The Duran Podcast - Will Trump Deliver Peace? - Jeffrey Sachs, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Episode Date: January 11, 2025

Will Trump Deliver Peace? - Jeffrey Sachs, Alexander Mercouris & Glenn Diesen

Hi everyone and welcome. I'm joined today by the excellent Alexander Mercurris and by always high demand, Jeffrey Sachs. And yeah, I really wanted to speak to the both of you today about the possibility of peace, especially now as Trump's moving into the White House. Perhaps people are too optimistic or pessimistic about their prospect. Again, I find it all, to be honest, sometimes confusing when I hear him speak. For example, Trump just posted an interesting video on social media, a video of you, Professor Sachs, where you are criticizing, I guess, efforts to portray always world conflicts as some sort of a struggle between democracy and authoritarianism. And your focus in the clip is Israel and the wars from Iraq, Syria, the genocide in Palestine,

and, well, if Israel has its way, also Iran. So you point out that these wars don't really have anything to do with democracy, and you even came down pretty hard on Netanyahu. Much deserved. Yeah, much deserved. This is possibly it, also why I was surprised that Trump would post this video, given that he tends to portray himself as Israel's best friend. However, I would argue one can also put Ukraine in the same category.

The war, of course, starting in 2014 with the effort of pulling Ukraine into NATO's orbit. It's something Ukrainians at that time overwhelmingly did not work. want and again, pulling them into NATO's orbit and avoidably destroyed its democracy, also main basic human rights. Yet, the political media leads tend to still portray this as democracy versus authoritarianism. So anyways, I thought it was interesting that Trump is now listening to you. It gives me reason to be optimistic, but I thought we can start by you maybe outlining some of your main ideas there, and also what you read into Trump's interest in your arguments.

Well, first of all, let's just say he posted some remarks that I made at Cambridge Student Union. I hope he listened to them. Who knows? But I can't read anything more into the posting, except how amazing social media is, because there was a lot of interest in the posting, more interest than in my words, I think. but the interest in the fact that he posted them, which rather reverberated around the world and was headlined in Israel and so forth, because, yes, I made some harsh and caustic remarks about Netanyahu, who, after all, is under an arrest warrant of the international criminal court for crimes against humanity and for war crimes.

So I think harsh remarks are absolutely due. And the point that I made about Netanyahu in particular is that he has been, I would say, the lead cheerleader in the United States for a series of disastrous wars. one can find remarkable statements online of Netanyahu cheerleading for the Iraq war in the fall of 2002, saying it's indisputable, no doubt, that Israel has, that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction, and this is going to be the greatest thing that ever happens when the United States takes out Saddam. Well, not only did Saddam not have weapons of mass destruction, we know now from insiders that the whole argument was a known ploy beforehand. It wasn't an error of judgment. It wasn't faulty intelligence.

It was as is so much the case in foreign policy, what we would technically call BS. And it was deliberately BS to bring the American people. into a war. And by the way, it's a horrible thing, but it's not hard to manipulate public opinion for war. And that's what was done in Iraq in 2003. We know that Netyao was the great cheerleader of the Obama administration, in this case, covert,

which one also has always to put in, quote, H. H. H. H. H. H.R. Al-Assad, which started in 2011. What is a covert operation? It is an overt military operation that the perpetrator denies. So you stare at it. It's happening in full view. But they say, no, it's not us, not us. And the New York Times says, it's not them. They say so. So we'll repeat every word because we have a quotation from an unnamed senior official. This is what's called a covert operation. Well, Obama ordered the overthrow of Bashar al-Assad.

The New York Times, I need to verify whether they covered this three times or two times in the 2010s Operation Timber Sycamore. In other words, they never told the American. people the truth about a presidential finding to overthrow another government. Anyway, that was Netanyahu once again. And we understand now from many different directions of insiders who have told us very important things, that this was a, and by Netanyahu's own writing, and by his political advisors' statements, and by a plan that was unveiled back in 1996 when Netanyahu first became prime minister, written with American political advisors and called Clean Break,

that this was a strategy for perpetual U.S. war in the Middle East to bring down all of the governments that supported the Palestinian cause by backing groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. So this is the point that I was making. I made it at the Cambridge Student Union. Trump retweeted it. It's not exactly his campaign speech. It's not exactly the mainstream of American foreign policy,

which is so recklessly and ruthlessly in the hands of the Israeli extremity. it's almost unaccountable. And just yesterday, by the way, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Congressman Brian Mask, led the way for the U.S. House of Representatives to threaten in this law or this draft legislation, which probably will pass the Senate and be voted by President Trump, sanctions against the international criminal court. In other words, not against Netanyahu, not against those who commit war crimes, but against the court for pointing this out.

So am I optimistic that things are going to change? Well, American foreign policy is very complex and pretty much continuous across administration. So we'll see. But in any event, it was on true social. you learn a lot about social media in the world when the president posts your statement or when Elon Musk does suddenly tens of millions of views show up. So this is our world right now, a very interesting one.

And we'll see. Well, can I just say, anyway, it is a good thing that he is reposting your statements. I mean, it's a sign. And there might be some telltaker. things that point to some frictions between Netanyahu and Trump. There was an article in Axios about how the Israelis, which means, of course, the Netanyahu government is trying to put pressure on Trump to launch missile strikes against Iran. And Trump doesn't seem too keen at the moment, judging by some of the things that he said. And Netanyahu is using the ICC warrant as a reason not to go to

Washington to attend Trump's inauguration. Well, he did come to Washington in the summer and made some incredible speeches and really terrible speeches at that time. And the fact that there were proceedings in the ICC didn't worry him then. Now, I don't want to, you know, join too many dots. No, no, no, no. It's very true. We don't know right now. And I think what everybody does need to understand, because it's one of the most pertinent questions in the world right now, there's no doubt that Netyahu has been on the war path for Iran for essentially 30 years. This is not a new story. And in the midst of all of the wars that he's provoked, Iran is the last one to fall.

And this is very interesting because, as I mentioned, his cheerleading for the war in Iraq, his cheerleading for the war in Syria is absolutely plainly part of an agenda that included seven wars. And for that, we have the, well, we have many testimonials about that, but the most important is by the former U.S. Commander of NATO, Supreme Commander Wesley Clark. Wesley Clark famously went to the Pentagon soon after 9-11, and a senior Pentagon official handed him a piece of paper that shocked even General Clark, and that General Clark has subsequently talked about extensively. Again, you can find his discussions online.

But what that paper said was that it was the policy of the United States' guns. government that there would be seven wars in five years. This was Netyahu's list. And the seven wars were wars across essentially the Arab region plus Iran. So across the Middle East and East Africa. They included Lebanon, Iraq, Syria, Iran. And then in Africa, and in Africa, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan. Now the idea, according to a very important insider named Dennis Fritz, who is a, was at the time a senior Air Force commander, who later was tasked with going through classified documents about the Iraq war on behalf of one of its architects, Douglas Fythe.

has told us in a book called Deadly Petrail that, yes, this idea of these serial wars, one after the other, was in fact the policy as early as late 2001. And what happened is very interesting. Iraq was the first of the seven wars. And then it was supposed to be Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, Lebanon, and Iran. And why did they choose Iraq first?

Also, extremely interesting, not the way the story is told on the surface. They chose Iraq because they thought they had an excuse. And the excuse was a piece of legislation in the United States in 1990. Under Clinton, this is way before 9-11, called the Iraq Liberation Act. It's stunning to read. It's a law that says it is the intention of the U.S. government to overthrow Saddam Hussein. It's a law on the books in 1998. 9-11 obviously became the excuse, the moment to move.

And then when they decided under these arch Zionists in the U.S. government like Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Fythe, that now we're going to move, they decided what the order would be. And the first one was Iraq because they thought, here's a fig leaf of legal justification. We can justify this war. But you can't go to war over a congressional resolution in 1998. So they had to concoct the story. And they actually had a policy group inside the Pentagon headed by a man named Abe Shulski to come up with the storyline for war.

This sounds like a Hollywood movie. Now, of course, it was a Hollywood movie called Wag the Dog about concocting the reasons for war. But that was a documentary, it turns out. out that wasn't a Hollywood fiction. This is exactly the Iraq war. And Netanyahu played his leading role. He made these cameo appearances in the U.S. Congress. This is the best thing you can ever do. Now, what happened, according to Douglas Fritz, absolutely fascinating, was the U.S. got bogged down in Iraq. You know, they thought it was shooting fish in a barrel,

as they say, that this was a no-brainer that we take out Saddam, and they did, essentially, immediately. But then there was local instability and insurrection, something the U.S. government never understands, never counts on because it's not generals. It's about politics and society, of which these fools know nothing, and get everything wrong all the time. So they got it wrong. The U.S. bogged down in Iraq, and the seven wars in five years took longer. But the agenda was sustained. And this is another very important point about American foreign policy, one that President Putin has made on many occasions, which is the presidents come and go, but there is a deep continuity. After all, it was Clinton under which the Iraq Liberation Act was signed.

It was Bush Jr. that launched the war in Iraq. It was Bush Jr. in his last year that invited Ukraine to join NATO. But it was Obama who presided over the coup that overthrew the Anakovich government in 2014. Now, these are supposedly very different characters. Clinton, Bush, Jr., Obama. We spend a lot of time and a lot of political energy in the United States saying, oh, that one's the bad guy, that one's the good guy, this one's crazy, this one's on the left, this one's on the right.

This is ridiculous. This is just feeder. No one's on the left. No one's on the right. They're all just where they're supposed to be doing the long-term deep state bidding. So this is why it's interesting to have Donald Trump post this. It's interesting to hear the things he's saying. But don't get too excited about anything because, as President Putin said in his famous interview in Figuero in 2017,

the presidents come into office and they have ideas. But then men in dark suits and blue ties come and tell them about the reality. And there go the ideas. You never hear about them again. Well, we'll see, therefore. We will indeed. I just wanted to quickly say that one of the things about Middle East wars is that they always lead from one to the other

because they never achieved that point of miraculous stability and success. How could they? They're running against deep, social, and historical and political truths. So the idea that Israel is going to be the great empire of the Middle East, and it's going to impose that by force and by the force of the United States in an Arab and Islamic region of hundreds of millions of people is plainly fatuous, idiotic, suicidal, but that's actually the policy of these people.

Well, they're now talking about war against Turkey. I mean, there's actually been a government report in Israel saying this, that, you know, we've got to prepare for war with Turkey. And we need to start arming to fight Turkey, which is, of course, a NATO ally. And we're getting people like Michael Rubin, who I think you've come across. He's actually written articles in the US about, you know, we must be prepared to kill Turks. So it's never ending.

It just, it just, it is, it is war. People talk about forever wars. It's actually war without end. And that's something that perhaps people need to understand. It is, it's not forever wars. It is perpetual war. That is what it is. And it's a disaster for Israel and its people,

because they're always going to find themselves. surrounded by threats and they're paranoia inside Israel is going to be fed constantly and radicalization. I read a very, very upsetting article, by the way, by Seymour Hersch, which I think is true, by the way, in which he describes the radicalization of the Israeli army and the things that Israeli soldiers and officers are now systematically doing in Gaza. And there's been this really horrifying proposal, supposing. coming from the generals about how to deal with the problem in Gaza and complaining that Hamas has not really been defeated and is reorganising. And again, not negotiate, just escalate even

more, do things that compound the horrors that they have already been and lead you further along the way to war crimes. As I said, this isn't as winning or successful strategy. It is an abyss. It is a moral and political abyss in which Israel is sinking ever deeper. And it's pulling the United States down with it. And every president down with it too. Every president who is involved with it. Now, whether Trump understands that, because the thing about Trump is that one senses that with Trump, that he's always a work in progress. He's always learning, but he never completely learns. At least that's my own sense of him. Part of the problem is that there is such a dominant view in Washington blob opinion that you hire people inevitably that continue the blob policies. And so one of Trump's realities in the first term and probably again now is that whatever he actually believes,

a lot of the so-called lieutenants will do end runs around the president. We have these memoirs of John Bolton, who is one of the more repulsive figures of American politics, who brags about how he repeatedly tricked the president when Trump was president and he was the national security advisor and he didn't like what the president wanted, And so he found ways to trick him. This is the reality. This is perhaps the modus operandi that President Putin describes about the people who come and explain. Maybe they don't explain.

Maybe they just trick the president. But when it comes to the Israel disaster, because it is a disaster for Israel, of course, a greater disaster for the Palestinians and for the Middle East, which has been in flames for decades now because of Israel's policies. There are two distinct parts of the Israel's

story that are feeding each other but are both leading Israel to disaster. One is that policy is overwhelmingly dictated by the military and by the security. And you see this

constantly. If it's true in the United States that the politicians are to an extent a sideshow, in Israel it's Mossad and the IDF that call the shots more than just about any other part of society. So this is a militarized state. This is a military regime. It's a security regime. It has all of the profound abilities of being a military militarized regime, which is that there's no such thing as diplomacy. There's no understanding

that the way to peace has a different route, which is you actually talk to the other side and find a way to make a solution. So this is a country that for decades completely abandoned any diplomacy

at all with the Arab world or with the Islamic world more generally or with the neighbors in general. None. No diplomacy. The other fact of Israel, which is really stunning and again counterintuitive unless you take a deep dive into it and then when you do take a deep dive into it, it's so perplexing and different from anything you think about, there is an extraordinary religious is zealotry that is another fuel of this. And I don't mean just zealotry of nationalism and zealotry of Jewish state and so forth. I mean zealotry of 6th century BC literal texts.

This is something absolutely unusual. It exists almost nowhere in the world. But the extremist, zealous, rabbis, the illegal settlers on the West Bank, troops in the IDF are reading from 6th century texts like the book of Joshua in the Old Testament, which is a book about genocide. It says God gave the Israelites this land and are instructed to one. wipe out every man, woman, and child that lives there. One of the interesting things about that zealotry is that the text says, no, this was not the primordial indigenous land of the Jewish people. This was conquered land, not just conquered, but conquered in a series of genocides.

Well, it's very unfortunate if public policy is shaped in this absolutely extraordinary way. Now, I think what is so utterly tragic and alarming about this from my own reading, I'm not a scholar of the ancient Middle East or of the 2,600 years of Jewish history under these texts. But I will tell you, as an observer, as a political observer, the zealots have lost their state on repeated occasions during this period. The ancient Jews had rebellions against powerful adversaries on a zealotry that ended up getting them destroyed. And one of the famous episodes is the rebellion against the Roman Empire in 66-8. to 70 AD, which led to the destruction of the so-called second temple of Jerusalem.

But the point is, excuse me, it's 66 AD. You're going to rebel against the Roman Empire, and you think that's good statecraft. Well, it ended up losing the state, the temple. for these zealots, and that was followed by 1,800 years more. It was a disaster. Now, if one steps back from zealotry, from literal readings of ancient sacred texts, if one looks at a region of 400 million people, if one looks at international law, simple justice, UN General Assembly, security council,

You don't want to lose the state of Israel by making demands that are so contrary to every norm standard law that we have in the international scene. But that's the root that Israel is on and that the United States has blindly fed. And at least this, I can say, I can't wait to see the back of the Biden. administration because it is, it was unimaginable for me that this administration would be such a hopeless, reckless failure in following, supporting, financing, arming, providing the intelligence for this utterly destructive, cruel, reckless, illegal. set of actions of Israel. And to this moment, this

secretary of state of ours in his exit interview says, no, everything's just fine. Well, goodbye, Mr. Blinken. At least with Donald Trump coming in, we have a chance of something different. Indeed. I just want to point out, I guess that's the benefit of Trump.

I mean, he's got his obvious weaknesses, but I guess the strength as well as weaknesses, he seems to be allowed to say whatever he wants and get away with it. Now, this is positive to the extent that it allows him to break the narrative at times, because all of our perpetual wars, they appear to be legitimized by this promise of perpetual peace. That is, you know, we're democratizing the world, spreading human rights. And again, this is the narratives which allow us to fuel this wars. I mean, in Afghanistan, this was even proven, as we, WikiLeaks leaked this CIA documents in which they addressed, how do we respond to the Europeans losing interest or support for the war in Afghanistan?

Well, let's say it's about women rights, you know, little girls going to school and suddenly the Germans, French, they're all happy about continuing the war. So, of course, this is what we do in Iraq, Syria, everything about human rights, democracy. Of course, sometimes the narrative gets a bit confusing, such as at the moment where we have to whitewash and celebrate essentially al-Qaeda, offspring in Syria. Meanwhile, we have to condemn and try to topple a democratically elected government in Georgia. But overall, we still always follow this format. This is all for liberal democracy in the pursuit of perpetual peace. And I think in Ukraine, we've done the same. We come up with this great ideas and values in order to continue a long war. And this is also, I think, a forever war, because this was very clearly stated by many observers when, as well as the mediators,

Zelensky himself in the beginning of 2022 when the US and UK sabotaged Istanbul agreement that they wanted a long war exactly to bleed Russia. But again, how do we legitimize this? We keep saying, well, we can't have diplomacy with people we disagree with. This is Kayakhalas, of course, pointing out. So we have three years now of all our politicians refusing to even speak and sit down. with the Russians as all these people die on the battlefield and they portrayed us a moral choice, something virtuous.

And so we have this, we always create this very strange fake narratives to legitimize our wars. But then suddenly comes Trump and it doesn't seem to be bound by anything. And he just spoke, I think it was yesterday that, yeah, I'll sit down with Putin. And we have to get an end to this. And when he addressed, you know, what about the origin of the war, he's instead of going into Russia's hatred of democracy and the thriving democracy under Zelensky, he essentially says, you know, goes back to what was uncontroversial before, just stating, well, you know, NATO creeping this close into Russian borders in Ukraine, who's always going to spark a war, perhaps we'll do something

different, we'll sit down and talk. I mean, no other politicians could get away with, well, referring to facts. They all have this commitment to the narrative. So I'm just wondering, at least he's talking about great power responsibility. This is something, isn't it? His statement that the war was about NATO and that he understands Putin's point of view is by far the single most important statement that he has made or that any American leader has made in many, many years. It is the core truth. It is the core explanation of all that we've seen. We know it. You've documented it.

We've documented it. We've discussed it for years. But like a taboo, it must not be said. And I discussed with you. I tried to get one op-ed into the New York Times for years to just say this. You know, space is free when it's online. I don't even care about print. Just give me 700 words.

Couldn't do it because this is a taboo. You can't say that there was a cause for this war. And Trump said it clearly and accurately. And Pascal heard it, of course. And this is the basis for ending this war. It's always been the basis for ending this war. This war has always been about great power, security, and interrelations. That's what this has been about.

This has been about whether Ukraine is a buffer between the U.S.-led military and Russia, or whether it becomes the battleground for who takes it, And the idea of Ukraine to survive, indeed to thrive, was we'll be neutral. Neither side has to attack us. Neither side has to worry about us. We will be neutral. And we will be very fortunate in our neutrality because we'll have good economic relations looking west to Europe. We'll have good economic relations looking east to Russia.

We'll be also a bridge in between. And that is a wonderful vocation. And the United States broke it, deliberately broke it because if there's one word in the deep state American lexicon that is hated more than any other word, it is neutral. if you're not for us, you're against us. Please, this is so important for people to understand.

That is the American mentality. There is a deep record of this. And I'm talking about a record including of conversations in the Oval Office where the president is told, while that one says he's neutral, get rid of him. That was the case of Lumumba, for example, where Eisenhower said, get rid of him, the popular and elected first prime minister of independent Congo, now the DRC.

And of course, the CIA was immediately tasked with poisoning him. Eventually he was shot with CIA assistance, but because he was neutral, neutral. That's the dirty word. If you're an enemy, we understand you, but neutral, that's insidious. And so this is a long story. Trump said something absolutely true, like you say, very important in this case. If he will, and he might, he might be able to apply the same reasoning that China has its interests in Taiwan, part of China. after all, that in the Middle East, there's another perspective on this.

If he can apply that same insight and say it and not have the men in dark suits come running to tell them how the world really is, it could be a breakthrough. It could be a breakthrough. Again, never hold one's breath when it comes to American foreign policy. But given the streak that we've been on, which is a. streak of misery, war, and the one most amazing thing that you absolutely could not contemplate, you couldn't even design, which is to make America itself less secure over a period of 30 years to the point of grave risk of nuclear war. Well, the U.S. fools in this Washington blob have done exactly that. So we really need Trump to change direction.

This is the main point. Well, he does say he wants to do something which Biden has never done and which you've pointed out many times. It's been a disastrous thing that Biden has never done. Biden has never spoken to Putin ever since the conflict in Ukraine began in February 2022. Trump says that he does want to speak to Putin. In fact, my impression is he wants to actually meet

Putin. And that would be, I think, a significant step forward. He's also appointed an envoy who is Kellogg. Now, Kellogg has all kinds of ideas. Maybe he's not the best person to act as an envoy, but he is nonetheless an envoy. He will presumably,

since he's going to be having to act as an envoy, he's going to go to Moscow at some point. He's going to meet with the Russians. This is absolutely essential. It's the first step that has to be taken, both to bring this whole situation that we have in Ukraine under control, because it is almost out of control, and also perhaps to take a way forward. And I just want to make a simple point, which is that in the West, for the last three years, we've been acting as if we are at war with Russia, whilst consistently denying that we are. So we freeze their assets. We refuse to talk to them. We lob missiles into

their country. We not just freeze their assets, but now actually are using their assets. We're actually lending money. We're doing things which actually, legally speaking, are acts of war. And we consistently say, no, actually, we are not at war. It looks to me as if, at least now, we're starting to get away from this terrible situation where we are in this essentially undeclared, denied war that has been so ruinous in terms of international relations. Now, where we're going to go from here, whether we're actually going to get a settlement, I don't know, because firstly there's all the problems that you say, a bureaucracy in Washington that is deeply hostile. Bureaucracies across Europe, which disastrously are completely hostile

as well. So destructive of Europe. Unbelievable. Whatever it's doing to the US, it's destroying Europe. It's unbelievable. Unbelievable. And of course, it's also coming desperately late in the crisis. I mean, you know, at a point where the Russians are visibly winning the war, they may have less incentive to compromise and make concessions than they would have done had this happened, say, a year ago. But the very fact that we have a dialogue is a step forward and we have ideas. I mean, not just from within the Trump campaign. I think it was you who provided us with a very interesting position paper taken by somebody who I think works at the UN.

I mean, he says he proposes all sorts of ideas. I'm not sure that all of these can happen. But he makes extremely good, very valid points about the UN Charter, about the provisions for self-determination in the US. UN Charter. He invites us, and I mean us, in the West, to rethink some of these dogmatic positions that we have taken. And again, if Trump and his people really want to move forward with this, there are plenty of good ideas that they can work with. Let me pick up on several of the points you made. First, of all the things that we've done, the use of and active engagement of the

United States in shooting missiles deep into Russia, the attackers and the others, is the most extraordinary and reckless action of this administration, bar none. It is tantamount to Russia having submarines off the U.S. coast and attacking directly the United States. And then would we say, no, they're not at war with us? Or would we be courting nuclear annihilation? Of course, we would. That's what we are doing. This is a point that President Putin has, of course, made repeatedly, not just President Putin, but the entire Russia. security apparatus. When attack of missiles are used, this is the U.S.

doing the attack. It is technically the U.S. doing the attack. It is U.S. missiles, U.S. guidance systems, U.S. personnel, U.S. intelligence, all doing the attack. We are attacking Russia. And as you have pointed out, repeatedly, of course, like every other detail of this narrative, this one was also a lie because it was approved in the spring of last year,

and the American people were then given some phony excuse in the fall of an approved policy change. And of course, also like everything else about the United States, it was not publicly vetted, debated, reviewed, overseen by Congress. This is a decision of one person. And perhaps, by the way, because everything else was phony in the United States, that person wasn't even the president of the United States, who may not be compass mentis, because from what we hear, he's not. And so maybe this was Jake Sullivan that did it or somebody else.

It's unbelievable. And that's what they did. And so any one of these issues is enough to say, are we kidding? Are we really playing games this way to the point of, as the Doomsday Clock puts it, were 90 seconds to midnight of Nuclear Armageddon? We are playing games this way.

then I want to pick up on the no discussion point because this is honestly worse than kids in a playground, you know, having some brawl. You talk to each other. You figure out at least your moms make you come together and say, talk to Johnny. You don't go on for two and a half years lobbying missiles into them without a discussion. but there literally has not been a discussion. I was once asked to speak to the G20 foreign ministers when they were meeting in Bali.

And it was a private Zoom, and I spoke to them about the war in Ukraine during the Bali-Indonesia G20 summit. They were not speaking with foreign ministers, Lavrov, who was physically present, but the whole point was we don't shake his hand, we don't take a picture, we don't have a side discussion. Again, worse than children. When I have said over the years they behave like children, my wife keeps correcting me that you're insulting children. This is something absolutely extraordinary. And then I think there's a basic point, and it's a very

fascinating and deep point and you have the experience, Alexander, as you've talked about as a mediator, and I've had the experience as well. The mere fact of talking to the other side actually brings you much closer to an agreement. And there's a fascinating, it's a huge body of psychological research in studying so-called strategic games like the prisoner's dilemma that many people will be familiar with. And the prisoner's dilemma is a setup where mutual cooperation is best, but there's an incentive to cheat on the other side.

And so you put people together in this kind of setting in an experimental setting, and you investigate. And if you are a game theorist, your prediction is people never cooperate because there's something wrong with this game theory. There's no human understanding embedded in it. So there's a so-called equilibrium concept that predicts no cooperation. Well, the only ones that don't cooperate, by the way, are typically or very low cooperation is economic students.

But if you put nurses in a room together, they cooperate almost all the time. If you put other professions in the room, they cooperate maybe half the time. Now, here's the point that I want to make. If you let the people talk before they play the strategic game, so they can say to each other, Yeah, we should cooperate with each other. What the game theorist tells you is, well, that doesn't matter. That's not binding. That's what we call cheap talk. That can't affect the outcome. Completely wrong. We are human beings. You put two human beings in the room. You let them have cheap talk before they play the strategic game. cooperation soars to more than 90%.

People say, yeah, I kind of like the other guy, or I trust him, or I don't really feel like cheating because we said we wouldn't cheat. Honest to God, this is the reality. Not the game theorists in the Washington blob that say you can't trust the other side. We have to hit them with missiles. That's insanity. That's not serious understanding. of strategic relations, much less the stakes involved.

So talking with the other side will make a huge difference, and that's not empty thought or do-goodism or whatever. That is the experience of real life. That is the experimental evidence overwhelmingly. It's also the demonstrated proof repeatedly of actual diplomacy. One case that I've studied my whole career and written about is the diplomacy between the U.S. and the Soviet Union from the Cuban Missile Crisis through to the conclusion the following year of the partial nuclear test ban treaty. What saved the world literally in this case because we were within a hair breadth of nuclear war. What saved the world was that Kennedy and Khrushchev had a back-channel, direct, ongoing communication, which now we can read in full because it's collected, it's published, it's completely fascinating to read.

And they sometimes lied to each other, they then rebuked each other, but it was a human relationship. Sometimes they warmly congratulated each other on election victories or on birthdays or on other occasions. There developed a genuine warmth between the two. But what was absolutely life-saving in the Cuban Missile Crisis was President Kennedy almost alone and to the opposition of his military brass which just wanted to go in and bomb. and his Air Force commander, Curtis LeMay, who was a complete madman, who basically, to Kennedy's face essentially, called Kennedy a coward and accused him of treason. In effect, Kennedy said, I understand that Khrushchev is in the same situation as I am, that neither of us wants war but were being pushed by our advisors and our. teams and so forth, and I get it.

And he and Khrushchev figured out how to pull back. It's extraordinary. But it was a human dimension to this. And with Trump, there will be a human dimension. Trump and Putin will meet. And Trump and Xi Jinping will meet. And they will actually on that basis make progress. And I would, you know, it seems completely,

impossible and far-fetched. But if Trump and Peschkian, the Iranian president, met, this would also change history. Peshchkian, who I met in September at the United Nations and had a very nice exchange with, is a heart surgeon. He's a decent man. He came with a message of peace. Of course, by the time our mainstream media mangled it, hid it, discons, it from view, everything was about war with Iran, the opposite of what Pasechkiyung was saying in person. So if there could be direct discussions, that would be a world changer too. I completely agree. Like Trump's ability to even meet with Kim Jong-un, this is a huge strength, something that no one

else is able to. And it's kind of frightening that how it's become normalized, that our political leaders behave like 12-year-old girls in the schoolyard who try to freeze each other out, the idea that you don't talk. And whenever they're asked to explain this absurdity that diplomacy don't do diplomacy, sorry, diplomats don't do diplomacy, it's always this absurd notion that, well, we can't meet with the opponent because we can legitimize them as if, yeah, this is a thing. And of course, in the case of Ukraine, we know that to preserve the long war, there's always this fear that the peace might actually break out from talks. But, of course, in the case, in the case, but. But I think it's a wider problem, though, with the decline of diplomacy, because since the end of the Cold War, this is really when we stopped talking to the other side.

And it seems like it belongs to this hegemonic era, because usually diplomacy means we recognize mutual security concerns. We make compromises. But when there's a hegemon, it's always this idea of negotiating from strength. We demand unilateral concessions. And, again, too much empathy and understanding for the other side is seen as being immoral. as it was. And I think, again, this is where Trump's, I kind of want to celebrate too much because he might, he's got some, you know, if you look from now, the statements about Panama Canal, Greenland, the Canada, the Gulf of Mexico, there's reasons for concern as well. But at least you recognize

when you have great power rivalry, you have to piece derives from mitigating security competition. Then you have to address the security concern of the adversary. This is, again, also big taboo now across the West. I cannot remember any media or politicians daring to discuss Russian security concerns. Again, this is fair to legitimize them and legitimize their actions. So we have to walk around all along pretending that this is just us standing up for democracy. And again, this is when we end up with this winner takes all solutions. It's very destructive. So I think we should also point out that there have been two profound failures, either of which had they not failed, would have been enough to prevent

this. One was the complete failure of American diplomacy, complete. The second was the even more shocking, ludicrous failure of European diplomacy. There is no European diplomacy. Borell, who was the, who is the, what was the so-called high representative of the European Union, now gone, was nothing but a war monger from morning till night. Nothing but a mobilizer of weapon systems and more war. He never had diplomacy between Europe and Russia. And now we have the same thing with Kayakales,

who is the new high representative. And I'm waiting for Europe to understand, And maybe, maybe, Trump will concentrate the mind a little bit in Europe, that Europe has its own interest. Because Trump's not going to be nice to Europe. And Biden was not nice to Europe. Biden was unbelievably destructive of Europe. But the European leadership was too blinded or too bought or too owned or too suborned or too stupid. I don't know, some combination, to understand that Europe's interests were completely lost in the last few years.

Ukraine is by far the biggest loser, but the second on the list is the European Union. It is teetering right now. Every government is profoundly unpopular. They're all falling one after another right now because of this idiocy of the, of the Brussels policies. So maybe, God, it would be maybe a miracle too, but if Europe would open its eyes and say, you know, we have our interests. We have our need for diplomacy. Instead of running off to Kiev, as they do, as by the way, Kala did on the first day of the job, go to Moscow and talk to your counterpart and find. find a way for the region to be in peace, that would save Europe. And even if the United States goes off in a crazy way, that by itself would save Europe. But of course, what we hear from Brussels is exactly the opposite right now.

Kala says, oh, whatever the U.S. does, Europe will continue its support for Ukraine. Well, this is, of course, ludicrous, not going to happen, absurd. empty rhetoric, but also from the point of view of diplomacy, so self-destructive of Europe, it's time for Europe to have diplomacy. I completely agree. We've run, I think we're up to our time. Can I just say thank you from again, Jeffrey, for coming to our program. Always.

It's great to be with you guys. Thank you every day for what you're doing, because you're bringing us the real information, the real analysis and it hardly exists anywhere else. So it's great to be with both of you. Thank you so much. And also, yeah, just a quick comment. When you talked about neutrality, I just remember Khan of Pakistan when he visited Russia,

he was accused of aggressive neutrality and we'll see what happened to him. Anyways, I didn't need to extend it. So thank you so much again. Thank you. Thanks for Dr. Sachs, Alexander. Great to see the both of you again. Let's do you again. Very soon.