"A Victory for Putin"? Jeffrey Sachs & Matt Duss Debate U.S.-Russia Talks to End Ukraine War

[Uncle Joe]

Top diplomats from the United States and Russia met in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to discuss ending the war in Ukraine and improving relations between Washington and Moscow. The Riyadh summit represents a monumental shift in U.S. policy after the Biden administration led an international effort to isolate Russia over its invasion and gave tens of billions in military aid to Kyiv. Participants included U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was not invited to attend and has said he won't recognize a peace deal negotiated without his country. European leaders have also been sidelined. For more on these developments, we host a discussion between economist Jeffrey Sachs and foreign policy analyst Matt Duss.

"This is a war that never should have happened," says Sachs, who faults "U.S. provocations" like the expansion of NATO for laying the groundwork for Russia's invasion in 2022. In holding these talks directly with Russia, "the Trump administration, for the first time, is telling the truth about the fundamental causes of this war," adds Sachs.

Duss says that while the U.S. has played a major role in the conflict, "Vladimir Putin is the one who chose to invade Ukraine." He also emphasizes that Ukrainians themselves have agency and have been key players in events since the end of the Cold War, including their current defense against Russia. "It's not just a story of unending U.S. villainy."

Democracy Now! is an independent global news hour that airs on over 1,500 TV and radio stations Monday through Friday. Watch our livestream at democracynow.org Mondays to Fridays 8-9 a.m. ET.

[xocetaceans]

1. Jeffrey Sachs is as wrong about Russia's war against Ukraine as he has been about Covid-19's origins. It discredits...

Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! to host such a character as Sachs and underwrite his statements as being worthwhile by platforming him.

The bottom line is that Russia's war is solely Putin's and Russia's responsibility. Putin chose to take parts of Ukraine in 2014 and chose to try to take the entire country in 2022.

On the other hand, maybe Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! should host Bret Weinstein or interview RFK, Jr. or maybe chat with Sen. Ron Johnson to get to the "bottom" of Covid-19. Maybe, Joe Rogan would be free to discuss the intricacies of human health and vaccines with her. Interviews of luminaries such as those would fit right in with this interview/debate featuring Jeffrey Sachs.

[Uncle Joe]

2. I'm not defending his opinion, but none of the people that you cited

have credentials that match his.

Just from Wikipedia

Jeffrey David Sachs (/sæks/ SAKS; born November 5, 1954)[4] is an American economist and public policy analyst who is a professor at Columbia University,[5][6] where he was former director of The Earth Institute. He worked on the topics of sustainable development and economic development.[7]

Sachs is director of the Center for Sustainable Development at Columbia University and president of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network.[8] He is an SDG Advocate for United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), a set of 17 global goals adopted at a UN summit meeting in September 2015.[9]

From 2001 to 2018, Sachs was special advisor to the UN Secretary General, and held the same position under the previous UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and prior to 2016 a similar advisory position related to the earlier Millennium Development Goals (MDGs),[10] eight internationally sanctioned objectives to reduce extreme poverty, hunger and disease by 2015. In connection with the MDGs, he had first been appointed special adviser to the UN Secretary-General in 2002 during the term of Kofi Annan.[10][11]

Sachs is co-founder and chief strategist of Millennium Promise Alliance, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty and hunger. From 2002 to 2006, he was director of the United Nations Millennium Project's work on the MDGs. In 2010, he became a commissioner for the Broadband Commission for Sustainable Development, whose stated aim is to boost the importance of broadband internet in international policy.[12] Sachs has written several books and received several awards. His views on economics, on the origin of COVID-19, and on the Russian invasion of Ukraine have garnered attention and some criticism.[13][14][15]

Sachs was raised in Oak Park, Michigan, in the Detroit metro area, and is the son of Joan (née Abrams) and Theodore Sachs, a labor lawyer.[16] His family is Jewish.[17] He graduated from Oak Park High School and attended Harvard College, where he received his Bachelor of Arts, summa cum laude, in 1976.[18] He went on to receive his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Harvard with his thesis titled Factor Costs and Macroeconomic Adjustment in the Open Economy: Theory and Evidence,[19] and was invited to join the Harvard Society of Fellows while still a Harvard graduate student.[20]

(snip)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Sachs

[RandomNumbers]

3. Matt Duss does much better than Sachs.

Sachs gets the headline maybe because we know his name and he once was respected. But his position here makes no sense. He appears to think the US did something wrong in Ukraine by exerting too much influence in 2014*, but then is okay with US and Russia carving up Ukraine in a deal in Saudi, without any consideration for the rights of Ukrainians to autonomy and democracy?

(I'll admit I didn't get through the whole clip. That's my takeaway so far, at the 13:30 mark)

It is ironic to me that I first saw this posted elsewhere by an extreme Trumpist. I searched for it here at DU and found this thread. Hmm.

* Sachs phrasing about that is disputed here https://www.thebulwark.com/p/what-really-happened-in-ukraine-in-2014-and-since-then