The Duran Podcast - Crossing Red Lines w/ Jeffrey Sachs (Live)

Episode Date: June 5, 2024

Crossing Red Lines w/ Jeffrey Sachs (Live)

We are live with Alexander Mercurus and the one and only Professor Jeffrey Sachs. How are you gentlemen doing today, Professor Jeffrey Sachs? Good to be together. Good to be together. We can commiserate a little bit. We can try to figure out what's going on. Yeah. All of us together.

I have the same feeling, actually. Exactly the same sentiment. So let's get started. We have a lot to talk about. Let me just give a quick shout. out to everyone that is watching us on Rockfin and on Odyssey. Hello to everyone on Rumble and YouTube. Hello to everyone that is watching us on YouTube.

And of course, our locals community, the durand.com. Hello to everyone in our locals chat. And a big thank you to our awesome moderators. I see Peter there. I see Zareel and who else is with us. I think that's it for now, but I'm sure more. Gift of the Gab is also with us. Thank you, Tower Moderators.

Professor Jeffrey Sachs, Professor Alexander Mercuris, we have got a lot to discuss. We've got a lot of stuff to discuss, and hopefully we can make some sense of what is happening in the world. So, Alexander, Professor Sachs, let's get started. Well, I would like to take it to starting point an article that Professor Sachs has written. about the proper responsibilities of the US president,

which is to keep the United States at peace. And since we're talking about the United States, given that it is still the most powerful country and likely to remain so for a fair amount of time, well, if the United States is at peace, so is the world. At the moment, the world is not at peace, and the United States quietly, with barely any real discussion,

seems to be heading edging purposefully towards a conflict with a nuclear superpower in Europe, something I would never have imagined before. And of course, there's talk also, some really astonishing talk in the Wall Street Journal and other places, about another conflict against another nuclear superpower, this time in the Pacific. And we have the horrors in the Middle East as well. So, Jeffrey, I'm going to go over to you. Professor Sacks. Tell us that's a short introduction, but we don't always have a huge amount of time. Let's go straight in. What are your thoughts about the situation about U.S. policy at the moment? What I wrote in that article was not just about keeping peace, but keeping us away from the nuclear precipice. And I referred to what many people listening will know, the doomsday clock. Doomsday Clock is the notional idea of measuring how close we are to nuclear annihilation.

It was started by the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists in 1947 to alert the world that in the new atomic age, of course, now we're in the nuclear thermonuclear age, we are capable of suicidal destruction of the planet in a way that wasn't true before 1945. And in 1947, these scientists and analysts of the global scene said we were seven minutes till midnight, meaning that we were at the brink of nuclear war and nuclear annihilation. And, of course, the idea was to keep us away from the brink. So what I looked at in that article was which presidents took us closer to midnight and which took us away from midnight. And it was very sobering to look at the clock from the American political point of view.

Most American presidents have been failures in my view in foreign policy. Most have made the world more dangerous, not less dangerous. Most, of course, have presided over CIA campaigns to overthrow governments around the world. There have been perhaps 90 such regime change operations since 1947. They continue until this day. The U.S. foreign policy is based first and foremost on the principle, if you don't like your opponent, overthrow it, which is a very strange kind of diplomacy. Most diplomacy is if you don't like your opponent, find out a way to live together, actually have diplomacy. Even compromise, a word that's a completely dirty word in our lexicon, it became, quote, appeasement.

It became one model, which is compromise means death. This is the psychology. So never compromise, never agree with an adversary, only defeat or over. overthrow an adversary. This is what most presidents have done. We have had a few skilled presidents, and Eisenhower was one of them, although it's a complicated record because he was a fiscal conservative. He didn't want to spend a lot of money, so he thought literally you got a lot of bang for the buck with nuclear weapons. So he was part of the arms race, but he also understood that there needed to be an agreement with the Soviet Union.

President Kennedy saved the world after almost stumbling into nuclear annihilation in 1961 in the Bay of Pigs, CIA operation to overthrow the Cuban government. And then in 1962, the disaster on both sides of the Cuban missile crisis, when the Soviet Union put in offensive nuclear weapons into, Cuba and we came the closest we've ever come to nuclear annihilation. But then Kennedy and his counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, were smart enough, human enough, decent enough, thoughtful enough, rational enough to pull us back from the brink and actually enter into what then became for years and even decades a nuclear arms control framework,

starting with the partial nuclear test ban treaty in 1963. Johnson put us closer to midnight again than Nixon, much reviled by me, by the way, in my youth, and by much of society and, of course, forced to resign over Watergate, took us away from midnight through so-called detente in the early 1970s and his opening to China. and that was very clever. Jimmy Carter, who I liked as a president, contrary to much foreign policy, actually took us back towards midnight to my chagrin

because we all learned decades after the fact and directly from the strategic author, the tactical author of this blunder, his big new Brzynski, I was very proud of having assigned the CIA to run jihadists in Afghanistan, starting in 1979, with the idea of entrapping the Soviet Union in an Afghan invasion. So we created what became al-Qaeda, what became the jihadist terrorism. This was a CIA op. Yes, it entrapped the Soviet Union in Afghanistan.

It entrapped Afghanistan in what became more than four decades of U.S. completely created disaster. And it took the world back towards midnight. So Carter failed. The apogee of safety was Reagan and George Bush won because this was the end of the Cold War. We thought, didn't we? And this also, of course, was due to somebody who has a very mixed opinion. There's a very mixed opinion about him. I knew him.

I actually worked for his economic team. I'm speaking of Mikhail Gorbachev. One thing I can tell you for certain is that Mikhail Gorbachev was a man of peace, which is absolutely remarkable. And unilaterally, he disbanded the Soviet military machine. in Central and Eastern Europe, the so-called Warsaw Pact Alliance. And to their credit, both Reagan and Bush Sr. cooperated with Gorbachev relatively straightforwardly.

And by the end of Bush Sr., we were 17 minutes from midnight. That means the farthest from nuclear war ever. But a funny thing happened on the way to peace, and that is the point of today, which is the U.S. could not take yes for an answer. We could not accept the idea of peaceful, mutually respectful, transparent cooperation with Russia. We just couldn't accept it. And by the way, what is fascinating looking back, it wasn't even about communism, which was the great bogeyman of the age. It was about Russia. Because as communism ended, as the Soviet Union ended,

now we know. And this, I think, is the main point for our day. We know that as early as 1992, as early as 1992, the goal as expressed by then Defense Secretary Richard Cheney, who became perhaps the most influential single architect of American foreign policy for the next 20 years was not only to end the Soviet threat or the communist threat, but to dismember Russia as well. Cheney's argument in 1992 was, well, the Soviet Union dissolved. Let's do the same with Russia. Russia can dissolve. And a very insightful way to understand this remarkably dangerous, bizarre, irresponsible, reckless idea is an article by Zbighbrizynski, one of the architects of all of this period in 1997 in an essay in Foreign Affairs magazine called a Strategy for Eurasia. And Brzynski just casually notes, maybe we need three rights. Russia's in a loose confederation, maybe a European Russia, maybe a Siberian Russia, maybe a

Far East Russia. Together, yes, but in a loose confederation. The point of reading this is to think about the arrogance, the hubris of American foreign policy, that it's going to dismember Russia. And that, I believe, has been the more than 30-year campaign. Dismember, surround, regime change operation, you name it. But we've got Russia on the ropes. The Soviet Union went down because we defeated it, not because of Gorbachev, not because of peace, not because of making a cooperative offering, but because we are the unipolar power of the world. No one comes close. The greatest colossus in world history, greater than the Roman Empire. This is how American leaders thought back in the 1990s. We have a

president who lives today in the 1990s. Biden, this is his formation. It may be his current mental apparatus for all I know, but it is his phraseology till today, the indispensable country, the sole superpower, the country that the whole world turns to for leadership. And the idea was from the start, weaken, dismember, overthrow Russia, we are the sole superpower. So that's where NATO enlargement came in. That's where the U.S. support for jihadists around Russia's boundaries, whether in Chechnya or the former Yugoslavia came in, breaking apart Serbia in 1999, with the deliberate attempt to weaken a, Russian ally as well as to implant a NATO base in a quote new country. Kosovo, oh, you're not

supposed to change the map. The United States had changed the map to have a NATO military base in Bondisteele and to break apart Serbia. 2002 withdraw from the ABM treaty unilaterally, the anti-ballistic missile treaty, put in Aegis missile systems in Poland and Romania. starting in 2010 and of course and of course and of course expand NATO to surround Russia in the Black Sea. Another Brzynski project spelled out in 1997, stealing as we've discussed in the past from Lord Palmerston's ideas of the 1850s, some ideas, some horrible ideas never die. And this one was brought back to life. But the point, Alexander, is that the presidents from

Clinton onward. Every single one, Clinton, Bush Jr., Obama, Trump, and Biden, every single one has moved us closer to midnight in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Domsday Clock. And we are now 90 seconds to midnight. Are you kidding? 90, you know, they're trying to tell us something. And it's true. And if you don't hear it from the doomsday clock, just listen to any stupid European politician these days. Because one is more stupid than the next. Let's taunt Russia. Let's provoke Russia.

Of course, let's bomb Russia. Let's destroy Russia. Says the big Baltic state presidents that want to bring us to nuclear disaster. One after the other makes no rational sense at all. Biden is adrift. He can't lead. So we are, as I have been thinking, with a stuck rudder heading towards the precipice, heading towards midnight, if you will, in the doomsday clock metaphor. And every day, every day is bringing us closer because we have a three front conflict right now, not one of which is being tamped down. We have Ukraine, we have the Middle East, and it's not only Israel's crazed and a genocidal assault in Gaza.

It's Israel's continuing attacks on Iran to bring the United States into a war with Iran. Good idea, Israel. Now we hear today, even from the New York Times, no less, it's Israel's. fake bot campaign on social media to continue to influence U.S. Congress, we don't even need to know about the fake social accounts because the Israel lobby is powerful enough that it has held Congress in its thrall all this period. And we have the third front in Asia, as if it isn't enough. We are absolutely talking every day now. We have politicians. These are grown-ups, at least in appearance, by birth date, talking about war with China.

So this is a kind of collective insanity. And incidentally, you know, I had an interview with Tucker Carlson recently, and it generates a lot of viewers and a lot of mail. And I got one just before we started from Germany saying, Professor Sachs, I enjoyed your interview, but you expressed a little bit of puzzlement about what is Germany doing and why is it so self-destructive and so forth. And then it went into a very intelligent discussion about how Germany and every country where this gentleman has worked in academia is completely under the U.S. mystique and U.S. thrall and U.S. influence peddling and U.S. money and military industrial complex. So he says completely impossible in the continental European context to say anything in academia that is against the

United States. I don't have that direct sense, but it's shocking because I always thought, and again, I'm a naive guy. It takes me a long time to understand these things. But I thought Europe's the sophisticated one. Two thousand years of history. Europe's got the diplomacy. Europe's seen everything. It's done everything. It understands everything. But what I'm here from a lot of people is that there's no real debate anywhere in continental Europe right now. And we know in Britain, I always say Britain taught America everything it knows about all of this, all of all of this danger and saber-rattling and wars of choice. And here we are. So five presidents in a row carrying us closer to nuclear annihilation than ever, and an American political system, utterly and

completely incapable of addressing this right now. Elections don't matter in November. This is something beyond the elections. This is something about the mentality, about the scale of the military industrial complex, about the depth of these long-term. projects about the special role of the CIA in American society because almost surely the most powerful institution in the land and the least known and least understood by design. And interestingly, just one last point of the rant and sorry to carry on, but, you know, when there's a real negotiation in the Middle East, when you really need to sit down to talk with Hamas, Who goes from the United States?

Not Blinken, but Burns, the CIA director. This is not an incidental point. What the hell is the CIA director doing, negotiating this arrangement? The CIA is supposed to be an intelligence agency. Of course, we know it's a secret army. But it's amazing to see that. CIA director should not be the negotiator. but the CIA director is the negotiator because that's the real power in the American system right now.

I think you're on mute, Alexander. You're muted Alexander. I am. I am. I put myself on mute because I thought that was the appropriate thing to do given this lecture you've just given, which is for which thank you. I wanted to say I agree with every point. I just wanted to flesh out a few things. You talk about the intelligence agencies.

A couple of, you know, over the last couple of weeks, I don't want to be too precise because I don't want to put anybody in difficulty. I met somebody who has worked at the very heart of British government. I mean, he was in the cab, but he was not in the cabinet, but he was working in close proximity to the cabinet. In London, he was there for several years. And I asked him, what do the intelligence agencies do? do they actually provide intelligence?

And he said, no, they don't. We never got any, not any to any real degree. They are very active. They are very busy, but not doing that which they are supposed to be doing, which is to keep ministers informed of what the actual situation in the world is. On that basic level, they no longer perform. their functions. And I suspected this for some time. I think we can see that. They are fundamentally unaccountable. There is a minister now in Britain who is supposedly responsible to parliament,

who speaks for the intelligence, who is, you know, supervises the intelligence agencies. This is a new thing in Britain until well within my memory, the British pretended they didn't have any intelligence agencies at all, just saying. And the head of MI6 was always called M. And we all knew who that was, but we never knew who the person behind it was. I mean, that kind of nonsense. Anyway, but, I mean, fundamentally, they continue to remain completely unaccountable and allot unto themselves.

And everybody is terrified of them. That is the other thing. I mean, people are very afraid of them. maybe with good course, maybe with bad course. But I mean, it was almost comical in a way, but I mean, in terms of actual briefings, understanding, you know, what's going on on the other side, what the thinking is,

the kind of analysis that you would expect them to do, apparently it never happens. So that's one thing I wanted to say. But the other is a question, which is this, when did we lose in the West, the fear of nuclear war? because it certainly existed in my lifetime. I remember millions of people coming out and protesting about nuclear war.

I remember many, many people within government, within the political system, certainly in London, were very, very nervous about nuclear war. Now, I'd been reading in one British newspaper, which I have to read, unfortunately, a whole succession of articles, one after the other, about the risks the West might face through the conflict in Ukraine. None of them, not one of these articles, it's a whole series, breaks up the possibility of nuclear war.

It's always about, you know, if we are defeated, the world will lose confidence in us, the credibility will collapse, we might face problems in Europe, all that kind of thing. But the absolutely central key issue, which is that we are in a conflict, with a nuclear superpower and that there might be a nuclear war,

that is never even talked about, it's never even mentioned. One just gets the sense that it really doesn't exist on the radar of the people who are writing these articles. So, I mean, that's a question because it's the thing that really baffles me. It is so profoundly weird, I would say, especially for the, those of us my age who experienced the Cuban Missile Crisis and the first Cold War, not the one that we're in right now, which we now see is really a continuation. It never ended in 1992, contrary to legend. I make the mistake every once in a while of actually reading the comment

lines under Financial Times articles. And the Financial Times is, you know, Gideon Rockman, for example, write something where he maybe has a sentence or two about the nuclear threat. And then all of the comments are, what threat? Don't let them blackmail us. Basically, what's a little nuclear war among friends?

So you read this in the comment section and you, my God, you realize also how sad it must be to be a writer or reporter when that's your readership. Oh, come on. Are you kidding? Because every comment is don't worry about it. Don't be blackmailed about it.

It's not real. I bet he won't do it. Let's find out. So what? And then if somebody writes, oh, my God, we should take nuclear war seriously. Russian troll, Putin apologists, the moment you say something. So it is bizarre.

And we had that experience, by the way, as a little controlled trial in the U.S. Biden says nothing about this, basically. But at a, I think it was 2022 in the fall, he said in a fundraiser to donors, which is really the only time he speaks to the quote, American people when he's speaking to some rich people in a private donor fundraiser,

he said, you know, we're on, we may be on the road to Armageddon, and he used the word Armageddon. What was the reaction in the press? It was literally the Wall Street Journal the next day or the day after in the editorial page, chastising the president for scaring the American people. And how dare he use a word like that? And what's gotten into him? So the norm is don't discuss this.

don't consider this. And the idea is probably they won't do it. You know, oh, it's only 10% chance the world ends. It's the most insane feature of our time right now. And again, the pain of all of this is

if one knows just a little bit of history how false readings on radar of a bird flock that passed the radar looked like incoming ICBMs or a tape training tape that was left on that led a nighttime supervisor in an early warning system think that there was an incoming attack or the most famous or should be famous. Actually, it's almost unknown, I should say, but the most remarkable incident in modern human history. It's a good quiz question to ask people, which one individual above all most clearly saved the world? And the man's name is Archipov, and he's known by one in a million or maybe less in the world. And he was the Soviet political officer on a disabled Soviet submarine where the skipper of the submarine had ordered the firing of a nuclear-tipped torpedo after Kennedy and Khrushchev had arrived at their compromise agreement.

but the word had not reached the disabled submarine. And under U.S. military doctrine being fired upon by any nuclear weapon, a nuclear tip torpedo, a tactical battlefield nuclear weapon or a strategic nuclear weapon, was to trigger the full nuclear arsenal of the United States against Russia, Soviet Union, China, and all of Central and Eastern Union. Europe under the Soviet regime. And the estimates of those days was 700 million deaths out of three billion, of course, not taking into account the global famine that would have followed and all the rest. And we came within a second of that. And it's not even known by most. And Daniel

Ellsberg of the Pentagon Papers and Martin Sherwin, the great historian who died a couple of years ago and is the author of Oppen, co-author of Oppenheimer, which became the movie, wrote about this in a book that everybody should read called Gambling with Armageddon. And the point of the book, which focuses on the Cuban Missile Crisis, but more generally, discusses the fact that. that were in the gamble with survival of the human species to an incredible extent. And he talks about this Arquipov episode. People don't know these things. They're not thinking.

They're not discussing them. They're not learning about them. And so somehow the fact that the U.S. might be embarrassed in Ukraine by not having its absolutely stupid idea of expanding NATO to Ukraine succeed is worth gambling with Armageddon. That's the situation we're in. And yes, every European leader stands up and salutes the United States in this, lies about everything, and says, sure, why risk it? And again, these leaders of the Baltic states, what the hell are they doing? They have countries of one or two or three million people on the border of Russia. They are not nuclear powers, but they're saying Russia must be destroyed. Are they out of their minds?

Do they think the U.S. is really going to keep them safe? Do they think a nuclear war is going to just be dandy for Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania? What is on their minds? But your point is right. It's completely not understandable to me, but it is the reality that we do not have any self-control right now. And we have no capacity to understand our own behavior, maybe because it is this agenda of secretive intelligence armies for the last, not even, 30 years, but for the last 60 years. And it's on a kind of fixed rudder and our politicians are useless in this. This is really where we stand. By the way, you know, it's fascinating. And it's so hard to uncover all of this. But there's a lot of known history and some not so known history about how the CIA immediately starting in 1945, following OSS work, started running

the neo-Nazi units of Western Ukraine, the same groups, the Bandaristas and others that are real. This isn't just a Russian figment of the imagination. These are literal groups with literal people who were literally on the CIA and MI6 account and were run for decades because they would help to undermine Russia or undermine the Soviet Union. So these games, which, you know, are the fun games of the James Bond movies and were mocked in Mad magazine as the white spy and the black spy, you know, playing games with the – this is what's bringing us to 90 seconds to midnight right now. I completely agree. just again a few points here. I mean, about the fact that there's been this disappearance of fear of nuclear war

and this constant talking about the Russians bluffing. Bluffing is a word that comes from gambling. It just confirms that we are gambling on what the other side is doing, that we assume that they're bluffing. Even whilst we insist that then we are not. It's an astonishing thing. And if it's the risk that they're not bluffing and that we could find ourselves in the nuclear war is 0.1%.

That is too big a risk, far too big a risk. Any risk at all in this kind of situation is far too great, especially given that all of these problems which have existed and which have accumulated and which are getting worse, are still problems that can be resolved properly through negotiations in a way that is not going to compromise or endanger anyone. And if we're talking about specifically the Baltic states, which are small countries next to this giant colossus, which is Russia, the best guarantor of their independence and security is Russia itself not the superpower far away, continent and an ocean away,

which can only ultimately protect them by risking its own existence. Again, I would have thought that was obvious and I would have thought, again, that a US president or in a US administration ought to be pointing that fact out to them. And so should the other European countries, which are being led by the Baltic states into policies which I find astonishing. The influence, the sway that these Baltic states have achieved over European policy absolutely astonishes me. Now, there's not... I can tell you, just to tell you a story about that, this Khadja Kallas, the leader of Estonia,

I knew her dad, actually, rather well, Sim Kallas, who was in 1991 president of the Central Bank of Estonia. Estonia gained its independence in 1991. I had a very wonderful Estonian Canadian student who said, Jeff, come to Tallinn. They need help. So I came to Tallinn back in 1991 in March, 1991. Interestingly, the hotel was freezing. We had to wear a winter coat because there was no heat. There was no fuel.

And I had a meeting with Sim Kales one evening in a bar. And he described to me, what do we do? We're in the ruble zone. We need to have a new nation. We need to have an independent currency. So I knew something about that. That was my profession. So I designed basically on a napkin that evening how Estonia could make a national currency. They adopted it literally the next day, that idea.

And a month later, the Estonian Kroon appeared. Now, what's interesting for me is I was there. The Russians didn't try to stop it. the Soviet Union wasn't even over yet at that time. And there was no attempt by Russia to invade Estonia. There was no desire to, quite the contrary. I was working with Gorbachev's team. I was working with Yeltsin after September 1991.

I was working with the Estonians on helping them to, design a post-rubal currency, which went into effect. The Russians wanted peace. They wanted quiet. They wanted rebuilding. They wanted integration with Europe. It was so normal. This is exactly the moment that Cheney is saying, okay, now we dismember Russia. This is the crazed mindset of this hubristic, indispensable nation, the United States. It just could not say yes. And now I see the daughter.

Yeah, by the way, got one of the highest awards of the Estonian state for my work in helping them set up the currency because it remained stable for the next 20 years and then they adopted the euro. It was a good success, good economic success, especially for an evening discussion about how to set up a currency. And now I see this hatred from the Estonians, hatred, but provocation and war mongering, as if this is going to keep them safe. Are you kidding?

It's completely the opposite. By the way, I was advisor to Poland in those years. I was their main outside advisor. And now I see Poland talking the same way. of Roddick Sikorsky, the most aggressive foreign minister in central and eastern Europe, not to be compared with Berbach, who is a minister of war of Germany, in effect. But basically, where does that hate talk come from when it is not Russia that made these aggressions over the last 30 years just the opposite, when the United States could not say yes,

But this is where the propaganda or the mental image or just the being suborned by U.S. money and power in the military industrial complex has come in, almost nobody tells the truth. Where are we going? Where are we going from here? We now have a situation where something is happening, which never happened at any time during the Cold War, which is that there were lots of proxy conflicts during the Cold War. war, but there was always an understanding that you never attacked the territory of the other side, the actual home territory of the other side. It just wasn't done. Again, I'm sure you remember Vietnam, even when the ships, the Russian ships were going to high fog. There was some talk by some people are bombing them and people said, oh, no, no, that's absolutely not where we go. That's far too dangerous. We don't do that sort of thing. Now we're talking about, you know, launching missiles inside of Russia. The Russians, again, showing incredible self-discipline in the face of all of this,

and they're winning the war in Ukraine. I think this is now generally accepted outside, you know, some cartoonish articles that you used to sometimes find in parts of the British media. Are we going to go on escalating? What is the point where we stop? Is it, are we going to stop at nuclear weapons? I mean, where are we going to stop? Because from the moment, actually, despite all that we've been saying, I think the Russians have shown incredible ability to absorb our provocations and to keep up their side of what they want to do. But we are escalating continuously.

Putin has talked about unending escalation. Is there a point where this escalation stops, given that people in the West on how talking about the war in Ukraine, in crazily, in existentialist terms, though West is apparently now at risk if Kiev falls. Yeah, I think you've been making the point completely correctly, both of you, that there has not been one point where the West has stopped an escalation that promised not to take.

And the most recent, of course, is this rather pitiful debate. Can NATO weapons be used to hit inside Russia? And every single line that's been drawn on which missile systems, which weapon systems and so forth, boots on the ground now with Macron and completely out of line of any sense, sending the French troops formally. There hasn't been a line where we have said, well, we said we wouldn't do it and we're not going to do it. That is the point up until now.

The escalation has continued because the dominant drama is we cannot be stopped from our purpose. Our purpose is Ukraine in our territory, NATO in Ukraine. We can't concede that because then. the whole world, the whole house of cards falls down, is the idea. So it's a kind of domino theory, the theory we can't stop in Vietnam, because then the whole free world will collapse. So it's nonsense then, nonsense now.

I always like to refer to the Battle of Tutterberg Forest, AD 9, when the Romans learned that they had a limit. The limit was Germania, it was the Rhine. They couldn't conquer Germania. You know, the Roman Empire didn't fall that day in AD9. Augustus more or less said, okay, enough with this. We stopped this particular project of heading east. It's almost the same story now. Nothing of any significance in this world. Nothing, not even for Ukraine, would be detrimentally affected by Biden picking up the phone today and saying to Putin, you know, that idea of NATO and Ukraine, that was pretty hairbrained. It's not going forward. Then the war stops today. Ah, yeah, there's some details.

But this is the essence of it from the start, from the start, from 30 years or 60 years, or 60 years, ago, depending on when you want to date this particular misadventure. But so far, no break at all, because they don't understand Tutterberg Forest. They don't understand that it's not the end of the world for the U.S. not to have NATO in Ukraine and Georgia, not exactly to North Atlantic countries, not exactly defending against the Soviet Union, which doesn't even exist anymore, not exactly in line with the promises given solemnly and repeatedly and in writing and verbally to Gorbachev in 1990. And everyone can look it up on the National Security Archives of George Washington University. If you have any doubt by James Baker the third and by Hans Dietrich-Genscher,

a foreign minister of Germany in 1990, we will not move one inch eastward. So this is really the question. And by the way, as you discussed on your shows, and I got one of the most harrowing emails that I've ever received by one of America's most esteemed scientist engineers and experts in nuclear missile systems and early warning systems, when the two radars were hit by Ukrainian drones. inside Russia, these radars that were, you know, partly damaged, probably not decisively, but key parts of the Russian early warning nuclear attack systems. And I got from this really very top expert, the biggest alarm email that I've received in recent times. and it basically said, believe me, Jeff, the people in the White House and the State Department do not understand the technical side of this. And then he sent me lots of pictures that I didn't understand about what Russia can see over the horizon given its early warning systems compared to

what the U.S. sees and how extraordinarily dangerous these hits were on these radar systems. and asked me, I said, what should I do? Should I forward it to the White House, to the National Security Council, to Blinken, to others? He said, yes, yes, yes, they don't understand what is going on. And I did that. Of course, you don't hear back, but I don't want to hear back and I don't expect to hear back. But we are, we don't have limits, but more than that, the Ukrainians certainly don't have limits. And one of the things I discovered, by the way, which is pretty interesting and pretty weird,

if you go back to the early CIA running of these extremist Nazi and then neo-Nazi units, the bandaristas and others back in the 1940s, the slogans that they used are the same slogans that are being used right now. literally, I was shocked. One of the slogans is, we are fighting for all of Europe. And because even the CIA back in the 40s was shocked at Bandera's brutality because they were mass murderers. They murdered the Poles. They murdered the Jews. They murdered everybody. And they were shocked. Incidentally, by the way, MI6 was not so shocked. M.I.6 had, you know, more professionalism. What's a little mass murder among friends?

These are our buddies. The United States, the CIA was a little bit more reserved. Are these really our friends? But the slogans that were being used, you know, we're fighting for your freedom. We're fighting for Europe. They're really recycled. Some of them. It's worth a historian actually doing this because some of these slogans never really go away.

Absolutely. Very last point, which is that I completely agree that the United States has taken an awful lot of its ideas from Britain. Britain, 19th century Britain, including the rhetoric, by the way, if you read the rhetoric and the kind of articles that appeared in the 19th century British media and compare them with what you say here today, the resemblance is absolutely uncanny. But the British did have limits. They did understand that sometimes it made sense to retreat. They retreated from Sudan. They retreated from Afghanistan. They did those sort of things. They were prepared to do that and they were prepared also. So to come to terms, they came to a very cynical and cruel agreement with the Russians to divide Iran into spheres of influence in 1907. But, you know, they did it. They understood negotiations. They understood diplomacy at that time.

What is astonishing about the United States is that it doesn't do even that. It's learned all the worst lessons from its teacher, but none of the good ones, which the British did have. You know, it's fascinating. I think part of it is the hubris of the nuclear age without understanding the other side as nuclear weapons, so not to rehash that. But the mindset in 1992, or the mindset,

of the project for a new American century at the end of the 1990s, that there's never been a power like the United States in history. So don't tell us about Tuttonberg Forest Roman Empire. What are they? There are nothing compared to what we are. So the hubris of it is something absolutely shocking. What also is interesting, you know, we have our, as is, You've discussed and we've discussed together. We have our neocon family, the Kagan family. This is Kagan, Robert Kagan, and Victoria Newland, and the Frederick Kagan and American Enterprise Institute

and the Institute for the Study of War. It's a family that has been the family of the military industrial complex. The daddy was a professor at Yale. And the kids are the neocons. The father was brought along into this project for a new American century at the end of the 1990s. But he has a book about war that was his course at Yale. And it's actually, in the introduction, he talked specifically about leaders who understand limits. as being crucial for the survival of their states.

And he gives special praise to Rome under Augustus and Hadrian for understanding the limits. He gives special praise to Bismarck for understanding that Germany didn't need colonies, Germany didn't need an arms race with Britain. And he talks about the excesses that then go on when these breaks are degraded. And you get the megalomaniacs or the drifters or the mentally incompetent or whatever it is in power.

And the kids don't understand the dad because he actually studied wars. And he said limits. He was not in favor of all these wars. So it's very, very interesting. But we've lost it right now. And, you know, I keep thinking, naively. Well, the break will come from Europe, but no, okay, I'm being disabused of that. The break is not going to come from inside the United States anytime soon.

We are probably in this extraordinarily dangerous, fraught situation where at least some rational people who can make calculations will have to somehow tell their bosses, stop. We actually cannot do what we're saying we're doing. And maybe the steady hand of, or maybe the countervailing pressure of the bricks or the 150 countries in the UN that are not exactly in favor of this Western adventurism, somehow this will be our lucky moment that a break has put on. I actually believe it will be. I think that is what will happen in the end. I think that in the end, the pressure will be too strong and will be pushed back. But as I always say, councils of despair are bad councils. Despair is a bad counsellor.

That's what I cling to because things don't look particularly good at the moment if we have to be honest. Professor Sachs, that's my part of the discussion. I'm going to suggest to Alex. we've got a few minutes. You may have one or two questions. Yeah, can we, can we take five minutes, five, ten minutes, answer some questions? I think we could do three because I, yeah, let's take one. Great, great. You have a lot of praise in the chat, by the way, Professor Sachs for your appearance on Tucker Carlson. Everyone is saying thank you. That's that. Let's see. From Ralph, is the USA, the UK prepared for full-on thermon nuclear war?

No, you can't be prepared. It's a complete suicide. There's no preparation for debt it. Duck and cover what was taught to generations of schoolchildren. Sorry, that's more cruel than cruel to even think that there is preparation. There's no preparation for nuclear war. Sanjavis says Professor Sachs and Duran. I think Mikhailo Padoliak answered your query. What are the Baltics thinking provoking Russia's because the leaders of those. countries see themselves as the global elite. Well, you know, they they see themselves as being able to, that they control the U.S. nuclear arsenal, they think, although that, of course, doesn't keep them safe in any way. It's, it's just a profound, profound irrationality. But it is because the United States lets itself.

be used by the most extremist voices, whether in Israel or whether in Kiev or any place else, it lets itself be used. It says whatever it takes and it hands over the weapons, the budget, and all the rest to Netanyahu, who is murderous. It hands over the weapons to Ukraine, which is absolutely extremist and radical. And this is where we are. we are. The United States needs its own rudder, which it hasn't had. Would you consider running for office, Professor Sacks? No, I would not. Thank you very much. Let's see. Okay, real quick.

That one was easy. That was an easy question, yeah. Mr. Sacks, we used to have script writers for prophetic speeches. Yes, we are out of self-control. But what happened to the speechwriters? Oh my, you touch on a favorite topic of mine because one of my neighbors was, I think, America's most gifted speechwriter and counselor and friend of John Kennedy, and that was Ted Sorenson. And I knew and loved Ted. And just to say, by the way, this is a whole, I wrote a whole book about one of Kennedy Sorensen speeches in 1963, the peace speech, June, 10, 1963 in a book called To Move the World, so an advertisement.

But it wasn't just speech writing. It was this wonderful, wonderful combination of advising and eloquence, and the two of them were most remarkable. And I do, maybe we could end here. I'll just say it. I probably made my family listen 100 times to the speech, but you can listen online to June 10, 1963. It's the American University commencement address.

It is the wisest words ever said by an American president ever about peace. And it was so compelling. And don't get me started because it goes on for an hour because I can't stop myself. But anyway, it was so compelling and so eloquent and so generous to the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War and so dignified and so respectful. calling the Soviet Union and the Russian people, people of great culture, great learning, great science, great technology, great arts,

that Khrushchev heard the speech, broadcasted around the Soviet Union by radio in Izvestia and Pravda, called the U.S. envoy, April Harriman, and said, this is the finest speech by an American president since FDR is how he put it, since Franklin Roosevelt.

I want to make peace. with your president. Five weeks later, the nuclear, partial nuclear test ban treaty was signed. A little mutual respect, decency, and vision can go a long way in this world. Professor Sachs, on that, let's finish. Thank you very much for joining us today. It's great to be with you, always. Thanks. Thanks so much. Bye-bye. Just to say, as we were ramping up, I've suddenly been new form. I have something to do in 15. minutes, which is completely out of nowhere. Yeah, 10 minutes. Absolutely. We've got

15 minutes. Barbara, welcome to the drag community. Richard says Scott Ritter, Jay Napolitano, passport, sees, know anything. Pescoff addressed that, actually. Oh, absolutely, yes. Terrible business, by the way. Go to R.T. And Peskov actually has some comments on it. No better source than Pescoff.

Zisi, thank you for a super sticker. Elza says, Mr. Sacks. Thank you for the brilliant interview you gave to Tucker. As Dimitri Sava says, it made you an even bigger star in Russia. Valle yes, thank you for that super sticker. Patty and Patsy says Duran and Jeffrey, thank you for the news analysis. Christos says maybe the pandemic didn't do the job. They expected and now they want the nuclear pandemic to finish us all.

Let's hope that's not it. Sangeva, thank you for a super sticker. Don Pop, thank you for a super sticker. Let's see. Ralph, we answered the UK and the UK. US prepared for a nuclear war. Nick, thank you for that super sticker. Christos said, I'm worried about, I'm worried we have B-52s in Australia.

Are we a target? Yes. Yeah, if things get real. Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Of course you are. Of course you are. No question.

If you have nuclear, if you have B-52s, which are nuclear bombers, then in the event that there is a, you know, out-and-out confrontation between superpowers. given the range of these bombers and the fact that they carried nuclear weapons, the other, the adversary superpower, is going to see them as a threat and is going to target them. That follows as night follows day. I'm not saying this to be alarmist. It is an acknowledged fact. It's a fact on their side and it's a fact on our side.

If you get drawn into these dangerous games, then you run all the risks that go with them. Elza says, I talked about the Cuba crisis and told the story of Archipiv I had heard from Mr. Sachs to my students, year nine, Germany, this week. Excellent. Thank you for that. Ralph Steiner says, is the Anglo-American Empire's march to thermonuclear World War III also related to its looming financial bankruptcy and need for war and external enemy? This is a big subject and one we need to come back to. I read a most terrifying article today in the Daily Telegraph, by the way, all places about a looming financial and economic crisis in the United States.

And this article says it believes that the United States is actually already in recession. I think that we are getting cause and effect wrong. I think it is not the financial economic problems in the United States that are drawn. driving the United States to take these, these terrifying things. It is the overcommitment, the absorption of the United States, the way in which it takes measure after measure that undermines its own economic stability in pursuit of this project that is bringing us to this point of financial crash. So that's my own view.

Big Wyman, thank you for that super sticker. Lame Duck, thank you for that super sticker. Tabernak says, Mr. Sacks, can you explain post-dollar trade and currencies? Well, that will have to bring him on for another program with... Post-dollar trade and currencies. Christo says all this fuss of nuclear threat is to hit deep into the mass population of Russia to get scared because they know and most of the West don't know. Well, can I just say something?

If this is a bluff on our part, it's not. working but the russians are not pulling back in ukraine they're continuing to advance because for them this is an existential conflict as they said and as they fully understand that is what makes our actions so reckless just a couple of more the black cat thank you a super sticker ricardo a fontzes has french instructors are only in ukraine to teach them how to surrender Bob, thank you for that Duran membership. Bob says NATO is pushing their agenda surreptitiously. Doc Holliday says the best informed follow the Duran.

Thanks, guys. Zahir, thank you for that super chat. And Vichel says BJP, NDA won the elections, but with a fairly low margin. They need a coalition. Many argue a post was funded by SOTOS organization. What's your take? I'm going to say this. Yes, I'm going to say this.

I think Alex and I perhaps will be doing programs about the recent elections in India and South Africa. I think maybe Soros had a role. Certainly the media in the West has been bashing Modi a great deal recently. I'm going to say this. I think both in South Africa and in India, the reason why the ruling parties have underperformed

in these elections or rather have performed less well than they would have liked to do is because of growing economic problems in those countries. I think that living standards have been falling, problems have been growing, it's part of the general economic malaise that exists all around the world. And it is important to remember that notwithstanding all of that, they are still in power. They still come through. they're still where they were, you know, they're still, they still are ultimately in control. So we shouldn't, I think, over-dramatize what has happened.

I would also add, I think the Modi himself and his party may have run a rather ill-conceived election campaign. But I think this is a topic we will discuss more fully in a program that we do. And certainly we will discuss Soros and not just Soros, but all of the others, the way in which the West has in fact shown very distinct preferences in whom it wanted to win in these two elections. Yeah, agreed. Okay. That's everything. Any final thoughts, Alexander, and we'll sign up. Well, an absolutely titanic program, if I may say. And I absolutely agree with Professor Sachs.

I've never known things to be so reckless and so dangerous. And, you know, I've always said these people have no reverse gear. Well, we see. We see where it's taking us to. All right, thank you to everyone that watched us on Rock Finn Odyssey Rumble, YouTube, the durand.locals.com, and thank you to our awesome moderators. Thank you very much, everybody. Take care.