and I was walked around the

22:32Maidan and I was told how the US paid the money for all the people around the

22:39Maidan spontaneous revolution of

22:44dignity ladies and gentlemen please where do all these media outlets

22:51come from where does all this organization come from where do all these buses come from where do all these

22:58people called in come from are you kidding this is organized

23:06effort and it's not a secret except to citizens of Europe and

23:14the United States everyone else understands it quite clearly

23:20then came Minsk and especially Minsk 2 which by

23:27the way was modeled on South Turoleian autonomy and the Belgians could have

23:34related to Mitzu very well it said there should be autonomy for the

23:41Russianspeaking regions in the east of Ukraine it was supported unanimously by the UN

23:49Security Council the United States and Ukraine decided it was not to

23:56be enforced germany and France which were the guaranurs of the Normandy

24:04process let it go and it was absolutely another direct

24:12American unipolar action with Europe as usual playing

24:19completely useless subsidiary role even though it was a guarantor of the

24:26agreement trump one raised the armaments

24:31there were many thousands of deaths in the shelling by Ukraine in the

24:37Donbas there was no Minsk 2 agreement and then Biden came into

24:44office and again I know all these people i used to be a member of the Democratic

24:50Party i now am strictly sworn to be a

24:56member of no party because both are the same

25:02anyway and because this is I the Democrats became complete wararm mongers

25:07over time and there not was not one voice about peace just like most of your

25:15parliamentarians the same way so at the end of

25:251991 Putin put on the table a last effort in two security agreement drafts

25:33one with Europe and one with the United States the US put on the table December 15th n uh

25:412021 i had an hour call with Jake Sullivan in the White House begging

25:48"Jake avoid the war you can avoid the war all you have

25:54to do is say NATO will not enlarge to Ukraine." And he said to me "Oh NATO's

26:03not going to enlarge to Ukraine don't worry about it." I said "Jake say it publicly." No no no we can't say it

26:10publicly said "Jake you're going to have a war over something that isn't even going to

26:18happen." He said ' Don't worry Jeeoff there will be no war these are not very bright

26:26people i'm telling you if I can give you my honest view they're not very bright

26:32people and I've dealt with them for more than 40 years they talk to themselves they don't

26:39talk to anybody else they play game theory in non-ooperative game theory you

26:45don't talk to the other side you just make your strategy this is the essence of game

26:55theory it's not negotiation theory it's not peacemaking

27:01theory it is unilateral non-ooperative theory if you know formal

27:07game theory that's what they play it started at the Rand Corporation that's what they still play in 2019 there's a

27:15paper by Rand how do we extend Russia do you know they wrote a paper which Biden

27:22followed how do we annoy Russia that's literally the strategy how

27:28do we annoy Russia we're trying to provoke it trying to make it break apart

27:34maybe have regime change maybe have unrest maybe have economic crisis

27:39that's what you call your ally are you

27:47kidding so I had a long and frustrating phone call with

27:55Sullivan i was standing out in the freezing cold i happened to be h trying

28:00to have a ski day and there I was jake don't have the

28:06war oh there'll be no war jeff we know a lot of what happened the

28:13next month which is that they refuse to negotiate the stupidest idea of NATO is

28:21the so-called open door policy are you kidding nato reserves the

28:28right to go where it wants without any neighbor having any say whatsoever

28:35well I tell the Mexicans and the Canadians don't try it you

28:42know Trump may want to take over Canada so Canada could say to China why don't

28:48you build a military base uh in uh in in Ontario i wouldn't advise

28:55it and the United States would not say well it's an open door that's their

29:00business i mean they can do what they want that's not our business but grown-ups in Europe repeat

29:09this in Europe in your commission your high

29:16representative this is nonsense stuff this is not even baby

29:23geopolitics this is just not thinking at all so the war started what was Putin's

29:31intention in the war i can tell you what his intention was it

29:37was to force Zalinski to negotiate

29:43neutrality and that happened within 7 days of the start of the

29:50invasion you should understand this not the propaganda that's written about this

29:55oh that they failed and he was going to take over Ukraine come on ladies and gentlemen understand

30:03something basic the idea was to keep NATO and what

30:09is NATO it's the United States off of Russia's

30:15border no more no less i should add one very important point

30:24why are they so interested first because if China or Russia decided to have a

30:31military base on the Rio Grand or in uh the Canadian border not only would the

30:38United States freak out we'd have war within about 10 minutes but because the United States

30:46unilaterally abandoned the anti-bballistic missile treaty in 2002

30:51and ended the nuclear arms control framework by doing So and this is extremely important to

31:00understand the nuclear arms control framework is based on trying to block a

31:07first strike the ABM treaty was a critical component of that the US unilaterally

31:14walked out of the ABM treaty in 2002 it blew a Russian gasket so

31:20everything I've been describing is in the context of the destruction of the nuclear framework as well and starting

31:27in 2010 the US put in Aegis missile systems in Poland and then in

31:35Romania and Russia doesn't like that and one of the issues on the table in

31:40December and January December 2021 January 2022 was does the United States

31:47claim the right to put missile systems in Ukraine and Blinken told Lavrov in

31:54January 2022 the United States reserves the right to put middle missile systems

32:00wherever it wants that's

32:05your puditive ally and now let's put intermediate

32:11missile systems back in Germany the United States walked out of the INF treaty unilaterally in 2019 there is no

32:19nuclear arms framework right now none

32:27when Zilinski said in seven days let's negotiate I know the details of

32:34this exquisitly because I've talked to all

32:40the parties in detail within a couple of weeks there

32:45was a document exchanged that President Putin had approved that Lavrov had presented that

32:53was being managed by the Turkish mediators i flew to Anchora to listen in

33:00detail to what the mediators were doing ukraine walked away unilaterally

33:08from a near agreement why because the United States

33:15told them to because the UK added icing to the cake by having

33:23Bojo go in early April to Ukraine and explain and he has

33:31recently and if your security is in the hands of Boris Johnson God help us

33:37all keith Starmer turns out to be even worse it's unimaginable but it is true

33:48boris Johnson has explained and you can look it up on the website that what's at stake

33:56here is western hegemony not Ukraine Western hegemony

34:05michael and I met at the Vatican with a group in the spring of

34:112022 where we wrote a document explaining nothing good can come out of

34:17this war for Ukraine negotiate now because anything that takes time will

34:22mean massive amounts of deaths risk of nuclear escalation and likely loss of

34:30the war i want to change one word from what we wrote then nothing was wrong in that

34:37document and since that document since the US talked the negotiators away from

34:43the table about a million Ukrainians have died or been severely

34:51wounded and the American senators who are as nasty and cynical and corrupt as

34:59imaginable say this is wonderful expenditure of our money because no Americans are

35:05dying it's the pure proxy war one of our senators nearby me uh

35:13Blumenthal says this out loud mitt Romney says this out loud it's

35:19best money America can spend no Americans are dying it's

35:27unreal now just to bring us up to

35:32yesterday this failed this project failed the idea of the project was that

35:39Russia would fold its hand the idea all along was Russia can't

35:45resist as Ziggnu Bjinski explained in 1997 the Americans thought we have the

35:53upper hand we're going to win because we're going to bluff them they're not really

35:59going to fight they're not really going to mobilize the nuclear option of cutting

36:06them out of Swift that's going to do them in the

36:11economic sanctions that's going to do them in

36:16the Himars that's going to do them in the Attackums the

36:23F-16s honestly I've listened to this for 70 years i've listened to it as

36:30semiunderstanding I'd say for uh about 56 years they speak nonsense every day

36:38my country my government this is so familiar to me

36:45completely familiar i begged the Ukrainians and I had a track record with the Ukrainians i advised the Ukrainians

36:52i'm not anti- Ukrainian i'm pro- Ukrainian completely i said "Save your lives save your sovereignty save your

36:59territory be neutral don't listen to the Americans." I repeated to them the famous adage of

37:07Henry Kissinger that to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous but to be

37:13a friend is fatal okay so let me repeat that for

37:18Europe to be an enemy of the United States is dangerous but to be a friend is

37:26fatal so let me now finalize a few words about Trump

37:36trump does not want the losing hand this is

37:44why it is more likely than not this war will end because Trump and President Putin

37:52will agree to end the war if Europe does all its great

38:00wararmongering it doesn't matter the war is ending so get it out of your

38:07system please tell your colleagues it's

38:13over and it's over because Trump doesn't want to carry a

38:19loser that's it it's not some great morality he doesn't want to carry a

38:26loser this is a loser the one that will be saved by the

38:32negotiations taking place right now is Ukraine second is Europe your stock

38:38markets rising in recent days by the horrible news of negotiations i know

38:45this has been met with the sheer horror in these chambers but this is the best

38:52news that you could get now I encouraged they don't listen to me but I

39:01tried to reach out to some of the European leaders most don't want to hear

39:06anything from me at all but I said don't go to

39:13Kiev go to Moscow discuss with your

39:18counterparts are you kidding you're Europe your $450 million people your 20

39:25trillion dollar economy you should be the main economic

39:31trading partner of Russia its natural

39:37links by the way if anyone would like to discuss how the US blew up Nordstream

39:43I'd be happy to talk about that

39:50so the Trump administration is imperialist at

39:57heart it is a great powers dominate the

40:03world it is we will do what we want when we can we will be better than a

40:13scineesscent Biden and we'll cut our losses where we have

40:19to there are several war zones in the world the Middle East being another we

40:25don't know what will happen with that again if Europe had a proper policy you

40:32could stop that war i'll explain how

40:37but war with China is also a possibility

40:43so I'm not saying that we're at the new age of peace but we are in a

40:51uh very uh different kind of politics right

40:57now and Europe should have a foreign policy and not just a foreign policy of

41:03rousophobia a foreign policy that is a realistic foreign policy that understands Russia's

41:10situation that understands Europe's situation that understands what America is and what it stands

41:17for that tries to avoid Europe being invaded by the

41:23United States because it's not impossible that America will just land troops in Danish

41:32territory i'm not joking and I don't think they're joking and

41:38Europe needs a foreign policy a real one not a yes we'll bargain with Mr trump

41:47and meet him halfway you know what that will be like

41:52give me a call afterwards please don't have American

42:00officials as head of Europe have European officials

42:07please have a European foreign policy you're going to be living with

42:12Russia for a long time so please negotiate with Russia there are real security issues on

42:20the table but the bombast and the

42:26rousophobia is not serving your security at all it's not serving Ukraine security

42:32at all it contributed to a million casualties in Ukraine from this

42:38idiotic American adventure that you signed on to and then became the lead

42:44cheerleaders of solves

42:50nothing on the Middle East by the way the

42:56US completely handed over foreign policy to Netanyahu 30 years ago the Israel

43:04lobby dominates American politics just have no doubt about it i could explain

43:11for hours how it works it's very dangerous

43:17i'm hoping that Trump will not destroy his administration and worse the Palestinian

43:23people because of Netanyahu who I regard as a war criminal

43:30uh properly indicted by the IC and that needs to be told no more

43:39that there will be a state of Palestine on the borders of the 4th of June

43:441967 according to international law as the only way for peace it's the only way

43:52for Europe to have peace on your borders with the Middle East is the two-state

43:59solution there is only one obstacle to it by the way and that is the veto of

44:05the United States and the UN Security Council so if you want to have some influence tell the United States "Drop

44:13the veto you are together with 180 countries in the world the only ones that oppose a

44:22Palestinian state are the United States Israel

44:29Micronisia Nau Palao Papa New

44:35Guinea Mr malay and

44:41Paraguay so this is a place where Europe could have a big influence europe has gone silent about

44:49the JCPOA and Iran netanyahu's greatest dream in life

44:55is a war between the United States and Iran he's not given up and it's not

45:01impossible that that would come also and that's because the US in this

45:08regard does not have an independent foreign policy it is run by Israel it's

45:14tragic it's amazing by the way and it could end trump may say that

45:23he wants foreign policy back maybe i'm hoping that it's the case finally let me

45:29just say with respect to China China is not an enemy china is just a success

45:36story that's why it is viewed by the United States as an enemy because China

45:43is a bigger economy than the United States that's all

45:51[Applause]

46:16more very well now questions please don't make any

46:22statements just make questions because we have too many and we we don't have

46:27that all that much time so um where do I start i start with on the left side i

46:35have a preference to the left yes you know you come over yeah go ahead uh thank you Jeffrey Sak

46:42uh from the Czech Republic we are glad we have you here uh we have a problem uh we were cursed by a witch who told m the

46:50EU and the EU is mugged uh so uh it won't be improved until 2029 but what we

46:57the central Europeans should do in the meantime especially if the Germans

47:03doesn't don't happen to vote for Sarah connect enough uh are we supposed to

47:09create some kind of neutrality uh for the central Europe or what would you

47:14suggest us to do so uh first of all uh all my

47:23grandchildren are Czech I want you to know uh and Sonia is a Czech born uh and

47:29Czech citizen um so we're very proud uh I'm I'm the trailing spouse in this but

47:35I'm a Czech wannabe

47:44um Europe needs to have a foreign policy that is a European foreign policy and it

47:51needs to be a realist foreign policy realist is not hate realist is actually

47:58trying to understand both sides and to negotiate there are two kinds of

48:03realists defensive realists and offensive realists uh my dear friend

48:08John Mirshimer uh who is the offensive realist I I we're very close friends and

48:15I love him but I believe more than he does you talk to the other side and you

48:21find a way to make an understanding and

48:26so basically uh Russia is not going to invade Europe

48:35this is the fundamental point it may get up to the deeper

48:40river it's not going to invade Europe but there are real issues

48:47the the main issue for Russia was the United States because Russia as a major

48:56power and a the largest nuclear power in the world was profoundly concerned about

49:04US unipolarity from the beginning now that this is seemingly possibly ending

49:12Europe has to open negotiations directly with Russia as well because the United

49:18States will quickly lose interest and you're going to be living with Russia for the next thousands of

49:25years okay so what do you want you want to make sure that the Baltic states are

49:31secure the best thing for the Baltic states is to stop their

49:39rousophobia this is the most important thing estonia has about 25% Russian

49:46citizens or Russian speaking citizens ethnic Russians latvia the

49:55same don't provoke the neighbor that's all

50:03this is not heard it really isn't heard and again I

50:08want to explain my point of view i have helped these countries the

50:14ones I'm talking about trying to advise i'm not their enemy i'm not Putin's

50:20puppet i'm not Putin's apologist i worked in Estonia they gave

50:25me I don't it's not I think it's the second highest civilian honor that a

50:31president of Estonia can bestow on a non-national because I designed their

50:37currency system for them in 1992 so I'm giving them advice do not

50:44stand there Estonia and say we want to break up Russia are you kidding

50:52don't this is not how to survive in this world you survive with mutual

50:59respect actually you survive in

51:04negotiation you survive in discussion you don't outlaw the Russian

51:10language not a good idea when 25% of your population is has a first language

51:18of Russian it's not right even if there weren't a giant on the border it

51:25wouldn't be the right thing to do you'd have it as an official language you'd have a language of in lower school you

51:34wouldn't antagonize the Russian Orthodox Church so basically we need to behave

51:41like grown-ups and when I constantly

51:47say that they're acting like children Sonia always says to me that's unfair to

51:55children because this is worse than children we have a six-year-old

52:02granddaughter and a three-year-old grandson and they actually make up with

52:07their friends and we don't tell them go just

52:13just ridicule them tomorrow and every day we say go give them a hug and go

52:22play and they do this is not hard

52:29by the way well anyway I won't belabor the point thank you so elect a new

52:35government no I shouldn't say that what all all I should say is change change

52:40policy i don't want to have a politically

52:47does that work yeah hi my name is Kira i'm a reporter with the Brussels Times um thank you for the fascinating talk

52:53Jeffrey um I just wanted to ask you about Trump's statements about wanting uh NATO members to increase their

52:58spending by 5% and we're now seeing lots of countries scrambling to prove that they're going to do that including

53:04Belgium and given that Belgium is also the NATO headquarters um I wanted to ask you what would be the appropriate

53:10response to those statements by NATO members thanks uh we don't see exactly eye to eye on

53:17this question uh so let me let me give you my own uh my own view

53:23um my first recommendation with all respect to Brussels is move the NATO

53:29headquarters somewhere else uh I I mean it seriously because one of

53:37the worst parts of European policy right now is a complete

53:44confusion of Europe and NATO these are completely different but

53:49they became exactly the same europe is much better than

53:55NATO in my opinion NATO isn't even needed anymore i would have ended it in

54:031991 but because the US viewed it as a

54:08instrument of hegemony not as a defense against Russia it continued afterwards

54:16but the confusion of NATO and Europe is

54:21deadly because expanding Europe meant expanding NATO period and these should have been

54:30completely different things so this is uh the first

54:35point my own view again with all respect to Michael we only had a brief

54:41conversation about it is that Europe should have Europe basically should have

54:47its own foreign policy and its own uh its own military security its own

54:55strategic autonomy so-called and it should i'm in favor of that i would disband NATO and maybe Trump is going to

55:02do it anyway maybe Trump's going to invade Greenland who knows then you're really going to

55:09find out what NATO means so I do think that Europe should invest

55:16in its security 5% is outlandish

55:23ridiculous absurd completely absurd no one needs to

55:29spend anything like that amount two to 3% of GDP probably under the

55:37current circumstances what I would do by the way is buy

55:44European production because actually strangely

55:53weirdly unfortunately in this world and it's a true truism but it's unfortunate

56:00so I'm not championing it a lot of technological innovation spins off from

56:08the military sector because governments invest in the military

56:14sector so Trump is a arms salesman you

56:19understand that he's selling American

56:25arms he is selling American technology vance told you a few days ago don't even

56:33think about having your own AI technology so please

56:40understand that this increase of spending is for the United States not

56:47for you and in this sense I'm completely

56:52against that approach but I would not be against an approach of Europe spending two to

56:59three% of GDP for a unified European security

57:04structure and invested in Europe and European

57:10technology and not having the United States dictate the use of European

57:16technology it's so interesting it's the Netherlands that produces the only

57:22machines of advanced semiconductors extreme ultraviolet

57:28lithography it's ASML but America determines every policy

57:34of ASML the Netherlands doesn't even have a

57:39footnote i wouldn't do that if I were you hand over all security to the United

57:45States i wouldn't do it i would have your own security framework

57:51so you can have your own foreign policy framework as well europe stands for lots

57:57of things that the United States does not stand for europe stands for climate

58:04action by the way rightly so cuz our president is completely bonkers on this

58:11and Europe stands for decency for social democracy as an ethos

58:17i'm not talking about a party i'm talking about an ethos of how equality

58:23of life occurs europe stands for

58:28multilateralism europe stands for the UN charter the US stands for none of those things

58:34you know that our Secretary of State Marco Rubio

58:40cancelled his trip to South Africa because on the agenda was equality and

58:47sustainability and he said I'm not getting into that that is an honest reflection of

58:56deep Anglosaxon libertarianism egalitarianism is not a

59:04word of the American lexicon sustainable development not at

59:10all you probably know by the way that of the 193 UN member

59:18states 191 have had SDG plans presented

59:24as voluntary national reviews 191 two have not haiti and the United States of

59:33America the Biden administration wasn't even allowed to say sustainable development goals the Treasury had a

59:41policy not to say sustainable development goals okay I mention all of

59:46this because you need your own foreign policy i issue a report two reports each

59:54year won the World Happiness Report and 18 of the top 20 countries if I I

1:00:00remember correctly are European this is the highest quality of life in the whole

1:00:05world so you need your own policy to protect that quality of life the United

1:00:12States ranks way down and the other report where's my

1:00:17colleague guom is somewhere in the room here there he is guom Laura Fortun is

1:00:22the lead author of our annual sustainable development report and

1:00:28almost all of the top 20 countries are European countries because you believe

1:00:33in this stuff and that's why you're the happiest except in

1:00:41geopolitics but quality of life so you need your

1:00:46own foreign policy but you won't have it unless you have your own security you

1:00:52just won't and so and by the way 27 countries cannot each have their own

1:00:59foreign policy this is a problem you need a European foreign policy and a

1:01:05European security structure and by the way although Michael assures me it's dead I was the greatest fan of

1:01:13OCE and believe that OCE is the proper framework for European security it could

1:01:20really work

1:01:28thank you thank you very much yeah okay uh well uh thank you professor

1:01:34i am from Slovakia and my prime minister Robert Fitz was almost shot dead because the opinions you had the similar with

1:01:41him uh yes we are as a Slovakia Slovaka government of the few countries in the

1:01:47European Union we are talking to Russians uh two months ago I was talking with Mr medvev in two weeks I will be

1:01:55talking uh in Duma with Mr slutzki who is the chairman of the Russian uh foreign affairs committee in Moscow

1:02:02maybe my question is what would you be your message to Russians in this moment

1:02:08because as I heard they are on the victorious wave they have no reason to not to conquer the Tombbas because

1:02:13that's their war aim and what can Trump can offer to them uh to stop the war

1:02:20immediately what would be what would be the message for Russians from your side

1:02:25thank you very much

1:02:31lots of uh important things are uh now on offer and on the table and I believe

1:02:37that the war will end quickly because of this and this this will be at least one

1:02:44blessing in a very uh very difficult time exactly what the settlement will be

1:02:51I think is now only a question of the territorial issues uh and that is

1:02:58whether it is the complete four oblasts including all of her son and operia or

1:03:06whether it is on the contact line and how all of this will be negotiated i'm

1:03:12not in the room of the negotiations so I can't really say more but the basis will

1:03:18be there will be territorial concessions there will be neutrality there will be

1:03:25security guarantees for Ukraine for all parties uh there will be at least with

1:03:31the US an end of the economic sanctions uh but what counts of course is Europe

1:03:38and Russia i think that there are and maybe there will be a restoration of

1:03:44nuclear arms uh negotiations which would be extraordinarily

1:03:51positive i think that there are tremendously important issues for

1:03:57Europe to negotiate directly with Russia

1:04:02and so I would urge uh President Costa and the leadership of Europe to open

1:04:11direct discussions with President Putin because European security is on the

1:04:17table i know the Russian leaders many of them quite well uh they are good

1:04:26negotiators and uh you should negotiate with them uh and you should negotiate

1:04:33well with them uh I would ask them some questions i

1:04:40would ask them what are the security guarantees that can work so that this

1:04:45war ends permanently what are the security guarantees for the Baltic states what

1:04:52should be done part of the process of negotiation is actually to ask the other

1:04:58side about your concerns not just to know what they know as you think is too

1:05:04true but actually to ask we have a real problem we have a real worry what are

1:05:10the guarantees well I want to know the answers also uh by the way I know Mr

1:05:17lavrov Minister Lavarov for 30 years i I regard him as a brilliant foreign minister uh talk with him negotiate with

1:05:25him get ideas put ideas on the table put counter ideas on the table uh I don't

1:05:31think all of this can be settled by pure reason because uh of oneself you settle

1:05:39wars by negotiating and understanding what are the real issues and you don't

1:05:46call the other side a liar when they express their issues you work out what

1:05:51the implications of that are for the mutual benefit of peace so the most

1:05:59important thing is stop the yelling stop the wararm mongering and discuss with

1:06:08the Russian counterparts and don't beg to be at the table with the United

1:06:13States you don't need to be in the room with the United States you're Europe you

1:06:18should be in the room with Europe and Russia if the United States wants to join that's

1:06:24fine but to beg no and by the way Europe does not need to have Ukraine

1:06:33in the room when Europe talks with Russia you have a lot of issues direct

1:06:40issues don't hand over your foreign policy to anybody not to the United

1:06:46States not to Ukraine not to Israel keep a European foreign policy

1:06:53this is the basic

1:07:03idea uh Hans Nohoff from the sovereignists political group in this

1:07:08parliament um alternative for Germany as political party first of all let me

1:07:13thank you Mr sax for being here and sharing your ideas with us and be assured that many of your ideas and of

1:07:21your colleague John Mshimer have well been received by political groups here and have been integrated into our agenda

1:07:30i widely share your views um yet there's one question regarding the historical

1:07:36account that you gave uh where I would like to go in some detail and this concerns the beginning of NATO expansion

1:07:45um you um uh uh reported from uh um the

1:07:51website um what Gorbachov heard that there are many um quotations from Ganter

1:07:58for example um that NATO will not move one inch eastwards now the 2 plus4

1:08:04treaty has been signed in September 1990 right in Moscow so at that point in time

1:08:12the warso pact still existed and countries like Poland Hungary and Czecha

1:08:18were not part of the negotiations for the two and four treaty so the Warsaw

1:08:24pact actually dissolved in July 1991 and the Soviet Union dissolved in December

1:08:301991 so nobody who was present in the

1:08:35negotiations could speak for Poland could speak for Hungary could speak for Slovakia that they would not try to

1:08:42become member of NATO once the overall situation has changed so the

1:08:49counterargument um which we have to counter um is that it was on the will of

1:08:56these countries of Poland of Hungary of Slovakia that they wanted to join NATO

1:09:02because of the very history they had with the Soviet Union and of course Russia was still perceived in a way um

1:09:11as a follower of the Soviet Union so how do you counter that argument

1:09:22i have no doubt of why Hungary Poland Czech Republic Slovakia wanted to join NATO

1:09:32the question is what is the US doing to

1:09:37make peace because NATO is not a choice of Hungary Poland Czech Republic or

1:09:44Slovakia nato is a US-led military alliance and the question is how are we

1:09:52going to establish peace in a reliable way if I were uh making those decisions

1:10:01back then I would have ended NATO altogether in

1:10:071991 when those countries requested NATO I would have explained to them what our

1:10:14defense secretary William Perry said what our lead statesman George Kennan

1:10:20said uh what our final ambassador to the Soviet Union Jack Matlock said uh they

1:10:27said "Well we understand your feelings but it's not a good idea because it could provoke a new cold war with

1:10:34Russia." So that's how I would have answered it when those countries joined

1:10:41uh in the first wave i don't think it was that consequential in fact except

1:10:48that it was part of a bigger project and the project was spelled out already in

1:10:541994 there's a very good book by uh Jonathan Hasslam Harvard University

1:11:01Press called Hubris which gives a detailed historical documentation of

1:11:07step by step what happened uh and uh it's it's really worth reading um so

1:11:15this is uh now but the point I would really make is that Ukraine and Georgia

1:11:24were too far this is right up against

1:11:29Russia this is in the context of the complete destabilization of the nuclear

1:11:35framework this is in the context of the US putting in missile systems on

1:11:41Russia's borders if you listen to President Putin over the years probably the main thing if you

1:11:49listen carefully that he's concerned about is missiles 7 minutes from Moscow

1:11:54is a decapitation strike and this is very real the US not

1:12:01only would freak out but did freak out when this happened in the Western

1:12:06Hemisphere so it's the Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse

1:12:12and fortunately Nikita Kruev did not stand up and say open door policy of the

1:12:20Warsaw pact we can go wherever we want cuba's asked us it's none of America's

1:12:27business what Kruev said is war my god we don't want war we end this crisis we

1:12:34both pull back that's what Kruev and Kennedy decided in the end so this is

1:12:40the real consequential russia even swallowed with a lot of pain the Baltic

1:12:47states Romania Bulgaria Slovakia and Slovenia it is Ukraine and Georgia and

1:12:54it's because of geography it's because of Lord Palmerston it's because of the

1:13:00first Crimean War it's because of the missile systems that this is the essence

1:13:05of why there was this war

1:13:18anybody else

1:13:35thank thank you very much Professor Sax for coming um here um you've mentioned

1:13:41that the European Union needs to formulate its own foreign policy um in the past the German Franco alliance was

1:13:48a big driver for for those policies now with the Ukraine war arguably that

1:13:53receives a crack um do you think that in the future when the European Union is going to formulate this new foreign

1:13:59policy that they're going to be again on the front seat or uh should it be other other countries or other blocks um

1:14:05trying to make that change thank you very much

1:14:11oh it's hard it it's hard because

1:14:17uh of course you don't yet have a a constitution for Europe which really

1:14:25underpins a European foreign policy and it can't be by unonymity

1:14:32there has to be a structure in which Europe can speak as Europe even with

1:14:38some uh disscent but with the European policy i don't want to oversimplify how

1:14:45to get there exactly but even with the structures you have you could do a lot

1:14:51better with negotiating directly the first rule is your diplomats should be

1:14:58diplomats not secretaries of war

1:15:08honestly that would go halfway at least to where you want to

1:15:13go a diplomat is a very special kind of

1:15:19talent a diplomat is trained to sit together with the other side and to

1:15:26listen to shake hands to smile and to be pleasant it's very hard it's a skill

1:15:35it's training it's a profession it's not a

1:15:40game you need that kind of

1:15:46diplomacy i'm sorry we are not hearing anything like

1:15:54that i'll just make a couple complaints

1:15:59first Europe is not NATO as I said I thought Stolenberg was the worst

1:16:06but I was wrong it just keeps getting

1:16:13worse could someone in NATO stop talking for God's sake about more

1:16:24war and could NATO stop speaking for Europe and Europe stop thinking it's

1:16:30NATO this is the first absolute point second I'm sorry but your high

1:16:37representative vice presidents need to become diplomats

1:16:46diplomacy means going to Moscow inviting your Russian counterpart

1:16:54here discussing this doesn't happen till

1:17:01now so this is really my point now

1:17:08i believe that Europe should become more integrated and more unified in the years

1:17:16ahead i'm a strong believer in subsidiarity so we were discussing I

1:17:22don't think housing policy is really Europe's main issue i think this can be

1:17:28handled at the local level or at the national level i don't see it as a European issue but I don't see foreign

1:17:35policy as being a 27 country issue i see it being as a European issue and I see

1:17:42security being at a European level so I think things need to be readjusted but

1:17:49I'd like to see more Europe for truly European issues and maybe less Europe

1:17:54for things that are properly subsidiary to Europe at the national and the local

1:17:59level and I hope that uh such an evolution can take place you know when

1:18:05the world talks about great powers right now they talk about US Russia China I

1:18:14include India and I really want to include Europe and I really want to

1:18:20include Africa as an African Union and I want that to happen but

1:18:27you'll notice on the list Europe doesn't show up right now uh and this is because there is no European foreign policy

1:18:35okay

1:18:56thank you very much and thank you very much professor for this very courageous speech very clear speech also that you

1:19:02made i'm an MEP from Luxembourg uh my question is the following what are the long-term consequences of this lost war

1:19:10we lost the war now we have an uncertain future for NATO we have also clearly and

1:19:15you refer to it marginalization of Europe we have um a strengthening of the

1:19:21BRICS countries which can be rivals in many uh respects so will there be a

1:19:27future for a collective west over the next 20 or 30 years thank you very much

1:19:35i I don't believe there is a collective west uh I believe that there is a United

1:19:41States and Europe that are uh in some

1:19:47areas uh in parallel interests and in many areas not in parallel interest i I

1:19:54want Europe to lead uh sustainable

1:20:01development climate transformation global decency

1:20:06i believe if the world world looked more like Europe it'd be a happier more

1:20:13peaceful safer world and long longevity

1:20:18and better food by the way uh but uh just saying um in any

1:20:24event Europe has a vocation that is rather different from the American

1:20:30tradition and frankly from the Anglo-Saxon tradition because it's been 200 years of Anglo-Saxon hijgemony or

1:20:38aspirational hegemony the British still believe they run the world it's amazing what

1:20:46nostalgia means uh they don't even stop it's almost like

1:20:52a MontiPython skit actually uh but in any event

1:20:58um where was I i'm thinking of Monty Python when when the knight gets all his

1:21:05limbs cut off and says everything's fine i'm victorious that's Britain unfortunately uh and so it's uh it's

1:21:13it's really terrible so no I don't believe in the collective west i don't

1:21:18believe in the global south uh I don't believe in uh I all these geographies

1:21:24don't even make sense because I'm actually you know I look at maps a lot and the global south is mostly in the

1:21:30north uh and the west is not even west uh and so I don't even understand what

1:21:36this is about i do believe that um we

1:21:42could be in a true age of abundance if

1:21:48we got our heads on straight we're in the biggest technological advance in

1:21:54human history it's truly amazing what can be done right now you know I marvel

1:22:02at the fact that somebody who knows no chemistry won the Nobel Peace Prize for

1:22:09chemistry because he's very good at deep neural networks a

1:22:15genius Demis Hosabus um they figured out protein folding uh

1:22:22that uh generations of biochemists spent their whole lives on and now uh deep

1:22:29mind figured out how to do it uh you know uh by the thousands of proteins we

1:22:36have friends that spent their entire life on one protein brilliant friends and uh now what we can do so if actually

1:22:45and same with renewable energy as everybody knows the prices come down by

1:22:50more than two orders of magnitude the costs we could transform the planet we

1:22:56could protect the climate system we could protect biodiversity we could ensure every child gets a good education

1:23:03we could do so many wonderful things right now and so what do we need to do

1:23:08that in my view we need peace most importantly and my basic point is there

1:23:16are no deep reasons for conflict anywhere as every conflict I study is

1:23:24just a mistake it's not we are not struggling for Leon's realm

1:23:31that idea that came from Maltus and that became a Nazi idea was always a wrong

1:23:37idea it was a mistake a fundamental intellectual

1:23:43mistake an intellectual mistake by the way because leading scientists adopted

1:23:49the idea that we had race wars we had national wars we had wars of survival

1:23:55because we don't have enough on the planet as an economist I can tell you we have plenty on the planet for

1:24:01everybody's development plenty we're not in a conflict with China we're not in a conflict with

1:24:11Russia if we calm down if you ask about the long term the

1:24:17long term is very good thank you the long term if we don't blow ourselves up

1:24:24is very good and so this is what we should aim for a

1:24:29positive shared vision under international law because of our technology things

1:24:36operate at a regional scale now it used to be it was villages then it was uh it

1:24:42was small areas then it was unification of countries now it's regional that's

1:24:48not just because regions are wonderful it's because the underlying

1:24:53technological reality say Europe should be an integrated area by transport by

1:24:58fast rail by digital by and so there's Europe the politics follows the

1:25:04technological realities to a very important extent we're in a world of regions

1:25:10now so Europe should be Europe with subsidiarity

1:25:15don't lose all of the wonderful wonderful national and local elements

1:25:23but Europe should be Europe so the good side is let's I want Europe to have

1:25:29diplomacy for example with ASEAN i spend a lot of time with the ASEAN countries

1:25:35if the the EU green deal wonderful idea i said many years ago okay to the

1:25:44ASEAN leaders make an ASEAN green deal and then talk with the Europeans so that

1:25:51you have this wonderful relationship trade investment technology so last year

1:25:57they announced an ASEAN green deal what did Europe do about it nothing it said

1:26:04"Sorry we're in the Ukraine war thank you." No interest so this is my point

1:26:11the prospects are very positive if we construct the

1:26:19peace uh can because we have to go i get all the

1:26:25time messages that I should hear leave the room can you something very short it's quite

1:26:32short sorry yeah uh thank you a lot for the lecture uh I wanted to ask like do you think way out of the conflict is

1:26:38some sort of style of finandization um and then also do you think that's what

1:26:43is that the way you would have liked to see like for example Finland and Swedish nature process that like sorry um do you

1:26:51think that a way out of the conflict is some kind of style of finization um and then like is that what

1:26:59you would have Sorry yeah is that what you would have liked to seen like Sweden and Finland's foreign policy as an

1:27:04example like is that instead of them becoming members of NATO is that the way that you would have liked to see these

1:27:10countries handled foreign policy um and do you think that these countries that

1:27:16border Russia should just kind of succumb to their fate that okay we can't provoke Russia like this is the way we

1:27:22have to live um and then sorry excellent question and uh let me let me just

1:27:30report one uh part about Finlandization finlandization landed

1:27:35Finland number one in the world happiness report year after year rich

1:27:43successful happy and secure that's pre-NATO so Finlandization was a

1:27:50wonderful thing number one in the world when Sweden and Finland and Austria were

1:27:59neutral bravo smart when Ukraine was neutral smart if you have two

1:28:06superpowers keep them apart a little bit you don't have to be right with your

1:28:11nose up against each other especially if one of them the US is pushing its nose

1:28:17into the other one and so Finlandization to my mind has a very

1:28:23positive connotation so does Austrianization austria

1:28:301955 signed its uh neutrality the Soviet army left and

1:28:36Austria is a wonderful place by the way absolutely wonderful and so this is uh

1:28:44basic how to avoid conflict if the United States had any sense at all it

1:28:50would have left these countries as a neutral space in between the US military

1:28:56and Russia but that's where the US lost it okay

1:29:01thank you very much let me I I just want to end with an appeal i

1:29:10think we both agree that we will have a the war will end within a month or two

1:29:16that means the fighting will end it doesn't mean that we will have peace in Europe the peace in Europe that has to

1:29:22be done by us by Europeans not by a president from the United States we have to create this peace and that is Europe

1:29:28which includes of course Belarus Russia and all these other countries so we have to do something and we are here a

1:29:35parliament we have as a parliamentarians we represent people we are the only legitimate democratically legitimate

1:29:42institution in the European Union maybe we should have become all a little bit more proactive in trying to move this

1:29:49peace process forwards across party lines i think I don't know how many parties here really are but that we can

1:29:54talk to each other without saying ah you're from this party you're from this party i think we really have to concentrate if here we could not take

1:30:01more initiative from the parliament visa v the commission and saying we are

1:30:07presenting the people not you we are presenting the people and these people in Europe want peace and that's what we

1:30:13should go so maybe this is the beginning of we will make every month I will organize with my colleagues an or the

1:30:20same thing here about different topics which were all around it and we hope this one we get a discussion that is

1:30:26different what we have in the plenum where we basically don't have a discussion but that we have a discussion

1:30:31and take also across the party and invite also people from other political parties we don't bite anybody let's

1:30:37discuss it in the end we want all want this the same peace for the next generation and I have plenty of children

1:30:43grandchildren you too and that's what we need okay thank you very much professor

1:30:49[Applause]

1:30:58F first of all I would like to thank you all for coming here uh we we didn't

1:31:03expect actually that so many people come we're very pleased about this and of course above all I want to welcome

1:31:09Professor Jeffrey Sax and his wife Sonia

1:31:16sonia it's it's it's very I have forgot my my things so it's very difficult to

1:31:22introduce him but he did it so much many things in in life you know he's uh of is

1:31:28of course advisor to three secretary generals in three secretary generals now he is

1:31:34professor from Columbia University he started the earth uh institute and do

1:31:39you correct me afterwards if I'm wrong and now you're director of the uh center for sustainable development solutions

1:31:45and all these things Sonia I forgot most of it there's much more but I want to say something more personally because I

1:31:51know Jeff for some time you know and I've know of course the international field more than this parliament I've

1:31:58never met any person who is so well connected internationally than Jeff so well connected both in the

1:32:06religious areas he went to the Vatican but also in the political areas Jeff can

1:32:11go anywhere in the world and they will know him whether it's the Middle East whether it's in China whether it's in

1:32:17Moscow hopefully very soon also again in Kief and whether it's in Africa or Latin

1:32:23America and he has a very long experience i would say the people he knows are alive or dead because he does

1:32:31this type of job since a very long time what I think is also at least from my point of view so special about Jeff is

1:32:37that he's always remained an adviser he has never tried to enter any political field to align with any political party

1:32:44so he's he has remained independent and that of course adds to his credibility

1:32:50and uh and I think that's also the reason at least for me and maybe many of you will agree that he has become a

1:32:57spokesman in economics sustainable development environment and of course in politics and today Jeff is probably the

1:33:04person in the world to speak up for peace everywhere for peace which is all these things combined and therefore I'm

1:33:12very happy that you're here and uh very proud also that you followed my invit

1:33:17invitations and uh he will talk about uh the geopolitics of peace now Jeff is

1:33:25coming now to the parliament when this when we have we are the European Union is in turmoil for whatever I don't want

1:33:31to value this but I think we have now the Ukraine war it's an American

1:33:36initiative Europe will not sit on the table although this is a war on European soil and um so we are in a very

1:33:44difficult situation I think the we don't know in what directions to to go uh I'm

1:33:50here since six months in this parliament and for somebody who worked for the UN I was actually quite shocked to learn that

1:33:56this parliament speaks only about war and that you can with force create

1:34:01solutions and the UN always spoke differently in all the countries and when I say here things which I say

1:34:06actually in all the war countries I've been to and I've been 34 years in war countries I'm boot for these things but

1:34:13I think we have now to rethink what we want to do and I hope the European Union will also come because I'm pro- European

1:34:21Union will come to to realize that we have also to see how we seek peace and how we manage peace and how we create

1:34:28again a peaceful Europe and Jeff might give us for these things some insight thank you very much

1:34:40great Michael thank you so much and thanks to thanks to all of you for the

1:34:45chance to be together and to think together this is a indeed a a

1:34:51complicated and fastchanging time and a and and a very dangerous one so we

1:34:58really need clarity of thought um I'm especially interested in our

1:35:04conversation so I'll try to be as succinct and and clear as I can be

1:35:11i've watched the events very close up uh in Eastern Europe the former Soviet

1:35:17Union Russia uh very closely for the last uh 36 years i was an adviser to the

1:35:27Polish government in 1989 uh to uh President Gorbachev in

1:35:341990 and 91 to President Yelson in 1991

1:35:40to 1993 to President Kuchma of Ukraine in

1:35:451993 94 i helped introduce the Estonian

1:35:51currency uh I helped uh several countries in uh former Yugoslavia

1:35:58especially Slovenia uh I've watched the events very close up for 36 years uh

1:36:08after the Maidan I was uh asked by the new government to come to Kiev and I was

1:36:14taken around the Maidan and I learned a lot of things uh firsthand i I've been

1:36:21in touch with Russian leaders for more than 30 years i know the American political

1:36:29leadership uh close up uh our previous

1:36:34uh secretary of treasury was my macroeconomics teacher uh 51 years ago

1:36:42or just to give you an idea so we were very close friends for a half century i

1:36:49know all of these people i just want to say this because what I want to explain

1:36:54in my point of view is not uh secondhand it's not ideology it's what I've seen

1:37:01with my own eyes and experienced during this

1:37:06period in my understanding of the events that have befallen Europe in many

1:37:14contexts uh and I'll include uh not only the uh

1:37:20Ukraine crisis uh but uh Serbia 1999

1:37:27uh the wars in the Middle East including Iraq Syria uh the wars in Africa

1:37:35including Sudan Somalia uh

1:37:40Libya these are to a very significant extent that would surprise you perhaps

1:37:48uh and would be denounced about what I'm about to say

1:37:54these are wars that the United States led and caused and this has been true

1:38:02for more than 40 years now

1:38:07what happened uh more than 30 years I should say to be more

1:38:15precise the United States came to the view especially in 1990 91 and then with

1:38:23the end of the Soviet Union that the US now ran the

1:38:30world and that the US did not have to heed anybody's views

1:38:36red lines concerns security viewpoints or any international

1:38:44obligations or any UN framework i'm sorry to put it so plainly but I do want

1:38:53you to understand i tried very hard in

1:39:011991 to get help for Gorbachev who I think was the greatest statesman of our

1:39:06modern time i recently read the uh archived memo of

1:39:13the National Security Council discussion of my proposal how they

1:39:19completely dismissed it and laughed it off the table when I said that the

1:39:25United States should help the Soviet Union in financial stabilization and in making its reforms

1:39:34and the memo documents including some of my former colleagues at Harvard in

1:39:40particular saying we will do the minimum that we will do to prevent

1:39:46disaster but the minimum it's not our job to help quite the contrary it's not

1:39:52our interest to help when the Soviet Union ended in

1:39:591991 the view became even more exaggerated and I can name chapter and

1:40:06verse but the view was we run the show

1:40:12cheney Wolawitz and many other names that you will have come to

1:40:19know literally believed this is now a US world and we will do as we want we will

1:40:28clean up from the former Soviet Union we will take out any remaining allies

1:40:35countries like Iraq Syria and so forth will go

1:40:42and we've been experiencing this foreign policy for

1:40:48now essentially 33 years europe has paid a heavy price for

1:40:55this because Europe has not had any foreign policy during this period that I can figure out

1:41:02no voice no unity no clarity no European

1:41:08interests only American loyalty

1:41:14there were moments where there were disagreements and very uh I think uh

1:41:19wonderful disagreements especially in the last time of significance was 2003

1:41:26in the Iraq war when France and Germany said we don't support the United States

1:41:33going around the UN security council for this war that war by the way was

1:41:39directly concocted by Netanyahu and his colleagues in the US

1:41:47uh Pentagon i'm not saying that it was a link or mutuality i'm saying it was a

1:41:54direct war that was a war carried out for Israel it was a war that Paul

1:42:01Wolawitz and Douglas Feith coordinated with Netanyahu and that was the last time

1:42:08that Europe had a voice and I spoke with European leaders

1:42:16then and they were very clear and it was uh quite wonderful

1:42:24europe lost its voice entirely after that but especially in

1:42:312008 now what happened after 1991 to get to 2008 is that the United States

1:42:40decided that unipolarity meant that NATO would enlarge somewhere from Brussels to

1:42:47Vladivosto step by step there would be no end to eastward enlargement of

1:42:55NATO this would be the US unipolar world if you played the game of risk as a

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